Month: January 2019

(2 minute read time)

“Everything in my life gets just the right amount of time and attention”: said no one ever.  

Often, when we think of a balanced life we think of having all the time we need to do all of the things we want to do.        

You all know I think nothing is impossible.  So, I am not falling for the whole “balance is unattainable” argument.  At the same time, I am consciously NOT pursuing it. I am not sure it’s worth it.    

We all get 24 hours each day.  I do not want a life where those 24 hours are somehow uniformly doled to the different areas of my life.    

Instead, I like to think of priorities and accept that there will be seasons in my life where a lot of my time is intentionally going to a certain area.    

Years ago I was pursuing my college degree while working full time.  During that season, my priorities were work and school, work and school, work and school.  It wasn’t that I did not care about other areas of my life. But, I wanted to pay for my degree at the same time I was earning it in order to avoid a boat-load of debt.   My life was very UN-balanced and I wanted it that way.

Gaining forward momentum on that thing you have always wanted to accomplish or achieve often means having to direct most of your energy towards it.  At least for a period of time.

Letting go of the idea that we SHOULD have balance is so freeing.  It’s much easier to decide what to do with our time when we have a conscious priority.

I am not suggesting that we carelessly ignore the other areas.  Instead, look at each area of your life and determine what is the #1 most important thing for each.  Then, focus on those. Rinse and repeat.

Have you consciously chosen your priorities?  Or, are you running around trying to squelch the loudest voices and feeling desperate for some “balance”?  I can help.

Click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session.    

(2 minute read time)

No matter if you are a seasoned leader or just getting started on your leadership journey, leadership involves fear.  Heck, let’s be honest LIFE involves fear whether you are a leader or not.

Forbes magazine cites several fears leaders face:

• Criticism
• Failure
• Making decisions
• Public Speaking
• Responsibility
• Having to be perfect
• Having to be 100% fair
• Motivating people
• Being accessible 24/7

Let’s start by defining fear.  I Googled it and found the following definition:

“an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat”.

If you have read any of my work, you know I teach that thoughts create feelings.  If you agree with that, then you will join me in the idea that fear comes from our thoughts.  

The definition of fear above supports this theory.  It literally says the emotion of fear is “caused by the belief” that something is dangerous, may be painful or is a threat.  The definition does not say that the threat is real.

If we can latch on to the idea that it is our thoughts creating the fear we can experience so much freedom from the fear.  Why? Because we get to think anything we want to.

Recognize that fear is just your brain doing it’s job.  It’s supposed to warn you of imminent dangers. But, you have to ask yourself “Is what I am afraid of really dangerous?”.  Most of the time the answer is no.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “That’s nice Deneen, but am I really just supposed to think a happy thought about my fear and then it will go away?”

My answer is: You don’t have to be fearless to take action.  You can acknowledge the fear and move forward anyway. Don’t let fear mean stop.  At the same time, just know the thing causing the fear is what you are thinking. All thoughts are completely optional.  All of them.

There is not one thing on the list of fears above that you can’t handle.  And if your fear is something else that’s not on the list, I suspect you can handle that too.        

Let’s tackle your fears together.  Click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session with me.     

(2 minute read time)

Early on in my leadership career I had this one “problem” employee, let’s call her “Julie”

In my mind, Julie was just miserable and she was determined to make everyone around her miserable too.  Everything she said was negative – what wasn’t working, what was wrong, what could go wrong.

I wanted to like her, I just didn’t.  

I will be honest.  I never did learn to like her when she worked for me.  But, I did not know then what I know now.

Julie was never the problem.  People never are.

The real problem is that our brains like to be right and they look for evidence to support what we already believe.  

I mostly had negative beliefs about her and my ability to change anything about this situation.  All of this only added negativity to the situation and made it impossible to move in a different direction.    

Most of us think in order to feel better about a situation, the situation has to change. It just isn’t true.

I did not have to wait for Julie to be happy, or better, or “normal”.  

The only thing we need to do is recognize that what we are feeling now comes from our thoughts and acknowledge we are choosing those thoughts.   From that place, we can choose better feeling thoughts (believable ones of course).

Here’s some I could have used back then:  

Julie is perfectly human .

I am willing to continue working towards a solution .

Julie is unhappy about _____, and that’s ok.

I am a good leader, even if Julie is having a bad day.

It’s possible that ________.

I could be wrong about _____.

Want to learn more about how to feel better about a situation you’re in?  Click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session with me.   

(2.5 minute read time)

You may be thinking I had a little too much eggnog this holiday season.  You may be asking yourself “Why would I want to earn haters??”

Here’s why.  

It means you are showing up in the world in an authentic way.  

Let’s be clear.  I am not talking about going out there and deliberately trying to be disruptive, rude, disrespectful, hurtful.

What I am talking about is being brave enough to be you, the real you.  To stop putting some version of you out there that you believe people will like.

Brene Brown calls it “Wholehearted”.  People who live from a place of worthiness, of being enough.  People who are willing to be vulnerable because at the end of the day, it does not really matter if someone likes you or not – you are still enough.

Our human brains are literally wired to seek acceptance, to avoid rejection at all costs.  Guy Winch Ph.D. describes it this way:  “In our hunter/gatherer past, being ostracized from our tribes was akin to a death sentence, as we were unlikely to survive for long alone…[therefore] the brain developed an early warning system to alert us when we were at risk for ostracism”.  That’s great because it got us to this point in our evolution. The problem is that wiring still exists and rejection no longer equates to certain death.

As leaders we make difficult decisions.  We share unpopular news or policy changes. We have concern about how theses decisions and changes will be received.

I am not suggesting that we disregard how our team members receive our messages.  I am not suggesting that our leadership styles do not matter. What I am suggesting is that the opinions of others have everything to do with them and nothing to do with your worthiness as a leader or a human being.  Your worthiness, and theirs, is already decided – it’s 100%.  

When you show up as your true self, there will those who appreciate who you are and others who do not.  If your authentic self is willing to be bold and brave, you may even earn some haters.

My coach often says “You can be the juiciest peach in the world and there’s still going to be someone who doesn’t like peaches”.  

By the way, I do not like peaches.  At all. Even the smell is awful to me.  That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with peaches.                

Let’s talk some more about this or any other leadership topic you are facing today. Click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session.    

(2 minute read time)

Have you ever felt overwhelmed, frustrated, annoyed, irritated and thrown your hands up and thought or said “Why me???”

Why do I have to experience this hardship, this difficulty?  Don’t I have enough going on?? Now I have to deal with THIS too??  

Sometimes, it just all feels like too much.  

I have found in those moments it is easy to wallow in the muck and mire.  I can find lots of evidence for why it should not be the way it is.

But, when I do that all I am doing is arguing with reality.  Byron Katie says “When I argue with reality, I lose – but only 100% of the time.”

My track record, and yours, for surviving the bad days and the tough times is literally perfect.  You are here, reading this. That means you survived every single day prior to this one.

Of course it’s you who gets to take on the challenges of your day.  You are the one who can do something about them. And it starts with believing, really believing, you can.

Feeling overwhelmed (or any other emotion) comes from our thoughts. Take a few moments to explore what you are thinking and it will become very obvious, very quickly why you are feeling overwhelmed.

So today, consider the challenges you are up against and instead of asking “Why me?” ask yourself “Why NOT me?”.  

Sometimes we have a hard time seeing how we are uniquely wired to address the challenges we face, we struggle to see the good in ourselves.  If that’s you, I can help. Click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session with me.    

(2 minute read time)

In the last few posts I’ve written about setting and achieving goals.  This time we are going to dive a deeper into what it takes to make your goal a reality.  

Nothing becomes reality without action.  But, not just any ol’ action will do.

For example, a friend of mine has gotten into Stand-Up Paddleboarding.  Have you seen this or tried it? It looks much easier than it actually is!  

Let’s say I wanted to learn to paddleboard as well as she does.  There are a lot of things I could do. I could read about it, watch videos, talk to people who are good at it.  I could also take lessons and I could practice.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for how to become a proficient paddleboarder.  But I am pretty confident in saying that no one has accomplished this without actually getting on a paddleboard and falling off – a lot.  

As you have read through my work you know that I teach thoughts create feelings.  The next important, critical piece to understand is that our feelings drive our actions.  Feelings and emotions are not something commonly discussed or examined in many environments – the business world included.   I find this unfortunate because they are the thing behind everything we (and our employees) do – or don’t do.

When I tried paddle boarding I fell – hard.  In order to get back up and try again, I have to have an emotion that would drive me to take that action.  Determination perhaps. If I felt discouraged or hopeless I am not likely to get back up and try again.

In order to feel determination, I have to think thoughts that create it.  

The same is true for you and your 2019 goals.  

Once you think intentionally about your goal and generate purposeful emotion you will find yourself taking the right kind of actions that support it.  

Not all of the actions you take towards your goals will get you there.  We have to have a commitment to keep taking action until we reach the desired outcome – my coach calls this Massive Action.  

Massive Action is different from the intellectual action we often take by reading a book, taking a class or watching a video.  Sure those things are actions, and they are not all bad. But really they’re Passive Action. It’s just gathering ideas about the Massive Action you could take one day (if you felt like it).                 

Want to explore how to make Massive Action a part of your plans to make your 2019 goals a reality?  Click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session with me.  

(3 minute read time)

We are 9 days into 2019.   How are you doing on that New Year’s Resolution?  

In my last post I gave you 4 reasons why you want to set a goal.  And in this one I am going to give 5 steps to see it through.

Lots of studies have been done and we all know most resolutions don’t stick and goals go unachieved.   So how do we stop this?

1. Make sure your goal is meaningful to you  – the goals someone else gives us or thinks we should achieve are often not compelling.  Take some time to hang out with yourself and ask yourself what you would do if you were not too busy, too fearful, too tired.  Imagine all of it is possible (because it is) and then pick the thing you are most drawn to. Don’t spin in confusion here, just pick one.    
2. Know your WHY – Think about the reason you want to accomplish the goal you chose.  You will need this to fall back on when you don’t feel like doing what it takes to get there.  Simon Sinek, in his famous Ted Talk implores us that “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.  The same is true for ourselves. We don’t buy into just the outcome of our desires, we buy into WHY we want it.  Why do you want to lose the weight? Get the promotion? Earn that advanced degree? Run the marathon? Whatever it is – know your why.
3. Anticipate obstacles – Think about everything that could get in the way of the finish line.  This includes “not feeling like it”. Write these all down. Next, and most importantly, develop realistic strategies for every single obstacle.  Write those down too.
4. Ditch the To Do list – To Do lists are a waste of time.  Get rid of all your To Do lists. Use your calendar.  If you are already using your calendar, stop treating your calendar like a To Do list.  Only put appointments on there you intend to actually do during the time slot they are in.  Treat your appointments with yourself the same as an appointment with an employee, friend or colleague.  Do NOT put it on your calendar with the mindset of “I might do it if the day goes smoothly” or “If all goes well” or “If I feel like it”.    
5. Go do it – No matter what.  Develop your sticktoitiveness (such a fun word isn’t it?).  Merriam-Webster defines sticktoitiveness as “dogged perseverance”.  What does dogged perseverance look like for you? What would you have to do to say you doggedly persevered in pursuit of your goal?  Think about it this way…. Most of us would doggedly persevere in pursuit of staying alive. We are pretty committed to that. We would probably do almost anything including foraging for food, living in the woods, running feverishly away from a dangerous animal.  Are you THAT committed to your goal? That truly is really the kind of commitment we need. Especially if our goals are big enough!

There is a lot more that can be said here about time and priority management.    If you want some help click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session with me.