Start Slow

By Jack Canfield

As seen in http://mysuccessfilledlife.com/ by Lee Jenkins

In an ideal world, we’d fully isolate ourselves from negative environments. The reality is that we can’t fully escape negative environments. However, there are steps we can take to minimize our exposure to negativity and limit its impact.

Acknowledge Your Reality

When we believe that we are being forced to tolerate a negative environment, such as a spouse who constantly complains or working for a company whose values don’t match our own, we can feel trapped and hopeless. The illusion of being subjected to negativity against our will can increase stress and depress our mood.

To regain a sense of control, it’s important to acknowledge that you do have a choice in every situation. You may feel that you can’t afford to quit your job because the pay and benefits are too good and the job market is too unstable. Instead of bemoaning the fact that you’re trapped in a job you don’t like, acknowledge that you do have the choice of quitting. Instead, you are choosing to keep your job, because you enjoy the stable pay and benefits that it brings. This simple reframing of your situation will ease your stress and make you feel more in control.

When you feel negative judgments arising, don’t resist them. Remember, what we resist, persists. Instead, acknowledge and embrace your feelings. Only by doing so will you be able to progress to the point of letting the negative feelings and judgments go.

Journaling is another excellent way to release your feelings. At the end of the day, pour out all of your negative feelings and thoughts onto paper. Use the Total Truth process described in The Success Principles to ensure that you’ve fully excavated your feelings about troublesome situations. Negative feelings are like weeds. If you don’t fully extract them (e.g., pull out the roots), they will come back. If you’d like, burn your journal pages or letters that you write.

3 Decompression Tips

When you find yourself repeatedly exposed to the same negative environments, such as your office, use one or more of the following tools to decompress and center yourself before moving on to the rest of your day.

•    Don’t listen to the news, which only adds negative images and thoughts to your mental space. If you commute between your office and home, spend your drive time listening to relaxing music or educational CDs. When I have to drive home from Los Angeles after a trip, I like to listen to a comedy channel. Because I spend the entire drive laughing, I walk in the door ready to greet my family pumped full of feel-good endorphins.

•    Create a decompression ritual to help you disengage from your negative environment. For example, take a walk after work, spend a few minutes meditating, or do yoga. A few minutes invested in nurturing and calming yourself will be rewarded with a calm and happy remainder of your day.

•    Do not use alcohol as a way to unwind. Alcohol lowers your inhibitions, which means that any stress and unresolved anger you’re carrying will come bursting out more easily. The innocent targets of your attacks will the people who deserve your anger the least: your family and friends.

Add to Your Environment

There may be situations where you are unable to control an environment. However, that does not mean that you should give up completely. Look again to see what small steps you might be able to take to create a more nurturing supportive environment.

For example, if your office culture tends to be negative, hang motivational signs in your work area or select a picture for your computer screen saver that uplifts and relaxes you. Take a quick walk at lunchtime to reconnect with nature, or close your office door for a few minutes of breathing and meditation rather than gossiping over a cup of coffee.

Finally, strive to be as positive as you can be. Give up complaining and blaming, and look for the best in every situation. Not only will you attract other positive people into your life, you may be the beacon that inspires others to shift their attitudes, as well.

Click here for more Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

Hi, just thought I would share something new.

A Video Blog! A lot easier to put together than writing – as much as I like writing, I found it much easier to sit and talk to myself in the computer.

Anyway here it is.

Please leave some feedback…

Paul

My First Video Blog

By Craig Ballantyne

The New Early to Rise – http://www.earlytorise.com/

On Sunday afternoon my eight-and-a-half hour return flight from Copenhagen turned into a twelve-and-a-half hour ordeal. Thunderstorms shut down the Toronto airport and by the time we were re-routed, refuelled and returned, we had spent an extra four hours on the plane.

Fortunately, I was prepared. Stocked with three books and my laptop I was able to get through “SHAM” (a skewering of the self-help industry), Marshall Goldsmith’s classic, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”, and “Y-Size Your Business” (a book about hiring kids from Generation Y that I disliked and disagreed with). I’ll review Marshall’s book in a future ETR article.

The extra time also allowed me to write two ETR daily emails, two fitness articles for my blog, five workouts for a new fitness product, and the PowerPoint slideshow for an upcoming fitness seminar I’m doing this weekend.

In fact, it might have been my most productive 12 hours this summer. However, as I looked around the airplane during the flight and the subsequent delay, I noticed almost everyone else sat around twiddling their thumbs, even the businessmen who were traveling to Toronto for meetings. They simply weren’t properly prepared for an eight hour flight, let alone a twelve hour delayed flight.

Call me crazy, but I’m one of those people who will take work to the dentist office rather than reading three year old magazines. I also plan my next workday each night before I shut down my computer. And I teach my fat los clients to plan their meals and workouts for the week ahead.

The fact is that little gets accomplished unless you prepare.

If you get to work and are instantly overwhelmed by half-dozen projects on your desk, you’re not organized. And if you are struggling to get work done or breakthrough in your business, it’s time to take a good hard look at your work habits.

Are you being reactive or proactive?

Are you allowing your day to be dictated by the ‘fires’ that need to be put out?

Or are you showing up with a ‘to do’ list and attacking it first thing in the morning, preferably thirty minutes before anyone else shows up to start bothering you.

Showing up to work early and with a plan is Michael Masterson 101. He taught us this lesson over and over during the past 10 years.

Take time each day to plan tomorrow.

Take time each week to plan the next.

Your productivity will soar. Your stress will become manageable. Your time will be used properly, and you’ll get ahead.

To your success,

Start your day right – with work, food, and a good attitude. This all starts by planning and preparing the night before. Having a great day tomorrow is as simple as planning for one tonight.

Is this what you do? or do you just take it as it comes.

Leave a comment below.

Paul

How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Thought this was a great video and aligns closely with my values and philosophies.

with thanks to Kevin Eikenberry from http://www.theleadershipadvisor.com

I’m a water rat. I love going to the beach. Even with all the chatter about the threat of sharks and the like, I have this penchant for swimming out a fair distance from the shore and then enjoying the swim back. One of the things associated with romping around in the water at the beach is how easy it is to drift away from where you’ve “pitched camp” on the sand. We get focused on what we’re doing in the water and bit by bit we drift away from where we were. It’s not intentional, but the environment in which we’re operating has subtly shifted us to a different location.

We experience this at more places than the beach. One of the most common places is in the workplace. Unfortunately, the area most negatively affected by this is organizational culture. The effort of establishing a quality culture can be easily undermined by what I like to call culture creep.

Culture creep is a slow disintegration of many of the aspects we have purposefully put in place to maintain and perpetuate the culture we worked so diligently to create. When you’re in the ocean, you make it a point to occasionally look up from what you’re doing in the water so you don’t drift too far from where you established your place on the beach. Organizations must do this very thing in order to avoid allowing the day-to-day tasks to cause you to drift from what you established your culture to be…culture creep.

Here are 4 important things to be aware of so you can avoid culture creep in your organization.

Maintain accountability – It rarely happens that an organization has this abrupt paradigm shift in their culture. Accountability being consistently applied across the organization is absolutely imperative. Not just accountable for doing their job, but also for maintaining alignment with the organizational values. Your values are the foundation of your culture, so don’t allow your foundation to slowly crumble.
Crush double standards – The obvious of not playing favorites is the easy target. What is more challenging is making sure there isn’t a double standard for the employees and leadership. Few people, if any, will actually call out a leader that is operating under a double standard, but the impact on culture and morale will be unmistakable. Once this begins, it’s extremely difficult to change without replacing the “rogue” leader.
Keep things public – Make it a point to take opportunities to highlight the actions of those who are exemplifying your desired culture. If there is a difficult decision that needs to be made and the solution is difficult or somewhat unpopular, yet it supports your culture, use this as an internal PR opportunity to boost your culture. Culture is ubiquitous and should be treated as such from all aspects.
Celebrate small victories – There doesn’t have to be some gala event for every act that supports your culture; there does have to be recognition. Re-visit your rewards and recognition program and see how many of them include cultural nuances. It can be a public, heart felt “Thank you” on the team level or something a little more grandiose for your annual event. Whatever level you decide, make sure it’s part of how you honor the efforts of people who support and perpetuate the culture of your organization.
I would love to hear what you think could be added to this list.

Have a great weekend

Paul

PS Please leave a comment to share with others.

Posted on August 16, 2011 by belief1st
By Dave Logan |

Tribal Leadership Dave Logan

More from Leadership Recruitment 2.0 |

What if there were a single technique that would make you a better leader, negotiator, friend, and family member? Would you try it?

Well, there is such a technique. And it’s one of the easiest to use (that’s where the four words come in)–yet, also one of the hardest.

Several years ago, one of my Master of Medical Management students, a doctor, called me to get advice on some tricky politics at work, involving other doctors, nurses, administrators, all doing the equivalent of the Jerry Springer show-yelling at each other. Every leadership and negotiation tactic he tried failed, making the situation more volatile and intractable.

I suggested that he write four words in all caps on a post-it note, then put it somewhere where he will see it and others wouldn’t, such as on a computer monitor.

The four words are: “Shut the f-up.”

Then, when in doubt, look at the post-it note and do what it says.

Flash forward several months. He and the other members of his class were in a large lecture hall at USC, along with some incoming Master of Medical Management students, and graduates who had come back for an alumni reunion. During a presentation, I asked if anyone had any updates that might be useful to others in the room. This same doctor raised his hand, and proceeded to detail, profanity included, what had happened.

He added: “those four words changed my life.”

I don’t remember the next couple of seconds, but the doctors there said I turned so red I looked like a hemorrhoid (I’m not known for using profanity in classes). I’m happy to say I don’t know what that image looks like, but I can only imagine my head swelled and I became red bordering on purple. But I stand behind those words, profanity included, with apologies to my mother.

The next thing I remember is people all around the room-close to 100-grabbing sheets of paper and copying those words down. Several said it was the most important lesson they learned in any education program. And remember-these were medical doctors pursuing a masters degree.

Why does this work? Because it interrupts something called an “amygdala loop,” in which one person loses their cool and goes into flight-or-fight mode. Being linguistic creatures, we don’t throw things (hopefully), instead, we lob insults and arguments, stop listening, stop making sense of things, and are thoroughly convinced that we are right and the other is wrong. This behavior triggers the other person’s amygdala, and the conflict spirals.

What’s happening in Washington? People yelling at each other without listening or critiquing their own point of view. That’s amygdala loops.

What’s happening when people at work form silos? They convince themselves that they are right, others are wrong, and the amygdala loop sets in. “Leaders” find followers who agree-generally jockeying for position themselves-and we find corporations where mediocrity runs the show.

How do you exit this cycle? You write those four simple words, changing the bad word to “heck” if you like, and follow them precisely.

There are two needle-moving additions to this advice. The first is, learn to spot your “amygdala early warning system.” This is a sensation somewhere in your body that your higher reasoning functions are about to shut down, and that whatever is about to come out of your mouth will be dripping in self-righteousness. An economist friend said one of his arms begins to feel hot, and that if doesn’t intervene, he’s about to end relationships and feed his reputation as a jerk. One of my psychiatrist friends reports a tightness in her chest (not related to anything with her heart). Mine is a spot on my head, about the size of quarter, that feels as though the hairs in that spot are standing straight up. When I feel that, I have about half a second before I become what my colleagues call “evil Dave.”

When you feel your version of this sensation, remember the post-it note, and do what it says. Doing so will make you a better leader, negotiator, friend, and all around good person.

The second is to send this blog post to your elected official in Washington. Interrupting the amygdala loop is how we get to Thomas Friedman’s grand resolution to stop NationSuck.

Have the guts to try this technique? If so, I hope you’ll tell us about what happens in a comment below.

Dave Logan

Dave Logan is a USC faculty member, management consultant, and the author of four books including The New York Times bestseller, Tribal Leadership. He has served on the USC faculty since 1996, and teaches leadership and management at the Marshall School of Business. From 2001-2004, he was Associate Dean of Executive Education. He is also Senior Partner of CultureSync, a management consulting firm, which he co-founded in 1997. The firm consults with dozens of Fortune 500 companies, major nonprofits, and governments worldwide. He has a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School at USC.
Learn more about Tribal Leadership
Follow Dave on Twitter @davelogan1

Life is like taking a trip on the river and reacting to the FLOW.
It is always about the FLOW. The problem is most people take their
boat down to the river, put it in the river and then they
invariably turn it UPSTREAM and start paddling hard against the
current. It never occurs to them to go downstream because they
think they have to struggle to have what they want.

Here is a simple idea. Why not go WITH the current instead of
fighting AGAINST the current? But you may say, “Struggle and hard
work is the only way to get what you want.” That’s crazy! Here is
the important point – NOTHING YOU WANT IS UPSTREAM. Ever!

Every bit of struggle and determination, all that “I am going to
heal myself”, “I am going to fix this”, “I am going to make this
better”, all of that has you focused UPSTREAM. What I want is for
you to feel the ease of letting go of struggle. You don’t even
have to turn your boat around in the stream and begin paddling
downstream – just let go of the oars (struggle) and the current
will turn you automatically!

This is not about teaching you to go with the stream because you
have no choice. This is about asking the question and helping you
answer it. Are you going willingly? Are you going toward your
natural unfolding willingly, or are you going to continue to paddle
upstream? In every moment the choice of which way you are going to
go is yours.

Today will bring you a new awareness, a lesson or a manifestation
that you are making progress – IF YOU LOOK FOR IT! No matter how
large or small, please record it in your Evidence Journal. It will
only take a few moments and will AUTOMATICALLY put you in the Flow.

Truly Caring for Your Success!

Dr. Robert Anthony
www.thesecretofdeliberatecreation.com

What are your thoughts on this.

leave a comment for others to see.

Share it with your social media friends

I know…you’ve heard that before. But perhaps not the way I’m about to share with you.

Research done at the University of Arizona demonstrated that top golfers and archers tended to switch from a left brain focus, to a right brain focus, seconds before striking the ball or releasing the arrow. Meaning that they focused on their technique first, but right before execution, they switched their focus to visualising the ‘result’ they were after.

This is also the way I, and most other speakers, prepare for our seminars and speaking events. Several weeks before the seminar, we rigorously review our presentation to ensure that we cover everything we feel will benefit the audience (left brain focused).

But on the day of the event, we switch to right brain thinking, and we don’t even think about the seminar – in fact you can find most speaker hanging out with the audience, or listening to music and just focusing on helping others before walking onstage.

The right brain is where visualisation takes place. This is where you see a goal in your mind before it happens. Is it any wonder these people performed better? They were seeing where they wanted their ball or arrow to go, just seconds before the action took place.

This same mental skill helps people reach their goal bodyweight faster!

You simply practice seeing where you want to go; not where you are right now. However, I want you to take this a step further and visualise ‘during’ your workouts. See in your mind the body you want to achieve, or the lift you want to accomplish.

Make that picture the center of your focus. Avoid anything that might distract you — and yes, that includes looking in the mirror and complaining to yourself about how “out of shape” you are.

Those thoughts absolutely must be minimized, but not eliminated. Asking you to eliminate negative thinking would be impractical. But, if you do away with the majority of your negative thoughts and choose to visualize positive pictures of yourself instead, the results will amaze you.

Chris Guerriero
Host of the Energy Factor TV show

P.S. The reason some people have troubles dropping weight has nothing to do with will-power or over-eating… what’s been holding you back is your self-limiting thoughts, but you can automatically fix that so your body can finally shed all of that stubborn weight for good.