The Power of Gratitude

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. As a busy adult, I have a stress to joy quotient related to every holiday. For Thanksgiving, my stress investment is an extra trip to the grocery store, and a tad more cooking and cleaning than usual on Thursday morning. The payback in joy is a nice relaxing meal with conversation, wine or beer, football, pie, perhaps a few games, maybe a movie, and lots of lounging on big cushy furniture around a fireplace, because the HUGE four-day weekend has only just begun. I don’t have to do laundry, homework, or bathe the children. No other holiday gives me as much joy in exchange for my efforts.

Of course, since Thanksgiving is dedicated to gratitude, I always spend a few minutes thinking about “what I’m grateful for”. But this year, for the first time, it struck me how powerful the feeling of gratitude really is. And, how useful it can be when it comes to success – both personally and professionally!

In our family, we go around the table and each person says something that he or she is grateful for before we start our meal. Some talk about love, health and family, others joke about beer and football, and some share a positive event from that year. More often than not, people are preoccupied with dinner prep, or uncomfortable speaking in front of the group, so although they do their best to say something appropriate, I wonder if the actual feeling of gratitude has a chance to emerge.

I know for me, more often than not, it doesn’t. I do my best to say something honest – whatever comes to mind at the time. And meanwhile, I’m watching to make sure one child has his drink in a safe place, the other is actually eating turkey before pie, and the guests all have drinks, silverware, and napkins.

But later, when I’m relaxing by the fire, I do have a chance to experience real gratitude. I watch the children play a game with their uncle. I’m grateful for the opportunity to sit back and enjoy their faces, pay attention to how small their hands and feet are, and listen to their voices and expressions, realizing how quickly they grow up. On the surface, this may seem like just a moment for me to notice and appreciate and smile.

But here’s the power: That moment of gratitude relaxes my muscles, changes my mood slightly, and when the kids come over to be close they get more hugs, cuddling, affection, and attention. How does that impact them?

My gratitude towards my brother (the uncle) for engaging with the children replaces my usual relatively impatient and critical “big sister” attitude with more appreciation, respect, and kindness. How does that impact him?

I notice that my husband does more than half of the food preparation and clean up, which gave me the opportunity to sit back and relax in the first place. I feel lucky that we work so well together on a meal. How does that impact our relationship?

Take this one step further. More appreciation in the house relaxes the moods of all the adults. They feel more at peace and have more patience with the children. The children feel safe in an environment where the adults are happy. Work gets done easier. Stress levels stay down. People are ok just being themselves. What are the physiological affects? The impact on everyone’s health? I could go on and on.

Maybe one moment of gratitude in one person doesn’t make a huge difference in the dynamics of a family, but it does generate a significant shift. It produces a slight change in energy level, and several subtle shifts in behavior, each impacting other people, and building stronger, safer relationships.

What if just one person experienced a genuine moment of gratitude just one or two times each day? Would that impact the family dynamics? You bet. And if family relationships are impacted positively, how does that, in turn, impact each person’s individual sense of well-being? And, how does each person’s individual sense of well-being impact their personal level of success in the world, or their ability to impact others in a positive way?

Your own gratitude can have a positive impact even if the others in your family don’t cooperate. Most people don’t pay attention to their emotions, so they react. They react first to their own thoughts, but if their own thoughts don’t produce any strong emotions, they react to the emotions of others. They enjoy themselves around the life of the party, they feel drained when loved ones argue, they respond positively to attention and appreciation from others, and they feel insecure when others overlook or ignore them. When you are deliberate with your emotions, you have the power to affect everyone. This doesn’t mean “faking” the emotion you want to create. But it does mean thinking the kinds of thoughts that allow positive emotions, like gratitude, to authentically emerge. And once they have emerged, allowing them to flow through you in your interactions with others, who will almost always respond positively, whether they realize it or not. If you feel genuine gratitude in a group of people, and interact with enough other members of the group while you are feeling it, you have the power to change the entire emotional state of the group.

This works in a family, in a classroom, in a group of friends, and in a group of people at work.

Why at work?

You may have noticed yourself treating your boss like a parent, noticing your employees acting like children, and dealing with peers that remind you of your siblings. In our teams at work, for better or worse, we replicate what we learned in our families. And even if we act “professional” on the outside, the underlying emotions feel very personal and all too familiar at times.

Gratitude is an essential part of any professional success formula. The formula works just as powerfully in any group. It goes like this:

1. Take the time to notice what you are genuinely grateful for
2. Make sure to really experience the gratitude at a physiological level. Notice your muscles relax, and your emotions change to compassion and appreciation.
3. Allow your compassion and appreciation to come out, both directly and indirectly, in your interactions at work.
4. Notice, over time, that people feel safer around you and that you build stronger, more trusting work relationships.
5. As a result of stronger, more trusting work relationships, notice your team extend themselves beyond the call of duty.
6. As a result of stronger, more trusting work relationships, notice your peers talking more honestly and directly with you.
7. As a result of stronger, more trusting work relationships, notice your boss relying on you more heavily for mission critical work, and providing you with more support.

Add that to the simple truth that gratitude lowers your stress and feels pretty darn good too; where do you get a more powerful business tool?

Why is Thanksgiving my favorite holiday? High joy, low stress, and practice with important business success skills, all while enjoying a game of Candyland and a slice of pumpkin pie by the fire. Who could ask for more?

Copyright ©2006, Nahid Casazza and Aspyrre, www.aspyrre.com

Instincts or Impulse?

You walk into the office one day feeling positive and exhilarated from a brisk walk in the fresh air, and as you pass the coffee machine you notice two co-workers speaking intently to each other in hushed tones. They notice you looking at them and stop talking, looking somewhat uncomfortable. The exhilaration you felt a moment ago dissolves, and a surge of adrenaline charges through your body. You have a strong instinct that you know who, if not what, they were talking about.

About an hour later, one of the co-workers comes to ask if you have a few minutes, and the adrenaline comes back. You do your best to maintain your composure, and the two of you go to a private place to talk. She begins, “We just realized that we completely forgot about Callie’s birthday last week, and we aren’t sure if she hid it from us purposely because she didn’t want us to make a big deal out of it, or if we should do something this week to make it up to her. What do you think?”

Hmmm…. could this have explained the coffee machine conversation? Relief sets in, and you continue on with the conversation at hand.

But what if you hadn’t had this conversation? What if you kept whatever story you originally created about the “coffee machine conversation” as your truth? How would you respond if that same co-worker sent you an e-mail requesting some information? Could this set off a chain of events, with your e-mail response coming across as a tad more abrupt than usual, eliciting some new adrenaline in your co-worker related to you? And could that lead to less-than-friendly behavior on her part, which confirms your truth for you, and so on, and so on, and so on?

This kind of emotional misfiring happens a lot in organizations, and even more so when we have so much work to do that taking the time to address what seems like a minor issue gets relegated to the bottom of the “to do” list.

As time goes by we begin to characterize and stereotype each other, and it’s hard to tell when someone is behaving “in reaction” to something they’ve created in their head, or “on purpose” based on clear and positive intentions.

If you observe emotional misfiring reeking havoc in your organization, what can you do about it?

1. Watch your assumptions, especially those you make about the character of another person.

2. When someone complains to you about a co-worker, help distinguish between actual behavior and assumptions made about the behavior.

3. Ask yourself, “If I knew this person was a decent person and only had the best of intentions” what are some possible explanations for the behavior?

4. Talk. All the time. Maintain ongoing dialogue with everyone who is important to you at work, so when something does come up, it can be dealt with naturally, and without an excessive amount of time or emotional investment.

In our coffee machine conversation example, a great way to casually check facts is to say something like “You scared me this morning when I walked in and you stopped talking – were you planning my execution?” Generally, humorous comments can give you an easy reality check. The person has an opportunity to respond in kind, without either of you feeling the weight of an “issue”. They might say, “well we were sort of planning someone’s birthday party – which can sometimes feel like an execution – but it’s a secret – so if you want in on it….” and your fears are quelled in a minute or two of light banter. On the other hand, if you try to “reality check” a few times and feel like you are getting consistently evasive responses, it might indicate that there’s something that needs to be discussed more seriously, and you can take it to the next level.

The most important thing to remember is that your truth may “feel” real – but feelings are created by thoughts, which are based on about 20% fact and 80% interpretation. Taking the time to question and reality check before jumping to conclusions can save you a lot of stress and friction, and pave the way to positive and powerful relationships with your co-workers.

Copyright @ 2006 Nahid Casazza Aspyrre

The Power of Questions

As a boss, manager, parent, teacher, or even as a coach, it's so easy and efficient to just tell people what to do. To give advice, suggestions, or the answers. Time is a luxury, so encouraging an employee to figure out a solution for himself, or helping a student learn through prompts instead of a lesson, can feel unproductive.

I attended the international coach federation conference last week, and one of my favorite events involved watching and critiquing master coaches in action. Master coaches are generally able to move a client from point A to point B in a conversation mostly through questions. The questionning process requires that they resist the temptation to tell the client the answer, and instead, use questions to facilitate the client to a solution that is co-created in the space between coach and client.

The skill of moving people forward through asking, not telling, allows the growing experience in the conversation to belong completely to the client. It's not an easy thing to do, but it's powerful, because any change that the client completly owns, sticks. And this skill is powerful for anyone in a "guiding relationship" with others. Here are some examples to think about:

1. Who is generally more accurate, the employee who is given work instructions and told to follow them, or the employee who creates the work instructions for himself?

2. When does a disagreement build a stronger relationship, when people agree to disagree and negotiate a compromise, or when they take the time to truly understand each other's perspective before deciding how to proceed?

3. How many times have people told you things that made brilliant sense, yet you didn't act on them?

4. How many times have you given great advice and watched people not follow it?

Good questions produce clarity, buy-in, commitment, and learning that sticks. But it takes time to learn how to ask the kind of questions that move people forward. You can usually tell the difference between a novice and a master coach because when the novice asks questions, the conversation often runs in circles and doesn't seem productive. A master coach, however, is able to move the coaching conversation through to a productive action commitment in 20 minutes or less.

Questionning well and efficiently takes practice - years of it. But there's no time like the present to start - and even a few well-placed questions in your dialogue with those in your charge, can make a world of difference.

If you'd like to practice using questions more in one of your "guiding" roles, here are a few to try on:

1. What would the ideal outcome be for you?

2. How much control do you have in this situation?

3. If you had more money, courage, status, time, what would you do?

4. What are some of the possible steps you can take?

5. How does it benefit you to not act?

Feel free to add to the list!

Copyright 2006 - Nahid Casazza - Aspyrre

When is a solution not a solution?

A friend once told me that we all have a theme – something we keep coming back to with each level of personal growth. And it usually shows up everywhere: in your clients, in your writing, in your relationships, and most of all, in the things you are most passionate about changing in the world.

One of my themes, which probably comes through in my writing more often than I’d like to admit, is this extreme frustration I have with solutions that aren’t real solutions. A good example is our nation’s obsession with diets. The problem is that people are overweight. The solutions that people come up with are diets. Most of these diets work fairly well too. As long as they are followed. People will follow a diet for a period of time and lose some weight. And then they’ll stop following it. And they’ll gain weight back. And then maybe they’ll look for another diet next time they are frustrated enough to drum up the willpower.

I don’t think diets by themselves are the solution to the problem of people being overweight. I think the real problem lies in the fact that people eat for many reasons, and not all of them have to do with hunger. So as long as those underlying reasons to eat exist, people will continue to eat unless they are focused on forcing themselves not to. And you only have a limited amount of energy to force yourself not to do something you really want to do.

As long as we think the solution to being overweight is to go on a diet, people will continue to be overweight. The real solution lies in working with whatever drives an overweight person to eat when she or he isn't hungry. Which I expect is somewhat different for everyone, although I bet we have many reasons in common.

The weight example works well for me, because I happen to be overweight, and when I’ve decided that I “need” chocolate, chips, or one of my other “crutch” foods to make it through the afternoon, no amount of logic about caloric intake can stand up to that drive. But I am beginning to understand where the drive comes from (in my case it often starts with shame about being overweight – which traps me in a vicious circle). I’ve written many diet plans, but I don’t think I’ve stuck with any of them for more than two weeks. If some well-intentioned person comes to me with a new diet or technique for losing weight – they’d better start running the other way – fast. On the other hand, if someone came to me today and showed me how to make the shame for being overweight in the first place disappear… now I’m listening because we’re closer to a real solution.

This weight struggle has given me a great gift of compassion.

I understand why my clients say they are going to make 50 sales calls each week… and then don’t. I understand why my clients say they are going to leave the dead-end relationship, but then get back together within a couple of weeks. I understand why time-management programs don’t usually work. Except for Franklin Covey’s. But that’s because Franklin Covey is not really about time at all – it’s about living a values-based life. Imagine that! A time-management program that actually gets to the source of how people struggle with time, and comes up with a real solution!

So when is a solution not a solution? And how do you know when a solution is real?

I would say if it doesn’t work, and you try it again, and it doesn’t work again, and you try it one more time, and it still doesn’t work, then it was probably never the real solution in the first place. That’s the time to look deeper.

Looking deeper sometimes feels scary until you realize it doesn’t mean you have to do anything specific about what you find. All you have to do is be honest about what’s going on, and see if you can step out of the emotions around the way things “should” work long enough to see what’s really working.

By the way, I’ve been working fervently on what I believe is the “real” solution to my weight problem, and I promise when I get it down – I will share.

Whatever your theme is – don’t give up. There is always a real solution somewhere – the adventure is finding it.

Copyright 2006 Nahid Casazza and Aspyrre

Feedback – should you give it when you don’t have to?

I’m reading a book called Crucial Conversations, which is all about how to handle those tricky yet critical conversations that make a huge difference in how easily we get to where we want to go in life. These conversations include things like giving the boss negative feedback, handling an uncomfortable situation with a neighbor, or breaking bad news to someone you really care about. I’m only in the first couple of chapters, and so far the book is great, but it brought up many questions, and one in particular involves avoiding giving other people feedback.

When is it ok to avoid giving feedback? My guess is that many times, the reason conversations become crucial is because stuff has been brewing and left un-talked about. On the other hand, there may be situations where it’s actually better to let things go.

We have countless examples to explore – when someone has bad breath, when something is caught in their teeth, when their clothes, shoes, or personal attire isn’t up to snuff, when they say something that might be taken wrong, when they aren’t handling something that well, when they are unwittingly committing political suicide, when they have annoying idiosyncrasies… the list could go on forever.

Part of being a good friend is being honest, but the other part is accepting each other as-is, with no personal judgment. How do you know when being honest is really just being judgmental?

Part of being a good boss, parent, or teacher is providing feedback, but the other part is creating an environment that is safe enough for those in your charge to make mistakes and learn from them. When is it appropriate to tell your child that the picture she drew isn’t a masterpiece? When does the child stop trusting you because you only say positive things?

When you witness a peer giving a presentation, and you are there for support, do you just give them the positive feedback, or do you share the negative points as well?

Here are the guidelines I try to follow:

1. Be honest with myself. I may choose not to give feedback to others, but I still need to know what my opinion is. Many people hide from the truth in order to avoid inner conflict. I now avoid this inner conflict by allowing myself not to act. You may realize that your marriage or your job is not going to work out years before you have the practical means to make a change. But if you hide from the truth, your inner conflict will find other ways to plague you.

2. Clarify my role in the relationship, and ask permission before sharing. Do you want me to make observations to help you take it to the next level, or do you want me to be here for support and validation?

3. Provide information when it will be useful, and stay focused on ways to use it. Your presentation was enjoyable. If you want to have a more powerful impact, you can do A, B, and C.

4. Separate the person from the behavior or situation. You look beautiful. In my opinion, that outfit doesn’t show your best characteristics because it looks tight and bunched up around the hips. The blue outfit you wore at the conference fell more naturally, and really complimented your shape.

5. Remind the person that I only have one perspective, and it may not be the right one. I noticed her flinch when you made the remark about the tackiness of the postcard campaign. I think she was probably surprised and hurt by the comment, but maybe I am wrong – why don’t you check in with her and see?

6. Allow myself room to grow as well. Sometimes I don’t have the energy to bring an issue up. That’s usually a signal that I have more personal growth to work on. But instead of berating myself for not bringing it up when I should, or rationalizing by coming up with an excuse to justify remaining silent, I acknowledge that I still have more work to do on myself – and I trust that the honest moment of self-awareness is moving me in the right direction.

In an ideal world, we would all be able to relate to each other honestly but not hurtfully. In this world, with all the layers we have built up to protect ourselves from each other, sometimes we can’t come close to approaching the ideal. But the more we work towards it, the better we get. Share your stories and opinions on this topic – and let’s all practice this week!

Copyright 2006 Nahid Casazza and Aspyrre

Intensity and Exhaustion in Business

I know a lot of business owners who don’t mind working hard or being stressed out – that’s really part of the excitement of growing a business. So when I get out there with my “simplify your life – reduce the overwhelm” speeches – they aren’t interested. Sometimes intensity is what drives your passion, and you need it. It’s kind of like needing a deadline to jump into creative mode.

I used to really enjoy talking with my friends about “what makes people tick”. I would spend hours dissecting why so and so might have done this, and what he or she might have meant by that. This conversation exhausted some of my friends. They would tell me, “you worry too much”, or “you take this stuff too seriously”, or “you get really deep and intense”. For them, the intensity of the conversations was draining. But for me, pondering all the different scenarios didn’t seem so much like “fretting” as a fun game or puzzle to figure out. I finally found a friend who loved these conversations as much as I did, and we were a great fit – we spent hours talking and truly enjoyed it.

To me, that kind of intensity is analogous to what an entrepreneur feels in the first few years of a new business. While on the outside it seems like the 14-hour days are going to kill him or her, it’s actually quite energizing and addictive to the entrepreneur, and this is the kind of passion that enables a new business to survive.

But at some point the cycle changes. The 14 hour days have become habits, the entrepreneur gets bored and tired, and wistfully dreams of family and vacations. Work is now “work” and not so much “fun”. But it has also become a trap, because there isn’t anyone else to process the orders, make the decisions, or handle the clients. At this point, many business owners get stuck, and can stay stuck for years. Revenue pours in, while joy leaks out.

One of the most important things I do with coaching clients is work with them on becoming more self-aware. This is why it’s hard to separate business coaching from personal coaching. I believe your level of self-awareness has a huge impact on your business. It effects how clear you are about goals, how effectively you communicate, how quickly you make decisions, how confident you are in your negotiations, and all of these things affect the bottom line.

And the first step to self-awareness is knowing what energizes you and what drains you. Just knowing this can make all the difference in the world, because as soon as something in your business begins to drain you, you can deliberately find a way to get rid of the drain. You either stop doing it, you get someone else to do it, or you change the way you do it. And you continue to pay attention to your energy levels and make adjustments, so that by the time you reach that place where it’s no longer fun to work 14 hour days, you have systems in place and can reduce your hours.

That way, when it’s time to take a vacation – you take one. And when you are involved in a new initiative that energizes you, you happily immerse yourself, even if that means not resting. When you are immersed in activities that energize you – you don’t need as much rest.

Here’s a ten minute exercise you can do to apply this concept – try it and see what changes you make:

Get out a sheet of paper and make a brainstormed list of everything going on that bugs you – even a little bit. We call this the “What are you tolerating?” exercise. It can be a certain person, a way something is being done, a fear, a disorganized desk – anything. Sometimes it takes awhile to compile your list and you keep coming back and adding to it, but that’s OK – the point is to have a list, so you can be aware.

Rate each item on your list by how much it drains you. Top priorities are items that drain a little bit of your energy every day. Lower priority items are those you usually don’t notice, and only drain you when they are brought to your attention.

That’s the exercise – it’s a simple way to bring you to a higher level of awareness around your own energy. And usually, the added awareness will motivate you to make some changes in the way you manage your business and your life. Your goal is to get rid of as many “tolerations” as you can.

If you’d like, you can even make a game of it. Get a team of people together and have a competition around who can get rid of the most “tolerations” on their list. This is not only fun, but it increases the overall energy level of the group – and is an easy way to pull out of a temporary “low” cycle.

If you do this exercise – I’d love to hear your comments on it!

Copyright ©2006 Nahid Casazza and Aspyrre www.aspyrre.com

Fear and Entreprenuership - Necessary Partners?

Actually, the word that was brought up in our most recent NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners) meeting, was "TERROR". We had a panel of successful business owners talk about how they got through some of the major turning points in their businesses, and it was a great show - but the one thing that impacted me the most was a question from the audience at the end.

One of the new business owners stood up and shared the experience of waking up at 3:00am in absolute terror, and was wondering if this was simply a signal that she was at a major turning point. What she got back was universal acknowledgement on the panel - they all experienced the same thing. They referred to the “night terrors” with a little too much familiarity for me. What I heard loud and clear is "they never go away".

Each time your business gets to the next level you think you can breathe a sign of relief. Except now you have more responsibility, bigger issues, and the stakes are even higher. It seems there's no sigh of relief in business - at least not one that lasts more than a day or two. The panel advised exercise and taking good care of yourself - standard stress management techniques.

I’ve got to tell you - I'm not into being terrified all the time in order to have a successful business. I was terrified sometimes in what I called "phase one" of my business. And I actually wrote an article on the "Four Stages of Decisive Change" that speaks to four distinct stages of growing a new business. In phase one you have the "panic elation panic" cycle, a true emotional roller coaster where you are often wondering if you were nuts to think you could start a business. But there are also moments of pure excitement at all the possibility you've created for yourself. However, in my model, once you get to phase two you are also in a different emotional state: lots of hard work, not so much terror.

Does it have to be this way? I know that currently, I don’t have night terrors in my business. I have worries sometimes, and days where there are more balls in the air than I can catch, but for the most part things run smoothly. On the other hand, I’m not running a 20 million dollar business. What if the stakes are higher? What if the success of a sales presentation you make tomorrow determines whether or not you can make payroll next month? What if a critical marketing misstep means people lose their jobs? What if your big investment doesn’t pay off and you are in more debt than your organization can manage?

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks, and I’ve talked to other business owners as well. Thankfully what I’ve heard mostly is: “It doesn’t have to be that way”. What makes the difference between a business that gives you night terrors, and one that doesn’t? I don’t have the complete answer yet, but are the top three items on my “list”:

1. If you are doing something new, exciting, and scary – then it will feel new, exciting and scary. Understanding that this is simply phase one of a new adventure in your life does a lot to calm things down. And, yes, as you reach one milestone, you will create new ones, but they usually aren’t as charged as your first year as a business owner.

2. If your decisions have a large impact on other people, and that impact has the potential to be negative, it can definitely keep you awake at night. What makes a difference in this case is being honest and up front with people about what they are getting into when they sign on with you, and staying honest with them throughout your relationship. When you cross the line and take more responsibility for them than you can control, the resulting anxiety can be huge!

3. If you’ve got your ego caught up in what happens with the business, you are going to feel pretty scared at the possibility of the business failing. I’ve heard that most successful entrepreneurs fail at two or more businesses, and find themselves “on the edge” of failing many more times than that. It makes sense if you take a look at most successful people. In sports, the best players in the world experience “the agony of defeat” many times over. The best artists and musicians create a few “flops” along with their masterpieces. And they say if you don’t get fired from at least one job, you aren’t working at your full potential. If failing makes you wrong or bad, then the path to success will be downright terrifying.

Do you want to enjoy growing your business without the terror? Then understand the process (

start by reading my article on the stages of change), be truthful with your employees and partners, and get comfortable with failure. And then, get a good night’s sleep!!

Copyright @ 2006 Nahid Casazza and Aspyrre. www.aspyrre.com