Daniel Goleman: Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence
John M. Gottman: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert
Try using these principles at work! You'll be surprised.
Laura Whitworth: Co-Active Coaching : New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and Life
Stephen R. Covey: The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
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Something to contemplate over the weekend, or the week ahead. Journal on it. Discuss with a friend or just mentally chew on it a bit.
There are 61 days left in 2008.
Where is the best place to invest your energy for the rest of this year?
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"You can get there. But you have to understand that what got you here won't get you there." Marshall Goldsmith
Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith's book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" identifies 20 behaviors that successful people need to change to get ahead at work. The book elaborates on each of these negative habits and provides useful remedies and strategies for modifying the offending behaviors.
Worth a a read and what I notice is you can apply them at work, at home, in relationships and other places in your life as well. They don't need much explanation.
Winning too much.
Adding too much value.
Passing judgment.
Making destructive comments.
Starting with "No," "But," or "However."
Telling the world how smart you are.
Speaking when angry.
Negativity, or "Let me explain why that won't work."
Withholding information.
Failing to give proper recognition.
Claiming credit that we don't deserve.
Making excuses.
Clinging to the past.
Playing favorites.
Refusing to express regret.
Not listening.
Failing to express gratitude.
Punishing the messenger.
Passing the buck.
An excessive need to be "me."
The only one I didn't really get on first read was the last one. An 'excessive need to be me" is justifying a behavior with "That's just the way I am."
Which of these behaviors might be coming between you and your next level of success?
Photo by Michael Mahlum
All of the wisdom and resources you need to solve problems, identify opportunities, grow yourself and move forward toward greater fulfillment and success are within you. They simply need to become available to your conscious mind from your subconscious mind or some other mysterious holding place.
Train your mind to access this guidance by sending it on a quest for information. Pose a query to your self and then reflect on it over a period of time and see what surfaces. There is no right answer to a query of this kind. There is only your answer, your wisdom.
Each Friday, I'll post a query here for you to contemplate over the weekend if you like. Write about it in a journal. Talk about it with a friend. Twirl it around in your mind while you're driving. See where it takes you. Let it be effortless and entertaining.
The question for this week is:
Where am I in relationship to my biggest dreams?
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Photo by Mizz Amontillado
I love mornings. I appreciate my mornings so much because not too long ago, I didn't have mornings to enjoy. Well, the mornings were there. They were just insane.
Working east coast hours from the west coast, I used to fly into the bathroom at 4:00 a.m., flip on the micro-coffee pot - that's right. the coffee pot was in my bathroom - and then jump into a fast and furious shower. I could wash my hair and shave both legs in less than 7 minutes on a good day. By 4:20 a.m. I was speeding down Columbus Ave. to the 12th floor of the Transamerica Pyramid building for the start of a 4:30 a.m. meeting.
The meeting was broadcast over a loud speaker so I could read the newspaper, scan multiple news services, review overnight emails and research, and choke down an apple while listening to CNN and MSNBC on the jumbo screen tv's - all at the same time.
If this sounds even a little bit like your morning, know that you don't need that frantic morning pace in order to succeed or get everything done that you want to get done in the day. The reality is, starting out at that level of adrenaline and cortisol so early in the morning leads to ineffective decision making and burn out. Its kind of like trying to run a marathon at the pace of a sprint. You use all your juice right off the start line and then limp through the rest of the race at a lackluster crawl.
Dustin Wax at Stepcase Lifehack asks, "What's it going to take to make you happy?" in his post by the same name earlier this month. He makes some good points about what doesn't make people happy pointing out that there have been unhappy rich people, desperate smart people, and suicidal famous and beautiful people. We know then the answer is not money, brains, beauty or fame.
The key to answering the question he says is "self-knowledge – facing the question of what it will take to be happy head on." He is spot on.
Specifically, what makes YOU happy is living YOUR life according to what is most important to YOU. It's different for everybody so there is no "formula" but there is a "recipe."
The recipe is in the value or the meaning that you place on things. Anyone can discover their own recipe for happiness by identifying their most deeply held values. Once you know what they are, happiness is a byproduct of living in a way that moves toward those things that you value most and away from those that you don't.
How do you discover what's in your particular recipe? You explore. At The Coach Approach, all of our clients go through a lengthy values exploration with their coach. Here is an overview of one of the processes we use.
Anger, commonly thought of as a "negative" emotion, is a result of a disappointed expectation or frustrated desire. Like all emotions it comes from our thoughts. You thought he would be on time for dinner with your parents. He was late - again. What you "think" is he doesn't appreciate you or the effort you put into making dinner plans. What you feel is angry.
Most healthy people don't enjoy getting mad, especially if they get out of control, saying and doing things they regret later. I certainly don't enjoy getting mad. First I get mad and then I get mad at myself for getting mad because I think I should be resourceful enough, or smart enough, or evolved enough to NOT get mad. Kind of feeds on itself.
But there is a gift to anger. That gift is energy. While sadness, shame, guilt and self-pity all lack energy and can keep a person stuck almost forever, anger has energy and that energy must be moved. Here, you have a choice - to use it either destructively or constructively.
We all experience fear and anxiety at some point in time. They are natural responses to stress in the environment and can be useful in moderate doses. We experience fear in response to a perceived threat. We experience anxiety when contemplating possibilities in the future and in fact, anxiety helps us take action to influence future outcomes.
As we focus on the worst cases scenarios, we lose the energy and the usefulness of these heightened states and begin to frustrate our abilities to successfully respond to whatever challenges we may need to face in the future. Fear and anxiety overload the body systems with stress hormones that decrease mental, emotional and physical functioning and stimulate disease and distress. Clearly, we cannot function at our best under these conditions.
Continue reading "Manage Fear and Anxiety So They Don't Get the Best of You" »
If you read the newspaper, have a tv, or access to internet news, its almost impossible not to notice a lot of negativity swirling around globally right now. What I am hearing are four sources of negative energy which are - anger, fear, anxiety, and jealousy. There is also some blame in there but that seems to follow from the other four. This week, I'm going to talk about how to use anger, fear, anxiety, and jealousy to move you forward rather than create more negativity.
All emotion is a result of your thinking. You can't have a feeling without a thought to precede it. How does this work? With jealousy for example, you have to notice that someone else has something that you want to have, be or do. You say to yourself, either consciously or not, "Wow, he is so rich," or "I'd really like to be as confident as that guy."
Then, you either feel bad because you notice that you are jealous and jealousy is not a very well respected state of being or you make the other person wrong for being, doing, or having what you want for yourself.
I try to learn at least one new thing every day. Today, in fact just moments ago, I finally learned the definition of the term "life hack." I'd seen the term in a few blogs and recently subscribed to one called, "Stepcase Lifehack." A life hack is a simple or quick solution to an every day problem. I want to emphasize the "every day" part. Apparently, hacks are not for people who are experiencing the problem at an abnormal level.
If you are experiencing some kind of mood disorder or chemical imbalance, then this hack is not for you. You will find it useful, but it may not solve your problem. If you, like most folks, find yourself emotionally hijacked from time to time by a bad mood - bored, angry, frustrated, or stressed out - then try these hacks to get into a better mood.
Important: You have to WANT to be in a better mood. If you are full on engaged in a pity party and the pay off is a ton of attention or something else compelling, you're not going to be too motivated to make a change.
When you find yourself in a bad mood and you really want to change it, here are some things that will help you get back to a state of well being:
This is my 100th post and with it, I am refocusing The Coach Approach blog to reflect more of my passions, skills, and experience in my coaching practice. For the past couple of years I have been blogging about how to use coaching in the work place to improve business relationships. It is an area worthy of attention and coaching skills are most certainly a useful tool for creating even greater success at work. But...
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What I've notice over the last 5+ years in coaching people toward greater success in their careers and their personal lives is that at least 80% of the progress comes from a person''s willingness to do their own personal development work. We can become better leaders and managers. We can learn to understand difficult people and to communicate with an unruly boss. We can practice seeing things from another's point of view. But first, before any other effort will succeed, we need to have an awareness and a conversation with ourselves. We need to become more conscious. Without it, we will repeat old patterns and wonder why we achieve the same results.
The posts that follow will dive full in to the art and science of personal development. I intend to share what I've learned through my coaching practice about what's useful, what works and what's important along with what I've learned on my own journey from my addiction to a lucrative career on Wall Street to the professional freedom I experience today among other things.
It won't be all about work any more and it won't be all about relationships with other people. Mostly, it will be about the most important relationship in the world - the one you are having (or could be having) with yourself.
I am open for feedback and welcome your input as I move through this transition. It feels right and I am a little nervous about letting go of some of the safe topics of the past to move in for a closer look at personal development and conscious living. This is a little stretch for an ex-Wall Street trader....
![Image Book Goldsmith](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401301304?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwthecoachap-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1401301304"><img border="0" src="518umWtNkEL._SL160_.jpg"></a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwthecoachap-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1401301304" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" > "Image Book Goldsmith")
