Integrate!

When I look at this picture, I see one speaker. It's me. I don't see a personal me and a work me. I don't see the brave me and the hidden me. I see me. I know you've read that you should have boundaries between your work life and your private life. There is wisdom in allowing yourself to experience all of yourself and that can mean creating time and space to be present wherever you are. There is no wisdom in sending a version of yourself to work and keeping a different version at home. What do you see when you look at a picture of you at work? People often call me at NLP Canada Training  and say something like "It's just for me." or "I'm interested for work." The problem is there is no such thing. You are one person and who you are changes your influence on the people who connect with you. The reverse is also true. If you don't change your own thinking or responses, you are unlikely to make change in the way you lead and influence....

© Can Stock Photo / wtamas We're one day away from Halloween and you're probably surrounded by images of heads that have become separated from bodies. If you're lucky, you're not also surrounded by coworkers who are losing their heads. Since you probably already know how to lose your head (at least under pressure), here are three reminders of how to keep it: Your head should be continuous with your body. That means staying aware of your physical needs for food, rest, exercise and touch (yes - I said touch. People are social creatures and a hug will often reconnect a lost head). Your  body and your head should be moving in the same direction. You need to walk your talk when you want to keep your head. Integrity is a sure way to reconnect the head you are afraid you are losing. Phone a friend. Better yet, go find a friend and talk in person. Putting your concerns into words will stabilize them and telling them to a friend will add both comfort and perspecti...

What would you say if you met your past self for a coffee? Of course it would depend on which past self you chose to meet. Perhaps you would chat like old friends and perhaps the conversation would be a little guarded, a little judgemental. How do you feel about the connection you have to the person you were five years ago? This is me five years ago, reading one of the very first copies of the first printing of my first book. I was really excited. I thought that finally finishing a book would change everything. But it didn't seem to make much difference. The business didn't grow. A few people loved what I had written, but for the most part, life chugged along with the same ups and downs. Like any dream that doesn't quite live up to our hopes, this one stung a little. I kept meaning to go back and rewrite the book for publication and I kept putting it off. Reading it was hard and I had a lot to do that felt more forward-thinking and more productive. So I kept do...

Photo Credit: Tamara Polajnar We make a plan when where we want to accomplish something. We want change to happen, and we list the actions we will have to take to make it happen. When we do, we assume that the plan is a roadmap: it describes a territory that we will have to navigate. I have come to believe that this is probably not what makes plans useful. In the map above, the mountains and loch are real (I visited them recently and can confirm they are there). But the steps in a plan are not real: they describe something that has not happened and that might never happen. Actions in a plan are not like the roads on the map. They are more like thermometers that measure your commitment to your outcome. At this moment, do you want this enough to take this action? If you do, take the action and then take the next test. In NLP, we would call this a test of your congruency. Congruency requires that all parts of you are engaged in moving in the same direction. The difference b...

 Carole Luft opens Leading Words    On Saturday, we held an unusual conference. Although it began much as every conference begins (with a welcome from a podium), there had been an unusual amount of hugging as people found their seats. Scattered around the tables were monkeys–monkey cutouts, monkey stickers, monkeys sitting in the fancy chair at the front. Everywhere were reminders of what the Buddhists call Monkey Mind. And our goal for the day was to get the monkeys to focus, engage, and show their most loving, cooperative, and ingenious selves. What do you think of when you think about monkeys? Do you imagine playing, shrieking, mischief or cuddles? Do you think of mindless activity or of a sudden, focused interest in a puzzle to be solved? All of these are typical of monkeys. All of these are typical of the monkeys in your mind–the troop of ideas, emotions, biases, memories, and hopes that are in perpetual motion as you try to focus, to think, to make decisions. ...

What's the difference between your best result and your typical result? Sometimes the world does align to support your performance and you get a personal best result. But that's probably not what came to mind first. Research shows that we usually attribute our best performances to our own skills, strengths and effort. We believe that we have more influence over our outcomes than is probably the case. What came to mind first was probably your own skill, attitude or effort. Before you rush in to correct this error, consider its usefulness. Whether or not it is true that our efforts determine our results, it is a useful belief that motivates us to change the only things we can change: the factors within our own control. To get a personal best, we believe that we need to be our personal best. We use a different version of this logic when we are managing the performance of others. We attribute much of their success to circumstances outside their control and blame their less-th...

Have you ever tried to solve a tough problem by digging deeper and thinking harder? How did that work for you? Most people find that the deeper within they dig, the more complexity they uncover. They are emotionally engaged in contradictory ways. They want incompatible things. The evidence points in different directions. With every turn, the maze becomes less familiar. There's a better way. When you notice that digging is not helping you get clear on a decision, let go. Let your imagination carry you out of the maze so you can survey it from high, high above. Rising above a problem does not begin with taking the moral high road. It begins with moving to a perspective that is free, moving, and distant. Imagine trying to tell a seagull what to do. You can watch them on the beach. Even other seagulls have little success in being the boss of a seagull. Now imagine watching that gull take flight. What would it feel like to simply lift yourself away from the squabbles and bumps?...

You've been waiting for this day for weeks - actively preparing so that you'll be at your best when you need to perform. You've researched and rehearsed and you are ready. Until the bug hits, the one that has been going around the office or the school. You're all set and you're sick. Now what? There are times when there is no choice. You're too sick to carry on and so you miss it. Other arrangements get made. What I want to think about now are the majority of days, the days when you have a wicked head cold and you have to face a 2 hour commute before presenting to a room filled with important people you want to influence. You have choices. You could cancel and begin the long, hard process of preparation again.  You could muddle through miserable and hope for sympathy points from your audience. Or you could excel despite the bug. You could be so committed to your outcome that you show up fully and let go of most of the rotten feelings until after you'...

If you are not in pain, don't read this. Don't imagine pain: it will get under your skin and it might grow in unexpected ways.  This post is for people who are coping with pain, people who don't have to imagine how pain concentrates your perceptions while making it hard to focus your thoughts. This is for people who know how words fail when some part of your body is suffering and someone asks you to describe the pain. If this is for you, then imagine that you can see someone who looks and sounds like you, someone who is experiencing that same pain that you are experiencing. You might notice the tension across that person's forehead, the clenching of the jaw, the breath that is not quite rhythmic. You might be aware that the body twists or tilts at an awkward angle, that something is unbalanced. You might notice, as though it were happening to someone else, someone far off in the distance, that all parts of that person are involved in the experience of pain. But that...

Would it surprise you that many of the people who lead others to achieve their goals have a really hard time creating compelling goals of their own?  I don't have research to back me up on this, but I have a lot of experience of people who are excellent coaches and who struggle with their own goals.  They may struggle more than other people. The more we think about goals, the more we admire the courage it takes to own them.  Imagine that someone walks into the room where you are reading this and says "So... what do you want?" It's likely that there are not many ways to say this that don't sound like a challenge. Wanting something is challenging: it means: 1) taking some of the attention you use to keep yourself safe and putting it to work on finding opportunities instead, 2) admitting that if you don't get what you want, it's going to hurt, 3) deciding you are good enough to do what you want to do. It's probably true that many people choose to w...

Some people have a routine for getting up in the morning that includes some time to prepare mentally for the day ahead. They pray or meditate or workout because they find that starting that way often leads to a better day.  You might think about that and instantly feel even more stressed because you cannot imagine how to fit yet another half-hour into a day that is already much too full. Even people who prepare for the day need to refocus during the day. Their concentrated practice does set them up for success, but it is not enough to carry them through a day of encountering other people and difficult ideas. Even people who start the day right need to be able to refocus more or less on the fly. I'm going to suggest you test just two things today. You don't have to believe they will work, but they will take only a moment and (if you remember to check in after) you will be able to tell within a day whether they are making an impact.  Deal? The first thing is to take three ...

Often often do you catch yourself wishing you could change something about you? It can be easier to wish for change than to do the work to make it real, whether that change is personal (weight loss, addiction, or bad emotional habits) or professional (time management, diplomacy or confidence). We often know what we need but feel like it's unreachable. The change you want will be unreachable until you reach for it.  And then you need a process that will help you manage your will power and persistence until the change becomes natural. There is no road to intentional success that does not require some hard work and discipline. But the FACT process will allow you to be more effective with less suffering and no room for the self-loathing that sometimes accompanies failed efforts at personal change. FACT begins with focus. To get something you want, you have to be willing to know what it is that you want, to spend some time developing a representation of it that is detailed enough to...

There's a truism that says you are more likely to hit something if you are aiming at it. We say things like "keep your eyes on the prize" and mean that paying attention to your outcome is likely to give you both a strategic advantage and the willpower to persist until you achieve what you want. We say these things because they represent a hard lesson. Take, for instance, a desire to be better spoken, to be able to talk in a way that impresses people more favourably. Most people try out new words or model great speakers in a concentrated effort to improve their choice of words. Ironically, their very first steps take their eyes off the prize. The prize is the good impression you make on a specific person or in a particular situation. And the only way to know how to make that impression is to become curious about the people and situation you want to influence. You need to notice what actually captures positive attention, what needs to be true for people to pay attention...

I'm going to suggest that there are four things that everyone wants, and that you can chart them on a quadrant.  The first axis has autonomy (control over one's own life) at one extreme and relationship (connections with other people) at the other.  The second axis has living comfortably with one's body at one extreme and escaping the confines of one's body at the other.  Everything that people want falls into one or more of the quadrants. It seems that anything we want serves one quadrant at the expense of the others. If we want autonomy for our bodies (perhaps the ability to support ourselves financially), that comes at the expense of escaping the body through connection with others (perhaps through reading fiction). If we want to be physically connected (to hang out with people we like), that comes at the expense of setting our thoughts free.  It's obvious that we cannot simultaneous move to both ends of the axis. It's obvious, but it is not always true. ...

Have you ever known that you were absolutely in the wrong mood for what you had to do next? You know that your attitude changes your effectiveness.  The question becomes how you can change your own attitude. Your current attitude colours all your perceptions. That makes it very hard to perceive the differences that would allow you to build a different attitude.  Many people don't even try. They just wait it out, hoping that the next mood that hits will be more useful. Or they pretend that attitude is something that only happens to other people. A more useful approach has three steps: 1) Move your body. 2) Connect with a new rhythm. 3) Borrow the best available attitude. It's hard to change your own mind. It's easier to change your body.  If you want to signal yourself to get moving, try moving.  A walk, a run, a climb up stairs: any of them will get the blood flowing, adjust your breathing and rhythms, and suggest to your whole brain that it look for ways o...

It seems to me that the people I know who are effective influencers are also people who are willing to own their influence. They don't pretend that they are disinterested. Sometimes they don't even pretend that they are particularly interested in you or your well being. They own that one thing that they want to change in you. I recently read a comment in a Linked In group by a coach who believed that he could not change anyone's perceptions, he could only open up possibilities.  This is nonsense. You cannot change anyone else's conscious choices but it is a relatively easy thing to change their perceptions and thereby to influence the choices they make unconsciously.  If you are not sure that this is true, stand on a busy corner and point up at a building as though you were seeing something really interesting. Then watch what happens. You will find that some people stop walking, change their posture, and become curious. You have effectively changed their perspective. ...

There are two kinds of conversations that are great. The first kind happens when you want it to happen. By this I mean, you choose to talk to someone you expect to have a great conversation with and you set up a context where conversation is likely.  Sometimes this means sitting someplace quiet; sometimes it means attending an event and following up with an opportunity to talk; sometimes it means going for a walk or a drive.  In all of these situations, you are intentional about who is part of the conversation and where it happens. There's another kind of great conversation. It's the kind you don't intend and don't expect. These conversations happen in rich environments where people are in that interesting state of being enlivened by their work (whether or not it's paid work) and temporarily detached from it (maybe they've stepped out for a bio break or maybe they are doing an errand, for instance). Lots of research shows that creativity happens when lots of d...

When I was in high school, there was no girls soccer program. While women's soccer was growing rapidly in the club system, it had yet to find its way into the high schools. By the time I was in grade 12, I was playing and coaching soccer all summer. I wanted to play at school, too. I decided it was time to launch a school tournament. I was 17, and I was playing and coaching rep soccer. I was in charge of publicity for our local club and I was a qualified referee. I had passed the first level of the national coaching program (at the time, that involved a written test, a practical test, and a referee's test). Running a tournament was in reach. All I needed was a staff sponsor. A friendly history teacher agreed to become our "coach." We began a round of communication with the local club and with other schools. I don't remember how many teams entered, or who won the tournament. I remember standing on the back line of one field, playing defence. I was also coa...