Tag Archives: success

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

How many times were you asked this as a young child? As an adult you may have actually wondered if you would every really grow up and know what you really wanted to be?

While no one really cared how you answered this question when you were little, as you got older you were given an idea from subtle and no so subtle suggestions that you must choose one goal or “purpose.”

The irony of this cultural pressure is that I have yet to meet anyone who truly has had one destiny or purpose. In fact, what makes people interesting is their multifaceted past. What creates genius is your ability to see things from various perspectives to find the keys to a new solution–something that comes with a varied experience.

How many people can you name who are still doing what they studied in college?

Sometimes doing what you love changes. You change. Circumstances change. Technology inserts new ways of doing things. Opportunities arise that if you are wise you capture–not because it was your goal since you were five and people asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up or it was your college major–but because the opportunity ignites your imagination and enthusiasm.

We have traveled down the road of specializing to such a degree that it is hard to change paths once you have invested so much energy in one direction. We have forgotten how important it is to be able to have a general perspective before you can drill deep. Henry Ford is often quoted as saying he did not need to know everything because he could hire people who specialized in those areas. Similarly, Andrew Carnegie, at one time the richest man in the world, surrounded himself by people who understood the steel industry much better than he did–even though he made his fortune in steel.

The people at the top of any field are not experts in everything needed for their success.

  • The orchestra conductor cannot play every instrument in the symphony.
  • The CEO is not an expert at marketing, manufacturing and finance.
  • The school principal is not an expert in each subject taught at her school.
  • The heart surgeon does not administer the anesthesia.

Maybe when our life expectancy was around 30 years of age it made sense to do one thing and do it well. But you will most likely live three times that age, so why limit yourself to doing the same thing your whole life through?

If you are a person who has many interests, rather than let culture pressure make you feel flighty and ungrounded, remind yourself that you are actually ahead of the rest of society who painfully try to find things that will inspire them. Many people in life have dulled their curiosity and ability to explore new things. If you have changed courses multiple times than you have probably honed and cultivated a spirit of learning that will serve you throughout life. Other skills you have gained are:

  • Comfort in uncertainty.
  • Skills that transfer across sectors like being able to inspire others, organization, or others.
  • Seeing multiple perspectives, creating solutions otherwise missed.
  • Ability to learn new things.
  • Adaptability which is key in our rapidly changing world.

The next time someone belittles your changing careers or ending one passion for another, remember…

By feeding your curiosity and willingness to change you are building your genius and becoming the person you were meant to be–when you grow up!

 

Your Oscar Winning Performance

You might wonder what the Oscars and your success have in common?

Oscar night always generates so much excitement–even for people like me who don’t see most of the movies nominated, it is still fun to watch the show or read the headlines of who won. Whether it is the glamour, the fantasy, or the fame, acting and those who do it well seem to grab our attention.

The skill of the best actresses (or actors) and their directors is to make us believe something is real, even when it isn’t, and–believe it or not–it is the same skill that determines whether affirmations work for you. Yep, the thing missing from your happiness is probably your inability to pretend things that haven’t come to fruition yet–are real!

You may have tried affirmations and given up on them because they didn’t work–writing them off as one more failed technique. But the harsh reality is affirmation do work, if you can convince yourself to believe they are true.

You probably deliver affirmations with an internal critic adding, “Yeah, right!” or “Here are all the facts that show this isn’t true.” The inner voice is more believable than the affirmation, and so it wins the Oscar award for your life.

A few years ago one of my mentors, Bob Proctor, gave me a book called The Art of Acting by Stella Adler. It seemed a strange book to give a businesswoman and spiritual seeker who had no interest in acting. Yet, a short way into the book I recognized it was my missing ingredient in making affirmations work for me. Stella taught her acting students, like Marlon Brando, how to make their characters come to life by having them study the intricate details that make up a scene and rarely focused on delivering lines. These are the same details that help you convince yourself that your affirmations are real, which is the key to affirmations working.

Based on Stella’s teachings, here are a four ways you can become the Best Actress in your own life and start to create the movie you choose to live rather than the one you don’t.

  1. Acting is doing. Stella never let actors rely on the lines, she told them their actions should come before the lines and make the lines believable. What would someone do if your affirmation were true? How would they walk? Sit? What would they be carrying? Fill your imagination with action that would arise from your affirmation being real.
  2. Imagine your affirmed circumstance in detail. Stella told students they couldn’t have dinner on a stage. They had to transform the stage into the circumstance of having dinner in their mind even if the props and circumstances were not on the stage. She would have her students first imagine the details of the dinner. Is it in a home or a restaurant? Notice the placement and type of silverware, plates, and water glasses. Is wine served? Are there candles? What food is being served? Be very specific. Only when you have filled in all the details of this dinner or anything else in your mind, including whom else is there, can you affirm it with conviction.
  3. Study others who do or have what you want. Actors do not always have the life experience of the people they are portraying, so they study people who do to learn the nuances that make up that type of person. If you want to affirm you are wealthy, go where wealthy people are and watch them. Shop at stores they shop at and observe them while there. If you want to be in love, remember times you were in love and how it affected your body, your walk, your tone of voice and go watch couples interact. Then when you affirm these things you will be affirming them with the energy and details that make them feel real to your subconscious rather than as an idle wish. Stella said actors are undercover agents who must constantly spy on others!
  4. Know your justification for what you are affirming. An interesting exercise Stella made students do was to justify their actions. If they were drinking a glass of water on stage they needed an internal reason for it, even if it is not stated outright to the audience–reasons like taking vitamins, getting a bad taste out of their mouth, or gargling. But she would not accept the justification of “I’m thirsty.” Why? Because it was too obvious. If you want to affirm being wealthy your justification needs to extend well beyond because you want to be able to buy things–what kind of things, what will wealth change in your life, specifically.

The best way to become an amazing actress is to practice and study and the same is true for your affirmations to become believable so that they manifest.

Many people who teach affirmations tell you to aim big, and I agree.

But to learn the technique of belief and faith you need to practice from where you are to quiet the internal critic. Stella told her students they could not play a part bigger than them and their experiences. She sent them out to increase their experiences so they could increase the size of the parts they could play.

That is what I recommend you do. Affirm something small and study the intricacies of what it would look like to realize it. Then affirm it to yourself, looking in the mirror, while driving, before bed. Pick small things until you grow you muscle of imagination and detailed observation.

If you are depressed, affirming you are joyful may be beyond your ability to imagine.

But you could imagine and affirm that today is going to be better than yesterday. And then start to create how that scene would look. What small improvements could you believe? Once you get these bit parts right, you will be on your way to the Oscars!

Amy

What Are You Feeling?

Most people try to hide their feelings and the result is that the emotions come out sideways in their relationships and work.

Matt Lieberman, a neuroscientist from UCLA, says that by labeling our emotions we diffuse their power over us and they can become informative instead. Labeling works because it gets us out of our reptilian brain and back to the reasoning part of our brain.

You might have learned this in a parenting class–instead of trying to appease an upset child your best strategy is to help them identify (label) what they are feeling. This allows them to process it and rise above the feeling, rather than be engulfed by the feeling.

Well, the same is true for you and I. Although you may have been taught that you are too emotional and should get a handle on your emotions, that type of conditioning only makes you more likely to explode or react from an emotional space. It does not actually make you more rationale.

Emotions are indicators that can help us navigate our environment and make choices that will lead to our happiness.

They should not be stifled. Neither do we want to become victims of our own emotions to the point they have shut down parts of our brain and put us into ‘fight or flight’ mode.

When you feel angry and acknowledge it then you can look at the circumstance and make choices to ask for changes or remove yourself from situations that aren’t in your best interest. If you try to hold in your anger you are likely to stop listening to the mild messages until they become an explosion.

My experience with my own pent up anger is it always comes out destructive and it never gets me what I actually want.

Cultivate Curiosity

So in order to make sure I hear my anger, or any other emotion, while remaining in the driver’s seat of my life–I am learning to label how I feel and start to become a curious investigator of my emotions.

The more I listen to and ask questions about how I am feeling the more I am starting to make choices I like. By labeling how I am feeling it keeps me from diving deep into the feeling. On those deep dives I rarely learn anything that helps me react to my world in a productive way.

Labeling your emotions is a great tool. Try it next time life sends you spinning. Cultivate curiosity for how you are feeling and it can become a wonderful guide. Life is too short to spend it pretending we are happy when we are not.  The easiest way to make a life where you are happy is to notice what makes you feel good and what doesn’t. Then do more of what does.

 

 

 

Walking the Tightrope of Caring While Having No Attachments

Many spiritual teachings tell us to have no attachments in order to find happiness; while success guru’s teach us to have strong dreams, build vision boards, and think about our goals regularly. How do you navigate these seemingly conflicting instructions?

You don’t have to choose one or the other–happiness or success. In fact, following both the instruction to build a strong vision of where you are going AND remaining detached will help you achieve both.

How?

The key is to have a goal, but not be so attached to it in the form you have in mind that you are closed to other possibilities. You want to build a picture in your mind that becomes so real you can actually feel the emotions you would feel if it were real right now. And at the same time you hold a relaxed view that if this did not happen it would be to make way for something even better.

Without a dream or vision you have no direction; but with attachment you are trying to force things and are not in the state of allowing–where the real magic happens.

You have to care–but not that much.

To do this you have to cultivate a few beliefs:

  1. You must believe in your ability to achieve what you are after and be able to stay focused on your desired outcome, even when events and circumstances have not yet lined up.
  2. You need resilience; knowing if it does not work out you will recover and find something else.
  3. You want faith in the goodness of the universe that when things sometimes don’t go as you plan that something even better is on its way and this was not the best thing for you.

The live by these beliefs, not merely state them, is hard work but the strength and confidence required to do so can be cultivated. It requires more than anything else self-control–control of your thoughts. Each time doubt arises you have to actively say “No” to that thought and return to ones that reflect the three beliefs you want.

When you hear, “This isn’t meant to be; nothing is going right and it’s not happening fast enough,” you must quickly replace those thoughts with, “I don’t know how this is going to come together but I know it is.” Then ask yourself what is the one thing you can do or learn to help you achieve your goal–right now, today. By moving back into action, you not only prevent those negative thoughts from gaining momentum; you also move closer towards your goal.

Each time you find yourself anxious you have to toss it aside with unabashed confidence knowing this goal is not the only thing you can go after. Remind yourself how capable you are–no matter what happens–to create something you love.

Then when occasionally something happens that makes you decide to let go of a particular dream it is critical you keep your thoughts on the idea that somehow that vision wasn’t the right one to bring you your highest happiness. It is hard in the moment to believe that; but if you think back on other losses and times things did not work out, you almost always can see that you are better off now because of it. Use those memories to keep yourself positive when it is happening in the current moment.

Walking the tightrope of strong dreams and detachment takes practice. The results are the ability to create the life you desire easily and effortlessly!

Words of Wisdom For Instant Happiness

Today, I received an email from a friend and colleague who I admire, Natalie Ledwell, quoting one of the women I admire most, Marianne Williamson. The quotes are pointers to how I choose to live. I think you will enjoy them so I have reprinted Natalie’s email below.

If you don’t know about Natalie’s work with Mind Movies, you will want to look into them. Mind Movies allow you to program your mind to the things you want, overriding all the programming you take in unintentionally–and you actually get to create your personalized version!

One of the reasons I love Natalie’s work is that she and I both are passionate to help people learn how to succeed, without the struggle and heartache most people stay stuck in. Both Natalie and I have been in the trenches and are teaching what worked for us, not some theory about what we heard works, but real life-tested ideas.

My success in various businesses would be fleeting and meaningless if it were not for teachers along the way that helped me create fulfillment not just bank balances, and purpose not report cards and titles. Marianne Williamson was one of those teachers.  I first stumbled on to her work over 20 years ago and have been enjoying her wisdom and turning to her guidance ever  since.

In Natalie’s words:

If you haven’t come into contact with this woman’s extraordinary work, you’re really missing out!

I’m talking about Marianne Williamson who, besides being a NY Times best-selling author and lecturer, has been a spiritual friend and counselor to Oprah! YES – Oprah!

If you’d like to be enlightened by her wisdom, read below for seven of her best lessons for instant happiness:

1- Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.

2- Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

3- We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?

4- Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.

5- The new midlife is where you realize that even your failures make you more beautiful and are turned spiritually into success if you became a better person because of them. You became a more humble person. You became a more merciful and compassionate person.

6- The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.

7- Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.

Enjoy!
Natalie ~ Mind Movies

Are you the Queen of “What if?”

Have you ever noticed that when you become anxious about something your internal voice that asks “what if?” goes into overdrive?

Questions that start with these two words actual do not improve your ability to assess a situation and make sound decisions.  No, these two words just add fuel to your stress and worry. According to Travis Bradberry, coauthor of Emotional Intelligence 2.0:

The more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you’ll spend focusing on taking action.

So rather than fret and worry about what might happen here are some tips to get you into a mindset that will support your success in the next stressful circumstance (let’s face it, another one will come sooner or later).

  • Breathe!

    • This is always my first and formost recommendation when anxiety mounts. Take at least two minutes (excuse yourself to the bathroom if needed) to just breathe deeply. Oxygenating your brain will improve your thought process.  Slowing down to breath will calm your nervous system.  And lastly, deep breathing for two minutes will allow you to respond, not react, to whatever troubles you.

  • Think outside the box!

    • When faced with a crisis of sorts you might tend to resort to restrictive thinking. “This is how it always is.” “This will never work.” Sometimes you need to imagine how another person would see and handle this situation, rather than yourself, to start to expand your possible solutions.

  • Imagine the outcome you desire in detail.

    • Unfortunately, if you are like most people you problem are great at imagining the details of what can go wrong but spend little time imagining things going exactly how you would want them.  Put time into creatively imagining how you want things to go and put your focus on the postitive possibilities.

  • Create a plan of action for achieving what you want.

    • Sometimes a list of what I need to do, broken down into small steps is extremely soothing to me.  It helps take me out of crisis mode and into planning mode. It also helps me see things from the smaller details that look managable rather than the overwhelming problem where I started.
    • You can even add in contingency plans to settle your “What if” queen, as long as they focus on how you can overcome possible obstacles and do not start a list of reasons it won’t work.

  • Ask will this matter next month, next year, in five years, or when I am old.

    • This is one of my favorite exercises and one that has saved me from spiraling into uncontrolled anguish that my first boss gave me. It will help you put things in perspective quickly when your fight or flight system has been triggered.

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.

 

 

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.

One Trick to Help Reach Your Goals Faster!

Here is a big twist on reaching your goals that might make the difference in your success!

Usually when we want to achieve something we focus on the outcome of what we want. There are even hundreds of books, audio recordings and training programs telling you to imagine your goal achieved–I often advise you to do it too!

However, psychologists Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor did a study looking at the effect of visualizing three different aspects of your goal:

  1. Imagining the goal achieved,
  2. Imagining having the habits that would achieve the goal, or
  3. Imagining having both the good habits AND achieving the goal.

Which do you think got the best results? Well, it surprised me because I assumed number three, visualizing both would have the highest reward. But it was visualizing the habits to get there!

Visualizing the habits to get there had the best results!

This could be a huge step in your success at any goal. Instead of focusing on being successful, visualize yourself as someone who has the productivity and decision making of a successful person. Rather than imagining yourself thin, imagine yourself with the habits of someone with a healthy, slender body. The possibilities are endless!

Apparently, the reason this is so powerful is because it decreases anxiety over achieving the results and increases your likelihood to plan for success. After thinking about it I realize it makes perfect sense. It’s why I coach women to work on their chief priority first…then fill in the day! It is the same reason I advise you to carve out time each day to move forward on your goal, even if it is only 30 minutes a day.

Both of these are habits. And by developing success habits, you create success! It really is that simple.

Do you have a goal in mind that you can refocus your attention to the habits required to achieve it? Start visualizing yourself with those habits, today!