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For Women in Business who want to take Scary Big Risks and anyone who wants to be a better Leader this afternoon

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I’m Dizzy with Fatique. You?

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Have you ever worked so hard, tried so hard that you were dizzy with fatigue?  And kept working until you were even more tired?  So tired you broke out in silliness?

I’ve done that a few times, working on proposals.  But there was something I was headed for, a prize I was seeking.  Have you ever been pumped up  with knowing that you were in the midst of doing your very best work?   That was the prize I was seeking; I have felt it several times in my life – lifted up, buoyed up, lifting, flying, knowing that my work was receiving the very best I had.  The work might not please everyone, there might be plenty of comments in red ink, but it was my very best work.

I hope to be lifted up many times when writing to you, buoyed up, doing my best work.  I hope you are that way sometimes too.

 

How To Silence Bad Thoughts

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“The Queen of Hearts turned crimson with fury, and after glaring at [Alice] for a moment like a wild beast, began screaming again and again, ‘Off with her head!  Off with her head!  Off with — ‘

‘NONSENSE!’ said Alice.

And the Queen was silent.”         (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)

Exactly.

How To Turn Your “Oh Crap!” Into The Beginnings of Success in 1 Step

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Studies are proving how important optimism is to mental health.  Optimism is absolutely essential in increasing your resilience.

What is optimism?

Optimism is this:  the skill of believing that, unless every piece of hard evidence is pointing the opposite way, the current situation is as likely to turn out well as not, and even if it doesn’t turn out well, it can still benefit you, will still bring all kinds of insights and lessons with it, if you’re calm and eager enough to look for them.  The “calm and eager” comes from optimism.

You Can Solve This

When we don’t know how to respond or solve something, and we feel our mood start to slide down the side of a cliff of “Oh crap!  This is gonna fail.  I don’t know how to do this”, a crucial mental step is to edit “I don’t know” into “I don’t know YET”.

Then  – and this is the step you cannot do without – give yourself over to curiosity.  As I’ve said to clients many times, “hundreds of thousands of people before you have solved this.  You’re a people.  You can solve this.  You just haven’t solved it YET.”

Do you agree that Optimism is a key to mental health?  When was the last situation when you could have used “I just haven’t solved it YET” ?  Please comment – we want to hear from you!

One Simple Tip To Help You Act Without Fear

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Women sometimes make fun of men’s ability to compartmentalize – that men can fight with us one minute and want to make love the next, because the fight is compartmentalized away as ancient history.

Compartmentalizing is an Important Talent

When it comes to fear and anxiety, compartmentalizing the fear away is an important talent and one we could all cultivate.

You Are Making Yourself Afraid

You think that the thing in front of you is making you afraid, but that’s not true.  The thing is just the thing; the person next to you could do it without being afraid.

The thing is not making you afraid; you are making you afraid.  Your thoughts about the past and the future are making you afraid.  Compartmentalize fears of the past and the future away from the thing that you have to do.   If you want to, you can lovingly, caringly tell the fear that you’ll be back to talk to it in its compartment.

Close The Door

Then close the door on the compartment, and go do the thing.  You can come back to the fear later if you want to.  It’ll still be there.

Or maybe it won’t.

I Don’t Have To Try THAT Again

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There have been glitches on this website that I have to fix.  I don’t want to know how to fix it; I just want it to work.  But I also want to know how to fix it; you know what I mean?  But what I’m trying isn’t working.

A Step to Mastery

I just read a little blurb about failure.  It suggested I re-label my failure (I’m all about re-labeling) as a “step to mastery”.  I like it.  I know we’ve heard it before, that Edison said after 1,800 failed attempts at finding a working light bulb filament, “how do I feel about it?  I tell myself that’s 1,800 things I don’t have to try again.”  But it never got through to me until now.

Just Stay Curious

Borrowing from Edison, pushing on after something doesn’t work is all about staying curious.  It seems to me now that there’s little about disappointment or adverse circumstances that a living, breathing, I’ll-keep-on-and-see-what-I-can-find-out curiosity can’t overcome.

Next time I’m fixing this website, I’m going to stay curious about finding out the next step.  I’ll keep saying to myself “Ah, another step to mastery.  Just another step I won’t have to try again.”

What do you say to yourself to keep going?

My Plan Failed But It Was Still a Good Plan

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During a warm spell in February 2014, I took a break from work and went out to transplant a rose bush that was about to die in its old location.  I had selected the location carefully:  enough sun but not too hot and dry, good soil, all the right things.  I had thought through the plan and the location.  It was a good plan and it should have worked.  But it didn’t.

My well-planned work failed.

I felt no guilt that my plan didn’t work.  I felt a little tired from the care I’d taken, but it didn’t bother me one bit that the plan didn’t work.

But it was still a good plan.

Just because the plan didn’t work doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good plan.

The test of a plan’s goodness is not whether it works.  It’s whether you thought it all the way through, seeing the the hard parts, the possible problems, the consequences, and the barriers and pre-planning answers to them all.

What do you think when a plan fails?  Do you still believe it was a good plan

One Quick Way To Turn Your Brain Into A Giant Search Engine

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Neurological research has shown that when you perceive a threat, your brain believes it’s threatened too, so it shoves out stress hormones that cause the brain to shut down, be less creative, and come up with few solutions.

Say This To Your Brain

If you tell your brain instead, “Cool!  A challenge!  I wonder what we can do about this?”  your brain turns into a giant search engine, intent on churning out ideas that will solve the problem.

Happy searching.

Do This If You Want Your Boss To Have Your Back

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Do you want the support of your boss?  Want him or her to have your back?  We all want that, don’t we?

Rick the Boss used to tell me, “I don’t care if you take risks as long as your paperwork’s done.”  He meant that as long as my timesheets and expense reports were in and approved (which meant that rules had been obeyed and minimum billed hours met), as long as I was clear on which critical rules to follow and was following them, I was free to take big risks.

Support for Big Scary Risks

As long as I wasn’t asking him to excuse me or cover for me on the fundamentals he expected me to respect, he was saying he’d have my back and support me on the scary-big sales opportunities I was good at.  As long as my paperwork was done.

It’s A Transaction

I came to understand that it wasn’t a matter of Rick trusting me, trusting that I could succeed at scary-big sales; it was a transaction between us.  Are you taking care of your boss on the fundamentals so he can have your back on the scary-big stuff?

Are you?  In what ways could you cover the fundamentals better so that your boss can have your back?   Please Comment.

 

 

 

What Simple Thing Can I Do To Have More Confidence?

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Action brings answers, insights, and lessons learned from successes and from failures.  Therefore, action breeds insights, courage, and confidence.

Inaction brings no insights.  Inaction breeds doubt and fear.  Inaction helps you find more and better places to hide.

Did you think inaction would get you something else?

Small Actions Work

The action required to get you more confidence doesn’t have to be big.  It can be small.  It just has to BE.  Act on anything.  Do anything on your list, however small.  Take a clear look at the nice little result you got.

Repeat.

How do you think the rest of us learned to have confidence?

Please tell me your opinion.  This is such a deep subject – please join in.

 

What in the Heck Was He Asking?

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Here is a very important lesson in Self-Leadership.

Many years ago, when the first big firm I worked for had been sold, and at the new firm, I’d made a couple of dramatic big sales, the new supervisor asked me to work more with the original members of his firm, even though neither our work nor our clients overlapped.  I see now I had no idea what he was asking.

I Never Asked

I know I never asked him because I was sure at the time I knew what he meant.  I was sure he was asking me to do the very thing I didn’t want to do:  work on his other employees’ projects in order to increase my billed hours.  I didn’t like that.  I was a big-picture business developer and risk-taker, both of which strengths had resulted in big sales for the new firm.  I wanted to have free rein to do more of that and not be pressured over my billed hours.  After all, my job was to create work and billable hours for other people, and I was good at it.  “Doesn’t he know that??” I said to myself.

I Thought I Already Knew

Who knows what he knew?  Who knows what he was asking?  I certainly didn’t because I didn’t ask him.  Who knows what I might have learned if I’d asked him for his wants and needs and then leaned in?  But I’ll never know because I was sure I already knew.  To answer your question, no, I didn’t comply with his request, which added to our never really getting along, though at the time I didn’t believe I had any role in that.  Sam, if you’re reading this, I was wrong.  I should have asked you want you meant and what you wanted.

Reader, have you ever made that mistake of thinking you already knew?  Please “comment”.

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