Turn, Turn, Turn

I had to take out my gloves today. The air has gotten crisp. The tree in Straus Park that I watch from my giant living room window has thinned out. The kids’ teachers have learned enough about them already to hold a parent conference. Yes, we’re in to Fall.

When I had my coaching practice in Northern California, I had several clients who lamented that they did not experience the changing of seasons: Some missed this experience so much, they considered changing jobs and moving across the country to once again undergo these physical reminders of time’s passing.

The changing of the seasons lets us mark time. Marking the time is another way of being present, of noticing what is happening to us and around us. And it’s a reminder that time is precious and fleeting: To show gratitude for what we have, and to realize that our unhappy moments are moments in a bigger context.

This post celebrates the seasons, and suggests a coaching exercise you can try, whether you are undergoing them or not.

No matter your location, Happy Fall!

~ Sophie

COACHING EXERCISE

If you are experiencing a physical change of seasons, then your exercise is simply to notice: To walk around and feel the air in and outside your body, to be alert for new colors in your path, to bring a fallen leaf inside. Notice how the new season is making you feel (physically or emotionally) and decide if that’s how you want to be feeling.

If you do not experience a physical change of seasons, create a more mental one. Consider the markers that do distinguish Fall from Winter or Summer - the school year is often a helpful one. Think about how you will periodically stop to notice the passage of time; to assess what’s happening for you at key intervals. Create or celebrate a ritual to mark this new season as separate from the last.  

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.” ~ Yoko Ono

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” ~ Anne Bradstreet

 “And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you have always accepted that seasons pass over your fields and you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

“To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” ~ George Santayana

Make every day a day to learn

This post is again inspired by my wise colleague, Maureen, who said to me today something to the effect of, "You know, there's so much you can learn in passing every day if you are open to what you want to learn." 


There are so many things I love about this sentiment! It's about being present in the moment to realize you are in a situation ripe for learning, and being self-aware of what you want to focus on. It's about rising above your circumstances and focusing on what you can do with what you have (e.g. I may not be able to get to a class on how to be a better leader, but I can become more aware of the leaders around me - good and bad - and I can learn just from watching them). And, of course, it promotes my favorite topic - lifelong learning. It also inspired the coaching exercise for this post (see below).


I learn so much from all of you - the people who read this blog, who write to me about the exercises you're trying and the successes (and failures) you're having, and who share such wise observations about life with me on a daily basis. Thank you for making every day a day to learn for me.
~ Sophie


Coaching exercise


Here are some ways I think we can take Maureen's statement and turn it into an experiment in making every day a day to learn...

• Spend some time to figure out what it is you really want to learn, whether it be in your personal or work life. What skills or characteristics do you wish you displayed more often? What do you want to learn how to do that you don't know how to do? This can be a very tangible thing, like playing the guitar, or a more intangible one, like being more curious about other people. I give that later example because that is something I decided a few years ago I wanted to learn to do better.
• Think about who you know who is very good at what you want to learn. How can you increase your time with this person? To continue on my real-life example above, I realized that our "Aunt" Janice was amazing at displaying curiosity about people, and I decided I would spend more time with her just watching her shining her special light on people, hoping some of what she does would rub off on me. 
• Alternatively, where is the activity you want to learn happening? If the tangible skill I want to learn is nursing skills, I might head to the hospital to hang out or volunteer. Even better is when I come to realize that the thing I want to learn is already happening around me and all I need to do is be open to it.   
• Don't forget to process what you are learning. You'll remain receptive to these inputs when you are holding yourself accountable for noticing and processing them. So, journal about your learnings. Share what you're learning with a friend. As always, I'd love to hear how you're making yourself open to learning in your every day.  

Quotes I like right now

• "Live as if you will die tomorrow; Learn as if you will live forever." ~ Gandhi
• “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” ~ John PowellI, American composer
• “I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”    ~ Albert Einstein
• “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust, French novelist

Assuming Positive Intent

I always take note when I begin to hear the same piece of advice in a few different contexts: Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something… Lately, that piece of advice has been to “assume positive intent.” My boss used it in an initial meeting with her senior leadership team to the effect of, “I may not always have time, and it may not always be my style, to ask my questions in a gentle way, but please always assume positive intent as my questions are generally coming from a supportive place.” A week later, I was at a conference where a team was sharing the “secrets” of their success. They mentioned that one of the first groundrules they established about working together was to always assume positive intent. And, then, during a discussion (argument?) with my husband, I heard myself saying, “But I didn’t mean it that way! I wasn’t coming from an angry / accusatory place. I was happy.”

It would be wonderful if everyone spoke and behaved as they intended to do. But experience has proven that we can’t – or we don’t. And yet, even though we know that about people in general, we take individuals' comments and actions at face value. We sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. We often assume negative intent.

There are many reasons to follow the advice to assume positive intent:

• When you assume that a person is attacking you, or coming from a negative place, you aren’t making an effort to really understand that person, or to connect with her.
• When you assume that a person is coming from a negative / angry place, that is where you go with your response and in your thoughts. You end up creating a problem where there might not have been one. You end up with negative feelings – and you’re the only one experiencing them.
• When you assume the best of someone, they often rise to the level expected.
• Assuming positive intent is a generous way to operate.

This advice has recently been highlighted for me. I’m going to take it to heart. Want to join me? Read on…

COACHING EXERCISE

Let’s try a week of assuming positive intent – in our jobs, with our partners, our parents, and our friends. Let’s assume the customer service representative or store clerk really is trying to do his best to help us; or that the reason someone is asking you a question is because they honestly don’t know the answer (not because they are trying to accuse you of something). Let’s take a moment before responding to consider whether there is any way that what we’ve been presented with has a positive slant, rather than a negative one.  

If you’re a person who journals, jot down some thoughts during the week about how this is going. Is this a stretch for you, or is it natural? What helps you to remember to assume positive intent? What happens when you do? How do you want to incorporate assuming positive intent in to your life after this week?  I’d love to hear how it goes…

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

If you look for quotations about intentions, most of them take a “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” perspective. Here are a few that are more in line with theme of this post…

“Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different…You are trying to understand and listen because at your basic core you are saying, ‘Maybe they are saying something to me that I'm not hearing.’” ~ Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, Pepsico 

“We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.” ~ Ian Percy, Motivational Speaker

“If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.” ~ Zen proverb

The Daily Question Process

This post will focus on a coaching exercise that was suggested to me at a conference I attended this morning with executive coach and author, Marshall Goldsmith. I'd like to try it myself with someone, so, if, after reading this, you're interested in trying it for a month or so, let's make that happen! Here's how it goes... 


Goldsmith and a friend simply ask each other a series of questions every day that help them live life more fully - and happily. Questions like:

• Did you do your best to increase your own happiness yesterday?
• Do you do something to make your wife happy?
• How many sit-ups did you do?  
• How many pages of creative writing did you write?

They each came up with their own list of questions based on things that they want to make time for / that have meaning for them. Goldsmith identified some of the major stakeholders in his life - like his wife and children - and asked them what they would like him to focus on on a daily basis. 

Goldsmith has found that the repetitive nature of the questioning eventually leads to action. For example, he says, when you get sick of being asked every day how many sit-ups you've done and answering, "none," you start doing some. When you are asked if you helped out someone less fortunate every day, that activity remains in the forefront of your thinking. And active questions - questions that focus on what you can do to make a positive difference for yourself and the world (versus passive questions that focus on what the world needs to do to make a positive difference for you) - questions like, "Did I do my best to maximize my performance yesterday?" - are especially effective.

Clearly, who you choose as your partner matters here. It will have to be someone you feel comfortable sharing your intentions with. More importantly, it will have to be someone non-judgmental who will not criticize you if your answer to a question like, "Am I current with my physical exams?" continues to be "no" week after week. Or maybe you do want someone who will push you if they notice your responses aren't matching your intentions. I guess there would have to be some groundrules established at the start of the partnership about how you want your partner to react to your responses. 

So, I'm intrigued and I'm going to start playing with the questions I would want to be asked every day: What questions would drive me to take actions that I want to be taking? What do the people I care about want me to be more aware of on a daily basis? I think even just coming up with the questions is a valuable coaching exercise. And if any one wants to go to the next step and try a daily check-in for awhile, I'm curious to try it out with you.  

Goldsmith himself was inspired to do this exercise based on a book by Atul Gawande called Checklist Manifesto, which sounds fascinating. Let me know, if you read it, what you think.

The Mind Gym, Part 2

NEW THOUGHTS...
A group of magicians were shown a trick in which an ace of spades popped up out of the middle of a deck of cards. They were asked how the trick might have been done and they provided elaborate instructions about how to perform the sleight of hand. A group of children were shown the same trick and asked the same question. "Are all the cards in the deck aces of spades?" they asked. This was the opening anecdote in the engaging "Wake Your Mind Up" workshop (put on by the Mind Gym) I recently attended. Through a series of stories and exercises, we were reminded how our minds can switch over to autopilot and how that limits our ability to see the entire picture in front of us. We learned about how curiosity, taking on different perspectives, and using reflection time can help us break this pattern.  


Creative thinking has long been one of my favorite topics, and it was great to just get immersed in it again for an hour or so with Mind Gym. It's one of those topics that, as much as I love it, I need to be periodically reminded of it in order to re-engage with it. I highly encourage everyone to give creativity exercises a try now and then, to learn more about creativity (some resources I especially like are listed below), and to remain open to new ways of thinking about and looking at things, which is kind of all creativity really is. Enjoy!


... AND AN UPDATE
So, I wrote in my last post that I was going to try to respond to ideas I didn't initially like by sharing three things I did like about them and three things I would change. That didn't work too well this past week. Turns out people don't often announce, "Now I am going to share with you an idea you won't like so you can use this tool..." Often I'd be well on the path of putting an idea down before I even realized I'd been presented with one. I'll have to try this one again. Any one else try it? What kind of results did you have? 


CREATIVE THINKING RESOURCES

• A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger von Oech
• How to be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum, Keri Smith
• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creativity for the 90's, Michael Michalko
• Five Star Mind: Games and Puzzles to Stimulate Your Creativity & Imagination, Tom Wujec
• Everyday Creativity, Dewitt Jones (video)

COACHING EXERCISES
Try a couple of these to get your mind working in new (and creative) ways...

• Wear your watch on your other wrist; take a different route home; go straight to a different room than usual when you arrive at home, listen to a different genre of music.
• Do a logic puzzle; or better yet, write your own logic puzzle - or a crossword, word search or Suduku. 
• Look at a picture of people you don't know. Come up with several stories about who they are and what was happening when the photo was taken. 
• Try looking at a problem or a project from several different perspectives: How would someone from another planet view this? What would a child think about it? How would a politician sell this idea? How would an advertiser position it? Creative thinker (and inventor of "lateral thinking) Edward DeBono, suggests putting on one of six thinking hats when thinking about a decision or dilemma:
  • Information: (White) - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
  • Emotions (Red) - instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling 
  • Bad points judgment (Black) - logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
  • Good points judgment (Yellow) - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
  • Creativity (Green) - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
  • Thinking (Blue) - thinking about thinking 
• Get curious. An exercise I had to do during my coaching certification was to look under my kitchen sink for 10 minutes and just be curious. I wasn't to move / clean / fix anything. I was just to observe and be curious. This one gets both at seeing things differently and also the whole concept of reflection time. It's harder than it might seem. Alternatively, you can just make it a goal to ask a whole lot of questions about things or people you don't know in the coming week. 

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

• “If you trip down one step, don’t throw yourself down the rest of the flight.” ~ Weight Watchers
• "Men are born to succeed, not fail." ~ Henry David Thoreau
• "If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are." ~ Zen proverb
• "A jug fills drop by drop." ~ Buddha

The Mind Gym, Part One

This week, I attended a really engaging workshop created by The Mind Gym called, "Wake Your Mind Up." While the entire session did just that - wake my mind up, in this post I want to focus on one exercise in particular that really hit home with me (my next post will focus on the session as a whole). In a discussion of how we establish automatic patterns of thought (someone says, "May I help you?" and we say "No thanks, I'm just browsing," even if we could use some help!), my facilitator had me try out an an exercise in which someone presented me with an idea that I did not like, and instead of expressing immediately what I didn't like about it, I was to mention three things I liked about the idea and then three ways I would like to change it. Immediately, I saw the power of this tool and I knew exactly where I had to apply it: My husband is always saying that I shoot down most of his ideas and I want to address his feedback. I've committed to trying this tool out at least five times this week with Jeff. 


So, for instance, if he suggests we take a bike ride through Central Park and I don't want to, I might say: 

"What I like about that idea is..."

- we'd be outside

- we'd be doing something active

- we'd be spending time together

"What I'd like to change about this idea is..."

- I would like to walk, rather than bike

- I would like to go to Riverside Park, rather than Central Park

- I would like to finish writing this blog post first  

Will this enhance our relationship? Does it frame the conversation as more of a conversation, rather than me shooting down another of his ideas? Does it remove my initial resistance to doing some new things? I'll let you know...

Enjoy the remaining days of summer!

~ Sophie

Coaching exercise

Is your initial inclination to think about what's wrong with someone's proposal, rather than what's right about it? Do you need a tool to help you approach tasks that you really don't enjoy doing? Obviously, I am giving you the same coaching exercise that I am doing this week to help you in these situations. For example, what are three things you like about having to organize your closet this weekend? And then what three things will you change - Maybe only do the top half? Maybe do it with a friend (and then work on hers the next weekend)? Maybe do it in ten minute intervals with "reward breaks" built in? Or... What three things appeal to you about your colleague's proposal? What three things would you like to change?

Note: While I don't think you have to be strict about the number three in this model (three things you like; three things you'd change) in the longer-term, I think forcing yourself to find at least three things is critical to making this work in the beginning - to stretching your mind to respond in a new way.  

Quotes

I haven't been inspired by many quotes recently. Maybe you could suggest a few??

The Gift of Feedback

My new boss recently gave me a piece of feedback. She said, “You have a lot of passion for what we don’t have. You need to be more of a problem-solver about how we can work with what we do have.” Her comments really got to me. Not only was there truth in what she was saying, but that truth meant that how I saw myself at my core was not how I was coming across to others. Because I do see myself as a problem-solver. I see myself as a person who believes in abundance – who knows that there is plenty to go around; plenty to work with. How come my outward behavior wasn’t matching up with the way I saw myself?

The beauty of feedback is that it allows another person to hold a virtual mirror in front of you to show you how you are coming across. And how you come across to others is the reality to them, whether you see yourself they way they see you, or not. My own coaching exercise this month has been to try to see myself from the perspective of others, and I’ve learned a lot in the process. I’ve learned that people can’t actually hear nice things I’m thinking about them in my head when I don’t tell them. I’ve noticed that being shy or introverted isn’t always perceived in a favorable way. Often, it’s read by others as just being cold. I appreciate my boss’s feedback because it’s given me an opportunity to think about how to adjust the way I am being outwardly to become more aligned with how I think of myself inwardly.

How is your outward behavior lining up with your own perceptions of who you want to be? Enjoy exploring!

~ Sophie

COACHING EXERCISE

Here are some things you can do to play with the theme of this post:

• Find opportunities to solicit feedback on how others view you. Accept their feedback as a gift with just a “thank you” – nothing more.
• Experiment with being a “fly on the wall” during your interactions with others. How would you come across if you were watching yourself from the outside?
• Make a list of the ways that you want to be with others, or in certain settings. For example, with my kids I want to be approachable, caring and encouraging. Then try the two exercises above focused specifically on these things. To continue this example, I might ask my kids to tell me how approachable I come across to them (and respond with just a “thank you,” not a follow-up question, a rebuttal, or anything else), or I might watch myself in my next interaction with my kids and score myself on how approachable I was being.

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

Earlier this month, my husband sent a letter to our daughter at sleep-away camp on a greeting card that featured the Eleanor Roosevelt quote, "Do one thing everyday that scares you." Surprisingly, our daughter took this suggestion to heart and tried new activities for several days in a row – from skateboarding to flying on a trapeze. Maybe Roosevelt’s quote will inspire you to do one thing that scares you. Here are some other quotes attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt that inspire me:

• "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
• "You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude."
• "To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart."
• "You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give."
• "Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived."