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01.05.15 |

Broken Resolutions

Do you set New Year’s Resolutions? I do. Well sort of. I don’t actually call them New Year’s Resolutions. I call them FLOW Goals and they are part of the Strategic Planning I do each year. This year, I was determined to get one of my personal goals achieved in record time … until I broke it.

Not the resolution to achieve the goal, mind you. I broke my ability to achieve it. I broke my left toe, to be exact.

My #1 personal goal this year was to take my yoga to the next level, so I had mapped out my next six months of yoga to make sure that I achieved my target by mid year. I was even ahead of my pace that I had planned earlier in December. And then, crunch. I’m limited to the number of poses and changes of poses I can do with this little annoyance.

I also can’t run. Which is what I normally do when I’m not doing yoga. I can do some weight training if I limit myself to a lot of floor and arm work. I can do cardio if I limit myself to a stationary bicycle. Right now I can’t even put on a pair of shoes.

So, now I need a new plan. Which means, I fall back to my Plan B.

How many of us let life’s little annoyances get in the way of achieving our ultimate goals? How many of us let setbacks derail us off our target for months, years, or even forever?

When I work with my coaching clients, I want to know under what circumstance would they not take action on doing the stuff that needed to be done to meet their goals. And then I want to know what they are going to do instead. Me breaking my toe prevents me from meeting my targets for the next month, which in turn affects the targets for the month after that, and so on. One of my clients wouldn’t complete his swimming regime if it was lightning outside or if he had a bad sinus infection.

So, then what? What do you do when the worst case scenario comes up? You fall back on Plan B. For myself, it’s core time. I can still work on my stomach muscles and my arms while I’m waiting for my toe to heal. I can even do a 3-point plank! For my client, it was stretching and weights. He could still do these things even if the weather had turned on him or if he wasn’t feeling up for a swim with a cold.

When we plan for what happens when it all goes pear-shaped, we prevent it from going pear-shaped. We can be flexible in our strategy to keep us flowing along toward our ultimate destination.

How about you? Do you have a Plan B for your New Year’s Resolutions?

12.01.14 |

Leadership Self-Discipline

I’ve noticed a few people around me who claim to be leaders in their given field display an amazing lack of self-discipline.

The details are irrelevant. What is relevant is the behaviour. What I was noticing were these self-professed leadership experts pointing fingers, placing blame, and complaining until they got their way. I just wanted to jump in and say, “Grow Up!”

It is easy to allow yourself the freedom to just say what you want in the spirit of “speaking your mind” and letting your thoughts be known. It takes self-discipline to notice not complain. It takes self-control to focus on what is going right rather than what is going wrong. It takes leadership to allow other people to make a mistake, learn from it, and help them get back up and try again.

When you are in a leadership role, studies indicate that you need to motivate six times more often with positive “well done” type of statements than corrective feedback. It takes self-discipline not to say what you really want to say and instead focus on practicing saying what isn’t so easy to say, “well-done”. Or just practicing the art of noticing, without comment and letting people learn and grow at their own pace and time.

For leaders, I suggest a 10 minute break. When you want to present your wisdom of corrective feedback onto someone in your team, wait ten minutes and ask yourself, “What could I say that would reinforce something positive?” Remember, feedback “sandwiches” don’t work so don’t disguise your corrective feedback in a loop of “well-done” phrases. If after 10 minutes you still need to say something negative, go ahead and say it. At least you practiced self-control.

Or just wait the ten minutes and don’t say anything. If no one is going to die and your business isn’t going to lose next quarter’s profits, then maybe it’s best for the person to learn a lesson. Who knows, maybe it will be you who learns the lesson.

And, remember, your family, friends, associations, etc are all part of your team as well.

11.10.14 |

One Step at a Time

I was in a wheelchair when I got off the plane.

I had been in a skiing accident and I fractured my tibia plateau & tore both my ACLs (ligament in your knee). I had 2 separate surgeries and had been in a wheelchair for two months. I returned to Singapore and was about to start the daunting task of my road to recovery. I had been told that the rehabilitation was vital to ensuring I returned with two completely functioning legs. Total time expected? One full year!!!

My first appointment with my rehabilitation coach, Clyve, was memorable to say the least. It took my twenty minutes to get to his office from the front door. It wasn’t a long route. It might have taken me three minutes with two good legs. But with a walker and one slow sleep at a time, I felt WAY older than my forty-something years. Five months later, during my training, I was crying. But I’m jumping ahead.

Step 1:You must first crawl before you walk.

Well, for me it wasn’t quite that bad. To put it into perspective, I couldn’t do a full revolution on a bicycle at the lowest resistance level without pain and immense concentration. Clyve had to force my legs to bend and straighten. We worked 3-days a week on range of motion and regaining my strength for five months. I had shed my wheelchair, my walker, crutches and braces. And then Clyve quit! Well, not actually. He decided to go back to school to get a Phd in physical therapy. I was thrilled for him and devastated for myself at the same time. Where would I find another coach?

Step 2: You have to get really frustrated or you’re not trying hard enough

My friend suggested her spin class instructor, Peter, who ended up interviewing me before accepting me as a client (now, that’s my kind of coach!). Peter’s main rules were that I had to be 100% committed and I had to have a clear goal. I told him I wanted to run again by the end of the year. It was September when we started. On the third session, I sat on the floor with tears running down my face. Peter had asked me to do a simple exercise of lifting my legs off the floor while seated in a v-position. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get my leg off the floor. Not even a millimetre off the floor. I was shocked and frustrated and it all came out in my tears. For months I had been training and working so hard to get somewhere and with this little setback, I felt like my world had come to an end. Was I ever going to run again? What was I working so hard for? The goal seemed so far away. Peter assured me it wasn’t the end of the world and cut the session short for the day and we took a little walk. After a few minutes of silence, Peter just said, “Take a break for awhile and come back next week and we will try again”.

Step 3: Never give up

I continued my sessions with Peter and through balance training, knee strengthening, and agility work I returned to my full functioning self. Step by step, I was able to reach my goal and run for 20 minutes on my last session with Peter. It was now up to me to continue my training on my own. I set my target to run a 10k off road race, which I completed, despite the rain pouring down through the whole muddy ordeal. My steps didn’t stop there though. I still do my leg workouts to keep them strong. It is a part of who I am now. If two days go bye without me doing some type of leg workout, I felt out of sorts, like I haven’t brushed my teeth in two days. And that’s what it feels like to take a goal and make it a way of life.

What goal do you have that you need to change into a way of life? What small steps can you start taking to get there today?

11.03.14 |

Agitated by my Environment

Recently I took a trip to Bali to attend a friend’s birthday party. The first few days, I stayed at this lovely villa with a plunge pool, large living and dining area and massive bedroom. I was relaxed, energised and at peace with my surroundings.

Then I moved hotels. My husband had some work to do and because his company was now paying for the accommodation, we had to move to a very different kind of hotel. This one had children. Lots and lots of children. And though I’m sure they are fun and cute to their parents, for some of us without children, there’s nothing worse than being surrounded by shrieking kids. I was beginning to be agitated by my environment. So, I left the hotel in search of a refuge to change my state.

Unfortunately, I was in the wrong part of Bali to escape the child infestation on my peaceful holiday. And I began to realise how important it is to choose your environments carefully. In NLP we say that you can’t fix a problem at the same level as it was created. So, this problem with my environment couldn’t be fixed by changing environments. I was meant to be changing my behaviour. And though I tried to relax at the pool (scream, shriek) or take a walk down the beach (scream, shriek, cry), I found that whatever behaviour I had, I was surrounded by my environment. And then I decided to change my behaviour and environment. I went back to the area where the villa was and hung around there for an afternoon.

Some people would say that ‘everyone’ would prefer the villa environment over a pool full of boisterous children. And I know that that generalisation doesn’t hold true. There are a lot of people who much prefer the child-infested chaos of slides, games and running around than a boring plunge pool at a villa.

I could have chosen to play with the children in the pool or at the beach. I could have chosen to enjoy their laughter and in their games. What I really needed though was peace. So, I took care of myself first and did just that.

On the last day, I had my fill of peace and relaxation and chose to spend my afternoon watching the kids play in the pool with their parents. It was a blast to watch the games children play these days that I used to play when I was a kid. And it was wonderful to partake in all of the horsing around and shrieks of delight when I was in my own mental environment that allowed me to do so.

When you feel like you need to change your environment to make things work in your life, first look to your behaviour and ask, “What else could I be doing to (change my state, reach my goal, overcome this situation) in this environment? Once you look to your behaviours, then make the adjustments in your environment that you need to.

10.27.14 |

Bad Dreams

I used to have this really bad dream that my husband found a younger, thinner, more impressive women and left me for this upgraded model. It was a reoccurring dream that was reeking havoc on my relationship. Not only was I angry and hurt while I was dreaming, I got up and was angry at my husband. He got so tired of me thinking that my dreams were somehow my brain’s subconscious way of telling me he was actually cheating, he finally said to me, “If you keep accusing me of cheating, I’m actually going to start doing it.”

I was out of control with my accusations until I learned something at an NLP workshop.

“I can change my dreams?” I said astonished at the mere possibility. The trainer was talking about having enough conscious awareness during the unconscious process of dreaming to flip the bad dream on its head and get the happy ending.

“How do I change my dreams?” I asked.

“What do you want instead?” The trainer replied.

“Well, I want to change my dream.” I thought I made that clear before but obviously not.

“No,” she said. “What do you want instead of what is happening in the bad dream?”

“I don’t want my husband to cheat on me and leave me for a younger model”.

“Then ask yourself in the dream that very question. What do I want instead? When you ask that question, your brain will start planning the solution to the question and leave the bad dream behind. It is a clever way to guide your own mind even when you are sleeping.”

I really didn’t think it was possible to ask yourself questions when you were dreaming but I had nothing to lose so I gave it a shot. The very next time I was struggling in my dream with my husband cheating on me, I asked myself, “What do I want instead”. Immediately the dream changed. My husband did end up leaving me for the new girlfriend and she got fat and ugly. My business was transformed overnight with the influx of the money I invested from the divorce settlement. I was sipping champagne on a yacht when I woke up.

Wow! That was so much better! Each time the bad dream of my husband cheating on me and leaving me came up, I asked, “What do I want instead” earlier and earlier in the dream. Then one day, they just stopped. I haven’t had the dream in years and I believe full-heartedly that it was because I kept asking myself “What do I want instead?”

What I wanted was to stop the dream completely. I love NLP and I love that I’m still happily married and sleeping soundly.

10.20.14 |

Generally Speaking

It sneaks into most of my workshops. It pops up in a lot of my conversations. It’s the big hairy beast of generalizations.

“Don’t you find that all men think like that?”

“Women are more emotional than men.”

“Everyone does it.”

“It is like that here.”

I don’t like being argumentative and when someone is assaulting me with big hairy generalizations, I find I can’t help but sound that way.

“No, all men don’t think like that.”

“I do know some women who are not emotional at all.”

“I don’t do it, so surely not everyone does.”

“It can be different here too.”

Do we not remember the sage advice our parents gave us as teenagers?

“But Dad, everyone has a purple Mohawk at school!” I would proclaim

“If everyone at school jumped off a bridge, would you?” was the inevitable response.

What my father meant to say is that generalizations rarely help communicate meaning. What my father could have said was:

“What you’re saying is that it seems like a lot of people have purple Mohawks and because some of those people are your friends and you want to fit in, you want a Mohawk too. “

Perhaps that would have taught me to stop using generalizations to make a point.

In NLP we help people understand that our brain naturally generalizes information to organize it and make sense of it. We also show people how to recover the lost information from a generalization by asking questions.

“Who specifically thinks like that?”

“Do you know a women who isn’t emotional?”

“Who is everyone, exactly?”

By recovering details from the generalization, we open our minds up to the possibility that people are individuals and their behavior can seldom be grouped into a general statement.

So when someone says to me, “Americans are loud”. I ask them to rephrase it to, “I notice a lot of loud people seem to be American”.

“Asians are spatially unaware. ” to “I sometimes notice people running into me a lot in Asia.”

Maybe it would be good to practice keeping the big hairy beast of generalizations away from your conversations today.

10.13.14 |

Big Picture or Detail

I have a friend who told me a story about making a conscious decision to let his boss fail. You see, he was in charge of an event for his organization and the person assigned to handle registrations on the day of the event was called away on a business trip. He told his boss that he would handle the logistics of the registrations because there was so much to do and he explained to her all of the components that were involved.

She said no. She told him that she would assign the task to operations and he was to focus on other areas. He knew it was a mistake and he let her make it.

The day of the event came and the registration table wasn’t being manned, the attendees’ badges weren’t produced and the marketing signage for the event was missing.

It was embarrassing for the company but not a complete disaster. A few people jumped in and sat at the registration table and manually checked attendees against a spreadsheet. People asked for each other’s names instead of just reading the name off the badge. No one said anything about the missing signs.

The embarrassment could have been avoided though.

You see, the boss is a big picture person. When she got involved with the ‘problem’, she was only concerned about why it was a problem. One person couldn’t show up so she just assigned the task to another person. Problem solved.

My friend is a details person. He is concerned with how the problem is being solved. Does the person being assigned know about registration; the badges, the marketing signs, the check-in process, the timing, who has the marketing signs, how to print the badges, what they look like on the table, where to put the marketing signs, what happens if someone who isn’t registered shows up, etc.? Only when the person handling registration has a detailed checklist of all of the duties of that job will my friend be satisfied that the problem is solved.

It isn’t a matter or right or wrong. It is a matter of programming and context.

If you know that you are a big picture person and you are put into a context that requires detail, then you need the flexibility to be able to give that detail. The example above illustrates this.

If you are a detailed person and you are in a context of needing to communicate in a big picture way, you need to be able to have the ability to do that.

A completely different friend tried to give her boss a 17-page synopsis of the marketing strategy expecting him to read through each and every sentence. He kept sending it back to her saying, “it wasn’t right”. I told her to put call out boxes on each page highlighting the key points and send it back. It was accepted without any other changes.

Some situations need a big picture. Some need detail. Self-leaders need to understand how to communicate both.

10.06.14 |

Is GPS Destroying Our Ability to Plan?

My friend was running late for lunch. I mean, really late. Like 45 minutes late. Why? Because her GPS gave her the wrong directions to the building where we were having lunch. I told her where lunch was and gave her the landmarks around the area to make sure she knew. Our mutual friend told her where the building was and gave her landmarks as well. She was still 45 minutes late because of the GPS.

Has this technological advancement taken away the ability for us to use our brains? If you drive, when was the last time you got into your car to go some place new and relied only on your GPS device to get you to where you were going?

It’s the case of reactive versus proactive.

Long before GPS, we would have to proactively plan our route on a map to get to where we wanted to go. I remember having a giant road atlas in the back seat tracing our route from city to city and from state to state. We looked at the map to see where the next rest stop was so we could use the bathroom. We consulted the map to see where the next major town was so we could plan lunch and dinner. We planned our trips in advance, proactively.

Now, when I travel long distances, specifically ones that I haven’t done before, I rely on a GPS to tell me where to stop and pee and where to eat. It is reactive. And heaven forbid if you haven’t updated the map in awhile. I remember being in a town in the middle of nowhere in the USA trying to find a Subway. It relocated since the GPS map had been updated and my husband kept saying, “It must be around here somewhere.”

It scares me how I rely on GPS way too much. If I’m traveling on my own, especially at night, I kick myself when I haven’t put an actual map in the car or researched my route BEFORE leaving. If the GPS is wrong (which happens sometimes) or it doesn’t work (in really bad weather), I’m SOL, as we say (that is Shit Out of Luck for those not from the USA).

And what does it say about us in general when we are relying on some technology to guide us to our destination. Do you have goals? Do you have some place that you want to get to in life? Are you proactively planning that route and that journey yourself or are you reactively relying on technology to do it for you?

For me, I’m going to start being more proactive. Time to get out the map and start planning my next journey.