Mindset

How to Get Committed

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I’ll admit it, I got a bit grumpy this week. I was fretting over a big project that will keep me on the road a lot over the next week, plus the demands of seeing my regular clients, writing blogs, creating a new program, etc. I started to get paralyzed by it all, when a new thought popped into my head…

“How committed am I to feeling this way?”

Hm… hadn’t thought of it that way before. Strangely, the question made me smile. Who intentionally commits to something like a lousy attitude? The heavy stress that was starting to take over was instantly lifted, although I’m not exactly sure why.

Maybe a little humor simply helped me refocus on what I wanted to accomplish, rather dwelling on the obstacles.

Maybe the question reminded me of the things I AM committed to – loving my family, serving others, enjoying life. Powerful things that, when compared with how I was feeling, made the idea of committing to a bad attitude seem ludicrous.

Maybe it’s because I moved from the “I am stress” perspective, to the “I have stress.” Things that you ARE, can’t be easily removed. Things that you HAVE, can be gotten rid of with a simple decision.

Whatever the reason, the shift was significant and immediate. It was like getting a deep breath of fresh air after being in a stuffy, smoke-filled room. Aaahhh… that’s better!

Turn it on its Head

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The other day, I was driving to Sedona and realized that the last 10 miles had gone unnoticed. I was in my head, figuring things out, imagining sharing with friends and clients… needless to say, I was not “in the moment”.

I started in on the lovely self-talk, “What’s wrong with you? You really have to work on getting present. Experience the moment. Maybe I should meditate. I’ll talk to Susan about meditating. But what if she’s busy? I’ve been meaning to tell her about this class I took… ”

Woops! Slid off into mental la-la land again. But suddenly it struck me how natural my internal dialog felt. It just felt like ME. I started to wonder if perhaps this was not a fault, but rather a gift.

How we manage our so-called “faults” is incredibly important. Some people work to improve them, while others ignore them. I encourage the third option that I stumbled upon the other day – leverage them.

For instance, I’m inherently lazy. It’s true. I never want to spend more time on a project than absolutely necessary. So over the years how did I leverage laziness? I translated my laziness (working as little as possible) into efficiency (working smarter, not harder). Same motivation, but when laziness is turned on its head, it becomes the gift of efficiency. I eventually (though quite unintentionally) moved past feeling bad about it, and leveraged my natural tendency towards sloth to serve me better.

But back to my original dilemma of not being present. How could I possibly learn to leverage this “gift” of drifting off in my mind, thinking about how I’ll tell others what I’m experiencing? Then it hit me – I already learned how to leverage it… I became a storyteller.


Overwhelm, Chapter 427

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I recently went to lunch with a good friend who also happens to be a great business woman. She just got back from a huge business seminar with hundreds of people, tons of information – like drinking from a fire hose. You’ve been there.

She shared with me how overwhelmed she felt, and how she just knows that she’s missed the boat because there are so many things she hasn’t done yet, and how everyone else will pass her up.

She’s lucky she’s got me as a friend, because I very nicely told her to stop being an idiot.

Ok, no, I of course didn’t say that. But I really wanted her to know that everyone gets overwhelmed when bombarded with lots of information all at once. Not to be cynical, but the goal of many of these programs is to overwhelm you – so that you need their next product or service. Now, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying that’s how some of them are. But (as usual), I digress…

News flash: Thinking that you’re the only one who gets overwhelmed is pure self-sabotage.

Everyone gets overwhelmed – even really smart, hardworking, motivated people. When you tell yourself the lie that everyone else has it figured out, and you’re just the loser oddball – you are just shooting yourself in the foot and stopping your forward momentum.

Now why would we do this to ourselves? Because moving forward means moving into the unknown. It means possibly looking like we’re getting too big for our britches. It means opening ourselves up for criticism. Seriously scary stuff.

Best bet? Focus on the upside. The opportunities for movement, growth, profit, connection, feeling great, reaching higher, inspiring others, helping more people, and rising above the fray. In other words – getting bigger britches!

Keep your attention on the good things ahead, and sabotage and overwhelm don’t stand a chance.

I Didn’t Want to Write This

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On Tuesday I scheduled myself to write an article for my ezine, and found myself struggling. Now it’s Thursday morning, and it just hit me that my struggle to write provided me with perfect topics for this week’s article.

As I mentioned, on Tuesday I was scheduled to write this article. It was the first item on my list, but all I could do was sit there and stare at my computer. Nothing was coming to me. I started fiddling around with email, looking at old articles, going on Facebook… and before I knew it, the day was almost gone. I hadn’t written an article, and because I was stuck on the idea that it MUST be done first, little else on my list was accomplished either. Added to the mix were my feelings of failure and frustration, and I had a recipe for an all-around bummer of a day.

The lesson? Keep your priorities in order, but if something isn’t working, move on, rather than losing your momentum.

The process of article writing has been a great teacher. As you know, I am forever getting writing ideas from the day-to-day happenings in my life (see current article). One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that when the mood to write strikes, I MUST drop everything and write. This habit developed out of sheer frustration from being too strict of a time manager. Here’s what I mean. I’d be working on a task and suddenly come up with a great idea for an article. In the past, I’d stick to my guns and keep working on the task at hand, trusting that I’d remember the idea and write the article later. But that never happened. Many “aha” moments of inspiration were lost forever.

The lesson? If you’re in the middle of something, and suddenly find yourself motivated to do a task that you generally find challenging – take advantage of the moment and do it!

Now it’s 7:15am on Thursday and I’m finally in the process of writing this week’s article. The ezine goes out at 10:30am, and I was just thinking, “Well, I’m not inspired to write, so maybe I’ll work on something else for a little while.” That’s valid, right? Because I’m not INSPIRED. But the fact is that this ezine is an integral part of my business plan, and is due to go out shortly. So I’m muscling my way through it, hoping I’m coming up with a few useful tidbits for you.

The lesson? You can’t be inspired all the time, so sometimes it’s time to push through and do what MUST be done.

Do you find some of these lessons contradictory? Yep – welcome to life! This is the challenge: knowing when to use each lesson. Am I inspired to write or avoiding my accounting? Am I appropriately muscling through an article or am I pushing too hard and coming up with garbage? Am I moving on to keep my momentum or dodging a necessary task?

I’d love to hear how you deal with these kind of conflicts, either in this blog or in a short session with me. I’m happy to give you 15 minutes of my time to sort out the contradictions. Just contact me!

Values in the Small Decisions

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One of the best books I every read was Stephanie Frank’s The Accidental Millionaire. For me, the most impactful part of the book was an exercise that helped me determine my values in life. I won’t try to explain it here, because I won’t do it justice. Suffice it to say that “values” in this context means “what is most important to me in my life”, rather than “virtues”.

What this exercise did for me is set up a kind of internal compass, so that when I’m making decisions in my life, both personal and professional, all I have to do is look at my top three values and see which decision is in alignment with my values. Mine happen to be:

  • Freedom and travel
  • Impact on others
  • Experiencing new things

Why do I bring this up? Because over the past few years, I’ve found this tool invaluable when navigating big decisions. But recently, I’ve noticed some of the small decisions I make on a daily basis are not in alignment with my values.

This occurred to me on a recent Saturday when I was out hiking in Sedona with my husband. We found a beautiful secluded spot by Oak Creek and dangled our feet in the water, basked in the sun, and enjoyed the view. In a word – idyllic.

When we got back to the car, the first thing I did was check my email. A few messages came in, my adrenaline spiked, and the peace I’d just experienced was diminished in an instant. That one small act was TOTALLY out of alignment with my #1 value of freedom – I mean, it was Saturday, for goodness sake! Was someone going to have a coaching emergency, and send me an email about it? How on earth would this add to my freedom?

An absentminded minute, that’s all it was, but these small moments add up to form a lifetime, don’t they?

I’m committing to being more vigilant about how I spend my time. In fact, I’ll work on changing how I think from “spending” to “investing”.  I challenge you to do the same – and feel free to share your experience!

Maybe it’s Time to Open the Door

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DoorknobToday I did something unusual… I opened the door. My front door, that is, to a couple of clean-cut Mormon boys.

Ok, don’t hate me, but when I spy these kind souls through my peephole, I usually quietly watch from behind the door, hoping they’ll simply think no one was home and move along to the next house.

But today, it occurred to me that I knew how to handle this situation with ease and grace, and perhaps a little more dignity than I have in the past. So I took a deep breath, and I opened the door.

I was able to look these young men in the eye, thank them for their good works, and gently disagree. We shared a laugh about an old friend of mine who spent her Mormon mission going to seedy bars in Salt Lake City because, as she put it, “Don’t you think those people need it the most?” Then I wished them well as they moved along to the next house.

Why did I find this situation significant? Because I realized it was good practice for real life. I’m sure I’m not the only person who finds it stressful to be in situations where I disagree or have to say no. But what I know for sure is that when I don’t deal with the situations, the stress internalizes itself. Over time, it builds, it erupts, it causes health problems.

So, is there anything that you are “hiding behind the door” from? Would it be possible to kindly look it in the eye and dismiss it from your life?

Maybe it’s time for you to open the door, too.