Integrate!

Are you too tired? I think we should be asking this question a lot more often than we do. We tend to say "this is too important for me to rest." What we should be saying is "this is too important to tackle when I am this tired." The science of fatigue and sleep deprivation is pretty straight forward. In essence, being overtired is like being drunk: you feel clever but you're really not clever. You can't learn when you're overtired, which means you can't adapt to change. You really shouldn't be making decisions or negotiating them or doing anything that demands your best thinking. You will never have your best thinking when you are sleep deprived. I am at the beach this week because I have been too tired. I stretch. I accomplish great things. People think I'm the Energizer bunny.  And I am, when I remember that even batteries need regular recharging. I am here because I have too much to do over the next few months to do it in a fog. I ...

The hardest part of the holidays is the expectation that they are supposed to be easy and fun. The very word "holiday" suggests a lovely break from work, a time when the world is a happy place full of lovely people, good food, and fun things to do. Occasionally, happiness happens. There are nice surprises when we are looking the other way. They are truly lovely breaks, moments to celebrate and remember that the world can be a really great place.  Most of the time, happiness develops slowly and with effort. We make choices and notice results and make an effort, and sometimes we notice that we're making progress and it feels good. Holidays are happy when we think about what has made us happy and do more of that. It snowed today. People worry that we won't have snow for Christmas and they complain bitterly when it snows before Christmas.  Some of them are frustrated and unhappy because weather changes their plans. It's quite inconvenient. This ...

Someone asked me this week, "how do you teach a kid to let go of a failure and move on." You can't get there from here. As long as you are thinking about failure, you are holding onto it. Even if the voice in your head is chanting "Let it go." We're not built that way. Our brains are built to let go of things we are not accessing, not giving any attention. As soon as we give something our attention, we make it easier to access. You make your fears and your failures stronger when you give them your attention. Even if you're telling yourself "just let it go." "Let it go" is impossible advice. It's like telling kids to "sit still and listen." Many kids listen by moving. They can't listen if they sit still and they can't sit still if they are listening. One of the secrets to leadership is to give people instructions they can follow. In this case, the instruction is not to "let go." It's "bu...

Loyalty is an old-fashioned word. We think that our pets are loyal, but we no longer expect loyalty from our business partners and often we don't expect it from our friends either. The Oxford English Dictionary thinks loyalty means this: A strong feeling of  support  or  allegiance What do you think it means to be loyal to a person or company? To me, it means having someone's back, showing up when you know it's important and when it is reasonable for someone to make a claim on your time and effort. It's not a matter of keeping score, but it is a matter of action and presence. I show my loyalty by making an effort to show up and pay attention. Presence (the kind that involves both body and mind) is the rarest of all gifts, the one that is not renewable. When we want someone to know that they mean something to us, we show up. That's loyalty. It's a struggle. I struggle with it. How can I be present for people who are doing work I believe in or who live ...

We had a storm in Toronto yesterday. Not a storm like they're having in Buffalo this week, but enough snow to turn a one hour commute into a four hour commute. We all expected a little light snow. What came was more than that, and many drivers hit a little ice and everyone else was suddenly trapped in a car that had nowhere to go. That happens in life, too. Out of the blue, there's a storm.  And little girls all over the world are celebrating those storms because of one Disney princess.   She causes a storm by exploring the full nature of her power. I watch my 3 year old niece singing "Let it Go" and I know she gets it - there's energy and there is also joy in finding out what you can do. It would be cool (pun intended) to follow Elsa's lead and sing "The cold never bothered me anyway." The cold is the price that comes with letting go and risking the consequences of finding your own power. I'm running a conference on November 29 on the th...

It is interesting to me that most of the NLP (neurolinguistic programming) conferences of which I am aware run exactly like other conferences: they put experts talking at the front of the room (usually with powerpoint) in unremarkable hotel rooms. This seems to me unfortunate. Why not use the practices and principles of NLP to create format that satisfies people's goals for attending a conference? While it is certainly true that people go to conferences to learn new things, it is more true that most people go to conferences to learn while making new connections and planting seeds for further development and networking. Most NLP conferences do no better or no worse than other mainstream conferences in giving participants opportunities to meet those goals. People sit and listen, and then mingle and make small talk during breaks. Whether or not the speakers are good is not really the point. The point is that the framing doesn't really facilitate meeting the outcomes. At NL...

We've all heard that curiosity killed the cat. That's a problem because what we should all know is that many great thinkers (and achievers) attribute their success to their curiosity. Curiosity is an amazing motivator. It allows us to explore the big picture and the fine details with great intensity and no sense of suffering. As long as we are following our curiosity, we are happy to work endlessly at a problem, to take a break just long enough for inspiration, and then to return for more exploration and experimentation. Curiosity will not break you. It will be the making of you. When I teach college classes, my heart breaks a little at how hard it is to awaken their curiosity. After years of being taught to sit still and listen, they have stopped being distracted by their own passion and curiosity. Instead of asking wildly tangential questions that might lead to innovation and understanding, they check out of the subject and into social media. That wouldn't ...