The Gift of Now

Are you currently in a situation which is less than ideal – not your dream?  Perhaps you’re in a job you don’t love or something in your personal life is falling short.  In talking with clients lately, I’m noticing two distinct trends. 

The first trend:  the current situation isn’t ideal, but they’ve chosen it for a reason.  The key word here is ‘chosen.’  There’s a plan, and they recognize that where they are today is one step along their path.  It could be they’re staying in a job because they can’t afford the risk of making a change right now, or they’ve put their weight loss program on hold to deal with another health issue.  Because there’s a conscious choice to serve a larger purpose, they can ride out the turbulence that inevitably comes up every day.

One client, Debbie, is working as a contractor for a local software company.  Her current assignment doesn’t give her the opportunity to learn and create, things that are really important to her, but it pays really well.  She had to take this job because she’s currently supporting a sister with children through post-divorce financial issues and needs the money.  Working together we confirmed how strong family is as a core value for her.  Once she recognized this she was OK with putting aside having her dream job for a period of time.  When her sister is back on her feet (Yes, there’s a plan for that.), Debbie will make a change.  

If you find yourself in a less-than-ideal situation for reasons which are right for you (and you’re the only one who can reconcile this), appreciate the gift of what it’s giving you.  At the same time don’t ignore needs not being filled.  Debbie is currently looking at classes at a local community college and taking up jewelry making at a local bead shop to keep learning and creating.

Trend number two is:  you’re stuck. How to tell if you’re stuck?  You feel frustrated, bitter, hopeless, and afraid.  You don’t have a plan – that’s the problem.  In fact, the thought of having a plan seems out of reach. You feel you don’t have any choices or options. It’s like a re-run of the movie Groundhog Day – the same crap keeps happening over and over again.

If you’re stuck, your mindset is your worst enemy.  When you feel hopeless and afraid you lose your objectivity and find it hard to listen to your soul’s voice over the sound of yourself shouting about how bad things are.  What to do?

Step one is to acknowledge that you’re stuck and make a decision, right now, to get unstuck.  Give that gift to yourself – it’s the easy part.  The hard part is taking the action needed to get moving. 

Find your inner voice – it knows what to do.  It’s under there, but you won’t hear it until you get quiet. Stilling your mind doesn’t happen in front of the tv, at a bar, or during a harried, overscheduled day.  It happens when your mind is engaged yet relaxed and you stop the mental chatter about how unhappy you are.  Perhaps go to the driving range, go for a hike, practice yoga, meditate.  During this time make a commitment to not dwell on negative thoughts and be open to whatever comes up.

This may take some practice, but once you begin to listen to your inner voice, ask, what do I want?  Don’t settle for the lame answer of what you don’t want.  What you want is not necessarily the opposite - go deeper.  It can get frustrating.  You might cry, “I don’t know what I want – just make the pain stop!!!”  I know it’s hard and scary, but keep at it.  You’re on your way, and when you can begin to answer the question of what you want you’ve got the seed of a plan. 

You deserve to live the life of your dreams.  If something is less than your dream, a coach can help you sort things through and ask those hard questions to help you get unstuck.  Call me for a complimentary consultation, and let’s get moving.

3 Ways to Tap Into Your Creativity

You need to come up with a solution, find a new angle, figure out what to do next, but nothing’s coming.  Your mind is blank. Or it’s so full of conflicting thoughts that you can’t find a thread to follow.  You take out a pen and start to map it out, but instead of drawing a picture, you’re scrawling back and forth until all you have is a blotch. You’re frustrated and all clenched up.  Here are 3 simple ways to unclench and move forward.

Find your flow.  You do this by letting go. The harder you try, the tighter you clench, and the tighter you clench the more frustrated you become.  It’s a vicious cycle.  The solution is to break that cycle.  Just walk away and go do something else.  Exercise is great for this.  Take a walk or do some yoga.  For me, I get on an elliptical trainer, plug in my favorite workout mix and get lost in the music.  After about 15 minutes, my mind starts to relax, and my creativity comes through.  By the time I’m done, I have so many great thoughts.  I had to buy a little digital voice recorder to get them all out of my head so I wouldn’t lose them.  Go with the flow.

Trust in the power of the group.  This was one of my favorite pieces of advice to the project managers on my team.  Groups have tremendous creative powers and can come up with solutions and ideas that you, working alone, cannot.  Napoleon Hill wrote the seminal work on this topic  Think and Grow Rich.  Don’t have access to a group?  Even with as few as 2 people working together, the engagement creates a third mind, a mastermind.  A best friend, business partner, mentor, manager, or coach (like me!) is a great place to start.  The give and take of a group will leapfrog you out of your current environment and take you someplace you would never have thought of on your own.

One great group activity is brainstorming.  Sometimes when I’m brainstorming with a client who’s stuck, they spend time trying to shoot down every idea.  That’s a huge no-no.  In brainstorming most ideas aren’t workable, but that’s not the point.  The purpose of brainstorming is to open your mind – to get you out of your own way and expand your thinking.  While a specific idea may not be it oftentimes the answer lies in a derivative of an idea, or a combination of ideas that provides the inspiration for a new way of looking at something. 

Beware of the negative.  When I ask clients what they want to accomplish or where they’d like to take their life, they typically start with a long list of what they don’t want, and that list is always relative to what they have today.  It’s like they’re clinging to the side of a swimming pool afraid to let go and swim out to the deep end.  What if what you really want has nothing to do with what you have today?  How can you possibly hear your inner voice if you won’t let go?  Take all the energy you’re spending hating your current situation and channel it into getting in touch with the voice of your inspiration – your inner Dreamer.  Let yourself want something even if you don’t know right now how you’re going to get it. You have to start somewhere.  Start with what you want.

Oftentimes when I’m coaching my radar sounds an alarm:  does this person really want to move forward?  Are they ready, or do they just want someone to validate their current position?  Funny thing about coaches – we don’t validate the status quo, especially if you’re stuck.  We’re all about forward movement and change.  You came to us for a reason.

Last week I was in the Bay Area attending a course with Dream University learning a powerful ten step process for tapping into your inspiration and realizing your dreams. Contact me for a free consultation when you’re ready to get unstuck and build your life around your dreams. (pnorton93@comcast.net)

Are You In A Funk?

It might be the time of year, or the stars might be out of alignment (need to check Astrology Zone), but over the past couple of weeks so many people I’ve spoken with say they’re in a funk.  They’re blue, feeling listless, burned out, and worst of all, hopeless.  They’re not feeling fulfilled, and they’re frustrated and scared that this is the best it will be for them. 

You can’t read your way out of a funk no matter what the magazine and self-help aisles at the bookstore promise.  You can’t daydream your way out, or complain your way out, or talk your way out, or shop your way out (tried it…).  The key to the exit door is labeled:  take action.  But what action, your whiney voice asks?  It doesn’t matter – just do something. If it feels right, do more. If it doesn’t help, do something else.

If you’re feeling burned out or in a funk, here are some ideas that might work or at least spark other ideas that will move you to action.

Set boundaries:  If you’re feeling burned out, you may need to put your foot down and set some boundaries so you can recharge your battery.  The boundary may need to be set with a family member, employer, staff, or friend, but it’s also likely that you are your own worst enemy.  Are you so important that you feel you have to work 12 to 14 hour days or the world will end?  Heads of state are the only ones entitled to this feeling.  There are selected times when this may be called for, like implementation weekend on a big project, but if it’s the rule rather than the exception, you have a boundary issue.  Few people are productive and discerning at the end of an 8 hour day.  Rearrange your calendar if you can to do the heavy lifting when you’re at your best.  For some people that’s early morning, for others it’s later in the day.  Also, take your weekends off and take your vacation days.  Oftentimes the biggest disappointment an ‘over-worker’ encounters when they get laid off is that the company continues on just fine without them.  If you’re the one who ends up carrying the heaviest load, take a look in the mirror and ask some hard questions about whether you’re being taken advantage of by your manager or your team.

Reconnect with your passion:  Do you have a passion?  I know you do, you may have just lost touch with it.  If you’re feeling disconnected, begin with take baby steps.  Make a list of 10 things that make you happy and 10 things that bring you pleasure.  Is there an issue that makes your blood boil or that you could talk about for hours?  Is there an activity you could do all day and have it feel like 5 minutes?  My friend Michele loves to draw floor and space plans.  She can do this for hours on end.  These are clues to a deeper connection.  Find those threads and follow them.

Dare to dream of the life you want:  Some people are afraid to dream.  They’re afraid to get a vivid image of their deepest desire because they’re afraid they’ll never have it and be doomed to a life of disappointment.  In my opinion, the surest way to not get the life of your dreams is to not have a dream.  So go ahead and let the genie out of the bottle.  You could start with making a dream board or write about your ideal day in your journal.  Then find little things you can do today to move in that direction.

Get a buddy:  This could be a coach or a personal trainer, or a friend.  I now have a walking buddy, Laura.  We walk 3.6 miles three days a week most weeks.  Believe me, I wouldn’t be getting out of bed at 6:30 in the morning in the freezing cold and pouring rain to go for a walk if I didn’t know that Laura would be standing at the top of my driveway waiting for me.  This is the primary advice in all health magazines, and being the independent “I can do it on my own” person, I poo-poo’d it for years. It works; try it. 

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.

Clear the Clutter

In early December I went to visit my dear friend who lives in sunny San Diego.  As usual we did girlfriend things – went out for dinners, to see a movie, walked on the beach with her dogs.  But most importantly we spent two days cleaning out and organizing her closet. 

My friend’s job requires her to commute to a different city three days a week, so she lives a third of the time out of a suitcase. Also, her weight has fluctuated down then up again over the past two years leaving her with two different wardrobes.  Her closet had become an energy-sucking abyss filled with dry cleaning bags, stuff on the floor, baskets of unfolded laundry, and reminders of her battle with her weight.  She hated going in there and dreaded Monday nights when she had to pack for the week.  It was increasingly a source of stress, and as it got worse and worse, she finally couldn’t deny the impact.

So we dug in.  My mantra for the start of any project is: what would success look and feel like?  Other key questions include:  What did she want her closet to do for her?  What adjectives describe her dream closet?

At the end of two days we had donated all the clothes and jewelry she didn’t want anymore, moved all the clothes she wanted to keep but weren’t in season to another room out of sight/out of mind leaving just the things she currently wore and loved.  This required a lot of decision making.  Some decisions were easy (Do you really need to keep that necklace that you used to wear to work in 1986?) some were harder.  We just kept going back to her answers to those key questions. In the end she got a functional, tidy and pretty closet that even now almost three months later makes her smile.  She’s inspired to declutter other rooms in her house, and eventually we’ll get to the garage.

Hanging on to things that don’t work for you anymore, that you’ve grown out of, grown away from, or evolved beyond drains your energy. Denise Linn, author of  Feng Shui for the Soul, says "clutter-clearing is modern-day alchemy." Every time you are willing to let go and clear out what no longer fits, the rest of your life steps up to the plate and you create space for amazing opportunity, creativity, and serendipity.

Clutter is more than just physical stuff.  What else is cluttering up your life?

Do you have habits that don’t work for you?  You know that vegging in front of the television for hours every night eating junk food isn’t contributing to your fitness goals, but you do it anyway.   Knowing is not the same as doing, and the pull of ingrained bad habits is very strong. 

Are you hanging onto relationships that drain your energy, yet you don’t know how to disengage?  You can’t always walk away from toxic, energy-sucking people; e.g., when they’re your family.  If you have any of these vampires in your life, you need to be really clear about what you’ll tolerate and what you won’t and establish clear boundaries.

Are you carrying around beliefs about yourself that may have served a useful purpose at some time, but that don’t reflect who you are today?  Many of us developed a protective layer and a story as a result of emotional wounds.  This armor helps you feel safe but it also keeps your true self, your essence, trapped behind a wall.  If you’re seeking more meaning in your life and want to be accepted and appreciated for who you are, how can this happen when the real you is locked away?

It can be really scary to let go - to let go of things we spent money on, that we might have loved at one time, that hold memories, that protect us, that help our life feel safe and familiar.  But if you want to make changes, pursue your dreams, open yourself up to new experiences and new relationships, you need to clear away the clutter of what’s not working for you anymore. 

So get that broom out and start sweeping!