Yes and No

April 6, 2010

These are funny little words that hold great power over our day-to-day lives. We say the words so often that we can lose touch with their significance and the role they play in our happiness.

Yes and No are two sides of a coin. Each time we say Yes to something, we are in turn saying No to something else. And vice versa.

Many have written about this concept and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. What am I saying Yes or No to each day?  How conscious am I of making these choices? What are the consequences of these choices – both positive and negative?

I’ve found that increasing my awareness around what I say Yes and No to is a great place to start intentionally aligning my actions to support my values and capitalize on my strengths and passions.

And although this sounds simple, it can be a little tricky.

For example, a client recently shared her frustration of having no time to devote to finding a new career path. She knows in her heart that she cannot continue on her current path yet she isn’t making enough time to make the change.

Her list of excuses included a laundry list of things she had over-committed to in her professional and personal life. When we went through the list, each one of them seemed like she “kinda got roped into doing it.”  And most of them were generous and noble things to be involved in – helping to coordinate an event in her community, making the costumes for her daughter’s school play, helping out a colleague who needed extra hands on a project, taking care of a sick relative, etc.

For the most part, she didn’t want to be doing many of the things she committed to. But she saw little choice but to say Yes. She wants to be a good person and help others. But as a result of saying Yes to all these outside demands, she was saying No to herself and her happiness. And the more she continued to do these things, the more drained she got.  And the less she had to give others. She fell into a common trap – saying Yes to everyone else in the hopes that it will be enough to sustain us.

So how do you start making a shift?  How do you start saying Yes and No in a way that supports your happiness?

1. Notice: For one week, take note of all the moments when you have the opportunity to say yes or no.  Do this at work and at home.

2. Flip the Coin: For each Yes, write down all the things you have said No to as a result. For each No, write down all the things you have said Yes to.

3. Reflect: Assess the consequences of each of your choices.  How are they serving you? Are they allowing you to find long-term happiness? Are they allowing you to honor your values? Are they providing you ample opportunity to utilize your natural strengths to feel capable and effective? Are they allowing you to focus on self-care so you can make the contributions you desire?

These 3 simple steps: Notice, Flip the Coin and Reflect will serve to increase your awareness of the choices you have and how you make them. Being present in the moments of your life will allow you to intentionally shape the direction of your future.

What are your experiences with saying Yes and No?  How has it shaped your life and affected your happiness?

“Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.” – John C. Maxwell

A Call to Action – Life is Too Short Not to Face Fears

March 3, 2010

“I don’t have enough time to focus on myself.”

“It’s a luxury to have a career you love. No one enjoys work.”

“I can’t spend time or money on myself to figure out what will make me happy.”

“I’ll figure it out later. With the bad economy, I just have to put my head down and make money to pay the bills.”

Have you ever said these things?  I know I’ve had these thoughts.  And I hear them pretty often from friends, family, colleagues and clients.

Where do these beliefs come from, I began to wonder. And how are they serving us individually and collectively?

My guess is that these beliefs do protect us in some ways.  On the surface, “not having enough time,” allows us to hide behind humility and virtue.  It presents us an opportunity to not seem selfish.  As human beings, we have a strong desire to be caretakers and supporters of our friends and loved ones around us.  What we are taught reinforces this value that many of us hold.  And to focus on our own wants and needs seems to contradict this value.

But is it a contradiction?  Is carving out time to care of our own needs and seeing ourselves as worth it really in opposition of being supportive of others?  I’m not sure. If we go deeper, we see that to be truly supportive of others in the way we desire, we must be at our best.  This allows us to fully give our gifts to the world.  And in order to be our best, we must see ourselves as worthy enough of the time it takes for self-care and an investment in our personal growth and development.

To simply say we don’t have enough time may be just another way we avoid facing our fears.

Fear of what you might ask?  The list is long.  It takes multiple shapes for many of us.

Fear of not finding the career that will fulfill us.
Fear of never finding enough clarity to move forward.
Fear of making the wrong decision.
Fear of making a change and still not being happy.
Fear of the difficult journey it will be to find and pursue a new path.
Fear that happiness and making money are mutually exclusive.
Fear that you will not be capable and effective if you pursue an area of passion.

The list could go on.  The underlying fear as I see it, is a fear of the unknown.

It is human nature to fear the unknown – to choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

But although we have a great capacity to endure undesirable situations, there is something deep within us that knows it is worth doing something about.  So what can we do about it?  How can we begin to make the changes in ourselves in order to make a positive impact for our immediate circle and the world?

We find that in order to conquer a fear, we need to define it.

In Tim Ferris’ book, The 4-Hour Work Week, he has readers face what I see as a brilliant question in helping us define our fear of the unknown.

What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – to postpone action? Don’t only evaluate the potential downside of action.  It is equally important to measure the atrocious cost of inaction.  If you don’t pursue the things that excite you, where will you be in one year, five years, ten years?  How will you feel having allowed circumstance to impose itself upon you and having allowed ten more years of your finite life to pass doing what you know will not fulfill you?  If you telescope 10 years and know with 100% certainty that it is a path of disappointment and regret, and if we define risk as “the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome,” inaction is the greatest risk of all.

And I’d like to add, what is it costing those around you?

How is your inaction impacting your friends and loved ones?  Your colleagues?  The world at large?

We are all inter-connected. A change in how we see and treat ourselves will ripple out to the world. Change in the world starts with each one of us. If we all hold back and live from a place of fear, we will continue to build a world of full of distrust, unhappiness, lack and scarcity.

So the next time you find yourself saying, “I don’t have the time to invest in myself” or “I’ll wait until a better time to make a change,”

Ask yourself, “What is it costing me to postpone action?”

And remember…What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

What Does Passion Got to Do with Career Success?

February 18, 2010

In my coaching, I often encounter women who “on paper” have all the success and happiness they could have imagined in their younger years.  They have degrees from prestigious colleges; they’ve moved up the ladder and are in positions of management and leadership at successful companies; they live in or near exciting cities; they travel; they have the material comforts they desire.

Yet they’ve lost their passion in work and life. They have lost touch with what is meaningful and satisfying to them. And they are tired of watching their life fly by without time to enjoy it.

When they finally decided to reach out for coaching, they’re exhausted, frustrated, and lost.  The first words I often hear are, “I know I want something different, I just don’t know what it is or how to find it.”

One of the first ways we begin turning the tide for them is to reconnect them with their passions. Now I know there’s a lot of talk about passions.  We’ve all heard that if you “find your passion”, money and happiness will follow.  It seems like magic, doesn’t it?  Find the elusive “passion” and all will fall into place.  But I’m a realist and know that for most of us, it’s not that simple.

So how do we in fact find what will make us happy in our work and life?

1. Look for clues in your past

An exercise I love using with clients is a Personal History.  This exercise gives you the opportunity to reflect over your life.

What experiences defined you?  What topics or activities were you attracted to as a kid, a teenager, and a young adult?  What themes or patterns reveal themselves to you about where you derive happiness and strength?

These are “breadcrumbs” that point you in the direction of your passions, strengths, and values.

2. Pay attention to the moments that make you strong, satisfied and successful

Another challenge I love to pose to clients is to be an investigator of their current lives.

Grab a notebook and carry it around for a week taking note of the moments you enjoy, the times you have a smile on your face, the activities in which you “lose yourself,” the times when you feel strong and you’re using a natural talent or strength. Again, like in the Personal Histories, spend time looking at the patterns, clues and “breadcrumbs” that emerge.

Marcus Buckingham has a great definition of success in his latest book, Find Your Strongest Life.  He says, “A strong woman feels successful.  And by “successful”, I don’t mean that she is getting prizes, awards, and big fat bonuses – though she might be.  I mean that she feels effective and capable.”

Effective and capable.  I love that.  It implies that we have the opportunity to fill our days with activities that allow us to use and express our unique strengths. That we get to let the best of us shine for all to see and that we’re acknowledged for those gifts. Without the opportunity to express these strengths and find affirmations of these strengths, we can lose our sense of who we truly are.

So once you identify these moments, what do you do with that knowledge?

3. Start adding more of these moments to your work and life

Often times, even after we’ve uncovered these clues, we’re still unsure if these “breadcrumbs” are truly pointing to a lifelong passion we want to build a career upon or simply to something we enjoy in our spare time.  But in order to learn the truth, you must dive in and try.  Start small if you have to.  Change is a process and it comes easiest when you start to build momentum.

Clear your plate of a handful of activities that are out of alignment with your strengths and passions.  Slowly add new activities that are in alignment.  For example, ask to work on a special project at work, volunteer at an organization that you love, or take a class to learn something new or deepen a skill.  Perhaps you look at your hobbies and push them to the next level to see if you want to have them be a bigger part of your life (e.g. an amateur photographer might enter photos in a contest or sell them online or at a local gallery.)

By diving in and trying these avenues out, you begin to grow clarity around your passions as well as increase your sense of happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction in your work and life.