Have you considered the gifts of change?

The value of any disruptive change is whatever we choose it to be.

Does it, in fact, matter? How could it be helpful? Does it cause concern? Does it include joy?

In other words, are we happy about it? Sad? Angry? Afraid?

These are natural and normal responses.

The key is recognizing they are also choices.

However, choice is not where our response begins.

Our attitude toward change shows up long before the choice is made and, to some degree, dictates the outcome.

In his book, Jumpstart Your Thinking, recognized leadership expert Dr. John C. Maxwell offers that our attitude acts like the “advance person” of our true selves. In other words, it shows up before we do, long before the main event. Over time it becomes almost instinctive. Because of that, every choice we make begins here.

It would seem then that this is an important concept to focus on when we consider where we want to grow. Do we have an attitude about change that is preempting its value?

If that is true, how do we change our attitude toward change? In the same writings, Dr. Maxwell offers this commentary about the role it plays: “It is the librarian of our past, the speaker of our present, and the prophet of our future.”  This statement holds the key. If our attitude is the speaker of our present, to change our attitude, it would seem to mean we must first change how we speak about it.

Let’s start by considering what is on the other side of change – what gifts it brings and will leave in its wake.

#1- New People

Our lives expand based on the growth we allow in our inner circles. Every new relationship represents growth which is just another label for change. What are you encountering just now? What new connections are waiting there? Every best friend was once a stranger. Every business partner was once unknown to us. Change brings new ideas from new minds and new people.

#2- New Places

As a writer, place has been somewhat of a conundrum for me. We like the comfort of our “creative space” and can even begin to rely on its trappings. That was certainly the case for me. But when the creative flow stalls, quite often, it is a change of place that allows it to begin streaming again. Once I realized that going to new places was a core fuel for inspiration, my attitude toward them shifted. But it’s not just about our craft. We need to experience new places to see life from a different lens.  Robin Sharma teaches that “The value of travel is not just the travel but what the travel makes of you.” Whether your travel is across town, across the country, or around the world – seek out a new lens on your life and work based on what you experience there.

#3- New Skills

Perhaps the most compelling gift of change is arguably this:  Change always brings something new to learn. That can be a daunting roadblock if we are afraid we may not be able to acquire that skill. As with people, recognizing that everything we know at some point was unknown to us can turn the dial of our attitude up. Everything we can do today, at some point, we did not know how to do. And with new skills come new opportunities.

#4- New Ideas

Change is a wonderful stimulus. What we consider (or reject) changes based on new information. We find that we have greater agility for transferring knowledge and skills. We are able to cross-pollinate our understanding of how we work best. The words of Marcel Proust come to mind for this point: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Even what is familiar can take on new life and new breath when we allow change to adjust our lens and spark a new perspective.

#5- New Possibilities

This is my favorite because it’s the culmination of everything else. It’s the pinnacle of success when it comes to real change. When we integrate new people, places, skills, and ideas into our strategies, the possibilities exponentially grow.

We can change our relationship with change by changing our attitude toward it. We change our attitude by changing our perspective and how we view it, how we speak about it. What new people can I meet and serve? What new places can I experience? What new skills can I acquire and master? What new ideas can this generate? How does this expand the possibilities for my life and work?

In summary: What does this make possible? Once we embrace that question, we begin to master the power of true resiliency.

Live today like you want tomorrow to be. Live (change) well.

Rethink productivity: Balancing your list with your life

Hourglass time clock with sandEverything we have or do depends on one or more of these three resources:

Time – Money – Energy

It is easy to miscalculate their priority if we don’t understand one essential fact:

Only one of these resources is actually limited.

The other two can and are continuously replenished and remain available to us in far greater quantities than we can even imagine.

Only one resource is universally finite: Time.

Coming to terms with time being the most precious resource I will ever have caused me to re-evaluate and re-organize how I approach just about everything in my life. That understanding also created a marked change in my personal productivity. Those changes began to make time seem less finite because I was getting so much more accomplished! Where did all of that time come from?

Those results came down to five essential keys that have unlocked true productivity for me. They aren’t the usual suspects.  It’s not about “touching things once” or having a killer app on your phone or calendar reminder for “what’s next”.  Those can be important but they aren’t the essentials.  What I have learned and embraced is the importance of partnering with time as an ally. Seeing time as our most valuable resource and loving it for what it allows us to do creates a powerful partnership with it.  Perhaps these keys will open some life locks for you as well.   (These are written in first person, counting down in importance. Here’s a tip: Read this out loud. Say them and claim them for yourself!)

#5 – I don’t have to do everything.  WARNING: This point isn’t about delegation.  This is about choice.  I do not have to do everything.  Long to do lists do not create more meaning for my day. They only clutter the day with things that diminish what I can give to what really matters. It is far more satisfying to have 5 things finished than to have 10 things started.

#4 – Sometimes I serve others more effectively by NOT helping them (This was my hardest one to learn..) Allowing others to DO for themselves or even SERVE US is quite often a better choice.

#3 – Things sometimes take longer than I planned.  And that’s okay.  It’s important to be prepared to miss cutoffs or deadlines and to have a backup plan.  Delays are not failures.  They are just delays.  Accept them for what they are:  a change in the schedule, not a change in the plan.

#2 – New information needs to be factored into existing plans.  New knowledge can show up in many forms.  Our ability to remain fluid within change and discern when it is creating a “new” decision point is an important skill with managing our investment of time.

#1 – Being clear about what I want to accomplish is ultimately the most important factor in true productivity. Being clear means more than a general feeling or desire to achieve something. It means being really clear.  Less impressionistic – more photographic. Sharpen every pixel in the image.  This is what makes all of the decisions along the way productive in their outcome as we partner with time.

Five essential keys that have unlocked time as a partner in my life.  Perhaps they will for you, too.  Which of these would make the most productive difference for you? Start there.

Live today like you want tomorrow to be.

Live well.

 

 

 

Stop, Pause or Continue? Get the questions right for the answer

Has this ever happened to you? You had to take a break from something – fully intending to go back to it – but somehow never did. You did not mean to abandon the project, but in the end, that is what happened. If so, you are not alone.

Recently I had to make some decisions about things in my life and work and there were some that I was not ready to just stop. But other priorities had to take precedence so I had to make a choice. Even as I was putting some things on hold, in my heart I knew that for some it was a death knell. I would not be back. Because that is what happens, even perhaps should happen. The issue then might be how we go about the pause.

I have identified three questions to consider when you aren’t certain about the future of something. It could be a project, an investment, a relationship – it is just something that in the priority ranking needs to be temporarily (or permanently) culled out of your life. This dialog is what helps me make decisions with confidence.

#1 – Why am I doing this?

This is the first question to ask ourselves because our reason why we even started is always the critical barometer for our consideration. In some cases, the reason we started something doesn’t exist anymore.  That is the real reason it has drifted down the priority list even if we don’t recognize that at first glance. When that is the case, it’s definitely not a pause, it is a stop and we should treat it that way. End it gracefully and generously with compassion for ourselves and anyone else involved.

#2 – Why am I doing this now? Timing is the second factor. Context comes from timing. It is how we see the current importance of things. It may be that something else in our lives is stalled or on some kind of hiatus and it has affected this particular thing as well. When we understand what the relationship is of timing and dependencies, it makes it possible for us to make a decision about when (or if) we will re-visit our decision. It may be a pause for now until we can determine if a later timing changes our perspective and priority. A key distinction is that we actually choose a date (or other condition) to re-consider our choice.

#3 – How can I use this now? Leverage. This is where we have the opportunity to create good from whatever the decision may be. A transfer of value is always a good thing. And knowledge applied is knowledge valued. How much easier to consolidate than to cancel! Yes this was a good use of my time, money and energy and it’s brought me to the point that I now need to do something else. Now I will transfer my results of this and feel good about the investment. It really becomes a continuation vs. a cancel.

Three questions. A good place to begin testing our response to shifting priorities.

When we ask the right questions, the answers that come make the path forward clear. We’re able to make the choices we need to make to keep the right investments of our resources front and center. As we live today like we want tomorrow to be, it’s important to remind ourselves that what we want for tomorrow is also subject to change. Because everything changes as we change. It’s why the word today is so important in that statement. It’s about NOW. It’s about what we want for tomorrow right now so we can live it right now.

Live today like you want tomorrow to be.

Live well.

Resilience: Asking the other question….

Recently, I have found my focus shifting more strategically to what is next as I consider plans and priorities.

Perhaps you find yourself here as well.

A productive practice to consider is integrating what I call the other question into our thought processes. I’m always intrigued by inverse statements and questions. There is always another one there.

What we are considering is a fundamental practice for experiencing the full range of possibility thinking. We must be able to consider every side of our choices.

In my work as a strategist over the years, this has proven to be what has made the difference between goals and objectives that are reached with greater ease and those that create struggles or even get lost along the way.

There is always another question to consider. The other question is also what quite often delivers us the more significant return.

Questions that drive insight are the ones that move us forward.

Here are three to consider that will help you develop a possibilitarian point of view that leads to creative resilience:

What is the real change I want to achieve?

Know your true objective. Keep asking until you find it. There are several schools of thought on how many layers of questions to ask. For each answer, you ask why that is important. My experience has taught me that we get to the true answer somewhere between questions five and seven.

I want to achieve X.  Why? Because XX.

Why do you want XX? Because XXX.

Why do you want XXX? Because XXXX.

Why do you want XXXX?

Because V!

You cannot stay on track if you don’t know where you really want to go. We want to get to the core value being served by taking on the work. I recently went through this practice again about my values around health. It’s the most powerful exercise we can do to get to the truth about what we want to achieve. Of note is that sometimes this exercise helps us identify what we can stop trying to accomplish because our underlying reason isn’t of any real value. But in most cases, we get to our true motivation.

The more you practice this, the faster you will reach your core value. Resiliency is a natural result when we keep our core values at the forefront because we do not look at a circumstance without context. We examine everything against how it can serve what matters most in our lives and work.

What options am I avoiding?

This is crucial because, quite often, what we refuse to consider is our best choice. We all have non-negotiable positions. That’s not what this is about. It’s about what we might be afraid to try or think isn’t possible for us. It’s about removing limitations and not compromising boundaries. When we practice a resilient lifestyle, how we perceive things will change, and what we never considered before can move front and center.

It’s also about tackling resistance head-on.

What is important is that we exhaust every possibility without limiting ourselves to probabilities or what we think we want to do.

What am I missing?

Where are the blind spots? What aren’t we considering that needs to be addressed? What are the risks? If you know them, you can mitigate them from the start or, at a minimum, have a plan in place to address them should they happen. If you do not know the risks, you have not fully defined what you want. If this is a challenging area for you, start with your assumptions. Your risks will be in your assumptions. What are you assuming to be true? What if it is not? What are you assuming is not true? What if it is?

One of the many gifts I received from my iPEC family, where I studied for my certification as an Executive Life Coach, was a very special stone. I’ve had it for many years, and it stays with me as a talisman when I’m thinking through something challenging.

The word problem has been engraved on one side, covering the entire surface. On the other side is the word solution. The solution resides within the problem itself. We must examine it from all sides to find it, but it is there. The other question is what will take us to the other side.

What would you do? Setting the right response in motion

A key lesson that I have learned over the past few years is that the easiest way to change how we respond to things or people we encounter is to have a system in place to help us. Frustration grows when it just seems like someone or something pushes our buttons every time. That trigger is going to continue to plague us until we change it. While it’s great when we can do that just by choosing to make that change, the reality is that it’s rarely that simple.

My experience has been that it really comes to down to sleuthing, solving the mystery, evaluating vs. judging. You see, that’s where I found the real issue. We can get so busy judging ourselves for our reaction, we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to understand it. When we understand it, we are equipped to change it in a meaningful and sustainable way.

What you give meaning to is what causes your emotion. Before you react know why you are giving something so much energy or fear. When you begin to understand why you give things meaning you can begin to change how you react and why you do what you do.  ~Shannon L. Alder

There are five key investigation tools to use that will help you master the art of reaction every time. Using the word REACT, let’s break them down.

R – Recognition

This is the first step. Simply recognizing it’s happening and taking responsibility for it. Just by asking ourselves if in fact we are reacting, we start a valuable chain reaction shift. We are taking responsibility for our side of the equation.

E – Emotion

Emotions are wonderful. They are such a part of what makes life such an exquisite experience. But they can also derail us when they are part of a triggered response. In my early training as an executive coach we broke this down into another acronym – FLAGS. We use that to identify the dominant emotion in our response. Fear, Love, Anger, Guilt or Sadness. FLAGS. Once we can pinpoint the emotion that’s involved we can begin to determine where the core response and put productive measures in place to handle it. If the trigger brings up guilt as an example, that’s very different from fear in terms of next steps. But in both cases, it is the initial recognition of the emotion that will lead us to the next right questions.

A – Attitude

What did you expect? Where are your sensitivities? Many years ago, when I was really struggling communicating with a fellow executive, I had a conversation with a trusted friend and mentor. He suggested that my sensitivities were high and that I was expecting a certain action and so that is what I saw.  My attitude was a conditioning agent. I had to first be open to a positive exchange before one could happen.  Being candid with ourselves about our expectations and attitude toward a person or situation is a critical part of our excavation to our solution.

C – Context

This was perhaps the most important element for me in a number of situations. Has someone ever asked you what a word meant and you weren’t certain or there were several possibilities? What do you normally ask them to do? I suspect it might be to ask them to use it in a sentence to help you better understand what it might mean. The context of anything is the ultimate lens for deciphering it’s meaning. What else is going on? Is it related? Not related? Is it influencing? One example might be that you’ve had a pretty long day and you’re physically exhausted. You’re tired. Does that seem to be a factor in some cases? Or perhaps there was an incident just prior that left some unresolved emotions that are spilling over.

T – Truth

What do you know to be true? This is an essential question because it allows us to get to the taproot of the situation quickly. When we take assumptions off the table or at least recognize them for what they are, we’re in fact clearing judgments and other potential mental or emotional clutter in reviewing our next steps.

R-E-A-C-T

RECOGNIZE what is happening;

Identify the dominant EMOTION;

Check your ATTITUDE coming into the situation;

Consider the CONTEXT of the situation; and,

Focus on what is TRUE.

That’s the process. That’s the system. Like anything regarding our personal framework, it’s also a skill. This can be your most effective system for productive personal change.

As a final note, remember that as we change ourselves, we are also creating the opportunity to change other people’s perspective of us as well. That’s especially true for those where we have influence but it’s also not limited there. When we employ this skill, we can inspire others to do the same. It creates a CHAIN REACTION that’s positive and constructive.

Live (react) today like you want tomorrow to be. Live (react) well.