Feelings are a better predictor of actions than thoughts. Too bad they’re so messy.
It was 6:40 in the morning, and the woman on zoom was wearing leopard print glasses. I reminded myself for the third time that I absolutely did not want to talk about the thing that was bothering me. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to have a conversation about it and I certainly didn’t want coaching on it an hour before I was due to start work. I’d booked the session specifically to get an idea of how another coach might handle a client with no issue. Plus, I just didn’t want to discuss it.
The whole blog, read to you by me. You’re welcome.
“Hi!” She said. “What can I help with?”
“I don’t have an issue,” I said. “Don’t you have a question of the day or something?”
She smiled at me. “Sure. Tell me, what were the three main feelings you felt this week?”
I sensed a trap. I wasn’t going to lie. “Stress, excitement about a project I’m starting and, um, frustration.”
Inside of twenty minutes she had me talking about the issue I’d sworn to avoid. Here’s the thing – by the time we were done – and I’d gone through a fistful of tissues – my actions from the last week made a lot more sense.
The coach had me name the cause of my stress and then dug into that situation until I was openly saying all the things that I thought but wasn’t admitting to. She gave me permission to feel the feelings, sit with them, and really feel them. I was astounded at how deep and strong the feelings were.I hadn ‘t been feeling the fear, the sorrow, or the abject disappointment. I’d bundled it all up as “stress”, wrapped it in a blanket of TV, work and books. I dumped it my psyche’s laundry room, where, I hoped, I’d wash it out of my system without ever opening the bundle up to see what was in it.
This was a personal issue but we do the same thing at work. Our issues might be just as upsetting or more subtle, but if we’re not willing to dig in, get messy and really look at what we’re feeling, our actions at work can be just as mystifying as my sudden need to watch every episode of House.
At work, we aren’t binge-watching TVor sitting at our desk with a great thriller novel and a bowl of chips, but we do the same thing – we drown out our feelings by going through emails, not settling in and working, taking care of small things or snapping at coworkers.
If the underlying motivation for all this activity is unwelcome feelings or a desire to not look under the hood and find out what’s fueling our emotional engine, the results are the same – our actions seem oddly disconnected from our intent.
Why Bother?
Look, I did not want to unroll my personal emoticons for the lovely EU coach with the leopard print glasses. I sure as heck prefer logic to emotion at work too. There’s one problem with avoiding emotions –
Emotions Drive our Actions.
Figuring out what we’re feeling and then allowing ourselves to feel them can yield powerful benefits.
Actions stop being mysterious.
Let’s take an example from myself at work – for some reason, I seem to be incapable of delivering on time any report on the team’s activities. Once you dig into the feelings you have when you’re confronted with the task, you might just have an eye-opening insight. Any time I have to report out exactly what our team did for the past quarter, I’m gripped with a certainty that we did nothing. Not because we’re slackers but because I have terrible recall for things that are complete. When I understood that I had a deep feeling of being a fraud, it was easier to understand why I kept putting off doing the darn power point.
Build Self Compassion
When you understand the feelings, you’re having it’s easier to be compassionate with yourself. Once I realized how I actually felt about score cards, I felt compassion for myself. I mean, I’d feel bad for anyone who worked hard and still felt like they were somehow not cutting it.
Release Judgments
I had a lot of judgments about myself not doing the scorecard report on time. I was lazy, lacked discipline, a procrastinator, a disorganized manager. Once I realized I was just a person who only remembers how to solve problems and what the current list of problems is and I quite literally believed that I wouldn’t find any accomplishments recorded, all that negative self talk fell away. Of course we did stuff. Of course, we earned our pay.
Change your thinking and get different results.
Armed with my insight, I decided to change the way we do the reports. Why not invite the team and have them tell me what they did? Why not have them each bring the data for their area and let’s put them on the PowerPoint together. Now, we meet once a quarter and celebrate all we’ve done as a team. Members get to see what other people did and we all get to feel like we’re part of a group that adds a lot of value.
Think you need a whiskey, a pizza or – shudder – a hot bath to relax? Not at work you don’t. Drop into direct experience right at your keyboard.
OK, short & sweet today.
Here it is… read for you – by me. With yawns. Enjoy.
So many of my clients have their days derailed by simple stressors, I thought I’d do a short blog about how to decouple the current moment from all that ails you at work.
What I mean by basic stressors are things that occur on the regular. Something more subtle than COVID-19, or financial hardship or major depression.
Here are some examples:
A project you’re supposed to work on right at this time that is difficult, time-sensitive, or has you holding back from it.
Repeating thoughts about one of your not-so-great moments
Repeating thoughts about worries or concerns
A sense of pessimism, mild anxiety, general distraction, discomfort or dislike
Your day goes sideways and you find yourself clicking on web links, wading through emails or hopping up to get water, coffee, a snack. In the old days (about 6 weeks ago) you might have wandered down the aisle to chat but now, you let the dog out, check your phone or the news.
Dropping into direct experience takes you out of your head and back into the immediate present moment. Doing this is unexpectedly soothing. The more you practice dropping into the moment, the easier it gets.
What is direct experience?
Direct experience is when you are engaging with the world around you with as few labels as possible. In a Zen story, the leader of a monastery placed a jar of water on the ground. He asked his monks to tell him what it was without naming it. Whoever passed this test, would get to be the head of a new monastery.
One monk said it was not a sandal. Other monks tried and failed to answer to the leader’s satisfaction. The cook came out of the kitchen, walked over to the jar, and kicked it over. The cook was made the head of the new monastery.
That’s direct experience. It’s the difference between reading a book about a boy and his puppy and actually living with a dog. It’ s the difference between watching a movie about the ocean and standing in the water. When you have your feet in the cold water, and it’s moving, splashing and withdrawing, you understand what the beach is. When you fall off a sailboat two miles from shore, you understand what the ocean is. Whether you call it the sea, the Atlantic or the ocean is irrelevant. What’s meaningful is cold, salt, waves, motion, air, buoyancy and if you know how to swim. The label is absolutely superfluous.
That’s direct experience and you can use it at your desk to help you focus and reduce stress. Because when you directly experience where you’re at, all the rest drops away just for a moment and you get a mini reset.
Here’s four ways to do to a direct experience reset:
Where am I?
They say a monk used to wake up in the morning and call his own name. No, he wasn’t senile. He wanted to center himself in the moment. He was asking himself to pay attention to where he really was. I use this technique all the time. It’s my favorite fall back to sleep method. Check out my blog, “Your Boss Should Buy You a Mattress”. Basically, all you do is ask yourself, “Where am I?” Answer with concrete details. I’m in my office, typing on a black and white keyboard, sitting in a small chair, in my home, at 6:18 pm on Sunday. That’s where I am right now. It’s a great way to remind myself that I want to get this done in a short time, and that I’m here for a purpose. Asking yourself “Where am I?” reminds you that what is really happening, is what is really happening, right now, in the room, where you’re standing. Right now, in this place, you’re OK. Right now, you are exactly where you should be, where all the actions and events have led to. Right now, where are you?
Where am I? I’m in the hospital where I work, standing outside a patient’s room.
Where am I? I’m in my home, in front of my PC, sitting in a chair..
Where am I? I’m in my bedroom with my blanket over me.
Find the Future and the Past
I’ve done several meditation sessions where I simply look for the future. Sitting on my cushion, I ask myself to point to the future. Can I see it? Can I smell it? Is it here, with me? Where is it? if I needed to send someone there, could I? Where is this future?
Try it. Right now, look around you for the future.
When you literally look for it, it can’t be found. You have to actually do this exercise, not just read about it. Do this a few times, set a timer for ten minutes or so, sit on the floor, back straight, and quietly, with your eyes open, without speaking, keep asking yourself where the future is and see that quite literally you can’t find it. Do the same thing looking for the past. For me, I have a sensation that is very specific when I do this exercise and having spent a couple ten-minute sessions at this, I can recall that sensation quickly.
Asking yourself where the future is helps out when you’re anxious or worried. It gives you the direct information that whatever you’re worried about has not happened, is not set in stone. Quite clearly, you are made aware that you are just hypothesising about something that may, or may not, happen.
Asking yourself where the past is, helps out when you’re replaying a painful event. The people who were there, are gone. The things you said and did, are over. Right now, all that is gone and right now, you are fine.
String of Pearls
The string of pearls exercise takes the concept of Where am I? and ties it to finding the future and the past. The idea is that each moment is a direct experience and each moment follows the next like pearls on a string. One is moment rolling toward you, while the current moment passes away. In each moment, you are still OK. Sit quietly for just sixty seconds, asking yourself “Where am I?” each time you breathe in. Notice your hands, the weight of your body, the placement of your feet, the area before your eyes and the sounds you are hearing. Notice that right now, you are fine. Notice that right now, the future moment hasn’t yet arrived and the past moment has rolled away, dropping off the string. In each moment, you are fine.
5 Senses Exercise
I adore this exercise. For the full version, please check out Dr. Susan Albers – 50 ways to soothe yourself without food. Right now, where you are at, stop and listen. Name five sounds you are hearing. – Dog bark, TV in another room, the hard drive, the sound of the keyboard, the dishwasher. Now name five things you see. Name five things you feel with your body, five things you smell, and five colors you see.
For me, sometimes I only smell one or two things. When you are done, you and your worries will have had a break from each other.
Why Bother?
By the time you finish one or more of these exercises, the thoughts that were causing you anxiety, or were circling in your head or making you want to escape will have had a time out. You will have reconnected with the fact that right now, you are OK. Tomorrow, you might catch a virus. Tomorrow you might have an unexpected bill that you can’t afford. Yesterday, you might have said something foolish and chances are, you are the only one still thinking about it. Yesterday you made a mistake but you’re not making one now. In an hour, or a half-hour, or a week, a problem might arise, but it’s not here now.
Some people believe this girl’s possibilities are already set in stone. Do you? Who decides who she gets to be? How you answer that question, can change your life.
This week, I had a good laugh. I’m not reverent, so it’s expected that some of that spills over at work. We have a little messaging system that allows us to customize information about our availability. At the end of the day, I notify the world I’m off duty by selecting a red dot and adding the phrase – gone to my happy place.
Today’s blog, read for you.
One day, I forgot to change back to the green dot that says available – working from home when I started my day. My boss IM’d me, and asked – “Are you working? It says you’re at your happy place.” One of the people on my team said – “Work IS your happy place!” and we laughed.
Sure, I still get exasperated. Sometimes, I embarrass myself and want to jump off a metaphorical bridge, but underneath it all, I have deep confidence that tomorrow, or even fifteen minutes from now, I’ll see things differently. That’s the key. I understand that how I see things is up for grabs.
For most of us, that bit of awareness is like getting the best game controller ever to use on our own darn life. Once we get good at this, we’re like, high-five me. I’m out. But there’s way more to uncover, so this week, we’re moving to the far end of the tool-set. Past immediate relief, beyond awareness and even past seeing our thoughts as objects. For today, let’s spend some time working with dreams, goals, and beliefs.
To get there, I want to take you on a quick journey. We start off thinking that we have fixed character traits. To one degree or another, we believe that who we are is defined by how we show up in the world. We’re smart, we’re silly, we learn quickly but we can’t speak in public. We don’t question this and common speech patterns reinforce it. Also, we believe that the environment we find ourselves in has a huge impact on how we feel. If we have a nice boss, good co-workers, and meaningful work to do, we’re doing great. If not, well then, we’re miserable and we expect our HR department to fix that.
There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s how most of the world views things. It has one major drawback though – we have to wait for someone or something to change before we can be happy again. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t have that kind of time.
Enter awareness experiences. What I call awareness experiences are episodes when we are standing slightly outside ourselves, thinking about our own thinking, recognizing our own role in the drama that is our daily life. This can happen when we’re challenged by a coach, or simply when we observe that other people are having a different experience at the same meeting, discussing the same project. Like the time that slacker you know agreed with you about the new product design. You both knew it was bound to backfire but while you were gnashing your teeth, he was chuckling. What was up with that guy?
Awareness experiences start to soften our view of the world. They get us asking questions.
If you would like to try life coaching and see how it can help you build awareness, sign up for a free session at https://rockyourdayjob.as.me/free.
Once we start asking questions, it’s a slippery slope. If you always believed you didn’t get math and one day, you wonder if maybe math is just a skill, like playing the banjo, that’s major. Pretty soon, our questions aren’t just about how much change is possible for ourselves. If we can change, how locked down is our experience of the world? You can work with these questions and actually start to change yourself and how the world feels to you. Once that happens, it’s game on. I mean, why wouldn’t you challenge yourself?
Do that enough and you start get a giddy feeling that who you are – just might be – up for grabs too.
This is where it gets GOOD…
Once you have a questioning mindset, you’re ready to do some big dreaming. This work I’m about to describe is my absolute favorite. Some of my clients like to live here. So do I. Sadly, this is not a hotel you can check into and just hang. It’s more like a lumberyard. You come here, look at all the pretty moldings, the cool cabinets, the funky bathtubs, and fixtures, but then, you have to buy something and take it home. You have to work on installing it if you want to use it. Nobody is going to let you just live in aisle twelve, and certainly not in your bathrobe.
From the opposing camp, I have plenty of clients who don’t even want to visit here. We pull up to the door and they’re like : “Nope, got no money, don’t need anything, couldn’t even imagine what’s in there. I’ll wait in the car.” If that’s you, just know, you will not get lost in there. You will not get depressed about all the things you can’t have. You are far more likely to have a beautiful master bath someday if you actually know that they exist. Trust me, some of the stuff in here is quite reasonably priced.
Are we still talking about identity? You bet.
So how do you do this dreaming big stuff?
Ask yourself who you want to be. Brainstorm a long list. Go all in.
Here’s just a few of mine: I want to be a person with few regrets. I want to be beloved by my family, crazy about my husband. I want to be kind and I want to have a big mouth. I never want to believe that I’m helpless. I want to be healthier and more relaxed. I want to write a NY Times best-seller and move my whole family to Hawaii.
Ask yourself how you want to live.
Do you want to live boldly, without fear and anxiety? Do you want to live with wide swaths of free time? Do you want to live surrounded by art? Or music? Do you want to live near the mountains? Do you want to live feeling confident?
And last, ask yourself what would the best way to experience life be – for you?
For me, I think the best way to experience life is to have the freedom to get neck-deep in things that mesmerize me, make me curious, call to me. I think the best way to experience life is to experience it with a tractor-trailer full of compassion for myself and others. I’m not there yet.
And if you do this exercise correctly, you won’t be at your idealized life yet. We’re not supposed to be. What is life, if we believe there’s nothing over the next horizon for us?
Trust me, there is always something over the horizon. It’s up to us to ask what it is.
And what about you? Right now, in the place you’re at? Who decides who you can become this year? Next year? And who decides how you will experience your world?
I love this picture. Did you notice that the person’s headlamp is beaming up at the moon?
OK. I hope you set aside some time this week and answer those questions. Don’t stop until you have at least ten answers for each of them. Got it? Good. Now it’s time to bring the building materials home and put them together.
Just like going to the store, some of the things you’ve listed are out of reach – for now. I’m pretty sure that becoming a NY Times best selling author is not something available to me in the near future. Same as with the store, you all ready have some of what you wrote down. I rarely feel helpless, I have a tremendously big mouth, I’m nuts for my husband. I let myself get up to my armpits in hobbies and interests. That’s how I became a coach.
So analyze your dreams. What do you already have? Circle them on the page. What is really far out? Underline that. What’s left? Possibilities, ladies and gentlemen, possibilities.
I can write a book. I can take concrete steps toward being more compassionate at work and at home. I can set aside more free time.
I can start to redefine who I am and how I experience the world.
I can make this life of mine, even more aligned with my dreams. So can you.
How to use sensation to reframe quickly from drama – to blue skies
Here’s the deal – I bring a lot of drama. When I make a mistake, it’s horrible. When situations are critical, everything else can go fly a kite, I mean, it’s like, serious up in here. Worse yet, after it’s all done, the curtain closes, and the seats get folded up, I feel – less than and embarrassed, maybe more than a little regretful.
A little riff here on how to use this technique for smaller things… like not eating that cookie.
At work, no drama is good drama. It turns out, with my family, no drama is good drama. In fact, the only time anyone around me wants any drama at all is after the fact. We love to hear the story told with great effect. We don’t actually want to live it that way.
So how do you reframe tense situations to stop your reactivity and get back to chill? It turns out, there are little doorways into behavior we can tug on to quickly reframe.
Let’s do a quick recap – what you think about events and facts, situations, and people, causes you to have emotions. Every thought fires an emotional trigger. We humans take action in response to our feelings, not our thoughts. Those emotions are what drive actions and … say it with me…actions create our results. For the coup de gras, our results are usually a reflection of our thoughts.
If that paragraph sounds new, check out several of my earlier posts where I build out that premise further. The rest of you, keep up.
If you would like to have me take you through this process, or you’re just curious about life coaching, book a free session here. 25 minutes, on Zoom – no sweat.
When the proverbial crap hits the fan, our fight or flight kicks in. You have, like, no control over that. It’s like a freight train. Your heart speeds up, you get laser focus and you either freeze or start a-hollering or you bolt out of the building. Or, you sit in your cubicle with every muscle on high alert, desperately trying to ignore the ringing in your ears and your heart pounding out the intro to Rock And Roll as you try to figure out if the code you wrote last week just brought down the power grid for North America.
You know that tiny awareness you get? The one that says you’re about to head down the wrong path? That’s the one we’re looking for. When things are scary, it might feel like this… frightened, defensive, but in cooler moments it’s more like Jiminy Cricket – a small alert.
Somewhere inside you, while you stare at the loop you swore you wrote an exit for, or you try to remember if you saved that report before you closed it, or you comb through the contract to see if the clause you really need to have is there, inside you – you feel a small twinge. Your mind taps you on the shoulder and asks you to notice that you’re in a panic, a thought flickers, a brief image of stopping.
You swat that unneeded information away and double down on the drama.
Lashing out feels inevitable… but it’s not.
Soon, you’re spinning through code, sending out emails and, if it’s really bad, snapping at people around you. Ever been there? Oh, come on. For sure you have, if nothing else, your kids got you there at least once. I mean, that’s what their entire job is.
Now let’s roll back the story. The mess hits the spinning blades of an air movement machine. Your amygdala wakes up with a roar. It’s time to get invisible or get gone. But then, you realize, that was Suzy’s contract or the code in question was written by Bobby-Jean Mckarfurkle, or the power went out and that’s why the document was lost.
Now what happens? Heart rate falls and you get a bit of euphoria. Now, you take a minute to map out the most logical place for the cause of the failure, happy to be helping out, or you spend a moment recalling all you know about this contract and others so that you can tackle this calmly, or you start a new document recalling that the last time this happened, your second version was better.
What’s the difference? In one situation, you were at fault (and therefore, going to die) and in the other, it’s someone else’s problem (and therefore, you’re going to be a big help.)
In which case are you most effective? Right. And, even if it was your fault, which behavior set is the more desirable? Right again. This is why being able to reframe quickly from being the star in a big drama to being the side kick in a small situation, is such a fantastic skill.
This is the “Anxious Yawn”. Dogs do this when they’re on the fence about how to behave. If you can get yourself just a small interruption, you can choose a new path.
Enter the “twinge”, the “sparkle”, the anxious moment, the tap on your shoulder. Remember that moment when your mind offered the observation that you were in a panic? You swatted it away in the first scenario. That’s the little handle you can grab and use to exit the drama zone and move over into a better way to be.
When the wad of bad news smacks against the propeller of life and flies right back at us, we can’t stop the initial reaction. We’re going to have the muscles of steel. Inside us Jon Bonham will start whaling away at our rib cage while Robert Plant reminds us it’s been a long time but we, for sure remember how this one goes. Oh yeah. Oh, oh yeah. You just have to suffer through this part – but get ready – wait for it – when your mind reminds you that this is a panic – grab onto that handle and pull.
If you can name the feeling, great. It’s panic. Sit with that. Let it move through you. Give it ten solid minutes if you need it, but I bet you’ll be on the way to reframing.
Sometimes though, we can’t name the feeling, can’t stop and observe it. The drive to action is too strong. I’ve noticed this when I’m building new habits. An impulse to change course (do the habit) is swatted away. But if I can catch that impulse and simply commit to the action it’s pointing to, I can stop the process right at the action and redirect, without understanding my thoughts or my emotions.
Here’s what this looks like. Crud. Fan. Freak. Mind taps lightly on your shoulder, a small awareness that you’re in a panic. You’ve trained yourself to notice and follow these tiny awareness moments, so you pause. You quickly realize that the small indicator is signaling to you to tell the person in contracts you’ll call her back, or stop and realize you’re IN North America and the power is actually on, or just stop and wait for your pre-frontal cortex to come back on line.
Notice that you don’t actually have to deal with the feelings or thoughts. They’re in there. Your thought is as – Oh, small twinge, I act on those – and even without you recognizing the feelings or engaging with the thoughts, you shift that action using awareness and your prior training. From the action shift – hanging up the phone, stepping back, waiting without reacting, you get to interrupt the flow and then, naturally, you’ll notice your thoughts becoming more ordered, more like – I can fix this, the contract might have the clause in it, the server with the reports was backed up last night. You don’t feel as good as you might if Suzie had caused the problem but you can start to look at things logically, feel more in control, and start to take actions that actually get you the right results.
Look, changing behavior is best engaged with a feeling of curiosity, because, hey, you’re already OK just as you are, right?
The good news is, you can train yourself to honor these small impulses long before you have to dodge flying muck. Look around you. What are you already trying to change? Let’s say you’re checking email too much during the day. Be very curious. Notice if you have a tiny impulse reminding you that you shouldn’t be checking. If you feel that urge toward turning back to your work, notice it, then honor it. Don’t dwell on this. Don’t analyze it or make a big deal. Like a dog who sees an unexpected squirrel, just chase that positive impulse. You might think – I follow these small impulses – and turn back around.
There’s a wall of resistance for this, and you just let it slide by. Just this once. Next time you can do email, or eat that cookie or whatever. But for now, just let it turn you around.
That’s it. Simple but effective. The payoff is huge though. If you can train yourself to be easily turned by what I like to think of as “the sparkle”, or the “twinge”, you’ll have it there for you the next time you want to duck and pull the plug on a big whirling fan of drama.
When’s the last time the voice inside your head made you feel this good?
Let’s face it. You spend a lot of time with you. When you walk into your workspace each day, there you are. Maybe you’re facing the reality of being out of work during a pandemic. Maybe you’re facing down an uncertain future in your industry right now. We all feel pressure to up our game if we want to create a soft landing for ourselves and our families.
On the road? Listen to the blog and get all the riffs. You’re welcome!!
When you check in with your own thoughts about where you’re at right now from a work perspective, do you get some great feedback? Or is it more like talking to panic-stricken person with some serious mind issues going on? Yeah? Join the club. Now ask yourself, what results would you get each day if you heard less of that internal panic talk?
I was on the phone with a family member this week and got a bit of a kick in the pants. As we discussed some important deadlines looming on the horizon, she must have said five different times – I can’t make myself do it.
As a family member, it would be nice if I just sympathized. My coach’s ear caught that phrase and it stood out like a neon sign. Not only for her but for myself. I could clearly see how I can’t make myself do it was a recurring, self-fulfilling thought that was never going to get her anywhere. Even as I got ready to break the news to her – Sorry, that’s a lie. You currently haven’t made yourself do it is more truthful. – I was looking into my own mind for examples of where I’d fallen down on the job for myself.
There were plenty of ‘em. Of course. Because I’d been all wrapped up in finishing a large endeavor and I hadn’t been giving my mind a clean sweep on the regular. I found these wonderful mind-gems:
I’m gaining my weight back.
There’s no way that team is going to undo that mistake I made.
I don’t know if I’ll make my deadline.
There’s nothing I can do to fix it.
I totally love how my brain has to lead with my weight before I get to the real issues – not.
As an outside observer, it was pretty easy to see that my family member who was constantly thinking – I can’t make myself do it – was going to wind up not getting the work done. After all, her mind was going to find evidence for the thought (confirmation bias), and she was going to feel something– probably defeated or overwhelmed – and when she feels defeated, she probably acts in ways that get less done.
For some people, thinking that they can’t make themselves do something might bring up feelings of anger or determination and that thought might get some different actions, but in general, if we think we can’t, we ususally prove ourselves right or at the very least, make it much harder to reach our goal.
Look, thoughts are the things that drive us. Most of the time, we think we’re in the driver’s seat but in reality, we’re riding shot-gun and it’s not a sunny day on a open road. It’s more like clutching the grab-handle and praying while the real driver, our thoughts, swoop and brake, speed and creep, pull off the road, make a u turn and then start fiddling with the dash.
Time to pull over and take the wheel.
How do you do this?
You stop the illusion that you’re driving when you’re not.
You make yourself aware of your thoughts and take control of them. Experienced meditators spend thousands of hours learning how to do just that. You don’t have that kind of time. You’ve got to find a job in a pandemic. You’ve got to finish your documentation, code a new module, analyze a totally new distribution pattern or design a way to make N95 masks out of macaroni. You’ve got work to do.
So instead of meditating (which is a practice well worth the time by the way) just get a sheet of paper and a pencil. Don’t do this on the keyboard. Hand, pen, paper. Now write. Write down all the bits of litter that’s blowing around in there. Don’t try to direct your thoughts. You’re not planning or giving yourself a pep talk. Write down what’s really driving you to distraction.
Don’t take all day with this, just a half of a sheet of paper is enough.
Now stop and take a look at what you wrote.
You’ve just taken thoughts out of your brain and made them objects. Analyze that stuff. Mark all the facts on the page. If you can’t prove it in court, it’s not a fact. Everything else is just a thought. Look at those thoughts. Everything that’s a thought, can change.
Now, work with the thoughts. Try to figure out where on the map they’ll get you.
Here’s mine
I’m gaining my weight back. ( fear, eat in response to fear, gain weight – not great.)
There’s no way they’re going to undo that mistake I made. (frustration, fuss and fret, I don’t try to fix my mistake)
I don’t know if I’ll make my deadline. (worry, assume the worst, bake a cake, I don’t try to hit my deadline)
There’s nothing I can do to fix it. (give up, stop working on it, bake a cake)
So for me, all roads lead to cake. Are you surprised to learn I have a beautiful chocolate cake on my counter? I’m an excellent cook, so it’s awesome – but it’s not helpful.
Once you’ve seen where your thoughts are taking you, it’s time to reframe. Rewrite a couple thoughts. Note where they will take you by thinking about how you feel and act when you think them.
Lady, it’s totally possible to live through a pandemic without eating a cake. (amused, motivated, wash the damn grapes and go for a walk)
I have no clue what the other team is going to do so I’d better be prepared. (focused, determined, put the finishing touches on my product)
There it is. I feel motivated to be healthy and focused on my objective.
Recap:
Thoughts can change
They are really hard to change when you don’t objectify them.
You can get there faster with a mental sweep
Journal with a purpose – sort fact from thought and analyse them.
Rework a few
Ride with your best self
How are your thoughts about what you have planned derailing you? To get back on track, get those thoughts out of your mind.
Ok, ready to take the day by the wheel and drive? Go to it dudette. You got this.
Mystikos N Kettle Cove Lucky In Love RE OA OAJ THDA, AKA – Jersey Girl 2009-2020 What awareness can teach us about handling difficult situations
Let’s just get it over with. On Friday, April 10th, 2020, we made the decision not to take extreme measures to prolong the life of our wonderful dog, Jersey.
Click here to listen to the blog.
All over America, and the world, people were having similar experiences. They were making decisions about whether to bring a loved one to the hospital, they were dropping their precious family member off at emergency room doors and then not being allowed inside.
In Paramus, NJ, I sat in my car and waited for the Vet to call me. We discussed Jersey’s symptoms, the evidence of cardiac distress, the decisions were made to the ringing of my cell phone as I bawled my eyes out in the virtual glass bubble of my minivan driver’s seat.
My husband was miles away, unable to leave home because of the health risk.
We had minutes to choose, try to take action or put her out of her suffering. I didn’t know if I’d get to hold her. We made the decision. The staff did me the great, great service of rolling my amazing Jersey out to the loading dock – and I was grateful. It was freezing cold, she was sedated but I held her, and then it was over. Papers were handed to me; the cart was wheeled away. A truck was waiting to unload supplies, the staff, waiting for this crying, messy and maybe dangerously infected woman to leave. I had to figure out how toget the car out of the fire lane, traffic was backing up and then I was on a major highway, literally in shock.
At one point, I wanted to know if I was going too slow for my lane. My husband was talking to me via cell phone, and I kept saying, “I don’t know how fast I’m going.” I was looking at the dashboard but nothing made sense. Finally, I recognized the speedometer. 74 in a 65. He stayed on the phone until I pulled in my driveway. The whole thing, including the hour ride each way, took only 4 hours.
I’m sharing this with you because I’m not alone. I’m not going to argue if a dog or a human has a greater value or the love is deeper. I’m just saying, I was lucky. There is no loading dock at any hospital for people to say goodbye to their loved ones. No looking into beloved eyes. No touch of a hand for comfort. I know how I feel, and I know I had just the barest scrape with what so many thousands have gone through.
Worse yet, I know what happened after I got home.
My brain got involved. I had suggestions for myself. I suggested I’d made the wrong decision, I questioned and tortured myself. But the truth is, there were many thoughts I could have engaged with, and what I was getting from my brain was the “fast track”.
Fast Track Thinking
Our brains are very tuned to negative events. We need to be. It’s important to remember what we were doing just before we fell over a cliff, cut our feet on rocks or got pounced on by a tiger. So our brains prioritize that. We don’t do a good job of differentiating these negative events, so a harsh word from a co-worker, a near-miss with a speeding bus and the pain of losing a beloved one are all lumped together. If we survive all of that, our brain decides our thoughts, actions,and feelings were successful. The next time we have that event, our brains are going to pull all those thoughts back out.
Good times.
Here’s another thing, our brain isn’t going to agonize over getting us just the right thought. It’s looking for fast and close enough. There’s nothing wrong or bad about that, but it’s important to understand.
Same Stuff, Different Day
Did you ever notice that you can have very different outlooks on the same situation, even one day apart? In my Reboot Your Day Job program we go through activities designed to help you see this up close and personal, but for now, let’s stick with some easy to recognize situations. Day 1 – you discover you’ve missed a critical appointment. The sky is falling and you imagine all the worst things. Day 2 – You decide to try and fix it, you call, apologize and then reschedule. Everything is fine.
Have you been there? Good.
That one’s easy to see. More subtle, when you journal every day about the same objective,you’ll notice that some days you are feeling positive and other days negative about your ability to achieve it. Same objective, same you, different thoughts.
What does this tell you? First of all, it tells you that nobody’s in charge inside there. Your brain is just dishing out whatever is on the fast track at the moment. If you want to learn more about this – read Your Brain At Work – by David Rock.
When I first really understood this, I took it like a punch to the gut. Click the link at the top for this blog’s recording to hear that story. What that means is that the sentences in my brain that I had believed were real, meaningful truths, were more like random chance, sort of like having a thousand Magic Eight Balls inside my mind. I was so angry.
I’m over that now. Now, I understand that what I think about most frequently will resurface more often than other thoughts. I also understand that what is surfacing is somewhat of a hack. I understand that thinking a thought, doesn’t make it true, or meaningful or useful, but it does make it more likely to come up again.
From a business perspective, you can see the effects of this when someone unfamiliar with a problem is invited in to assist. Often, they ask some question that is both simple but profoundly important to solving the issue. Everyone else in the room does a facepalm because the question is so obvious. Why does this happen? As we focus in on a situation, we start to fall victim to our own internal fast track as well as groupthink. Our brains stop offering alternatives, not because there are none, but because, well, we’re built that way.
I also understand that once a decision is made, the consequences of that decision or action are now just the situation we find ourselves in.
I’ll never know what might have happened if I made a different choice. It could have gone well or horribly. I’m not a bad person for choosing. I’m not a good person for choosing. I’m a person who made a choice. Right now, I feel like shit, because I’m grieving. I don’t need to try to control that by changing the topic to something else – like what-ifs, or my own failures. I could wallow in remorse, second guess myself and stay up there, in the world where maybe I can control this situation. But that painful path is just an escape from the real truth which is – I miss my dog. Just that. Nothing more and certainly nothing less.
If you are suffering in the aftermath of a situation, questioning your choices, or having vivid thoughts about a loved one suffering, please reach out. Click here: I’ll be happy to coach you for free. I will not try to sell you on coaching. Please reach out, – these thoughts don’t have to keep going. It’s OK to take a step toward feeling better.
The more I question myself or relive that day, the more likely those thoughts are to come up again. That is the way our brains are designed.
In business, we can protect against these limitations by inviting in more people to brainstorm, letting go of the need to be the one with the answers and investigating questions. Contrary to what we sometimes see on TV, a group of informed people, asking all the questions they can think of, is the best way to find a new thought, new hope, better outcomes.
I want to grieve, but I can also decide to focus on remembering her entire life in vivid detail, not just the last four hours. In her entire life, I’m very proud to say, Jersey Girl ran several 5Ks with me, spent hours and hours at the dog park, helping me make good friends, got featured in the local paper for her fashion sense, visited her nursing home patients, some of them, more than 70 times. Imagine that? She worked for over eight years at our local hospital, visiting twice a month. She competed in sports, earned ribbons and vacationed at Canine Camp Get Away.
It is the nature of our brains, that the more I times I think of those facts, the more often my brain will offer me them when I’m reminded of her.
Social media not reflecting your reality right now? Here’s how to use restraint to help.Click on the recording to hear the blog. There’s riff on why a coaching session is like sanitizer for your brain.
Welcome to another week of the new normal. I’ve received some emails from people praising all the time they’ve spent with their family now that we’re all under shelter in place rules. Social media has been full of suggestions about what we can do with all this free time we’ve got on our hands. Am I the only one who hasn’t all of a sudden had more time to read or walk my dogs?
I’m pretty sure there are a lot of us out here feeling more pressure than ever before.
If we’ve got our kids home from daycare or school, then we’re trying to keep them studying, learning, praying they don’t fall behind, all while we’re either working from home or worse yet, not working at all.
If we’re still showing up on the job, and a lot of us still are, then there are all the extra precautions. We are changing our clothes before we join the family, maybe we are trying to live separate from the family and sleeping in the guest room, or living in the garage, trying to keep our families safe. For some of us, we can’t make that choice because we have to come home and care for our families.
Once you get past that, there’s the fear. The other night my husband was soundly sleeping while I lay awake. I heard him cough in his sleep. As I lay there in the dark, I wondered if I’d brought home the virus with me. He’d been home, isolated, for over a week, but I hadn’t yet started to work from home. There in the dark, I began to cry. What if my choice to go to work resulted in illness or worse for him? My heart pounded in my chest, fear beating at my ribs. I thought: What have I done?
Look, today’s situation is not what any of us wanted, but it’s the road we’re on now. Like every other situation, we have many choices about how we think, feel, and respond. It’s through mindfulness that we can start to pry out what our options are.
It’s been tempting to dump my original plan for this year’s blog, but I’m not going to. I believe the skills I’m showing you are as relevant today as they were a month ago. I’m going to use business examples and also examples from the pandemic. So here we go.
Let’s talk about the R-word: restraint.
We hate that word. We don’t like to be restrained in our homes, and we don’t like to restrain ourselves from overeating, box in our time, constrict our choices, or restrict our actions. We want to be free, baby, free.
Take a good, long look at the dog in the photo above.The harness and restraint are allowing the dog to ride in the car. Using the harness system, he can safely experience a world beyond the four walls of his owner’s home. So is it cruel to clip him into his seatbelt? I think most of us can see that it’s an act of kindness. It’s an opportunity.
That’s how I want to view restrictions- as gifts I give myself. One thing I’ve learned is this – you never figure out how to change anything in your life until you restrict yourself somehow.
Restraint opens up the gate to new ways of being, working, achieving, and sometimes, just surviving.
I think we all get how restricting ourselves in the short-term yields benefits in the long term. Don’t smoke today, and you’ll be healthier tomorrow, eat less today, stay home today… all of these restrictions yield a greater good tomorrow, for ourselves or our communities.
Here’s what we forget about restriction – and this is what gives me hope in this terrible time – being not able, or not allowing yourself, to function as you have been, is the fastest door to innovation and change.
Right now, we can’t get PPE the way we always have. Three months ago, if you had asked us how we would get it, I bet the answers you would have received would be the same circle of options – federal stockpiles, common suppliers. You wouldn’t have said Eclipse Mattress will start making and donating thousands of surgical masks. You wouldn’t have said – you know what, we’ll get them from Facebook and Goldman-Sachs.
Being unable to solve a problem the way we always have before
is exactly what generates new ideas, new hope.
As the nation and every business owner on the planet tries to find ways to solve for the shortage of tests, the need for PPE, the need for ventilators, we can apply this same concept in our immediate lives.
For those of us trying to manage challenging schedules and increased demands, placing restrictions on how long we’re going to spend on a task,forces us to focus and come up with solutions that we wouldn’t even consider if just doing what we always did was an option.
You’ll see this in business when managers use restraint by taking opportunities off the table. It’s not an option to deliver after the deadline, now what? They might further restrict the conversation by saying it’s not an option to work ourselves more than 50 hours a week, so now what? How do we create the product without overworking?
At first, our brains resist this. It’s not possible, we think. We’ll have to work eighty hours a week. If we relent and allow ourselves to work that many hours, our brains are actually satisfied. What we believed has been proven true. We didn’t need to expend any effort on a new idea. Sneaky, huh?
To use restraint effectively, you have to honor that restraint far more times than you allow yourself to blow through it. You know this from dieting, from quitting smoking.
What we forget is: before we exercise restraint, we can’t yet see the how.
Before I quit smoking, I couldn’t imagine how I could get up, have coffee and leave for work without a cigarette. I literally, couldn’t think of how I might be able to do that.
Now that I’m tobacco-free for over 20 years, I see exactly how it’s done.
That’s the thing. You have to be able to believe in the future you can’t yet see, in order to accept the current restraints and start working on “What now?” “How next?”
You can apply this same thing to your current situation. For any obstacle you’re facing, your brain will offer you better solutions when you restrict your options. Keep taking the unpalatable solutions off the table until you find a solution that sounds good. Then try it. If it works, great. If not, the answer isn’t to go back to the unpalatable solution, the answer is to come back and look for another good answer.
Finding creative solutions to problems (when familiar solutions don’t work)
There’s a third use for this powerful tool. You can put restrictions on your mindset.
Laying there in the dark, feeling afraid was not the end of the story for me. I had a choice at that moment. Changing the past was out of the question; changing how I viewed my past was.
For those of you on the front lines, you are making choices every day. Do you reuse your mask? Do you walk off the job? Do you send your children to a relative? Do you speak out on TV about what’s happening? Do you go into one more room? Help one more patient? Do you show up at your register and or do you call out sick? If you’re in IT, do you go in and fix the machines that are needed by the folks working from home? Do you show up and ship things? Deliver things?
If you are a front line worker and need a safe space to clear out your thoughts and feelings, schedule a free session here.
For those of you laid off, you are making decisions about what to do with your limited resources.
All of us, we’re making decisions every day during a time in which none of us know what will happen next.
Here’s what you can absolutely restrict right now. You can promise yourself that you will not go back and condemn yourself for your choices. You can restrict yourself to making conscious decisions about what you’re going to do, why you’re doing it and then, no matter what the result is, you can commit right now that you won’t waste a minute using your choices to beat yourself up.
My team had a job to do. Part of that job was to keep showing up to work until we were sure that the equipment our company needed to be in place was set up. I am married to, and in love with, an at-risk man. I looked at the options, I took every precaution that made sense to me, and I did what I believed was right.
In that same situation, with no new information, I would do the same thing. So there in the dark, I had a choice. Was I going to lay awake and worry, blame myself and make myself sick over it or was I going to own my choice and stand by my decision?
Neither option was going to change the past. Neither option was going to make me a saint. I let all the recriminations go.
I restricted my thoughts to the present moment. What was happening right now? In the moment, we were both just fine.
Preparation, collaboration, and mindset are the keys to any risky endeavor.
This is the third blog I’ve written for March 16, 2020. I wrote my planned blog and the events of the week convinced me I needed to provide something more useful. Then, I wrote a blog about productively working from home. Last night, when I awoke at three am, I changed my mind. Today, I’m going to tell you a story.
The entire blog, read for you, right here. Just click and go.
Today I’m going to tell you a story. Back in late 1990s, I quit smoking. To celebrate my accomplishment, I decided to return to the White Mountains of New Hampshire and retrace a hike I’d done with my stepfather long before.
I was out of shape, every mile was a challenge and my gear? Let’s just say it lacked sophistication. Let’s just say most of my clothes were made of cotton.
I stayed a hut the first night. After dinner, I took out my maps and decided to reroute my descent. I didn’t think I could go down the way I came up. I found a trail that had elevation lines broadly spaced most of the way to the valley. It was long but it promised an easier descent. Seeking advice from the most experienced hiker I could find, I received confirmation that, yes, this would be an easier way down.
What I didn’t factor in was that this hiker was fit, well equipped and to him, any trail in these mountains was a cakewalk. He’d hiked all over the planet.
Another thing I didn’t consider was that the trail, long and lacking in dramatic views, was unpopular. I was hiking down on a Monday. By the end of the grueling and devastating day, I would understand how important that was.
Here’s what happened. I set off and summitted Mt. Washington. Then I turned and headed down the Osgood trail. I descended gradually, gaining the treeline quickly. Looking ahead, I noticed a change. Next to me were tree trunks. Ahead of me were treetops. Tops. As in, the trail dropped sharply, by the height of the trees.
Approaching the drop, I realized I was alone, I couldn’t navigate the descent ahead with my pack on, and the drop was substantial. I removed my pack and dropped it down the short cliff, turned and clambered down.
All that long, frightening day, I repeated this, each time becoming more aware that if I were injured in a fall, I might not be found for several days. Each time I tossed my pack ahead of me, each time my boot slipped on the rocks, each time I missed a handhold, my armpits prickled, my heart rate jumped and my focus narrowed.
Any backpacker can tell you, it’s the descent that kills you.
By the time I reached the bottom and turned onto a sandy, flat trail back to my car, my legs were so sore I could barely walk. I’d spent hours alone, in sheer terror. I stood at the top of a shallow ditch and realized that walking the four steps down and back up was almost beyond me. I burst into tears. Since I was only a few yards from the car, you can imagine the looks I got.
I usually get a laugh when I tell it. Picture me, an overweight woman with a world war two backpack standing in her floral cotton pants, crying because she can’t bear the thought of navigating a drainage ditch. Frankly, at the time, I was chuckling and crying. After all, I was safe.
What I learned that day was that my mind could become an anchor, a weight that made every step harder. I understood that with a different mindset, that same trail would be a much easier go. I also understood that if I wanted to try it again, I’d need a hella betta plan.
Backpacking is a sport of isolation, collaboration, and most of all, mitigation planning. You have only so much you can carry, so every item counts. Once you’re out into the wild, you’ll only have what you’ve brought. You learn pretty quickly to plan for every eventuality and you go out into the wilderness anyway.
Thursday, I went grocery shopping. Grim-faced people silently pushed their carts through the aisles. Apples were in great supply. Bananas were gone. I had my choice of every potato chip known to man, but if I wanted rice or beans, I was going to have to act fast. Overnight, people had changed their basic behavior. I noticed my mindset shift with each passing aisle. By the end, I felt a strong urge to buy enough for a month, to put back my normal food and stock up on high-calorie proteins, I wondered if I’d regret paying for a luxury item. I was planning on how to ration my two week supply so it would last two months. I bought yeast in case I had to bake our own bread. I mourned the lack of powdered milk. I paid eight dollars for a pack of bathroom wipes. I’d been here before. This was the Osgood trail again. I had a mindset problem.
If you would like a free coaching session this week, please don’t hesitate. Click here and book it. If you would like free coaching but not from me, please email me at Amy@RockYourDayJob.com. I’m part of an amazing community of generous coaches, many of whom are offering free support during this virus. Let me hook you up.
When faced with the unknown, plan, plan, plan and then – work your mindset.
This week, our children will be home from school. Corporate America is reviewing and modifying their business continuity planning to respond to the unprecedented challenge of Covid19. Teams are moving to a work-from-home model, while others are stepping into the breach.Our elderly neighbors are frightened and need supplies. Others are unable to care for children and work; their paychecks at risk. Small businesses, which rely heavily on steady cash flows, will reel from the blow to their income and many will not recover. Performance artists have watched their industry vanish. Families are separated from their members in long term care. It’s pretty grim stuff. We’re all taking off our backpacks and dropping them over a cliff, praying we can navigate safely to the next challenge.
In backpacking, when faced with risky terrain, it’s key not to go it alone. Hiking in pairs, turning to help those behind you on the trail, pointing out unsteady rocks, is how you mitigate the risk of the trail. Supplying yourself sufficiently so you have a good chance at sustainability but not overpacking is critical.Hikers understand there’s no such thing as one-hundred percent safe. It’s not viable.Thinking out your next step but not being paralyzed with fear is a skill wilderness adventurers build step by step.
The good news is – all of this is available to us, right now, in this current situation.
At the end of the trail, however challenging, there’s a road home.
We all have so much control, right now, at this moment. You can plan. Plan how you think you’ll work from home today. What’s most important? How can you get that work done for sure?
You can predict – something will go wrong, kids will interrupt, things will get hectic. Decide now how you want to respond to the mental challenges you’ll face.
You can contribute – each of us can act as if we’re asymptomatic carriers – washing our hands, being mindful our how our actions impact those around us, the health care system and our emergency responders. There are so many things we can do to make sure we don’t add to the burdens of the people who step forward in times of trouble.
We can behave well. We can be kind and patient with each other. We can offer to grab some supplies for an elderly neighbor or friend, we can call people how are isolated. We can spend fifteen minutes listing all the useful ways we can contribute, and then we can act. Is there something you can do to help a person who works in healthcare? Can you feed their dog? What can you do to ease their burden?
Right now, you can take steps to make sure you stay healthy. Get enough sleep. Don’t beat yourself up for not being perfect in the face of challenge and don’t turn away from a hand offered. Turn off the twenty-four-hour news cycle and consciously decide when you’ll check-in for more information.
Most of all, you can be kind to yourself. Manage your mind.
When I woke up last night at three am, this is what happened that made me change my blog –
Worries about the future flooded in. Supply chains, business continuity, what would I do next? I drew on my mindfulness skills, the same ones I’ve honed over and over since that day on the Osgood trail.
I asked myself – Where is the future?
Not what are the possible futures but where is the future, right now.
My mind, used to this question, went searching for it. In a very literal sense, the future doesn’t exist. It’s not here. Hitting that wall, the wall of the present moment, beyond which nothing exists yet, my mind relaxed.
Oh, yes, I thought. That’s right.
The future is not to be found here within this moment. It’s built moment by moment, with each breath and action we take. The future is malleable and it’s all under construction.
Would you kick this cute little guy in the face? Of course not. So why are you doing that to yourself?Looks like a long blog… take a shortcut and listen to it instead. Check out the pictures below first. Rock on!
A few years ago, some friends and I hiked the John Muir Way, a trail that bisects Scotland. The hike was fantastic. It led us through pastures, fields, towns, and beside canals. Did you know that you can smell the scotch in the air around a distillery? I kid you not. At one point, we spent a day passing fields of sheep. It was May, so there were lambs. If you’ve never been around ’em, they bounce around in little groups. With different levels of curiosity and courage, these little cuties follow you along their fences and, sometimes, scramble underneath the wire and then scurry back inside. I was utterly charmed.
I also worried about them, I wanted to make sure they got
back into their fields. I wanted to
engage with them; I couldn’t take my eyes off them. One thing I didn’t want to do was put them
in a cubicle and make ’em sit in a chair until their spines were misshapen and
their eyesight went.
I wouldn’t do that to a lamb, but I’m all too willing to do that to myself.
Why is that?
Today, let’s open up the Awareness Toolkit and take a look at unkind behavior towards ourselves.
Before we start, let me clarify here – we’re STEM people, we
have projects and deadlines, we have bugs, defects, and production problems – sometimes,
we just have to dig in and do the thing.
We have to fix it, finish it, or get it working again.
Collaboration is our lifeblood. We know that investing in our social network
is key to getting through difficulties, so we make sure we help out other
people. We brainstorm, listen to peers as
they talk through an idea, or interrupt ourselves to help others hit their goals.
If we’re not doing this to some
extent, we won’t succeed.
When we overdo these behaviors so that our health, relationships,
or positive outlook suffers, then we’ve entered the dark zone of sacrifice.
For me, it’s the forced march. I fall into the habit of working long hours
without a break. I forget to drink
water, I resist getting up, I pile up snacks to give me little boosts of dopamine
as I work to my own detriment. I don’t notice
that I’m getting less and less done, and I’ve crossed the horizon into
diminishing returns.
For others, it shows up as giving up their own
desires to say yes to other people.
It can show up as skipping lunch because you’ve accepted too
many meetings. Doing one little thing,
to help someone, then another, then another, until you’re staying late to catch
up.
We can fall into overdoing our good habits of determination
and collaboration. Our thinking takes on a more extreme turn.
We think that something is more important than ourselves,
we believe if we don’t complete this task or say yes to this request, the
results will be threatening or even catastrophic. We convince ourselves our value is tied to
achievements. Sometimes, looking at
our current situation, we tell ourselves, just this one more time. Next time, we’ll plan better. Meanwhile, we’re staying later, we’re feeling
resentful, and we can’t even list our results for the day.
Any of that sound familiar?
Listen, lambkins, it doesn’t get better until you become
aware of the issue and of the ways it goes wrong.
This behavior stems from a positive intention. We presume
our self-sacrifice makes us team players. We’re tough, dedicated, and have the
ability to go the extra mile. At work,
most of us want to be excellent. We want
to go above and beyond. We also feel
like none of this could have predicted. This
is the reality, we need to sacrifice for the good of the company. True dat, right? NO!
Hey, I got it right this week… here’s the whiteboard of where we start on this journey.
Here’s what our behavior,
driven by this positive intention, looks like:
Changed or canceled personal time – we move
our vacations, are afraid to plan them or take them, we miss birthdays or
family celebrations, we get home just as the kids are going to bed. Not only once or twice, but on the regular.
Forced Marches – Long hours, extreme effort,
unrealistic expectations.
I just did this last night. There
were three of us working on a production issue, which we knew we could resolve,
but the root cause would become obscured.
One of us had a hard stop that blew right by as we egged each other on,
looking at one more thing, checking one variable, trying to get to the complete
answer. It was made worse because we
already gathered sufficient evidence, an hour before, to prove the source of
the issue.
Poor planning, lack of experience – when we run
out of time on projects, or can’t deliver results, we don’t look like pros. This is so hard to say because it kinda hurts
me to admit it.
As professionals, trapped in the
go-go, can-do mindset, we don’t do the less glamourous work of continually reframing
our MVP (minimum viable product). If all
our projects end up in a big push or fail to come in on time, we really owe it
to ourselves and the company to demand that we step back and re-evaluate. These issues are solvable, and we stop
ourselves from finding solutions when we don’t require them. I’m not saying it’s easy or that I have this
solved – it crops up over and over – like crabgrass. The key is to face it – be
aware.
Exhaustion, Stress, Resentment – I don’t think
I have to explain this. If you’re sacrificing
your health, your sleep, the breaks that your brain needs to thrive, it’s going
to show, and you’re going to get cranky.
Falsely Helpful – Oh my, we’ve all met this
person. We ask them for something, and it’s clear that they don’t have time to
help. We try to take our request
back. They won’t let go of it. We apologize; they insist that there’s no need. With a big, fake smile, they head off at a
hundred miles an hour to do what we’ve asked, and we’re left there, feeling
guilty. Don’t be this person. Just say no.
Being Kind to Yourself Is the Best Gift for your Team
Are you ready? Let’s turn this nasty cycle on its head.
Go from Self-Sacrificing to Self-Affirming.
Here’s where we end up as we become aware of the consequences of sacrificing ourselves to work and move to a self-affirming stance.
When we adopt a self-supporting
attitude, we remind ourselves that our health and life priorities are first. After all, we’re working for a reason. I’m pretty sure it’s not a deep desire to
drop dead at my desk while my family doesn’t even notice. Sad to say, this has been a real possibility
for me at times. The good news is I’m
aware of my propensity, and I’m not willing to live like this anymore.
As we’re faced with challenges, in this new mindset, we
tell ourselves, if I don’t finish, fix, solve, do whatever I’m tempted to
sacrifice for, then I’ll find another
way.We remind ourselves that
there will always be another emergency, but there’s only one of us. We can’t do anything well if we’re exhausted,
miserable, or running in circles.
Scary huh? Did you just reject all of that out of
hand? You’re not broken. You are right on track. My clients, and I, resist moving to a self-affirming
place. Here’s why:
We THINK this behavior means:
We’re selfish
We’re mediocre
We’re not a team player
We’re risking our job
All of that is pretty darn frightening. Better play it safe, and keep sacrificing, right?
If you need some help working through how to affirm your right to health, optimisim and a great personal life, just say the word. You can book a 25 minute session with me and I’ll walk you through your personal, specific issue. It’s free, it’s my jam, and I promise it’ll be useful. Click Here. I can help you – THIS WEEK.
NO! Because we’re wrong. When you act in a self-affirming way, you actually demonstrate this:
Belief in your ability to find better solutions – we love
to be around people who think there’s a better way and want to try to find
it! We love this. You’ll love being this person. Try it. You won’t always win, but others will want to
help you solve things better, and the more you do this, the more value you add
at work.
Stopping when your productivity falls, calling it a night
– nothing will help your team more than knowing the right time to call it a
night and send people home. Sometimes,
we’re all just waiting for the one person who has the backbone to say uncle.
Professional planning, designing, tracking, and
delegating – Once you’ve committed to never sacrificing yourself, you’re
going to need to change the way you work.
Don’t wait to figure this out before you stop overdoing it. You have to stop first, then you’ll be driven
to figure it out. This is counter-intuitive,
but it’s the magic key. When you have to
face the consequences of being self-affirming, then you figure out pretty quick
how to prioritize, plan, and all the other good stuff. Be brave! Jump in!
Self-respect, good health, smart breaks – think about
a person you know who doesn’t sacrifice their health for their job and still
manages to knock it out of the park. There’s
a man I’ve worked with who is like this.
He exercises, he leaves on-time most days, and he’s well respected. If he can do it, we can do it.
Treating others as competent – this is the most unexpected and beneficial side effect. When you treat yourself respect, when you don’t overdo it, you have to rely on others to do their jobs. You stop over-helping and that, allows others to grow too. In a way, you’re less selfish? What? Yep. True.
See this little lambkin?
This is us, heading off into the world of work. We have no idea what’s about to hit us.
Have some compassion for your innocent self, trying to do a
great job in a challenging world. There’s
no need to sacrifice yourself, lamb.
Yeah, not your police department. I’m talking about your personal dreams. If your answer to that is – “Dream this, lady” – I’ve got the blog for you.
I’m pretty stoked. We’re jumping ahead today and tackling something in the accelerated column of the plan for this year.
If you’re not aware, the goal for the blog this year is to get back to basics. I want to help you move from unhappy, out of control, boxed in, and overworked to happy, engaged, forward-looking, doing right-sized work. Lofty, huh?
There are levels we have to pass through, and I’ll describe those in later posts. To help us make this miraculous change, there are four toolsets, each a little more advanced than the one before. These are short-term relief, awareness, thoughts as objects, and dreams, goals, beliefs.
We’ve been hanging around in the short term relief toolbox for a bit. You need that relief desperately at the beginning. Today though, we’re moving to the far end. Why? Because that’s where we find the excitement and drive to keep us running ahead. Otherwise, we take that short-term relief, start to feel better, and stop there. That would be a shame. The full journey is WAY MORE, WAY BETTER than just ending the pain.
What
is a personal dream?
A personal dream is something you want that carries an excitement with it, maybe a little anxiety, perhaps even fear. It feels like getting on a brand-new amusement ride. Get it?
A personal dream is also internally motivated. We can have the same vision – buy a house – for example, and if it’s externally motivated, it feels completely different. It feels like we’ve got a monkey on our back, like if we don’t achieve it, then there’s something wrong with us. If we want that house because of an internal drive, then it feels like – wouldn’t it be amazing if I could get a place of my own? I wonder how I could do it? If we fail, we feel like we’re okay, all good. Just tripped there a bit, I’ll try again soon.
Yep, I’m still not great at this. Email me for a high res copy. Amy@RockYourDayJob
What
is a personal dream at work?
Buying a house can be a personal dream you bring to work. It shows up there as several months of steady employment needed for a mortgage, the ability to pay for the house or save for it. A personal dream of home-ownership can motivate you to strive for a promotion or be assigned to a project that creates opportunities for a bonus.
We can also have personal dreams specifically about work, too. It can show up as a desire to have a specific job, or work with a group that you admire, or become something you find exciting. For years, my personal dream is to become an inspiring leader who builds team cohesion and finds terrific opportunities for her staff.
Aligning
your PD with your Boss’s goals
Did you all get your goals for the year? Were they inspiring? Got ‘em tacked next to your phone, do you?
Will this year be different? Are you going to really work on them and make sure you hit them all, or are you going to follow marching orders, and if you’re lucky, your boss will have actually assigned them to you?
Are they in a ball under your desk already?
Yeah. I thought so.
If you want help tying a PD to a goal, I’m here.
If you would like a free 25-minute session – click here. It’s free, it’s on zoom, camera on or camera off. It’s my pleasure
What your boss wants is an external goal. External goals often leave us feeling depleted and unmotivated. To ramp up and actually hit those goals, you have to hitch them to a balloon, something that will get them some lift. Tie them to your PD.
When
I think of getting better at leadership, I get excited, happy. I think – wouldn’t that be cool? Wouldn’t I be cool if I was really great at
that? I want to run around and holler
for my car keys; I want to get started.
If I can add that zoom to my boss’s goals, that’s a win for both of us. For example, if she wants me to figure out a process for getting a new type of application out to our users, well, that’s fine. But it’s just a job, a task. She tells me, I try to do it.
When I ask myself – how can getting this new type of application out to our users help me be a better leader? Now I’m getting somewhere. Perhaps I think our team could get to code these new applications. That ties to my desire, my DREAM, of finding terrific opportunities for my staff. Boom. I’m all on board. Now this goal, which started out as a task, is part of my dream. Now, I want to show up at work and get to it. Now, I want to bring it out and talk about it during meetings with my boss. Now, I’m all in.
What
if the goals you get can’t be tied to your personal dream?
Well, I got to tell you, there are very few that you can’t tie to your PD. When it does happen, though, you want to tell your boss. Tell him this is a task you’ll absolutely do, but you don’t wish to have more assignments like this. Let him know where you’re headed, see if he can help you align it with your PD. You don’t have to drop your PD like a hot potato, and you don’t have to declare defeat.
