When is it a good idea to give coaching as a gift? Here are three important guidelines to make sure your recipient gets the most from your investment:



Almost everyone knows someone who could use a coach, but the key question when considering coaching as a gift, is will it be used?

Coaching can be the most positive and powerful gift you can give someone, because it can truly change a life. But it only works if the person receiving the coaching fully engages in the process. So, how can you be sure that your gift will be used well and truly provide a positive experience and great results?

Here are a few tips to help you decide whether coaching is the right gift for the person you have in mind, and if so what type of package would be the best fit for your budget and their situation:

1. Does the person you have in mind need to change, or want to change?

If they need to change, coaching may not help

This is an important distinction. Someone who complains a lot and maybe even asks for advice, but then doesn’t do anything with the help and advice they receive, could be stuck in a victim pattern where they simply don’t believe they have the power to change their life. You may really, really, really want them to see that they can make a change, but until they make the shift in their own mind and decide to take ownership of their situation, hiring them a coach will be just as useless as any other type of help.

Don’t despair though. One thing you can do in this case is continue to plant seeds by letting them know what has helped you without pushing it on them. If they complain about their situation, you can say something along the lines of, “I get how frustrating that can be and I used to feel that way too. Hiring a coach / reading this book / doing such and such program really helped me get my power back and take control of my life. I’d be happy to give you the information if it’s something you want to try”. Leave it at that and then set your own boundaries in your relationship with this person so the negative outlook doesn’t drag you down.

If they want to change, coaching may be the ideal gift

You will know that someone wants to change when you see them working at it. They may be trying a variety of things and failing miserably – but you see them taking enough ownership to keep getting back on their feet and trying something else. Also, when they talk about their situation, the language is less complaining and blaming and more introspective, asking themselves questions related to what they might try next, and you’ll notice a willingness to do the work, even if they are frustrated.

You can always slip in a question, “if you were able to have a coach or participate in a professional development program, do you think you would get a lot out of it?” and gauge their reaction. If they seem curious, intrigued, and positive, you have probably landed on the perfect gift!

2. Usually it takes three to six months to see the first transformational shifts.

You can purchase one or two coaching sessions as a gift, and what someone will most often get out of it is clarity. Clarity can be powerful because it can help you make a big decision, it can give you a new personal awareness, or it can help you get more clear on what you don’t want. But for long term change that lasts, the coaching process usually follows a pattern that enables someone to not only get momentary clarity on the frustration of the day, but also to learn what is behind the pattern of frustrations that keep coming back. The process is different for everyone, but a typical pattern is:

• month one – excitement


• month two – frustration


• month three – glimpses of real change


• months four and five – practice and application


• month six – the first big shift


• months seven and eight - more practice and solidifying the first shift


• month nine - seeing the “next” level

With that in mind, when it comes to time-frame, the best gifts are:

(1) a clarity gift (one or two sessions)

(2) a taste of coaching (three to four months to make sure they’ve gotten past the first hurdle – then they can decide whether or not to continue on their own)

(3) a whole package or program (6-12 months – gets them through their first major shift and settled into it so they don’t lose it and go back to the old ways)

Whatever you do, keep in mind that getting someone two months of coaching is never a good idea because it only gets them to the point of frustration and they’ll leave feeling like they didn’t get anything out of it.

Deciding on a time frame is easy with Aspyrre because with the Aspyrre Community program you can do a longer term package even on a budget.

3. Feeling comfortable and safe with your coach is critical to success.

Sometimes one conversation can give someone the comfort level they need to talk freely with a new coach. At other times they need more time to build trust before getting to that comfort level. And, in some cases the relationship never gels. If I think my coach is a “sham” or has no genuine understanding of who I am as a person, I will never trust him or her enough to share the things I really feel vulnerable about. And those are usually the exact things that once shared, enable big changes that haven’t been possible before.

When gifting coaching usually it’s best to provide a “taste” of the coach first to see if the relationship develops and then decide how to proceed. There are several ways to do this. One is to gift a few sessions up front and then find out if the person wants to interview other coaches or stay with the one they have. Another way is to have the person enroll in a longer term group program or class that doesn’t require as much personal trust up front, but enables them to get enough of a feel of who the coach is to decide whether it’s a good fit for private coaching. With Aspyrre you have the option to do both.

Aspyrre 2012 Gift Packages

A Taste of the Aspyrre Community 2012 Coaching Program – Three months - $135

This gift gives three months of the Aspyrre Community with the coaching program included. This is great because it has them engage for three months – past the typical first hurdles, and long enough to earn their first private coaching session. If they are doing the work and enjoying the program, they have the option to start their own subscription when the gift package ends, which gives them a sense of full ownership. Even if they don’t choose to continue after the first three months, they will have gotten enough in terms of training, information, tools, and personal insights to make 2012 their best year to date! MORE INFO - CLICK HERE

A Taste of Private Coaching – One month - $650

This package provides two private coaching sessions, along with two optional bonus components: (1) an additional assessment or exercise that is specifically relevant to their situation (such as a business assessment, a self-discovery tool, a personal marketing plan, or a personal development program), and (2) an additional private coaching session to review the results of their work. This provides them with three coaching conversations (a $1050 value) and a solid plan to help them move to a new level in 2012. They will also have enough of an experience of working with me to see if working together long term would be a good fit and help them put their plans into action! MORE INFO - CLICK HERE

Aspyrre Community 2012 Coaching Program – Full year plus Bonus Coaching - $1490

This package provides one full year of the Aspyrre Community Coaching program – from January through December 2012, plus 5 private coaching sessions to be used anytime during the year. As a member of the Aspyrre Community coaching program – each participant has the opportunity to earn up to 4 private sessions per year, so this package gives them the opportunity to have nine private sessions total along with a full year of classes that they can participate in live or listen to as recordings, depending on their schedule. Please note, the private sessions can ONLY be taken in conjunction with full engagement and participation in the Aspyrre Community and packages must be purchased before January 15^th 2012. MORE INFO CLICK HERE

Leadership Development – Individual Custom Package – One Year - $9500

This package is an ideal gift for someone in an organization who is poised for growth. As an ideal year- end bonus, or in conjunction with an annual evaluation, it shows your willingness to invest in your people and provide them with the tools and resources they need to shine and reach their next level professionally. It includes initial meetings with all involved to clarify objectives, review of evaluations and objectives, a “mini-360”, twelve full months of private coaching, and three progress “check-in” meetings with stakeholders. It’s everything you need to insure your employee gets full support throughout the year to rise to his or her highest level, and at the same time it allows you guide the process, provide regular feedback, and integrate what is learned into your team environment. This package can be purchased at any time during the year, and also can be modified to include additional assessments, workshops, or team programs as needed. MORE INFO CLICK HERE

 

Dealing with Resistance to Change

Any time you try to make a big change in an organization you will experience resistance. As a leader, you can make a big difference in how effectively you move forward by being aware of how change impacts people emotionally, and spending more time “with them”, almost like a parent understands and handles the phase of temper tantrums in toddlers. People don’t mean to be unprofessional or uncooperative during periods of change. No matter how confident they are normally, organizational changes force them to grapple with real fears. As a leader, you can make it much easier for them to handle their fears and move forward. Here are some tips:

1. When you notice people you thought you could count on resisting the change – don’t take it personally. Keep in mind that everyone struggles when things change, no matter how much they want to support you. A good way to handle this is to say (once you are calm and NOT taking it personally), “I noticed X [insert behavior], and I’m wondering if you are struggling with this change?” Your goal is to get them to open up and articulate their fears – which may be irrational. Just having a safe space to talk themselves through their resistance with your encouragement could be all they need to buy in completely.

2. Keep your eyes open for individual fears of losing power, prestige, or value in a new role. We all have egos, and even though we know intellectually that the change is really about the organization functioning better as a whole, which should eventually offer more individual opportunities – it’s scary to “let go” of something you’ve been attaching your personal identity to. And, unfortunately most people attach their personal identity to their work, in the form of how many people they manage, how large of a budget they control, what title they have, who they get to report directly to, etc. We may be embarrassed about clinging to these things, but it’s normal to feel like we are losing everything that makes us valuable. As a leader you can break through a lot of resistance by taking as much time as needed to talk to constituents individually and validating their value and their role in the new order.

3. Articulate the vision clearly and repeatedly. Every day. Several times per day. It takes SO much energy to do things differently that sometimes the only thing that keeps people going is a sense of excitement over what is possible. If you can keep people focused on the light at the end of the tunnel – they will walk faster.

4. Leverage the power of habits. Do whatever it takes to get people actually behaving in the new way you need them to behave as soon as possible, and as consistently as possible. As soon as people are “in action” they are building habits that will be difficult to reverse later. As long as they are “anticipating the unknown” their resulting anxiety and negativity will slow you down.

5. Talk to people openly about the cycles of change. Let them know what to expect, how long it might last, how you can work as a team to accelerate progress, what behaviors will slow things down, and what you are willing to do to support them through the process. Then keep talking, keep listening, keep “being with” your team emotionally, because that lowers their fear level and helps them stay focused.

Don’t expect change to happen in an instant, and take ownership of your role in the process. As a leader, you can keep people focused on the vision, confident in their new roles, and “in-action”, while also understanding and being patient with their emotional and seemingly childish resistance. You can make a big difference in how smoothly the change goes, and how quickly your team passes through the “unproductive” stages and gets moving to the next level.

How Important is the Truth, Really?

This is a scary topic for me to write about for two reasons: one, I don’t know the answer, and two, it messes with my strongest values. I was always taught that honesty and integrity are the most important guiding principles of life. When I was a teenager, I lied to my parents point blank one time, and cried afterwards for two hours because it felt so horrible. Now I read books that say all teenagers lie to their parents and I think, “Geez, what was wrong with me?” But that’s a different story.

This story is about success, and what it takes to become successful, given a definition of success that includes building a life around your core values.

It starts with one of the most powerful tools that I use with clients - a perspective-shifting tool that helps people move very quickly from being upset and angry about a situation to becoming positive or at least emotionally neutral. In their new emotional state, they handle the situation much more effectively and get better results. It’s amazing how much more powerful a person can be once they shift what they believe “the truth” about a situation is. I often speak about it in presentations and workshops, and I hear myself saying over and over again, “In fact, it doesn’t even matter what the real truth is – you could pick the truth that works best for you and operate from that perspective, and when you do, the principle of self-fulfilling prophecy kicks in, and you influence events to reflect the truth you chose.”

But in the back of my mind a question has been sitting for a very long time – just wondering how important the truth really is, and if my coaching tool works better without a real truth, what else in the world works better that way?

Today I got another example.

My eleven year old daughter is nervous about an upcoming dive meet. It’s an important event, in that the top six places move up to nationals, and she made it last year. But her chances this year are not good. The competition is tough, the dives are harder, and the way the scoring works puts her at a disadvantage. I don’t want my child to be stressed about this. I’ve been having conversations with her designed to take the pressure off, focusing on the fun we’ll have on the trip, and how no matter what the outcome is, we’ll find something to celebrate. But she has still been nervous.

Today, when I picked her up from practice, she said, “Dave said if I dive at the meet like I dove today, I will definitely make nationals.” And then she said, “I’m not nervous anymore – I’m actually kind of excited. I mean I’m a little nervous, but when I get into the water it all goes away.” And what I saw, for the first time, was confidence – the kind of confidence and belief in herself that will make this meet fun for her, no matter how she places. The kind of confidence and belief in herself that might even inspire her to perform better than she ever has before.

My daughter’s coach gave her a powerful gift. It wasn’t about truth or facts or mathematical probability; it was about belief. It was about faith and hope and confidence and belief in what’s possible. And it transformed everything.

I see this all the time with people in job transition, with people starting businesses, with people in professional organizations. It’s not the smartest, the most qualified, the hardest workers, or even the most charismatic that make things happen. The people who make things happen are the ones who believe they can make something happen. NOT just intellectually. There are many people who believe intellectually that they are capable of making something happen, or that something should be able to work conceptually. That’s not the kind of belief I’m talking about. I’m talking about an emotional belief: a confidence – the kind that helps you let go of that nervousness, the self-doubt, the pressure, the worry, the “what if’s”, and immerse yourself in confident, focused, and therapeutic action.

So, as I continue my own personal journey – still very much attached to the values of honesty, integrity, and searching for my “truth”, I sometimes wonder if I’m asking the wrong questions. Is it really my truth I should be searching for, or is it something else?

Would love to hear your thoughts…

What are “Needs” and why do they have everything to do with how things go at work?

Do you remember the last time someone pushed your buttons?

In that instant, did it seem like they crossed the line, almost intentionally?

What emotions got triggered, and how did you control your reaction?

That emotional reaction comes from having a need that isn’t being met, and this is important because almost every single ridiculous thing that happens between people at work, happens because someone has a need that isn’t being met. Most of us aren’t aware of our needs. We just experience spurts of annoyance and frustration with each other, but in a work environment, it’s an ongoing battle of unresolved animosity that undermines trust, communication, and productivity to the nth degree.

We may be able to hold ourselves back from reacting in the moment, but then we vent like crazy to our friends, we “forget” to provide information that the “button pusher” needs, we go out of our way to avoid him or her, and our judgments of each other get harsher. Eventually we decide we simply can’t work together at all.

All it takes is one struggle like this on a team to undermine productivity, but most teams have several “button pushing incidents” going on in tandem, and repeating themselves regularly.

If you make it your business to understand how needs work, you have the power to break through the barriers and maintain a productive work environment, both for yourself and your team.

Here are a few tips to get started:

1. Keep a log of all of your “emotional reactions” at work. Write down the situation and ask yourself “what did I need in this moment?” Listen to the first word or phrase that comes up, and write it down – even if it seems silly.

2. Once your log gets long enough, see if you can find a pattern. If the same words or phrases repeat themselves, you may have nailed an important need. You will also notice that the same people or situations will serve as a trigger for the need, over and over again.

3. At first, it will seem like the only solution is to make the person who is “pushing your buttons” change their behavior and treat you differently. Often the person is someone you have to work with a lot, like your boss, team-mate or subordinate. Unfortunately, you have to start this process by accepting that the person in question will probably not change. BUT the good news is that as you do the needs work, focused on YOURSELF, your reactions to the person move to neutral, and as a result you are able to provide more effective feedback, and the person does change. You just have to be willing to take the indirect route, work on yourself first, and trust that things will end up changing as a result.

4. The person who really has control of getting your needs met is YOU, even though it seems like other people are the source of what you need. What you’ll realize once you do some thinking, is that you have more power than you think, and you’ll also begin to see what you can do to influence the world around you and get more of what you need.

5. An interesting paradox about needs is that we often close ourselves off to receiving what we most need from others. It’s like having trouble accepting compliments. One of the biggest things you have to learn is to graciously receive what you need when it comes to you, even if you don’t really care that much for the source.

6. You also have to learn to give YOURSELF a lot of what you need – listen to that inner voice, and notice what you say to yourself over and over again. If you need to be accepted, are you accepting yourself? If you need to be heard, are you ignoring yourself? It seems like an odd thing to check for, but you may be surprised when you start paying attention.

7. Once you get a feel for how needs play out in your own life, start observing other people and their interactions at work. Pay attention in meetings and notice when someone has an edge to their voice, a hint of sarcasm or resentment. You’ll begin to pick up on the dynamics of others on your team, and may even find subtle ways to intervene and facilitate better interactions across the whole team.

At work, whenever things start getting weird, one of the most powerful things you can ask is this: “are you getting everything you need in this situation?” If you are genuine, this question can dissipate emotion from people who aren’t even aware they are reacting, and give them an opportunity to articulate what they do need. Sometimes it’s as simple as clarity on priorities, extra time to finish a project, or appreciation for work they did that is no longer going to be used.

As independent and self-sufficient professionals, we don’t want to “have needs”. But whether we want to admit it or not, we all have this stuff going on underneath, and if it’s not dealt with directly, it shows up anyway – resulting in poor communication, inefficient team-work, and wasted time, which no organization can afford these days.

No matter what type of organization you work in, you can take yourself to the next level by learning about your own needs. Start with the seven tips above, or you can join the Aspyrre Community, an ongoing professional development program, that provides insight to help you see what’s really behind challenging situations at work, and tools to manage the situations effectively and get better results. For more information on the Aspyrre Community, click here.

Will you Really Change this Year?

If you could change anything, what would be different by the end of this year? It’s a question I often ask clients, but in January, it crosses almost everyone’s mind. The thing is, change doesn’t happen just by thinking about it, and that’s why most New Years Resolutions fail. Our brains and bodies like habits because they make life more efficient, but if your current habits are keeping you stuck, it will take more than a burst of commitment to change them. Here are five tips to help you make real and lasting change:

1. You need to know why it’s important to change, and your reason has to matter to YOU, at a deep emotional level.

Too many people resolve to quit smoking or go on a diet because they know they should for their health. The problem is they still feel ok, and the good feelings they get from smoking or eating are so much more positive, clear and strong than the concept in their mind of what it will feel like to be healthier. Those who succeed are either scared by a close call (powerfully emotional), or they are able to attach themselves to a clear, emotional, and positive vision of themselves in a healthier body. That clear vision and positive emotion is the thing that keeps them going as they develop new habits.

2. Get clear on what actions you are willing to take, for how long, and how you will decide whether it’s worth it to keep acting if you aren’t getting results.

The sad thing about most goals is that it takes longer to get results than what you would expect. When you don’t get results, it’s easy to get into a slump of not working as hard, which slows you down even more. One thing that helps is rewarding yourself for effort as opposed to results. When you know you are putting in your best effort, it’s hard to get down on yourself, and easier to keep going until you’ve gathered enough momentum to start seeing results.

3. Detach yourself emotionally from failure, get used to it, and learn from it.

While it’s powerful to be emotionally attached to the vision that drives you forward, it’s painful to be emotionally attached to the little failures along the way. You have to get over being embarrassed about looking like a dork, or comparing yourself to others who seem to be doing it better or faster. The successful people in this world have failed many more times than the failures. Who do you want to be?

4. Develop habits that support your success.

Habits and routines can form a strong foundation for success, helping you maintain consistent behaviors that build on themselves over time. Your brain likes habits, and if you do the same thing enough times in a row it will become automatic. Habits can work for you or against you, and the more habits you can develop to work for you, the easier it will be for you to create lasting and permanent change. This works with meals, exercise routines, sales calls, building your network, managing people, running meetings, and just about anything else.

5. Adopt a mindset that matches your change.

Your mind is powerful. It dictates what you notice in the world, what you decide it means, how you respond, and ultimately what shows up for you. It’s almost lucky that it takes awhile to make most changes on the outside, because if your mind doesn’t catch up, you can easily spiral right back to where you started. The way to prevent this is NOTICE that running commentary in your head and THINK about how that running commentary might be different if you succeed. Instead of “I need a smoke” every time things get stressful, it might be “I need a walk” or “a break” or “ten minutes to think with my door closed and a cup of tea”. Start playing with new ways to think that match the way you want to be thinking about the world once you have succeeded.

6. BONUS - Get a support system!

Studies show that people are three times as likely to make a change when they have a support system in place – usually a group of people who are in it together. You can put together a mastermind group, or join a support group, or even get a buddy to work with you, and the natural synergy and support will propel you forward. I have to make a sales pitch here – JOIN the Aspyrre Community and as long as you show up on the phone calls it’s almost inevitable that you will change. We are continuously learning and working with tools that help you move yourself to the next level, and hearing other people with similar challenges talk about their experiences is invaluable.

It all comes down to this. Do you really want things to change this year? If you do, you will need to do something different. Something that moves you out of your current habitual way of living. It can be as small as joining the community and showing up on calls or as big as moving to a brand new place physically and developing a whole new living routine. But do SOMETHING different – and lay the foundation for real and lasting change.

Organize to Higher Revenue

I first hired an organizer in 2003, wrote this article 2 years later, and still pull it out every few years and re-post it. Even now, 7 years later, I still have most of the systems in place that my original organizer set up for me - and I stand by the claim that having great organizational systems has a direct impact on revenue!

So, here it is again:

HOW GETTING ORGANIZED IMPACTED MY BUSINESS

One day about two years ago, I decided to find out how much the clutter in my office was costing me. The answer amazed me. After a few days working with a professional organizer, I immediately increased my monthly income by about 50%. And if you can imagine anything better than that – my stress level dropped to almost nothing. What I learned about organizing has made a huge impact in my business and my life. Here are five things I learned about the value and process of organizing that were key to achieving such amazing results:

1. Organizing, weeding, and taking care of open issues are distinctly separate activities. Try to do them at the same time, and you run into trouble.

If you’ve ever hired a housecleaning service, you may have noticed how quickly they get the job done. This is because all they do is clean. They don’t get distracted picking up clutter, or fixing broken things, or deciding if something should go to Goodwill.

The problem with organizing our own stuff is that everything we own requires a decision or reminds us of something we intended to do. So, instead of “getting through the box”, we spend our time taking care of what we find in the box. This approach takes a lot of time – it’s common to end up with the box still full hours later. Working this way is frustrating and overwhelming.

The professional organizer sees things differently. She sorts through an entire box in 20 minutes, easily. She has no emotional attachment to the items in the box – to her they are simply objects with a use, size, shape, and category attached to them. Her job is to get them into piles and find homes for them. All the things that need to be taken care of get put in a “take care of” pile and can be addressed once the organizing part of the job is done.

2. Everything has a home, absolutely everything.

You can’t put something away if you don’t know where it goes. If you look at a pile of clutter, in most cases it exists because 80% of the contents either don’t have a home, or the home is not easily accessible. Anything that will reside in your space, even temporarily, needs a home. This includes keys, borrowed books, business cards, thank you notes, and single sheets of paper with scribbled notes on them.

The “home” is specifically designed around ease of use. It’s located where the item is most often used, and it has a container or hook that fits. The containers and hooks are critical. They make it easy to retrieve items and easy to put them back where they belong. They also reduce the chance of items getting in the way of each other.

The biggest benefit of assigning homes to everything is that a mess that used to take three hours to clean only takes ten minutes. Why? Because you grab the stuff and put it where it belongs. You don’t even have to think. I thought that when my office got organized, I would have to file a few minutes every day to keep everything looking perfect. What I found is that even if I let my filing stack up for an entire month, I could get caught up on it in less than 20 minutes. What a relief!

3. Create decision criteria, so you know immediately what to keep and what to throw away

If you don’t decide what to keep and what to throw away you have a lot of items taking up space that don’t have homes (because you aren’t sure you’ll keep them) and aren’t in the trash (because you haven’t decided to let them go).

Here’s where my organizer really helped me. She gave me a simple over-riding guideline, and asked really good questions whenever I was confused. It went something like this:

The over-riding guideline: You only keep something if you use it regularly, or you love it.

Then, every time I wasn’t sure about something, she would ask me a series of great questions:

a. What situation are you keeping it for?
b. How often does that situation occur?
c. What will you do if that situation occurs and you don’t have it?

Inevitably we would find a lot of things I was keeping because they were “too good” to throw away. Now all these items get donated to places where they will be used.

Once I had created my rules, everything went much more quickly. I would “weed” first, by throwing out or donating everything that didn’t fall into the “keep” criteria. Then once I got to the organizing, it was simply a matter of sorting and finding homes for everything that was left.

4. I wouldn’t have done it myself.

If I pay close attention, this is what happens when I organize alone: I get frustrated because it’s taking too long; I get bored because it’s not interesting work; I get distracted because I think of other important “revenue producing” activities I should be focusing on; I get angry when I discover something I intended to do that fell through the cracks; I stop and try to solve problems as I uncover them. All these negative thoughts and emotions drain my energy and pull me away from the task at hand.

With my organizer the experience is quite different: She sorts quickly and easily because she has no emotional connection to my stuff. As issues come up, we discuss them, and because she has lots of experience with similar situations, decisions come quickly. There is a sense of teamwork, forward movement, and the relief of having someone experienced to lean on who will insure that the project continues to move forward, even when I’m lagging behind.

5. The return on investment is enormous.

For me it was several thousand dollars. It started with about four extra hours per week. On top of that I had a more powerful presence that came from knowing I had everything under control. I was more prepared when I gave presentations, I had a better follow up system, I put more thought into my writing, because I was more relaxed about taking the time to think. That translated into more powerful personal interactions, which translated into more business. My monthly revenue immediately increased by about 50% after the initial organizing effort, and never dipped back.

It’s been about two years now since my first experience with an organizer. Since then I’ve continued to use an organizer periodically, to replace systems as they become obsolete, or to save me if I’ve let things go for more than a few months. Even though it’s a smaller, more intense effort, I consistently experience more confidence, more time, and increased business in the weeks following the visit.

Copyright @2005 - 2010 Nahid Casazza http://www.aspyrre.com/

The Quick "Pick Me Up" Exercise

Most of the people I work with are used to being very successful, and when they find themselves in transition for a long period of time, they start having scary moments of self-doubt, where they truly wonder if they've lost themselves forever.

When you feel like curling up in a ball and hiding from the world, but you know you have to get moving in order to change things, this tool can help.

The exercise below can be done in five minutes and is specifically designed to counteract thinking patterns associated with sadness. If you focus and answer each question honestly and introspectively, you should experience a subtle shift in your frame of mind that can serve as a mental and emotional "pick me up", when you need one. Have fun with it!

The Quick “Pick Me Up” Exercise

You can do this exercise for an emotional “pick me up” when you are feeling really down. Answer the questions below with effort and honesty:

1. List five things you are grateful for in this moment:

2. List five people you know and respect. For each person list at least one specific thing that you do better than they do:

3. List five people who love and respect you for who you are:

4. List five things you have accomplished in the last three weeks that you are proud of:

5. List five things you could do right now that take 20 minutes or less, and would make you feel really good about yourself:

6. Choose one of the five things on your list, and do it now.

Top Business Mistakes Business People Make
Mistake #1 – Keeping Your Idea a Secret

Dear Nahid,

I had an idea for a business and I took an entrepreneurship class to learn how to put it into action. I made the mistake of sharing my idea when the instructor asked, and was later disappointed to learn that another student had a friend who was working on the same type of business. I’m not sure what she told her friend and I feel betrayed. What do I do now? Do I scrap my idea? In the future should I have people sign a non-disclosure agreement before talking about my business, to protect my idea from being stolen?

-Furious

Dear Furious,

It’s not easy to grow a business and even if your classmate passed on some of your ideas to her friend, she may not implement them. A business owner can usually only focus on about one initiative at a time. Great ideas are usually a dime a dozen, while getting the business to operate smoothly so you can breathe easy at night is priceless.

Most new entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that a unique idea is the key to success, and because of their protectiveness, they have a hard time moving forward and putting their idea into action. They only talk to people who are willing to sign non-disclosure statements, and even then are somewhat vague about what they plan on doing.

The fear is, “What if someone steals my idea?” But what you may not realize is that at least two thousand other people in the world probably have the exact same idea you do. It’s not the idea itself that makes a business, it’s the execution of that idea, and as the business grows, things will normally change.

Innovation is definitely important in business, but it usually doesn’t show up as “one great idea” in isolation. The most cutting edge companies have a consistent process of innovation as part of their culture; one that enables them to constantly come up with new ideas in response to new situations that arise on a daily basis. By the time tomorrow hits, yesterday’s idea becomes old news.

In my experience, the best entrepreneurs do a lot of talking about their ideas before they start a business. They use these conversations to “test” an idea by seeing how potential customers respond to it, learning what other people have done, and discovering in advance what they will be up against.

When you don’t talk to people about your idea, potential customers don’t find out about what you are doing, and they are unable to give you feedback. Thus, by the time you are ready to “launch”, you may not have enough resources left to bring your product to market and adapt your product or services to what you learn from that feedback.

When you don’t talk to people about your idea, you miss the opportunity to hear the stories of the other people they know who also had similar ideas, and learn from someone else’s mistakes, or get a true handle on what your competition is.

When you don’t talk about your idea, you miss opportunities to learn, collaborate and partner with others, leveraging your personal resources and increasing the chances of building a viable entity.

Remember your idea is only the initial seed of your business. To give it a chance of coming to life, it will need to grow and change in participation with its environment. What that means is having conversations with people, asking questions, collaborating, experimenting, and using the success of your competitors as inspiration to keep building on your idea to make it better. Established businesses rarely fear their competitors copying or stealing their ideas. In fact, they often use the competition to fuel even better ideas.

If you are afraid someone will steal your idea, it might be a good time to do some research. See how many people you can find who are doing something similar to what you are thinking of doing. Ask a bunch of questions about their ideas. And then ask yourself, “am I stealing their ideas if I already was thinking about this?” Knowing what others are doing, or are considering doing, can I still build a business in this market and be unique enough to have an edge? This type of questioning will fuel the innovation in your mind, AND give you the information you need to move forward.

It’s great that you have a great idea. Now take the first ten steps and see what happens!

The Difference Between Needs and Values

In some of our recent sessions I have heard participants use the words “needs” and “values” interchangeably and it occurred to me that it might be helpful to distinguish the two:

1. NEEDS are what you are currently missing and cannot feel / be completely “OK” without.
2. VALUES are what you would naturally build your life around when all your needs are met.

It is very difficult to distinguish between needs and values when you have a lot of unmet needs. Your needs will pull at you much more strongly than your values, because they are urgent and required. When you do values work during a time of a lot of unmet needs, it’s highly likely that your needs will show up as values. Once the needs are met, you may feel like your values have changed because the same words aren’t showing up as much. Typically a value that changes is actually a need that has finally been met and is no longer necessary to bring into your life because you have more than enough.

I can’t tell you for sure whether or not values evolve over time, but MY BELIEF is that your deep values never change; they are simply “uncovered” as your needs get met.

This issue is really not a problem when it comes to personal growth, because getting your needs met is a priority anyway. If you are developing a list of your core values and it turns out later that four of the values disappear and in retrospect those turned out to be needs…perfect. That means your needs are getting met and you are making room in your life for your deeper values to come to the surface and be recognized. This is why it’s important to do needs and values work periodically; I would say at least once per year, and once per quarter is great for people on a path of accelerated personal growth.

Help - I Lost my Motivation!

Motivation is never a problem for a naturally unmotivated person. It’s when you are used to achievement, accomplishment and success and suddenly you experience a lull in your motivation that things get frustrating.

If you are normally highly motivated, but suddenly notice yourself procrastinating, feeling drained, or otherwise not moving quickly enough towards your goals, here are some things to consider:

1. How clear are you about what you want to achieve? If you are confused or having doubts, this can lead to a question about whether or not the effort is worth it. The solution: Ask yourself how much effort you are willing to put forth on the next few steps without knowing if you will continue to move forward. Make sure those steps include gathering whatever information you need to clear up your initial confusion or doubts.

2. How much do you have to break out of current habits and patterns to achieve your goal? It takes a lot of energy to create new habits, which is why people don’t change very easily when they are busy or comfortable in their current routines. In this case focusing on one activity or habit at a time as a priority can help you build new patterns.

3. How will your success or failure change your relationships? Those who love us are incredibly impacted by everything we change. Even positive changes on our part can wreak havoc on their lives. For example, if you are suddenly running several miles per day to train for a marathon, you aren’t available for whatever you used to do during that time. It helps to ask the people you are close to how the changes you are making (or stressing over making) impact them. You may be surprised, but getting it on the table and talking about it will often clear up the resistance and make it easier to move forward.

4. How painful are the steps you need to take to achieve success? If you have to do something you aren’t comfortable or confident doing in order to achieve your goal, your procrastination will kick in no matter how enticing the end result is. Identify the specific tasks you are avoiding and see if you can eliminate them or break them into small, manageable steps that don’t require as much energy.

5. How much meaning have you attached to your success? As soon as achieving a particular goal grows into something that defines who you are it becomes elusive. If you have to find your passion, be in the ideal relationship, make a certain amount of money, or be a certain weight in order to be ok with yourself, then those things wont happen. The only way out of this one is separating your ego from your goal and dealing with them separately.

For more information, including workshops, articles, and tools for getting motivated, check out my website at: www.aspyrre.com.

Your Presence Impacts Everything

My daughter wanted me to watch American Idol with her this season – from the beginning. So, of course, I had to pick everything apart in my curiosity about people and success. I immediately noticed stadiums of 20,000 or more hopefuls in each audition city, did the math, and wondered what the process of elimination was. I did some research and learned that regardless of what you see on television, the vast majority of those who try out for the show are excellent vocalists. In fact, people who are willing to make a fool out of themselves actually have better odds of getting through round one.

But that wasn’t the part that interested me. Less than 1% of the excellent singers who show up actually get to audition in front of the “star” judges. What I wondered is this: as producers watch rows and rows of these amazing voices, what is it that strikes them enough to move a person through to the next round?

Part of it may be having a good back story, like having broken both your arms falling out of a tree, or coming from an interesting part of the country or having an interesting family. But beyond that I believe it is presence. In this case perhaps it’s “celebrity presence”. You could call it charisma, but it’s even more distinct than that. It’s the ability to capture the imagination and emotions of an audience. Those who have it aren’t just singing in great voices, they are making a connection that “strikes” at an emotional level. It wakes people up and generates energy.

You don’t have to have celebrity presence to have presence. Everyone has some tone and level of presence, but we don’t think about it much, and we often attribute it to personality, assuming it can’t be changed, and therefore not bothering to develop it.

I would like to suggest that developing your presence could be the most important professional development work you ever do.

If you give presentations as a business leader or salesperson, you probably have a sense for when you are “on”. You can see from the faces in the audience that people are mesmerized. If you don’t develop your presence as a speaker, you give away your ability to influence your audience with the clear compelling messages that will get them moving in one direction.

Even in quieter interactions, such as one on one conversations with employees or small meetings, your presence will influence your audience far more than your words. See if you recognize these examples:

1. Have you ever been in the presence of someone who champions justice? In almost any situation they can find a story about someone taking unfair advantage of others. The person is appalled on behalf of the victim(s). The “presence” is that of self-righteous anger and the energy around it can be powerful. Some people are invigorated and inspired to jump on the wave of rebellion and take some action. To others it sounds like constant complaining and they feel drained by the negative energy. These are two ends of the same spectrum. If you want to be an advocate for change, working on your presence can make the difference between gathering a crowd of people ready to fight for your cause, and wondering why everyone is avoiding you.

2. I saw a speaker recently who was dripping with charisma, effervescence, and what I would call celebrity presence. Her stories were dramatic and mesmerizing, and her physical presence was beautiful to match. She compelled about half of her audience, but many of the intellectuals in the group were turned off by a message that to them seemed trite and empty. This is a great example of someone who has polished her speaking presence, and somewhere in the process it got overdone enough to lose some of its magic. The lesson here is that working on your presence is one thing, but taking it beyond authenticity may backlash you with a reverse effect.

Your presence doesn’t have to be big or loud to be compelling. If we take a look at quieter people, they tend to fall along a spectrum as well. At one end are those we barely notice, but at the other end are those who inspire us. They may sit quietly and listen most of the time, but when they say something it’s profound. When we read stories about powerful guides and teachers, they tend have quiet and peaceful but focused energy about them, and people come from miles around just to hear what they have to say.

Many of the most powerful business leaders are quiet intellectuals with a strong presence.

No matter who you are or what you do, working on your presence can help you be more successful. If you sing, it gives you a better chance of passing an audition; if you present, it gives you a better chance of having an impact on your audience; if you lead, it gives you a better chance of being willingly followed.

The two most important keys to presence are confidence and authenticity. Those are common words: easy to say, not anywhere near as easy to live. If you find yourself thinking about how you should say something so people will hear you or react the “right” way, you are already moving away from those keys. The tangible steps towards building presence involve becoming aware of and removing everything that holds you back from being present. For some this takes years of work, but the good news is, for every new level of awareness, you become that much more compelling in your interactions.

If you want to work on your presence, work with a coach who not only understands the concept of presence, but who IS present when you have your initial exploratory phone call. You will be able to tell this from your own emotional response during the conversation. Do you feel intrigued, interested, and inspired? If so you have found your coach. If you feel bored, not understood, or uninspired, keep making calls until the connection feels right. Trust your intuition, and good luck on your journey!

Are “You” Lined up with Your Goals?

As a coach, I help you achieve your goals faster. But I’m less interested in your actual goals than how you can most easily achieve them. And, I’m less interested in how sensible your action steps are than how lined up you are mentally and emotionally with those steps. Simply put, if you aren’t lined up with your goals, you wont achieve them. So my most important mission when I talk with prospective clients about their goals is to ask the kind of questions that will reveal any hidden values conflicts, fears, or attachments connected to those goals.

When we work together, our most productive work will be addressing those conflicts and getting “you” lined up with what you want to achieve. Once you are lined up with your goals, then the action steps are easy to take, and over time, with consistent action, there’s almost no way you can fail. But when you aren’t lined up, no matter how clear you are on your actions, no matter how committed you feel when we get off the phone, by the next session, it’s predictable that you will either be frustrated with yourself for procrastinating, or you will cite many legitimate reasons why you could not take the actions required to achieve your goal. You may even be distracted and want to talk about other things, until after a few months you look back and wonder what you accomplished.

How do you know if you are “unaligned” with your goals? Here are just some of the signs:

1. It takes a whole lot of willpower and discipline for you to follow your plan.
2. You feel that you need accountability – someone to push you.
3. You really don’t enjoy doing the specific actions required to succeed.
4. You find yourself procrastinating and feel ashamed, but that doesn’t change things much.
5. Other, more important things keep getting in your way so you don’t have time to do what you need to do to succeed.
6. You keep changing your mind about your goals.
7. You set a goal and work towards it for awhile and then, without even realizing it, you seem to drift into not working on it, until one day you notice you’ve blown it off for weeks.
8. You feel like if you could only just get this one thing worked out and achieve this one goal, everything in your life would finally be ok (the right job, the right weight, the right relationship, etc.)

In contrast, how does it feel when you ARE lined up with your goals?

1. You may be tired or unmotivated, but you take the action steps anyway, and you feel good about it.
2. You might want an accountability partner, but you look forward to the time together instead of feeling pushed or forced.
3. Taking the steps required to achieve your goal feels energizing and exciting even if you feel scared, even if you fail.
4. Once you get some momentum going on your actions, they get easier, more enjoyable, and you feel more efficient.
5. You can see yourself having achieved your goal, and it feels possible, not like a “too good to be true” fantasy.
6. You know achieving this goal will be fulfilling, but you don’t expect it to make all your problems go away.
7. You might procrastinate or get distracted sometimes, but within a few days you are naturally thinking and focusing on your goal again, and wanting to take more steps.
8. As you work towards your goal, you continue to grow your confidence, even when things aren’t working out like you’d hoped.

If you look at the two lists above, you may notice that there is a distinct difference in the overall feeling and forward motion. When you aren’t lined up with your goals, your emotional state is more conflicted, your mental state is more confused, and although you may take some action, you never gain enough momentum to see results. When you are lined up with your goals you still feel all the same human emotions like fear and frustration, and you still face setbacks, both internally and externally, but through it all you naturally hold the vision, want to move forward, and find the energy you need to do what it takes. So eventually you gain momentum and get results.

If you are becoming painfully aware that you are in the “not lined up” category, don’t despair. You wouldn’t “want” whatever it is that you want if it wasn’t lined up with at least one real value or need. And that means the possibility exists for you to achieve at least most of what you want. However, if something isn’t lined up, you will have more long term success working to identify your internal conflicts and working them out than in attempting to force yourself through willpower to take action.

This doesn’t take as long as you might think. You don’t have to go into years of therapy and resolve everything in your past that affects you now. Just shining some light on your values, thinking about what makes you feel happy, fulfilled, and purposeful, and understanding what tends to get in the way for you can make enough of a difference to get you moving forward.

That’s why, at Aspyrre, December is the month of “self-discovery”. January is a big month for goal-setting, so in December we get back in touch with our core values, think about who we really are, what we most want out of life, and identify what gives us a sense of fulfillment and purpose. Then, as we plan for the year ahead we can make a conscious effort to line our goals up with our strongest values and give ourselves the best chance for success.

There is an exercise I have my clients do each year in December that helps shine the light on what is most important, and sets the stage for setting solid, values-based goals in January. The exercise is on my website, and is called “Your Year in Review”. Feel free to go through the questions yourself for this year, and when you are done, see if you have uncovered any gems that help you line yourself up with what you want to accomplish next year. I’d love to hear what you come up with!

P.S. As I write this at the end of 2009, I am working on a new website, so if for any reason the link doesn’t work – just go to my website and look in the articles section, or feel free to e-mail me and let me know so I can get the exercise to you.

What to Tweet About?

People keep saying, “You should be on Twitter”. Yes, I know. I’m on there all right. But I don’t “tweet” much, because up until now, I haven’t really “gotten” what I should be saying. I mean, who in the world cares when I wash my hair or that I had a great talk with my daughter or whether I’m answering e-mail or talking to a client in any given work moment? And I know people definitely don’t want to read a bunch of workshop or coaching advertisements. So, what to write?

And then, today, the answer began to form around the edges of my mind. It happened when I was writing my weekly update to the Aspyrre Community members. I realized that the update created intimacy, a conversation for those who did not have time to show up for the live event that week. And for the first time, I realized I wanted to have that kind of conversation with more people. It occurred to me that the question “what do I tweet about?” is the exact same question as “what do I write about?” when I think about writing an e-mail or a blog.

Except with my blog and articles, I take time to write, and my readers take time to read.

But the world is changing, accelerating at an outrageous pace. Nobody has time to read or write anymore.

In my recent workshops on time management, participants grappled with the idea that they simply can NOT complete or even begin everything there is to do anymore. They have to choose. In my career transition workshops, job-seekers are learning how to write resumes that will not actually be read unless they make it through the first few rounds of selection. Everything has to be in bullets.

So the pieces of the puzzle begin to converge, as I realize what twitter gives me – a place to blog in bullets.

The whole world has access to the bullets, and yes, they are quite lost in a sea – like “pings” from a submarine. But there’s always someone else on line the same time I am and, the more followers I have, the more interested those “per chance” people are in what I have to say. After reading the bullets, some will honor me with more of their time, and read a paragraph or an article. And some of those people might want to delve in deeper and join the community, attend a workshop, hire me as their coach.

We live in a new world, where people can choose who, where, when, and what to engage with. Twitter is a selection tool that enables people to come together quickly around what they care about, and disengage just as quickly when they need space.

At least I think. But today, I’m going to step in and give it a try.

Your “To-Do” List – Is it a Tool or a Weapon?

How do you feel when you look at your to do list?

• Do you feel confident that everything is contained in one place, or do you wonder what’s missing?
  
• Do you feel clear about what to get started with, or do you feel overwhelmed at how long the list is?
  
• Do you feel a sense of accomplishment as you check items off throughout the day, or a sense of desperation as you watch the list grow throughout the day?

A to-do list is supposed to be an organizational tool, used to keep you productive, prioritized, and focused, and as a result it should greatly reduce your stress. But all too often I work with clients with to-do lists they want to hide from. The sense of overwhelm they experience as they see an unending list that can’t possibly be completed is enough to send them crawling back under the covers and take a sick day. If your to do list makes you feel bad and doesn’t help you work more productively, it may be a weapon you are using against yourself instead of the tool you originally created to serve you.

When facing your to-do list feels like facing an enemy, chances are it has become a trigger for negative self talk. If you listen closely to the words of your thoughts, you might notice things like, “I am so incompetent – I’ll never get all of this done”, or “what a loser”, or “this will take weeks and I’ll never get any time to relax and enjoy my life”, or “it’s useless, I can’t get on top of it – why bother doing any of it?” There are many variations in what you might be saying to yourself, but if the sight of your list triggers feelings of overwhelm, impatience, exhaustion, or other draining emotions, you can bet there is some form of negative thinking and self-talk behind it.

For many people, the energy drain is so severe that they avoid the list and procrastinate on tasks they might have otherwise enjoyed or easily completed. When that happens, your to do list has become a weapon you are inadvertently using against yourself, and it is no longer effectively serving its purpose as an organizational tool.

So, if this is happening to you, what do you do about it?

The first thing is to get back to the purpose of the to-do list. The to-do list serves you; you don’t serve it. Ask yourself why you have a list in the first place? Is it to keep you more organized, or prioritized? Is it to prevent you from forgetting things? Once you get clear on what you wanted the list for in the first place, you can make some adjustments to your list, or you can use an alternative tool that might work better. Here are a few ideas:

1. To keep you prioritized and productive: write a “top 5” list each day, of the five most important things you want to get done. There may be a longer to do list that you use to contain ALL your projects, but the top 5 is much less overwhelming, and keeps you focused on the 20% that will give you 80% of your results.
2. To move through your list faster: Most people know about the A,B,C method of prioritization. A items are the most critical items, B items are important, and C items are things you’d like to do when you can find the time. Add a Q designation for anything that takes 10 minutes or less and is relatively easy. Each day when you get 15 – 20 minutes of open time, such as before a meeting, knock one or two Q’s off your list. You might be surprised at how much shorter your list stays as a result.
3. To get rid of the overwhelm: The bottom line is that technology has changed the nature of work over the past decade such that it is now literally impossible to get everything on our lists done. The people who survive in this new age of information overload have changed their mindsets and expectations accordingly. It’s no longer “getting it all done” that is important. It’s choosing what’s most important now, given the current circumstances and opportunities in this moment, which may be entirely different from what was relevant just a moment a go. Shifting your mindset to a new way of judging your competence can be powerful. Instead of “getting it all done”, if “getting what’s most important done” is what makes you competent, your to do list may lessen its power over you, and go back to its rightful place as your servant.

I’ll be talking about this mindset change in my Calming the Chaos workshop November 17th. To see a list of workshops I’m currently offering, you can always visit my website at

www.aspyrre.com.

Getting a Better Return on your Energy

Sometimes we look at time management one dimensionally, and we forget to look at our energy, which is one of the most significant factors related to productivity. Some activities you do throughout your day are completely draining. You don't look forward to doing them, you often procrastinate, you don't enjoy yourself while you are doing them, and when you are done you are relieved and ready to relax. On the other hand, some activities naturally energize you. When you do them you forget about time. You tend to be more focused and engaged. You do a better job naturally. You feel good about yourself after you are done, and you leave the task energized, confident, and excited to move on to a new challenge.

How much more productive would you be if you could build your work day around activities that energized you? If you could eliminate or at least contain the ones that drained you? And if you could create systems and routines to get more out the ones in the middle?

My bet is that regardless of how much time each activity takes, you would end up getting more results from everything you do. If you'd like to experiment, here is an activity I recently walked Aspyrre Community participants through in our business systems forum. You can do this using a four column spreadsheet:

Column 1 - Write a brainstormed list of every activity you do regularly in your business, daily work, or job search.

Column 2 - Score each activity from 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest based on your reponse to this question: "if this activity is done consistently and well, how much impact will it have on my success?"

Column 3 - Score each activity based on whether it gives you energy or drains your energy. If it is neutral (like brushing your teeth, for example), score it a 0. If it gives you energy, score it from 1 to 5 with 5 being the MOST energizing. If it drains your energy you want to give it a negative number between "-1" and "-5" with "-5" being the activities that drain you the MOST.

Column 4 - Add column 2 and 3 (remember when you add a negative number to a positive number, it's just like subtraction. So 4 plus "-5" is like 4-5 and your answer would be -1). Your results should range from "-4" at the lowest to 10 at the highest.

How to Analyze your Results:

Activities scoring between 5 and 10 - capitalize on these activities. Build as much of your work as possible around them because you get the most leverage from them.

Activities scoring between 0 and 5 - systemize these activities, by having a step by step process or a routine for them. This enables you to do them more frequently with less energy drain, and get more leverage from them than you do now.

Activities scoring between (-4 and 0) - Eliminate / delegate / or at the very least CONTAIN these activities. They will always drain you, so if you can limit them to a short period of time and give yourself a reward afterwards, or otherwise manage them, you will be drained less by them.

When I did this exercise something quite obvious hit me between the eyes, and I actually revised my business strategy as a result. I'd love to hear what comes out of it for you!

Beyond Planning and Acting – the Emotional Game of Success

Sometimes success is easy. You set a goal, make a plan, take action, adjust as you go, and ultimately get to where you want to be. Then you choose a new goal and start all over again. Even in this crazy world when the more realistic scenario involves many goals, complicated webs of people, competition for resources, and constant change, it’s possible to set your mind to just about anything, and achieve it with a clear vision, good interpersonal skills, and consistent, focused action.

But sometimes the success formula doesn’t work. You may blame yourself for not managing your time well, or not having enough willpower, or not getting your priorities straight, but at some level it feels like you are banging your head against an impenetrable wall. I believe that this is because thinking and acting are just part of the success equation.

You see the emotional component of success all the time in sports. The underdog gets a burst of positive energy and performs beyond all expectations. Or an athlete falls into a “slump” and can’t do anything right. It’s alive in business as well. Sales teams purposely generate fun to keep the emotional energy as positive as possible. Leadership teams work on creating emotional environments (corporate cultures) that support what they want to achieve. Marketing teams use branding to create an emotional connection between products and customers. While the emotional game can seem vague and hard to define, we intuitively know it plays a big part in getting solid results.

When I coach clients, I often notice that the “emotional” game they are immersed in has more impact on their ultimate success than their goals, their plan, or any techniques or strategies they can learn. Unfortunately it’s hard to see, it’s not tangible or easily measurable, and controlling it is like herding cats. So what most people do is resign themselves to focusing on the things they can see and control – the mental game and the action game, and they ride the emotional waves the best they can.

But the emotional game is not as hard to manage as it looks – it just follows different rules and requires a different kind of awareness. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Notice when someone is pushing your buttons. We tend to assume that the other person “pushed” and that causes our reaction. But if you take a deeper look, you may notice a pattern of your own reactions that spans different people and situations. Understanding this pattern is the first step to learning what you need to succeed.

2. Notice what drains you and what energizes you. There is a pattern here too, and once you see it, you can begin to manage your environment, your activities, and your interactions in ways that preserve your emotional energy.

3. Notice the story you tell yourself about a situation when you are immersed in a negative emotion about something. If you look deeper than the actual situation, you will notice that you have a pattern of “explaining things” to yourself that may be habitual. Just realizing that you made up the explanation and there may be other more positive explanations is incredibly empowering.

4. Notice when you are feeling your best- confident, in your element, joyful, on top of the world. What exists that does not typically exist when you are stressed or down?

Some people think that the purpose of emotional awareness is to force a positive attitude all the time, or to always have positive energy. This line of thinking not only misses the point; it doesn’t work. A positive attitude and positive emotional energy are often helpful in the short term, but especially when they are forced, they can be even more draining than feeling authentically negative.

The purpose of increasing your awareness around your emotional game is to help you manage it so you can play your full game more effectively. In your physical game, you do better when you take good care of your body, and take time off to heal when you are injured or ill. In your mental game, you do better when you are periodically engaged in something that interests or challenges you, and when you regularly get a good night’s sleep. In your emotional game, as you spend more time doing what brings you joy and confidence, your level of personal power gets stronger and stronger. And when you find yourself stressed or angry or frustrated, you know what you need to get back on track.

Imagine what it would be like to feel energetic, confident, and content most of the time. Would you be more productive? Would you be on top of your mental game? If you have a goal and a plan, and you are not moving forward consistently, there is a good chance that the barrier you are facing is hiding in your emotional game. Discover it, and you have the key to breaking through to your next level.

Ask for What you Want – and Set Yourself Up for Success

Recently I received an e-mail from Courtney Phillips, asking if she could submit an article to this blog. I don’t know Courtney, but what I do know is that she took the initiative to ask me, and then she answered the questions I had, and she followed up with me exactly as I requested her to. To me, these are most critical components to success: (1) asking, and (2) politely and consistently following up. So here’s to Courtney – I wish her the best of luck in her endeavors, and here’s what she has to say about success:

Setting Yourself Up for Success

When it comes to dealing with clients, there are many things that can go right and just as many that can go wrong. Setting yourself up for success can be far easier than you think if you make preparations and work hard at getting the right things in place from the beginning. Take your business and rapport with your clients to the next level with a few simple modifications to the way you do business as usual.

Visualize the Outcome

Knowing where you are headed is one thing; seeing it happen is a completely different way of thinking. Take time to visualize the outcomes of events throughout your day including meetings, presentations, and even the daily commute. When you actually sit back and work your way through the day mentally, you are being proactive at the core level. Don’t confuse this with dreaming or wishful thinking. Work on using your mental faculties to anticipate your day regularly and you will soon see the benefit of doing so.

Get Time on Your Side

Nobody knows you better than you do. That said, if you are better on your feet in meeting during mid-morning, schedule your most important appointments at those times. If you know that post-lunch meetings aren’t going to work well for you, then change things up. You want to bring your “A game,” so set your self up for success by playing on your strengths. Use time to your advantage and see how your interactions with clients and colleagues transform.

Create a Relaxing Environment

In business, we often spend as much or more time at the office as we do at our own homes. However, rarely do we find offices that give off that “home away from home” feel. Consider that the more comfortable you are in your own office, the more likely you are to be productive and happy. Use subtle scents, colors, artwork, and even soft music to enhance the feel of your office. Keep things clean, organized, and clutter-free and you will soon notice the difference that these changes will make in your work day.

Treat Clients as Guests

Strategically speaking, it is always best to hold meetings on your own turf. Having a relaxing environment to meet in will speak volumes to your clients about the type of person you are. Treat each client as you would a guest in your home and be sincere and deliberate with your actions. Conduct business as usual and rest assured that your improvements will reap benefits soon enough.

This post was contributed by Courtney Phillips, who writes about how to obtain bachelors degree online. She welcomes your feedback at CourtneyPhillips80 at gmail.com . Courtney taught for a couple of years before becoming interested in freelancing, as writing has always been of interest to her. Courtney writes for a couple of websites concentrating on education and health and writes from past experiences, knowledge, and research.

When what Works stops Working - Adapting to Change

Everything was going fine, in fact it was easy, and I decided it was time to take it to the next level. I was confident and ready to move. But as soon as I decided, the level I was standing on collapsed. After eight years of coaching, all I had to do was show up at a couple of professional organizations to speak each quarter, stay in touch with my clients and business network, and clients showed up. But suddenly, they slowed down – big time.

So, I figured, well hey – with the economy as it is, maybe I need to just “up the pace” a bit. I made three times as many presentations, talked to what seemed like fifty potential clients, and I wasn’t getting hired. Not as quickly anyway. I lowered my rates; I raised my rates. It didn’t make a difference. People were “thinking about it” but not buying. Or they’d buy much less than in the past – just a few sessions or a few months or a lower level program. I qualified harder. I started following up more. Still people hesitated. I listened to what people needed, and came up with new and different programs. To some extent people responded. But it was still too early to tell. Bottom line, I was working three times as hard to bring in half as much business.

I began to get frustrated, questioning myself, resenting the extra work that was taking me away from family, yet not bringing them any financial benefits to make up for it all. I began to feel drained, wanting to take time off, yet not being able to enjoy the breaks, from worry that I was wasting time. One minute I’d be excited about a new direction I was taking, the next minute I’d feel like a complete idiot for things not being easy anymore, but there were no answers. I couldn’t go back, and I couldn’t see the way forward.

One morning I woke up with a pit of anxiety in my stomach, and suddenly I had a flash of recognition. I’m in stage one of decisive change! I wrote about this – something like six years ago. What are the symptoms?

1. Every action takes more energy than you think it should
2. It feels like you are on an emotional roller coaster
3. The people who supported you as your old self don’t really believe in your “new self”
4. Your progress feels like it’s being sabotaged at every turn, both from without and from within.

As soon as I remembered the article, I felt relief, and also like maybe I was moving into “stage two”. When you understand how transition works, and know what to expect, it suddenly seems like you are going in a straight line instead of spinning in circles and you can begin to make sense of things. Here is a link to the article on the stages of change if you want to read the whole thing: Stages of Decisive Change

What does it mean, spinning in change, whether you’ve found yourself here, or been thrust here? The bottom line is that it’s not comfortable and it’s not going to get comfortable for awhile. The worst thing about change is the unknown. You can’t know how things will turn out. You can’t know if your “solution” to the problem will work. You can’t rely on things like focus, because it might blind you to the different opportunities that exist now that things have changed. You can’t rely on things like flexibility, because it might prevent you from working long enough on an idea to see it bear fruit. You simply can’t approach the unknown knowing what will work. And that makes it nearly impossible to plan and allocate resources.

So what can you rely on?
1. Action. Even if you take action towards a goal that ultimately changes, 80% of your work is transferrable, meaning if ultimately you decide to go in a completely different direction than you are moving now you only lose 20% of it.
2. Rest. Most people spin their wheels to the point of exhaustion when they are under the stress of transition, and it does nothing but make them less effective. Each day make sure to stop, and rest, run, veg out, hang out – whatever rejuvenates you. Getting your needs met gives you the energy you need to be confident next round.
3. Detach from the Results. I’m not sure why we fail so much more when we are in transition, but that seems to be the way things happen. This is a time to get used to failing and not take it personally. The sooner as you get used to it, the easier it will be to act, and the more quickly you’ll get to the succeeding part.
4. Get Support. Trying to handle transition alone is like going off to war without an army. The hard thing about getting support is that we are such a self-sufficient society and it feels weak to let others know we need help. There are many ways to get support from joining networking or church groups, to enrolling in transition programs. It doesn’t matter how you get support, but if you pretend you don’t need it – chances are you are slowing yourself way down. (I’m currently running several transition support programs and also have a “transition with me” blog series designed to walk you through the transition process – step by step)
5. Do Something that is Hard for you. The number one thing that will get you through a transition is confidence. A few weeks ago, my son’s martial arts teacher told the kids, “the way to get confidence is to do something that is hard for you”. If you do ONE thing that is hard for you every day, how much more confident would you be? And, as a result what would change about your transition?

So this is what I have been doing – something hard for me each day. I can’t tell you how my story will turn out, because I haven’t made it all the way through this transition tunnel. But today I committed to sharing my transition with clients and readers in a blog series called “transition with me”. I figure we can connect and work through this transition together in an e-community just as easily as any other support system. I hope you check it out and enjoy your process more for going through it with me.

Why I’m Passionate About Coaching Groups

The majority of people who change jobs, start companies, quit smoking, go on a diet, or start any big initiative, tend to go it alone. I tend to do this as well, falling into the mental trap of dismissing support, almost as if it were an admission of failure. But one thing I’ve learned in the past few years is that leveraging the positive energy of others is like swimming with the current. The struggle disappears, and it feels like “riding the wave” of success.

Consider this:

1. According to Richard Bolles (http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/jbl14010.htm), sending out resumes randomly has about a 7% success rate, which you can increase to 69% by using a more proactive method. Being proactive with a group of other job hunters increases the success rate even more… to 84%.

2. Estimates for small business survival range from the standard “90% of all new businesses fail” to “3 out of 5 survive the first four years”. But a study from the University of Munich found that entrepreneurs who receive support from a network are more successful than those who are isolated. (Josef Brüderl and Peter Preisendörfer)

3. In his famous book, "Think And Grow Rich," Napolean Hill asserts that a key difference that made people successful was being involved in Mastermind Groups that bring people together with different experiences and ideas to collaborate, brainstorm, and provide support to help the participants achieve their goals. For business owners Masterminding can help you model other successful entrepreneurs, and provide you with your own board of directors.

4. Studies have shown that meeting regularly with a support group increases success in just about everything, from tripling your success rate if you want to quit smoking, to doubling your life expectancy when you have cancer.

The bottom line is, if you are serious about achieving any goal, personally or professionally, getting a support system is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your success. With that in mind, the most important question is how to find the right support system for you. Here are some important tips:

1. Although this may seem counterintuitive, it’s best to join a group of acquaintances who do not have an emotional investment in the decisions you make. Family members, good friends, and work associates will be influenced by the relationship they already have with you.

2. It’s good to have a diverse group with one to three key themes in common. For example, you may share a desire to succeed professionally, but your individual goals and areas of expertise vary widely. This provides you with an innovative environment where you can take advantage of completely different perspectives, and also enables you to build strong relationships based on shared values.

3. The most successful groups normally have a professional facilitator managing time and group dynamics, and this allows the group members to immerse themselves in the conversation without worrying about “playing host”. If you choose not to use a trained facilitator, it’s still important to set clear guidelines that create a safe and mutually respectful environment for all participants.

I’m passionate about groups, not only because they make sense, but because being a part of the right group can change your life. If you’ve ever been part of a project team that pulled something amazing off against all odds, or had that feeling of being a valuable part of something important that was much bigger than yourself, you might get a sense of what I’m talking about. It’s a feeling that can’t be described in writing, but it makes you feel powerful, confident, and capable of doing much more than you would have ever imagined on your own, and what’s more – those feelings are translated into real action and results.

If you have been wondering about getting involved with a group to accelerate your success, please feel free to send me a personal e-mail at nahid@aspyrre.com or give me a call at (949) 495-1021. I would love to talk with you more about your situation, and would be happy to share information on groups I am starting or provide you with additional guidelines if you’d like to start your own.

How your Identity Impacts your Success

You may have noticed that it’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog entry. There is a good reason for this: in July, I made the decision to pull my children out of daycare. I took the month of August off work, and drove around the United States with them, through 25 states, visiting family, friends, museums, and historical sites. We got home in time for school to start, and I did not re-enroll them in after school daycare, choosing instead to compress my business into the hours they are at school, and devoting the afternoons to being a parent. My business motto has been “twice the revenue in half the time”. We’ll see how that actually pans out over the next year or so, but meanwhile, it has been an interesting lesson in productivity, efficiency, and surprisingly, personal identity.

On the surface, it’s been fairly clear how to prioritize my tasks, schedule my days, and make the changes required to navigate this transition. The real struggle completely caught me off guard – it was this internal sense of vague confusion over what makes me a success. I’ve had spurts of frustration and irritation that seem to come out of nowhere, and after several bouts of thinking things through it hit me that my business transition has knocked me into a mini-identity crisis.

I don’t know if we realize how tied we are to our identity until it changes. In retrospect, I know that when I started my business, the personal identity I globbed onto was “successful entrepreneur”. Statistics or not, I was not willing to fail at building a viable business that I could be proud of. All my feelings of self-worth were wrapped up in the business. Once it gathered enough momentum and I crossed that “survival” line, new questions started nagging at me, and the main one was “how am I doing in my role as parent”? I don’t think I was quite satisfied with the answer, and this began the drive to change into what I wanted my new identity to be: both a successful business owner and a successful parent.

When I work with professionals in transition, I find that loss of identity is one of the biggest contributors to the stress and emotional struggle they experience while they are out of work. I also notice that the clients I coach are going to naturally behave in ways that are in line with their personal identity, and if they don’t strongly identify with the role they are moving toward, it’s almost impossible for them to succeed.

When you think about your own success, it’s important to know what roles you have defined for yourself, and what they mean to you. For example, I when I watch other parents, I see a wide variety of ways each individual defines success in that role. Some parents define their success through the success of their children, some define their success by the amount of time they spend with their children, some by the kind of relationships they have with their children. At work, some define success by how much money they bring in, some by what they are building and the impact they are having on the world, some by the level of power in their organization, some by how much they are learning – we are all different.

If you are struggling at work or in any area of your life, you may want to write down the roles you see yourself playing, and how you define success in each of those roles. Just taking a moment to ask yourself who you are and who you want to be brings assumptions to the surface, and may reveal the source of any frustration or confusion you feel in your current role.

The bottom line is that we really aren’t any of the roles we play, and the roles we play in life change many times. Our identity is what we make up in our mind about the roles we are playing currently, and how we define success in that role. If you are feeling successful in life, you probably fit well into how you define success. If you are feeling frustrated or unsuccessful, there is a good chance that you feel “out of synch” with your definition of who you “should” be and what success in that role means.

How to get back “in synch”? Well, you can change your behavior, or you can change your definition of success, or you can look deeper for something that means more to you than the current role you are playing. If you’d like to talk about this, or anything else related to your success, don’t hesitate to write or call. These are the big questions that take time to think about, but make the difference in your success, personal fulfillment, and overall life satisfaction.