People tend to love or hate Valentine’s Day. Whether you are a devotee of the day or a person who celebrates anti-valentines, you may discover that focusing on yourself can actually make you better at appreciating and giving to others be they lover, family, friend or colleague. This blog post offers you three arguments to put yourself first in order to grow your business or advance your career.

High achieving women are passionately driven to make a difference. Often these women have multiple roles which bring multiple demands on their time.  Many of us begin to see taking time for ourselves as a luxury that we cannot afford. There are also those among us who may not even consciously be aware that we are harming our loved ones, our businesses, or our careers by not thinking of ourselves.

The airlines recognize that we need to be told to put the oxygen on ourselves first before we help others and yet on a day to day basis we forget to breathe. Many years ago as a CEO of a national organization, who was focused on her career, I ignored my body when it complained to me.

Eventually, it complained loud enough to make me visit my osteopath. His diagnosis – I wasn’t breathing. I thought he was nuts but I discovered I really was starving my body of oxygen.  I had to become much more conscious of my body and listen to what it was telling me — I had to slow down. I had to breathe.

Time is money is a phrase that is attributed to Benjamin Franklin. The effects of that philosophy have shaped so much of what we do. We tend to break down our day into time and money segments and we ramp up our speed so we can try to fit more and more into those 24 hours we have each day. Many high-achieving women have become whirling dervishes of multi-tasking.

Own Your Value

In his book Value Based Fees: How to Charge – and Get – What You’re Worth, Alan Weiss writes about the courage and belief systems that underlie consultants not focusing on true value for their clients. Time units are a much easier way to measure but do they really measure successful outcomes and true value for clients? The challenge for women business owners and women executives is the undervaluing of their worth – not considering the true value they offer to their clients and organizations. While focusing on yourself may sound like an odd way to help your clients, it really isn’t. The time spent in bringing your unconscious thoughts to the conscious level can greatly enhance what you can offer and allow you to flow with what you are doing.

Stop Multi-tasking

Do you still think that your ability to multitask is a factor of which to be proud? Think again. The evidence shows that giving yourself time to focus on one thing at a time helps improve productivity and success. You may realize you are currently living a myth if you think that others are just not as proficient at multi-tasking as you are. Look at this infographic at mashable.com to see if any of this research sounds a chord within you.

Slow Down

Give yourself 20 minutes to watch Carl Honore’s TED talk  In Praise of Slowness

Carl says that “By slowing down at the right moments, people find that they do everything better: They eat better; they make love better; they exercise better; they work better; they live better.”

So what do you think? Can you spend just one day – perhaps Valentine’s Day – and look at how to you can better own your value, be more productive by focusing on one task, or can you slowdown to be more present with your experiences?

What is your biggest challenge in trying these three things? Please leave a comment below.

Sometimes lessons come from the weirdest places. Nick Nanton and JW Dicks highlighted lessons learned from looking at the Twinkie as an Eternal brand. What struck me about this fun and helpful post is that they highlight the significance of emotions to the life of a brand, the internal alignment employees need to have with the brand, and the value of storytelling to build recurring business.

Branding is often thought of as “all of the promises and perceptions that an organization wants its customers to feel about its product and service offerings” (Davis, S.M.). So how can we determine what feelings we want our customers to feel and how do we act so as to inspire those feelings? Perhaps the answer is to first do some soul searching. In Brains on Fire, the authors take a stand that they prefer the word identity over the word brand because they feel that by “finding your purpose in the world as a company, you unearth your soul” (p. 110). What is your story?

At times we get so involved with developing a marketing plan that it becomes an exercise in itself and segregated from the identity of the culture and purpose of the business – the identity and your story. “Brands provide a sense of meaningful identity that is distinct from the particular product or service being offered” (Blumenthal).  It may appear to be easier for packaged goods in retail and business to business marketing to sell because they have tangible objects. However, brands that excel know what service providers who offer intangible offerings that often offer a promise for the future know – you need to know the values and the why behind your brand.

What is uniquely you? What do you stand for? What do you do? Why do you do it? The energy you invest in answering these questions will allow you to convey a more personal, authentic, and soulful brand. A brand where people are likely to feel the emotions you desire they feel. Before you start looking at marketing opportunities, budget, and evaluation options etc. get clear on your identity. Who are you and what do you do? Remember your answer does not have to be cast in stone. Just as people grow and change so can your brand, just make the changes consciously to stay true to your identity.

Reference: Blumenthal, D. (2003). Internal Branding: does it improve employee’s quality of life? Institute for Brand Leadership. Retrieved March 2004, from http://instituteforbrandleadership.org/internalbranding.pdf

Or is it? In any piece of wisdom is it not advisable to sometimes stop and question these comforting quips? What about the somewhat juxtaposed piece of wisdom we need to learn from our mistakes? Or history keeps repeating itself until we get it right?

There is a Hawaiian moving meditation that draws upon ancient Hawaiian wisdom that has the body move in a rhythmic dance resembling an infinity sign. The meditation provides a sense of balance, ease, clarity and energy to those who practice it. In the movement, the future is considered to be behind us as we cannot see it and the past including that of our and our ancestors is before us as we can see it. The body moves in an even rhythm from the future though the present which is within our embrace, to the past, then moves in reverse through the present to the future. Watching the movement is like watching poetry in motion. Performing the movement is challenging until you can disengage the mind and stops worrying about your form and whether you are doing it right. When the mind settles and the movement emanates from the within the body the feeling of flow and connection is incredible. The movement is called flying and my teacher is Jody Soltau Mountain.

How many times do we get caught repeating a pattern in our life that is not serving us? Are we in a Ground Hog Loop? This loop is aptly named from the movie Ground Hog Day where the main character is doomed to repeat the same day until he makes the right correction. Are we stuck there because we are not recognizing the flow from the future, embracing the present, and looking to the past?

When I am offered a new view on something I have taken for granted, I embrace the opportunity to consciously look at my patterns and view my world with somewhat fresh eyes. Stop and think about it for a minute. Most people will concede that we are not prophetic and cannot see the future yet many of us focus on it almost to the exclusion of the present. Often this attempt at control is rooted in the past. We may not look to the past for help – we encourage not looking at it because it may be too upsetting or there may be too many unanswered questions.

We do not know what the next phone call or knock on the door will bring and try as we might, we cannot control it. Are we ignoring the calls or knocks in an attempt to forget the past rather than seeking the gifts of the lessons the past has to share with us so we can greet whoever is calling or knocking?

Consider what effect on your daily life patterns could be if you approached the past in the light of the dance? Begin with a slow and steady rhythmic approach of looking back at the future, embrace the present, and look forward at the past then continue the flow back to the present and the future. What would your life be like if you were not rushing through your days unconsciously, not blocking the past, and not attempting to control the future? The past, present, and future form the whole.

How do you recognize an opportunity?

Yesterday I learned the answer to this question from Kendall Summerhawk and I am going to share it with you!

I have been bombarded with the answer ever since.

Several times a week I drive by a street and just last night while stopped at a traffic light I looked up and saw a street sign. I asked my partner if the city had changed the name of
the street because I didn’t recognize it. The street name was the same, it was me that was different. I saw it.

This morning I decided I was going to write a blog post and was rolling three ideas around in my head. While pondering which to write about I stopped at my desk and popped in to check on my email and Facebook pages. There at the top of my personal newfeed in Facebook was a post from my friend Kecia Joy in Maui…that post is the picture that accompanies this post. “If you are waiting for a sign THIS IS IT”

So the answer to the question “How do you recognize an opportunity?” is…drumroll please…Because you can see it!

How many bits and pieces of information do we receive in a day? Are they even quantifiable? Although I have not researched it, I doubt we can quantify them because many of bits of information are taken in by us below a conscious level. For those numbers people let’s look at a quantifiable illustration from social media – Twitter. Twitter is a micro message social media platform that demonstrates staggering statistics. Quora.com reported that on October 17, 2011 there were 250 million tweets per day which is about 175,000 tweets per minute or about 50 tweets a second! Simply astounding. In Twitter there are filters that we can define and apply to sort through the most relevant information to us.

The same is true for people. We have filters. We have learned to selectively attend to certain pieces of information that are important to us at that moment in time. Unlike Twitter we can’t always define what those filter parameters are because we may not even be consciously aware of what needs our attention.  How many harried Moms or Dads have said yes to something like “Can I paint the dog blue?” because they weren’t attentive at the time when asked. What if the exact same situation was in place and only the question differed. Supposed they were asked “Can I light the barbeque?” I would guess that most likely the parental response would not be the same because something
within alerts us to the fact that we have to pay attention.

In the many pieces of information that come to us daily if something stands out and presents itself to you as an opportunity. It likely is because otherwise it would not have had
your attention. Begin looking for the opportunities that present themselves to you daily. When you start recognizing them you just can consciously decide to take action and seize them or dismiss them. Either way you get to choose. How cool is that?

For more information on selective attention simply psychology offers an interesting post or you can test your attention using this famous video now available on YouTube.

Are You Flourishing?

Ever notice that one of the best motivators for doing something you have been procrastinating about is to find something you have to do that you want to do even less that the first thing? I ran into that situation again this morning. I think one of the best examples in my procrastination history has to do with studying. My apartment was never as clean as it was during exams. The clutter that had accumulated for 4 months all of a sudden became such a critical issue that I could not study in such an environment. The only solution was to clean before studying!

Sometimes we put off consciously thinking about our own happiness because it is easier to procrastinate than to face it down. I have been thinking about priorities a lot lately and ones I am sure you can relate to is happiness at work. How do we balance our need for security and income with a good workplace experience? Which takes priority if the workplace is unpleasant – money or sanity? There are so many factors to consider and even considering them takes energy. Energy we often do not have if we are negatively stressed. Then one day the tipping point comes and something, maybe even something which at the time seems insignificant, forces us to look at it. Which side of the tipping point are you on or are you balancing carefully on the point? Is fear weighing you down from beginning to explore your options or are you buoyed by a workplace that respects and nurtures you?

I have seen two people this week who look tired and sad even when they smile because of workplace unhappiness. Can you really see yourself in the mirror or is it time to ask someone who will tell you the truth about whether they think it is time for you to be creative in finding a good alternative to where you are working now? Harter, Schmidt, and Keyes in the book Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived (Keyes and Haidt) looked at aspects of well-being in the workplace for people and organizations to flourish. Aspects of their findings form the basis for a good thought-provoking self-assessment checklist.

In the workplace:

Do I know what is expected of me?

Do I have the tools and equipment I need to do what I should do?

Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

Does someone care about me?

Are my opinions respected?

Do my peers have high quality standards for their work?

Am I experiencing opportunities to learn and grow?

From the perspective of an employee, answering these questions can help you determine if energy should be focused on change if you are hurting or on appreciation for what you are living if you are happy.

From the perspective of a leader, how do you think your employees would answer these questions? Do they smile? Do they look tired even if they are smiling? Are they hurting or flourishing? What can you do about it?

For an organization to flourish the people who collectively comprise its soul must flourish.

Reference

Keyes, C. L. M. and J Haidt. Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2007.

Last night I was traveling for business and stayed in a lovely hotel. I was tired and ready for a great night’s sleep before my travels home. Alas, that was not to be because at 3am the fire alarm sounded. I was on my feet long before I awoke dancing around trying to hit whatever it was that was making the awful noise to get it to stop. Eventually the noise did stop and fortunately no one suffered anything other than the night cold while a minor problem was resolved.

Skip forwards an hour when my cell phone starts ringing. I had dropped it in my suitcase earlier when I was looking to silence the fire alarm and now it continued to ring as I sifted through my belongings in the dark. Panic struck as I saw my 18 year old daughter’s name appear on my call display – she is 5000km or 3100 miles away from home. “Hi” she says, “why are you breathing so hard?” Because you startled me awake. “Oh” she says “is the alarm on in the house?” My mind tries to process the odd question from her, given that neither one of us is near the house and I have just had one alarm settled. She proceeded to tell me that her friend wanted to break into our house to retrieve something. For various reasons I indicated that this would not be a good idea. Her response was “Well, that sucks. Ok, goodnight.” I then lay awake and attempted to understand what had just happened. This is when my mind shifted to leadership.

Have you been working hard and then believed you have reached a brief moment of quiet only to hear organizational alarm bells? What was your first reaction? Did you jump up and try to silence the alarm by any means including squashing something? Or did you stay still and assess what the alarm was warning you of?

What about competing and unrelated alarm bells sounding in a short period of time? What did that do to your senses?

How did you hear the organizational alarms – did someone sound them for you or did they come from your subconscious and your gut?

How did you filter the organizational noise?

Have you been working is such a noisy environment that the sound of the alarms is lost to you?

Have a listen to your workplace. See if there are external or internal alarms sounding about the organization’s health or your personal health. Assess whether you are dancing around trying to squash something or whether you are clearly listening to what is happening.

Find out what the commotion is all about before you hear someone else say…“Well, that sucks.” in relation to you or your organization. Find out if it is something you need to resolve by fixing the cause of the alarm or the alarm itself.

In my case, the cause of the first alarm was fixed. In the second it was the alarm that required resetting to better understand the criteria for a 4 am call because the urgent item sought in the potential break and enter was a favourite disposable razor.

Picture this…

It is a cold wintry day. The sky is overcast. Snow banks guide the car through the maze of streets like a bobsled run. Rush hour won’t start for about another hour and you are right on track for your day.

You turn from one major street onto another and find yourself at a full stop. Plumes of car exhaust rise from the tail of cars sitting waiting impatiently for the opportunity to move. Why the disturbance on this normally open road?

Looking off in the distance, I can see a red traffic light in front of the elementary school.  The light changes green and we advance a car length and then stop. What happened? The light is red again. How can that be? As we inch along, I can see that the school buses are trapped in the school yard with only one exiting at a time. I have been down this street before and know that the light is almost always green because it is a cross-walk light and not a regular traffic light. Hmmmm….

Eventually the source of the delay becomes clear. There behind the snow bank are a group of 3 little boys beaming with excitement and pure joy. I watch as they continue to amuse themselves by pushing the cross-walk button every time the light turns green.

While a group of 3 little boys pushing a button might not cause a traffic jam in some parts of the world, in Canada we tend to be polite and patient (and some other things my dear American partner could add) and so there you have it – a traffic jam.

I found this whole situation fascinating. Get a life I can hear you mumbling. Aside from the cultural difference which is another story all-together, think about the dynamics of power in this situation.

Children are normally exposed to siblings, parents, bullies, teachers, institutions and possibly welfare workers all having power over them. Bundy-Fazioli, Briar-Lawson, and Hardiman (2009) studied the distribution of power in situations where child welfare organizations were involved with families. They considered parents’ and workers’ feelings of powerlessness, the perception of the ability to wield power, and the perception of the distribution of power in the contexts of hierarchy, sharing and balance. What if while we were sitting in traffic, we applied those thoughts to those delighted little boys?

Of course those little boys were having the time of their life. They had no one wielding power over them. They were the ones controlling the world at that moment. All those adults had to wait until the children gave them permission to move. What does that tell us about what we are teaching children about power and the abuse of it?

Thinking of this story and using the little boys as metaphors, ask yourself if you are a little boy deriving joy from taking control and wielding power hiding behind a snow bank? Do you work with any passive aggressive little boys? What conditions in your life or your organization are motivating you to push the control button? Is it hierarchy, a lack of balance or sharing?

Everett Spain, a recognized leader who has risen through the US army, has commented that “The best organizations deliberately share power throughout, at all levels.” I wonder if being a best organization means that people who work within it feel joy in participating in the organization’s mandate rather than striving for personal control? Ah perhaps there is a key…personal control.

In the Art of Power (2008), Thich N Hanh suggests that the way to achieve real power is to control our own thoughts through developing a clear mind and peaceful heart. Unless we can create this place of calm within we will be dominated by our fears, emotions, and desires.

If as leaders we can lead from a place of sharing because we are clear minded and calm of heart, we will not teach those who follow us that they need to hide behind snow banks to try and achieve control in ways that sabotage the organization. Yet as self-reflective leaders, we must also recognize that the perceptions of the followers are filtered through their own minds and hearts and if they are not at peace, they may not join in the sharing.

Please share your thoughts and strategies in the comments.

References

Bundy-Fazioli, K., Briar-Lawson, K., & Hardiman, E. R. (2009). A Qualitative Examination of Power between Child Welfare Workers and Parents. British Journal of Social Work, 39(8), 1447-1464. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcn038

Hanh, Thich Nhat., (2008) The Art of Power. HarperOne. San Francisco.

Do you believe the conventional wisdom that the only thing holding you back are your own beliefs? Are your beliefs preventing you from leading your way to a successful future? We hear so many stories of triumph of people surprising others with their accomplishments when the person knew they could achieve these results.

So what happens when you believe this conventional wisdom and these stories and yet you sabotage yourself with self-defeating beliefs?  Have you had an argument raging in your head almost like the television and movie images of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other? Did the dialogue go something like…

Negative Voice: You can’t do that!

Positive Voice: Yes I can the only thing stopping me is me. I need to believe I can do this.

Negative Voice: See you know you need to believe and yet you don’t!

Positive Voice: But I want to believe and I need to believe to do this.

Negative Voice: But deep down you know you aren’t capable don’t you? Remember how you screwed that opportunity up by….. you should  have….

Now the Negative Voice is tearing down the road of everything you could have done better in your life making a case for why you shouldn’t believe in yourself.

Confusing and frustrating? Oh yes!  David Posen (2008) defines beliefs as the “premises and assumptions that a person holds about how the world works, how you should behave, what you are capable of, among other points.” p.18

These beliefs can affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Our self-confidence, our self-esteem, and our interactions with others are all affected by these often subconscious assumptions. Beliefs can cause stress because they might conflict with one another or they might conflict with our behaviours. Generally people don’t like a misalignment of their beliefs with their behaviours and environments so we act to make ourselves right and supposedly align ourselves with our beliefs and create self-fulfilling prophecies.

An obvious example I saw of a self-fulfilling prophecy being driven by a person’s beliefs was a young woman who on my first meeting with her as her supervisor, informed me that I had been put into the position to terminate her employment. This was not true, I had no fore knowledge of the woman, but because she believed it was true she acted as though she was already fired and guess what….she eventually was.  This young woman undermined herself to make herself right in her belief that I was going to fire her when I had no such intention or instruction.

The stress from beliefs can cause us to lose sleep, supplement ourselves with caffeine, alcohol or drugs, and who can take time for exercise when there is work to be done or when you are just too tired from the stress. These negative cycles can be exhausting. So what can be done?

Identify your beliefs

Take a quiet moment and sit down and start writing. Maybe sit with a significant person in your life and do this exercise together so you can help each other by raising beliefs you think you have seen in this person.

Go through the list and determine which are serving you well and which ones are not..

For the beliefs that are not serving you well, can you see where they came from??

 For example, did your parents always complain about the rich people in town about how they didn’t work hard and how scandalous they were? Have you developed a belief that people who are well-off financially are not good people?

Challenge your beliefs. Are they valid?

Using the last example, look around you. Do you think that all people with wealth are not good people? Is this belief preventing you from improving your financial comfort because you don’t want to be a bad person?

Update your beliefs or discard those that are out of date or self-defeating.

Do you work excessively hard because you believe if you took time off you would be a slacker and never get ahead?  Revise your belief to recognize that you can only perform well and improve productivity to a certain point with stress and arousal and then the human condition kicks in and your performance drops. You also become more inefficient when you are tired and may make mistakes and have to redo the work. Also have you noticed that sometimes when you take a break from the work your subconscious mind is working in the background solving your problem? A tired mind and body cannot perform well – update your belief so that you can give yourself permission to relax.

Beliefs help us form our reality. What kind of reality are you creating for yourself?  Is it time to check in with yourself to see what beliefs are helping and which are hindering?

Reference:

Posen, D.. (2008, June). The Beliefs That Run Our Lives. National Underwriter. Life & Health, 112(25), 16,18.  Retrieved October 30, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Complete. (Document ID: 1514208041).

One day my teenage daughter decided to change her signature. This change surprised me and when I asked her why the change she said she did it because it looked better.

Ok I confess I may be rather nerdy as she says but I thought Wow what a concept. She just consciously decided to improve how her signature looked and made the necessary behaviour change to make her perception of how she related to the world better from her perspective. She tried a “bunch of styles” because she said “writing is just like clothes, eventually you just grow out of a style and get a new one”.

I had never thought about changing my signature in this way. Thoughts were racing through my mind…what about all those legal documents I have signed? What about my legal identity – my driver’s license, my passport…. In some ways, is our signature expected to be more stable than our appearance? Have I been culturally conditioned to live within a signature box? Is my signature a brand? Do I really want to mess with our personal brand?

How did your signature develop? Did it just evolve over time and you really didn’t notice? Did you consciously play with it until you found the right one? I know mine changed in grade 4 because my teacher at the time traumatized me by making me stay after school to improve my cursive writing and I missed meeting my sister and I waited in the freezing cold for her until my Dad happened to drive by and rescued me with my tears frozen on my cheeks. Hmmmm frozen…maybe that is why my signature has not changed since then…

Is your signature very different from the rest of your cursive writing? Do you scrawl your name so that nobody can decipher it? Do you have a fanciful signature with elaborate swirls and flourishes? Do you flatline it with a first letter followed by a line of a length that suits your fancy? Graphology suggests we can tell whether someone is being authentic by comparing their signature to the rest of their writing and we can ascertain whether they are optimistic, pessimistic, confident, arrogant and domineering, or passive and lacking in self-confidence.

Do you know what you are trying to say or are saying with your written signature? Are you stuck in a signature box or can you change it if the message of your signature is not consistent with whom you are?

Last night my 9.5 year old collie Tegan – a contender for the gentlest spirited creature on the earth award – was in distress. I awoke to hear her pacing on the hardwood floors and whining. This unusual behaviour awoke me from a deep sleep and I sought her out. Her food and water dishes are by the front door of the house on a tile floor which is a step down from the hardwood entry hall.

What I discovered was she was afraid to step down on the tile floor and couldn’t get to her water dish.  After some conversation and me going to the dishes, she did follow me to the bowl and drank.  I returned to bed and she followed me. Two hours later she awoke me again and wanted me to follow her downstairs. So down I went and there she stayed on the landing 3 steps down from the top. It took 10 minutes of me trying to convince her that she was safe to make that 4^th step down.

Nothing had changed that was physically perceptual from the thousands of times she has gone up and down those very stairs. Her physical wellness appeared to be fine with her senses and movement. The house itself did not have any new lighting to cast shadows or physical impediments.

What was causing the distress for the Tegan was her fear. She was literally paralyzed by it. She stood glued to the floor with one foot trying to touch the next step but then retracting it with lightening speed. She would back up turn around and around then look like she had made up her mind to go forward and with conviction take that first step but only to again retreat. Her physical manifestations of a racing heart, whining, and agitation were so profound yet they all appeared to have been created by the emotion of fear.

This example is an obvious illustration of how a witness can see the effects of fear. But what about when fear happens within, do we always recognize it? Are there steps we do not take as individuals and leaders because of fear?

In the case of Tegan, perhaps she had a dream that was so very real to her and created her fear of the steps. Are you living in a dream that creates fear within you?  It might be a dream of sleep or it may be a day-dream with all kinds of scary thoughts that our imagination creates for us. For example, are you concerned about making bill payments and letting yourself get carried away with drama and awfulizing as I call it? Perhaps you have had car repair expenses and you start worrying that before you know it you will have rebuilt the car piece by piece? It is kind of like mind dominoes. One domino gets knocked over and all of these thoughts get triggered in the wake of the first one.

Tuning into your body and what it is telling you is essential. Next time you are hesitating on a metaphorical step, tune into yourself. Is there an element from your past that is bringing forward some negative feelings? Assess whether these feelings from the past have any relevance in the present and the fictional future you are creating in your mind. Returning to the car example, did you experience a clunker of a car that cost you many dollars in car repairs in the past? Are you taking that experience forward and applying the past experience to your newer car? Does this make sense given that your newer car is a different brand and has been very reliable? Stop the dominoes! The path these dominoes follow is to your past not the present and your future.