You always have the Power to Change YOU

Do you have things or situations in your life that cause you to go, “ugh!”?

I call them Tolerations — things you “put up with” in your life. Because they are often small and invisible, they create stress without your awareness; they drain your energy.

Happiness Principle #6 reads: Tolerate Nothing. Continually identify and eliminate all the little “stuff” which causes you friction and drains your energy.

When I introduce people to the concept of Tolerations they often list issues they are tolerating, but then they get overwhelmed when they consider how much WORK it’s going to take to address them.

No.  Stop.  It doesn’t have to be about you changing them — it’s about you changing YOU, which is a lot easier.

Here’s the thing: people are people, and situations are situations. They are neither good nor bad, hard nor easy.  It is your ASSESSMENT of a person or situation that creates your stress, and many times the easiest way to reduce your stress is to change the story you tell yourself.

Example: For several years, my gym time overlapped with that of a guy I’ll call “Greg.” Greg worked out six days a week, and was in superb physical condition, via swimming, weights, and cardio work.  AND Greg was a neat freak/germophobe.  Each time I crossed his path he would comment on a leaky sink, the odor in the bathroom, insufficient hot water in the showers, etc, etc.  I regularly agreed with him, and we’d have a little pity party….

And I would leave the gym feeling stressed and a little down.

What Greg said was true — stuff wasn’t working. Also true: this was a 60-year old YMCA building, and Greg issues were related to the aging facilities.  One day this situation came up in my tolerations work, and I realized I was whining.  So I adjusted my thinking and my behavior.

In working on myself, I also became aware of what Greg was doing. So I asked him, “If you have so many problems with the place, why do you keep working out here?”  Greg looked at me with surprise.  His first reaction was, “I’ve been coming here for years!” and I came back with, “So have I, Greg… and I cannot think of a time when these were not issues.  You are arguing with reality.  Do you realize that you are tolerating these conditions?”  “Tolerating?”  I explained what I meant, and he pondered that as he dressed and left.

I never saw Greg again at the YMCA. However, we traveled in overlapping business circles, and two months later I saw him at a networking event.  He came over to shake my hand and said, “You were right.  I obsessed about that place, and yet I had the power to change the situation all along.  I found another gym that I like better.  Thank you for showing me that I was putting up with the situation.  It was not them that needed to change – it was me!”

And that’s the point of Tolerations. If you are unaware of something that is draining you, it will continue to Zap your energy. The tolerations exercise gives you the opportunity to say, “that bugs me,” out loud, and really acknowledge it.

Once you do that, you have choices that you did NOT have when it was invisible to you.  You can CHOOSE to remain and whine about it, OR…you can choose to take action, make a plan, make a request of someone else, or even…

…change your thinking about it. Note the contrast between how Greg and I experienced the same reality – shower facilities occasionally smelled and needed constant repair:

• Greg thought, “It should not be like this.  This is wrong.  I am suffering.”  And he took action to find a new place.
• I looked at the same situation and thought, “yes, there are breakdowns constantly; AND they keep it clean and the price is reasonable, and I am willing to accept the tradeoffs.”

We CHOSE different, yet equally effective paths: I let go of the toleration by changing my story, while Greg eliminated the toleration by changing his environment.

Notice that what changed in both situations was US – first, awareness, then making a new choice.

Do This For Yourself

What are you tolerating? Download the complete exercise here.

If you removed a few tolerations, how much better might you feel? Think about it.  Less burdens to carry.  More energy and capacity to focus on what’s important.  More space to feel happiness and contentment rather than the anxiety and stuckness that often accompany tolerations.

And who doesn’t want to be happier?

Visit http://www.theexecutivehappinesscoach.com/resources/articles/HP06-TolerateNothing.pdf for complete instructions and a Tolerations worksheet

Drop me a note to tell me what YOU notice when you acknowledge your tolerations. I look forward to hearing how it goes for you.

7 Ways to Turn Your Organization Upside Down

One of the major obstacles to change and growth in an organization is something we call “Organizational Inertia.” In physics, inertia is: the tendency of matter to remain at rest if at rest, or, if moving, to keep moving in the same direction, unless affected by some outside force.” In common language this means that people – especially in bureaucratic systems – will repeat old behavior and defend the status quo even when they are not getting the results they want.

One way to create change, then, is to exert an “outside force” on the existing system. In other words, change the workspace and you’ll change the way people behave in that space.

Seven Ways You Can Turn Your Organization Upside Down and Backwards to create new perspective:

1. Begin every meeting with a “good news report” instead of a “what’s broken” report. You’ll shift the mood of the room into a more creative, optimistic space, which will lead to better problem-solving and faster-decision-making.
2. Shift primary responsibility for employee assessment from managers to their team members. I speak from ten years of personal experience when I promise you that (once people receive basic training in the process) the quality and depth of performance feedback will INCREASE when individuals shift from passive receivers to active partners in their performance appraisal process.
3. Add an Upward Appraisal to your feedback system.  If you’re really serious about improving leadership in your organization, add an element of upward feedback to encourage frank conversation about teamwork (even entry-level folks have great ideas about what their manager could be doing to support them better!)
4. Write “contracts” with project team members, versus impose deliverables..  Goals created in a conversation of mutual commitment are more likely to energize AND get met, on time, than goals imposed from “on high” without negotiation.
5. Engage team members in the process of selecting new members of the team, or even (gasp) their new boss.  When people are invested in the hiring decision, they will view that person’s success in a different – and more positive — way.
6. Ask people what they think BEFORE you make your decision. Yep, that’s what I said.  Hold as a possibility that you DON’T know everything!
7. Hold (at least some of) your meetings standing up. Notice how the energy of a meeting shifts and becomes more efficient when the physical props change.

ACTION ITEM: Hold this question in front of you for the next month: How might I challenge the status quo, shift the environment, or create new ways for people to work together?

Remember, Leadership is not about a title: Anyone can be a leader who deliberately seeks ways to challenge organizational inertia, and strives to help others step up and take a more active and engaged role in their work.

Choice by Tiny Choice, You Can Change Your Life!

I turned 54 last week. This was a special birthday to me, because there was a time when I did not expect to live this long.

When I was 28 I had heart problems that landed me in the Cardiac ICU at the Cleveland Clinic. While they tried to get my heart rate under control, my cardiologist introduced me to several older men who had the same arrhythmia, but it had not manifested in them until they were older… and they both nearly died on the spot the first time it happened. I remember him telling me, “you will not live as long as these guys did if you don’t take better care of yourself.” I asked the one guy, “How old are you?” 54. He was 54 and he looked like crap.

At the time, I was overweight, stressed, and had “too many” negative medical indicators. Ugh.

So my ‘scared shitless’ story took root, and I changed my life, one little habit shift at a time:

• I became disciplined about working out.  At first it was twice a week, then three, and eventually five (that transition took 10 years).
• I lost weight.
• I started watching what I ate, and over the years became a low-carb, meat-free, fresh-foodie (with a dark chocolate addiction on the side).  I did not become a vegetarian overnight — I got there by dropping one food at a time, and adding new foods gradually.
• I dropped my cholesterol by 80 points and normalized my blood pressure through diet.
• I cross trained, did Jazzercise, swam, ran, and lifted heavy things.  Since I”m easily bored, I used variety in my workouts to keep myself motivated.
• I started noticing my self-talk, and gradually re-wrote all my ‘stories’ (still workin’ on this today!)
• I started studying happiness.
• I nurtured my optimism.
• I took up yoga (five years ago) and then meditation (three years ago).

And yet…. I realized just last year that I’ve been holding – for many years – the story that “I could die when I’m 54.” And I’ve been (quietly yet definitely) scared to turn 54.

And now, I’m here. And it’s not so scary after all.

And I got here one tiny shift, one new practice at a time.

And, my dear reader, that’s what I hope for you.   You can change your life, Choice by tiny Choice.

Stand Tall. Breathe Deeply. Smile Often!

Change Starts With You

“If you start waiting for other people to stop being stupid, it will take too long.“
~Raskilnikov, in the play Crime and Punishment

Isn’t that just the greatest quote?  Raskilnikov utters this line near the end of the play, shortly before he breaks down and confesses his crime.

He holds a theory that some men are “extraordinary” and are thus exempt from laws (like murder) when they can show how an act of evil can be justified if, in the end, a greater good is made possible. He has a few problems, however, convincing people that his murder of an evil woman is balanced out by the prevention of her future cruelty to others.

He utters the above line as he realizes that time has run out on him — no one’s going to buy his justification…

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Imagine me sitting in a darkened theater at the moment this line is uttered, suddenly startled into looking frantically for a pen to capture the quote before I lose it.   The line perfectly captures the essence of coaching, of my work in happiness, and my belief that I am the only person who can create my world.

Look at that line again.  Now, substitute for the word “stupid” just about any human trait you find irritating, and notice how true it is:

“If you start waiting for other people to stop being IRRESPONSIBLE, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being MISERABLE, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being GREEDY, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being UNREASONABLE, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being UNCOMMUNICATIVE, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being CONTROLLING, it will take too long.”
“If you start waiting for other people to stop being MEAN TO ME, it will take too long.”

See where I’m going, here?  It all comes back to you.  People are going to be who and how they are, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them from being how they are.  So if other people’s behavior galls you, you have only two choices:

1. Let it eat away at you until you become a victim, OR
2. Take responsibility for, and shift, how you react to other people.

I’m not giving anything away to remind you that, in the end, Raskilnikov turns himself in and thus finds peace within himself: he knows that by serving time for his crime, he’s doing the right thing.   He found the courage in himself to change how he responded to the world.

In a similar way you have the choice, every day, to hold onto your current beliefs, or not.  To justify your own actions and behaviors and always be RIGHT in every conversation, or to let go and let others be heard.  You have the choice to be in anger about other people’s “stupidity,” or accept that they are who they are, and move on.

Change starts with you.

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By the way, if you’ve never finished Crime and Punishment because it was just too long and too dense, know that this adaptation, written by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus, does a magnificent job of reducing the story to just 90 minutes.  The play honors Dostoyevsky’s dark, brooding view of the world thru his existentialist lens, yet strips out a lot of the complications and multiple plotlines to bring the book’s primary struggle to life on the stage.

If you’re in Cleveland, note that Crime and Punishment will continue to run thru March 22 at the Drury Theater at Cleveland Playhouse.  According to a coupon in the playbill, if you mention that a FRIEND told you about it, you’ll get $10 off the ticket price.  We sat in the balcony and had a fabulous view of the stage in this intimate theatre — a real gem!

People hear what they see

Many movies today have such short and limited runs that most of us never hear about them, especially if they are released in the shadow of some summer or holiday blockbuster flick.  That’s sad, because so many of those ‘little’ movies are really fabulous — they are unconventional, thoughtful, creative, and often showcase some incredible acting.

I’ve learned that one of the best ways to discover obscure movies that I’ll enjoy is by noting the trailers packaged with a similar movie.  Romantic comedies tend to carry previews for other sweet comedies, intelligent movies for other smart films, etc.  So when I fall in love with a film, I write down the other titles previewed on that same DVD, then put them in my Blockbuster queue.

One such film arrived last week, and on Saturday evening Cheryl and I sat down to enjoy a movie we’d never heard of:  Beyond the Sea.  It’s a biopic about Bobby Darin, a singer/actor who was popular in the late 50′s and 60′s.  Kevin Spacey (a very talented guy!) clearly has a fixation on Bobby Darin — he wrote the script, directed the movie, and starred in it, (along with Kate Bosworth who makes a stunning Sandra Dee!)

Kevin is a decade older than Bobby Darin ever was, but in this cleverly written, part-fantasy, part-musical, part-drama, part-theatre-within-a-movie, that element matters not — Kevin plays the role as both actor and narrator.  IMO, it’s a very clever device that he pulls off beautifully.

Anyway, here’s the set up for what I thought was the best line in the movie:

Bobby rises to stardom, then disappears for awhile.  He’s totally disenchanted with the world following the 1968 assassination of Bobby Kennedy, whom he adored, so he goes into seclusion to figure out life.  He emerges to make a comeback.  He’d always been successful as a clean-shaven, suit-wearing, upbeat nightclub singer.  He comes back to the stage as a mustached, balding hippie who sings anti-war ballads.  He flops.

In the dramatic sequence that follows (as he grows progressively weaker, his heart failing as a result of rheumatic fever as a child),  he laments that audiences won’t listen to his new music.  His wife says, “Bobby, people hear what they see.“  That’s it! he exclaims.  and so he sets up a new act.

Clean-shaven, with a full head of hair and a suit, he appears on stage singing “We don’t want no war” and it’s a sensation.

People hear what they see.  When he showed up as someone else and sang something unexpected, people were turned off.  When he showed up LOOKING like what people expected, they heard him in an entirely different way.  They were able to “hear” the unfamiliar thru the lens of what they already knew.

On multiple levels, this concept so appeals to me.  This explains how to shift our own behavior, how to change a relationship, even how to implement change in the workplace.  When we put something new out there in the guise of something old, we allow our brains to absorb the “different” thru the lens of familiarity.  Change feels less disruptive when we can still anchor to something we’ve seen before.

So if you’ve been living in a mood of sadness, anxiety, or fear, for instance, the most comfortable route to happiness might be THROUGH — rather than away from — that other emotion!

Till next time…