Category: Stress

Posted on

What Was I Thinking?

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.

And that – is just a great way to feel.

If you would like to have a free session where I walk you through how to uncover your own thoughts & feelings, click here. Free, on Zoom, my pleasure.

Posted on

Agency

Is this a random spill or symbolic artwork? How you make sense of your world is entirely in your mind.

I’ve struggled this week with how to make a blog on personal power at work relevant in the light of current events.

Although I can listen, see, imagine, and sympathize, I will never experience what it is to be a black person in America. Although I’m the mother of a police officer, I will never know what it’s like to be one. I can’t walk in any of these shoes.

Here are the shoes I can walk in – a pair of pop-art pumps with chunky heels – because these shoes belong to me.

These are literally, my shoes.

Standing in those shoes, here’s what my experience as an American woman has taught me – systemic, conscious, and unconscious bias is 100% real.

Here’s what I can tell you – I have been told and shown, based solely on gender that I am ridiculous, inconvenient, a threat or worse yet – a disposable object.

Here’s what I believe – People do abuse power and when anyone in power acts as if the rules and laws don’t apply to them, they should be held accountable.

So let me be clear – on the macro level, I for sure don’t think we should pretend inequality, injustice or violence doesn’t exist. That would be crazy. I believe in social agency. I believe in protest, in free speech, and the ability to leverage our influence to change our laws. We have a truckload of problems with bias in this country and we should get to work on them.

For the purposes of maximizing our impact at work, I don’t think it serves us to relinquish our sense of agency, even if the deck is stacked against us. Which brings us to today’s topic – agency.

Agency: the ability to act independently, to impact the course of your life, and to set goals for yourself. A sense of agency is linked to subjective well being on both a personal level and for us as a society. As my grandmother used to say, as long as you have choices, you’re OK.

So many of us give our agency away on the day-to-day. When we give away our agency, we’re giving away our sense of control and, along with it, our own power.

You get to look at the world around you and decide what’s working and what’s not. You can change your mind about all sorts of things.

You change how you view yourself.

You can change what you think about your job, your boss, your capabilities, and your value.

If you’re going to embark on a journey of this sort, let me encourage you to change the way you view your own agency. I’d like to encourage you to see yourself as the CEO of You, Inc. No matter what deck is stacked against you at this moment, you have the choice to validate that reality by giving up or spend some of your time on the planet trying to reshuffle the cards. My advice is always choose to reshuffle.

For this at-work example, let’s say that I want to move up one level in my organization and to do that, I’ve decided I’ll need to demonstrate leadership on a large project.

One way to approach this is to ask my manager to give me a large project to lead. Then, I can go back to my desk and wait for the project that never comes. When review time comes, I can be frustrated by the fact that nobody gave me a chance to shine and, I can settle for whatever wages I get, remaining in my current position, probably doing less tomorrow than I did yesterday, because, well, nothing works.

Let me tell you, this happens all the time. Why? Because the person in that example believes that they must be given a project by someone else. Can she control her boss? Hell no. Can she make someone give her a project? Not before the next review cycle comes up and not without legal action and money. Maybe not ever. So this is a completely dead-end way of dealing with the here and now – even if it’s true! This is why, in the moment, I always act in favor of personal agency.

So let’s say, despite the fact that I’m an old woman of average intelligence, I think I have the ability to maximize my personal benefit, and demonstrate my effectiveness, regardless of what project my boss gives me.

Now let’s say because of this belief, I tackle even small projects with a professional process. I document what I do, I create templates to use to build efficiency, I keep track of how long I expect it to take, how long it actually takes, and what caused any variance. Let’s say I sat down at the start of the project and wrote out my expectations of how I would perform and in the end, I evaluated my performance.

Basically, I treat this little project that I’m doing by myself, as if it was the big opportunity I’ve been waiting for. I’ve assumed all the authority over how it will be handled. I’ll be evaluating my own performance, so my manager’s feedback is now secondary. I’ll be learning from the project and improving my skills. Because I’ll understand why any problems in delivery or performance occurred, I’ll be able to build in processes to prevent future delays or disappointing behavior of my own making.

Here’s what I’ve just done – I’ve taken all the power over my performance and my opportunities, out of the hands of my manager, and put it all right on my desk. I’ve basically just made my manager irrelevant in the context of this project. I don’t need to know when he wants it done, because I already know when it will be done. I can just check to see if that will suit him. If not, I can offer up options. I’m not forced into a timeline, I’m negotiating one. I don’t need him to tell me what he expects because I know what results I’m delivering. Now I can just confirm I’m delivering what he’s looking for. I basically treat my manager like he’s my customer. I have lots of power. I have the goods and services he wants to buy. I just have to keep myself relevant.

Do you see what I did there? It’s still work. I still need to deliver stuff and make it good but it is a completely different ballgame if I see myself as the owner of Myself, Inc., and my manager as my best customer. My work experience is no longer at the whim of my boss, my work life is at the whim of ME. If my boss doesn’t agree with my evaluation, well, that just means we need to communicate better. Or I might decide to make it mean nothing at all.

What I find actually happens is I get really curious about what my boss thinks. I’m not devastated when my boss has something critical to say. I’m fascinated. I take this bit of information and analyze it. Did I miss something in my own eval of me? Great! I’ll add it to the working template for next time. I already do this for myself, so getting this information upfront is like getting a free trip around the monopoly board.

Ok, sound good? So to build out your own little Yourself, Inc. empire where you rule with confidence and independence, take back your own agency.

  1. Commit to working for yourself and refuse to let your boss control your opportunities. Strike a blow for the republic of you!
  2. Study your own work by stating beforehand what you will be doing ( time estimates, results expected, and expectations of your own behavior) and then by evaluating what actually happened.
  3. Take it one step further and ask yourself how you can be better, faster, or more professional next time and add that information to your documents.
  4. When the next project comes, repeat the process but shoot for improvement using the information you learned.

In a short time, you’ll have great confidence in your ability to deliver, your ability to estimate when you’ll deliver and how you’ll approach the work. When you have that kind of bedrock under you, it’s easy to ask good questions about projects, you can estimate quickly and with confidence.

It doesn’t work if you don’t put in the effort to do it fairly. You must lay out your expectations for yourself upfront. Don’t just do work and take stock at the end, looking back at the project and feeling good or bad about it. You won’t build confidence and communicate to yourself that you take your work seriously.

Because you value your own work and treat it with respect, you no longer have your ego tied to the size of the project you’re handed, the team that comes with it, or really anything external. All your satisfaction is internally driven. When your own evaluation of your performance is the most important one you get, there’s a lot of freedom in that. When you hold yourself accountable to you, and you treat yourself like a professional, you have just shown yourself who you are at work. Better yet, you’ve just shown everyone else, too.

And that? Is just a great way to work.

Posted on

Get Out of There

What do other people think of you? Better ask yourself what the question costs you before you ask it.

I love to wonder what other people think about me. I mean, kinda. Right? In STEM we don’t all walk around emoting and asking if people like us. We’re the problem-solvers, the endurance kings, the queens of creating something out of nothing. We don’t care what other people think about us. Right?

Have me read you the blog and give you the riffs. My pleasure.

I had one of those eye-opening experiences the other day. I wanted to make sure our team understood my expectations for how we work with our summer intern. I look forward all year to our summer college student joining our team. It’s a chance to make a positive difference for sure, but more than that, it’s our chance to show up as the leaders and teammates that we want to be. A time to bring our very best to the table. A chance to cheer on another human being reaching far, far out over thin air, trying to grab at the branch we’ve carefully placed there. A chance to witness a real triumph and real accomplishment.

I believe every word of that. I take enormous pride in our ability to find challenging, meaningful projects that get these college students a chance to achieve more than they thought they could. It’s my pure joy if they blow their minds while working for us and leave there feeling ten feet tall.

This year, I’m turning all that over to someone else on our team to lead. As I wrote out the instructions for how to achieve this, imagine my surprise as I realized that I have that same opportunity every day for every member of my team and I’m not bringing it. I mean, yeah, I do OK but I don’t bring it like that. Not with every fiber of my imagination, not with those big expectations, not tossing them out into the river without telling them I’ve got their lifelines looped around my fist and I’m ready to haul them out with everything I’ve got.

I almost couldn’t hit send on the email. What would this person think of me when he saw what I expected of myself and him, and realized that I was dropping the ball daily?

We don’t care what other people think of us.

Oh, big fat hell-yes we do.

Our brains are designed to make sure we hang in tight with the tribe. Tribe is survival. As children, our entire job in life is to watch other people’s body language and try to figure out how to get more cheerios and a clean diaper. That’s before we even know how to say pass the pampers.

Once we’ve got language on our side, it’s worse yet. There’s standing in the family. We grow up applying all the labels that come with social dynamics – the good one, the wild child, the troublemaker, the silly one, the funny one, the smart one, the bad one. Lovely labels stuck all over us like little price tags that rub off as we carry an armful of cans to the pantry.

All of this is 100% normal. Here’s where our education system and culture leave us in the lurch – nobody ever tells us – Here you go kid, how you feel is on you now.

Next thing you know, you’re thirty-five, walking out of a meeting, unable to stop the flood of worry over what the person across from you thought about your progress on your project.

Again, 100% normal and 100% useless.

Here’s the rule – you don’t belong in anyone’s head but your own.

What she thinks about you, your project and the way you waxed your car is on her. It tells you absolutely zero about your ride, your performance, or you as a person. It tells you everything about her.

Get it? I could have held back on my proclamation for interns, toned it down, set less dramatic expectations, aligned it better with what I’m actually doing on the regular, made it less obvious that I’m not all that. If I did, that would tell you something about me wouldn’t it?

You might think that I was being realistic in my expectations. You might think that I was a hypocrite or untruthful. You might think I was a coward. You might think I’m an irrational dreamer.

I sent the email. How do you like me now?

Here’s the deal. I can never know what you or anyone else actually thinks – even if you tell me. There are so many layers, filters and variations. In the end, the only thing that I can act on is what I think.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate people sharing their thoughts with me. Thoughts, critical ones especially, are worth their weight in gold.

Secret One: It’s darn uncomfortable to deliver critical feedback. If you get feedback you can bet the person felt you were worth thinking about for a couple of hours so they could figure out how to tell you something true and useful. Even if they do a poor job of handing it to you, it’s still the most valuable thing you can get at work other than your paycheck.

Secret Two: If you agree with the person who gives you feedback, even just a bit, and then thank them for it, you’ll get more of this magic serum. If you disagree and make them feel small or uncomfortable for sharing it? Right. It’s like killing the goose. You won’t get another omelet out of that bird.

Do you see that? Honest feedback about how we can improve is uranium. It’s the kind of information that can power a career. We should care about it. We should ask for it. We should embroider it on throw pillows and leave them on our recliners.

What we shouldn’t do is predicate how we feel about ourselves based on it.

Critical feedback is one thing. Speculative musing about what someone else thinks is where we tend to go next.

Our boss says “You need to be more organized.”

We think “He thinks I’m a chaotic mess and he’s going to fire me.” Which makes us feel anxious, and then we check our email and facebook, and maybe text a friend, all of which is – a bit chaotic and not what we’re being paid for. Ironic, yes?

Or we think “He’s the most disorganized person on the planet, who’s he to tell me that?” The answer to which is “He’s got no right to tell me.” And then we feel angry, and we discard the advice and keep doing what we’re doing and … that results in us not allowing him to tell us anything. Get it?

Better to remind ourselves that we have no business in his head, we don’t know what he thinks other than we might be better at our job if we were more organized. Truth be told, everyone is always better at their job as their organization skills increase. He doesn’t have to be good at being organized to be able to observe disorganization in us.

Ok, let’s tie this back to my story. Even if I’m not knocking it out of the park on the regular for every member of my team, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to do just that. So sending the email and braving disapproval is worth it. I meant what I said. We should make our summer intern’s ten weeks of work with us an opportunity for him or her to blow their mind.

What my team thinks of me for that, is up to them. What I decide to do with my insight is up to me.

And that? Is just good for me to remember.

If you would like to have me walk you through your thoughts about other people’s opinions, set up a free 25-minute call here.

Posted on

Confidence and the Big How

Think you have to know how to do something before you can be confident?
Think again. I’m gonna lay it down – get ready to take notes.

Straight up. Confidence is a feeling. Which means, say it with me, you can create it anytime, anywhere. On your worst day – confident. On your best day – confident. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Wanna hear all about the free site for Medical Front Liners & other stuff? Click on and let me read you the blog.

We get tangled up when we think that we need to have built up a history of skill and results in order to have confidence. If you’re talking about how certain you are that you can deliver a piece of software within the time allowed, then yeah, ok, knowing that you’ve done it before gives you confidence.

SCRATCH. Back the truck up.

No. Truth: the feeling of confidence comes from your thoughts. So if you think – I’ve done this six hundred times so I’m sure I can do it again – that thought can bring confidence. Sure. But stick with me, it’s the thought “I’m sure I can do it again” that generates the feeling of confidence.

Now, let’s ditch arrogance right here. Arrogance is not confidence. Arrogance is thinking you are somehow, someway “better” than someone else. That’s not what we’re talking about.

Confidence is the feeling of self-assurance that comes from faith in your own abilities.

The Big How

My coach gets us to build confidence by having us do stupid dares. We dare ourselves to ask someone for a free dinner, we ask for a better seat at a concert or a new job. We dare ourselves to publish a book, or a blog or sing in public. We dare ourselves to start businesses, to grow our businesses, to get on a live event and coach people. We dare ourselves to enter a 5K, return a product, or just ask for help. Sometimes we dare ourselves to jump up on a park bench and recite a poem – for nobody, in front of everybody.

Why? Because all of these things are uncomfortable. And the more you put yourself out there, and do something that has you squirming and wanting to back out, but you do it anyway, the more you realize that you’re OK. Ok with being turned down, OK with being thought a fool, OK with being ridiculous, vulnerable or just plain wrong. OK with trying and failing, OK with trying again and OK with figuring out how.

At work, we are confronted with things we don’t know how to do – all the time. How to get it all done? How to create something, fix something, get our message across, and sometimes, just how to be happy.

Here’s the big secret – you don’t have to know how to feel confident. All you have to do is have faith in your ability to figure it out.

The Big How – is about writing down where you are now, where you want to go and then listing out all the things that can stop you from getting there. For each obstacle you write down the plan for overcoming the obstacle.

Say I’m an analyst and I want to be a team lead – here’s some obstacles:

  • People don’t see me as a leader
  • There are no current openings for a team leader
  • I’m not sure what a team leader does
  • I don’t have any large projects where I can demonstrate leadership.

Now, I think about how to overcome the obstacles.

  • People don’t see me as a leader – So I can demonstrate clear leadership of myself. I can volunteer to set up meetings, which will put me in control of the agenda and the meeting and the follow-up. I can look for opportunities to be of service to my team, and demonstrate teamwork and leadership. I can dress a bit better, carry myself like a leader.
  • There are no current openings for a team leader – but I can tell my manager I want to prepare for one. I can say I want to be the next in line, her replacement. All managers need a replacement in training. I can ask for additional work that will help me learn what she does.
  • I’m not sure what a team leader does – I can meet with other team leads and find out what their responsibilities are, I can imagine what would be helpful and take that work on of my own volition.
  • I don’t have any large projects where I can demonstrate leadership. I can lead smaller ones, and demonstrate skill, and when I notice that my boss has too many balls in the air, I can ask for the chance to take one. I can get on committees and work on their projects. I can ask for a project.

Now, I have a path. More obstacles might come, but for now, these are the ones I see. If more come, I’ll add them to the path. For now, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Some of these things will fail, but since this is my path, my Big How, it’s ok. I’ll just think of something else.

For some of these, I might have to carry the big how with me for a few days, asking myself over and over – how can I solve this obstacle? Eventually, your brain will give you an answer. Try it. Even if it fails, you’ll get more information about what to try next.

Once you’ve done this process consciously a few times, you start to understand that you have the best ability on earth – the ability to figure out The Big How.

You can start anywhere and go anyplace.

How’s that for confidence?

And that? Is just a great way to feel.

If you would like to have me walk you through this process, click here and book a free 25 minute session.

Posted on

Drop Into Direct Experience

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.

If you want to experience life coaching for yourself, sign up for a free 25-minute session here.

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.

And that? Is just good to experience.

Posted on

Go to Your Happy Place

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.

And that? Is just good to do.

Posted on

Nix the Drama – Move to Blue Skies Fast


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.

And That? Is Just a Good Skill to Have.

Posted on

You Drive.

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.

A life coach can help you work through this process quickly. If you would like me to help you – you can sign up for a free mini-session by clicking here.

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:

  1. Thoughts can change
  2. They are really hard to change when you don’t objectify them.
  3. You can get there faster with a mental sweep
  4. Journal with a purpose – sort fact from thought and analyse them.
  5. Rework a few
  6. 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.

And that? Is just a great feeling.

Posted on

Same Stuff, Different Thoughts

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 to get 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.

And that? Is just good to know.

Posted on

The R-Word

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.

If you want help working with these tools, schedule a free session here.

Restriction isn’t just a tool for

  • Changing behavior now for a future goal (diet)
  • 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. 

And that? Was just good.