Choices

When you think back on your life, what pops into your mind’s eye?  If you were to write your story, you’d probably anchor it around a series of Y’s in the road, defining moments that took your life in a different direction. It may have been an event in your family or your world that impacted you, but just as often it was a choice you made. 

It’s fun to read books or watch movies about alternate histories where the hero sees what life would have been like if a different choice had been made at a key pivot point.  I’m a big fan of the movie Back to the Future and the Quantum Leap tv show.  I wonder what my life would be like today if I hadn’t broken up with my boyfriend of 3 years, Bob, to marry someone else, aka the Jerk.  (Give me a break… I was 18.)   Would we have gotten married, had kids, broken up anyway?  Who knows, but what I do know is that the consequences of that choice played a major role in shaping the life I live today.

When we write our life story, it’s these defining moments that stand out.  Regrets often stem from bad choices made at these points and they can haunt us for years.  But your story - your life - is so much more.  In fact, it’s the small choices you make every day that quietly form the basis of your life.  It’s not big drama, just a slow drip, drip, drip that shapes you over time. 

These smaller choices fly under the radar.  Think back on your day.  How many choices did you make?  Was it 4 or 6?  What to have for breakfast, lunch, dinner – that’s 3.  Of course it varies by day, but I’ll bet there’s a big gap between the number of choices you made consciously and those that you made unconsciously.  One key to making changes in your life is to turn that around.  If you increase your awareness in the moment and make conscious choices aligned with your goals and priorities you’ll begin to move in the direction you want to go. 

Habits are unconscious choices on autopilot, and they can support or sabotage your dreams. Is it easier to start a good habit or to stop a bad one?  For me it’s easier to start a good habit since I can tie it in a positive way to something I want to accomplish.  Stopping a bad habit feels like deprivation.  But you might be different.  Experiment on yourself to find what works for you, and remember that it takes time for new behaviors to be come habits. 

Perfection is not the goal; the key is to make progress. Do what works for you, but in order to do that, you need to know what’s working.  Put in place practices that build awareness in support of your goal; e.g., a food diary, exercise or training journal, spending log, tracking time wasters like oversleeping or hours of tv watching.  (Try it, you’ll be amazed..and shocked…how fast the hours in front of the tube add up.)

In addition to wrangling your habits, look out for non-choices like procrastination. If you find yourself procrastinating about a project or a task, you’re really making an unconscious choice to let something, usually fear, stop you.  When you feel yourself resisting getting something done, bring the issue to the surface by hearing my little voice in your head asking in a quiet, non-judgmental way:  what’s going on, what’s stopping you, what are you afraid of?  Be gentle but honest with yourself and try to identify what it is.  Once you bring it to the surface and name it, you can craft a strategy to address the issue like asking for help.

If you’d like to hear my little voice in your head for real, give me a call for a 30 minute complimentary coaching session. Working with a coach is a great way to increase your awareness around your choices, habits and non-choices.

Risk Management

During my last two years at Washington Mutual Bank I worked in the Risk Management group heading up a program to reduce deposit fraud.  Fraud is fascinating and scary!  One of the keys to our success was balancing the bank’s sales and service goals with the changes we were implementing to make us a less attractive target.  It was a tricky balance that took a strong partnership across multiple business functions.  

Good risk management doesn’t equate to zero risk.  The best risk management functions embrace the business objectives and collaborate in designing strategies to support those objectives in a manner that minimizes or mitigates risk.

How are you doing as Chief Risk Officer of Your Life, Inc.?  Are you managing the balance between your objectives and risk or are you too risk averse?

People seem to fall into two categories:  those who define themselves by their successes and those who define themselves by their failures.  When we have a setback we tend to ask, what went wrong? When things don’t turn out as planned, we often stop whatever we’re trying to do and shy away from going down that road again – there’s just too much risk as evidenced by firsthand experience. 

But people who are pursing their dreams and have a track record of success will ask, what could I have done differently, what did I learn, and what role did I play in how things turned out?  They then take those learnings and either walk away or make adjustments to reduce the risk of repeating the setback.  Seth Godin wrote a great little book on deciding when to walk away called The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick). 

So, CRO of Your Life, Inc., thinking back on 2010, what were your successes over the past year and what were your failures?  Draw a line and put success at one end and failure at the other and list them out.  I know failure seems like a strong word – think of it as things that didn’t turn out and things you walked away from - non-successes.  

Then look at the middle.  That’s where the goals not met often reside, the dreams not pursued, the abyss that creates a ho-hum life.  It might be the zone of work in progress, but it’s usually the zone of inaction or not enough action.  As the economy continues to create challenges, we don’t want failures so we forego creating success.  Things just sit in the middle until they die on the vine.

Now put on the CEO hat of Your Life, Inc. and think ahead.  What do you want in 2011?  Are you willing to dare to dream, take a risk and try for success knowing that a setback could occur?  Is your Chief Risk Officer on board collaborating to develop strategies that will support your objectives while appropriately managing the risk? Or is your CRO sabotaging your success?

I have a client who desperately wants a different life, but she is frozen in place by fear.  She’s afraid that she won’t be able to have what she really wants for her life and won’t even let herself dream.  She’s afraid she’ll get laid off and not have enough money to live, so she stays in a job she doesn’t like which is sapping her confidence.  This pile-up of fears combined with low self-esteem is so strong that she needs to feel safe and be comforted.  Guess what she does to comfort herself?  Shopping – resulting in credit card debt which is one of the factors feeding her fears keeping her penned into her current situation. 

Why do we do this to ourselves?  She’s not alone.  How many of us engage in self-sabotaging behaviors every day to help us feel safe and keep us on familiar ground?  We desperately want a different life but are unwilling to make foundational changes in thinking and actions that would create change and move us to where we want to go.  Our Chief Risk Officer (and Chief Financial Officer in my client’s case) need to get on board!

What about you?  Are you foregoing your own dreams by being unwilling to go for success?  By being unwilling to challenge and change the limiting beliefs and behaviors which keep you tied to your current situation?  Give me a call when you’re ready to have a talk with your Risk Mangement department and get them on board with supporting your dreams.

Rethink Time Management

Do you often feel there aren’t enough hours in the day between the demands of work and your family and other commitments?  If you find yourself saying yes, expand your thinking about traditional time management and try a different approach next time you’re feeling overwhelmed.


Not having enough time is a challenge that I hear all the time.  Many of us juggle work and family and often get to the point of asking:  when do I get time for me, for my hobbies, and my dreams?  Many people are just in survival mode trying to make it through another day or until the weekend.


Cell phones, email, instant messaging, texting.  There’s a growing expectation that we’ll be instantly available to anyone who wants to get in touch with us at any time.  These constant interruptions and demands on our time are exhausting.  We’re also challenged at work with having to get more done with fewer resources due to budget cuts and layoffs. Carreerbuilder.com found that 78% of the people they surveyed say they’re on the verge of burnout.

In one respect, we’re all the same.  We all have exactly 24 hours in every day.  So why do some people make better use of their time?   Do they have a better tool?  Traditional time management tools can help us schedule our time and prioritize our tasks, but finding new ways to slice and dice time is not always the answer.  What else can help? 

Manage your Energy.  Unlike time, which is finite, you can increase your energy. 

You might be thinking, oh, I’ve heard that before.  Become more physically fit so I can have the stamina to cram more into my day.  When people think about energy, the first thing that comes to mind is physical energy.  But, there are other forms of energy which are just as important.  In fact they’re all interconnected.  Begin to increase one type of energy, and it will carry over into the other areas.

Mental energy engages your mind.  It brings focus.  There are a number of practices that can increase your mental energy such as clearing away clutter and eliminating multi-tasking, which I call activity clutter.  It’s anti-focus. There’s also a strong correlation between physical and mental energy.  If I eat something sugary for breakfast my mind gets fuzzy, and it can take hours for me to be able to focus.  On the other hand, after I get back from a morning walk, my mind is racing with creative thoughts.

Emotional energy is charged or drained by your relationships with others and with yourself.  Do you know an energy vampire?  Hopefully it’s not someone in your family or your boss.  Limit exposure or eliminate these people from your life.  That’s easier said than done because sometimes that energy vampire is you.  I asked a client:  what does your inner voice say to you?  He replied, it says I’m shit.  Yikes! Once he started to practice more positive self-talk, his emotional energy improved which enabled him to make other changes.

Perhaps the most powerful energy is spiritual or purpose energy.  Not religious, but being strongly connected to your purpose, values and passions.  An energy deficit here is often the source of feeling disconnected.  When I get a new coaching client I ask them to make a list of 10 things that make them happy and 10 things that give them pleasure.  This can be very challenging for some people because they’re so out of touch with even this level of connection.

Where to start?  Start working with whatever form of energy you most identify with.  It really doesn’t matter as long as you do start.  You’ll create a ripple effect and other forms of energy will begin to increase.  Once you make some headway, you’ll find that you’ll be making better choices and therefore making better use of the finite amount of time you have every day. 

If you’d like to read more on this and be inspired by some great examples, here are two book recommendations:

This is a quick read on the power of creating positive energy.

The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy
This is a great book with lots of examples of changes to make to increase physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy.
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
Call me when you're ready to tackle those energy drains so you can have the time and energy to be your best.