A family of four – mom, dad, two boys – arrived at the hotel beach. Everyone looked happy enough to kill some time on the beach since it was too early for them to check into their room. Until. The. Rain.

The smiles remained for three of the four, but the younger boy was in tears as they headed back toward the hotel. This was the exchange between the young boy and his mom.

Toddler:  “I hate vacation!”

Mom:       “Oh, honey, you don’t hate vacation. It’s the sand that’s bothering you.”

Toddler:   “It’s in my shoes.” The crying ramped up to sobbing.

And with that, the boy’s mom talked him through the ordeal of walking with sand-filled shoes another 10 feet to the sand-free area where his dad and older brother were patiently waiting for him.

A couple of hours later, I headed over to the sand-free pool. The family appeared to be having a great time: all four were in the pool. Both boys were laughing and playing. No shoes filled with sand here!

Lessons learned here from a toddler:

The next time you think it’s time to quit your job or fire a client, ask yourself a few questions:

• Is it really time to move on from your job or client, or do you just need to get out of the sandbox?
• Do you feel the need to sever this relationship only when it’s raining, or is this job / client always a buzz kill?
• Why am I spending so much time in a sandbox when I don’t like sand?

Sometimes asking and answering a couple of simple questions can provide new perspective. Give it a try the next time you’re tempted to run for cover when the rain hits while you’re in the sandbox.

The post Do You Hate Vacation – or Just the Sand? appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

Daniel Pink is a curious guy. So it just makes good sense that he would ask a few questions to satisfy that curiosity. He wanted to find out what people do all day, so he asked them a (seemingly) simple question:

“What percentage of your work involves convincing or persuading people to give up something they value (attention, effort, money, time, etc.) for something you offer?”

What he learned is that, “Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.”

Next up on his list of questions was this: When you think of sales or selling, what’s the first word that comes to mind?

Queue the negative responses – wow. We’ve got a bias against sales. There was a 4 to 1 ratio of negative to positive responses to the question. Since we’re all selling, this is pretty disturbing. Pink pointed out two key features of today’s sales world:

1. We’re all selling all the time. Each employee serves as a representative of the company. Every impression moves a prospective customer / client closer to or further from purchase.
2. We’re doing that selling on a re-made landscape: seller beware. Buyer Beware used to be the name of the game back in the day before online information leveled the playing field. Now the buyer enters negotiations with no less information than the sales person. Think about buying a car here – 20 years ago, the car salesperson held all the cards; that’s no longer the case.

This is a really interesting situation we’re in. We all sell. Yet we have all these negative thoughts spinning in our heads about sales and sales people. Pink surveyed some of the top business schools and found that most do not teach sales. What??? Very interesting indeed. Looking at data that’s available through a number of studies, Pink explored qualities of successful sales people and found there are three key elements that make us more effective in our sales efforts:

1. Attunement – the ability to get out of your own head and into your client’s head. What will this do for you? It will allow you to see the situation from someone else’s perspective and find common ground.
2. Buoyancy – the ability to stay afloat in the ocean of rejection sales people face every day. A key factor here: self-talk. Check yourself. Is your self-talk encouraging or discouraging your sales efforts?
3. Clarity – the ability to curate information. In this world of information overload, it’s important to be able to separate what matters from what doesn’t. You want to be the person who can identify the problem to be solved before it surfaces.

Want to take some steps to ensure your sales increase? Of course you do. More data, more suggestions from Pink:

Continuing on with his review of data, Pink investigated whether introverts or extroverts would be more successful at sales. What do you think? Introverts? Extroverts? The advantage here clearly goes to ambiverts: those people whose personalities include a balance of extrovert and introvert features. Think about this when hiring your sales force and avoid the extreme introverts and extroverts. Here are four tips to improve your sales efforts:

1. Have you ever been told that you should mimic the person you’re talking with so that they’ll feel that you understand them? Good advice or garbage? This would be good advice – mimicry is clearly effective in closing sales. The caveat here: don’t be “an idiot about it.”
2. Dump the technical jargon. Use your client’s language and don’t make them feel uneducated by correcting their technical language.
3. Show some social proof if you want to change your client’s behavior (to buy your product). North Americans tend to exaggerate the importance of personality and under value context. Context drives behavior more than we realize, so make it easy for your clients to take action. Pink suggests we ask ourselves: Have I built an off-ramp? An especially apropos question for a roomful of engineers.
4. Pay attention to others’ posture, gesture, and language. Then reflect those back without being an idiot about it.

Living up to his assertion that we’re all in sales, Pink followed his talk with a book-signing session. And, yes, I hopped in line after buying To Sell is Human. I suspect it will be a valuable sales tool. What are your favorite sales tips and tools? Let me know in the comments below, or connect with me directly.

The post Humanizing the World of Sales with Daniel Pink appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

It’s easy enough to say thank you – via text, email, snail mail, phone, in person – at any point in our day. When I worked in the nonprofit arena, I conveyed my thanks every day in a variety of ways for the many generous acts done on behalf of my nonprofits by volunteers and donors. Since those days (which ended five-plus years ago), however, I’ve been a bit remiss in extending thanks for the many good deeds that have benefited me.

A quick on-line search for the definition of thank you includes the following:

a polite expression of one’s gratitude

a polite expression used when acknowledging a gift, service, or compliment, or accepting or refusing an offer.

When used in it’s

Exclamation used to express appreciation to some for offering or giving you something, for helping you, or for asking how you are feeling

For me, thank you and gratitude are inextricably linked together. I owe a debt of gratitude for many and find that expressing gratitude via thanks provides a variety of benefits for me:

• Serves as a reminder of the good deeds done on my behalf
• Acts as a natural mood enhancer
• Spurs me on to do a good deed on someone else’s behalf
• Forces me to slow down and appreciate the moment
• Boosts productivity in all areas of my life
• Underscores how a seemingly small act can have ripple effects
• Reminds me that there is a lot of good happening in the world

Join me in your own way in adopting an attitude of gratitude and thanking those near and far who lend a hand to your success.

The post Challenge On: Expressing Thanks appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

Linda Brossi Murphy faced breast cancer with a heaping dose of humor and bravely shares her cancer experience in her book F*CK OFF CANCER: Cancer, shaken, not stirred, on the rocks with a twist! to benefit those who may follow in her footsteps. Those who have previously walked in her footsteps will also gain some degree of comfort, validation, and sisterhood as they read this book. As Linda pointed out: “The good news about this is that I was not alone. The bad news is that everyone’s life is touched by cancer.”

Truer words were never spoken, as every person I know has a relationship with cancer. There are, it seems, many paths to health. Linda chose to follow conventional treatment: surgery (two lumpectomies) followed by chemotherapy and radiation. She also chose to participate in a clinical trial, not knowing whether she was receiving the actual drug or a placebo in addition to the protocol outlined by her oncologist.

We’re all lucky that Linda followed a friend’s advice to write this book. Linda tells it like it is, leaving very little to the imagination (yes, her book includes photos to document her journey) as she graciously told her story of life with cancer. This story will help assess cancer treatment by studying how the treatment affected every facet of Linda’s life. Yes, we can call this anecdotal data and dismiss its value. OR we can give this type of data a little more respect and call it a case study. It is, after all, each individual’s experience that lets us know how our science (treatment protocol) actually plays out. Linda’s observation about chemotherapy illustrates the toll her treatment took on body, mind, and spirit:

Someday, in the future, chemotherapy will be looked at the same way we currently look at electric shock therapy. Barbaric! As we progress in understanding cancer and finding treatments, it will eventually be looked back upon as ludicrous that we sat people down and pumped them full of a broad-spectrum poison.

There simply must be a better way to treat cancer. Linda endured more than a year and a half of treatment, at one point joking: “I am fat, bald, toenail-less, burned from radiation, and scarred. How lovely!” So how the heck did this wild woman get through her treatment with her sense of humor fully in tact? With a little help from her friends, of course! She had a support team that included a vast group of family and friends. Each chemo treatment found a collection of supporters in Linda’s chemo room laughing, joking, and sometimes cajoling the hours away. This party atmosphere did not mean that Linda didn’t appreciate the serious nature of cancer. On the contrary, this was just one way Linda chose to tell cancer to f*ck off.

Linda also focused on her medical team: To show the members of her medical team how much she appreciated their treatment, Linda asked her support team to bake cookies for her medical team rather than to bring meals to her and her family. Not just once and done; she had a calendar and her support team signed up to bake cookies and make sure they got them to Linda ahead to time so she could deliver them prior to her treatment. She also threw an end-of-treatment party to thank everyone – friends, family, medical personnel – who had helped her through her treatment.

This book is a generous gift from a cancer conqueror to anyone who wants to know what it’s like to walk through the world of cancer treatment. There are laughs and tears along the way as you’d expect. Not surprisingly, there are also poignant moments when Linda and her husband faced mortality head on.  Little was easy; much was overwhelming. Each day also presented a new adventure, an opportunity to look at the world from a new vantage point. While making her way through a world of overwhelm, Linda chose to find a way to laugh every day as she walked through the halls of cancer treatment.

As we observe World Cancer Day in 2016, we owe it to Linda and everyone else who has faced a cancer diagnosis to:

• Acknowledge that after 40 years of fighting a war on cancer, we need to change up our approach.
• Stop expecting a different outcome without changing our behavior (treatment / research).
• Provide support to cancer patients, rather than the cancer industry.
• Focus on prevention. Prevention ≠ screening / detection.
• Explore evidence-based complementary care.
• Read this book and others like it to understand how cancer treatment affects the patient.

All eyes are on Vice President Biden’s moonshot. I applaud his and President Obama’s enthusiasm. We’ve also got answers right here on Earth that are waiting to be put into practice. What do you say? I say now would be the time.

The post On World Cancer Day, This Book Title Speaks For All of Us: F*ck Off Cancer appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

Entering 2016, I joined the Marathon Sports Winter Warrior Challenge. The challenge for me: run or walk five miles OUTSIDE every day for the month of January. Don’t quite make five miles on any day? No problem. Simply downgrade to three miles or one mile a day. Just can’t get it together to get out one day? No problem there either – you’re out of the challenge.

January can be a downright tough month to be outside in Maine. Apparently Mother Nature wanted me to succeed, though, and provided us with a number of unseasonably warm days – 45 degrees in Maine in January??? Score! No worries for those of you who are wondering if I got off without difficulty in reaching this challenge. I was also outside in wind, rain, snow, and ice.

The rewards for meeting this challenge? My name will be listed along with the others who completed the challenge on the back of a t-shirt featuring this handsome guy. More than that, though, as Ziglar’s words imply, this challenge was about setting a goal and following through on my intentions. I wrote about my three words for 2016 earlier this year: Focus. Finish. Follow-through.

So far, this challenge includes two of my words: Focus and Finish. I had to put this challenge at top of mind and make time every day to be outside. There certainly were a couple of days when I just didn’t feel like going outside. I had made a commitment to myself and a friend to participate in and complete this challenge, however, so I put on my winter gear and headed outside. Follow-through will now be to make sure I transition from walking to running over the next 60 days – a longer-term goal that feeds into a goal to run, walk, or crawl 1,000 miles this year. Thanks to the Winter Warrior Challenge, I’ve already walked 161 miles.

So, what was the key to my success in getting my sedentary self out of the house to achieve this goal? Several factors were key to ensure that I met this goal:

Accountability – I had an accountability partner who was doing this challenge with me. Since she lives in Massachusetts, we weren’t walking or running together. Instead, we stayed connected via text messages and phone calls. There was no way I was going to leave her high and dry by not completing this challenge.

Support System – I had announced to some friends and, of course, my husband that I was entering this challenge. My husband accompanied me on weekend days when he could, and a friend of mine was able to fit a walk into her schedule just when my resolve was wavering. Timing is everything!

Immediate Gratification – I had to go online to confirm that I had, in fact, walked or run five miles each day. I was able to get a lift by meeting each day’s challenge and seeing the cumulative number of miles that I’d walked. And…the challenge was for one month only: the end was always in sight.

Long-term Impact – As I mentioned, this challenge fits into my year-long goal to walk or run 1,000 miles. (I hope to avoid crawling.) It will also get me in shape to run a 5K in March and to hop on my bike in April.

SMART Goal – This challenge fit right into the SMART Goal theory. It was specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Unintended Consequences – Not only did I became a morning person (who would ever have thought that was possible?), but I also became much more productive over the past month.

Success breeds success. I’m looking forward to experiencing and sharing more successes in 2016. How about you?

The post Challenge Met: Enjoying the Rush of Meeting a Goal appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

What’s the purpose of our food? Pleasure? Nourishment? Both? Rip Esselstyn’s book, My Beef With Meat: The Healthiest Argument for Eating a Plant-Strong Diet makes the case that plant-powered food offers both pleasure and nourishment. A former firefighter, Esselstyn also puts to rest the argument that manly men can’t live on plants alone.

He argues that:

Plants can heal. Plants can nourish. Plants can nurture. Plants can give you everything you need to be the healthiest person you can be and live the life you deserve to live.

The book sets out to debunk 36 myths surrounding diet and takes a look at actual facts about plant and animal foods. From Plants are Plentiful in Protein to It’s Never too Early to Start a Plant-Based Diet to It’s Never Too Late to Start a Plant-Based Diet, Esselstyn explains his take on how and why plants are the way to go. Referencing science to back up his claims, Esselstyn implores us to take the plunge into the plant world and leave the beef behind. He also includes 140 recipes to entice us into the plant-strong side of life.

He cites the claim by the American Institute for Cancer Research that:

You can’t control your age, but you can control your cancer risk….For seniors, the AICR advises that all meals be based on plant-based food. A consistent diet of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains will ‘protect against a range of cancers, including mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, stomach, lung, pancreas, and prostate.’

In full disclosure, I gave up meat (or carcass as Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D. would say) a number of years ago. It’s a decision that suits me well. I also realize that each of us is unique with our own nutrition needs. So…what to do? What to do? If you’re a carnivore, experiment with your diet. Try opting out of meat and giving Meatless Mondays a whirl. For the rest of the week, take a look at the amount of meat / animal products you’re eating. How much of your plate is covered by a hunk of meat and how much of your plate is covered by vegetables?

No doubt if you are eating meat, you think you’re not eating that much. That seems to be the refrain from meat eaters around the world according to Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. So take a look at your plate, and make a few adjustments. See what happens if you cut down on the amount of animal products (that includes dairy and seafood) you’re eating and replace them with vegetables. Pump up the volume on the amount of water you’re drinking while you’re at it. Do you feel better? Worse? Do you have more or less energy?

If you give this a try, let me know how changing up your diet works for you and whether you’ll make long-term changes or revert back to your traditional diet. Or have you already been experimenting to find a diet that suits you best?

The post Got A Beef With Meat? appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

Listening to the State of the Union address last week I wondered how President Obama would use this speech to influence his legacy. He made a number of points that we’d expect to hear supporting children, families, and the middle class. And then, from out of the blue (at least from my non-inner-circle perspective), he announced that the vice president would be taking charge of an initiative to end cancer: a new initiative in the Obama administration that was first introduced by the Nixon administration.

This appointment by President Obama was actually quite logical since the vice president had apparently called for a moonshot three months ago to cure cancer. It’s also a sentimental appointment on the heels of the death of Beau Biden, the vice president’s son, who lost his life to brain cancer last year.

This appointment came as no surprise to the vice president, who published a blog post following the SOTU and shared it via twitter. The blog shared the vice president’s plans to “accelerate our efforts to progress towards a cure.” He also indicated he wanted to hear from people if cancer had touched their lives. The vice president then went on to let us know that he intends to do two things:

1.) Increase resources — both private and public — to fight cancer.

2.) Break down silos and bring all the cancer fighters together — to work together, share information, and end cancer as we know it.

And that is when I sighed a heavy sigh. A sigh of cynicism, a sigh of sadness, a sigh of defeat. It sounds to me as though we are taking the same approach to dealing with cancer we’ve always taken. Now, simply because we’ve elevated the desire to deal with this disease we expect the same action to produce a different result.

Why, I wondered, were we continuing down the same road? The road of pouring seemingly endless amounts of money down a seemingly endless black hole? Increasing resources in my mind translates to more cash for the pharmaceutical companies. That might make sense to me if the results to date indicated this would be a promising route to take. Unfortunately, in 2015 cancer diagnoses in the US were expected top 1.5 million and cancer deaths were on track to surpass 500,000. It really makes me shake my head to think that $2 billion will be invested in the same fashion – more research conducted by the same people who have had access to billions upon billions of dollars in the past.

Is the vice president asking what will happen if we:

Explore the unconventional?

Invest in the science-based complementary treatments serving cancer patients so well?

Focus on at prevention?

Take a look at some “anecdotal” evidence?

Don’t invest $2 billion in research?

Since I’m not in the inner circle, I can’t say that these questions aren’t being asked. I’d be surprised, though, if discussion of any of these questions is on the agenda.

So…what did I do with my sighs of cynicism, sadness, and defeat? I let them take up a few moments of my time. Then I responded to the vice president’s request for information from anyone whose life had been touched by cancer by:

Leaving a response on his blog post.

Referencing his moonshot in a tweet or two.

Sending him a message via the White House website.

So far, no response. No worries. I’m off to write Vice President a note. After all, this moonshot could do us all a world of good if a few assumptions are kicked to the curb. My advice to the vice president is simple:

Be bold.

Be brave.

Ask difficult questions.

The post Joe Biden’s Moonshot Needs More than $2 Billion appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

Good intentions here. Stop the suffering caused by cancer. Who could argue with that? Well, more than four decades later, it’s time to ask a few tough questions:

Is waging a war on cancer actually waging war on our own bodies? Conventional treatment includes three options:  cutting, poisoning, and burning cancer away via surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. One of the issues with these treatments, of course, is that there is a delicate balance: give the patient enough treatment to kill the cancer cells without killing the patient. While this balancing act may read like a Stephen King novel, it’s a real-life nightmare for way too many people.

Is this what success in the war on cancer looks like? The National Cancer Institute’s website includes expectations for 2015: “In 2015, an estimated 1,658,370 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 589,430 people will die from the disease.” Conduct your own analysis here; however, it’s difficult to argue with the conclusion that these expectations indicate less than stellar success after 40+ years of research, experimentation, and treatment.

Einstein proposed that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result. Isn’t it time to do something different? We seem to think that in order to “beat” cancer the patient needs to go to battle and endure unimaginable suffering. How many times have we heard how close we are to a cure? And that all we need is more funding for research? More clinical trials? This brings up even more questions – questions that begin with What if…

What if stronger drugs aren’t the answer?

What if lifestyle and nutrition play key roles in prevention and healing of cancer?

What if we focus on prevention?

What if we stop referring to screening for cancer as prevention?

Who is benefiting from all of these fundraisers to eradicate cancer? How many billions of dollars have been raised for cancer research? And still, the National Cancer Institute expected more than 1.5 million new cancer diagnoses and more than 500,000 deaths due to cancer in 2015.

Is there a simpler solution? These questions have been asked before – for decades, actually. Dr. John McDougall has been working with cancer patients for more than 40 years. One of his favorite treatments: diet. While he does prescribe drugs for patients and recommends surgery as well, he puts his patients in control of their health by teaching them about the importance of a plant-based diet. Listen to the interview Chris Wark of chrisbeatcancer.com conducted with McDougall – none of the propositions about the relationship between diet and cancer are new; these connections were acknowledged decades ago.

T. Colin Campbell has conducted research showing the impact diet has on chronic diseases. Campbell published the results of his research in The China Study; these results were the opposite of what Campbell thought he’d find.

So what does this all mean?

Keep asking questions if you find yourself or a loved one facing a cancer diagnosis. I’ve written an eBook, 12 Bold Questions to Ask on Your Journey to Health, to serve as a starting point for a conversation for cancer patients and their healthcare teams.

Remember that knowledge is power. Conduct your own research, and know where your healthcare tea is getting its information from.

Listen to your inner voice.

Lots of questions remain. How do you approach the conversation surrounding cancer and other chronic illnesses?

The post Is it Time to Rethink Our Approach to Cancer Treatment? appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

It seems that clean slates, fresh starts, and big dreams are the buzz as we enter the New Year filled with hope and high expectations. I’ve set resolutions in the past – broken them quite quickly – and moved on without hesitation.

So…why am I devoting my first blog post of 2016 to something akin to publicly announcing New Year’s resolutions? It’s all Chris Brogan’s fault. Brogan has set his three words for the year each January 1 since 2006 and encourages the rest of us to join him. It’s easy enough. (Easy meaning it’s a logical approach. Choosing words that fit my life and following through are up to me.) Here’s how it works:

Pick any three words that will guide you in the choices you intend to make for 2016. They should be words that let you challenge yourself as to motives and decisions. They should be words that help you guide your actions.

This seems a much better fit for me than resolutions. Semantics? Maybe, but the way I see it, selecting three words allows for missteps, pivots, and life in general throughout the year. The three words are chosen to guide activity through the year to meet goals. I’ve set intentions for the year in a number of areas of my life. Here is how I see My Three Words moving me forward in both my personal and professional lives this year.

Focus. I never have a shortage of ideas bouncing around in my head. The issue for me is which idea(s) to take action on. Then, of course, once action has been set into motion, there are sooo many shiny objects vying for my attention. It’s easy enough to stay on task: shut down social media windows (what?!?!?), turn off that phone, avoid those pesky distractions, and identify short-term tasks to be completed in support of long-term goals.

Finish. Once I select an idea to act on, I’ll outline what the finished product will look like. No stopping mid-way through project. Eye on the prize of completion. Since I’ve identified the areas I want to concentrate on, it’s easy to say no to proposals that won’t move me forward in reaching my goals. I’m looking forward to doing the happy dance in celebration of project milestones and completion!

Follow-Up.  Input along the way can also open up a variety of possibilities that can be incorporated into a project or put on hold for a later date. When a project / idea reaches the finish phase, follow-up on opportunities that have been presented (versus those distractions that have been kicked to the curb).

Since I’m writing this post on January 4, we’re four days into 2016; and, yes, I’ve begun to put these three words into practice. I’ve identified some goals for 2016 and have accountability partners to help keep me on track. I’ve moved the needle a bit in each of these areas over these four days:

• Shifting business to health coaching
• Publishing my book
• Fitness

What’s your plan for 2016? What’s moving you forward this year? It’s not too late to choose three words to help you have a happy, productive 2016. What do you say?

The post Focus, Finish, Follow-Up: My Three Words for 2016 appeared first on deb nelson consulting.

Riding past my local Y last week, I was glad to see this sign promoting the LiveSTRONG at the YMCA program. This program is “designed to help adult cancer survivors reclaim their total health.”  Participants in the program meet twice a week “to regain their physical, emotional, and spiritual strength.” That’s why I love the idea of this program: there is an acknowledgment that cancer patients need to heal on a number of levels. Cancer affects every nook and cranny of a person’s life and LiveSTRONG at the YMCA aims to address a variety of challenges cancer patients face.

This 12-week program, offered at no cost, also benefits every family member of the cancer patient as it includes a complimentary membership for the entire family.

Printed material sums up this program:

Participants work with Y staff trained in supportive cancer care to safely achieve their goals such as building muscle mass and strength; increasing flexibility and endurance; and improving confidence and self-esteem.  By focusing on the whole person and not the disease, LIVESTRONG at the YMCA is helping people move beyond cancer in spirit, mind, and body.

Restoring strength and physical stamina is important; equally important is the need to restore self-confidence, address relationship issues, and stresses and life changes associated with cancer diagnosis and treatment.  If you know someone who could benefit from this program, please connect with your local Y or LIVESTRONG.

The post Strong Partnerships Helping Cancer Patients appeared first on deb nelson consulting.