Coaching Results

What You Really Really Want

2012-01-23T06:36:00.000-08:00

Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann is a National Book Award Winner that I highly recommend. The novel is set in New York and built around events occurring on the day that Phillipe Petit and his team strung a cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He then danced across 8 times, and even laid down on the wire at one point, to the awe and delight of 10,000 onlookers.

The author chose to weave his tale of redemption around the 1974 tightrope walk because it was an act of creation, in direct opposition to the act of destruction that occurred at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The story is a testament to the power of hope and of being true to your self.

In Let The Great World Spin, McCann described Phillipe Petit in a meadow, training for his famed tightrope walk across the twin towers of the World Trade Center. "What he had to do was reimagine things, make an impression in his head, a tower at the far end of his vision, a cityline, below him. He sometimes resented it, bringing the city to the meadow, but he had to meld the landscapes together in his imagination, the grass, the city, the sky."

Petit had a dream, to which he was totally committed and on which he placed intense focus. McCann states that Petit had a sign tacked to the cabin door, his personal version of eliminating failure as an option: NOBODY FALLS HALFWAY. Petit has written his own book about his feat, and there is an Academy Award winning documentary on the subject as well. It stands out as an incredible act of daring, and a vivid illustration of an essential element of how you can set and achieve your goals.

Have you taken the time to figure out what you really want to do? How about what you really, really, really want to do? What's stopping you? I had a teacher who said: Life is too short to do what I have to do. It is barely long enough to do what I want to do.

Goals that are aligned with your personal interest and values contribute more to your success and happiness than those that you believe you should have or that are dictated by others. They free you to enjoy the journey of your life, provide you with a motivational pull and they have a trickle down effect as well. They help to make everything you do more enjoyable. Sometimes it takes some work to figure out what those goals are, as you learn about what is really inside of you and struggle against societal pressures that may push you in different directions. Can you imagine telling your family that you planned to devote yourself to walking a tightrope across two gigantic office towers?

The reality is that there are other factors that we consider when choosing our goals. It would be irresponsible for the sole breadwinner of a family to quit earning money to paint watercolors in the attic all day.

Yet, there is a way to create a more fulfilling life regardless of your responsibilities. The goal of providing for one's family could be a goal that is aligned with your values, and it increases your self-esteem to acknowledge and nurture that goal. If it is also your goal to become a renowned painter of watercolors, then devoting even an hour a week to that pursuit will increase your sense of well being and happiness. And it will make the day job more fulfilling too.

So I encourage you to spend some time thinking about what it is you love to do. When was the last time you enjoyed doing something that you thought was valuable? Formulate a goal around this and commit to spend some time working towards it on a regular basis.

Life really is too short.

Resolutions

2011-12-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

Do you brush your teeth every day? How does that go for you? Do you have to think about it and give yourself a pep talk to get yourself into that bathroom and do it?

While you're pondering these questions, let me throw in one more. Did you make any resolutions about a year ago? If so, how many of them have you kept? If you're like many of us you have made and repeatedly broke resolutions. This really erodes your confidence. It's not keeping your word to yourself and that makes you feel bad about yourself.

Now I hope you're wondering what these questions have in common. The short answer is that self-discipline does not work, change is hard and it's possible, but self-discipline is not the route. Studies have shown that we are all born with a finite amount of self-discipline that does not change over the course of our lives, so there is just about nothing you can do to get more.

Let's take a simple example of a business related New Year's resolution. You resolve to grow your business by doing more follow-up in the coming year. Monday, January 3, 2011, rolls around and you make follow-up calls to five potential client with whom you've had conversations. You do that again on the 4th and the 5th. On the 6th you get busy with a new project and you just make 3 calls. On the 7th you have a meeting that takes up your entire morning and you just don't have the energy to pick up that phone. The weekend rolls around, then it's Monday the 10th and you just have a ton of paperwork to get through. You don't give much thought to follow-up calls. The calls start to get sporadic, you're not really sure how many you're doing, and one more resolution goes down the drain.

Now how come you brush your teeth everyday without struggle, without really using any energy thinking about it, without becoming distracted from it? The reason is that brushing your teeth is a well established ritual. No effort, no thought, you just do it. You were not born with a brushing your teeth as ritual gene. You developed it as a ritual. Given the benefit derived from brushing your teeth over your lifetime, the effort and time that it took to establish it as a ritual is minimal.

If you would like to make changes, make a resolution and keep it, change your focus to creating a ritual, and forget using self-discipline. Not to say that it starts off with no effort, but if you focus on creating a ritual for a relatively short amount of time, it quickly becomes effortless and you've got a new ritual that is moving you towards your goal.

Building rituals requires defining very precise behavior and performing those behaviors at very specific times. It also helps to be clear on your motivation for the behavior. Most of us don't brush our teeth when we think of it. Some people do it as soon as they get out of bed, others after breakfast, but whenever it is, the time is the same every day, and you are doing the same thing every time. Your Mom, or whoever got you doing it, was highly motivated by wanting you to be healthy ( and maybe saving on those dental bills).

Back to our example. You decide that to grow your business you need to do follow-up calls. You make it a New Year's resolution. You will do five a day, at 9AM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is an unbreakable appointment that you put in your calendar. In January, it's an effort, you have to force yourself to keep that appointment sometimes, but you really want to grow your business, so you do it. It's easier in February, and by March, it's kind of like brushing your teeth!

This applies to any change that you want to introduce into your life, and can be done at any time of the year. It works, although, it works best if you limit yourself to one or two at a time. So do it now, think of one or two rituals that you would like to introduce into your life and commit to a regular time to practice them. Why wait until January 3rd? Do it today, by the 3rd it will be as easy as brushing your teeth.

Gratitue Schmatitude

2011-11-17T17:53:00.000-08:00

Yeah, yeah, I should count my blessings and that will make me happier. How about a new car, a gigantic television and winning the lottery? Are those the things that will make you happy? Well, not according to scientific study. Research confirms that our level of happiness is remarkably stable. People who win the lottery or suffer catastrophic loss return to their usual level of happiness after three to six months. Events on either end of the spectrum do not have a lasting impact. Studies have also shown that being thankful is the key to raising that level. Gratitude is the way to increase your happiness baseline.

Dr. Robert A. Emmons is a professor at UC Davis and a psychologist who researches gratitude. The most common method he uses is to ask people to keep a “Gratitude Journal” where you write some¬thing you for which you feel grateful. More than a hundred adults were asked to keep a journal, and were randomly assigned to 3 different groups. Group A had to write about things they felt grateful about, Group B about things they found annoying and Group C about things that had had a major impact on them.

Using this methodology across 3 different studies he found that people in the gratitude group felt fully 25% happier - they were more optimistic about the future, they felt better about their lives and they even did almost 1.5 hours more exercise a week than those in the hassles or events condition. There was also a positive impact on sleep and an increase in reported connectedness to other people and in the likelihood of helping another person deal with a personal problem.

In summary, Dr. Emmons states, “The ability to notice, appreciate, and savior the elements of ones life has been viewed as a crucial element of well-being.”

Gratitude is not just about saying thanks for the grub once a year.

If you take a minute to consider this it is truly amazing. Being grateful is free, takes 2 minutes, makes your life better, and can even make you a better person. What’s stopping you?

Nothing is too trivial when it comes to expressing gratitude. Here are some of the things that people in the study wrote:
•I don't have a headache today.
•I had a good lunch.
•I have my family.
•My new socks keep my feet warm.
•I made a joke and people laughed (got to take whatever I can get!).

Right now I’m grateful that I’m getting my newsletter done, my dog is happy and healthy at the age of 15, my daughter is doing well in school, and I’m drinking a delicious cup of coffee. Before you move onto your next email or task, take the little bit of time required to note the things for which you are grateful. If you get into the habit of being grateful the benefits will last all through the year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Change and Confidence

2011-10-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living."
Gail Sheehy

In the remarkable book, Light in August by William Faulkner, one of the characters is a man who has been repeatedly abused and isolated, yet does not leave town. Here is how Faulkner explains it: "A fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have then he ever is of the trouble he already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change."

It is more usual then not to resist change, running the gamut from the experience of Faulkner's character to staying in unsatisfying relationships and work to avoiding new experiences.

All behavior, including response to change, is a reflection of self-esteem. Resistance to change and fear of the unknown characterizes low self-esteem. High self-esteem correlates with comfort in managing change.

Sometimes we get some lead-time to deal with change, sometimes change is rapidly thrust upon us. I thought about his when I had the privilege of presenting one of the awards at the Honors Assembly at Helen Hayes Hospital, a rehabilitation facility in West Haverstraw, New York.

Award ceremonies are often dull (even the lavishly produced Oscars!) and I wasn't looking forward to two hours of presentations. Contrary to my expectation, I was riveted for the entire event. The honorees were people who had experienced severe physical injury, had worked hard and made incredible progress: a father of young children who was rendered helpless after being hit by falling tree branch is now a person using a wheel chair and functioning independently, a nurse who woke up one morning paralyzed from the waist down is now walking and back to work, a man who suffered multiple fractures, burns over 13% of his body, and lost several fingers, came to the event the day after hiking up a mountain, a young man who lost both legs in an accident is now walking. These are dramatic examples of how change can be suddenly foisted upon us. The honorees were a diverse group of people who reflected in their acceptance speeches that they had one thing in common. They were optimistic and grateful, key characteristics of those with high self-esteem.

What happens when you live life avoiding change? You end up like Faulkner's character, and unlike the Helen Hayes honorees. You live a life in which you close yourself to new experiences and ideas and fight anyone who encroaches upon the status quo. You feel insecure all the time because that is the price of not being open to change. You are literally paralyzed by change.

In addition to the optimism and gratitude expressed by the Helen Hayes honorees, there are other elements of self-esteem that you can cultivate to successfully respond to change.

Any change is a challenge to your confidence and your resourcefulness. As stated, resistance to change is normal. In fact, resistance to change is healthy. Resistance guards against instability, so the first step to effectively respond to change is to respect and embrace your resistance to change. Allow yourself to freely think about how you might undermine it and the negative aspects of the change you are resisting. This process alone builds your confidence and clears the way for you to more easily make the change.

The next step to build your confidence and effectively deal with change is to frame the challenge as an opportunity. Change is our biggest opportunity for personal and professional growth. This perspective enables you to experience your personal power and enhances your feelings of self worth resulting in the confidence needed to successfully cope with change.

So cultivate optimism and gratitude, respect and embrace your resistance to change, and frame change as a gift for opportunity, for that is what change is if we cultivate the confidence we need to allow it to be so.

Honesty

2011-09-20T03:33:00.000-07:00

I was 14 years old and having lunch at my best friend's house. Her mom asked how I liked the franks and beans. I said that I liked them very much; although the truth was that I did not like them at all. From that point on, whenever I had lunch or dinner there, it was franks and beans.

I've been caught more then once in a difficult situation caused by not telling the truth. Have you? Most of us have.

The question "why do so many love affairs with a promising start sooner or later end badly?" was posed on the Positive Psychology Professionals group on Linkedin. This was shortly after I had a conversation with a friend about the very same thing. She had been reflecting on the reason her own romantic relationships did not last and concluded that it was because she did not tell the truth. Instead of sharing things that bothered her, she decided that the person was not right for her and ended the relationship. Why did I not share what was on my mind, she reflected, and give the relationship a chance?

An organization that I recently worked with had many serious personnel problems. They were heavily impacting productivity. There was much discussion about letting people go. The employees had no idea what they were doing wrong. Why had this information not been shared? The staff had not been given the opportunity to correct their behavior.

A colleague just sent me an article entitled "Do You Tell Your Therapist The Whole Truth?" A therapist who was not being honest with his own therapist wrote it! None of us is immune to the temptation of holding back the truth.

You know how difficult it is to change. It is hard to make changes for ourselves, people significant in our lives, and for teams and organizations. People do not change based on logical data. If that were the case, everyone would be trim and no one would smoke! John Kotter, an authority of change and leadership, states that people change because they are shown a truth that changes their feelings. So to get what we want for ourselves in all areas of life we need to tell the truth.

One of the main reasons we do not tell the truth is to avoid conflict. But now that my communication skills have improved, I would choose conflict over franks and beans. Acknowledging and working through conflict is often the way that situations and relationships are improved.

Another reason often given for avoiding the truth is to spare feelings. However, the truth behind this is really about how we want to be perceived. Almost no one wants to be the bad guy. You need to keep your eye on the bigger picture. A better choice is to risk being the bad guy then having someone lose their job.

Honest communication is the cornerstone of solid relationships at home and at work. We need to have the courage to be known and to create an atmosphere of trust. Nothing can do this but telling the truth.

Studies of leadership in business and in the military show that people will go to great lengths for leaders whom they trust. Customers keep buying from vendors that they trust. Building trust is accomplished first and foremost by honest communication.

It can be challenging to get in the habit of telling the truth. Many of my clients hire me primarily for my objectivity and to become more comfortable with being honest. It is worth the effort to practice with someone you trust, and to discover what is keeping you from being honest.

And for the ultimate truth telling challenge, how do you answer the question, "honey, do I look fat in this?" Well, the answer is the truth: "you look good in everything to me."

The Habit of Optimism

2011-08-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

Optimist or pessimist? I am an optimist. How could I not be? My parents, all of the adults in our family and extended family were Holocaust survivors. People who had lived through the unimaginable, who had lost everything, and often everyone. They came to a place where they did not speak the language, started all over again, and built successful new lives. That is optimistic, and they were my role models.
Optimism is an explanatory style that is a habit of thinking. Optimists are more successful in all aspects of life, including work and relationships. Some studies indicate that optimists live longer too. Like all habits, optimism can be learned, so why not choose to be optimistic?

In his book "Learning Optimism", Dr. Martin Seligman states that optimists and pessimists have different ways of explaining events. The optimistic explanatory style leads to feeling empowered to take action and make changes. The pessimistic style leads to feeling passive and behaving in a helpless manner. The three factors that characterize this are permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. Here's what they look like:
-Optimists believe that adverse events are temporary(permanence),isolated(pervasiveness),
and due to external causes(personalization)
-Pessimists believe that adverse events are permanent(permanence),
diffuse(pervasiveness), and they cause them(personalization)

The way to build your habit of optimism is through the ABC method. A is for Adversity, B is for Beliefs, and C is for Consequences. Pay attention to the beliefs you have when you face adversity. You can look at the above chart to determine if they are optimistic or pessimistic and thereby determine the consequences.

A great example of this is someone who has been successfully dieting and then messes up one night while out with friends. A pessimist thinks that they are awful and believes that they will never be successful at losing weight. They go home and eat a cheesecake. The optimist forgives themselves for the slip, congratulates themselves for the good work they have done so far on the road to better health, and gets right back on their healthy eating regime. Adversity leads to beliefs leads to consequences.

Which set of consequences do you choose?

Maximize Your Time

2011-07-19T04:25:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, You, Me, we all have the same number of hours in a day: 24. Not a thing to be done about that until someone comes up with an app for that! Until that happens, we can turn to the book “The Power of Full Engagement” by Tony Schwartz and Jim Lohr.

In their book they talk about the discoveries made through their work with elite athletes and high level CEOs to achieve peak performance. They posit that the impact that we have on time is not the amount we have, but the energy that we bring to the time that we have. Maximizing time is maximizing energy.

These are the four areas in which we can maximize time by renewing and expanding our energy:

1- The Mind
This is the energy of focus. Multi-tasking undermines energy and increases the time it takes to complete a task by 25%. We are all subject to electronic interruptions (email, phone).
Systematic focus on the most important task maximizes the energy of the mind. Prioritize your tasks every day and ala Brian Tracey, “eat the biggest and ugliest frog first”.

2-The Body
Physical energy is depleted by inadequate sleep, poor nutrition, and a lack of exercise.
Enough sleep, healthy eating and exercise renew physical energy. During the work day regular breaks revive us. Even a few minutes can be a reviving break, as long as it is a full disengagement from work. Human beings are naturally sprinters, not marathon runners.

3-Emotions
Emotions, and particularly negative emotions, affect the quality of our energy. Become aware of how you feel, what events trigger your feelings and the impact of your feelings on your work. Don’t allow yourself to be a victim. Choose another lens through which to view your emotions:
Reverse lens-what would the other person say
Long lens-how will I look at this in 6 months
Wide lens-what can I learn from this situation
Make your emotions positive and empowering.
Expressing detailed and specific gratitude and deep breathing is a couple of strategies to deal with emotions.

4-The Spirit
This is the energy of meaning and purpose. Effectiveness and satisfaction come from aligning what you do with what really matters to you, doing what you do best, and practicing your core values in your everyday behavior.
To determine this think about work experiences where you felt most energized and determine what about the experience energized you. Also, ask yourself what qualities you find most off putting in others. The opposite characteristics will tell you what you value the most.

You can expand and renew your energy in any and all of these areas by creating rituals. Pick a specific behavior, commit to when you will start, and if possible, the time(s) of day that you will perform the behavior. Make yourself accountable to someone to stick to it. The results can have an enormously positive impact on your life.

Enjoy the extra time you will have by maximizing your energy!

Self-Assertiveness In The Workplace

2011-06-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

Self-assertiveness in the workplace benefits both the employer and the employee. I had a boss who asked me during my interview if I would be honest with him in the event that I disagreed with him. He wanted self-assertive employees; he didn't want to miss out on valuable feedback and creative initiative. He worked at creating an organizational culture that supported self-esteem and the practice of self-assertiveness. Elements of that culture included that it was ok to make a mistake as it was an opportunity to learn, it really was safe to disagree with the boss, autonomy was encouraged, and creative problem solving was rewarded. At this point in time, this organization has survived economic challenges, and I do think that the culture is one of the factors that enable it to survive.
Here are some typical answers, gathered by the expert on self-esteem Nathaniel Branden, given to the question, what would you do if you were more self-assertive:
-I'd be more candid.
-I wouldn't drag my feet about declaring bad news.
-If I didn't understand, I'd ask questions rather than pretend I knew.
-When I knew something impossible was being asked of me, I'd say so on the spot.
-I'd be more honest about my feelings.
-If someone wasn't doing the job that was needed, I'd e faster to react and insist on better performance.
-I'd be clear about my expectations and lay them right out there.
-When I knew I had done a good job, I'd make sure my bosses knew about it.
-I wouldn't be wishy washy about presenting my ideas, I'd stand up for them.
What would you do if you were more self-assertive? How would it impact your work, your self-esteem and your relationships? Let me know!

Self-Assertiveness Part II

2011-06-22T03:47:00.000-07:00

The practice of self-assertiveness is one of Nathaniel Branden's six pillars of self-esteem. It is the willingness to stand up for yourself, to be who you are, and to treat yourself with respect. This doesn't mean that you behave as a tyrant and trample over other people's rights or ideas. It means that you behave as your authentic self, as appropriate to context. Appropriate self-assertiveness is not the same with your family as it is at the workplace, not the same with a young child as it is with an adult.
Being self-assertive is a choice you make, and it can be a choice you make based on your situation. I attended a party during which the host gave a fortunately short piano concert, accompanying his spouse's singing. I thought it was pretty awful, but sat through it and politely and gratefully applauded at the end. I believe that this is common courtesy. However, I did not rush over to the performing couple and shower them with praise. When I attend my daughter's piano recitals, I give each and every performer, including halting renditions of Mary Had A Little Lamb, enthusiastic rounds of applause and say good job to every child that crosses my path. I'm being authentic in both situations.
An essential element of lasting intimate relationships is self-assertiveness, knowing and being known. The temptation to conceal our true selves is often strongest in our relationships with those that we care about the most. In my experience giving into this temptation is a huge contributing factor to unhappy marriages and divorces. The energy consumed by tamping down parts of ourselves wears us down, and creates unhappiness and distance from our partner. We are afraid that revealing parts of ourselves that our partner will not like will end the relationship. In fact, even your mom doesn't like every single thing about you, but I hope she still loves you. For a relationship to survive over the long run, you have to be your authentic self, warts and all. It is also a big hit to your self-esteem to only have the "acceptable" parts of yourself known. Feeling good about yourself requires that your life belongs to you and that you are not basing your behavior on someone else's expectations.

Self-Assertiveness Part I

2011-06-21T04:16:00.000-07:00

What do these two things that have been in the news lately have in common: the increased number of wedding announcements for the month of June and the death of Leona Helmsley’s dog Trouble? They are about relationships. You may recall that Helmsley left millions to her dog. Perhaps Trouble was the only one with whom she could be herself. Dogs are so easily unconditional in their regard for us; you don't have to struggle to get there. And I hope that all of those new married people are asserting their genuine selves to their spouses (not just their dogs!) as that is the way for a relationship to grow and thrive.
Relationships are so important. Studies have demonstrated that the number one predictor of well-being is the time we spend with people we care about, and that people in a romantic, intimate relationship are generally happier.
I'm not spending all of my time reading soft news. I have been working with several organizations to develop their managers and build teams. Relationships in the work place also play such an important part in our well being and our success. Many of us spend a lot of time with the people with whom we work and need to work as part of a team to reach our goals. So this month I'm going to look at a crucial part of how we create successful relationships, and that is by the practice of self-assertiveness.
I'm also offering a limited offer for companies who want to develop their most valuable resource: 15% off on executive coaching, management development and team building. There are only a only a few openings and the offer ends July 15th, act now!

To Be An Expert And Not To Be An Expert

2011-05-31T04:22:00.000-07:00

It was over 2000 years ago that Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do”. He has certainly repeatedly been proven correct. More recently, Anders Ericsson, a leading researcher on high performance, and others, posit that 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” is the minimum necessary to achieve expertise. It does mean that excellence requires a lot of work, and it also means that we can build any skill or capacity that we desire, if we’ll willing commit the time and make the effort.

But do you have to be an expert at everything? One of my clients gave up a sport that he was good at because he was not great! We talked about it, and he discovered that he really enjoyed it, so he had given something up that gave him a great deal of pleasure. Since it wasn’t a priority for him, he never would be an expert player, but couldn’t he still enjoy himself? “We are what we repeatedly do”, but is our value as people, our self-worth, based only on the outcome of what we do? The greater our self-esteem, the more we can enjoy the journey and feel the deep satisfaction of a good effort, as well as the satisfaction of being an expert.

A balanced life is about having time for work, relationships, and leisure. It’s also about having enough self-esteem to enjoy doing things at which you excel, in fact, making the investment in yourself to become an expert, and things that you just enjoy doing no matter your performance.

Here’s what you can do to become an expert:
•Pursue what you love.
•Do the hardest work first.
•Practice intensely.
•Seek expert feedback.
•Take regular renewal breaks.
•Ritualize practice

Here’s what you can do to not be an expert:
•Enjoy the journey.
•Do things that you enjoy no matter your skill level.
•Have fun.
•Do whatever you need to do you to perceive yourself as a person who deserves to be
happy.

Workplace Motivation

2011-04-26T04:43:00.000-07:00

How do you motivate yourself and your staff? If you focus only on rewards and outcomes you are missing out. It’s like clinging to a horse and buggy because you just don’t believe that darned auto thingy works and has a future.

Studies conducted all over the world repeatedly demonstrate:
•Rewards as an incentive work for a very small number of tasks that are simple and have a clearly defined measure of success. Increasingly, these jobs can be either automated or out-sourced.
•Reward structure can destroy creativity. In one study, a group of MIT students was offered financial bonuses to solve different problems. The bonuses were effective with problems involving mechanical skills, but for those that required cognitive skills financial rewards led to poorer performance and larger financial rewards led to even worse performance. Yes, you read that correctly, performance declined as the financial rewards increased.
•For right-brained tasks, the more creative ones, motivation is increased when individuals like what they’re doing, find it interesting, feel that they are part of something bigger and have autonomy. Google has taken this finding and run with it. Their employees work on whatever they want 20 percent of the time. Their most popular products, such as Gmail and Googlenews, have been developed under that slice of work allocation. Google estimates that half of their new products come out of this totally autonomous time.

Another area in which we can operate in line with scientific findings is in acknowledging performance rather than just focusing on outcome. Highlighting effort and process is much more effective than looking only at results. This is not to say that outcome is not important, however, acknowledging effort is the most effective way to engender the optimal performance that leads to desired outcomes.
Belief in the importance of effort improves resilience, persistence, and grants people a greater sense of control over what they are doing. They are intrinsically motivated to do a better job and will be more successful.

These research results, if acted upon, can maximize the performance of your business or your work life in the 21st century. Think about how you might apply them.
Can you give your employees (or get for yourself) more autonomy? Some companies have given their employees total control of their own schedules, they work whenever they want to and this has proven to have a positive effect on creativity and productivity. It also goes a long way towards attracting and retaining top performers.
Can you acknowledge effort as well as outcome? Can you even go as far as to acknowledge failure as a step on the way to success and as an opportunity to learn how to do better?

We are over a decade into this century and have experienced a time of tremendous economic upheaval. Trite as it sounds, the only constant is change, so it’s a great time to explore new and more effective ways of working.

Are You A Perfectionist? Part 2

2011-04-14T04:37:00.000-07:00

Perfectionism may result in a lack of motivation (why bother, you'll never be able to do it well enough), paralysis (why even start, you know you'll fail), obsessive/compulsive behavior (maintaining those shoulds), and has been demonstrated to be a central issue for those with eating disorders. On the lower end of the continuum, we've all experienced it to some degree when we procrastinate doing something in an area where we doubt our abilities.

Wait, I hear some people saying I'm not a perfectionist; I'm a high achiever. Well, high achievers and perfectionists both want to do their best and there are some huge differences. High achievers set high and realistic standards, accept that making mistakes and risking failure are part of the achievement process and enjoy the process. They don't experience failure as a reflection of unworthiness resulting in ridicule and rejection.

Here are some steps you can take to cope with perfectionism and perfectionism tendencies.
-The first essential and necessary step is to become aware of the ways in which you are a perfectionist. Along with this you must give yourself permission to be human, to accept and have respect for reality.
-Have a clear-eyed look at what perfectionism is costing you and those around you. Use this to motivate yourself to address your perfectionism.
-Make an effort and make it a habit to look for the positive. Enjoy finding 3 positives for every negative you find in yourself, others or about your work.
-Recognize that failure and mistakes create the opportunity for improvement.
-Separate who you are from what you do. Recognize your inherent worth that is unconditional.
-Focus on the journey, which is the true reward.
-Set realistic goals.

Perfectionism is a tyranny from which you can escape. Remember, if you and those around you are not measuring up, it's time to wonder about your ruler.

Are You A Perfectionist? Part1

2011-04-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

I've come across some really interesting examples of perfectionism. There is something called holiday perfectionism. The holiday perfectionist has to hand-make every gift, write a two page holiday card for a list of 200 people, slaves over a holiday meal they can't enjoy, and just does so many things there's no way to have fun. The pressure of perfectionism robs the possibility of joy. This is along the lines of the Martha Stewart perfectionist, believing that you can do what she does without a team of gardeners, cooks, chefs and artists. Who amongst us mere mortals can spend the time putting all of the spices in beautifully labeled uniform jars? My favorite is painting the grass, if your grass is not green enough you can paint it to get a perfect color, and then you can get it perfectly even by using scissors to cut the lawn! (After I wrote this there was a front-page article in the New York Times about the booming business of spray-painting grass in Arizona).

Like all personality traits, perfectionism is on a continuum. When it comes to perfectionism, the more we have the more it costs us. Perfectionism is characterized by the belief that no effort is good enough, the fear of making mistakes and being humiliated, never having enough time to be your best, and being intolerant of mistakes in others.

Perfectionists are usually not aware that they are perfectionists. They believe that failure is a reflection of lack of personal worth, a mistake is a miserable unredeemable failure, they will be rejected for mistakes and that rules are steadfast and life is based on series of shoulds. So, they're not perfectionists, they're just unworthy, doing what they SHOULD be doing and they are caught in an endless cycle of perfectionism and low self-esteem. Try as they might, they are never satisfied with themselves or their own performance, blame themselves for their own shortcomings, they can never reach their own unrealistic standards for themselves. This also interferes with relationships, as others either don't measure up or will reject you once they catch on to the fact that you are not perfect.

Stop Shoulding On Yourself

2011-04-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

Shoulds are those things that you think you have to do, but don't want to do. Consider getting rid of your shoulds. Yes, you can. I can hear you saying, no I can't. I must do things that I should do or nothing would get done, or I'll never lose weight, or I'll never do the laundry, or never get those invoices submitted, or send in those insurance bills............. Well, consider this.

You can increase your energy by identifying and getting rid of your shoulds. Do you have goals that you drag around like an albatross, year after year? These are energy sappers and they are not helping you get what you want. Goals that you make over and over again and don't achieve are shoulds, not wants. They take your power away, cost you a lot in terms of your self-esteem,and are frustrating. Think of all the extra energy that you could be using productively in your business and your personal life. They make us feel unworthy,that we are not in charge of ourselves, and that we're hanging out waiting for things to happen.

Take some time now to think about your goals. Evaluate whether they are based on shoulds or wants. The should goals make you feel burdened and/or have been on your list for a while. Dump them. Oh no, if I do I’ll never lose weight. Well, has saying that you should lose weight year after year helped you lose weight? Hmm, can this be reframed, become something you want to do, be based on your values?

Use this 4-step process to liberate yourself from shoulds:
1- Identify them, all of them, don't let that nagging inner voice stop you.
2- Just get rid of as many as you can. Take the leap. Has not doing (fill in the blank) really had a negative impact on you?
3- Reframe around your wants and values. A weight loss goal is a great example of this. Instead of I should lose weight, how about I want to take great care of myself. I want to feel great.
4- Get support and delegate. Let's stick with the example above .You could decide to work with a coach, a nutritionist, work with a personal trainer, take a dance class, get a facial, or get a massage. If this isn't working for you, go back to step 2. If you don't want to do anything, if your goals don't resonate with your values, stop dragging them around. They're not doing you any good.

Stop shoulding on yourself today!

What Am I Tolerating Part II

2011-03-17T04:22:00.000-07:00

Some tolerations are more challenging, and require more time and energy. One of my clients identified where he is living as a toleration, another has a customer who often cancels meetings at the last minute. Handling the more challenging tolerations usually eliminate more then one toleration. My client needed to earn more money so that he could move, which would also enable him to keep his car in better repair, another toleration. Setting clear boundaries with the canceling customer enabled my other client to set clear boundaries in all of his relationships. No matter what it is, handling a toleration feels really good and helps you to feel good about yourself.

So here are some tips for handling tolerations:
· Write them all down, regardless of whether them seem big or small, possible or impossible to handle. If you don't acknowledge them, you will never address them.
· Prioritize them and handle a few at a time. Do not overwhelm yourself.
· Combine small and large ones. In this way you can get some instant gratification from sewing on that button or making that phone call at the same time that you are dealing with a toleration that requires more time to handle.
· Include handling a toleration that will address more then one toleration.

Be patient and kind to yourself, especially if you are going after some large tolerations. Hang in there. It's worth it.

What Am I Tolerating Part I

2011-03-16T04:02:00.000-07:00

"MOM! When are you going to fix this light???" My daughter was exasperated, and who could blame her? The light in the hallway had not been working for weeks because I couldn't get the bulb in the socket. The fixture had not been installed properly, so the angle was tricky. Finally the stars were correctly aligned and I did get the thing working. When we recouped the luxury of a hallway in which you could see at night, I felt a little surge of joy every time I flicked that switch. I had eliminated a toleration.

We have all learned to tolerate a lot. We put up with things every day that zap our energy. Most of the time we are not even aware of them, we adapt to them, but they still hold us back, create frustration and anxiety and have a negative impact on the quality of our lives. They can be things like a light bulb, or other people's behavior, unmet needs, crossed boundaries, unfinished business, frustrations, problems, and our own behavior. Identifying and handling tolerations is beneficial in that it frees up our energy to focus on what we want and builds our self-esteem, as it is a step towards taking full responsibility for our selves.

Most of the people that I coach have too much on their plates, so we
often begin our work together by freeing up some energy, and one of the most effective ways to do this is by identifying and eliminating tolerations. They range in size and in the effort required to eliminate them.

My light bulb is a good example of how you can handle a toleration with a quick fix or deal with the source to eliminate the toleration. Getting the bulb changed handles the toleration, but getting the fixture reinstalled so that the bulb can be easily changed eliminates the toleration

Dont' Give Up On Your Ideas

2011-03-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

In my experience small business owners, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs have so many wonderful creative ideas that never reach the light of day. It’s happened to me too. We just use our creative brains to kill them! Not enough time, not enough money, it’s already too late, and on and on. We’re just as good as creating ideas as we are at creating obstacles. They either just linger in our thoughts or on a to do list. It this way they end up zapping your energy and damaging your self-esteem. They become part of a constant negative background noise about what you’re not accomplishing.

Here’s some things you can to do turn those ideas into exciting opportunities that are a source of energy and positive feelings about yourself:
1-Write it down. Free up some space in your head, and look at the idea so you can start to really look at what is possible, what is important and exciting to you and what things you need to make it happen.
2-Examine the idea. What would it look like if you make it happen? What are the possible results? Have fun with it.
3-Does it fit with your values; your long terms goals, your vision? The answers to these questions are key and will tell you if this was just a fun idea or a great thing to work on and make happen.
4-Is it something that your clients need? Don’t get stressed about it, continue to have fun exploring your wonderful creative idea and get some reactions from your market.
5-Talk to your trusted advisors, the friends and colleagues who will be honest and supportive, talk to your coach.

Your creativity is a strength. Optimize it as a source of energy and self-esteem.

Visualization and Self-Esteem

2011-02-22T05:01:00.000-08:00

I used to be somewhat skeptical about visualization, but I have come to believe that it can be an effective tool for achieving goals. Effective visualization is related to what we know about the brain and self-esteem. Recently I was reading what Brian Tracey had to say about visualization, and it once again struck me how closely the success of visualization is related to how much self-esteem one has.

Tracey breaks down visualization into four parts. The first part is frequency, the number of times that you visualize a particular goal as achieved or of yourself performing in an excellent way in a particular event or circumstance. Higher frequency increases the chance of achieving what you’re imagining.

The second part is the duration of the mental image, the length of time that you can hold the picture in your mind each time you replay it. The longer you hold the image, the more effective as it is more deeply ingrained.

The third part is vividness. The more clearly you see what you want the more quickly you will get what you want.

The fourth part is intensity, the amount of emotion that you attach to your visual image. In reality, this is the most important and powerful part of the visualization process.

Here is where your self-esteem comes into play. You cannot visualize anything with intensity unless you believe you can do it, and for that it is essential to have high self-esteem. What we believe is what we achieve. And low self-esteem can get you want you do not want, as you intensely believe and visualize that you cannot get what you want. Visualization is a two edged sword!

Your brain is the most powerful simulator in the world. If you practice thoughts, actions, and attitudes that support high self-esteem, you can visualize and achieve your desires.

Lucky New Year

2011-02-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about luck while I was looking back at "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden. One of the six pillars is the practice of self-responsibility. It's really the opposite of hanging out and waiting for good luck. Branden states that self-responsibility is essential to self-esteem as well as a manifestation of self-esteem. We are responsible for the achievement of our desires, and knowing that is empowering. No one is coming; luck is not waiting around the corner. What happens is up to us.

Then I found the book "The Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life: The Four Essential Principles" by Richard Wiseman. He conducted studies over a period of 8 years and discovered what makes some people more fortunate. He discovered that lucky people behave in ways that create good fortune. He supports Branden's view in that he found that a good part of what happens to us is defined by the way we think. It's not that different from the self-help adage of positive thinking, but it is a more refined and backed up by empirical data.

So here are the four principles that can create good fortune in your life according to Richard Wiseman:

1-Maximize Chance Opportunities
Lucky people are good at noticing and acting upon chance opportunities. They are open to new experiences, are more relaxed and tend to have strong social networks.

2-Listen to Your Luck Hunches
Lucky people listen to their intuition and make decisions based on what they hear. They also do things like meditate and clear their minds so that they are in touch with their intuition.

3-Expect Good Fortune
Lucky people are optimists. They expect a bright future. This expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and helps them persist in the face of failure.

4-Turn Bad Luck Into Good
Yes, lucky people make lemonade out of lemons. When faced with adversity they think that things could be worse, and take control to move on.

He also discovered that bad luck is funny if it's not happening to you. After a year of searching, here is what he determined to be the world's funniest joke:
Two New Jersey hunters go hunting. After a while, one of the hunters clutches his throat and falls to the ground, his eyes roll back, and he's lying there motionless. The other picks up his cell phone, dials 911, and says, "I think my friend is dead! I don't know what to do!" The operator says, "Just relax. Calm down. The first thing to do it to make certain that your friend is dead." There's a pause-then a gunshot. The hunter gets back on the phone and says, "Okay, now what?"
And here's some quotes :

Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember, it didn't work for the rabbit.
R.E. Shay

I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.
Steven Wright

Any fool can have bad luck; the art consists in knowing how to exploit it.
Frank Wedekind

My wish for you is good fortune in the coming year and all the years to come.

Achievable Goals

2011-02-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

Most goals can be worded in a way that makes them either approach goals or avoidance goals. For example the avoidance goal that I want to stop procrastinating about doing my taxes can be rephrased to I will work on my taxes Monday through Friday from 9AM-9:30AM.

The research on this is very interesting. In a study of beginning bowlers, Daniel Kirschenbaum of Northwestern University enrolled study participants in a “learn to bowl” class. After a few hours of their bowling lesson, the students were asked to write down lists of things they did correctly and another list of things that they did incorrectly. He then asked half of the participants to spend time reading and reflecting only on the list of “things I did right”, and asked the other participants to read and reflect only on the list of “things I did wrong”. Afterwards they were asked to bowl another game. Participants in the “things I did right” group significantly outperformed those in the “things I did wrong group”, outscoring them by an average of 11 points.

Andrew Elliot and Holly McGregor asked students to write down several of their most important life goals. They found that students with a preference for approach goals displayed a larger number of desirable outcomes relative to those students with a tendency towards avoidance goals. These outcomes included superior test performance, improved organization, reduced text anxiety, greater class engagement, and even fewer visits to the student health center.

So you can improve your success in achieving your goals by rephrasing them. If you have any goals that are avoidance goals, simply ask yourself how you can rephrase it so that you are moving toward a desirable state instead of away from an undesirable state.
Let me know if you do this, I’d love to hear how you transformed your goals!

Vision Part II

2011-01-19T04:10:00.000-08:00

If you're on as many email lists as I am, you've probably received several emails this month about setting goals for the New Year. In fact, I've written a couple of blogs about goal setting myself, as goals to tend to be on our minds right around now.

Goals are great, and writing them down is even better, but the fact of the matter is that by mid January 30% of us have scaled back the goals that we set for the year, and by June most of us have given them up totally. Some of the reasons are a lack of specificity, no system for tracking progress, and neglecting to build in accountability, and a big mistake that many of us make is that we don't tie our goals to a vision, a bigger picture.

As a coach, I have seen time and time again that my clients accelerate progress in achieving their goals once they articulate their vision. If you want this year to be the year in which you stick to and achieve your goals, take the time to define your vision. It can be a pleasant undertaking; after all, what is a visionary? Someone who sees what is possible, who sees the potential. Be a visionary for your own business and life.

The best way to begin thinking about your vision is to define what values are most important to you so that your work and your actions can reflect your values. What are the things that bring you happiness and inspire you, the things that you do best and enjoy doing, the things you've always wanted to do? Where do you want to go, what are your hopes and dreams? The answer to these questions will give you a vivid picture of your vision that is aligned with your values.

Here's some of the ways that your vision can help you achieve your goals:
-It makes it easier to define goals if you know they will help you achieve your vision
-It acts as a yardstick against which you can measure your progress
-It gives you a framework for planning
-It set your direction

Making progress on your goals is usually not straightforward. If your goals are tied to a vision it helps you to stick to it and work through the inevitable setbacks and obstacles. It keeps you moving forward, it can be a source of motivation.

One of my clients hired me because she wanted to grow her business. As we explored her values, she realized that she also wanted to change the focus of her business. She created a vision of her life that included spending half of her time out of the office, traveling, and spending more time with her family. Her vision has propelled her forward, she is achieving her goals, her stress level is way down, and she is a much more satisfied person.

"We are limited not by our abilities, but by our vision"

Vision Part I

2011-01-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

Hope your year is off to a good start. I'm feeling good about 2011. Last week a couple of weeks I announced a new success program for women business owners based on my book, The One Thing That Changes Everything, and the fabulous Cyber-Mania added a terrific media page to my website.

Another part of the good start to my year has been reading the book, Matterhorn, a masterpiece about the war in Vietnam. The author, Karl Marlantes, is a Rhodes Scholar who served as a Marine in Vietnam where he was awarded multiple honors, including two Purple Hearts. One of the reviews states, "There has never been a more realistic portrait of a war that ground them cruelly underfoot for no good reason."

As portrayed in Matterhorn the enemy, the NVA, is fighting for their country, a vision to which they are fully committed. Several times in the book a character becomes aware that they lack the commitment to a clear vision that is possessed by the enemy. The know that the NVA will never give up. Our soldiers were motivated by a strongly held sense of duty and love for each other. It propelled them to commit extraordinary acts of bravery and sacrifice. Marlantes conveys that these acts are all the more remarkable because these actions were taken with the knowledge that this was a war that could not be won.

This book gave me a completely new perspective on the war in Vietnam. There are multiple topics for discussion and reflection in Matterhorn. The one I will focus on in my next blog post is related to the power of clarity of purpose, commitment to a vision. I think that it is an important perspective as we begin another new year.

Ready, Set, Goal! Part ll

2011-01-10T04:56:00.000-08:00

According to the US Government, these are the most common failed New Year’s Resolutions:
Quit smoking
Drink Less Alcohol
Get a Better Education
Get a Better Job
Get Fit
Lose Weight
Manage Debt
Manage Stress
Save Money
Take a Trip
Volunteer to Help Others

The research also shows that by mid January 30% have scaled back their resolutions, and by June most have given them up totally. Only 12% achieve them.

My last blog was about the research that demonstrates what goes into successfully achieving a goal. So, since we’re getting close to mid January, it’s worth repeating!
-The more difficult the goal, the greater the achievement.
-Goals that are both specific and difficult lead to the highest achievement.
- Commitment, being determined and really wanting to achieve the goal is essential. Commitment to goals is belief that the goal is important and attainable.
-Some form of feedback and accountability for progress on goals contributes to goal achievement.

The things that are missing on the list of failed resolutions are specificity and accountability. So if you’re considering scaling back or dropping your goals for 2011, reconsider them, make them specific in a way that you can track your progress, get support and make yourself accountable for that progress. There are lots of tools that are available, like the Ready, Set, Goal form on the free resources page of my web site, www.EttieShapiro.com, or just a simple excel sheet.

Don’t’ give up! Get what you need to make this the year that you get what you want.

Ready, Set, Goal!

2011-01-04T04:00:00.000-08:00

Ready, Set, Goal is one of the free resources that I offer on my web site, www.EttieShapiro.com, and it is one of the most popular. At this time of the year, goals are a particularly hot topic, and as we all know, so many of the goals that are set at the beginning of the year quickly fall by the wayside.
In my experience, people don’t use what we know about goals to work towards them, so I’m sharing what has been demonstrated by research and I encourage you to incorporate it into setting and achieving your goals.
Research on this topic shows the following are true about setting goals:
-The more difficult the goal, the greater the achievement.
-Goals that are both specific and difficult lead to the highest achievement.
- Commitment, being determined and really wanting to achieve the goal is essential. Commitment to goals is belief that the goal is important and attainable.
-Some form of feedback and accountability for progress on goals contributes to goal achievement.

The number one reason that people don’t achieve their goals is that they are not big enough. So as you are reflecting on what you want to achieve in 2011, make it BIG, make it specific and be honest about how important the goal is to you. It has to be something you want, not what you think you should want. Write it down and keep track of your progress. Get a coach or an accountability partner to keep you on track. Achieving your goals requires work, and writing them down and noting your progress towards them is an important part of that work.

So, go for it. Make 2011 an incredible year by achieving your goals!

Resolutions

2010-12-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

Leadership and Self-Acceptance

2010-11-30T04:23:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday the Corner Office column in the Business Section of the New York Times featured an interview with Bob Brennan, C.E.O. of Iron Mountain. He stated that command-and-control leadership is dead. This is how he described the culture he is creating in his company:
“ We want managers to display confidence and optimism, and give constructive feedback, never destructive. And managers need to seek constructive feedback themselves.”

Brennan is talking about leaders who have high self-esteem as reflected in the practice of self-acceptance. They are being real about themselves. Self-acceptance enables us to hear critical feedback or different ideas without becoming hostile or adversarial.

Self-acceptance is not something we think, it's something we do. You don't have to like everything about yourself in order to accept who you are. If we can't accept something about ourselves, we cannot make changes, because we can't change something that we deny exists. Paradoxically, self-acceptance is necessary to make changes, but is not about changing ourselves.

It's only when we stop judging ourselves that we can have a more positive sense of who we are and increase our self-esteem. And it is in this way that we can become more effective leaders.

Effective leaders practice self-acceptance and support self-acceptance in the culture of their workplace. The benefits of having employees who give and receive constructive feedback without defensiveness creates the type of safe environment where people are action oriented, can respond quickly and comfortably to change, and focused on their goals.

Here are some of the behaviors that support self-acceptance, and therefore high self-esteem in the workplace:
* Be present when speaking with someone, give them the experience of being heard and accepted
* Maintain a tone of respect
* Describe undesirable behavior without blaming
* Speak honestly about your feelings
* Develop a toleration for mistakes
* Reward success and ignore failure as much as possible

Remember, successful leaders have high self-esteem, practice self-acceptance and promote this as part of the workplace culture.

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."
Albert Einstein

Gratitiude All Year Raises Self-Esteem

2010-11-23T04:05:00.000-08:00

Gratitude fosters higher self-esteem and a more satisfying life. It's something anyone can do; it takes a few minutes a day and doesn't cost a dime.

There have been studies that indicate that people who practice gratitude are happier, less stressed, more satisfied with their relationships and have higher levels of control of their environment. Grateful people have more positive ways of dealing with problems, and sleep better. Studies have shown that if you think more positive thoughts before going to sleep you will sleep better.

Although there are many emotions and traits that are important elements of a satisfying life, gratitude is a uniquely important element. Gratitude has been demonstrated to explain well being more that any other of the most commonly studied personality traits.

One way to make gratitude part of you life is to keep a gratitude journal, a proven method of increasing emotional and physical well being. Every night before you go to sleep write down 5 things for which you are grateful. It can be a meal or an important accomplishment. It's ok to repeat the same things. As with visualization, the important thing is to experience the feeling as you write the item down. Make a commitment to practice this for just 10 days and see what happens. You will experience an appreciation of the positive in your life and increase positive feelings about yourself.

Another way is to write a gratitude letter or make a gratitude visit. This is not a thank you note, although those are great too! It is a thoughtful statement about what gives you pleasure in a relationship and describes specific aspects of a relationship. It is a simple and profound exercise that has great meaning for both the author and recipient.

A Lesson in Optimism From A Dog

2010-11-10T03:47:00.000-08:00

My dog Guy will be 14 years old this month. His gait is a bit unsteady now and he lost his hearing about a year ago, but he is my role model. The physical challenges of old age has not changed him one bit. He consistently believes with all his heart that he will be taken out for walks and that good food will appear in his bowl, he will get treats and belly rubs persists and maintains his belief even after repeated failure, takes action to improve his situation, and is ever hopeful. He is successful and happy.

He is not consumed with false optimism. If he is left at home, he does not deny that harsh reality. He simply accepts it and has faith that with persistent work at being a good dog he will prevail. His optimism includes hard work and passion (yes, he has great passion about walks and food). Even though Thomas Edison was not a dog, Guy is a big fan. Edison had 1800 failed experiments before inventing the light bulb. Guy has been left home at least that many times, and still celebrates each outing with pure joy.

If you would like to improve your health, happiness and level of success by becoming an optimist, you can, even if you have the disadvantage of being a human. Thomas Edison did.

There are three elements essential to being an optimist; action, imagination, and rational thinking. These elements work together and feed off of each other. So if we take action and work hard, we create success, which motivates us to work hard. And if we can imagine or visualize our success our minds will help us create an external reality to match our internal reality.

Rational thought is a skill that you can hone. You may believe that rational thinkers cannot possibly be optimistic in today's world, but that is not the case. In fact, much pessimism reflects distorted thinking. Some examples of distorted thinking are to believe that the way things are now are the way they will always be or that we are in an all or nothing situation. We do not see the whole picture, and dismiss the positive aspects of a situation.

How can you have realistic optimism? Along with action and imagination, know that reality is created by what we focus on, the questions that we ask. So, ask yourself: am I magnifying, minimizing, ignoring part of the picture?

Successful, happy people and dogs perceive the world as optimists. They see the negative as temporary and as opportunities to learn, and the positive as a catalyst to enhance and celebrate. So consider taking Guy on as your role model too!

Good Self-Esteem Equals Good Business Decisions

2010-11-02T05:18:00.000-07:00

Business leaders are the ultimate decision makers. As it has been said, if Moses went up to the mountain with a committee, he would have never come back down. After getting input, it is the leader who has to say what it is that needs to be done. The higher the leader’s self-esteem the more the decision will be made based on what is good for the company. Lower self-esteem invites the clouding of judgment by the need to be liked or gain approval and makes it more challenging to be clear on the right choice, as opposed to the easy or popular choice.

One of my clients recently fired a member of his management team. She was well liked by her staff and colleagues, and he liked her too. However, her reports were full of errors, and she wasn’t directing her staff to work in sync with the company’s mission. He had spent time explaining the problems with her performance, and how to remedy them, but things didn’t change. He fired her and dealt with the fall out.

Effective decision making requires self-awareness, an essential element of high self-esteem. You need to know how you feel, so you can know if you are acting on your feelings or what is best for your company. Sometimes these two things are the same, but sometimes what makes you feel good is not good for business.

Here’s some things to consider when differentiating between what is best for you and what is best for your business. I will use the example given above:

-How will this decision make things better for the organization? Getting a new manager who is efficient and brings the staff into alignment with the company’s mission will save time, raise morale, increase production and profits.

-How will this decision affect employees? In the short run the employees will be upset about losing a well liked manager, and anxious about a firing and the unknown replacement. In the long run, they will feel better about themselves, their jobs and the company, and increase the likelihood of being successful in their jobs.

-How will this decision affect me? The decision will favor the company rather then make the leader look like a nice guy. He will gain more respect for his leadership skills, and he will feel better about himself knowing that he made the right decision for the company.

Low self-esteem in a leader can be deadly, and raising self-awareness enables leaders to increase self-esteem and make decisions with a clear mind.

Hair, Heads, Feet and Self-Esteem

2010-10-26T04:19:00.000-07:00

I don’t completely enjoy trips to the beauty salon. It almost always takes more time then I want it to, and I’d often rather be doing something else. But, I want my hair to look the way I want it to look, and to attain that goal, trips to the beauty salon are required. Good-looking hair is one of the pluses, the other is the good conversation with Chris, he is great at his job and I love talking with him. If anyone wants a good colorist, let me know and I’ll give you his contact information.

The last time I saw him we were chatting about podcasts and he recommended the Freakecomics podcast, recorded by the authors of the book of the same name. The last one he listened to was about football players belief that their helmets are so improved that they no longer need to be concerned about head injuries, so they end up using their heads as weapons, which ends up causing other types of serious injuries. The next day I read an article in the New York Times about runners incurring more injuries when they use expensive running shoes. The article quoted a study that found there was a “tendency in humans to be less cautious when using new devices of unknown benefit because of overly positive attitudes associated with new technology and novel devices.”

This relates to some thoughts I’ve had about high self-esteem, which enables us to take risks. Can it be dangerous? I recently read a blog post about the “danger” of high self-esteem, claiming that it leads to a lack of empathy for others. However, the post was based on the incorrect definition of self-esteem as feeling superior to others. Real self-esteem has little resemblance to arrogance or grandiosity. It both develops from and results in greater acceptance and empathy for others and ourselves. Real self-esteem is reality based and earned, and does not vary based on what others around us do or think. It enables us to take changes, to cope with change; it doesn’t lead us to believe that we are superhuman or superior.

So we should all take good care of our heads and our feet, and build as much self-esteem as we can to get the most out of life!

Confidence and Change Part II

2010-10-15T04:11:00.000-07:00

What happens when you live a life that avoids change? You live a life in which you close yourself to new experiences and ideas and fight anyone who encroaches upon the status quo. You feel insecure all the time because that is the price of not being open to change.

In addition to optimism and gratitude, there are other elements of self-esteem that you can cultivate to deal with the range of change that is part and parcel of daily life.

Any change is a challenge to our confidence and our resourcefulness. As I have already indicated, resistance to change is normal. In fact, resistance to change is healthy. Resistance guards against instability, so the first step to effectively deal with change is to respect and embrace your resistance to change. Give thought to the negative things about the change you are resisting and how you might undermine it. This process alone builds your confidence and clears the way for you to make the change.

The next step to build your confidence and effectively deal with change is to frame the challenge as an opportunity. Change is our biggest opportunity for personal and professional growth. This perspective enables us to experience our personal power and enhances our feelings of self worth resulting in the confidence needed to successfully cope with change.

So cultivate optimism and gratitude, respect and embrace your resistance to change, and frame change as a gift for opportunity, for that is what change is if we cultivate the confidence to allow it to be so.

"Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine."
Robert Gallagher

Self-Esteem and Change-Part I

2010-10-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

In the remarkable book, Light in August by William Faulkner, one of the characters is man who has been repeatedly abused and isolated, yet does not move. Here is how Faulkner explains it: "A fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have then he ever is of the trouble he already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change."

It is more usual then not to resist change, running the gamut from the experience of Faulkner's character to staying in unsatisfying relationships and work to not trying new activities.

All behavior is a reflection of self-esteem, including our response to change. Resistance to change and fear of the unknown characterizes low self-esteem. High self-esteem correlates with comfort in managing change.

Sometimes we get some lead-time to deal with change, sometimes change is rapidly thrust upon us. I thought about his when I had the privilege of presenting one of the awards at the Honors Assembly at Helen Hayes Hospital, a rehabilitation facility in West Haverstraw, New York.

In my experience, award ceremonies are often can be dull, even the lavishly produced Oscars, and I wasn't looking forward to two hours of presentations. Contrary to my expectations, I was riveted for the entire event. Awards were given to people who had experienced severe physical injury, and had made incredible progress: a father of young children who was rendered helpless after being hit by falling tree branch now a person using a wheel chair and living independently, a nurse who became paralyzed from the waist down who is now walking and back to work, a man who had suffered multiple fractures, burns over 13% of his body, lost several fingers, and came to the event the day after hiking up a mountain, a young man who lost both legs in an accident and is now walking. These are dramatic examples of how change can be suddenly foisted upon us. The honorees were a diverse group of people with one thing in common. They were optimistic and grateful, key characteristics of those with high self-esteem.

Confidence and Procrastination

2010-09-07T04:20:00.000-07:00

Today is the day after Labor Day, the time when we're facing all that we put off until after Labor Day! Don't let it erode your confidence. Everyone procrastinates.

Procrastination is not always a problem. There are those times when we need to work on something mentally prior to completion. So, if you get something done on time with good enough quality, don't beat yourself up for a job well done in a timely manner.

The first thing to do is to recognize that you are procrastinating. Some of the signs include:
1-Filling your day with low priority tasks.
2-Looking at a task more then once without starting on it or deciding when you are going to start it.
3-Sitting down to start a high priority task and shortly afterwards getting up to make a cup of coffee, water a plant, bake cup-cakes, change the oil in your car.............................
4-Letting important items linger on your task list.
5-Saying yes to unimportant tasks while important ones remain undone.

The second thing to do is to figure out why you are procrastinating.
The most common causes are feeling overwhelmed and finding a task unpleasant. Other causes include: waiting for the "right" time or mood, a fear of success or failure, underdeveloped decision making skills, poor organizational skills, and perfectionism. Once you identify why, you can then chose the most appropriate action to take the third step, which is to get over it!

Some of the actions to take to get over procrastination are:
1-Promise yourself a piece of chocolate when you're done, or a facial, or a bike ride, or whatever a reward is to you.
2-Hire someone to kill you if you don't do the task. Well, maybe not kill you, just break your legs or just call you and ask you how you're doing. Make yourself accountable to someone to whom you can talk to about obstacles, strategies and wins.
3-Don't think about finishing the task and all that it entails. Focus on beginning it and just go with it. Break it down into small pieces if you need to.

So, the way to respond to procrastination is to recognize you're doing it, figure out why you're doing it, and then get over it. And to accept the fact that you're going to do it sometimes anyway.

So get that after Labor Day thing done then enjoy that feeling of accomplishment and your reward. As for me, I wrote my blog so now it's time to get to all the other stuff I've got to do!

The 12 Elements That Predict Good Employee Performance

2010-08-31T07:54:00.000-07:00

These 12 statements, which are predictive of good employee and workgroup performance, are based on a Gallup poll done in 2005:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

These statements are consistent with the work of Nathaniel Branden, in which he maintains that good performance is a result of an organizational culture that promotes self-esteem. Success in every area boils down to building and maintaining deep down confidence!

Self-Esteem and Your Comfort Zone II

2010-08-10T05:19:00.000-07:00

Ways to raise your self-esteem and become more confident is something you can learn. You can make building your self-esteem as habitual as brushing your teeth. The first step is to choose to be confident. If you choose something, you eliminate the possibility of something else. So, if you choose to be a vegetarian, you choose to not eat meat. Choose building your self-esteem, commit to it, and eliminate the possibility of being not confident.

  Your next step is to take action. The most powerful action you can take is to do something out of your comfort zone. Think about things you've done that you started out being afraid to do and/or doubting that you could accomplish. How did you feel after you did it? Even if the results were less than you hoped for, overcoming fear and doubt and acting is enough to boost self-confidence.

  I never learned to swim because I was afraid to go into water above my head. This has restricted my life in many ways. This past December I committed to learning to swim and have been taking lessons since then. I've come to see that overcoming my fear boils down to feeling confident in the water. As of today, I have swum from the deep end to the shallow end of the pool dozens of times. I feel fantastic, and the confidence I've gained is not isolated to the pool. It spreads through everything in my life. Doing things out of your comfort zone enhances everything you do.

  Here are some thing I have discovered while moving out of my comfort zone:

  -Feel your feelings, and don't let them run you. My mind always says, "Why are you doing this?" as I'm walking to my lesson. I listen, I acknowledge my fear and then I go and take my lesson.

  -Repetition may be necessary. Fear of the deep water is an old and long-standing fear for me. I make more progress each time I go into the deep water, although it will take some more lessons to get totally comfortable. I am confident that if I persist I will get there.  

-Get support. I tell people I'm learning to swim, and I always get a big supportive response.

  -Acknowledge yourself. I am so proud of myself.

  -Celebrate. I indulged in a long relaxing sauna.

  -Visualize the rewards. I envision myself enjoying pool parties with friends and cooling off with a relaxing swim, after lying on a magnificent beach at a luxurious tropical resort.  See you in the pool!  

"Your life is important. Honor it. Fight for your highest possibilities." Nathaniel Branden

Self-Esteem and Your Comfort Zone I

2010-08-02T04:49:00.000-07:00

Last summer one of my newsletters was about doing things outside of your comfort zone. I wrote about my decision to learn to swim and how challenging and rewarding it was to confront such huge and old fear. I’m getting close to swimming comfortably in the deep water, still not quite there. I took a break and it was terrifying all over again to resume my lessons, although I have retained some of the skills and comfort that I learned. Not quite as frightening as it was before, and after just one lesson I feel a lot less scared.

Stepping out of your comfort zone has become one of those pat phrases that loses some of its meaning because you hear it often. My experience with swimming has made me realize that not all stepping out of your comfort zone is created equal!

It is something that you can do it small ways on a daily basis, and that does enhance your self-esteem. Recently I was annoyed by something that I would have not talked up about in the past. I said something and although I still didn’t get what I wanted, I felt good about myself for asserting myself and allowing myself to be known. I had a moment of hesitation, but it was nothing like the fear I have of being in water above my head.

Smaller steps outside of your comfort zone are great because you can do them frequently and they really add up for raising your self-esteem. Bigger steps are like hitting the self-esteem lottery. It’s a huge boost to your self-esteem currency. Consider doing both!

Successful Small Business Owners and Self-Esteem

2010-07-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

A recent study by the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute revealed the top six traits of the 1 in 2 small business owners that survive for more then 5 years. They surveyed 1,100 businesses with between 2 and 99 employees. Most business owners who do well share these traits:

1-The ability to collaborate is number one. This translates into strong relationships with employees and customers and delegating.

2- Owners of businesses that succeed value their self-fulfillment. It is of the upmost importance for them to being doing what they like, control their own time and the money that they make.

3-They are future-focused. They have a vision, and often a plan for what their business will look like in five years, in addition to a plan for today.

4-Curiosity makes them keep learning, asking questions, and most of all, learning from mistakes and failures.

5-They invest money in technology for marketing and efficiency.

6-Action orientation keeps them moving forward, and reacting to adversity as a reason to keep innovating and moving ahead.

As per Mark Wolf, the Institute’s Director, "Success-oriented small business owners are a special breed of highly motivated, caring and curious individuals. They effectively balance their personal and business goals, take advantage of others' expertise and continually seek to learn the best practices exhibited by peer companies."

What do all these traits have in common? They are all traits of a person with high self-esteem. It is shown again and again that what makes a successful small business owner or corporate executive, or spouse or parent is high self-esteem!

Living Purposefully and The Workplace

2010-07-20T05:02:00.000-07:00

The level of your self-esteem has a profound impact on every area of your life, including your work. Last week I wrote about one of the pillars of self-esteem: the practice of living purposefully. This week I’m thinking about it specifically in relation to work.

If you are engaged in the practice of living purposefully at work, you are focused on your goals and you organize your behavior around those goals. It also serves as a tool for you to monitor your behavior so that when you get off track, you can get yourself right back on.

Here are some typical responses, from the work of Nathaniel Brandon, to the question, what would change for you if you increased the practice of living purposefully at the workplace:

-I’d want to know the purpose of any meeting or conversation and I’d try to keep on track.

-My work would be more focused on results.

-I’d prioritize my time better.

-I’d tell people when they wandered away from the subject.

-I’d encourage people to stay conscious of their goals and not get distracted.

-I’d stay focused on my job and not get bogged down doing other people’s work.

-I’d look at everything from the perspective of how it affects long term goals.

As we look at these responses, it is obvious how living purposefully contributes to being more effective at work. Are you practicing living purposefully at your workplace?

If you are a manager of others, do you create a culture that supports and encourages the practice of living purposefully? Here are a few steps that you can take:

-Be clear not just on the big picture, but how the employee’s work relates to it.

-Encourage her/him to measure results against goals.

-Make it clear that you expect innovation when necessary to meet goals.

-Regularly and consistently give feedback on progress towards long range goals.

Put the practice of living purposefully into play at your workplace and you will have more self-esteem and better results.

Living Purposefully

2010-07-13T03:22:00.000-07:00

Living purposefully is to use our power to attain goals that we have selected. It means that we are not leaving our lives to chance, or hopes and wishes. We decide what we want, identify what we need to get there, and maintain an awareness that our actions are moving us towards achieving what we want. It is one of Nathaniel Branden's pillars of self-esteem because taking actions towards our goals builds our self-esteem. Purposeful action, in fact, is what builds self-esteem rather then the actual achievement of our goals.

Sounds so easy! And it would be if we were robots. Luckily we're people, and we have feelings so we experience all kinds of wonderful things like happiness, and love. But, in order to feel wonderful, we have to be open to feeling sad and angry, things that we would rather avoid. It's the way we're made, if we don't allow ourselves to fully experience unpleasant feelings, we don't fully experience the great stuff.

It's not possible to live purposefully without being conscious of how we are feeling and accepting it. In order to focus on our goals and choose actions that are purposeful, we need to know how we are feeling so that we can decide if we will act on what we feel.

There are over 10,000 taxi cabs in New York. If the number of pissed off taxi drivers, other drivers, passengers and pedestrians who got angry back at them acted on their anger, there would be a mind boggling number of injured and dead people on the streets of New York! We can choose to not act how we feel. We do this every day. How many days do you wake up and feel like going back to sleep? Did you get up or roll over? Just think back over the last few days and you will realize how many things you did that you didn't feel like doing to achieve a greater goal. If you were able to act in a way that you felt was purposeful, you were acting in a way that enhanced your self-esteem.

There is a 3 step process that you can use to make your behavior more purposeful. If you discover that some of your actions are expressions of low self-esteem, this is a process that will also eventually change those feelings and increase your self-esteem.

The first step is giving yourself permission to be human. Allow yourself, without judgment to experience whatever it is you are feeling. Respect your inner reality. Anything you feel is fine, it's just a feeling.

The second step is to find the benefit. Not so easy if it's disappointment, sadness or anger. But the benefit is there, and you can find it if you've allowed yourself the full experience of it.

The third step is gaining perspective. Now that you can change your perspective, you can have a clear head to determine the best course of action.

One of my clients gave me a great example of how this worked for her. She realized that she habitually rejected compliments. They made her uncomfortable. She gave herself permission to be human and experienced that she felt unworthy. The benefit was the awareness, and the change in her perspective was that she was worthy. She has stopped rejecting compliments, and feels better about herself.

Sometimes this process isn't linear and it can take varying amounts of time. But it works. You don't have to do what you feel and you can enjoy the journey on the way to achieving your goals.

Confidence and Motivation In The Workplace

2010-07-06T04:40:00.000-07:00

How do you motivate your staff and yourself? If you are focused on rewards and outcomes you are ignoring well-established scientific fact. It’s like holding on to that horse and buggy because you just don’t belief that darned auto thingy works. Do you have the confidence to let go of the old way of doing things?

This is something that I blogged about this past winter, and right now it’s hard to remember that it was ever cold! However, this topic is worth another look.

Studies conducted all over the world repeatedly demonstrate the following facts:
1 -Rewards as an incentive work for a very small number of tasks. These are tasks that are simple and have a clearly defined destination. In today’s world most of these tasks can either be automated or out-sourced.
2- Rewards as an incentive destroy creativity. One of the many studies on this topic took a group of MIT students and offered them financial bonuses to solve different sets of problems. The bonuses worked with problems that involved mechanical skills. When offered for problems that required cognitive skills, financial rewards led to poorer performance, and larger financial rewards led to worse performance. Yes you read that correctly, performance declined as the financial rewards grew.
3-For right-brained tasks motivation is increased when the individual likes what they’re doing, finds it interesting, feels that they are part of something bigger, and have autonomy. Google has taken this finding and run with it. Their employees work on whatever they want 20% of the time. Their most popular products, such as gmail and googlenews, have come out of this time. In fact, half of their new products come out of this totally autonomous time.

Another area in which we tend to operate contrary to scientific fact is in acknowledging performance. The fact is that highlighting the effort, the process, is much more effective then focusing only on outcome. This is not to say that outcome is not important, our course outcome is important. However, acknowledging effort is the most effective way to get optimal performance and desired outcomes. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. A belief in the importance of effort improves resilience, persistence, and gives people a greater sense of control over what they are doing. Therefore, they are intrinsically motivated to do a better job, and will be more successful.

These are solid research results that can bring your business or your work life into the 21st century. Think about how you might apply them.

Can you give your employees (or get for yourself) more autonomy? Some companies have given their employees total control of their own schedules, they work whenever they want to, and this has proven to have a positive effect on creativity and productivity. It also goes a long way towards attracting and retaining top performers.

Can you acknowledge effort as well as outcome, can you even go as far as acknowledging failure as a step on the way to success, as an opportunity to learn how to do better?

We are 10 years into a new century and have experienced a time of tremendous economic upheaval. Things are changed and won’t be the way they were before, so it’s a great time to explore new and more effective ways of working. Check it out.

Find That Owl

2010-06-28T04:12:00.000-07:00

Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, defines persistence as the "voluntary continuation of a goal-directed action in spite of obstacles, difficulties, or discouragement" . The element of challenge is important when talking about persistence because doing something for a long time that is easy or loads of fun doesn’t require persistence. My daughter would watch television for a week without food or sleep if she could!
It’s now very tempting to talk about Thomas Edison and others like him who kept at the task at hand despite repeated failure. In the case of Edison, as many of you know, it is said that he had thousands of failed experiments before he invented the light bulb. But what is often left out of a discussion of persistence is the need for judgment and self-esteem.
What got me thinking about this was a bird walk that I went on this past Saturday. From September through June the New York Botanical Gardens has a weekly bird walk at 11AM on Saturday. It’s been led for 24 years by Debbie Becker, an excellent birder with a tremendous knowledge of everything, including the birds, that you might encounter on a walk in the NYBG. On this last walk of the season she spotted a Great Horned owl high above us, actually looking down upon us as we looked at him! It took quite a while to find him, and I’ve been on this walk before when she’s given up without finding an owl.
It takes good judgment and wisdom to know when it is the time to quit and move on to something else. Debbie knows the area in which you would find the owl, and is persistent in looking for him or her (there are one of each in the area). However, she also knows that sometimes they’re someplace you just cannot see them, and when she has given it a good amount of time and effort, she moves on.
In general people with higher self-esteem are more likely to persist on a difficult task than people with lower self-esteem. Logic tells us that if you believe you are a competent person with a good chance of succeeding, you are less likely to quit. Debbie knows she has a better chance then most at spotting that owl.
It is also true that when you have been rewarded in the past for persistence you are more likely to persist on a future task-even if that future task is not directly related to the first. So this wasn’t the first time Debbie looked long and hard for a specific bird, and it is almost certain her repeated failures and success in this area has increased her ability to persist in other areas of her life. This is an important lesson for all of us to remember. Persistence in one area of your life will positively affect your self-esteem and spread out into other areas of your life.
Don’t you just hate it when you’ve been struggling to get that jar open and just as you give up, someone else picks it up and opens it with one twist? If only you had tried one more time! Here are some tips to strengthen your persistence muscle and build your self-esteem as a result:
Notice your thoughts about stopping a task, accept them, but don’t act upon them.
Make a plan that will support you in sticking to taking action towards achieving your goal.
When you lose focus on your task, direct your attention back to it.
Do things today that you could put off until tomorrow.
Never forget to acknowledge and reward yourself and celebrate sticking to it.

Peanut Butter and Self-Esteem

2010-06-21T04:39:00.000-07:00

My watchband broke. I haven’t been wearing a watch, and I can’t remember the last time this was the case. Now that I’m habitually looking at a bare wrist I realize how often I look at the time, especially if my schedule is running tight. It is as though I believe that knowing the time is related to how fast I will get somewhere, and of course, it is not at all related. The only thing I can do is start out with enough time to get where I’m going. If there is an accident on the road, or some other unforeseen circumstance, knowing the time does not help. The lack of a watch has not been an obstacle.

Sometimes it is challenging for us to identify and accept the real obstacles in our way. One of the stories in the book The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman, comes to mind. He was working on a construction site, and had lunch with the other men working there every day. One man complained bitterly and loudly about his peanut butter sandwich. He had one everyday and said he hated peanut butter. Finally someone asked him why he didn’t ask his wife to pack him another kind of sandwich. His reply was that he lived alone and packed his own lunch.

What are your obstacles? Is it a situation, a person, fear, perception, pessimism, low self-esteem, perfectionism? If we focus on the negative, on the obstacles, we get stuck. If we turn our focus to what we want and the benefits, we can overcome our obstacles.

How does that work? If we focus obstacles it’s like having a partner whose job it is to prevent you from getting anywhere and put you down. If you refocus onto your goals and benefits, you’ve got yourself a partner whose job it is open doors for you and support your efforts.

Overcoming obstacles and turning your focus to your goals raises your self-esteem, and raising your self-esteem enables you to overcome obstacles and to focus on your goals. This cycle is one you might consider getting started! The elements of self-esteem: self-responsibility, living purposefully, and personal integrity, all serve to help us overcome obstacles. If you are responsible for yourself, you feel empowered and do what you need to do. If you live purposefully, your vision shapes your actions, and if you have personal integrity you hold yourself to the highest possibility.

If you don’t want peanut butter sandwiches, stop making them.
As for me, I love a good peanut butter sandwich and I miss my watch. I am going to get the band repaired.

Self-Esteem and Limiting Beliefs

2010-06-14T04:37:00.000-07:00

A while ago I was working as a consultant and went to the firm's office several times a week. The office is located in a building that is close to the avenue, so I would walk up the avenue, turn on the block and ride the elevator up to the office. When I was done, I retraced my steps back to the avenue. One day I realized that I had no idea what was on the rest of the block. I took a walk past the building and found many interesting stores and restaurants. As result, I had a fabulous meal.

This is the way that a lack of confidence and limiting beliefs create barriers in our lives. Until Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3.59 minutes in 1954, no one thought it was possible to run a mile under 4 minutes. Despite the prevailing attitude, he was confident he could do it. Within the following year, many other people ran a mile under 4 minutes. Wilbur and Orville Wright were confident that a flying machine could be a reality when many (if not most) people of their time thought is was absurd. Once limiting beliefs are identified and eliminated, it becomes obvious that they are false. How about the notion that you can use a telephone that can be carried in your pocket. My daughter looked at me like I was a Martian when I told her that there were no cell phones when I was a kid! But there was a time before cell phones, and many people who believed they would never exist. Obviously not everyone looked at it that way because once you believe something can happen, it becomes possible.

What do you want in order to have a satisfying and fulfilling life? Are a lack of confidence and limiting beliefs preventing you from thinking that a great life is possible, that you can go for it? Take some time to listen to your thoughts. Think about what you want for yourself and then listen to what comes into your mind. Sometimes we think things like, "I don't have what it takes", "I'll fail", "I'm not worth it". These are negative things that have found a home in your head and have stuck due to repetition. They've probably come from some past place in which you no longer reside. Evict them! Replace them with thoughts that will empower you.

Erik Weihenmayer is a man who reached the summit of Mt. Everest and he is blind. He pushed passed the limits of vision loss, and his guide was his coach! The coach worked with the entire team to identify and eliminate the barriers they had built in their heads. Go for it, eliminate the barriers that are blocking you from climbing your Mt. Everest.

Self-Assertiveness in the Workplace

2010-06-10T04:35:00.000-07:00

Self-assertiveness in the workplace benefits both the employer and the employee. I had a boss who asked me during my interview if I would be honest with him in the event that I disagreed with him. He wanted self-assertive employees; he didn't want to miss out on valuable feed-back and creative initiative. He worked at creating an organizational culture that supported self-esteem and the practice of self-assertiveness. Elements of that culture included that it was ok to make a mistake as it was an opportunity to learn, it really was safe to disagree with the boss, autonomy was encouraged, and creative problem solving was rewarded. At this point in time, this organization has survived economic challenges, and I do think that the culture is one of the factors that enable it to survive.
Here's some typical answers, gathered by Nathaniel Branden, given to the question, what would you do if you were more self-assertive:
-I'd be more candid.
-I wouldn't drag my feet about declaring bad news.
-If I didn't understand, I'd ask questions rather than pretend I knew.
-When I knew something impossible was being asked of me, I'd say so on the spot.
-I'd be more honest about my feelings.
-If someone wasn't doing the job that was needed, I'd e faster to react and insist on better performance.
-I'd be clear about my expectations and lay them right out there.
-When I knew I had done a good job, I'd make sure my bosses knew about it.
-I wouldn't be wishy washy about presenting my ideas, I'd stand up for them.
What would you do if you were more self-assertive? How would it impact your self-esteem and your relationships? Let me know!

Self-Assertiveness Part III

2010-06-09T03:52:00.001-07:00

An essential element of lasting intimate relationships is self-assertiveness, knowing and being known. The temptation to conceal our true selves is often strongest in our relationships with those that we care about the most. In my experience giving into this temptation is a huge contributing factor to unhappy marriages and divorces. The energy consumed by tamping down parts of ourselves wears us down, and creates unhappiness and distance from our partner. We are afraid that revealing parts of ourselves that our partner will not like will end the relationship. In fact, even your mom doesn't like every single thing about you, but I hope she still loves you. For a relationship to survive over the long run, you have to be your authentic self, warts and all. It is also a big hit to your self-esteem to only have the "acceptable" parts of yourself known. Feeling good about yourself requires that your life belongs to you and that you are not basing your behavior on someone else's expectations.

Self-Assertiveness Part II

2010-06-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

Self-Assertiveness Part 1

2010-06-07T03:56:00.000-07:00

There have been lots of news stories lately about long marriages breaking up, most recently Al and Tipper Gore separating after 40 years of marriage. I've been reading that it's not that unusual, that divorce after decades of marriage is common. In fact, divorce rates are rising for those 55 and older, while falling for other groups. And in many cases, as with the Gores, infidelity is not a factor. It's usually due to long-term unhappiness or not spending enough time together.
At the same time, I've been thinking about the importance of relationships. Studies have demonstrated that the number one predictor of well being is the time we spend with people we care about, and that people in a romantic, intimate relationship are generally happier.
Relationships in the work place also play such an important part in our well-being and our success. Many of us spend a lot of time with the people with whom we work and need to work as part of a team to reach our goals. So this week I'm going to be blogging about a crucial part of how we create successful relationships, and that is by the practice of self-assertiveness.

Exercise and Confidence

2010-05-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

In honor of the unofficial beginning of summer, I’m reposting this blog on exercise.

Exercise is good for you and your business. It doesn’t just strengthen your heart; it creates positive changes in your brain, makes you more resilient, and will no doubt increase your confidence.

Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the last 50 years, you’ve heard that exercise is good for you. It lowers your blood pressure and strengthens your heart, it adds years to your life. However, this information does not seem to be very motivating for most people!

Research has shown that the benefits of exercise have a wider reach then heart health. It begins with the fact that human nature is to be physical. Our ancestors spent many more hours a day then we do moving around. The reduction of physical work in our modern world has a direct correlation to rising levels of mental illness. Not exercising is like taking a depressant or an anxiety drug.

In 2000 Babyak did a study with 156 people suffering from a major depressive disorder. He divided them into 3 groups. One group was prescribed only medication, the second group was prescribed medication and 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week, the third group was prescribed only 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week.

After 4 months, the recovery rate in each group was about the same, 60% got better, there was no significant difference, and in fact the group who were prescribed exercise alone took a bit longer to recover. Those who did recover were looked at again 6 months later. In that group, 38% who were prescribed medication alone relapsed, 31% who were prescribed medication and exercise relapsed, 9% who were prescribed exercise alone relapsed. Interesting. This is not to advocate that those in need forgo medication. In my own experience working with people suffering from mental illness, I think that medication is a wonderful thing and saves lives. Exercise is not a panacea. But this study does illustrate the powerful benefit of exercise, the advantage of heeding human nature.

It is also pretty well know that exercise enhances mood, the “runners high” is a commonly used phrase. And now we know why. I personally am not fond of rats, but I guess we do owe them thanks for all of the good information we get from experimenting on them Recent experiments on rats demonstrate that exercise causes changes in the brain that creates a different response to stress. And here I quote Michael Hopkins, a researcher affiliated with the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Laboratory at Dartmouth. “It looks more and more like the positive stress of exercise prepares cells and structures and pathways within the brain so that they’re more equipped to handle stress in other forms. It’s pretty amazing, really, that you can get this translation from the realm of purely physical stresses to the realm of psychological stressors.” An example of one of these studies is the response of rats placed in an unfamiliar space. The rats that had exercised didn’t run for dark corners and hide, as the unexercised rats did. They explored.

Exercise also has a positive effect on behavior. In his book Spark, The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and The Brain. Dr. John Ratey states, “Having a bout of exercise is like taking a little it of Prozac, a little bit of Ritalin, right where it is supposed to go.” He studied children in a failing school and in a good school. With the introduction of daily exercise, the failing school became 17% above the state average, the good school became one of the top performing schools in the world. Obesity levels fell from 30% to 3%, disciplinary incidents declined, and violent incidents decreased 67%.

All this just by exercising, moving around as we are meant to. So let’s all go for a brisk walk today!

Resolve the Past

2010-05-24T04:23:00.000-07:00

Olives, brussels sprouts, liverwurst, and sushi are among the foods that people either love or hate. Personally, I hate liverwurst and love sushi. Many years ago I shared a platter of sushi with a with a like minded friend. We were both in an adventurous mood so we ordered things that were new to us and split each piece.

At that time my work brought me into frequent contact with physicians. A few days after this meal I mentioned to one of them that my stomach had not been feeling right. He listened to the symptoms and advised a dose of Pepto Bismol. After that my stomach ailment went from a minor nuisance to a major problem. It took three more visits to the doctor over the period of a month for a correct diagnosis to be made. It was a truly rough month. My work at the time required a lot of traveling which was a huge challenge with a chronically bad stomach.

I had a parasite that can only be caught from eating raw fish and it had to be that sushi that I shared with my friend. It was the only raw fish I had eaten that month. My friend was fine, so I had gotten it from one half of a piece of sushi! Once it was correctly diagnosed it was easy and rapidly cured. My response to this experience was to swear that I would never eat another piece of sushi as long as I lived.

Three years went by before I asked myself why I was condemning myself to a life without sushi. One fluke (pun intended) experience and I denied myself the pleasure of a food I enjoyed. Did it make sense to be ruled by the fear of getting a parasite? So, I started eating it again and have enjoyed many wonderful sushi meals since.

I was reminded of this incident this past weekend as I was talking with an old friend. A mutual acquaintance who seemed to be stuck in the past came up in our conversation. The fact is that not all unresolved, lingering situations are as easily identifiable as my experience with parasites, or as easy to reverse. To find them you need to examine the way you cope with challenges, negative relationships, uncomfortable communication. What habits do you have that don’t serve you well? It’s almost guaranteed that these behaviors are left over from something that happened in the past. It’s worth the effort to heighten your awareness and identify them. The benefits are more confidence, fewer problems and more opportunities.

What’s the bad sushi meal that drives a practice in your business or personal life? We all have unresolved matters from the past that are no longer true for us today, but still influence our behavior. If we can identify and handle them, we are free to deal with new situations as they present themselves. We gain the freedom to enhance the quality of our lives, and eat good sushi!

Managing Time

2010-05-17T04:30:00.000-07:00

I recently started a new coaching assignment that requires me to be on site three days a week for the length of the contract. Time management is now a challenge for me because my time is usually committed to being outside of my office in much smaller chunks. I read somewhere that it is easy to be a good captain in still waters. I have given talks and coached many of my business clients on time management. Now, it’s my challenge. You could say this is a case of “Coach, coach thyself’.

So here are the steps I’m taking to meet the challenge of time management:

1- De-clutter
I’m heeding the words of someone much smarter then me. Albert Einstein had three rules of work:
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity
So I de-cluttered my desk. I took all the things that were on my desk and decided which ones had to be acted on, which ones needed to be trashed and which ones needed to be filed. De-cluttering was also one of the first things I did in the office I’m using at the company for which I have this contract.
Clutter is a time and energy drain. The amount of time that you have increases as the amount of clutter, mess and distraction in your environment diminishes. When your space is cluttered you spend extra time looking for items that you need. It could be right in front of you and impossible to see because it’s surrounded by clutter. The extra time that it takes to find things can add up very quickly.

2- End Procrastination
I writing this now instead of later!
Procrastination is something that we all do sometimes. Ask yourself why you are procrastinating. The most common causes are feeling overwhelmed or finding a task unpleasant. Waiting for the “right” time or mood, fear of success or failure, poor organizational skills and perfectionism are some other reasons.
Once you’ve identified why, you can take action to get over it. You can promise yourself a reward, make yourself accountable to someone to whom you can talk about obstacles, strategies and wins, or just get started and don’t think about all that the task entails.
As soon as I finish writing this I’ve having a nice walk in the park with my dog on this beautiful day.

3-Say No
Once I accepted this contract I had to take a serious look at my calendar and say no to some things. There is no tool or system that will enable you to do too many activities in too little time.
When it comes to time management the word no can be your best friend. Saying no is good for your health and those around you. It reduces your stress and allows you to spend quality time on the things that you say yes to. You feel less grouchy, empowered and can try new things by saying no to old things.
Some of the things that make saying no easier are being assertive, remembering that no is an honorable response if it is authentic, starting your sentence with the word no, accepting that your time is valuable, and being firm
Practice by saying no several times every day, it’s good for you.

So those are the tips that I’m following to manage my time. Now, I can go out for my walk and really enjoy the day!

Build New Habits and Your Self-Esteem

2010-05-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Do you brush your teeth every day? How does that go for you? Do you have to think about it and give yourself a pep talk to get yourself into that bathroom and do it?

While you’re pondering these questions, let me throw in one more. Did you make any resolutions this past January? If so, how many of them have you kept? If you're like many of us you have made and repeatedly broke them. This really erodes your self-esteem. It's not keeping your word to yourself and that makes you feel bad about yourself. Perhaps, with the change of seasons, you’re thinking again about changes you’d like to make.

Now I hope you’re wondering what brushing your teeth and resolutions have in common. The short answer is that self-discipline does not work, change is hard and it’s possible, but self-discipline is not the route. Studies have shown that we are all born with a finite amount of self-discipline that does not change over the course of our lives, so there is just about nothing you can do to get more.

Let’s take a simple example of a business related New Year’s resolution. You resolved to grow your business by doing more follow up. Monday, January 4, 2010, rolled around and you made follow-up calls to five potential clients with whom you’ve had conversations. You did it again on the 5th and the 6th. On the 7th you got busy with a new project and you just made 3 calls. On the 8th you had a meeting that took up your entire morning and you just didn’t have the energy to pick up that phone. The weekend rolled around, then it’s Monday the 11th and you just had a ton of paperwork to get through. You didn’t give much thought to follow up calls. The calls got sporadic, you’re not really sure how many you did, and one more resolution and your self-esteem went down the drain.

Now how come you brush your teeth everyday without struggle, without really using any energy thinking about it, without becoming distracting from it? The reason is that brushing your teeth is a well-established ritual. No effort, no thought, you just do it. You were not born with a brushing you teeth as ritual gene. You developed it as a ritual. Given the benefit derived from brushing your teeth over your lifetime, the effort and time that it took to establish it as a ritual is minimal.

If you would like to make a change, focus on creating a ritual, and forget using self-discipline. Not to say that it starts off with no effort but if you focus on creating a ritual for a relatively short amount of time, it quickly becomes effortless and you’ve got a new ritual that is moving you towards your goal.

Building rituals requires defining very precise behavior and performing those behaviors at very specific times. It also helps to be clear on your motivation for the behavior. Most of us don’t brush our teeth when we think of it. Some people do it as soon as they get out of bed, other after breakfast, but whenever it is, the time is the same every day, and you are doing the same thing every time. Your Mom, or whoever got you doing it, was highly motivated by wanting you to be healthy (and maybe saving on those dental bills).

Back to your business. You decide that to grow your business you need to do follow-up calls. Don’t wait until the New Year, do it today. You will do five a day, at 9AM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is an unbreakable appointment that you put in my calendar. Now it’s an effort, you have to force yourself to keep that appointment sometimes, but you really want to grow your business, so you do it. It’s easier in next month and in couple of months it’s nearly effortless.

This applies to any change that you want to introduce into your life, and can be done at any time of the year. It works; however, it works best if you limit yourself to one or two at a time. So do it know, think of one or two rituals that you would like to introduce into your life and commit to regular time to practice them. Soon they will be as easy as brushing your teeth!

Self-Acceptance

2010-05-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

Self-acceptance is being real about ourselves. It enables us to hear critical feedback or different ideas without becoming hostile or adversarial. Self-acceptance is not something we think, it's something we do. You don't have to like everything about yourself in order to accept who you are. If we can't accept something about ourselves, we cannot make changes, because we can't change something that we deny exists. Paradoxically, self-acceptance is necessary to make changes, but not about changing ourselves.

Ultimately, liking ourselves more has mostly to do with self-acceptance. And it's only when we stop judging ourselves that we can have a more positive sense of who we are and increase our self-esteem.

What we need for self-acceptance is the conviction that we are always doing the best we can. We are who we are, with whatever strengths and weaknesses we possess in the moment. Self-acceptance is unconditional. We don't ignore or deny our weaknesses, we just see them as not relevant to our basic acceptability. Personal flaws or shortcomings don't need to get in our way. Certainly, we can decide to do better in the future, but we can nonetheless accept ourselves exactly as we are today.

Self-acceptance doesn't mean that we won't want to change things about ourselves. It's just that our self-acceptance is not dependent on changes that we make. We don't have to do anything to secure our self-acceptance: we have only to change the way we view ourselves. So altering our behaviors becomes a matter of personal preference, not a prerequisite for greater self-regard.

Here are some ways that we can support self-acceptance in others as well as ourselves:

* Be present when speaking with someone, give them the experience of being heard and accepted
* Maintain a tone of respect
* Describe undesirable behavior without blaming
* Speak honestly about your feelings
* Develop a toleration for mistakes
* Reward success and ignore failure as much as possible

Apply these same attitudes and behaviors to yourself. Cultivate self-acceptance. It's something that operates for us on so many levels, and informs our behavior, thoughts and feelings every day.

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
Mark Twain
"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."
Albert Einstein

Self-Esteem and Change Management

2010-04-26T04:42:00.000-07:00

Although there have been many eras in the past characterized by change, the constant and rapid change that characterizes our society today is unprecedented, and unending.
Here are some dramatic facts from Jay Conrad Levinson, The Guerrilla marketing Guru to illustrate:
• On average, around the world, an innovation in digital technology is copyrighted every three seconds. That’s no misprint; that’s a fact.
• More than half of many companies’ revenues, from technology to food service to banking, come from products and services that didn’t exist two years ago.
• On average, multi-national corporations listed on the New York and Tokyo stock exchanges lose half their customers within five years, half their employees every four years, and half their investors in less than one year.
We never know what today or tomorrow will bring. What we do know is that things are changing rapidly, the rate of change is getting faster and we need something strong to respond to this. The thing that we need is high self-esteem. Behavior is a reflection of self-esteem and a mind that distrusts itself cannot decisively do what needs to be done. Change requires decisive action.
Resistance to change and fear of the unknown characterizes low self-esteem. High self-esteem correlates with comfort in managing change. The more rapid the rate of change, the more urgent the need for high self-esteem.

What we believe is what we make happen. It is very difficult for people to act beyond who and what they believe themselves to be. If you’re a business owner or an executive you also need to know that is very difficult for people to act beyond who and what the CEO is.

An organizational culture that supports high performance, personal accountability and the creative initiative needed to manage change is the same as an organizational culture that supports self-esteem.

The same conditions for self-esteem are the same conditions for:
• Change Readiness; Dealing With The Rate Of Change
• High Performance Behaviors
• Innovation And Creativity
• Superior Customer Relationships
• Bringing Out The Best In People
• Operating Better Under Pressure

I recently gave a talk to a group of CEOs about self-esteem. They were aware of how much their self-esteem contributed to the creation of the organizational culture. What they had not previously considered was the need to be aware of and support the self-esteem of their managers and staff.

Self-esteem is a reflection of behavior in every aspect of your life. So if you or your company is experiencing challenges around managing and responding to change, consider the likelihood that self-esteem and organizational supports related to self-esteem need to be increased.

Living With Self-Esteem

2010-04-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

Recently I’ve been preparing a presentation on Nathaniel Branden’s Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, so it’s been on my mind more then usual! He defines self-esteem as the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness. This means trust in your ability to think, learn, make appropriate decisions, and respond effectively to new conditions. It also means confidence in your right to experience success and personal fulfillment — the conviction that happiness is appropriate to you.

Self-esteem pertains to an experience of efficacy. This entails confidence in your mind at a very deep level. Not the confidence of knowing you can perform this or that task appropriately. Not confidence in how much you may know about any particular subject. But rather, trust in the processes by which you reason, understand, learn, choose, decide, and regulate action.

Then I heard the story of Natalie du Toit, the South African Olympic swimmer, and I thought there was no better way to illustrate the elements of self-esteem.

When she was in her teens, it was clear that the Natalie du Toit was a world-class swimmer. At the age of 16 she nearly qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Her determination was evident and it was widely believed that she would show up strong for the 2004 Athens Olympics. Then in 2001 a car hit her on her way to school after her morning workout.

Her injuries were horrible. Most people would have lost consciousness, but du Toit, who knew immediately that she had lost her leg, is a girl who confronts reality without blinking. She remained awake the entire time.

Her leg was amputated, and that did not change her motivation. She accepted that her strengths were no longer in the shorter races, so she changed the events in which she competed. With her prosthetic leg she was better at the longer distance races, so the longer freestyle races became her events. In her own words, “It’s important to swim your own race.”

du Toit narrowly missed qualifying for the 2004 Athens Olympics, but on May 3, 2008 she qualified for the Beijing Olympics after finishing 4th at the Open Water World Championships in Seville Spain. She was only 5.1 seconds off the winner in that race. In the women's 10km race in Beijing she finished in 16th place, 1:22 minutes behind the winner.

As you listened to her story, I hope that you heard that she is a person who takes responsibility for herself, accepts herself, set goals around which she organizes her behavior, has personal integrity, lives consciously, and stands up for her authentic self. If she were not, she would not have been at Beijing. And these are the six pillars of self-esteem; self-responsibility, self-acceptance, living purposefully, personal integrity, living consciously, and self-assertiveness.

The story of Natalie du Toit is both an inspiration and a road map for self-esteem.

Self-Responsiblity and Self-Esteem

2010-04-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

An important part of building self-esteem is building self-responsibility. In our times this has become more urgent for our work places and, in some cases, our families. Many organizations are downsizing and need more self-sufficient employees, and many families consist of individuals, each of whom has their own demanding schedule. We need to know how to create environments in which people are accountable for their choices, behavior, and results.

Here are some of the ways that managers can encourage self-responsibility in the workplace. You might find some of these points applicable to your family as well.

1- Give permission to fail. The only way to learn and to succeed is through failure. Almost every successful person has had lots of failures along the way. Instill the belief that if you don’t learn to fail, you fail to learn.

2- Make sure that tasks are clear and that the resources to accomplish tasks are readily available. There is nothing more undermining to one’s sense of responsibility and self-esteem then to not know what is expected and/or not having the tools to get it done.

3- Along with clear tasks set specific, measurable goals. This is the most effective way to create accountability. A real bonus for enhancing self-responsibility is also involving the employee in setting goals.

4-Ensure that employees know the company vision and how they are part of that vision. It is not enough just to know the company vision. In order to completely understand one’s responsibility it’s important to know how it fits into the bigger picture.

5- Have regularly scheduled check-in times. This is the time to review where your employee is in relation to goals, visions, resources, and to make needed adjustments. It’s also the time to reinforce permission to fail.

6- Listen. Just listening with empathy and giving someone your full attention so that they know their concerns are important, empower people. Often, being listened to in this way enables people to come to their own solutions, and reinforces self-responsibility.

7-Give lots of acknowledgment. It’s free and it goes a long way to aid someone in reinforcing success and self-sufficiency.

8-Empower decision-making. Whenever possible, let the employee make their own decisions along the way to attaining their goals. This reinforces commitment to and ownership of the goal. This can’t happen if you’re a micro-manager, so it’s important to be aware of that and take steps to let it go. Any steps taken to encourage self-responsibility will be undermined by micro-management.

Not all of these steps apply equally to everyone in every situation. They are meant to be guides to building a more self-sufficient work force. If the ones that apply to your situation are implemented, the result will be more responsible action and better results.

Living Consciously Builds Self-Esteem

2010-04-05T06:32:00.000-07:00

Springtime is a time of rebirth, and in many places in the world, there is a wonderful sense of being free from the harshness of winter weather. There are also joyous holidays in the spring: Easter is a celebration of rebirth and redemption, and Passover is a celebration of the exodus from slavery to freedom. It got me thinking about freedom.

An essential part of being a free person is making distinctions and searching for meaningful patterns. When we are really free we want understanding not ignorance. Without freedom, nothing is different; all tasks are part of the same meaningless randomness.

Free people ask questions, which moves them towards living consciously. We create awareness so that we can choose our behavior based on that awareness.   

One of Nathaniel Brandon's six pillars of self-esteem is living consciously. The essence of living consciously is seeking to understand both your inner and external world so that you are not choosing your actions blindly. We can't feel worthy and competent if we are acting without awareness. Living consciously also involves holding to this awareness even when the temptation to close our eyes is strong.   

As with all of the pillars of self-esteem it is both a source of and an expression of self-esteem. And living consciously is more then awareness, it is acting on that awareness.

Real freedom is the spirit by which the individual is elevated to become loyal to their inner essential self. Through this characteristic they can perceive their lives as purposeful and worthy of value. This is also one of the basic elements of self-esteem. The absence of living consciously is like giving up one's freedom to be true to one's essential self, and instead, being ruled by what others define as worthy.

Living consciously requires attention to the present, to what you are doing in the moment. I was recently at a diner, ordering an omelet. I was distracted, physically sitting in a booth at the diner, but mentally miles away. I ordered a Greek omelet, thinking it would have spinach and feta cheese it in. I was surprised when I got an omelet that had olives in it, as I'm not a big fan of olives. I had not really read the description. I had a moment of not being happy with myself.

What it means to not live consciously is that you can't control your life. You end up with an omelet that has stuff in it that you don't want. You also damage your self-esteem. You'll never gain your own respect for yourself if you are not honoring your own wishes, not behaving as who you truly are, in my case, as a person who doesn't like olives!

So, enjoy the weather, and enjoy being yourself-live consciously.

The Importance of Self-Esteem For The Workplace

2010-03-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

I’d like to share some quotes from Jay Conrad Levinson, The Guerrilla marketing Guru:
•On average, around the world, an innovation in digital technology is copyrighted every three seconds. That’s no misprint; that’s a fact.
•More than half of many companies’ revenues, from technology to food service to banking, come from products and services that didn’t exist two years ago.
•On average,multi-national corporations listed on the New York and Tokyo stock exchanges lose half their customers within five years, half their employees every four years, and half their investors in less than one year.
With that kind of change, and it’s growing, we need something strong to respond to this

And the strongest response is an organizational culture that supports high performance, personal accountability and the creative initiative needed to manage change. That organizational culture is the same as an organizational culture that supports self-esteem.

The same conditions for self-esteem are the same conditions for:
Innovation And Creativity
High Performance Behaviors
Change Readiness
Bringing Out The Best In People
Operating Better Under Pressure

Highly effective leadership cannot happen without high self-esteem. And, by the way, if you’re thinking that your self-esteem is already pretty high, I guarantee you, it can be higher. Just as there is no limit to the amount of joy one has there is no limit to the amount of self-esteem that an individual can have. Hopefully, they are both life long pursuits.

By self-esteem I mean the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness. This means trust in your ability to think, learn, make appropriate decisions, and respond effectively to new conditions. Behavior is a reflection of self-esteem and a mind that does not trust itself cannot produce decisive action.

So what are some of the conditions at the workplace that support self-esteem?
-Opportunities for continual learning and upgrading of skills
-Exploration of what made superior work possible, which will increase the chance it will happen again
-Exploration of what made mistakes happen, without blame, which will decrease the chance they will happen again
-Avoiding micromanaging, the enemy of autonomy and creativity
-Keeping managers focused on what needs to be done instead of on personalities
-Encouraging frankness, candor and nondefensiveness
-Clear and firm performance standards
-Support of perseverance
-Promotions based on merit rather then seniority
-A safe environment for disagreement
-The clear message that interest is in solutions, not in blaming or excuses
-Providing enough resources, information and authority to people so that they can do their jobs
-Measuring results against clearly defined objectives
-Acknowledging mistakes and letting the appropriate people take responsibility for them

There are more, and I’m sure you can think of some as well. But in this time of rapid and continual change, it is essential to realize that paying attention to self-esteem is essential to having a competitive edge.

Spring Forward Into Change

2010-03-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

Like the beginning of the New Year, the beginning of Spring inspires us to makes changes. So this posting is a revised version of my popular post on resolutions.

Do you brush your teeth every day? How does that go for you? Do you have to think about it and give yourself a pep talk to get yourself into that bathroom and do it?

While you’re pondering these questions, let me throw in one more. Did you make any resolutions this past January? If so, how many of them have you kept? Are you thinking that Spring is the time to try again? If you're like many of us you have made and repeatedly broke them. This really erodes your confidence. It's not keeping your word to yourself and that makes you feel bad about yourself.

Now I hope you’re wondering what these questions have in common. The short answer is that self-discipline does not work, change is hard and it’s possible, but self-discipline is not the route. Studies have shown that we are all born with a finite amount of self-discipline that does not change over the course of our lives, so there is just about nothing you can do to get more.

Let’s take a simple example of a business related practice you want to put into place. You resolve to grow your business by doing more follow-ups, inspired by Spring in the air. Monday rolls around and you make follow-up calls to five potential clients with whom you’ve had conversations. You do that again on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday you get busy with a new project and you just make 3 calls. On Friday you have a meeting that takes up your entire morning and you just don’t have the energy to pick up that phone. The weekend rolls around, then it’s the following Monday and you just have a ton of paperwork to get through. You don’t give much thought to follow-up calls. The calls start to get sporadic, you’re not really sure how many you’re doing, and one more resolution goes down the drain.

Now how come you brush your teeth everyday without struggle, without really using any energy thinking about it, without becoming distracting from it? The reason is that brushing your teeth is a well-established ritual. No effort, no thought, you just do it. You were not born with a brushing you teeth as ritual gene. You developed it as a ritual. Given the benefit derived from brushing your teeth over your lifetime, the effort and time that it took to establish it as a ritual is minimal

If you would like to make changes, make a resolution and keep it, change your focus to creating a ritual, and forget using self-discipline. Not to say that it starts off with no effort but if you focus on creating a ritual for a relatively short amount of time, it quickly becomes effortless and you’ve got a new ritual that is moving you towards your goal.

Building rituals requires defining very precise behavior and performing those behaviors at very specific times. It also helps to be clear on your motivation for the behavior. Most of us don’t brush our teeth when we think of it. Some people do it as soon as they get out of bed, other after breakfast, but whenever it is, the time is the same every day, and you are doing the same thing every time. Your Mom, or whoever got you doing it, was highly motivated by wanting you to be healthy (and maybe saving on those dental bills).

Back to your business. You decide that to grow your business you need to do follow-up calls. You will do five a day, at 9AM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is an unbreakable appointment that you put in my calendar. When you begin, it’s an effort, you have to force yourself to keep that appointment sometimes, but you really want to grow your business, so you do it. It’s easier the second month and by the third it’s kind of like brushing your teeth!

This applies to any change that you want to introduce into your life, and can be done at any time of the year. It works; however, it works best if you limit yourself to one or two at a time. So do it know, think of one or two rituals that you would like to introduce into your life and commit to regular time to practice them. Do it today and soon and soon it will be as easy as brushing your teeth!

Increase Self-Esteem to Be a Better Manager

2010-03-15T06:22:00.000-07:00

Are you a manager or do you employ managers? Many of us are responsible for managing other people as part of our work and/or personal lives. Sometimes we lack the proper training and don’t have the skills, sometimes we really don’t like managing, and sometimes we are not attuned to the needs of others. These can all be contributing factors to less then stellar management. However, the top five causes for poor management are related to low self-esteem.

According to Nathaniel Branden in “Self-Esteem at Work” the reasons that managers experience career setbacks, missed promotions and business failures are:

1- Poor interpersonal skill is the single biggest cause of failure.

A person with low self-esteem is not a good listener, avoids dealing with potentially troublesome issues, and avoids confrontation out of fear and insecurity. This manager does not communicate respect for themselves and others and does not create a climate for good performance

2- The inability to change and let go of strategies that are no longer adaptive.

Those with poor self-esteem cling to the known and are afraid to embrace change and do not view it as an exciting opportunity. In our time of rapidly changing technology, this is an obvious liability.

3- A pre-occupation with self-aggrandizement or turf-protection at the expense of the needs of the organization.

The manager with low self-esteem does not believe that they can succeed based on their performance, and guards against being “found out”. Their perception of reality is distorted and they are unable to be objective, let others in and get expert assistance when needed.

4-A fear of making decisions and taking action-one of the commonest causes of business failure.

Self-esteem is inherently the ability to trust one’s own judgment and proceed accordingly.

5- A lack of resilience and the ability to rebound from adversity and setbacks.

Low self-esteem does not create the inevitable setbacks and disappointments that are part of life, but does affect the response to them. Low self-esteem creates defensiveness and passivity instead of resourcefulness and creativity.

Raising self-awareness has the effect of raising self-esteem. If you want to increase your self-awareness, ask yourself how you would be different if you did the following:
-brought more consciousness to your dealing with people
-operated with greater self-acceptance
-became more assertive
-operated more purposefully
-acted with more integrity

These areas can be worked on in small increments every day. Branden suggests that it is most helpful to think in terms of a 5% increase a week, for example: If I brought 5% more consciousness in dealing with people (fill in the blank). Don’t judge or censor yourself, come up with 6-10 answers as spontaneously as possible. Just the act of thinking about these areas and writing them down creates higher self-esteem.

Try it out and pass this on to anyone you know who needs help being a better manager. They and all those whom manage will thank-you!

2010-03-08T05:37:00.000-08:00

Say Thanks Throughout The Year

Now that the end of the year holiday season is a distant memory, many of us are finished with acts of appreciation until the holidays come around again. But acts of gratitude for your clients into your business can boost your business all year long, strengthen your relationships and raise your self-esteem.

There have been studies that indicate that people who practice gratitude are happier, less stressed, more satisfied with their relationships and have higher levels of control of their environment. Grateful people have more positive ways of dealing with problems, and sleep better. Studies have shown that if you think more positive thoughts before going to sleep you will sleep better.

Although there are many emotions and traits that are important elements of a satisfying life, gratitude is a uniquely important element. Gratitude has been demonstrated to explain well being more that any other of the most commonly studied personality traits.

All the ways that we touch our clients, our family members and our friends remind them how important they are to us and in the case of business, of the services that we provide. Showing appreciation to our clients can increase loyalty, improve client retention and referrals, and build relationships.

Greeting cards for special occasions like birthdays and a new baby is tried and true. Making them hand-written, personal and sent by snail mail sends a stronger message about how much you care.

Here’s some other ways to express your thanks:

-One of my clients had a “Client Appreciation Party”. She used a venue owned by one of her clients, so he got some business and exposure, and one of her employees made jam with wine make by another client. Everyone went home after a very pleasant couple of hours with a jar of jam with her business name and logo on it.

-Nothing gets a person’s attention more then a gift out of the blue for no particular occasion. A simple hand written note or a small gift card will make a big impression and be very meaningful.

-Strengthen your relationship with your top clients by inviting them out for a meal. You will get to know them better and be better able to serve them.

-If you see an article or other resource that you think someone will benefit from, send it to him or her. Another terrific way to communicate that you appreciate someone and that you are thinking of him or her.

-Connecting others to resources is a way of showing gratitude that also demonstrates that you have others best interest in mind and are aware of their needs. This goes for anything from a special recipe, to a car repair shop or a great groomer for your pet.

There are so many ways to express gratitude, large and small; a gratitude letter or visit, a note in your child’s lunch box, a hot cup of coffee in the morning. There are hundreds more! Don’t forget to make it part of your life. It’s an easy thing to do that can be low cost in terms of money and time and pays big dividends.

Make Your Own Luck

2010-03-01T05:07:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about luck as I was looking back at "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden. One of the six pillars is the practice of self-responsibility. It's really the opposite of hanging out and waiting for good luck. Branden states that self-responsibility is essential to self-esteem as well as a manifestation of self-esteem. We are responsible for the achievement of our desires, and knowing
that is empowering. No one is coming; luck is not waiting around the corner. What happens is up to us.

Then I found the book "The Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life: The Four Essential Principles" by Richard Wiseman. He conducted studies over a period of 8 years and discovered what makes some people more fortunate. He discovered that lucky people behave in ways that create good fortune. He supports Branden's view in that he found that a good part of what happens to us is defined by the way we think. It's not that different from the self-help adage of positive thinking, but it is a more refined and backed up by empirical data.

So here are the four principles that can create good fortune in your life according to Richard Wiseman:

1-Maximize Chance Opportunities
Lucky people are good at noticing and acting upon chance opportunities. They are open to new experiences, are more relaxed and tend to have strong social networks.

2-Listen to Your Luck Hunches
Lucky people listen to their intuition and make decisions based on what they hear. They also do things like meditate and clear their minds so that they are in touch with their intuition.

3-Expect Good Fortune
Lucky people are optimists. They expect a bright future. This expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and helps them persist in the face of failure.

4-Turn Bad Luck Into Good
Yes, lucky people make lemonade out of lemons. When faced with adversity they think that things could be worse, and take control to move on.

He also discovered that bad luck is funny if it's not happening to you. After a year of searching, here is what he determined to be the world's funniest joke:
Two New Jersey hunters go hunting. After a while, one of the hunters clutches his throat and falls to the ground, his eyes roll back, and he's lying there motionless. The other picks up his cell phone, dials 911, and says, "I think my friend is dead! I don't know what to do!" The operator says, "Just relax. Calm down. The first thing
to do it to make certain that your friend is dead." There's a pause-then a gunshot. The hunter gets back on the phone and says, "Okay, now what?"

And here are some quotes:

Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember, it didn't work for the rabbit.
R.E. Shay

I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.
Steven Wright

Any fool can have bad luck; the art consists in knowing how to exploit it.
Frank Wedekind

My wish for you is good fortune in the coming year and all the years to come.

Increase Confidence, Decrease Tolerations

2010-02-22T05:42:00.000-08:00

Tolerations are things that we put up with every day that zap our energy. Most of the time we are not even fully aware of them, we adapt to them, but they still hold us back, create frustration, anxiety and have a negative impact on the quality of our lives. Identifying and handling tolerations is beneficial in that it frees up our energy to focus on what we want and builds self-esteem, as it is a step towards taking full responsibility for our selves.

Tolerations range in size and in the amount of effort they require to handle. When I first learned about tolerations in my coach training I walked around my apartment with a screwdriver and tightened all of the loose cabinet and door handles. Easy, and instantly gratifying. Then I tackled the messy, full of junk hall closet. After I cleaned and straightened it out, I opened the closet door every time I passed it for days and smiled. Some tolerations are more challenging, and require more time and energy. One of my more challenging tolerations was dealing with a friend who was always canceling plans at the last minute. A current client of mine has identified her living situation as a toleration. No matter what, handling a toleration feels really good and helps you to feel good about yourself.

The most effective way to start addressing tolerations is to write them down. Don’t consider whether they are small or big, seem possible or impossible to handle, just write them all down and add to the list as you encounter new ones. If you don’t acknowledge them, you will never address them.

Prioritize your list and choose a few to handle at a time. Make your list a mix of quicker and more demanding tolerations. Include a toleration that will resolve more then one toleration. For example, if you are not making enough money you could be unable to live where you want, keep your car in good repair, etc. Then include some that will give you a more instant feeling of accomplishment, like finally sewing on that button or returning that phone call.

Handle the source of the toleration, not just the toleration, or it will keep coming back. If you clean up your messy desk without creating a good filing system, you will soon have a messy desk again.

Be patient and kind to yourself, especially if you are going after some big tolerations. Hang in there by committing to having more energy and more confidence. You will improve the quality of your life and feel as though a weight has been lifted from you.

I’d love to hear about your tolerations and how you eliminate them. And of course, if you want to a coach to help you identify and eliminate your tolerations, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Listen With Confidence

2010-02-15T06:13:00.000-08:00

I was recently at a business council event. There was a person there who could not stop talking. Anything that anyone said to him got a long-winded canned response about his business. I noticed people avoiding eye contact with him in the hope of not being engaged by him. He struck me as being very unsure of himself and needing to gain confidence and learn some listening skills.

Most, if not all, of us have been involved in a meeting or conversation where people aren’t really listening to each other. The participants are just waiting their turn to speak, and what they have to say is not about what was previously said. They just want to shine a light upon themselves. These are not people whom inspire you to do business or spend time with them.

People who have high self-esteem are better listeners, which lead to better personal and business relationships. They are not focused on what others will think of them and how to impress them. They are focused on what is actually going on, and able to be more spontaneous. If there is an agenda, such as at a meeting or networking event, they are more able to comfortably work that into a natural flow of conversation.

How will someone to whom you have asked good questions about themselves and then responded by demonstrating that you really listened to the answers remember you? People want to be heard and recognized, they want to have their uniqueness perceived and acknowledged. When you provide this for someone in a conversation or meeting, you present yourself as a confident, attractive person; someone with whom people want to do business and spend time.

You come across as confident because you are not concerned about stepping out of the limelight, you don’t need to do all the talking. In a business situation, listening will also give you the competitive edge, as you will learn things about your potential customer and their service needs and they will remember you for how well you treated them.

Here are some tips for being a good listener:
•Give you full attention to the person who is speaking. Don’t wonder why the people over at the other end of the room are laughing or if the clouds outside the window mean it’s going to rain. If you feel that your attention is wandering, it helps to shift your body position.
•Do your best to not interrupt. Even if you are listening, it can feel like you are not when you interrupt. Let the speaker finish.
•Make sure that you have fully finished listening before you speak. Know what it is that you want to say.
•Listen for the important idea or ideas. Pay attention to words that stand out, things that are repeated or sentences that contain phrases like, my point is, or what I really want to say.
•Remember to ask those really good questions. Care enough about what is being said so that you want to understand and know more about what is important to the speaker.
•Give feedback that indicates that you are listening. Your body and face say as much as your mouth! Look at the speaker, nod, smile when appropriate, say uh, uh, laugh, etc.

A great listening exercise is to get a friend and ask them to talk to you for 5 minutes without you saying a word. You can gain experience in active listening, learn what is challenging to you about listening, and get feedback from your friend about how you did.

Listen with confidence and you will grow your business and social network while having a great time!

Think Confident

2010-02-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

“Men harm others by their deeds and themselves by their thoughts.”

There continues to be lots of talk about the dramatic changes in our economic landscape. It's almost a cliché at this point, but it is a fact that a time of dramatic change is a time of extraordinary opportunity. It's amazing how many people are reinventing their lives. I believe that many of us are choosing to spend our time in activity that aligns more closely with our values, with what we really want to do.

Our most valuable possessions are those things that we can never lose, what we carry in the core of our being and in our hearts. And we have quite an edge in taking advantage of opportunity if we have deep down confidence at our core.

In the past I have written about the ways that taking action outside of our comfort zone builds confidence. This column is about building confidence from the inside out. Both are essential to what we need for that deep down, unshakable confidence that is the key to success in every area of life.

There are several elements to confidence from the inside out. It starts with the choice to be confident. When we decide to be confident we eliminate the option on not being confident. After we make that choice, we need to support that choice with our behavior and thoughts.

Have you ever really paid close attention to what is going on inside of your head? You are talking to yourself in there a lot, and some of what you are saying might not be helping you to grow your self-esteem. In fact, there is usually no greater criticism than that which we give ourselves.

Pete Cohen, a British motivational speaker, talks about our self-talk as represented by a duck. He recommends that we respond to our stream of negative self talk with "shut the duck up". It is funny, and a good point. An important way to build lasting deep down confidence is to hear what you are saying to yourself, and when you are saying negative things about yourself, respond to yourself by saying it's not true. Substitute positive statements so that saying positive things about yourself will become your new self-talk. Make this a conscious effort, and have patience. You've had literally thousands of negative thoughts and attitudes about yourself; it takes time for the new ones to take hold.

Some posit that this is it, all you need is to change the voice in your head, and you will be confident. I don't think so, although it would be quite nice if this were it. I believe that you also need to redirect your attention. The more in the moment we are, and the more we maintain an attitude of gratitude, the more confident we feel.

Here are some other things to do that support the choice of confident self-talk:
•surround yourself with positive people
•don't accept negative things that you hear from others
•eliminate the words should, could, and might
•think for yourself
•use your initiative

The more you practice, the more positive your self-talk will become and the more you will feel and act with greater confidence.

Just Say No

2010-02-01T05:31:00.000-08:00

Do you feel that you are in charge of your time or does it feel like you can’t make the time for the things that you really want to do? The answer to this question impacts on how we feel about ourselves and how effective we are in managing our work and personal lives.

Please take a moment (find one!) to put your next most important, can’t miss it or change it, appointment in your mind and keep it there while I ask you a question:
If Barak Obama or Oprah Winfrey or Steve Jobs or Lady Gaga or the person you most want to meet in the world called you right now and told you that they wanted to chat with you at the same time as the appointment you’re thinking about, what would you do?
If George Clooney were on the phone now, I wouldn't be writing this, for sure!
With this in mind, consider to what degree you are in charge of your time.

There is no tool or system that will enable you to do too many activities in too little time. That is where our beautiful little word, no, which is by the way, also a complete sentence, becomes our best friend. Amazing, a 2-letter sentence!

What is so challenging about this word to many of us?
-We may have a strong need for approval. -Saying no can make us feel guilty.
-We might have a habit of accommodating others.
-We feel obligated to keep doing what we’ve done.
-We are aware that it is a potentially destructive word.
There is a big difference between being assertive and being aggressive. Aggression is typically associated with anger, hostility, possibly contempt, and an attack. Assertiveness is simple and direct, and a good assertive no is simple and short. Everyone is left standing!

Saying no is very good for your health and those around you. You are less stressed and can spend quality time on the things that you say yes to. To do a good job and take good care of others, you really do need to attend to yourself. Saying no can make you less grouchy, empowers you and others, and gives you the opportunity to try new things by saying no to old things.

Saying no can become your new habit, and with that you can learn to let go of guilt.
What are some strategies to make saying no easier?
1-Be assertive and support your assertive no with a firm voice and nonverbal cues, like eye contact and shaking your head.
2-Remember that no is an honorable response if it is authentic, as opposed to a dishonest yes that will make you feel resentful and drain your energy. So be honest.
3-Start your sentence (and maybe end your sentence) with the word no. This makes it easier to commit to no.
4-Value your time. Know how precious it is, you simply can’t do something because you’ve already allocated your valuable commodity.
5-Don’t apologize. Be firm about guarding your time.
6-Stop being nice. Be polite and even empathic, not nice.
7-Pre-empt. In some situations you can start a conversation or a business meeting by letting others know you are full up, don’t have time for anything new.
8-Say I’ll get back to you or maybe later. Maybe you need to think about taking something on, or it is something you want to do when you have the time. You can say no and leave your options open.
9-Let them down gently. Anyone ever reject a date? It’s a strategy that is good for people and for projects. It’s the old, it’s not a good fit, it’s not the right time for me, and this is certainly effective and sincere.

Practice, practice, practice. A homework assignment that I’ve given to some of my coaching clients has been to say no at least 5 times a day for a week and track it. So, get out there today and start saying no!

Find Your Tightrope

2010-01-25T05:04:00.000-08:00

In Let The Great World Spin, Colum McCann describes Phillipe Petit training in a meadow for his famed tightrope walk across the twin towers of the World Trade Center. "What he had to do was reimagine things, make an impression in his head, a tower at the far end of his vision, a cityline, below him. He sometimes resented it, bringing the city to the meadow, but he had to meld the landscapes together in his imagination, the grass, the city, the sky."

Petit had a dream to which he was totally committed and on which he placed intense focus. McCann states that Petit had a sign tacked to the cabin door: NOBODY FALLS HALFWAY. I would characterize that as motivating! Petit has written his own book about his feat, and there is an Academy Award winning documentary on the subject as well. It stands out as an incredible act of daring. As for me, I'm not too crazy about getting up on a ladder.

Have you taken the time to figure out what you really want to do? How about what you really, really, really want to do? What's stopping you? I had a teacher who said: Life is too short to do what I have to do. It is barely long enough to do what I want to do.

Goals that are aligned with our personal interest and values contribute more to our success and happiness than those that we believe we should have or that are dictated by others. They free us to enjoy the journey of our lives, provide us with a motivational pull and have a trickle down effect. They help to make everything we do more enjoyable. Sometimes it takes some work to figure out what those goals are, as we learn about what is really inside of us and struggle against societal pressures that may push us in different directions. Can you imagine telling your family that you planned to devote yourself to walking a tightrope across the World Trade Center towers?

The reality is that there are other factors that we consider when choosing our goals. It would be irresponsible for the sole breadwinner of a family to quit earning money to paint watercolors in the attic all day. Yet, there is still a way to create a more fulfilling life. First, the goal of providing for one's family could be a goal that is aligned with our values, and it increases our self-esteem to acknowledge and nurture that goal. If another goal is to become a renowned painter of watercolors, then devoting even an hour a week to that pursuit will increase one's sense of well being and happiness. And it will make the day job more fulfilling too.

So I encourage you to spend some time thinking about what it is you love to do. When was the last time you enjoyed doing something that you thought was valuable? Formulate a goal around this and commit to spend some time working towards it on a regular basis. Life really is too short.

Commit To Your Goals

2010-01-18T06:41:00.000-08:00

“I was able to see what I wanted to do, I could see the opportunity, even when others could not, and I stay committed to doing it and doing it well, no matter what.”
Magic Johnson

People who set goals are more successful, and have higher self-esteem. Studies show a correlation between writing down your goals and achieving them, which leads to enhanced self-esteem. There are several reasons that setting and writing down your goals increase success.

One reason is focus, if you know where you are going, you are much more likely to get there. Another is resilience. Having clearly stated goals makes us stronger as they pull us forward, give us drive and motivation. And it is a form of commitment.

Setting goals is a form of commitment because it implies a belief in our ability. We start to see possibilities, when we create an image of the goal. It’s like deciding to get a puppy. Suddenly you see puppies everywhere you go. Once we have an image, we are much more likely to create a reality that matches that image.

This works for me. When I decided to give workshops I first decided the topics and set the dates. Then I wrote the content.

You need to have a strong commitment because the odds of achieving your goals without setbacks and effort are small. The more you want it, the more willing you are to do what it takes to accomplish it.

One way to strengthen your commitment is the pain/pleasure principle. It stands to reason that if you link pain with losing your goal and pleasure with achieving it, your commitment will be strengthened.

So, let’s look at the pain part first. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your goal to figure this part out:
-What will you miss out on if you don’t reach your goal?
-What will it cost you if things stay the same?
-How ill it hinder you spiritually, emotionally, financially or physically if you don’t reach your goal?

Note your reactions as you answer these questions. Are the answers helpful in moving you toward acting on your goal?

Now the pleasure part and some questions to ask yourself to figure out his part:
-When you reach your goal how will you feel about yourself?
-What kind of momentum will you have when you achieve your goal?
-How would you feel if you were consistently moving toward your goal?

How did you feel as you answered these questions?

The key is to get strong enough reasons to commit to your goals and get into action today, not someday.

Respond And Increase Self-Esteem

2010-01-11T13:43:00.000-08:00

The one thing you can be guaranteed that changes everything is self-esteem. It can profoundly impact your life, your relationships and your work. It’s not money, but it sure can generate a lot of money It’s not wisdom, but it sure can generate a lot of money. It’s not charisma, but it sure can generate a lot of charisma. It’s not happiness, but it sure can generate a lot of happiness. It touches every single aspect of your life-all daylong. And you can increase you self-esteem throughout your life, there is no limit to how much you can increase your self-esteem.

In the words of Nathaniel Brandon, one of the foremost authorities on self-esteem, “Self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness”.

My workshops and keynotes on building enduring self-esteem include the science behind increasing self-esteem, how to learn from failure, and strategies to create higher self-esteem. I also cover how to deal with negative communication.

One way to build self-esteem is by dealing with negative communication as soon as possible. This is in direct contradiction to the advice often giving of letting things roll off your back. But think about it, if we let all of those so-called little negative comments go by, they add up and get deposited right into those negative messages in your head and they undermine your self-esteem and your confidence.

Here’s a four-step communication model that I would like to pass on to you to deal with negative comments and build your self-esteem. Just like other habits, the way you communicate can be altered; it just takes awareness and practice.

The four steps are inform, request, insist, and leave. When doing this it is helpful to maintain a neutral tone of voice.

I had a job where I handled client complaints. As you can well imagine, I got lots of practice dealing with negative comments! If someone started off yelling, my first response was to inform, “You are yelling at me”. If the response continued to be loud, I would then request, “Please stop yelling” If they continued I would insist, “In order for me to hear your complaint, you must lower the volume of your voice”. If they continued yelling, the meeting was terminated and I left. In fact, out of dozens of meetings only one went through all four steps. More often then not, I had to use only the first step. I think that you will find if someone makes a negative comment to you and you inform him or her that it hurt your feelings or made you uncomfortable, you’ll get a sincere apology and if you keep responding to negative comments in this way, the instances of you being the recipient of negative comments will significantly decrease.

You will increase your self-esteem if you practice responding to negative communication. And if you want to discover the strategies to feel good about you, take more risks, and let your brilliance shine for others to see, check out my workshop series for 2010, Grow Yourself/Grow Your Business: http://tinyurl.com/yj3fenh

Customer Service

2010-01-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone. You might recall that there was a recession in 2009! So, as a coach I was working with many of my clients on how to do business in a down economy.

Here’s an example of someone who has mastered the art of customer service. Jennifer, a real estate agent, is has high self-esteem and practices good self-care, so she is able to be both genuine and generous with others. She received a request for help from Ted, who is known in the business community of their town. Ted’s elderly mother, with limited resources and on a fixed income, was relocating to their town. Ted asked Jennifer to assist her in finding a place to live. Jennifer took her to see several low cost apartments, even took her out to lunch, although she knew there would not be a large commission. Ultimately she recommended that they look in a specific development on their own, in which they purchased, and she received no commission. As a result, her reputation in the community has soared and when Ted put his house on the market Jennifer was the agent.

Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. And about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer and in their turn become, repeat customers.

In a down economy, let them know that you’re aware of the tough economy and that you’re making your business a sensible place to patronize more then ever before. And give excellent customer service by doing the following:
1- Under promise and over deliver
I think that if you were going to focus on one area of customer service to strengthen this would be the one. It’s very powerful. Just think about it in terms of yourself. If I promise delivery to you on a Wednesday, what are your reactions to getting the product delivered on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday? Wednesday is good, the customer sees you as reliable and might come back, Thursday, not so good, you didn’t keep your word, and the customer is disappointed and might consider using another provider, but Tuesday is a wow. Delivery a day early is something a customer will remember and tell their friends about.

2-Answer your phone
What a delight to get a human being on the other end, especially a polite and happy human being. If it’s not you answering the phone get a good receptionist or a virtual assistant or have your phone forward your calls to your cell phone. And if you have a receptionist, make sure he or she is good. A rude receptionist is far worse than an answering machine

3-Respond immediately
People lose business by not getting back to customers as soon as possible. A quick response means you provide good service and that you care about your customer. Remember, people don’t care what you know until they know that you care.

4-Listen to your customers
Don’t you hate working with people who don’t listen to you? So, listen. Your customer is your most valuable source of information on how you’re doing and how to keep and get customers. Listening also communicates respect and caring.

5-Take the blame
You are in business to make money, not to have your ego stroked. The experience of having someone say I’m sorry, I’ll fix it is an experience that leads to super satisfied customers and customers who will refer people to you.

6-Throw in something extra
Who doesn’t love something for nothing? Free shipping is one of my favorite things. Added value is guaranteed to create repeat business.

7-Take the extra step
This is another very effective way of communicating that you value your customer and helps you to stand out from the rest. I’m so pleased when I can’t find something in a store and the staff walks me offer to product instead of just telling me where to go.

8-Ask for referrals
Don’t expect your customer to read you mind. Let them know that you hoped that liked your product or service and that you appreciate referrals. Follow up with a thank you.

I’d love to hear about your experience with getting and giving good or bad customer service, so please send me an email. And if you’re looking for a great value, check out my workshop series for 2010, Grow Yourself/Grow Your Business: http://tinyurl.com/yj3fenh.

2009-12-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

Sleep for Smarts and Self-Esteem

The holidays can be a time of less work and more sleep or more partying and less sleep. For many of us, there are few times in our lives when we get enough sleep. We all know that we feel better when we get good nights sleep. Consider the powerful impact of sleep.

Before the light bulb was invented people slept on the average of 10 hours a day. Today the average amount of time spent sleeping in a 24-hour cycle is 7 hours. 25% of 18-29 year olds get 8 hours of sleep.

Human nature dictates that we require an average of 8 hours of sleep a day. There are people who require more and people who require less, but most of us need 8 hours a day. We have such busy lives today that many of us neglect this basic need and we pay a price. Sleep is an investment that pays off with capacity for better performance and more happiness. Not sleeping enough is equivalent to not saving for retirement. Sooner or later it’s going to cost you.

What is the physical and psychological cost of inadequate sleep?
-Our immune systems aren’t as effective. Inadequate amounts of sleep leads to more illness.
-Our energy level declines. Our bodies are like engines in which we build capacity. A body with inadequate sleep will break down faster and be able to carry less.
-Our weight is harder to maintain at a healthy level. When we are sleep deprived, we don’t feel our best and we look for comfort in fatty, salty and sweet food. And if we haven’t slept enough our motivation to regulate ourselves is diminished, so we crave unhealthy food and are less able to resist it.
-Our motor skills aren’t as sharp. More accidents happen when we are sleep deprived.
-Our IQ goes down. We lose 10 points of our IQ if we miss a night of sleep. Our memory is also diminished by lack of sleep. While we are sleeping, neural connections are formed that we need for memory, and lack of sleep means lack of neural connections.
-Our stress and anxiety levels increase. Anyone who sees a tired child knows this. We feel the same way that children feel when we are sleep deprived, but we don’t express it. So this has a double cost, the price of suppressing our emotions and feeling stressed.
-Our susceptibility to depression is increased, and our self-esteem is diminished. When we sleep we dream, and when we dream we work things through. The dreams that we have earlier in our sleep deal with the negatives, our later dreams are the positive ones. If we don’t get full nights sleep we don’t have our positive resolutions.

We do look better when we get a full night’s sleep, and we also are smarter, happier, and feel better about ourselves. So figure out what the right amount of sleep is for you, and take a nap if circumstances (like a newborn baby or a project with a deadline) cut into that amount of time. Also, pay attention to how exercise and food affect your sleep. Don’t you love it when you know the kids have ran around all day and eaten well because you know they will go to sleep with no problem? The same applies to you.

Do you sleep enough? How would extra sleep benefit you? Are you worth the investment? If you can’t figure out how to manage your time to allow for adequate sleep get some help to figure it out. Work and play smarter, happier and healthier in 2010.

And to make 2010 a really spectacular year, take one of my workshops: http://tinyurl.com/yj3fenh

Failure in 2010

2009-12-14T05:02:00.000-08:00

Perfectionism is constructive in very limited circumstances, such as if you are building a space vehicle and need to get that last computer chip in the exact right spot. However, most of the time it is an incapacitating fear of failure that permeates our lives. It also is a huge time waster as we avoid failure by spending time on things that don’t need to be perfect. In fact, it sets us up for constant failure, erodes our self-esteem by preventing us from accepting ourselves, and prevents us from trying and living fulfilling lives because our motivation is to avoid failure.

I had a friend who was constructing a 3D baseball scene with his 8-year-old son. It started out as a project they could have fun with together. But my friend became intent on having it be perfect. After a while he was doing all the work in deep concentration as his son sat there staring into space. It was perfect, and not fun, in fact harmful to the self-esteem of the boy.

What are we to do? Embrace failure in 2010. Yes, that’s what I said; it’s not a typo. Make failure your friend.

Success is almost always preceded by failure. In order to succeed, you must fail. There was a study that demonstrated that people, who succeeded in having a healthy life style, had four failed attempts before they got there. Research shows that the average sale takes 8 nos to get to a yes.

How many times have we heard about the blockbuster author, actor, artist, who faced rejections before achieving great success? We usually hear about successful people when they are famous for their accomplishments, and I will tell you that the key to almost anyone’s success is high self-esteem and multiple failures. Thomas Edison had over 1,000 failed attempts on his way to inventing the light bulb. And I’m sure many of you have heard this quote by Michael Jordan, “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Thomas Watson, the legendary CEO of IBM believed that they way to increase your success rate is to double your failure rate. He refused to accept the resignation of an employee who was responsible for the company losing a million dollars. He said it was an investment in the employee’s education.
Here’s the career path of someone else you might of heard of; at age 22 he lost his job, at 23 he was defeated in a race for the state legislature, at 24 his business failed, at 27 he had a mental breakdown, at 34 and 39 he lost in races for congress, at 46 he lost in a race for senate, at 47 her lost in a race for his party’s nomination for vice-president, at 50 he lost another senate race and at 51 Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States. When would you have thrown in the towel?
Keep going in the face of rejection and failure. It is a necessary step towards greater self-esteem and success. Allow your self to feel your feelings, then congratulate yourself for your effort and move on. There is no other way, rejection and failure are unavoidable.
Best wishes for good health and good failures in 2010. But don’t fail to check out my workshop series for 2010, Grow Yourself/Grow Your Business: http://tinyurl.com/yj3fenh

Exercise and Confidence

2009-12-07T05:01:00.000-08:00

Exercise

Exercise is good for you and your business. It doesn’t just strengthen your heart; it creates positive changes in your brain, makes you more resilient, and will no doubt increase your confidence.

Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the last 50 years, you’ve heard that exercise is good for you. It lowers your blood pressure and strengthens your heart, it adds years to your life. However, this information does not seem to be very motivating for most people!

Research has shown that the benefits of exercise have a wider reach then heart health. It begins with the fact that human nature is to be physical. Our ancestors spent many more hours a day then we do moving around. The reduction of physical work in our modern world has a direct correlation to rising levels of mental illness. Not exercising is like taking a depressant or an anxiety drug.

In 2000 Babyak did a study with 156 people suffering from a major depressive disorder. He divided them into 3 groups. One group was prescribed only medication, the second group was prescribed medication and 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week, the third group was prescribed only 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week.

After 4 months, the recovery rate in each group was about the same, 60% got better, there was no significant difference, and in fact the group who were prescribed exercise alone took a bit longer to recover. Those who did recover were looked at again 6 months later. In that group, 38% who were prescribed medication alone relapsed, 31% who were prescribed medication and exercise relapsed, 9% who were prescribed exercise alone relapsed. Interesting. This is not to advocate that those in need forgo medication. In my own experience working with people suffering from mental illness, I think that medication is a wonderful thing and saves lives. Exercise is not a panacea. But this study does illustrate the powerful benefit of exercise, the advantage of heeding human nature.

It is also pretty well know that exercise enhances mood, the “runners high” is a commonly used phrase. And now we know why. I personally am not fond of rats, but I guess we do owe them thanks for all of the good information we get from experimenting on them Recent experiments on rats demonstrate that exercise causes changes in the brain that creates a different response to stress. And here I quote Michael Hopkins, a researcher affiliated with the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Laboratory at Dartmouth. “It looks more and more like the positive stress of exercise prepares cells and structures and pathways within the brain so that they’re more equipped to handle stress in other forms. It’s pretty amazing, really, that you can get this translation from the realm of purely physical stresses to the realm of psychological stressors.” An example of one of these studies is the response of rats placed in an unfamiliar space. The rats that had exercised didn’t run for dark corners and hide, as the unexercised rats did. They explored.

Exercise also has a positive effect on behavior. In his book Spark, The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and The Brain. Dr. John Ratey states, “Having a bout of exercise is like taking a little it of Prozac, a little bit of Ritalin, right where it is supposed to go.” He studied children in a failing school and in a good school. With the introduction of daily exercise, the failing school became 17% above the state average, the good school became one of the top performing schools in the world. Obesity levels fell from 30% to 3%, disciplinary incidents declined, and violent incidents decreased 67%.

All this just by exercising, moving around as we are meant to. So let’s all go for a brisk walk today. But, before you go, please check out my workshop series for 2010, Grow Yourself/Grow Your Business:
http://tinyurl.com/yj3fenh

Confidence and New Year's Resolutions

2009-11-30T05:16:00.000-08:00

Do you brush your teeth every day? How does that go for you? Do you have to think about it and give yourself a pep talk to get yourself into that bathroom and do it?

While you’re pondering these questions, let me throw in one more. Did you make any resolutions about a year ago? If so, how many of them have you kept? If you're like many of us you have made and repeatedly broke them. This really erodes your confidence. It's not keeping your word to yourself and that makes you feel bad about yourself.

Now I hope you’re wondering what these questions have in common. The short answer is that self-discipline does not work, change is hard and it’s possible, but self-discipline is not the route. Studies have shown that we are all born with a finite amount of self-discipline that does not change over the course of our lives, so there is just about nothing you can do to get more.

Let’s take a simple example of a business related New Year’s resolution. You resolve to grow your business by doing more follow-up in the coming year. Monday, January 4, 2010, rolls around and you make follow-up calls to five potential client with whom you’ve had conversations. You do that again on the 5th and the 6th. On the 7th you get busy with a new project and you just make 3 calls. On the 8th you have a meeting that takes up your entire morning and you just don’t have the energy to pick up that phone. The weekend rolls around, then it’s Monday the 11th and you just have a ton of paperwork to get through. You don’t give much thought to follow-up calls. The calls start to get sporadic, you’re not really sure how many you’re doing, and one more resolution goes down the drain.

Now how come you brush your teeth everyday without struggle, without really using any energy thinking about it, without becoming distracting from it? The reason is that brushing your teeth is a well established ritual. No effort, no thought, you just do it. You were not born with a brushing you teeth as ritual gene. You developed it as a ritual. Given the benefit derived from brushing your teeth over your lifetime, the effort and time that it took to establish it as a ritual is minimal

If you would like to make changes, make a resolution and keep it, change your focus to creating a ritual, and forget using self-discipline. Not to say that it starts off with no effort but if you focus on creating a ritual for a relatively short amount of time, it quickly becomes effortless and you’ve got a new ritual that is moving you towards your goal.

Building rituals requires defining very precise behavior and performing those behaviors at very specific times. It also helps to be clear on your motivation for the behavior. Most of us don’t brush our teeth when we think of it. Some people do it as soon as they get out of bed, other after breakfast, but whenever it is, the time is the same every day, and you are doing the same thing every time. Your Mom, or whoever got you doing it, was highly motivated by wanting you to be healthy ( and maybe saving on those dental bills).

Back to your business. You decide that to grow your business you need to do follow-up calls. You make it a New Year’s resolution. You will do five a day, at 9AM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is an unbreakable appointment that you put in my calendar. In January, it’s an effort, you have to force yourself to keep that appointment sometimes, but you really want to grow your business, so you do it. It’s easier in February, and by March, it’s kind of like brushing your teeth!

This applies to any change that you want to introduce into your life, and can be done at any time of the year. It works, however, it works best if you limit yourself to one or two at a time. So do it know, think of one or two rituals that you would like to introduce into your life and commit to regular time to practice them Why wait until January 4th. Do it today, by the 4th it will be as easy as brushing your teeth!

Grow Yourself/Grow Your Business

2009-11-23T08:03:00.000-08:00

GROW YOURSELF /GROW YOUR BUSINESS IN 2010

• BUILD ENDURING SELF ESTEEM
• GOAL SETTING
• TIME MANAGEMENT

BUILD ENDURING SELF-ESTEEM
Self-esteem is the essential element to a happy, successful professional and personal life. In this workshop you will learn strategies to build enduring self-esteem that will enable you to feel good about you, take more risks, and be more productive.

GOAL SETTING
Life is too short not to go after what you want. The goals that you set can put you on the path to self-fulfillment and success. In this workshop you will learn how to set goals and achieve what you want.

TIME MANAGEMENT
This workshop moves from creating awareness on how we focus and organize our time to planning how we use our time. You will leave with knowing how to stay on track and feel a sense of accomplishment in your daily life.

Choose the session that is most convenient for you from the following dates:
Build Enduring Self-Esteem
Wednesdays from 8-9PM ET: January 6, January 20, April 14, April 21, September 15, September 22
Fridays from 10-11AM ET: January 8, April 16, September 24
Goal Setting:
Wednesdays from 8-9 PM ET: February 3, February 10, May 5, May 12, October 6, October 20
Fridays from 10-11AM ET: February 5, May 7, October 22
Time Management:
Wednesdays from 8-9PM ET: March 3, June 2, November 3
Fridays from 10-11AM ET: March 5, June 4

Price Per Class: $39.00
Price For All Three: $99.00
A Teleclass is a workshop held over the phone. It’s easy to participate-no need to travel or find parking-you just need a phone. And because our overhead is so low we are able to offer them at very reasonable rates. Once you register you will receive all the call-in information.

Call or Email to Register:
Coaching Results
Ettie Shapiro, LCSW
Phone: 347-964-6983
Email: coachettie@optonline.net
www.ettieshapiro.com

Contact Coaching Results to have these workshops given at your company, community organization or conference.

Motivation in the 21st Century

2009-11-16T05:01:00.000-08:00

How do you motivate your staff and yourself? If you are focused on rewards and outcomes you are ignoring well-established scientific fact. It’s like holding on to that horse and buggy because you just don’t belief that darned auto thingy works. Do you have the confidence to let go of the old way of doing things?

Studies conducted all over the world repeatedly demonstrate the following facts:
1 -Rewards as an incentive work for a very small number of tasks. These are tasks that are simple and have a clearly defined destination. In today’s world most of these tasks can either be automated or out-sourced.
2- Rewards as an incentive destroy creativity. One of the many studies on this topic took a group of MIT students and offered them financial bonuses to solve different sets of problems. The bonuses worked with problems that involved mechanical skills. When offered for problems that required cognitive skills, financial rewards led to poorer performance, and larger financial rewards led to worse performance. Yes you read that correctly, performance declined as the financial rewards grew.
3-For right-brained tasks motivation is increased when the individual likes what they’re doing, finds it interesting, feels that they are part of something bigger, and have autonomy. Google has taken this finding and run with it. Their employees work on whatever they want 20% of the time. Their most popular products, such as gmail and googlenews, have come out of this time. In fact, half of their new products come out of this totally autonomous time.

Another area in which we tend to operate contrary to scientific fact is in acknowledging performance. The fact is that highlighting the effort, the process, is much more effective then focusing only on outcome. This is not to say that outcome is not important, our course outcome is important. However, acknowledging effort is the most effective way to get optimal performance and desired outcomes. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. A belief in the importance of effort improves resilience, persistence, and gives people a greater sense of control over what they are doing. Therefore, they are intrinsically motivated to do a better job, and will be more successful.

These are solid research results that can bring your business or your work life into the 21st century. Think about how you might apply them.

Can you give your employees (or get for yourself) more autonomy? Some companies have given their employees total control of their own schedules, they work whenever they want to, and this has proven to have a positive effect on creativity and productivity. It also goes a long way towards attracting and retaining top performers.

Can you acknowledge effort as well as outcome, can you even go as far as acknowledging failure as a step on the way to success, as an opportunity to learn how to do better?

We are 9 years into a new century and have experienced a time of tremendous economic upheaval. Things are changed and won’t be the way they were before, so it’s a great time to explore new and more effective ways of working. Check it out.

Stress and Confidence

2009-11-09T16:07:00.000-08:00

Stress has been characterized as a global epidemic, and it is expensive. Psychologically, stress and overwhelm are driving high rates of depression. Physically, it is estimated that 80% of physical ailments have psychological causes, the prominent one being stress. As for levels of productivity and creativity, beginning in 2008 the #1 reason for missing work is psychological, and that psychological condition is stress. It is also very difficult to feel confident when you are stressed and depleted.

So what can we do? One possible solution is moving to Tibet and taking up a meditative life. But let’s say you’re ambitious, and you want to remain hardworking, how can you manage stress and avoid the cost?

Studies of those who are successful, hardworking and successful demonstrate that stress can actually be good for you. If you know how to manage it, stress makes you more resilient, and increases your well-being and capacity for joy. In fact, it’s not a problem at all. The problem is LACK OF RECOVERY.

Weight training is a good illustration of the importance of recovery. Lifting weights that are a little too heavy, and cause small muscle tears develops muscle strength. If you then take the time to recover and then lift again your muscles gain strength. If you don’t take the time to recover, your muscle strength is depleted.

In their book The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, find that in order to experience “good stress’ work needs to be changed from a marathon to a sprint. Think of what a marathon runner looks like after a race and then think of the appearance of a sprinter. The marathon runner is depleted and exhausted. The sprinter looks strong and powerful.

Loehr and Schwartz found that productivity is increased when work is a sprint followed by a period of recovery. A period of 60 to 120 minutes of hard, focused work followed by a 15 minute plus period of recovery give the body and mind the needed break. This is human nature and you will get more done if you adhere to it. Recovery can be a coffee break, meditation, a session at the gym, lunch, chatting with friends, whatever works for you. You will feel better about yourself and more confident.

Recovery on larger levels is also needed. It has been demonstrated that people who take time off every week are more productive, as well as those who take vacations. It is also important to remember that real recovery doesn’t include constantly being on the phone with your office, typing away on your laptop on the beach or checking work email every few minutes! When you’re taking the time to recover, allow it to be a genuine break.

Try it! And please let me know how it works out if you do.

Guy The Dog

2009-11-02T11:07:00.000-08:00

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
Thomas Edison

My dog Guy is a role model for us all as his optimism and confidence is unwavering, even in tough times. He consistently believes with all his heart that he will be taken out for walks and that good food will appear in his bowl, he will get treats and belly rubs, persists and maintains his belief even after repeated failure, takes action to improve his situation, and is ever hopeful. He is successful, happy and healthy.

He is not consumed with false optimism or an overinflated sense of himself. If he is left at home, he does not deny that harsh reality. He simply accepts it and has confidence that with persistent work at being a good dog he will prevail. His optimism includes hard work and passion (yes, he has great passion about walks and food). Even though Thomas Edison was not a dog, Guy is a big fan. Edison had 1800 failed experiments before inventing the light bulb. Guy has been left home at least that many times, and still celebrates each outing with pure joy.

If you would like to improve your health, happiness and level of success by becoming a confident optimist, you can, even if you have the disadvantage of being a human. Thomas Edison did.

There are three elements essential to being an optimist; action, imagination, and rational thinking. These elements work together and feed off of each other. So if we take action and work hard, we create success, which motivates us to work hard. And if we can imagine or visualize our success our minds will help us create an external reality to match our internal reality.

Rational thought is a skill that you can hone. You may believe that rational thinkers cannot possibly be optimistic in today's world, but that is not the case. In fact, much pessimism reflects distorted thinking. Some examples of distorted thinking are to believe that the way things are now are the way they will always be or that
we are in an all or nothing situation. We do not see the whole picture, and dismiss the positive aspects of a situation.

How can you have realistic optimism? Along with action and imagination, know that reality is created by what we focus on, the questions that we ask. So, ask yourself: am I magnifying, minimizing, ignoring part of the picture?

Successful, happy people and dogs perceive the world as optimists. They see the negative as temporary and as opportunities to learn, and the positive as a catalyst to enhance and celebrate.

The Real Secret

2009-10-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there."
Yogi Berra

The Secret, the book and the film, is the self-help sensation of the decade. It was featured on two episodes of Oprah and as the DVD reached number one on Amazon in March 2007, the book version reached number one on The New York Times bestseller list. In April of 2007 Simon & Schuster released the biggest order for a second printing in its history, 2 million copies.

There are 3 steps taught in The Secret: ask, believe and receive. I agree that these are vital steps on the way to getting what you want. However, if this was all there was to getting from where you are to where you want to be in your business and your life, we’d all be retired with billions in the bank before we were 30.

There’s something missing, and that is persistent action. In 2005 there was a study done on visualization. Two groups of students spent time daily visualizing getting an A. One group focused their thoughts only on the outcome. The other group focused their thoughts on the outcome and about what it would take to get there. The second group enjoyed the course more, had less anxiety and was more successful in getting an A.

Thomas Edison has a vision of streets being lit by electric lamps. He kept that vision in his mind and had total belief in what he saw until he turned it into a reality. There was no such thing as a bulb, and he did not know how to make one when he first had this vision. So the real secret to getting what you want is to ask, believe, take persistent action, and receive.

In order to achieve your goals, you need a clear picture of them, take persistent action towards them, and have the self-esteem to know that failures along the way is just part of the learning curve.

That’s the real secret, and there's no need to keep it to yourself!

Confidence and Beliefs

2009-10-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

Confidence and Fear of the Economy

2009-10-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

Fear is a feeling that can cloud our thinking and cripple our ability to formulate reasonable actions. Has fear stopped you from taking action? A recent internet study showed that the most common fears are of flying, heights, clowns (isn't that interesting???), intimacy, death, rejection, failure, people, snakes, success and driving. This study was done before the economic meltdown. Here are some tips for one of the new Top-of-the-List fears, the economy.

1- Do not listen to all of the negative media.
2- Avoid spending time with pessimists. They can be infectious.
3- Write down those limiting beliefs you have developed in response to fear of our economy and work through them with your coach or try Katie Byron's method at www.thework.com.
4- It is more important than ever to make self-care part of your daily routine. Include practicing gratitude, laughing, yoga or meditation. Even just 5 minutes a day make a difference.

Fear, and particularly fear of failure is the number one reason that people don't set goals. We fail to realize that setting goals that inspire and motivate us move our lives in the direction that we want to go, even if we fail to achieve them.

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game's winning shot...and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Michael Jordan

Don't let fear erode your confidence and stop you from moving forward with your goals.

Confidence: The Secret of Success

2009-09-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

The dictionary definition of success is "the favorable termination of anything attempted, the attainment of a proposed objective". The secret to success is not money. Oprah Winfrey, one of the richest women in the world, started out dirt poor in rural Mississippi. Nor is it education - Bill Gates left college before he graduated and created Windows. The secret of success is confidence.Oprah believed that you can combine humanitarianism with the media. Bill Gates believed he could create the operating system that IBM had been trying to create for years.

Think of Groucho's quote and substitute the area in which your success seems to be out of reach. "I would never date someone who date me...I would never work for a company that would hire me as an executive... I would never be comfortable speaking in front of a group I respect."
There is good news: Confidence can be learned. Yes, you can make confidence as habitual as brushing your teeth. The first step is to choose to be confident. If you choose something, you eliminate the possibility of something else. So, if you choose to be a vegetarian, you choose to not eat meat. Choose confidence, commit to it, and eliminate the possibility of being not confident.

After you make this choice, it's time to take action. Do all that stuff your mother said when you were a kid, stand up straight, brush you hair, make eye contact, smile, act as if you are confident and it will increase your feelings of confidence.

Your next action to take is the most important one you can take to reinforce your choice to be confident. Do things that are out of your comfort zone. Think about things you've done that you started out doubting you could accomplish. How did you feel after-wards? Even if the results were less than you hoped for, overcoming fear and trying is enough to boost self-confidence.

I never learned to swim because I was afraid to go into water above my head. This has restricted my life in many ways. This past December I committed to learning to swim and have been taking lessons since then. I've come to see that overcoming my fear boils down to feeling confident in the water. As of today, I have swam from the deep end to the shallow end of the pool 5 times. I feel fantastic, and the confidence I've gained is not isolated to the pool. It spreads through everything in my life. Doing things out of your comfort zone enhances everything you do.

Here are some thing I have discovered about moving out of my comfort zone:

-Feel your feelings, and don't let them run you. My mind always says "why are you doing this?" as I'm walking to my lesson. I listen, I acknowledge my fear and then I go and take my lesson.

-Repetition may be necessary. Fear of the deep water is an old and long standing fear for me. I make more progress every time I go into the deep water, although it will take some more lessons to get totally comfortable. I have total confidence that if I persist I will get there.

-Get support. I tell people I'm learning to swim, and I always get a big supportive response.

-Acknowledge yourself. I am so proud of myself.

-Celebrate. I indulged in a long relaxing sauna.

-Visualize the rewards. I envision myself enjoying pool parties with friends and also cooling off with a relaxing swim, after lying on a magnificent beach at a luxurious tropical resort.

See you in the pool!

"Your life is important. Honor it. Fight for your highest possibilities."
Nathaniel Branden

Gratitude and Confidence

2009-09-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

The practice of gratitude can be the starting point of a more satisfying life. It is also a factor in your self-confidence, as it increases your level of self-acceptance. It's something anyone can do, it takes a few minutes a day and doesn't cost a dime.

There have been studies that indicate that people who practice gratitude are happier, less stressed, more satisfied with their relationships and have higher levels of control of their environment. Grateful people have more positive ways of dealing with problems, and sleep better. Studies have shown that if you think more positive thoughts before going to sleep you will sleep better.

Although there are many emotions and traits that are important elements of a satisfying life, gratitude is a uniquely important element. Gratitude has been demonstrated to explain well-being more that any other of the most commonly studied personality traits.

There is always something to be grateful for, as per the saying of the man who complained about his shoes until he met a man who had no feet.

I have so much to be grateful for including my wonderful daughter. I also feel grateful every day for things like a delicious cup of coffee or finding a good parking spot! We all have moments like this, even on difficult days. The key is to be aware of these moments and focus our attention on them.

Here are a couple of ways to make gratitude part of your life:

1-Keep a gratitude journal, a proven method of increasing emotional and physical well-being. Every night before you go to sleep write down 5 things for which you are grateful. It can be a meal or an important accomplishment. It's ok to repeat the same things. The important thing is to experience the feeling as you write the item down. Make a commitment to practice this for just 10 days and see what happens. You will experience an appreciation of the positive in your life.

2-Write a gratitude letter or make a gratitude visit. This is not a thank you note, although those are great too! It is a thoughtful statement about what gives you pleasure in a relationship and describes specific aspects of a relationship. It is a simple and profound exercise that has great meaning for both the author and recipient.

Life is really all in how we view it and how we think about it. Wouldn't you just rather have a happy and positive life? It's in your power. Practice gratitude and see what a difference it can make.

Be Confident and Be Selfish

2009-09-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

When traveling by air you are told to put on your own oxygen mask on before assisting children in putting on theirs.

This instruction, which most of us have heard countless times, is telling us to behave in a selfish manner. Take care of yourself so that you are able to take care of others.

In my coaching practice I have found that many of the most positive life changes my clients make follow their gaining new perspective on what it means to be selfish, and then translating that new perspective into action.

This is not the dictionary version of selfish, "concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well being without regard for others". According to this definition selfish behavior is rude and inconsiderate.

The selfish behavior I'm referring to is anything but rude and inconsiderate. I'm talking about acting in ways that you get what you need and taking such good care of yourself that you have a solid base from which you can be more generous and supportive of others.

Who do you want to hang out with? Who do you want to be? Is it the person that is tense, exhausted and grouchy because they have spent the day taking care of everything and everyone but themselves? Or would you like to spend time with a
relaxed, good humored, well rested, and satisfied individual? I'm going to be worried about you if this is a difficult choice!

Remember, you can't help anyone get his or her oxygen mask on if you've stopped breathing.

Confidence and Proscrastination

2009-09-07T16:02:00.000-07:00

For some of us tomorrow, the day after Labor Day, is the time when we’re facing all that we put off until after Labor Day! Don’t let it erode your confidence. Everyone procrastinates and sometimes it helps us to work on something in our heads prior to completion. So, if you get something done on time with good enough quality, don't beat yourself up for a job well done in a timely manner.

When you are procrastinating, take these three steps: recognize that you are procrastinating, figure out why you are procrastinating, and then take the most appropriate step to get over it.

Some things that have worked for me to get over it are:

- Promise yourself some chocolate, or a facial, or a bike ride, whatever is a reward to you, once the task is done. Be sure to keep your promise.

-Hire someone to kill you if don't do the task. Well, maybe not kill you, just break a leg, or call you and ask how you're doing. Make yourself accountable to someone.

-Don't think about finishing the task and all that it entails. Focus on beginning it and just go with it. Break it down into smaller pieces if you need to.

So get that after Labor Day thing done then enjoy that feeling of accomplishment and your reward. As for me, I’m going to relax on my terrace and enjoy the beautiful evening since I’m finished blogging!

Be Confident and Chose Your Attitude

2009-08-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

An attitude change can change your world in an instant.

My fellow coach Kent sent an email letting his colleagues know that he would be unavailable for a few days due to the fact that he lived in the path of an oncoming hurricane. He wrote that he was well stocked with supplies and looking forward to settling in for a couple of relaxing days with no electricity, no computer, no phone. My friend Merrie had her bag snatched with her phone, cash and a couple of credit cards in it. She cancelled the cards, notified the police and phone company and then had a great weekend.

Kent and Merrie chose healthy attitudes. Your attitude is your choice. I think about this when sitting in a traffic jam. I can get upset, drive up my blood pressure and take some years off my life, or I can enjoy the company of whoever else is in the car, music, or an audio book, or just think and enjoy my own company. Either way I'm sitting there. Hey, a traffic jam can be a gift.

Here are some tips for choosing a healthy attitude:
- Monitor your attitude with the intent to make a choice for a healthy attitude
- Associate yourself with others who have a healthy attitude
- Ask your coach and close friends to give you feedback about your attitude, and
to hold you accountable for your attitude
- Learn to master your thoughts
- Have faith in yourself
- Find reasons to smile more often
- Visualize only what you want to happen

Think about it the next time that line that you're standing on is moving like molasses. You can reduce stress, slow down the aging process (my personal favorite), have a less difficult life, more energy and happiness, and easier goal attainment. Just say yes to a healthy attitude.

Confidence and Commitment

2009-08-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

When I first heard about the law of attraction and creating your vision as a way to get what you want I thought it was ridiculous. Could anyone really believe that sitting in a chair and thinking about what you want would bring it to you?

Since that time I have learned that in fact, the law of attraction and creating your vision are incredibly useful tools to create your ideal life. What makes them effective is that they pull you towards action, the action that you need to take to get what you want.

Commitment is a critical component that motivates us to take those actions that turn our visions into reality. A way to increase our commitment to act is to get in touch with how much we want something. Just how serious are we about achieving our vision of what we want from life? Our only real limit to reaching our goals is how badly we want to achieve them. The more we want something, the more willing we are to do what it takes to accomplish it.

These questions will bring weight and clarity to your motivation to do what you need to do to get what you want. Think of a specific goal as you ask yourself these questions.

1-What will I miss out on in my life if I don't achieve my goal?

2-What will it cost me if I'm not not moving towards my goal?

3-How will it hinder me spiritually, emotionally, financially or physically to give up?

4-If I achieve my goal how will I feel about myself?

5-What kind of momentum will be created in my life when I achieve what I desire?

6-How would I feel if I were consistently moving forward towards living a like I really love?

How did you feel as you answered these questions? Were you inspired to act?

The key to is to get strong enough reasons so you truly commit to your goals and start taking action NOW, not someday.

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

More layers of confidence

2009-06-09T07:27:00.000-07:00

I thought that I was more confident about swimming then I really was! Last week I got to a whole new layer of fear. My challenge was to propel myself straight down to the bottom and then pop up. I forgot to mention the hard part-letting go of the side of the pool.

Well, let me say that this was the first time is many weeks that my swim coach had to get in. Ultimately, he had to push me down and gradually we got further away from the side. By the end I was even swimming (a combo of flailing and swimming) to get to the side of the pool after I popped up. I had definitely gained more confidence and was less fearful by the end of the lesson.

It's not enough to be able to just get through, which I know see is what I was doing. I was just doing the back stroke from the deep end to the shallow end, but really I was trying to get out of the deep water as soon as I could! To be a confident swimmer I need to be really comfortable in the deep water, and to be confident at anything you need to get from the out of comfort to the comfort zone. It doesn't work to do it half way. And it is only by doing it (in my case, with the support of a coach) that we discover all that must be done to get there.

Layers of Confidence

2009-05-28T17:28:00.000-07:00

Another swimming lesson, another lesson on confidence. As I have been doing the elementary back stroke across the pool, my fear has diminished and I have more confidence in the water. I thought that I would continue to do this, and learn more skills in the shallow water. Eventually it would all come together and I would be a full fledged swimmer.
Today I uncovered a whole new layer of fear! I was instructed to let go of the side of the pool in the deep water, push myself down with my hands at my side or straight up in the air, and then come up. Now, this might not sound like much to you, but it was a lot for me. The sense of not being able to stand on a surface was very intense, and is the major physical manifestation of my fear of deep water. I did the best that I could, and I can see that I have a way to go.
It was also a lesson about the importance of persistence and patience. These are elements of confidence and acts that support confidence. I believe that I will achieve my goal if I am persistent and patient. My persistence and patience increases my confidence. I have a way to go, and I will get there.
So I will continue my lessons and peel away at these layers until I get to that deep down confidence. And then, I will go snorkeling!

Confidence Shakers

2009-05-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

I'm so convinced that confidence is the key to success, any type of success, and in this way we are all the same. We are also all different when it comes to confidence in what shakes our confidence and how "deep down" our belief in our abilities go.
I had a very challenging day yesterday. I spent 6 hours working on something that I don't enjoy. This is a vestige of an obligation from my past career, and the experience just reverberated through my entire day and evening. Things did not go well. It took me a bit to realize that I allowed it to tap into an old belief that I was not in charge of my life. A belief that does not support strong sense of confidence!
An annoying dig from my ex-husband put the icing on the cake. I started to doubt much of what I was doing, it went to my core. When I decided to relax by watching an episode of In Treatment that I had taped, there was Gabriel Byrne ranting about becoming a Life Coach so he could give "advise", tell one of his patients to get a dog. Oh no, Gabriel was turning on me too. No, no, don't say those things about coaches, that's not what we do.
Finally, I allowed myself to feel how I was feeling, let go of it being not ok, and when I was ready had a good talking with myself. I congratulated myself for living a life of integrity and honoring my commitments, not reacting to provocation, and living out my vision of contribution and making a difference to others through coaching. Time to move ahead with confidence, ultimately strengthened by having been shaken.

Gaining confidence

2009-05-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

My last swimming lesson was on Friday. I went into the deep water twice and did the elementary backstroke from the deep to the shallow end twice. My teacher remained outside of the pool for my entire lesson. This is great progress.

I was again struck by how much the whole thing boils down to confidence. When I feel more confident in the pool, I am more relaxed, and a much better swimmer. If only we could just deal with it one time and gain all the confidence we need to do those things outside of our comfort zone. That's just not the way we humans are made.

So, here's what works for me. I keep reminding myself to relax. I talk to myself, I talk to those voices of doubt and fear and discouragement. I persist. I get a picture in my head of me doing laps, or having a swim with a friend this summer. This all works. I get more confident each time. And those moments of comfort and enjoyment in the water are multiplying and growing.

Swimming with Confidence

2009-05-02T17:17:00.001-07:00

In December of 2008 I decided to tackle my fear of deep water and learn to swim. My latest newsletter is about how doing things like this outside of your comfort zone builds confidence. In my swimming lessons I've experienced how valuable a good coach is when venturing out of the comfort zone.

My swim teacher is an athletic coach. We're going for my big dream, swimming in the deep water, losing my fear. His wish for me is to swim fearlessly. When I feel like I can't do it, he talks and acts like there is no doubt that I can. He points out how false beliefs that I have about buoyancy are holding me back (and in reality buoyancy is holding me up!). He gives me lots of praise and encouragement. He tells me to do just a bit more then I feel comfortable doing, and he is clear that I can do it. He is patient. The time that he spends with me is 100% about me, and he is totally there focused on the task at hand. He devises winning strategies that get me where I want to go.

So that is how my swim coach teaches me how to gain the confidence to swim in the deep water. I've come to realize that coaching is coaching, no matter if it's sports or life. He coaches me the same way that I coach my clients to gain confidence to "swim" in the deep water of their dreams of the life they want. It's as exciting on the land as it is in the water!