Category Archives: mindset

Time-off will improve your time on!

Did you know that 9 out of 10 Americans say their happiest moments came from vacations, yet according to Horizon Workforce Consulting two-thirds of Americans do not use all their paid vacation days?

It is a contradiction that the majority of people value their family over work, remember vacations more vividly than other weeks of the year, and yet often avoid actually taking these coveted vacations.

How many of the weeks you can remember over the past 10 years were during a vacation?

Do any of these reasons keep you from taking time off from work?

You fear asking your boss for the time off?
You feel guilty taking time off because it will put a burden on other people you work with?
You dread having to orchestrate everything to accommodate you being gone–who will handle some of your responsibilities, what needs to be rescheduled, what will you miss, and how will you get other things done before you go?
You dread even more the pile of work that will await you when you get back?
You don’t want people to see they can get along just fine without you?

Other countries with long-standing minimum vacation requirements don’t seem to have the level of vacation phobia that Americans struggle with. Taking time off from work (whether you work at home caring for others, have a full-time job, or something in between) is good for you and for the work you do. Let’s look more closely to relieve you of participating in what TakeBackYourTime.org calls the epidemic of overwork.

By taking a vacation you will actually improve your work because time-off:
1. Increases productivity
2. Sparks creativity
3. Improves problem-solving
According to a 9-year study by Brooks Gump, PhD, MPH, and Karen Mathews, PhD more frequent vacations are good for your health and may even reduce your chance of stress-related deaths from things like heart attacks.

One of the first things you are instructed to do if your computer is having trouble is to turn it off and then re-start it. You, too, need time to reboot.

Everyone needs unstructured time to explore their creative nature, experience joy, and reconnect to loved ones. This time does not mean leaving your work and using the time to care for an elderly relative or fix up your house. This is time where your responsibilities are lessoned and your playfulness is increased. It can be across the ocean, down the street, or in your own backyard–as long as you get to genuinely let go.

When is your next vacation? If you don’t have any time-off planned, why not sit down tonight and start day-dreaming!

Taming Your Inner Critic

Have you noticed how often your inner critic sabatoges your relationships, your confidence, and your life?

Becoming aware of the subtle whispers she is putting in your thought process, not to mention the down right abusive yelling, all takes a willingness to listen. All too often you try to ignore and push these voices down in order to overcome them. However, like almost everything in life the more we ignore or deny it, the worse it gets.

Your inner critic causes you to react, rather than respond, to your environment more than you can imagine. She makes you feel small, uncomfortable, and incompetant. She compares you to others, points out your flaws and makes your entry into an important event much more difficult than necessary.

My inner critic not only criticizes me, she also starts to attack someone outside when their look on their face or tone of voice makes her feel criticized. Although the queen of criticizing me, she cannot stand to feel criticized and will put me on the defensive faster than I can blink, unless I am listening for her.

Stop and listen when you notice this inner dialogue, rather than allowing it to egg you into reactions you will later regret the affects of. Just pausing rather than reacting will give you the space you need to make conscious choices of how to handle a situation.

I love the advice of Dorie Clark and Susan Brady around the inner critic. They say to listen with compassion and curiosity because awareness is the first step to changing a behavor. They also state that studies show people who practice self-compassion are happier, more optimistic, less anxious and less depressed.

For those types of gains, I am going to start practicing more self-compassion starting now. How about you?

The first step in self-compassion is listening to your inner critic with curiosity for what she might really be trying to tell you. Learn from it and thank her for trying to help. Like most of us, when she feels heard her need to increase the volume goes down. And a decrease of inner criticism will go a long way to improving how you feel, how you relate to others, and how well you perform at what you do.

“Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional”

As the United States remembered 9/11 last week, I was reminded that none of us are immune from grief.

You have no doubt experienced sorrow and loss.

Perhaps your life looks nothing like what you had hoped for at one point. Maybe you have lost someone important to your heart through death, divorce or other circumstances. Deep loss is felt by our bodies, minds, and souls. It is not a trivial experience. No matter what the cause, you have probably grieved deeply, and most likely you will again.

Over the years, I have facilitated various grief workshops for people who have recently lost a loved one–husband, child, sibling or parent. The most profound of those workshops was a group of teens who had all recently lost a parent.

What was different about my group of teens? Once they crossed over the barrier of being vulnerable with the group, they did things that helped their process that so many adults refuse to do:

They felt their grief as a real-time, present moment experience. (My adult groups spent considerably more time focused on re-living moments of past grief, rather than identifying how they felt at the current moment.)
They had no goal to achieve in the process, they simply processed what they were feeling. (My adults participants usually measured and re-measured their progress by random, unconscious beliefs about where they should be in their process. This often colored what they shared with judgment about themselves, or pretense about where they were–rather than open, really vulnerable sharing.)
They knew they spent most of their time running from their pain and were honest about it. (Participants in other groups often took weeks or months to acknowledge their coping mechanisms so they could assess what was working and what was making things worse.)

These are gifts given unknowingly from my group of teens that anyone can embody. What things still bring up feelings of grief for you?

Use the following steps based on the wisdom from my teens to help you move from feeling stuck in this grief to finding your inner transformation and resilliance. You might want to journal your answers.

Do you re-live this event in your mind frequently? Can you identify the difference between how you initially felt about this situation and how you feel NOW? Take a moment to describe this situation from your perspective today. Anytime you notice your story going into how it felt “then,” cross it off and resume writing from the perspective of how it feels today. It is a good idea to do things that ground you in the current moment while doing this exercise. You might write for awhile, then go for a walk outside before continuing. Other things that can help keep you grounded in today are exercising, contact with water (washing your hands or feet, swimming, taking a shower, foot bath in epsom salts), walking barefoot on the earth, and digging in the earth (weeding, planting).
What judgments do you have about how you have handled grieving this situation, especially verses other people? Write them down. Be specific. You might start with sentences like, “I should have…,” “By now…,” “Other people…” Once you have exhuasted your litany of self-condemnations, rewrite each one beginning with the statement, “It’s OK that I…” Then find a nice place to walk where you can have a destination goal of at least 100 feet. As you walk that distance take each step deliberately and state “It is OK that I…” Do this as many times as you need to until you feel a release of judgment from each item.
Identify (with scathing honesty!) all the ways you have ignored and run from feeling your feelings around this situation. Write them down. Which ones of these are serving you and which ones are just keeping you tied to your grief? Make conscious choices as to which behaviors and actions you plan to continue and which you want to cease. Call your best friend and tell her what you have discovered and ask her to help keep you accountable to your new goals. Create new behaviors that help you feel your feelings and release them, rather than cover over them. Here are a few suggestions:
- Commit to feeling fully the grief when it comes. If it is convenient, go into the shower and cry until you feel complete, go into a private room and turn on music loud to cover your sobs, or climb into bed and rock yourself in a fetal position.
- Take long walks in nature regularly to reconnect to yourself and let go of the outside world
- Journal everytime your emotions get triggered. Give all your feelings voice–whether good, bad, or ugly–not just the socially acceptable ones. Let your hurting inner-self really express the depth of how she feels. By ackowledging, not hiding, how you feel you take away these emotions power over you sand they can no longer control you.
- Forgive yourself. You are usually encouraged to forgive others who have hurt you in order to heal from grief. While that is an important element, the more often ignored and more important step is to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for the choices you made that helped create this circumstance, or for not taking care of yourself sooner, or for handling your grief in a way that has kept you stuck. Whatever it is, forgive yourself over and over for it until you have set yourself free.

No one is immune from painful experiences that trigger feelings of sorrow and grief. It is part of our human condition. Yet, how we approach our grief can determine how long we carry its weight around our necks.

As the Buddha is oft-quoted as saying,

“Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”

Do You Resist Change?

I do not easily embrace change. Do you?

I clung to my marraige long past its healthy life. I have remained in my family home–with all its memories of another time–probably longer than was good for me starting a new life. I love creating warm, cuddly environments and then I rarely want to move from them. I am very flexible and “go with the flow” in most situations; so I deceive myself about how hard it is for me to really move willingly into big changes.

Some people are definitely more inclined to jump with both feet into change whenever the opportunity arises, and others, like me, are slow to put our toes in the water. What is your nature?

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

– Charles Darwin – 1809-1882, Naturalist and Geologist

Ironically, in business I understand completely that the companies who are able to change and adjust to their environment are the ones that succeed. I actually am good at it in a business arena, just not my personal life. So it is time to bring my innate knowledge of adaptability in business to my own personal life.

I will be making many changes in the coming months. It is both exciting and terrifying! I will keep you posted on my progress at jumping in the water.

When facing a miscarriage

This is for any of you who have ever lost a baby. I remember my own miscarriage and the years of stiffled pain I held inside. I want to share with you a beautiful poem by Paula Brancato.

The only time I ever cried at the gym,

apart from when I broke a balance beam with my

head, was in yoga class. The teacher,

in her bow pose, switched on “Love

to love you, baby.” Right into the second

chakra it went, just above my pubic bone, when something

very much like my head, but lower, burst.

Only a month before, I had lost a baby I wanted

and a man I didn’t, one after the other.

In my bow pose, holding my ankles,

pelvis rocking on the mat, I started to cry.

I had no idea my body had baby memory.

A current ran through me, very like when my head

unexpectedly hit the beam and I found I was still

alive, or when years later, I held my mother as my grandmother

died, feeling through her body, my grandmother’s life in me.

In the yoga class, what I felt was distinctly the other

way around, a life that almost was but now would never be.

A part of me had died, and a smaller part of my mother

and an even smaller part of my mother’s mother and so on.

Paula Brancato

Create Your Own Blue Zone Routines

August is often the start of hectic activities to resume our regular routines. Here is why, and how creating your own Blue Zone routine is important.

Whether you are getting ready to send your children back to school, or you are just starting back into a more regular work week as employees, you and your customers are all back from vacations — the end of summer schedules is near.

As you begin to ramp back up into your regular routine I suggest you think about creating routines that better align with your desires and your health — rather than doing what you have always done.

I often talk about how creating a life you love will feed your soul and your pocketbook. And it is true. Plus, creating routines that feed your inspiration actually improve your health and life span!

In his book, The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner describes nine key lessons he discovered while researching the places around the world where people live longer than average. He looked at places where people lived to over 100 healthy at rates significantly higher than average — blue zones. Many things he found also match what I have learned about success.

Here are key points you will want include in your routine this fall:

Regular physical exercise — preferably outside rather than in a gym helps your body be strong and reduces stress.
- Walking five miles a day or more every day seems common in blue zones.
- Gardening is another great form of exercise that uses a wide range of motions and gives you a source of fresh vegetables.
Choose work you love, rather than work to later do what you love.
Find purpose in your life so you wake up enthusiastic for your day.
Take time for family — many blue zones have strong family time in their lives. In fact, they put family first.
- Develop and cherish a strong social network; family and friends who will have your back and you will have theirs emotionally, financially and physically. Make sure the people you spend the most time with honor the same values and goals you do.
Take time daily to admire what is beautiful in your world. Stop and enjoy it.
If your routine does not include much laughter, start new ones that allow for more joy in your daily life.
Keep learning. Look for ways to expand your mind regularly.

Here is to your happy, healthy, Blue Zone routines. Do you have one to add?

How do you compare?

One of the worst things women do to themselves is compare themselves to others–especially other women.

Yet, as women, we are frequently doing this. I know I have found myself guilty as charged on numerous occasions. Have you?

I remember during a rough spot in my marriage dropping my son off at a friend’s house for a sleep over. Since I, too, was friends with most of his friends’ parents, I stayed and visited for quite awhile before leaving him there for the night. When I got back in my car to drive home I actually sobbed before driving off because they seemed to have such a wonderful relationship and mine seemed to be falling apart.

Only a few months later at the dropoff to school, this child’s mother came to give me her son’s overnight things since he was coming home with me after school. With a concerned look on her face she explained her son might be overly emotional because his dad and her had just told the family they were getting divorced! I was shocked. We talked for awhile and I offered any help I could give.

Driving away from the school I was overwhelmed with the feeling of how little we really know about the shoes in which anyone else walks. How can we compare ourselves to others when we actually have such inadequate data for our comparisons?

On the flip side of these comparisons, I often have women tell me they could never succeed the way I have because they aren’t as ….. as me. Have you thought that about someone? Most of the ways you fill in the blanks on that statement are full of inadequate data, being pumped up with illusions that someone else always knows more, has more, is more, and can do more than you. They are not filled with truth and facts.

What can you do to fill the space where you normally compare yourself and break this way of looking at yourself and the world?

Rather than find someone who can do it better than you; look for someone who you excel past!
Every time you find yourself comparing yourself to someone; stop right then. Find five people who you can pay a complement to or congratulate on something. Make them feel good about themselves. (You will be amazed at this simple act and I will discuss it in more detail in another blog.)
Go look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself five things you like about you. Look yourself in the eye when you say it.

Commit to doing this and you will find a mound of benefits flow into your life. Without changing your education, looks, or position you will find:

A greater network of resources as people become less risky as competition and more likely friends.
Increased confidence to tackle the tough stuff.
Greater ability to ask the people you think do it better for help.
Clarity on your true strengths and weaknesses so you can focus on what you do well.
More energy, vitality and enthusiasm–all of which are magic bullets to having, doing and being who you want to be!

5 Easy Steps to Increase Your Happiness

Everyone wants to be happier. We chase after things, relationships and success hoping one of them will be the key that changes the balance in our life to greater happiness.

Yet, I have noticed that the happiest people I know are not always the ones with more toys, or outer success in relationships or careers. So what is the key?

In this Ted Talk, Shawn Achor gives great examples of why so much of what we do doesn’t bring happiness and he ends with 5 actions that do. They are things I can vouch for as helping me sustain a positive outlook during a rough time in my life after loosing my mom and brother to cancer in the same year, getting divorced and having my business and family land burn in a wild fire.

Aside from my children and friends, these are the things that saved me, and they can boost your life, too.

Write down things you are grateful for each day. Shawn says three, I like to journal about it each night before bed. It reminds me of what is going well and helps train my mind to look for the good.
Journal about something that went well each day. This helps you replay something good in your mind which actually gives you all the benefit of having it happen again because your subconscious mind doesn’t differentiate between reality and what you think about.
Exercise. We all know this increases a sense of well-being. The question is are you doing it?
Meditate. Meditation is not about making your mind completely still. It is about focus and returning to your focus again and again until you get really good at it. There are numerous studies on the benefit of meditation on our well being. It lowers cortisol and can be as rejuvinating as 8 hours of sleep.
Random acts of kindness. In his Ted Talk, Shawn suggests employees in companies he consults with start each day by sending a positive email to someone–complimenting their work, noting something they did that was appreciated, anything. This creates a good feeling in the person doing the random act as well as the one who receives it. I love this idea and am implementing it starting tomorrow!

I would love to hear how you increase your happiness!

8 Tips for a More Balanced Life

Recently, I was asked what my best advice was for women maintaining a work-life balance. My answer was I don’t believe in work-life balance — and that’s the truth.

The only people worried about it are those who are uninspired by their work. The rest of us are engaged and enjoying what we do, so forcing some balance seems arbitrary and unnecessary.

For example, it is Sunday while I am writing this blog and most people might think if I were leading a balanced life I would not be working.

However, I have spent most of my day reading interesting articles about new business ideas, learning about what some amazing women are doing and bringing it to you in the way of upcoming blogs. I have enjoyed myself thoroughly, while pursing my deep desire to empower women. I did not need to look for balance.

At the same time, people pursuing their passion successfully are also usually good at taking care of themselves to ensure they have the energy, focus and creativity to be successful.

So let’s look at some of the most important ways you can keep yourself well-positioned for success by taking care of yourself — this is how I keep myself healthy and happy.

I work on my important big tasks early in the day before meetings, email or other daily trivia can overwhelm my time. This always includes activity that is moving my BIG goal forward, since I know from experience that I become enthusiastic when I am working on something I feel passionate about. That enthusiasm seeps into everything else I do all day long.
I plan my important tasks ahead of time for the week and usually end my work day with a list of what is important for the next day, rather than just take what comes. By planning ahead, I have more control over my time and am less at the effect of all the minor emergencies of life. And when real emergencies do take me away, I know what my priorities are when I resume, so I spend less time reconstructing my day.
I avoid multi-tasking, so that my focus is on the task at hand. That way, I complete things faster, leaving me free to be present for my family and friends when I elect to.
Eat healthy, home-cooked meals often using real ingredients that are as close to the way mother-nature provided them as possible. We are what we eat–it affects our moods, energy, focus and mental capacity. Although many busy people feel they cannot afford to take time to cook from scratch, my opinion is you cannot afford not to. This is one of the multi-tasking areas I indulge because cooking often becomes a social event for me–time to catch up with a child or friend while cooking together. With such a large household (4 kids plus a nephew who lived with us and often friends for dinner), I always cook large quantities that allow me to have home cooked leftovers eliminating the need to cook at every meal.
Exercise regularly. I like to mix my exercise between long walks to clear my head, gardening to feed my soul and going to yoga or Pilates classes to build my strength.
Lastly, something I am learning to do better — take “real” breaks, not pretend breaks from work. My fake breaks include looking at social media sites (which although are entertaining and a great way to learn about friends) usually end up including me posting on my business page or linking to articles that become research for a book or program. I get much greater rejuvenation from a phone call or dinner with a friend, or cooking a meal with one of my children completely away from anything work related.
Enjoy life. Although I am working on a Sunday, I left my work behind yesterday to spend the morning with my daughter who will leave soon for her gap year travels. Then, a friend unexpectedly came to visit in the afternoon, and I went out to a movie and dinner with friends in the evening. Was there work that needed to be done? Yes, when isn’t there? But having fun is one of the ingredients to success.

I know the title of this blog is 8 tips for a more balanced life and I just gave you seven. The first and most important tip was in the intro. Do what you love, follow your passion and balance will happen because you will feel more alive!

Got Stress?

Do you feel stressed? Frequently?

I often walk a tight-rope between enthusiasm for something that keeps me working until late at night and feeling stressed and overloaded. Do you? We all know stress is not good for us, yet as a culture we seem almost addicted to it.

Here are some reasons you should care, and take action to reduce the stress levels in your life:

Regardless of the type or size of the stress, each time you experience it (for most of us this is multiple times per day) your body has some 1,400 biochemical events. Unchecked, this causes premature aging, impairs of cognitive function, drains our energy — basically it reduces our effectiveness and clarity.
Stress causes “cortical inhibition” which is the term brain researchers used to say it makes smart people do dumb things!
People become numb to stress and then it becomes the new normal. Unfortunately, just because you are not noticing it, stress is still wreaking havoc in your brain and body. Even small stresses accumulate stress hormones in the body unless we take active steps to remove them. Unobserved stress can show up as over-reacting to life events, which if you continue to ignore can end up in really poor decisions and even an unwanted health issue.
The American Medical Association notes that over 60% of ALL human illness and disease are caused by stress!

Notice: I did not start this list saying you should remove things in your life that cause stress, but that it is important to reduce your stress level?

That means our reaction to events is more important than the events. Your goal is to increase your ability to handle stressful events and quickly return to a state of calm.

At the Voice and Exit conference I went to recently, there were a number of talks about stress, it’s opposite – flow, and how we can become more effective. I also tested some fun products that help you relax.

Here is what I learned:

Breathing is top of every list.

Even the gadgets you can buy end up teaching you to breath deeper and more rhythmically. Try this every morning before getting out of bed and each evening before sleep. Then, use it during the day to reduce your stress levels and increase your brain power. Breathe in for five or more counts and then out for the same. Do this for at least two minutes while counting your breaths.

Real and imagined threats both create the same biochemical chain of events in your body.

I know we have all heard this, but it warrants repeating.

Our thoughts influence our level of stress as much or more than our outer circumstances.

If we are ruminating over what happened yesterday, last week, or last year again and again, we are triggering our body to go into fight or flight each time. This means noticing what goes on between our ears and taking control of it.

Deal with each stressful event when it arises; don’t hold on to it.

Easier said than done, but the amount of time wasted thinking about problems rather than acting on them could be as much as 25 to 50% of your day. Think of all the time you could free up — which would also decrease your stress levels — if you were not taking up so much space in your life this way.

Support yourself reducing stress with activities and tools that work for you.

Here are a few of my favorite stress busters I use:

Exercise, exercise, exercise. We hear it and yet so many of us still do not do it regularly. I know I often let this go faster than anything in times of pressure. My favorite ways to keep it in my routine are to take a 30 minute walk between projects or at the end of my day. Gardening. I love having my hands in the dirt, being around plants AND true confession — it fulfills my need to get something done, rather than just “take care of myself.” The issue is not what you do; but that you do it. Five minutes on a trampoline, or downward dog yoga position, or jumping jacks will help reset your hormone meter.
Sing out loud. You can do it when you are alone. Put the music on high and sing your heart out. Or do it in the shower. There is something cathartic about connecting our emotions with our voice in song.
Dance. Although this could be in the exercise list, dancing has an emotional component for me that takes it to a whole new level. I can dance by myself to my playlist, dance with my kids around the living room or go out dancing — and each time I feel something move in me. If you haven’t danced since you were a young adult or teenager, then I highly recommend you find some private time to reconnect with your body. It is great!
Joy. Dancing brings me joy which is why it is high on my list. But really all things that bring you into a state of joy work to lower cortisol and other stress hormones. Playing with your puppy, wrestling with your child, painting can all do the trick…what brings you joy?
Meditation. For those of you who meditate, you know how blessed this can be. For those of you who haven’t tried it, this is your invitation. Most people avoid meditation because they believe they cannot quiet their mind. But that is not your objective. Your goal is to notice when your mind has hijacked you into some story and gently return to your objective of calmness. Over time, your mind becomes the servant it is meant to be, and you become the master. Right now, it may be driving you around, instead of the other way around.
Get more sleep. This is hard for me because I think of myself as a night-owl and enjoy the work I get done when the house goes silent. However, the more I play with earlier sleep routines the more I am realizing what a great impact it has on my attitude and my effectiveness. I am converted!

I will follow up with a review of the products I tested at Voice and Exit soon and let you know what works.

PART OF INFLUENTIAL WOMEN, INC.

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