Little Things That Matter

Learn From The Past, Live The Present and Have An Open Mind to Face Tomorrow

Archives for April 2014

Disempower FEAR and Empower Your Progress

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She has won triathlons, trekked the Gobi desert, has done bungee jumping and sky diving despite being scared of heights. She has been a juvenile diabetic for over 30 years and she has faced this lifelong companion and the challenges associated with being a diabetic exceptionally well. She has faced many other hurdles in life with hope and optimism.

Today she is faced with a fear of her ability to own the space, to exude confidence and credibility in some situations. Her gravitas is weak when she has to face the board of directors of her company. Her name is Elisa.

Why is the otherwise confident and fearless Elisa having issues with her gravitas? Elisa (name changed), who hired me as her coach to assist her in upgrading an aspect of her Executive Presence, was allowing her thinking and her self-judgment to dominate her.

She had made her underlying beliefs and fears about the situation so strong that they were disempowering her.

The emotion of fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger—if our brains didn’t warn us about the dangers and alert us and we didn’t feel fear, we couldn’t protect ourselves from legitimate threats. But often we fear situations that are not life-or-death situations and we disempower ourselves by allowing our inner thoughts and feelings to dominate and prevent us from taking the appropriate action.

What fears are you allowing to dominate to an extent of constraining your progress?
How do you overcome your fears ?

1. Befriend Fear – one of the first steps is to acknowledge your fears. Courage comes only when you recognize and feel your fears. Own your feelings and ask yourself what is the fear ? Naming the fear helps to bring it to the surface. What are the causes of the fear? What is the source of this fear? What are the possible solutions ? What is the best workable solution ? Whose help or support do you need to work on the solution ?

Conquering fear cannot happen by running away from it or engaging in an outrageous courageous activity on impulse.

2. Don’t over-think – I’m reminded of a quote by Pema Chodron

“The essence of Bravery is being without self-deception. However it’s not so easy to take a straight look at what we do. Seeing ourselves clearly is initially uncomfortable and embarrassing. As we train in clarity and steadfastness, we see things we’d prefer to deny – judgementalness, pettiness, arrogance. These are not sins but temporary and workable habits of mind. The more we get to know them, the more they lose their power. This is how we come to trust that our basic nature is utterly simple, free of struggle between good and bad.

A warrior begins to take responsibility for the direction of her life. It’s as if we are lugging around unnecessary baggage. Our training encourages us to open the bags and look closely at what we are carrying. In doing this we begin to understand that much of it isn’t needed anymore.”

Take responsibility, trust your instincts and believe in yourself and don’t allow the negative thoughts to dominate you. Click To Tweet

3. Don’t overshadow and feel embarrassed – feel the fear, share it, reflect and don’t feel embarrassed and shut your feelings. Learn to take baby steps to recognize the feelings and thoughts that stand against you. Ask yourself some of these questions.

What do you do in uncertain situations?
How do you handle failures?
When you have the negative thoughts, and fear takes over you what happens then?
What is your desired outcome you would like to have in overcoming fear?

4. Forget the naysayers – don’t keep company of people who feed into your negative thoughts. Believe in yourself and think of the desired outcome you would like to achieve. How passionate and committed are you in achieving this goal? Surround yourself with people who encourage and challenge you but not those who are like thorns in your path.

5. Check your ego– Even if you are not a loud and egoistic person, there are times your ego creates fear. This may be from fear of failure, fear of losing, fear of the unknown, fear of humiliation, fear from your own untested beliefs, fear of losing your status or an imagined identity, fear of exploring the uncertain path and the undesired results.

Life is not a certain path. Our brain is a prediction machine but if you allow yourself to be prepared for uncertainty and train yourself to handle uncertainties, the neural pathways of your brain can be changed. By facing uncertainties and allowing yourself to disempower negative thoughts, you build character and grow stronger.

Elisa had without her awareness become a victim of giving in to her sabotage thoughts and talk. Her conversations with me gave her insights and helped her achieve the necessary shift she was looking for in terms of her gravitas.

Intentions to do, be or achieve something is great but you alone can take responsibility to change that intention to action.

Don’t be your worst enemy and let your constant inner fears and doubts sabotage your growth and development.

The choice of taking the right decision rests with You. Click To Tweet

Persevere and build the momentum to achieve your desired goals.Click To Tweet

Are you self-sabotaging your progress?

For Coaching, Speaking or Training let’s connect.

How To Have A POSITIVE ATTITUDE

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The Gym TRX class starts at 11am on Sunday and two people walk in at 11:15 and their body language was such that they didn’t even look apologetic for being late. Despite being told that they are late and they can’t enter the class, they stomp in, ignoring the instructor’s request.

Eric who has just taken over as the Asia-Pacific sales head for his company, tells the new intern in his team that he has to get Eric’s breakfast sharp at 8 am daily.

If I can’t get that, you can’t get that too! This was Sylvia’s inner thought that was dictating the attitude that she was showing her friend who was looking bewildered.

It has been said that people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. Click To Tweet. This indicates the importance of demonstrating a respectful and caring attitude. Be it in sales or in any role, your credibility can be established by how much you know and your accomplishments but what finally allows your reputation to be built is having the right attitude. Click To Tweet

⇒How does bad attitude look and sound ? 

Learnings In The Journey Of Life

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LifeI reflect quite often. However, this weekend I got into a deeper reflection mainly due to behaviors of some people. I got into this mode of “I must be doing something wrong” thinking. This is the inner critique taking over and I didn’t want that dominating me. When I started to reflect, write and self-coach myself, I started seeing things differently.

Reflection helps me to let go, learn something new, get different perspectives and insights and handle certain situations differently. Over the years I have learned the following

1. Have the courage to be yourself. Reflect, learn, unlearn, improve and never lose your values. Click To Tweet

2. You can’t please everyone. You will meet people in life who will always be toxic and never appreciate your strengths or your authenticity. Click To Tweet

3. You are unique in who you are. Your experience with each of your relationships and situations is unique.

4. You don’t get what you want in many turns of your life, though you may have given your best. Trying to find an explanation or a reason only makes matters worse. Stop overthinking.

5. You are not your rejections or your failures. You have to believe in your positive potential and your ability. Click To Tweet

6. As hard as it may be, it is best to let go of some relationships. Click To Tweet

7. Be authentic but let your authenticity not fall in a way that you are misunderstood. Framing the way you communicate your authenticity is imperative. Click To Tweet

8. Know when to speak up, when to be silent and know when to walk away. There is a time and place for everything and your best guide is your intuition.

9. Change is constant and people change. Don’t blame yourself when people start behaving differently.

10. You have to be street smart and be part of the change. Initiate change, be the change but never lose your values or your integrity. Click To Tweet

11. Apologize even if you are not wrong because you can walk away with a clean conscience.

12. Let yourself be lead from within and your intuition and not by your falsified ego. Click To Tweet

13. Value yourself and never compromise your values. Never allow yourself to be trampled by someone else. Speak your mind but always be respectful to others.

14. In trying to impress and cultivate your new relationships don’t forget about people who have stood by you through your tough times.

15. Smile. Smiling when you are going through a tough time is the most difficult but from personal experience I can say it makes a huge difference to that moment. You have to consciously tell yourself to smile in that vulnerable moment.

16. Being strong may feel tiring many times but the world is with you through your smiles and not your tears. Learn to cultivate resilience because that helps you to bounce back and approach life with a positive mindset. Click To Tweet

17. Focus on improving your strengths and don’t overemphasize your limitations.

18. Think before you speak, question yourself before you act. Pause is better than impulse. Click To Tweet

19. Don’t forget to be kind to yourself and others.

20. It is never too late to improve and change for the better.

21. Living in the moment is difficult but find ways to do it. You get insights when you accept the circumstance that you may be in. Anger worsens the situations and increases your frustration.

22. Share your emotions and how you feel but with people who will honor you for who you are and will listen with empathy.

23. Maturity is a lot to do with what lessons your experiences have taught you and how you show up in different challenges that life throws at you.

24. No matter how good you are there will always be people who hurt you. Take it as a lesson and let go of the hurt.

25. No one has lived your life or walked your road. So don’t worry about the naysayers and those who are judgmental.

Various actions, reactions and behaviors upset me but whenever I’m in that space of feeling hurt and upset, I remind myself that I can choose how I react. I ask myself how is this feeling of hurt impacting me and as a result, how I might not be showing up fully to various moments in life.

Choice of our behavior and actions is well within our control and let us always choose what is best to reflect our character. Click To Tweet

In the end, what matters is loving your life. Find the joy in trusting your intuition, cherishing your happy and sad memories, learning through the challenges that seemed indomitable at that moment in time and allowing yourself to make the choices in the chances you take. Learn to trust your instincts and stop doubting yourself every step of your way.Click To Tweet. 

Life is a continuous learning journey and there is no right or predetermined answers. Click To Tweet

What have you learnt over the years?

What reflections can you share so that others may use it in their path of learning and development?

For Coaching, Speaking or Training let’s connect. 

 

Turning Whiners To Contributors

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It was 2pm and I was on my way to a client meeting at 2:30 pm. I felt like having a coffee and decided to stop at the Starbucks on my way to the client’s office. As I entered the Starbucks, I noticed that the queue was rather long and seemed to be not moving. I was debating if I should continue to stand and decided to give it five minutes before I decide to walk out. I heard several murmurs in the queue and complaints about the Starbucks barista’s being too slow.

I started getting impatient and though I realized that not every barista could be the same, my gut told me that there is more to it than meets the eye. I decided to find out what was going on. I requested the man standing behind me to accommodate me when I get back, stating the reason to him as to why I was leaving the queue.

I moved to the front of the queue and realized that a customer was creating a situation and the barista was having a tough time trying to manage this customer. I looked at my watch and realized I had no more than 10 minutes to spare, in order to be at my client’s office on time. And by then, I was determined to have my coffee. I asked for the manager and requested that the manager take care of the situation and have the barista attend to the other customers. I was able to get my coffee within 7 minutes and leave Starbucks to be on time for my clients meeting.

How often do we face similar situations in life and at work where we have to deal with whiners and complainers? The negativity that arises from such situations increases the annoyance factor and doesn’t help anyone solve the issue.

Complaining is a vain way of expressing something without gaining relief. Click To Tweet

Not every complaint may be of importance and more often than not it is whining. Complaining is a stressful thing to do and listen to. As a leader, how do you turn whiners into contributors and avoid the negativity from spiraling? Click To Tweet

Be concerned about genuine complaints or concerns but create an environment to turn the moaners to a friendlier and productive lot.

1. Environment – create an environment which promotes creativity and for your team to use their talent to the fullest. You can create a culture where people connect, share ideas, and improve relationships. Leadership is engagement. In Leadership Mastery, first released in 2000 by Dale Carnegie & Associates, the “secret sauce” is to challenge yourself and others to greatness. Inspiration and motivation are the key ingredients. A challenging environment where each team member feels that their creativity is being used and is being appreciated for their contribution creates an atmosphere of low tolerance level for whiners.

2. Values – how can you as an individual align your values to your firm’s values? Again as a leader, how can you allow the values of your team to be in sync with the company’s vision and their behaviors? An environment that creates a dissonance between the individual values and that of the company’s values promotes dissatisfaction.

3. Accountability – holds each of your team members accountable and secure their confidence. Once you build a culture and live by the value of expecting solutions, you raise the bar and shift the accountability back to each person including the whiners. You help them become a contributor by challenging them to think of solutions and they take responsibility in achieving success despite the odds.

4. Commitment and Positive Attitude – Expecting solutions increases creativity and builds confidence in each of your team members to come up with a solution that works and is acceptable to everyone. You facilitate your team to unleash their power of not to give up and get their commitment to arrive at workable possibilities. This creates a positive attitude and one that is inspiring and motivating.

5. Reward and feedback – you as a leader should not take the importance of giving positive feedback for granted. People whine because they just feel they are underutilized or have not contributed to the idea that they have been told to work on. When people are made to feel like a cog in the wheel, lack of commitment ensues. Praise every improvement every step of the way. You can show them you care for their effort in making a difference to the company’s vision.

Change starts with me and with each of us. It is easy to complain and whine but ask yourself what can you do to make a difference? Click To Tweet

Can you be the solution or provide a solution to the cause of the problem? If you have the time to whine and complain, you can make the time to do something about it. Click To Tweet

The most important team player can be a person who has transitioned from a whiner to a contributor.

For Coaching, Speaking or Training let’s connect.

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Disrupting Your Negative Thoughts

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Image Credits : Lalita Raman

Jacinta has sent her proposal to her boss. She has worked over the weekend on this proposal making sure all the details had been covered and that there is no room for any errors. On Monday late morning she gets a call from her boss asking her to come over to his office. She goes in with a heavy heart. She observes her boss reading her proposal as she is entering his room. He finishes reading the report and gives it back to Jacinta stating, ‘Jacinta, your proposal is good, though I would like you to refine these two sections. The client meeting is in an hour and please make sure you have it ready much before that’.

Jacinta is disappointed and she feels she should have done better. She thinks that her boss is not going to like her coming to the client meeting. She feels that her boss won’t trust her with any such important projects in the future. She knows that he has lost confidence in her. She is so lost in this negative mindset that she fails to attend to another task with her heart and soul. She in fact loses a deal with another key client and this gets her into a further negative vicious cycle.

Clearly, Jacinta has blown the situation way out of proportion. Her negative monologue has turned a suggestion for improvement to an extremely disruptive thought process.

Have you seen people with similar behaviors? How about you? Would you have reacted the same or differently?

Thinking affects our feelings and in turn our beliefs and actions. Click To Tweet

What are these thinking traps?

1. Magnifying – you magnify the issue. You minimize your own strengths and your ability to believe in yourself of rendering a task or job. You magnify it to an extent where even some of the future events become certainties in your mind. In Jacinta’s case, her negative mindset has made her conclude that her boss will not trust her with any important projects in future.

2. Blanket generalization – you think that just because an unpleasant thing has happened before, it will always happen. Let’s say you miss the bus when you are in a hurry to get to your client’s office. You believe that this will happen to you every time you need to get somewhere urgently.

3. Perfectionist and “all or nothing thinking “– you set high standards for yourself and others. When you hear suggestions for improvement you see it as, you are not good enough and you could not render a simple task well. You start telling yourself you should have checked the report or your work again or should have written it better. Jacinta failed to see her boss’s remark as a suggestion to improve few sections. Her negative inner talk started to tell her what she should have done so that her proposal would have been accepted without the necessity of any refinements.

4. Jumping to Conclusions: you conclude negatively despite no evidence to support your belief. In Jacinta’s case, she believes that she is going to be told by her boss not to attend the meeting with the client. The fact is he hasn’t stated so nor has she clarified nor is there any evidence that he doesn’t want her to attend the meeting with the client.

How do you avoid falling prey to your negative thinking? Click To Tweet

1. Track Your Inner Dialog – Keep a journal of your thoughts when something doesn’t go as per your expectations. How do you react to this stressful situation? What were the consequences of your reaction to that situation? What beliefs did you form and how did it affect your thinking and behavior thereafter?

2. Analyze Results – Once you have written down several such daily activities and how you behaved, ask yourself and observe if there were any repeated patterns in the way you think and act. Which of these beliefs or behavior have led to specific consequences that made things worse?

3.Distractor – You have seen how your negative thinking affects your behavior and actions. How do you interrupt your negative thoughts? It is unlikely that telling yourself to snap out of the negative thoughts will work effectively.

A positive distraction like walking away from what you are doing or concentrating on your achievements in the past in challenging situations or talking to somebody who can inspire you is what you need at that moment. Even asking yourself How Dare I allows you to snap out of your negative thoughts?

Disrupting your negative thoughts allows your brain to snap out of the stress and negativity and thus helps you to think clearly.

Surround yourself with positive people who can inspire, encourage and believe in you to bring back your self-confidence. Click To Tweet.

Once you snap out of the negativity, ask yourself

– What happened?
- what did you do well?
- what could you do better?
- if a suggestion has been given by someone else like your boss, is there an element of truth to that?
- is the feedback destructive or constructive? If destructive, why bother? If constructive what can you do better? What lessons did you learn?

You need to look for ways that will help you stay committed to your goals and evaluate:

–Are you a product of your negativity? Click To Tweet


-How can you grow through your challenges and yet keep up the optimism? Click To Tweet

If you shroud yourself with negativity most of the time, and keep giving credence to your inner critique, you may consult a coach or mentor who will assist you in overcoming your negativity. Overall you need to believe in yourself and your strengths.

For Coaching, Speaking or Training let’s connect.