Category: self compassion

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Showing Up as Your Authentic Self

If being yourself at work feels like you’re one step closer to a pink slip, read on.

Who’s your best friend? Go ahead, answer that question. I’ll wait. And yes, you can have more than one. Ok, got your answer? Did you say your spouse? A childhood friend? I’ll tell you what you probably didn’t say – you didn’t say – me.

Don’t be a wise guy. I mean you, not me. Hopefully, I’m your life coach – which is a totally different thing. Basically, I’m asking if you are your own best friend. Anyone who said yes? High five, Dude.

If you want to shut down anxiety and start feeling better at work… Dudette, call me. Let’s talk about how coaching can get you mad skillz so you can show up relaxed and confident at work. Click here. We got this.

Here’s the deal. At some point, we all do something at work that is authentically ourselves. We speak out at a meeting. We vote “no confidence” during sprint planning. We buy clown shoes as a gag. We go a little Jerry McGuire, and then? We feel embarrassed. We fret over what we said, we change our vote, we go home at lunch and get our loafers. We shred our manifesto.

This is a deep-rooted survival pattern – the need for acceptance kept us aligned with the tribe. In turn, the tribe kept us safe.

When we do this at work, we train ourselves to be quiet in meetings, vote differently than we believe, stop sharing our love of slapstick and trade in our passion for cynicism. That’s painful for us and bad news for the companies we work for.

Nothing drives innovation like unique interests and points of view colliding with a problem.

Whoa. What’s all this got to do with being your own best friend?

Ready?

To show up as yourself, you need to be comfortable with who you are. Your best friend knows that you wore your shirt inside out to work last week. They like you anyway. You never get that line from Seinfeld right, but your BFF laughs anyway. They know what you mean. Your intentions are clear even when you act like an idiot. They wait for you when you’re late and pay the bill when you forget your purse. You’re not perfect and your BFF doesn’t give a fig. And that? Lets you stop worrying about fitting in and start being you.

To be your own best friend requires courage. You have to accept that you’re human, you’ll fail and you’ll win and you have to like yourself either way. You have to treat yourself with compassion.

If you are your own best friend, when you’re the only one at the planning meeting holding up a confidence level of one, you don’t change your vote. Instead, you explain to the group why you think that. You wear your damn clown shoes until someone laughs and you make their day. More importantly, you continue to speak up in meetings even if you were flat-out foolish in the last one.

I’m not saying don’t learn from mistakes. Dude, that’s just silly. I’m saying don’t let mistakes make you their errand boy. I’m not advocating for being disruptive and throwing manners out the window, either. You, waiting your turn, aiming for brevity and being polite is still you. There’s plenty of room within civility for speaking your truth.

Accepting what is unique about yourself, appreciating your great points and not shutting yourself down is being authentic.

If you punish yourself every time you get outside the tribal norm, you will never want to bring yourself to work.

To stop punishing yourself, act like your own best friend.

Every company on the planet has to innovate faster and more effectively every day. Every person on the planet has a unique voice. Every problem on the planet has a solution.

Show up as yourself and get to work. The world needs us all.

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Master the Art of Self Compassion

Does your inner critic treat you like this?
She can.

Here’s the thing, we all want to be happy, have peace, eat well and see the Mets make it to the world series. What? You don’t agree? Because you don’t want peace? Oh, the Mets…well some of you are still with me.

While we want to have these things, we do just about everything in our power to get away from the one thing that will get us closer to happiness and peace. We overeat, binge-watch TV and fiddle away the day on social media to avoid just being with ourselves. Because hey, sometimes we can be our own worst critic.

Hey, I get it. One weekend I decided to change the sheets and clean the bedroom without music, TV, audible or even a dog to talk to. I didn’t have my phone with me. It was just me and the dust bunnies and I’ll tell you, things got ugly REAL quick.

No, I wasn’t sucked under the bed by the monster – he’s where he’s always been -in my head. First I became aware of a running loop of thoughts. My head was full of worried, fretful, self reproachful little thoughts running around in there. No wonder I prefer to clean listening to books on tape. Who wouldn’t? And that’s exactly where we foul it up.

By escaping from the thoughts we have playing on a loop in our brains, we lose the opportunity to bring them out and acknowledge them.

Not that day though. I was very aware of each thought and after about the fifth or sixth one, I got creative. I got a notebook out and laid it on the dresser. Then I waited to spring my trap. The next random thought that my brain offered me, I jotted down. Then I said, OK. That’s one. Next? I turned the page and went back to work. Soon, a new nasty bit of self-criticism popped up. I walked over and wrote it on the new page and turned that page. This went on for quite a bit. It made making the bed take longer, that’s for sure, but eventually, when I asked for the next thought, my brain was beautifully silent.

The first step to loving yourself is stepping back and finding empathy, for yourself.

I still have that notebook sitting right here on my desk. I pulled it out to see what my real thoughts were that day. Here they are:

  • People disapprove.
  • I’m a worried person
  • I’m going to be in trouble
  • I’m being shoved aside
  • My self-absorption is disgusting
  • I’m not a good wife
  • I feel bad for my husband marrying a waste like me

It’s not easy for me to share these on this website. But the truth is, I don’t even remember the situation that set this thinking off. I’m sharing my private and painful thoughts because I know that I’m not the only person who has a brain that does this type of thing. I’m sharing them on the off chance that someone out there will try this technique because writing these thoughts down on paper changed everything for me. Here’s what I learned:

  1. Writing this type of thought down gets it out of your head. The method was very important though. If you just sit down with a diary and write and write, your mind will build out logic and evidence for why these thoughts are true. You can wind up feeling even worse. But not engaging with the thought, just writing it down, turning the page and asking – OK, next? – objectifies it. Each time I wrote a thought and turned the page, my brain left that thought behind.
  2. Eventually, your brain runs out of canned thoughts. I kept writing and turning the page and finally, finally, my mind was quiet, calm, relieved. It was like it had a finite set of blather in there and was too lazy to go get anything new to bug me with. Blessed relief.
  3. Looking at what you are carrying in your mind can be the doorway to true self-compassion. When both my mind and my room was clean, I sat on the bed and turned the pages of the notebook, looking at each sentence dispassionately. None of these thoughts were true. They’re an example of what one of my clients calls snowballing -packing more and more negative around a small starting point. I thought about the woman who was having these thoughts. I felt such compassion for that person. No person should have to carry those thoughts around. It was obvious that the thoughts were overblown, and just as evident that she must have been suffering as she thought them. I had been suffering and it was completely unnecessary.
Turning your critic into your ally changes everything.

That day was literally the first time in my life that I felt compassion for myself. I wasn’t judging myself. I wasn’t full of self-pity. I wasn’t avoiding my thoughts and feelings but I also wasn’t rolling around in them. I could see the thoughts I’d been thinking and I could see that they weren’t true. I could empathize with the woman who’d been carrying them around but I also saw the error in her thinking. Until I was able to step back, I hadn’t seen how needless my suffering was. I gave myself a big imaginary hug and then told myself to move on. There were more rooms to clean.

Acknowledging that we are suffering needlessly and feeling empathy for the person who suffers is the first step in turning your inner critic into your inner BFF. After all, she looks like you, she hangs out with you and you’re stuck with each other. You two ought to be friends.

And that? Is just good to know.

If you would like help with your inner critic so you can stop agonizing over every little mistake, I’ve totally got you. Sign up for a free 25 minute mini-session. We meet using Zoom. We’ll see if coaching is something that might be helpful, and then we can see if you’ld like to coach with me or if I can recommend another coach for you. I’m pretty harmless and I love to talk about this stuff. Click here and get hooked up.

NEXT WEEK: how self-compassion is the key to showing up as yourself at work, and why it matters.

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How to Create a Feeling…Right Now.

Dudette, if your emotional vocabulary is limited to happy, sad and OK, you are seriously stuck in the wrong buffet line.

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You don’t want to be a cartoon. You certainly don’t want to be an emoji. You, my beautiful friend, are a person. You’ve been gifted with a plethora of feelings, some so sublime, they can make you weep for pleasure.

Don’t waste your FOMO on food, cars or the newest movie. If you have FOMO for anything, it should be fear of missing out on the opportunity to expand your emotional vocabulary.

Seriously, when we want to try a divine meal, or drive a hot car or catch the latest flick, we’re looking for a feeling. I’m seriously mad for the new Toyota Supra. I know driving that car will give me a feeling of exhileration – that’s what I’m after when I’m consumed with the desire to leap from my chair and go buy one. I’m certainly not after the payments or dealing with the issues of owning a car whose rear differential is a massively complex computer system. I want the sheer rapture of feeling g-force and the joy of swooping around a curve in a growling, magnificent liquid-red machine. I want the damn feeling.

Try this exercise –

Would you rather have the life described here:

Good, bad, scared, neutral, angry, loving, sad, happy

Or the life described here?

Awkward, adaptable, blocked, blissful, confounded, connected, dreadful, devoted, euphoric, envious, fragile, forgiving, glum, grateful, hesitant, hardy, immobile, inspired, jittery, jubilant, liberated, lonely, malicious, motivated, nervous, natural, offended, outgoing, perseverant, pessimistic, quiet, quarrelsome, reliable, reactive, sane, seething, sullen, sunny, tender, touchy, unburdened, unbending, vulnerable, vigorous, weary, warm, youthful, zany

Right. We want the full catastrophe. We want to have a full life with a smorgasbord of feelings.

The truth is, you can have any feeling you want, right now. But you can’t create a feeling until you can name it and that’s where a great emotional vocabulary comes in.

Once you can name a feeling, you can create it. What?

It’s true. Here’s how:

Feelings are caused by thoughts. Since you can control your thoughts, you can create a feeling. (Sensations like hunger, pain, sleepiness are physical – that’s not what we’re talking about here.) Actions arise from feelings and since we can control our actions, we can also back into a feeling.

  1. Pick the feeling you want to have. Mine is marvelous.
  2. Really think about what you experience when you feel it. When I feel marvelous, my shoulders are relaxed, my brain feels light, uncluttered as if I’ve just exhaled. My eyes are alert, I’m curious and engaged. When I feel marvelous, I’m not in a hurry, I’m happy where I’m at and interested in what’s next, but not eager. I’m capable and content, curious and engaged, joyful and in no hurry. I’m marvelous, simply marvelous. There is nothing wrong in the whole world. See why I like to feel this way? Now it’s your turn. Describe how your body and mind feel when you are experiencing your desired feeling.
  3. Remember how you act when you feel this way. When I feel marvelous, I get right to what I want to do, I don’t run, I notice everything around me and appreciate it. I look people in the eye, I smile. I have time to compliment their new shoes but I don’t dillydally. I’m heading somewhere, in no hurry but not wasting time. I’m generous with my help when I feel marvelous. I’m able to listen well. I can change course easily. Now your turn. How do you actually behave, in the world when you feel this way?
  4. Figure out what you’re thinking when you feel this way. When I feel marvelous I think things like “Everything’s great. I’m able to do what’s needed. I have all the time I need. I’m so lucky to be here, to have my job, to enjoy my work. The sky is beautiful. The work is interesting. The people are lovely. I can’t wait to dig into my day.”
  5. Put that all together. Practice thinking and experiencing the emotion you want. Try to feel it all day. Make it bigger, make it smaller.
  6. Tie a movement to it. That’s it. Soon, you’ll be able to bring out this emotion any time you need it. When I practice feeling marvelous I raise my arms over my head and drop them to my sides while I give a big exhale, smile and say ‘marvelous’. I practice this often. I might look like a nut, but I can stand in the elevator, take this quick action, think the word to myself and emerge at the next floor feeling, well, marvelous and ready for what’s next.

And that? Is a terrific skill to have.

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

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Letting Go of the Need to Get There

Our lives are miraculous and if you’re reading this, you’ve already arrived.

Potential must be a BIG word. It has to be tall – because we need to live up to it, right? It’s inscrutable because we have to work hard to realize it. We had better get to it because we don’t want to fail to reach our potential. Right? Right? After all, our managers are eager to help us and we want to be excellent.

Too bad. Because we’ll never succeed at manifesting our true human potential. It’s a massive Catch-22.

Our human potential is unlimited.

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

Listen, I’m a person who always wants to take on challenges, learn, grow, and keep moving, I mean, that is some fun way to live. But I want to give a big, fat raspberry to that idea that we all need to hurry to reach our potential, or that there is one perfect manifestation of our potential.

So I decided to get the facts. I went to Google and got the first definition that came up. (Yes, do laugh, but we’re moving on.) When used as a noun, the definition is “latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness.”

Basically, we’ve got some stuff we’re not using yet. It may be useful but, we have to put some work in to make that so. When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound like life or death. It might not even be worth missing a family outing for.

Look, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got lots of “stuff” I’m not using. I’m not using my ergonomic keyboard; I’m not using my subscription to Dragon Speak. Fact is, both of those are going to require a bit of effort and time and I’m not ready. Why? Because I’m busy – I’m writing my blog, I’m rushing to get outside a enjoy a perfect September Saturday walking my dogs. I’m looking forward to getting my house clean and maybe cooking that free turkey from last Thanksgiving before I get another one. You know. I’m living my life.

You are too. Well, not my life. You’re living yours.

And that? Is a gift.

According to a Japanese Zen story, we can think of our human existence like this:

Our very existence, at this moment, on this planet, in this human form, is as unlikely as a sea turtle sleeping on the bed of the ocean for 100 years, waking up and swimming to the surface, and putting its head into a floating oxen yolk. Not just any floating oxen yolk, but a golden one, as in made of gold – heavy, sinkable gold, that is floating for a brief moment, pushed this way and that by the wind and waves. The likelihood of our 100-year-old sea turtle hitting that yolk perfectly – that’s the chances of us being here as humans, with our experiences, in this life and being aware of the present moment.

The minute I allow my quest to reach my human potential to cause me to refute the wonder of this present moment, I’ve let go of the rare gift of the here and now.

And it’s worse than that. I’ve used the distance between where I am and where I can go to mean that there is something wrong with me, here, as I am, because I’m assuming there is somewhere better to go, some better person to be.

It’s just not true.

There is no getting to my full potential, ever. And there’s certainly no getting to my potential without starting where I am now.

So go ahead, walk out into the superunknown of your own potential. Take risks, try new things, learn more stuff. Set goals; achieve them. All of that creates texture and flavor in this beautiful life you’ve been given. Work hard. Do stuff.

Just know, the future doesn’t hold a final goal that gets you to the place where your life starts with you in the starring role as a fully realized human.

Dude, you’re already there.

And that? Is a good idea to hold onto.

Never miss a blog. Sign up here for my Monday morning newsletter – “It’s Monday”. You’ll get information about new programs and offers, links to interesting videos and books all in your inbox.

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When You Assume…

We’re magnificently good at guessing what other people are thinking – not.

The definition of assume is enlightening. There’s the type of assuming where we presume or suppose something to be true without any evidence, but there’s also the taking of responsibility, to assume power or responsibility, and also, the assuming of a false face, pretending or assuming an appearance.

I want people to like me. So sue me. And yeah, I know that leads to me thinking way too much about what might be going on between their ears. My brain ( and yours too) was built to be pretty good at that – at least as a kid. I mean, I needed to know if my folks were going to feed me or not and I didn’t know a lot of words. Also, I had no car keys and no money, feel me? Our standard-issue brains are pretty OK at understanding if we’ve made our parents happy or not and if we’re about to have our desires thwarted. That’s pretty important for the preschool to preteen set.

As adults, our built-in “guess what they’re thinking” app starts to lose its shine. First of all, we’re trying to apply that process to more complex subjects and second of all, it leaves us making assumptions and jumping to conclusions. (Shout out to any fans of “The Phantom Tollbooth” out there who just imagined being tossed to an island.)

All that is to say, if you find yourself acting as if you know what someone else is thinking, well, it’s not your fault. You’re built that way.

But here’s the interesting part, when we think we know what another person is thinking, without actually asking them, we’re not only assuming facts that are not in evidence, we’re also assuming responsibility for what happens next.

Whoa. I wasn’t looking to take that on, were you?

When we walk into a meeting with a stain on our shirt and our boss eyes us up and down, we might assume she’s displeased with our poor presentation of ourselves. But she could also be looking to see if we have an extra pen with us. And that’s where we go from assuming we know what she’s thinking to assuming responsibility for what happens next.

When we hazard a guess at another person’s thoughts, we then have thoughts about that assumption. Those thoughts we have trigger feelings, deep shame about our slovenly blouse or anger at the fact we were dumb enough to wear white on taco day. Whatever we’re thinking, that thought will cause an emotion. That’s what thoughts do.

And then… we act on those feelings.

We might spend the rest of the meeting so worried about hiding that salsa stain, we totally can’t focus on the content of the meeting – not that I’ve ever let that happen. Heck, I’ve been so distracted by my own clothing that I considered taking a half-day to go home and collapse into my sweat pants. For a couple of years, I solved that by having a change of clothes in the car. But that’s just me. I’m a nut.

If we’re angry at ourselves for being sloppy or angry at our boss for being judgemental, we’re going to behave in a different manner. Maybe pointedly not backing up something she says, or not sticking up for our own position. Who knows what we’ll do.

One thing that’s for sure – how we react to those feelings, be they shame, anger, offense or guilt, is on us. And it’s based on castles in the air. Because at the root of it, we’re taking actions based on feelings and the thoughts that caused them – all related to what basically amounts to a wild guess.

You and I have no business inside someone else’s head, and that’s a fact.

On top of all that, we are now presenting to the world a facet of ourselves wholly built on fantasy. Our behavior is tied to what we think someone else is thinking. It’s not even tied to what we actually think we should be doing. As in, if we knew that nobody could see that stain because the light in the room and the angle of the fabric render it invisible, we wouldn’t be having all those thoughts about the boss, the look, the shirt and the what it all means. We’d just be opening up our notebook and taking notes. We’d be in the meeting as our authentic selves.

And that? Is just good to do.

I’ve helped many people get perspective on their own thoughts and get the heck out of everyone else’s mind. The relief we feel when we stop worrying about what other people are thinking and start to show up as the person we want to be is profound. I’m so grateful to my coach for helping me get out of my own way and I’d be honored to pay that forward. If you would like to work with me – I meet my clients over zoom – camera on or camera off- at a time that works for them. I’d love to work with you too. Book a free mini-session to see if this life coaching stuff works for you. Why not? It’s free and I’m nice. Click Here & Try It. I promise not to think any judgy thoughts.

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The Third Path

You screwed up again.
You just want to get out unscathed.
But what if there was a better option?

Mess up much? Me too. In fact, I make so many mistakes I could fill a steamer trunk.

And yes, I do all the things that everyone does. I indulge in shame and tie my self worth to the mistake and look for ways to avoid all that unpleasantness by eating, drinking, watching TV, reading – you get the picture. I’m not perfect – and neither are you.

None of us is, which is why mistakes are inevitable.

If you believe John C. Maxwell, and his book Failing Forward, mistakes are the way forward too. So if you’re trying to grow, then you’re going to have to make a lot of mistakes. You can read more about that in my blog Failure is not Actually Optional.

Typically, we see mistakes as a dual outcome event.

Things around us can get worse because of the mistake or we can recover from it and escape unscathed.

It’s like an evil Hobson’s choice – take a really bad outcome or be happy you got nothing.

How often do you leap from your chair and gasp “Hooray, I’ve made a mistake! Now there are new, better outcomes that wouldn’t have been available a minute ago!”

Right? Never. And yet, that possibility exists.

That third path, that failing forward, that post-traumatic growth, exists as one of three possible outcomes – not two.

  • Things can get worse.
  • Things can stay as they are.
  • Things can be better.

Here’s why we miss that third path, why we never even look to the left to notice it – during times of stress, our brains have a natural tendency to narrow our focus. To find out more about how this works and why – check out The Opposite of Chronic Stress. For now, suffice it to say, that we think mistakes are deadly, they mean that there is something wrong with us, they could get us kicked out of the tribe. All that negativity narrows our focus and we have less capacity to see a third path forward, the path that leads to something better.

We’ve all experienced it – the mistake we thought would be terrible caused an unpredicted and wonderful outcome. Yet, just when we need it most, our brains close down to the possibility.

How can we overcome this? Simple. Awareness. It’s enough to know that there are three paths out of any mistake. Write it on a post-it note and keep it handy. I might tattoo it across my own knuckles.

On my left fist – RELAX

On my right fist – 3 PATHS

And that?

Could turn your steamer trunk of mistakes into a treasure chest of wins.

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Get Help.

It’s one of the most common things I hear clients say…
and it’s not “I want a better desk chair.”

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My step-dad taught me to hike. Always have a map. Break-in your boots. Use a damn stick. Know a lot of jokes and stories to tell – these are pretty much the rules. Oh, and turn around and give the person behind you a hand.

After any particularly tricky ascent, he would always turn around and offer me his hand. If I was ahead of him and I turned and offered my hand, he would always take it. Even though he outweighed me, even though I often didn’t have such a great foot plant, he never refused a hand up. He also never failed to offer one.

There’s a dignity in having someone accept the hand you offer to them. There’s a mutual respect there. It’s nice.

It’s also good to have the person you’re hiking with, turn around and offer you their hand. They remember you, they acknowledge you.

A lot of hikers will refuse that hand offered to them. They don’t want to pull the other person off balance, they might say. But I think they just don’t feel comfortable taking a hand that’s reaching out. These same hikers would be the first person to offer up a hand or food or water on the trail. It’s not the offering of help that bothers them, it’s the taking.

“I don’t like to ask for help.”

I hear that one so often from my clients. They’re talking about seeking out an assist on a problem that they are wrestling with. They’re talking about trying to finish a large project when they don’t have enough time. They’re talking about what they make it mean when they ask for help.

Here’s what it means:

Nothing.

Work is a collaborative effort. Seeking help or accepting help is just how work gets done. Accepting help only means one thing – you’ll get done faster.

It’s possible to lean on people too much or to ask for too much help, but if you’re a person that doesn’t ask for any help – this is not your issue.

So this week, set yourself up for success. Resolve to offer help once a day, and accept help when it’s offered.

And that? Is just a good way to stay on track.

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How to Build a Great Day

Great Mornings, Great Work Days and Great Lives might happen by chance, but why not DIY?

This is one of my ten best mornings. That thought changed my life. It was a beautiful day and I was heading out the door to work when the thought crossed my mind. This is one of the ten best mornings of the year.

I stopped in my tracks. Ok, not literally. I still headed out to my car, put the key in the ignition and headed out. But mentally, I was stuck. Why, I wondered, was this such a great morning? I started to pick the last few hours apart. I’d woke up, had great coffee, meditated and listened to music while I dressed.

Making these things part of my regular routine was not a great intellectual leap once I’d uncovered this. Over the years, I’ve added to my routine, noticing what makes a great morning and what doesn’t. I can pretty much have a blast before work on any day I choose now. A great morning for me includes not checking my cell phone, sitting quietly on my cushion with my dogs curled up beside me, getting outside with one of them and walking or running – all accompanied by my favorite playlist. If I really want to have a perfect morning, I’ll eat breakfast on my deck and continue the music during my commute.

You build great mornings and days by noticing what’s working.

You can also build mental resilience – strong, positive thought patterns – by noticing what’s working.

How to work with positive events: 

First off, we need to notice and celebrate the positive in our lives.  Why not, right?  We certainly pay attention to the negative. 

Next – analyze what happened. Figure out how you were feeling at the time and what actions you were taking. Jot down what you were thinking. Replay the thought and double check it… when you think it again, does it give you the same feeling you had? If so, you have found the right thought.

Putting positive events through analysis is a very powerful activity.    Here’s why:  When you are really on, doing great and being your best self, you’re having feelings that feel great, you’re taking actions that pay off and getting great results.   So figuring out what you’re thinking is really helpful.  When things aren’t going well, we have to work hard to find believable ideas that we can use to help ourselves.   Well, the stuff we’re thinking on a great day is exactly that – believable thoughts that work.  It’s good to have them in our back pocket for when we need them. 

So make sure to catch those thoughts like fireflies and keep them in a bottle where you can see them glow.

To learn how to slow down your thinking and catch the thoughts that work, book a free session with me – here.

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When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Friends

If you tend to hunker down alone and grind out work during stressful times, you might want to rethink that.

Burnout isn’t a four letter word. It’s a seven letter word that can be fixed by another sever letter word – friends. Shawn Achor writes about his research on this topic in his book “The Happiness Advantage”. He found that during times of challenge and stress, the students who pulled back and upped their social connections fared better academically. The example he gives is students who, when faced with a challenging semester, organized group study activities with peers versus students who isolated themselves and crammed alone.

We tend to reduce our social connections when faced with stress and challenging demands, because, well, who has time?

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, reaching out to other people could be the action we’re better off taking. For instance, I can’t count the number of times, when faced with a challenging code problem, simply explaining the issue to a person unfamiliar with the project, led to finding the solution. When we explain or teach something to others, we clarify it for ourselves.

Here’s another example – as we work late into the evening, our ability to quickly turn out good work starts to fade, we grow fatigued, we make mistakes. Disconnecting and spending time with a loved one, reduces stress, increases happiness and that makes creative thinking easier. (For more, see my earlier blog.)

There’s a backlash effect that can happen when you chose to spend time with family despite heavy work demands. When we’re used to grunting it out in isolation, working longer and longer, with less and less to show for it (see this blog for more) – it can feel wrong to spend time with family on the weekend.

Avoiding burn out, in my experience, requires a strategy that insists on honoring our own needs and limits, supporting our decisions once they are made, and making conscious choices to invest in our relationships, even when we have a lot to do.

This looks like getting enough sleep, stopping when we’re tired, prioritizing the most important relationships in our lives and then not blaming ourselves for doing these things.

Bottom Line? During times of stress:

  • Don’t isolate, socialize
  • Don’t overwork – seek out family and friends
  • And for goodness sake, don’t indulge in guilt after the fact.

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You’re Wishing For The Wrong Thing

Don’t you wish for work to feel like this?
Relaxed, clean, a cup of coffee and a blank page?
Fuh-gedda-bout it.

I am a little upset. My life isn’t neat and orderly. Stuff is happening and I’m not as caught up as I’d like to be. Sound familiar? You too? Huh.

Well, let me go you one better. My work life is that way too. What do you think of that?

You think I should take down my Life Coach sign and go home, don’t you? Or maybe you’re like many of my clients and you’re a bit relieved to learn that I’ll be spending an hour or four on Sunday getting my inbox in order.

The nature of work is to be messy. Hey, after all, we’re working in here, we’re having a life. Each of us is trying to grow, to master the next thing required of us and to find a way to balance this against all the other demands on our time.

Work is not static and it never will be.

As soon as we wrangle all the demands into an orderly state, as soon as we master what’s in front of us, something changes. A competitor comes up with a better product and we have to catch up. Our co-worker retires and we have to learn their tasks. A new opportunity presents itself and we have to learn to fit it into the puzzle of time and tasks. All of this happens and more. It never ends.

Regardless of where we are on the learning curve, the curve keeps sloping off into the distance.

Are you disappointed?

I used to be so change resistant that I let my living room sofa make me unhappy for a month. I spent hours and hours shopping for it. It was perfect until it arrived. Then it was all wrong – because it wasn’t the couch that used be there.

Now, I’m older. I know I’ve got at least three more couches coming my way before I kick the bucket. I don’t need my couch to be perfect to be happy. It’s not the centerpiece of my life.

What if you let work, be work? You know, kinda how when the cat leaves dead mice on the doormat, you have to acknowledge that Mr. Fuzzy is a predator and not a really short person?

What if you looked at work and noticed that it always comes with challenges? What if you looked at work and noticed that interruptions arise daily? That if you turn off your phone and log out of instant messager, people will show up at your door? That your work consists of both projects and changes to the projects?

If you wish work would be orderly so that you can relax, then you’re wishing for the wrong thing. If you require your situation, or your sofa, to conform to your expectations in order for you to be content, then change is going to be a problem.

When you and your work are separate, you get to be you.

Work gets to be work.

Work can stay messy. And you? You can put your feet up and be content.

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