Are you "should"ing all over yourself and others?

For a second you thought I was being vulgar...didn't you?

Nope, just trying to get you attention.

What is "shoulding"?   The idea is pretty simple. 

Are you a "should"er?:
When you look at your to-do list, do you find lots of things that you don't want to do but feel that you "should" versus "need" to do?
Do you often hear yourself saying "I have to" or "I must"?
Are you often overheard saying "You don't understand how busy I am?"
How about "I am supposed to"?
Do you have so much to do and yet you feel that you never have any time for yourself?

Let me be clear.

The reality of life is that there are truly very few things that are absolutes. You have to feed your children. You need to pay your mortgage and your electric bills. There are things that you really have to do.  This is not the kind of thing I am talking about.

What I am saying is that if you look closely at your "to do" list, I bet there are things on it that could be left undone for a day, a week or forever.

Some examples:
Your friend had a baby and you agree to drop their older child at school for 2 months and she lives on the other side of town.
You make meals for this same person for weeks at a time during this same timeframe.
A co-worker is constantly running over to you to bail them out.
You signed up to run 4 committees at your child's school.
Another friend is involved in some committee and they are constantly asking you for last minute help for their committee.

I am not saying that these aren't very nice things to do.  I'm not saying that is isn't great to do things for friends.  What I am saying is that if doing these things doesn't give you energy then you should probably reconsider not doing them.

If so, you are probably a "should"er. But there is hope.


Want to reform your "should"ing ways? 

Try these simple steps:

• Write down all of your shoulds, musts, and have tos.
• Mark an X next to those that are the true musts of your life.
• Add an X to the things that give you energy or are for someone who has always done a lot for you.
• Eliminate what remains on your list that are causing you the most strife.
• Add back at least one thing that is just for you and something you have wanted to do.

Need a coach to help you get started? Let me know.

Ciao, Melissa

Writing Your Own Obituary

I am sure you are thinking that this sounds pretty morbid.  Why would you want to do this?  The answer is pretty simple.  Writing your own obituary is a very powerful way to discover what it is that you truly want out of your life which can sometimes be the best way to ensure that you will actually achieve it.

To complete this exercise, one must think about dying.  But more importantly, one must think about how one has lived.  For example, did you get that Doctorate you always wanted?  Did you give back to your community?  Did you have a happy marriage? 

To complete this exercise, one must consider very important things...things not to be taken lightly.

I recently suggested that someone complete this exercise.  This person was not happy with their circumstances, personally or professionally. 

So, if you want to get started, do the following.

• Grab a seat in a quiet place....a great place would be outside in a park under a shady tree but since it may be Winter where you are, that may not be an option.  So in lieu of that why not just imagine a warm place.
• Take out a sheet of paper or a journal and grab a pencil.  (Or just fire up your computer and open a blank page.)
• Close your eyes and imagine what your life will look like at the end.....the end that is hopefully very far away.
• Imagine all that you have accomplished personally and professionally...nothing is too insignificant.
• As you begin to have images, write down what you are seeing. 

For example, you have been married for 50 years to your college sweetheart.  Your have 3 beautiful children and 6 grandchildren all who live very close to you.  You retired about 5 years ago with your spouse and you split time between where you grew up and your home by the beach.  You had a very successful career which culminated in your role as VP of Sales at a Fortune 100 IT firm where you won many accolades and were loved by many.  You were also very involved in the organization Room to Read where you helped to launch a local chapter that eventually helped build over 25 libraries and provided over 50,000 books to children across the globe. 

Don't worry about writing it like they do in the newspaper.  What is important is that you get the essence of your life on paper.

And then after you have taken the time to write the obituary, you can great goals for yourself to help you to achieve it.

If you'd like help completing this exercise in the form of coaching, let me know.

Ciao, Melissa

Why I Like Positive Psychology?

I was recently asked to write a post on basically anything I wanted to regarding Positive Psychology and type.    Positive Psychology and type have added tremendous value to my life so I thought I'd share the bulk of my post here.

 
My personal definition of Positive Psychology is making one’s life fulfilling by focusing on what you are good at…in other words, by focusing on your strengths.

I had my first exposure to Positive Psychology when I read the book by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton “How Full is Your Bucket”. It is a very sweet book that talks about how we impact others in lots of little ways…some more positive than others. (Donald, by the way, has often been referred to as the Grandfather of Positive Psychology.)

It introduces the metaphor of the “dipper” and the “bucket” and how we all choose to add to our own or other people’s “buckets” each day by doing or saying nice things.

So many “A Ha” moments for me after reading books like “Now, Discover Your Strengths” and “Vital Friends. I couldn’t get enough of this thing called Positive Psychology. It made SO much sense to me.

One of the things I appreciated the most was focus on the positive. I had done SO many assessments and as much as there were positives….there was also always the negatives. Positive Psychology is all about what is right with people…not what is wrong.

A few years later while I was going through some personal stuff, I decided that I was going to start on personal happiness journey. And where did I turn but my local Barnes & Noble where I happened upon “Authentic Happiness” by Dr. Martin Seligman…often called the Father of Positive Psychology…what a coincidence. I couldn’t get enough of his work.

In his latest book “Flourish”, he redefines Positive Psychology to be focused on wellbeing instead of just happiness. By his definition, wellbeing consists of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment or PERMA. (Check out the book for all the details.)

Does PERMA explain everything? Is it a road map to wellbeing for every single person? No way. How could anything be? PERMA defines the categories that contribute to wellbeing. It doesn’t define a “how to” for each person. (It does give great examples such as creating a “what went well today” journal.)

In her blog titled “Do you overemphasize happiness?, Penelope Trunk, a popular career blogger who is a self-proclaimed ENTJ, wrote:

“I think I want an interesting life. Not that I want to be interesting, but I want to be interested. I'm talking about what I think is interesting to me. I want to choose things that are interesting to me over things that would make me happy.”

I think what Penelope is talking about here is the “E” in PERMA or engagement. And engagement for her means exploring interesting ideas.

In his review of “Flourish”, Richard Layard, a Wellness expert, writes “Positive psychology can come over as very individualistic – a strategy for each individual to find his own way to wellbeing, full stop.”

I think Positive Psychology is and should be individualistic. It is all about what creates wellbeing in every single one of us.

In Albert-László Barabási's book “Linked”, he writes about the six-degrees-of-separation theory which states that, on average, we are connected to anyone in the world by 6 links or degrees of separation. Six is the average but there are many people who are separated by only 3.

I can tell you that my husband, an ENFP, is one of those people. He knows EVERYONE!! Any time we meet someone new, he always knows someone that person knows. We have run into people in his network in the most obscure places…and it is never a surprise.

You could argue that he derives meaning and engagement from this network. Hmmm, this is starting to sound familiar….weren’t meaning and engagement part of PERMA?

Richard Layard further states “our wellbeing depends hugely on how others behave towards us. So, we will never achieve a better life for all of us unless we each take more trouble about the wellbeing of others.”

While I agree that the world we live in is a vast social network and that it has a great influence on us. I don’t agree that everyone or every “type” has the same concern with that network.

It took me 30+ or so years to figure out that my success was going to be heavily influenced by others. My husband probably knew it from birth. He is an incredible networker and always has been. I had to learn to prioritize networking...hmmm…could it be because Feeling is my inferior function?

Growing a network might give me a sense of accomplishment but it won’t give me a sense of engagement or meaning. The opposite is true for my husband.

I get an incredible sense of meaning and accomplishment from organizing people and things. So much so that when my daughter started Kindergarten and the PTA had no President, I agreed to step in even though I was totally new to the school. Being in charge of 30 committees and implementing an electronic communications process for parents was just the kind of thing that I love to do. Don’t they call ENTJs the Field Marshalls?

So why do I like Positive Psychology? I like it because each individual gets to decide what will give them the greatest sense of wellbeing and then they can go forth and flourish.

P.S. If you are interested in the Positive Psychology movement, I highly recommend Dr. Seligman’s U. Penn site www.authentichappiness.org. There are TONS of free resources including the VIA Strengths Survey.

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What do Justin Bieber and Bill Gates have in common?

It's simple. Justin Bieber and Bill Gates are both Outliers as defined by Malcolm Gladwell...one of my favorite authors.

Why is that? Let me tell you.


1) Just like Bill, Justin practiced his craft for well over 10,000 hours.  He has been singing and dancing since the age of 6 or 7.

2) If it weren't for a convergence of technology, he wouldn't have had a chance.  Justin had recorded videos to show his family across Canada and thought that YouTube would be the easiest way to share them.  Well, guess what...next thing his family knew he had about 1,000,000 followers without even trying.  

3) And then when he was trying to get radio stations across the country to play his music and they all kept telling him that he was too young and no one wanted to listen to his music, he used Twitter to tell his fans where he would be...and, as chronicled in his new movie, some of his appearances were cancelled due to the shockingly massive turnout of his fans.   

So, Malcolm when you are writing a new forward to Outliers or if you end up adding a new chapter, don't forget to add Justin. 

Introverts- Do they Get the Short End of the Stick?

I was recently having lunch with a really good friend of mine...in fact, she is my best friend. We used to work together for years. We don't anymore but we share the same passion for coaching people (she coaches sales people) so it is often a topic of conversation between us.

She was talking about her new team. You know...the good, the bad, the ugly...etc.

She is excited because she has a group of people who are doing really well. And even better, she has a few who don't do so well...but with some minor adjustments will be fanastic.

Then she was talking about "the star". You know who I mean. The one who does really well and is usually left alone...for years and years. And it isn't until a new manager comes along that anyone realizes that this person might pull great numbers in some areas but do horribly in others.

My friend was talking about her first conversation with this person. It was basically an introductory meeting... a "getting to know you" kind of thing where my friend asked her coachee how she could help. And my friend, a very clear Extravert, couldn't understand why every question that she asked her coachee was answered with either a "everything is fine" or "no, I don't need any help". Oh, and did I mention that she did so without expression.

I laughed visualizing the conversation. I can imagine that the less that the coachee said the more my friend spoke. Thus giving her Introvert zero processing time. The more my friend spoke, the less her coachee said. In conveying the story, my friend was blown away by this person's apparent lack of insight into their faults or openness to receive help.

What I was blown away by was how much someone can read into what someone else says... or in this case, doesn't say.

It is tough with sales people because the stereotype of sales people is that they are all Extraverts. But having managed sales people for years, I know that it can go either way in sales. And I certainly have had my fair share of fantastic sales people who were Introverts. They may have been less apt to toot their own horn but they were great... in their own way.

Long story short, my friend and I then had a long conversation about how she might approach this person differently to appeal more to her coachee's type. (I suggested she email her team members an agenda and give them an idea of what might be discussed in each session. I also suggested that if she had any data to share that she send it ahead of time as well.)

Whenever I have this kind of conversation, the Extraverted coach is always totally open to taking a different approach...but what if no one ever tells them?

Finding Work-Life Balance

When I was growing up, I aspired to be a "career woman". That is where I focused all of my energy. And for years I was a bit of a workaholic. I was the first one in and the last one out. If I took a vacation, I'd go from the airport straight to the office to catch up. If I wasn't "away", I'd go in every day. (This was before the day of laptops and crackberries.) It got to the point where my therapist at the time threatened to medicate me if I didn't find moderation in my life.

I don't know how (maybe it was the therapy) but back in approximately 1997 I found work life balance. Now...I have read many articles about work life balance. And some say you can have it all. Others say you can't. Others say that there is no such thing. For me, work life balance is a state of mind. If I feel or in my case "think" I have balance, I have it. My goals is that every day is 7.5 or 8. That is balance to me.

You might be thinking. Wow, 8 hours...she doesn't want to work that hard. Well, for those of you that know me well. I am able to get a ton of work done very quickly. Back in the days when I was in college working Summers in bank operations, I could do 2 or 3 people's jobs. One of my bosses thought it meant I was doing sloppy work. But that wasn't the case. I just worked quickly. I like to get stuff done and I did. My mother always told me that some day I would learn to slow down. I never did. (Not coincidentally, this is when I developed my addiction to diet soda.)

As I climbed the corporate ladder, I learned that if I got my work done early the rest of the time was mine. With "Strengths" of "Activator" and "Achiever", I like to start and I like to finish. So I do...that's "how I roll".

Getting back to the topic. I finally feel like I have balance 95% of the time and I don't know if you can ask for more than than.

Want some ideas for finding work-life balance for yourself? Read on.

• Leave your building and have lunch with a friend at least once a week, preferably daily.
• Figure out your boundaries and stick to them. (e.g. I won't work on weekends and I don't travel for work.)
• Figure out (and tell your boss) what you are good at and make sure that you can spend as much time as possible doing it.
• Get as much sleep as you need.
• Find time for the gym.

"Unusual" Words

A week ago, I observed a funny conversation between my husband and my, much younger, sister. I had been watching a roundtable discussion about one of the big firms that was having trouble in the Market. You know...Lehman, AIG, Merrill etc. When asked why one of the firms was going under, one of the participants said it was due to the hubris of the President/CEO of that firm. I shared this with my husband and sister.

What ensued was pretty funny. My sister went on and on asking why didn't he just say pride or ego. And my husband made references to Greek Mythology and Shakespeare stating that hubris was much more appropriate because of the imagery and nuance that the word conveys in comparison. Neither would agree with the other and I just laughed knowing that I'd write about this conversation some day soon.

I site this as an example of the differences between Sensors and Intuitives. My sister, the Sensor, felt that the more straightforward word would suffice. Where as my husband, the Intuitive, wanted something less practical, less obvious and hubris "fit the bill".

Love it!