Category self management

Entries 21 Total

Back to body basics

Nov 3, ’11 3:01 PM

Most of us, including my executive coaching clients, typically live in our minds. We try to think our way to creative answers for vexing and complex challenges. But we get our best ideas when we’re doing something physical: taking a shower, walking the dog, working out.

Now science is verifying that the best way to open the door on our creative juices is to drop into the world below our chins. The body can actually expand our creative thinking. Wray Herbert’s recent report on the connections between our physical and cognitive experiences describes how.

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Is your pumpkin light flickering?

Oct 29, ’11 4:51 PM

“It’s been great talking with you, but I feel my pumpkin light flickering.” That’s an escape strategy one of my clients uses with talkers who are unaware that their listeners are no longer listening.

I loved the whimsical quality of it … which may be why it helped me see my own light flickering

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Control your attention redux …

Oct 14, ’11 8:11 PM

Last Friday, one of my clients had a meeting with several of her direct reports that left her feeling “absolutely giddy” afterwards. Her words were music to my ears. She’d been feeling overwhelmed and out of control for months. And here she was, excited and confident and energized.

What made the difference?

I have lots of stories about that. Here’s the one I like best: she got control by giving up control.

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Control your attention …

Oct 12, ’11 5:44 PM

When I start coaching engagements, new clients almost always have a short list of problems to fix. It’s a normal response. We’re wired [both biological and psychological] to sort for the negative.

And every time our mind attends to the negative, we do something else: we strengthen the brain’s tendency to sort for the negative!

Researchers call it neuroplasticity: the brain’s capacity to change and adapt its

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Breaking the speed of light

Sep 30, ’11 9:29 AM

On 22 September, a group of Italian scientists reportedly broke the speed of light. They were measuring a beam of neutrinos sent from Geneva, over 500 miles away. The science is way too complicated for me. But the notion that this effort may overturn one of our most fundamental “laws” of physics fascinates me. Astrophysicist Adam Frank says that what’s being challenged here is “the structure of causality in the Universe” because it’s based on “an absolute cosmic speed limit.”

We’ve heard for a century-plus that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Our experience and all of our learning are based on the notion of time as linear. And if that turns out to be a faulty assumption,

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Chunking change

Aug 26, ’11 5:26 PM

Top mistake #8 at the Persuasive Tech Lab is focusing on abstract goals more than concrete behaviors.  Here’s their example. Abstract: get in shape. Concrete: walk 15 min. today.

This is a “yes and” provision. We need big abstract goals to provide direction and meaning: get in shape, write the Great American Novel, create and implement

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Getting to the future

Aug 24, ’11 7:02 PM

Here’s #4 on the Top 10 Mistakes in Behavior Change list: trying to stop old behaviors instead of creating new ones.

And Fogg’s solution? Focus on action, not avoidance.

This cries for more detail.

Action can be a form of avoidance, so action isn’t enough. It has to be action that moves us toward what we want. And that means

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Forget about willpower

Aug 11, ’11 10:42 AM

I was entertained and inspired by the following list from B.J. Fogg, director of Stanford’s Persuasive Tech Lab, and friends.

They’ve assembled what they call their Top Ten List of Mistakes in Behavior Change. See how many fit for you.

Here’s the list.

1.  Relying on willpower for long-term change.

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A little exercise that pays big returns

Jul 11, ’11 11:12 PM

I’m always looking for practical ways to improve relationships, and I came across a powerful one recently in a new book by Marty Seligman, the grand old man of psychology and one of the masterminds behind the burgeoning field of positive psychology.

A decade ago, Seligman wrote a book called Authentic Happiness. Despite its unfortunate title, it was a great treatise on what he considered the key elements of happiness: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning.

In April, he published Flourish. It pushes beyond happiness into  new territory: the science of well-being. And it has five key elements:

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A revisionist history …

Jun 16, ’11 12:37 PM

One of my clients, a career woman named Mary, wife and mother of two school-age kids, has been feeling so overwhelmed that she wants to request a 30% reduction in her workload. And she’s willing to take a 30% reduction in income. In the past few months, she has created several maps of how her life would look, less this 30%. She likes what she sees.

Here’s the hitch. Part of her just can’t say “No” when there’s work to be done. She’s always taking on more. Even when she has no energy for the extra effort, a voice deep inside is urging her on.

So she knows that unless she actually says no and does less,

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