Work-Life Sanity Blog

Once upon a time I worked with a client named Eva, who lived with her husband, their two preschool children, her mother, and her adult sister, both of whom worked full time.  Her husband had his own service business that he ran from a home office.  

Eva would leave her office daily at 5-ish, pick up the kids at daycare and head home, where she’d prepare dinner, serve it to the whole gang, clean up, and then return to her office for evening hours with clients.  I asked her why, in a household of 4 adults, she was the only one making dinner.  She told me she was the only one who could make dinner.  In her mind, there were no other options, period. 

I worked with her to make the implicit explicit, and she ended up owning this:  “I have high standards for dinner.  It needs to be nutritionally sound.  My children have to like it.   No one else in the household would deliver to that standard except my mother and it’s not her job to make dinner.”

She and I explored the situation, her assumptions, and her beliefs.  The bottom line was that Eva was bone-tired all the time and felt like she never had a break.  She badly needed some breathing room in her schedule.  Getting some nights off from dinner duty without sacrificing quality would feel like a mini-vacation.  What had been stopping her from exploring this, until now? Her underlying beliefs, some of which she didn’t even know that she held.

She initiated conversations with the others, and together, they arrived at some interesting solutions.  Her husband knew how to make a mild chili, which the children liked.  He also knew how to cut up carrots, celery, and apples, which the kids would eat.  She thought this was an acceptable dinner.  He started doing dinner once a week. 

Her sister was willing to pick up pizza and Greek salad on the way home from work once a week.  Eva thought that would an acceptable dinner once a week.  Her mother was a good cook and was willing to take two nights a week. 

In a short time, Eva’s dinner job was cut in half, and she really enjoyed her nights off from dinner duty.  On those nights, she found herself more relaxed, more present with the family at dinner, and more refreshed when she went back to work.

While the other adults in the family had certainly enjoyed the days when Eva made dinner every night, none of them really felt burdened by the new arrangement.  It really worked out very well.  In the days and weeks that followed, Eva saw that the new arrangement really was OK with with the others, and she was able to let go of some of the guilt she felt initially.  Feeling guilty doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing anything wrong.  Sometimes it just means you are doing something new that is still out of your comfort zone. 

These were the particular underlying beliefs that had kept her from getting some very appropriate help:

• The female head of the household should make dinner for the family.
• I have to do it all.
• Others are not as competent as I am.
• I’m the only one who can do it right.
• Once you relax your standards, it’s a very slippery slope to having no standards at all.

Do any of these beliefs sound familiar to you?  Is the refrain “I have to do it all” something you hear in your own mind sometimes?  If you answered yes to either of these questions, that is very good news!  Because that means there is great potential in your life for getting more help.  All you need to do is re-frame one of these beliefs into something more flexible, and then look for ways of getting help. 

Here are some examples:

• Lynne decided that every time she hears herself grousing to herself, “I have to do everything myself,” she would take it as a cue to question how she could get more help with something immediate. 
• Once he realized he was being held hostage by “Others are not as competent as I am,” Richard invested the time to train one of his direct reports to take over a particular task which had become a boring burden for him. He is thrilled to be rid of the the task.  The new owner of the task, on the other hand, finds it challenging in a good way.
• Raised as a “good girl,” Carol was afraid that if she relaxed her standards anywhere, she would be punished (somehow), and certainly no good would come from it.  She decided to proceed very cautiously.  She started on the home front.  She allowed herself to leave home in the morning without cleaning up her breakfast dishes.  Nothing bad happened, and the dishes were waiting for her when she came home after work. 

It’s a good idea to start small, like Carol did, where the consequences will impact you and no one else.

If you could use some targeted help in learning how and where you can get more help. contact me and let’s schedule an initial consult. 

One of the most common patterns of overwork I see with clients stems from advancement.  Here’s an example.  Ellen worked for a startup that was doing well and growing like crazy.  A natural systems-thinker, Ellen could anticipate potentials glitches down the road and know how to resolve them ahead of time. She got lots of thumbs-up from her manager to run with her solutions. 

The only catch was that as a result, her workload kept growing and growing.  Each new solution she came up with added to what was already on her plate.  Eventually, her workload became untenable and overwhelming. That’s when she sought me out.  She hired me to help her become successful at work again.  She thought she was failing. 

As people advance into more complex work, many jump into the new work without letting go of enough of their old work to make it possible to succeed.  The solution is to offload some of what’s on their plate, either to someone already in the organization, or to a person who would be hired to do this work. There are at least two pieces to this process of offloading.  One is to bring your manager on board — you’ll need his or her buy-in.  The second piece is actually handing off — or delegating — parts of what is now your job.

Learning to delegate is a process — it’s not a trivial thing to learn how to do well.  There are courses, books, and articles about how to become a good delegator.  I sometimes lead workshops on delegating, and may write a blog post about it soon.

Ellen was suffering from what I call the “If it’s on my plate I should be able to do it” syndrome.  The solution for Ellen was to catalog all that she was doing and to quantify approximately how much time each of these items required of her weekly.  When it was all down on paper, it became visible to her that the job as it was currently defined was impossible.  No wonder she felt like she was failing! 

I had her select the pieces she most wanted to keep, and draft a job description for the remaining responsibilities.  Then she made the business case to her boss — that much of what was on her plate could be done by someone at a lower salary, which would free her up to do more of the work she currently found most engaging, which happened to be high-value work for the company’s long term strategy.  Her boss hired someone to work for her. 

When I raise the subject of delegating, many people immediately slam the door shut by saying, “Well there’s nobody at work I can hand work off to, and that’s not going to change.  My boss will never let me delegate any of this off to a colleague or a more junior person.” I’m sure that some people reading this will identify with this position, and here is a suggestion for you.  Delegate something on the home front.  You will get some relief from that which will help you at work.  Relief anywhere in the system helps. 

 By delegating, I mean have someone else do the task, using any means that will work.  Hire, barter, trade, call in owed favors, indenture your children, whatever it takes.  There is always something more you can delegate. 

Have you had an experience like Ellen’s?  Do you have an anecdote about a time when you used delegation to move things off your plate and expand your bandwidth?  If so please share in the comments!

Two powerful, recent experiences have shaken up the way I see things. 

First, the 26-year-old son of friends collapsed and died of a fluke abnormality that had been invisible until then; he was otherwise in perfect health, thriving in every way.  Unspeakable grief and shock. 

Second was the Boston Marathon bombing, and the 18-hour lockdown and manhunt in my town, Watertown, MA, where the suspects had fled, and where one was killed. The other was apprehended finally, one neighborhood away from mine.  All of it, including seeing on television the vast law enforcement presence in my little town, was very unsettling. So are the the regular newspaper updates on the people recovering from their bombing injuries.

These experiences have made me very grateful for ordinary days when nothing remarkable happens. I understand the great privilege of feeling safe.  I’m treasuring all the more the people I love and their health and wholeness, having been reminded how things can drastically change in a second. 

I encourage you to notice the ordinary blessings in your life, and to be sure the people in your life know how precious they are to you.

At the risk of sounding pretentious or preachy, I want to share with you a tiny bit of the gratitude I’ve come to regularly experience since these events.  It feels like a risk to share this — I think it’s the superstition of the evil eye — if I speak publicly about my good fortune, I will lose it.  Does anyone reading this have a superstition like this lurking in your consciousness?

• I’m grateful for my whole, unharmed, able body that gets up every day and energetically goes about her business, and for the wholeness and health of my immediate family — we are all living Spring 2013 without terrible interruptions, just regular ups and downs and age-appropriate challenges. How fortunate we are for this.
• I’m grateful to my 4 grandparents who put themselves through the whole challenging immigrant process coming to the US from Central Europe, and as a result I raised my daughters without the spectre of hunger and pogroms, and I live a middle class life.

• I’m grateful to have meaningful work with people I genuinely admire and enjoy, and to have the privilege of being trusted by them with their pressing issues.  I’m grateful to have enough work that I’ve been able to be self-employed for so long. 
• I’m evaluating multiple health care insurance policies in order to choose one for the coming year.  I’m grateful to have the mental bandwidth to do this task, and to have the time to do it.  In a past life I would have squeezed it in at midnight a few nights in a row.

• And the blessing being married to my husband for close to 40 years — don’t even get me started.

When I was a sullen, moody teenager it used to annoy me to no end when my father expressed gratitude for simple things in his daily life like the birds in the back yard and long distance phone calls. And mail delievery!  It drove me nuts that he would be thankful for mail!  I would think the 60′s equivalent of “Get a life!”  But I get it now.  He had a life, a really good life, and his appreciation of it only made it richer for him.  So if my thankfulness annoys you, I understand.

At other times in my life, a daily view of my blessings was often eclipsed by my Inner Task Manager, who keeps me on a short leash and always, always on task, and my Inner Perfectionist, who would notice that the phlox still haven’t recovered from years of neglect and really should be replaced, and too bad that’s not going to happen. 

But this year is different.  

Have you ever witnessed a genius moment?  It’s a moment when you experience someone (other than yourself) taking an action that is so inspired and totally RIGHT for this very situation and moment, that it takes your breath away.  Genius can come from anywhere and anybody.  We all have it sometimes.  And I believe we all see it from time to time.

I witnessed a genius moment once in the office of a middle school principal. My daughter was a student in that school.  Though she was an excellent student and a “nice girl” (meaning she was not a troublemaker), she was often late to school.  In fact, she had racked up so many “tardies” that she and her parents were summoned to the principal’s office to address this problem.

He started off our meeting by framing the issue and summarizing Sarah’s morning arrival statistics.  He asked Sarah if she had any ideas how to resolve this.  She didn’t.  He looked once again at her record, which included her address, and the genius moment was born.

He said, “Say, I see you live right down at the end of Irving Street, don’t you?  Well, wouldn’t you know it, on my way into school every day, I stop at the Dunkin Donuts at the other end of your street.  I could come and pick you up and take you to school every morning!  That would certainly get you to school on time.  How about if I did that?”  

I don’t know if you remember your own middle school experience, or if you know a middle school-aged child, but the last thing any middle school child needs is to be driven to school by the principal.  It’s embarrassing enough to have parents you are seen with from time to time.  But to arrive daily with the principal?  Utter demolition of whatever tenuous social standing you might have in the middle school jungle.  An unrecoverable embarrassment.

After a moment of silence, Sarah said she did not think that would be necessary and she did not think there would be a problem going forward.   And by and large there wasn’t. 

As her parents, we had tried everything we could think of, ranging from being understanding and trying to find out what the underlying problem was, to structural approaches such as giving her an earlier bedtime and having her set out her clothes and pack her backpack the night before, to setting up consequences.  But we hadn’t come up with consequences dire enough to matter to her.         

Mr. Burns just nailed it. 

Where have you witnessed a genius moment? Or an inspired action? I invite you to share it in a comment. 

If you are a parent actively dealing with a chronic challenge of any sort with your child, know that you are not alone.  Make sure you have the support you need, whether the support of other parents, of a professional, or whatever else might be useful to you and your child.  Because an ongoing challenge with a child can be very depleting for the parent, it can be extremely helpful to supplement your usual ways of keeping your own batteries charged. Get help if you need it!  

I met with a prospective client recently for an initial consultation.  She wanted help addressing her uneven professional performance: she used to do A+ work all the time, now she finds herself doing “so-so” work some of the time for no apparent reason.  She wants to go back to A+ all the time but sheer will, intention, and “positive thinking” aren’t making it happen, and it’s stressing her out. 

I asked her several questions, including, “What else is going on for you on the so-so days?”  That turned out to be the key to what needed to happen next.  She hadn’t ever really looked at that.  She decided to hire me as her coach, and her first assignment was to notice what else is going on for her on the so-so days.

[Shameless plug: a coach can ask questions that approach the problem from a wholly different perspective from the individual's, and THAT can get things moving again.  To paraphrase a quote from Albert Einstein: We can't solve problems using the same mindset from which the problems arose.]

The “what else” that might be going on for you in your off days can be on any level, and if you experience a similar unevenness in your work, looking at the list below might be useful to you as well.  Here are some micro-questions for looking at “what else.”  If you have other good questions to add, please leave them as a comment.

1. What’s the content you are working when doing so-so work, and is it different from the content you’re addressing at more effective times? 
2. What’s the process you’re engaged in, and is it different from your process on better days (or hours)?  For example, are you doing a lot of writing today, or is it a day of interacting with other people?  Is it a day with 4,672 interruptions?
3. Who are you interacting with today?
4. What are you wearing?  I once worked with a woman who (it turned out) had a bad day every time she wore a certain pair of shoes. She hated the shoes because she thought they made her look matronly and sexless, so she felt bad about herself the whole day. But she’d paid a lot of money for them and made herself wear them.  [When she saw how much it was costing her (in the quality of her day and her output) to wear them, she got rid of them replaced them with a new pair that she loved. Problem solved.  I kid you not.  Alas, it's not always this simple.]
5. A total aside: my father was a primary care physician and ace diagnostician.  Once, he cured a patient’s daily headaches by having him get all new underwear that was looser.
6. What took place prior to your noticing your meh performance — consider everything, including what you were thinking about. Did you have a conversation earlier in the day with your spouse (or child, nanny, colleague, boss, client, doctor’s office, etc)  that’s distracting you? Are you beating yourself up for not having finished the annual report?  Are you comparing yourself with a colleague or with Marissa Meyer or Naomi Watts and coming up short? Are you worried about an upcoming interview?  Are you worrying about something else?

Having a next step to take toward solving a nagging problem can be a huge relief.  My new client was so happy to have an assignment that would move things forward, knowing we would talk about her observations in next week’s coaching call. I don’t know what she’ll observe in the coming week, but we’ll look at it together and I’m confident something useful and actionable will come out of it. 

Effective people don’t stay stuck.  For more on this, see another recent post. 

Feel free to add to this topic with a comment here.

If you missed the flurry of public conversation that took place right after Lean In was published, this post gives you a taste of it.  [Background: the book was written by Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Facebook.]  You can get the gist of the book’s overall message in Sandberg’s Ted Talk.

She essentially looks at why there are so few women leaders (CEO’s & heads of state, for example) and what can be done about it. 

She’s largely speaking to young, ambitious professional women about what she’s learned about women’s career advancement and leadership.  Her strongest recommendation to women is to “lean in,” meaning to be fully, 100% committed to working hard and getting ahead, and to assume their “place at the table” whether or not they feel they belong there.  To the women who shy away from the fast track because at some point in the future they want to cut back to raise their children, Sandberg says, “Don’t leave before you leave.” 

Here are some of  the best posts from right after the book came out:

Why Sheryl Sandberg is Beside the Point, by Amy Gutman.
Start here because Gutman lays out beautifully just how and why the book elicits such strong, polarized responses.

The Retro-Lean-Back Snow Day, by KJ Dell”Antonia (in the Motherlode column of the NY Times).
Dell’antonia, from deep inside a snow day at home with her kids, makes the case for a modified career plan that allows for snow days and sick kids.  The strategy is imperfect, it requires flexibility, and it’s the right answer for many professionals with young children.  This piece links to several other juicy posts/columns on the subject. 

Why Lean In Makes Me Depressed, by Morra Arons-Mele.
She writes, “Sandberg asks women to lean in, but social and cultural institutions haven’t caught up with her, so we feel confused and perhaps disappointed.”  Aarons-Mele writes about the challenges that 20- and 30-somethings grapple with.

Why I’d Rather Stand Straight Than Lean In, by Kristin van Ogtrop, editor of Real Simple magazine.
Van Ogtrop makes the case for a more balanced approach: “Here’s the thing: I don’t want to be striving for bigger/better/higher/more every minute of every day. I don’t always want to have a larger goal.”  Sometimes she stops to enjoy a clementine.               

Enough With The ‘Leaning In,‘  by Tiziana Dearing.
This is more of a response to the buzz than to the book. A CEO herself, Dearing writes, “Who died and made the top of the ladder God?” She makes the case for each individual navigating her professional path in her own way.

 I Had to Take a Xanax to Read Time Magazine This Week, by Penelope Trunk.
She writes, “The high performers in corporate life are so much more focused than everyone else in the workforce that it’s time we stopped selling a false bill of goods; almost no one can be so singularly focused to get to the top of anything. Including corporate America. Yet we keep talking to kids and each other like anyone can do it.”  Trunk often says things no one else is saying. I don’t always agree with her, but boy, she is one interesting blogger. And smart. 

He Hasn’t Had it All Either, by Michael Winerip in the Booming section of the NY Times.
Winerip opens with this: “I have had a lot. I feel lucky to have had a successful career as a journalist and author while being the primary caregiver of our four children for a decade.  But I definitely did not have it all.  And unlike most people written about in the media who don’t have it all, I’m a male who didn’t have it all.”  This is a very sane, grounded piece, and an interesting look at an egalitarian marriage.

You Can’t ‘Have It All’ & More of Feminism’s Outdated Phrases, by Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute.
Galinsky “loathe[s] the terms of the debates . . . [because] these seemingly innocuous words invariably hamper, not foster, change.” She takes 5 of these terms and suggests more appropriate ones, such as “fit” instead of “balance,” “thriving through it all” instead of “having it all.”

And now it’s your turn.  Did you read the book, and if so, what did you think?  And, whether or not you read the book, what do you think about its message?  Please leave a comment.

My 2nd floor office window looks out into the branches of 3-storey evergreen trees. When I’m not meeting in-person with a client, I face out that window, toward the Charles River.  

One day in March, a red-tailed hawk landed on a branch right in front of me.  He had a headless sparrow in his right claw.  There was a flurry of activity as he de-feathered the already-dead sparrow.  Then he ate the small bird in bite-size morsels.  It was like a National Geographic special right outside my window.  When he finished, he wiped his beak and cheeks several times on a clean part of the branch — as if he were sharpening a knife on a sharpening stone.  It was not until that moment that I first thought to myself, “Photo!”  and reached for my iPhone which was right next to me the whole time.  But as I slowly lifted it to my eye, Mr. Hawk took off. 

Some days later, he (or his relative) was on another branch when I sat down to work.  This time I got the photo. 

 A few days later, I saw a squirrel in the same tree doing something I’d never seen a squirrel do.  He  very animatedly pulled off pieces of bark in long strips, about 2 and 3 feet long, a bunch of them.  I thought he was going to carry them off to build a nest — wouldn’t this be nest-building time in Squirrelville?  But no.  He turned them over so the inner surface was facing him and proceeded to very quickly work his mouth down the length of the strip as if he were eating something delicious and fast moving. (Sap?  Insects?)

Then he let the strips fall.  He left some of the strips just hanging without ever processing them.  Here’s a photo of one of the stripped branches.  If you look carefully you can see a couple of the strips still hanging. The stripped area is reddish; the gray still has its bark intact. And then a photo of the perpetrator.

Because these “National Geographic specials” were such unusual events outside my humble window on an ordinary Tuesday morning, my meaning-seeking mind went to work. 

Each of these animals was unabashedly doing their work  in ways they are wired to do.  Each was earning his living, oblivious to me on the other side of the window. They simply followed their instincts.  The squirrel didn’t eat the sparrow. The hawk didn’t strip the bark.  I concluded this was an unpaid advertisement for unabashedly following one’s own path.

Feel free to leave a comment. 

My client Lyn needs to get more focused.  She doesn’t have ADD, but like many of us, she gets distracted easily.  It’s not a problem at work: when she’s there, she does the work that’s in front of her, which is fully engaging, and she does it well.  Outside of work, until now, her distractibility hasn’t been an issue. 

But circumstances have changed, and suddenly she has a great deal to accomplish outside of work in a short amount of time.  For example, she’s applying for an advanced credential with a rapidly approaching deadline.  She’s studying for the exam and writing up the extensive documentation of the last 20 years of her professional experience.  Getting this work done requires strong time management and mental focus.  There’s no time for distractions. 

 Lyn is not only learning the material for the exam.  She’s also learning how to be more disciplined with her time and attention.  And there’s more.  As she struggles to manage her focus, one of her distractions is regret that she didn’t learn these skills earlier in her life.  So she’s also learning how to effectively handle the regret.  

 How do you deal with regret?  I think for most people, the innate response to regret is to immerse oneself in the bad feeling of it, and then to move into the even worse-feeling space of self-blame.  In Lyn’s case, whose fault was it she never mastered these skills before?  Well, hers of course.  And so forth. 

But you can transform regret into a powerful catalyst for change.  Once you notice that your mind has wandered into self-blame, YOU HAVE A CHOICE.  You can move further into the space of self- blame – which is unpleasant but familiar (and which most of us are really good at) – or you can practice the new behavior, which in Lyn’s  case is bringing the mind back to the difficult task at hand and getting back to work.  

In other words, take all that regret-energy and re-focus it to support you in doing the new behavior NOW.  The new behavior is hard for you, which is why you haven’t done it until now, so have compassion and understanding for the “you” who avoided it.  But do the new behavior now so 10 years from now you won’t regret that you didn’t do it now. 

Take the small, humble step that is right in front of you on this ordinary Tuesday morning.  This is how deliberate, intentional change happens.

 For Lyn, the new behavior is staying focused, which involves noticing when her mind wanders off, and simply and immediately bringing it back to the task. I’m happy to report she’s doing really well.  What’s the new behavior you’re learning?  Here are some examples from recent clients and myself: 

• Learning where to do a B+ job (instead of an A+ job)
• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator
• Prioritizing more ruthlessly
• Choosing healthier lunches
• Coaching rather than directing your team
• Keeping your manager updated without making her concerned

 How do your transform regret or self-blame into positive change?  What tactics work for you?  Please share your experience in a comment. 

A while back, I wrote a post about enhancing the creative process.  There is so much  more to say on the topic.  For example, there are some useful, free online free tools out there to not only enhance your creativity, but assist you at various steps along the way.

To give you an idea, I’ve gathered a list of five free online tools for the creative process.  You may already use some of them or a competitor, but take a look at these if you’re not already familiar with them.  They may be useful to you.

1. Mind Tools http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_00.htm. The site is known for helping people — from struggling students to top scientists — exercise and improve their mind.  With a special section just for creativity, they offer a ton of options including Provocation, Morphological Analysis, and a Re-framing Matrix.  They also have lower key creativity tools for those who would need to schedule extra time to work the advanced ones.  There are also loads of other related tools for those who enjoy an intellectual challenge.
2. Creativity Toolbox http://gocreate.com/tools/index.htm.  A lite version of the above, here you can utilize some creativity tools that are both easy to find and use and can help you kick start your creative mojo.  There are options in idea generation, instant stimulation, and even the problem-solving process. This free site can help you do a range of things, from coming up with a website name to telling you how a famous person would solve your problem.
3. The Accidental Creative http://www.accidentalcreative.com/category/podcasts. If you’d rather listen to ideas than read them, this is the website for you because it includes many excellent podcasts.  The Accidental Creative has many tools for creativity, but the podcast section alone is worth a visit.  Todd Henry and company’s podcasts address topics like inverting the creative process, lying, and other intriguing angles.  And, should you get tired of listening, they also have good articles.
4. Creative Something http://www.creativesomething.net/. Get some creative inspiration from one of the top bloggers on the subject, Tanner Christensen.  Every day he offers an interesting and sometimes quirky idea on creativity, which can include a useful iPhone app, suggestion, or new way of approaching old problems.  You can search through the archives for something that fits your dilemma or check out the most popular entries.
5. The Creative Mind http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/. Ever wonder about the psychology of creativity?  So does Douglas Eby, an expert in counseling psychology and blogger for Psych Central.  He has interviewed many artists, psychologists, and others about creative expression and features the science behind creativity, along with some useful tips in this online column.

The key factor in enhancing creativity is to do what works for you.  There are many things a person can do can do to enhance creativity, but not all of them will be a good fit for you at the time that you need it.  If a mind exercise is taking up too much time, read about a possible solution to the specific problem.  If reading doesn’t help, listen to a podcast on something related.  If none of the above five websites are helping, maybe it’s time to track a colleague down for some brainstorming.

You probably already know this, but it bears repeating: 95% of the time, an awful first draft of anything is still better than nothing, because at least you have something to improve on. Sometimes the unsuccessful terrible first shot at a solution provides the impetus for a creative breakthrough.  However, if you are certain beyond a doubt that your first draft will make matters worse for you, it might be time to return to the creative process itself.  Check out some of these sites and try some of the tools they offer.  They could make a difference for you.

Full disclosure: if you’re a card-carrying procrastinator, these sites may be a danger zone for you — don’t let yourself disappear into them!

What are the resources, tools, and strategies that work for you?  What are your creative challenges? Please share your thoughts in a comment.

Here’s how Sheryl  Sandberg, author of Lean In and COO of Facebook, describes her own early experience with Fraud Syndrome:  “The real issue was not that I felt like a fraud, but that I could feel something [so] deeply and profoundly and be completely wrong.”

She discovered this dynamic early on in her career, and realized she “needed to make both an intellectual and an emotional adjustment.  I learned over time that while it was hard to shake feelings of self-doubt, I could understand that there was a distortion. I would never possess my brother’s effortless confidence, but I could challenge the notion that I was constantly headed for failure.  When I felt like I was not capable of doing something, I’d remind myself that I did not fail all of my exams in college.  Or even one.  I learned to un-distort the distortion.“

 This strategy of bringing up past successes in the face of low confidence in the present is very powerful.   How does that translate into real life?  Here are the steps.

1. Cultivate your Inner Witness
   Your Inner Witness is the part of you that watches you go about your life.  It is not the part that gets emotionally pulled into a tailspin when something adverse takes place.  It is the segment of your consciousness that observes the tailspin: “Joe got angry with me at the meeting, and now I’m feeling crappy about myself.  I’m starting to think I can’t function at this level and have no business being in this job.” We all have an Inner Witness.  Cultivate yours by listening to what she tells you and appreciating her straightforward, non-judging perspective.
2. Remember that there’s an emotional and a cognitive level to your experience of inadequacy or fraudulence.
3. For the cognitive level, bring to your awareness some  examples of your adequacy.  You can do this  in one of the following ways: Name 5 things you’ve accomplished, small or large, Name 5 things you did effectively today, or Name 5 things pertaining to the work you do with Joe that you did/do well. 
4. Check in.  Did doing item 3, above, shift your emotional level out of the negative and at least into the neutral zone, if not all the way  to positive?
5. If so, the shift is complete.  If not, try one of these:
   1. Turn up the volume on your past and present successes: remember more of them, invoke them to the point where you can actually feel the competence in your body. 
   2. Go off and DO some of the things you’re good at, and do them until you feel better.
   3. Use an affirmation, such as, “I am a competent, effective financial adviser with a great track record and many satisfied clients.” Say this to yourself throughout the day for as many days as you need to. 

 What helps YOU to un-distort the distortion of your fraud syndrome?  There is great wisdom among my readers  – please share some of yours in a comment.