Work-Life Sanity Blog

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 crackerjack 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.

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. 

Don’t underestimate the depletion-factor of intense personal work. Consider it another kind of workout and expect to be wiped out.

I was a systems analyst at a data-driven consulting firm when my daughters were in middle school and high school, respectively.  That was a challenging period in our family life.  One of my daughters was having a very rough time, and often refused to get up and go to school.  Some mornings, by the time I got to my desk at work at 8:15, having gotten the kids out the door and dropped off, I felt like I had already put in a long day.  I also remember feeling greatly relieved to be in a neutral zone, where no one was yelling,  no arguments were going on, and no one refused to do anything.

A coaching client and her spouse were in a particularly intensive phase of their couples therapy.  On a daily and sometimes hourly basis, my client had to manage her enormous fear that her marriage was ending.  By managing, I mean containing it so that she could do other things, such as go to work and do her job. The last few therapy sessions had brought to light some troubling new information.  She found herself going over the therapy conversations again and again and trying to figure out what to make of the new information.

She burned up a lot of energy keeping herself from imagining worst case scenarios and processing the new information, but she didn’t realize it.  So, on top of everything else, she was very unhappy with herself for having less than her usual energy level at work. But the truth was, she was exhausted and depleted from all the work she was doing in the emotional realm.  I convinced her to cut herself some slack on this, and to just be compassionate and appreciative with herself, losing the self-critical tone about her energy level at work.  (Turned out  the marriage was strengthened by this chapter and is going strong many years later.)

What is intense personal work?  Here are some examples:

• You have a sibling who is not doing well and you want to figure out what’s needed and then make it happen.
• You’re not only unhappy about your performance review, you’re angry.  You know you have to work with yourself to get into a frame of mind where you can address this professionally and effectively.
• There’s a new tension in your marriage that you’re trying very hard to understand and/or eliminate.
• You had an uncharacteristically heated exchange today with a colleague about which one of you originated a large contract.
• You’re having a health challenge that you’re afraid to investigate.
• Your new leadership role at work is bringing up huge personal challenges for you. 

Intense personal work can be exhausting!   If you’re in a period of extreme growth, or doing deep emotional work, it’s likely you need a lot more down time than you usually do, so you might want to strengthen your boundaries around time and commitments to protect your time out.  You might use the down time to get more sleep or otherwise decompress.  And if you’re lucky enough that YOUR intense personal work doesn’t exhaust you?  Well, no problem, right?

A while back, when my husband and I (both non-athletes)were training to do a 170-mile charity bike ride, he said, “I understand now why jocks have a reputation of being stupid. But they’re not stupid — they’re just tired!”

What does YOUR life look like when you’re in a period of extreme growth or otherwise doing deep personal work, and how do you take care of yourself?   Please share a comment.

When my friend Mary’s kids, Andy and Sophie, were 7 and 5, the family went to synagogue one Friday night as they often did. During the after-service informal socializing and refreshments, the kids left the social hall to see where all the other kids were. A cluster of other kids had gone into the sanctuary and left a very big mess.  Andy and Sophie peeked into the sanctuary, saw no kids, and moved on. Out in the hallway, the rabbi intercepted them, blamed them for the big mess in the sanctuary, yelled at them, and would hear none of their protests of innocence.  The kids returned to their parents, outraged.

The next day, Andy had moved on, but Sophie was still indignant, upset, and very angry. Mary invited her to dictate a letter, which Mary would send.  This is what Sophie dictated:

Dear Rabbi _____,
You are a stupid shut-up rabbi.  I hope you get a insect in your pants. 
Sophie

Once the letter was composed, Sophie felt much better, and her mom never sent it (though she did have a conversation with the rabbi about yelling at her children without knowing the whole story.)  This smart mama knew that Sophie needed to discharge the anger in a healthy way that would not create further complication or trouble for her.

We would all be wise to write down our angry thoughts about the people we get angry at, thereby releasing at least some of the upset, and not send that letter. Sometimes sending a very different letter is a very appropriate next step. The letter to send is a carefully-languaged, intentional letter that you wait at least a day before sending. I recommend asking someone to read it before you send it off, to alert you to any incendiary segments that escaped your edits. 

I have been that “other reader” for clients and a few relatives over the years. The letters would eventually go to a spouse, a business partner, someone at work, a doctor or other service professional, an adult or adolescent child, for example. My view is the letter needs to be neutral in tone — not raging, seething, or lashing out — and focused on the transaction, not the person. One handy construct: “When you do X, I feel Y.”  Or “when you did X, I felt [or experienced] Y.”

Life coach Cheryl Richardson has an excellent, short video offering ideas on how to discharge anger from your body, and how to effectively address the person and the issue that made you angry.  The idea that we “hold” anger in our bodies may seem a little strange if you’re not particularly tuned into your body; this video does a good job of explaining it.  One of Cheryl’s many talents is crafting boundary-setting language that is strong, clear, and appropriately neutral.  By appropriately neutral, I mean non-incendiary, and respectful of both self and other.    

What these recommendations have in common is the idea of preparing a response away from the person and communicating it to him after some time, after you’ve had some time to process.  It can be very reassuring to know you can go back to the person, after the anger-generating event, and express yourself in such a way that you actually have a shot at being heard.  And that’s typically what we want when we’re angry at someone.  We want them to understand the validity our position, even if they don’t agree with it.

What’s your best anger management strategy?  Do you disagree with anything in this post?  Do you have a story you might be willing to share?  Please leave a comment.

The following is a guest post by my friend and blogging colleague Diana Cullum-Dugan, who teaches yoga and so much more.

Diana Cullum-Dugan

Blame – whether self-blame or other-blame — drains you of creativity, self-acceptance and compassion.  Releasing blame is a transformative process that can come about through sincere intention and dedicated practice. What kind of practice? You pick. There’s a lot to choose from: yoga, meditation, journaling, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and many other body/mind connectors. 

Releasing blame is a practice that derives from the desire to be free from shame, unworthiness, helplessness, and anger at the blamed person (including yourself).  It comes from a desire to be done with all that once and for all.

Here’s a quick story from Buddhist teacher Tara Brach.  It’s her habit to walk her dog at a nearby park that opens its gates at 6:30 am. In this early morning ritual, neighbors join her. One day, the gatekeeper was late. He repeated this habit of tardiness for several days in a row, first 5 minutes, then 20, then 30, then 35. Tara, upset at sitting in her car waiting, began thinking of what she would say to him when she met him, how rude he was to keep them all waiting. She even had visions of ramming her car into the gate. He was making her late in finding the perfect rock for her daily meditation!  (She appreciated the irony of this.)

Finally, she fell back to her Buddhist understanding of the present moment, that this was her meditation.  She tried to breathe deeply in her car. It didn’t work. Those vengeful thoughts (known as papancha in some meditative traditions) kept churning. “Aha,” she thought, “this is papancha, so what am I believing about this?” Turns out, she thought if she didn’t get to that rock “on time” to meditate, her day would start off badly, she wouldn’t be productive, her book wouldn’t get written and she would let down not only herself but the world.  Wow!  What a lot to pin on the man whose job is simply to open the gate!

Just this simple aha awareness begins to halt that tireless battering against our own soul that leads us to blame ourselves and others, and ultimately, to feeling remorseful and shamed.

Eventually, Tara met the gatekeeper and he apologized.  He said he was new and confused about the opening time, and would try to be more consistent. Later that week, Tara met the owner of the park who also apologized and kindly reported that the park really doesn’t open until 7 am. The gatekeeper had just been kind to open it earlier, knowing that people came early. 

Releasing blame makes space. It lets us unhook from a memory or story line from the past and move forward without being held, dragged backwards, and pulled under by an old, obsolete belief.

These aha moments tug us toward being in the present with ourselves, living in the light of our truth and letting go of what holds us back. They show us up close that we already have all that we need, all the power to step away from the churning negativity we get into when we ruminate.

Every time we have one of these insights, one more limiting belief releases and our mindful inner space within expands.  

Take a moment now, close your eyes, and invite your intention to release blame. You might say something like this to yourself: “May I be more present, receptive and aware of what is happening right now.  May I not be mired in memories that project me even further into repeating blame.”

You might ask yourself, “What am I believing right now about this?” You can create an entirely new moment by uncovering the old belief or obsolete paradigm, and being willing to discard an old belief that no longer holds true or serves you. 

You can choose to be in the space that gives you the wisdom to know how to handle reality as it presents to you right now.  In the present. 

Every time you release any degree of blaming yourself or others, you create more space, light, and possibility in your present life.

What are your thoughts or experience on this topic?  Have you been able to let go of blame, and if so, how did you do it?  Please leave a comment.

Someone sent me a link to a fabulous piece in the Harvard Business Review blog: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/sitting_is_the_smoking_of_our_generation.html. It’s short and compelling — take a look!

A couple of weeks before reading the HBR post, I took an excellent daylong workshop called The Paper Room.  I learned a great deal about the automatic, internal “systems” in my head that interfere with my effectiveness.  I ALSO learned that I need more physical activity in my life.  Of course, we all do, so on a certain level I already knew this.  But during the workshop I realized that as a result of  not-enough physical activity,  my core being is not adequately nourished.  I got it in a way that was deeper than the usual.

During a partner exercise in the course, I came up with the idea of inviting one of my in-person clients to have our next coaching meeting while walking.  She readily agreed, and I’m looking forward to our walking meeting, which is tomorrow. 

Here are some ways that people I know are getting more exercise — maybe there’s something in this list what will appeal to you and allow you to turn up the volume a little with your physical activity:

• Instead of having coffee, lunch, or an after-work glass of wine with a colleague, take a walk.
• Take a class that gets you moving. Having to be at a specific place at a specific time can be a miraculous alternative to “I’ll go for a walk later.”  Paying for a class makes some people more motivated to get their money’s worth by GOING.
• Take your spouse out for an exercise date.  Go dancing.  Many cities and town have ballroom, Latin, Swing, Folk and other dance events, many of which are preceded by a 1-hour lesson.  Take the lesson, stay for the evening.
• Plan outdoor active activities ahead of time and get them onto your calendar, however far in advance you need to to make them happen. For example, plan a manageable local hike.  If “hike” sounds too strong, replace it with “walk.”
• Learn something new.  Take a cross-country ski or snowshoeing lesson.  Allow yourself to be a beginner. Or become a better kayaker or canoe-er.
• Find out what local hiking, biking, birding, and other such groups have scheduled.  You can trick yourself into a lovely walk by going birding with a group.
• Visit a botanic garden or even a museum.  You might not break a sweat, but you’re upright and moving!  Still better than spending that time seated.
• Here are some organizations in the Boston area that organize events that get people moving — you may have such things local to you as well:
  • Charles River Wheelmen  (and other local bike clubs: sponsor informal rides throughout the year)
  • Boston Ski and Sports
  • Arnold Arboretum
  • Mount Auburn Cemetery (wildlife walks)
  • Appalachian Mountain Club

What motivates you to get moving more?  How are you getting more exercise?  What do you like to do? Please share your thoughts and ideas in a comment.

My Tai Chi teacher, Ben Booth, is lean and agile. As he does every class, last week he taught us additional moves in the Tai Chi form we are learning. I kept losing my balance in one part of the new sequence, and eventually I asked for help.  It turned out I was modeling my step after his, that is, stepping the distance he steps in this move.  He is a little over 6′ with unusually long, lean limbs.  I am a little under 5′ with proportionally average-length limbs.  His natural step is WAY too big a step for me – it’s no wonder I was losing my balance.  I was trying to take HIS next step, not mine.

Ben Booth teaches Tai Chi & Yoga, and runs outdoor adventure programs.

I’m sometimes annoyed when I get a life message like that.  It’s so trite, really. If this were a movie, I’d say, oh, please, that’s just too simple and obvious a metaphor. But there it was. I was over-reaching.  I was basing my move forward on what someone else was doing, not taking into account our differences and what was a good next step FOR ME. When I repeatedly lost my balance I had to deal with the fact that something wasn’t working. Once I understood the problem, I easily fixed it. I started taking smaller steps at that point in the sequence, and voila, that was it. Balance restored.

As I left the the class, I wondered where else in my life I was trying to take too big a step.  And then I got at  least one place: of course! In social media.

My intention for my coaching business is to become more active in social media. I’ve taken some appropriate-to-me next steps in that direction, including blogging more regularly, about once a week on average. I’ve done that for the last several months.

Until last week. Last week, in addition to meeting with my ongoing coaching clients, I had an influx of new clients, I hired a new Virtual Assistant and had our first working meeting, placed a real estate referral for my real estate matchmaking business, started a 12-week marketing class (as a student), caught up on the blogs I follow, posted two comments, and closed the office Thursday evening to take a long weekend away visiting my new granddaughter (oh, and her family too). 

I did not also get a blog post out last week.  But at the time of the Tai Chi class I was still pressuring myself to write one.  The epiphany about over-reaching helped me realize that getting a blog post out last week was more than I could pull off without losing my balance: getting crazy and miserable, an utter slave to the task. I’ve learned that when I see crazy and miserable coming at me, it means I’m already out of balance, and I stop moving in that direction. So there was no blog post last week.

It can be hard to distinguish between being out of comfort zone (which often just means you’re trying something new) and being off balance (in some way you’ve gone too far for your own well-being).  For me the difference lies in the inner experience. When I’m out of comfort zone I feel awkward, unschooled, or afraid. When I’m out of balance I predominantly feel miserable, resentful, and kind of manic.

How do you distinguish between the two in your life?  Please share your wisdom in a comment.

I spent 9 days out of the office during the Christmas-thru-New-Years period.  Although I wrote a blog post and answered a few coaching-related emails during that time, I was 99% “out” on family time.  And it was delightful.

When I got back to work that first week of January, there was some catching up to do, including some end-of-year processes that I hadn’t gotten to before I left because my daughter’s new baby arrived a week early.  The work of closing out 2012 actually would have been enough to keep me plenty busy upon return.  But there was much, much more. 

There’s a ton of deferred maintenance that my coaching business needs: renovations to my website, expansion in my use of social media, upgrades in other infrastructure, to name a few.  And each of these has about a gazillion sub-tasks, or at least that’s how it looked when I started making lists of what was needed. I felt overwhelmed. I started doing triage and felt my stress level rise.

The more anxious I felt, the more scattered and speedy I became.  You may be familiar with this cycle.  Not a pretty sight, no fun, and not much work actually gets done — all that hyperventilating creates a lot of distraction. After a day or two of frantic rushing from one task to the next, it’s not just “I have this huge mountain to climb” but also “and I’ll never get there at this rate!” 

And then I recognized what was going on. I’ve only been through this cycle about ten thousand times before, so at this point I’m able to read the signs before too much damage is done. The real culprit is not the mountain, but the un-managed stress. The antidote is to calm that freaking-out voice in my head (the cortisol-crazed voice-over from my fight-or-flight response). And to bring back the more grounded voice that usually narrates my daily life.

I have a bag of tricks I collect for just such a need, so I pulled it out and started deploying its contents. The first day I listened to 20 minutes of Pema Chodron’s Smile at Fear, and the next day another 20 minutes. That helped me feel more “unconditionally friendly” toward myself, calmer, and more neutral (less blaming) about what was going on.   The third day I went to yoga, where I gratefully absorbed the teaching of my yoga instructor, Diana Cullum-Dugan, who said (to paraphrase), “Let go of blaming yourself and others. Unhook from the story of your history.”  That allowed me to be much more present and expansive.  And then today I listened to about 15 minutes of Tara Brach, who helped me let go of the energy of striving, which enabled me to simply do the work in front of me without the edge.  Tomorrow I’ll watch a Brene Brown video. 

These teachers calm my racing head and engage a whole other part of me.  In the great open space this creates, I have plenty of time to do everything I want and need to do.  Without the insanity. 

What’s the best tool in your bag of tricks?  When do you use it?  Leave a comment.

“If you think working overtime, skipping your lunch hour and staying chained to your desk will make you more productive, you need to cut yourself some slack and take a break.  Working non-stop without taking a break can increase your chances of weight gain, heart disease and worse.”   So begins a powerful infographic the creative folks at Learnstuff.com developed.   Check it out here: http://www.learnstuff.com/take-a-break/.  In fine print at the bottom, they include the data sources for their bold statements and strong suggestions

They offer disturbing statistics about how many hours most of us SIT at work (guilty as charged), how bad it is for us, AND how easily we could turn it around.  For example, getting away from sitting at the computer even for 5 minutes at a time can make a difference.  Standing for 1/2 hour burns 50% more calories than sitting. 

I recently had a pinched nerve in my neck that produced numbness, tingling, and pain in my right arm.  It didn’t get better on its own and started keeping me up at night. I consulted my chiropractor who did some work on me that helped, but he said the main cause of the problem was that my posture was terrible: I didn’t sit or stand straight.  He said my poor posture was causing premature wear and tear on my cervical vertebrae, and I would continue to see pinched nerves and the like unless I improved my posture.  Who knew? 

So I started paying attention and was appalled at the collapsed, crumpled-up way I frequently found myself sitting in front of my computer.  But when I noticed it, I could pretty easily straighten up.  After 2 weeks of my noticing and straightening, the chiropractor actually saw changes in my neck from better posture.  That was so encouraging and motivating!  Small changes can have big impact, I thought.  How lucky is that?

Between the chiropractor and the information from Learnstuff.com, I also find myself making other changes.  This was my week to send out holiday gifts and cards to my clients and colleagues.  I usually do this sitting at a desk with everything I need in front of me.  But this year I did it while taking a break from sitting.  I walked around my office to assemble each person’s card and/or gift and wrote out the card and label while standing.  As I finished up each one and stamped it, I walked it to the growing stack of items outside my office door.  I actually felt energized by it.   

My big challenge going forward is to remember these things.  I printed out the graphic (it’s long but looks great) and hung it where I’ll see it daily. 

So what about you?  I encourage you to find ways to take breaks from sitting, and to find other ways to heed the warnings about being chained to the computer.  Make some changes.  Apparently a little can go a long way.     

Over the course of the last year,  I learned at a very deep level that when my relationship with food starts to deteriorate, it generally means I’m truly hungry for something that has nothing to do with food. It means I’m out of balance in some essential way.  (Click to read the whole post.)  This is an excerpt from my guest post at Diana Cullum-Duggan’s blog, Yoga, Nutrition, and More.  It looks at the connection between life balance and healthy eating vs unhealthy eating. 

I generally have a healthy diet: fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, light on dairy and sweets.  And I generally have a pretty healthy relationship with food: regular meals, healthy snacks, plenty of water.  I generally keep it together.  Except when I don’t. There are times when it seems I am possessed by one of the following:

• Hungry Wolf who is ravenous and ruthlessly single-minded
• I-Don’t-Care Girl who rebelliously does whatever she wants
• Space Shot who totally forgets that healthy eating is a priority

The post looks at what I learned from taking Diana’s excellent  Yoga for Mindful Eating course, which has helped me more consistently stay away from unhealthy eating and keep my balance.

At the time I decided to take the course, I had been taking her Anusara-Inspired Yoga classes at my gym for couple of years.  As a yoga student, I was a total Diana-Fan.  She not only teaches yoga postures, but also brings in the philosophy in an authentic and inspiring way.  The teachings really inform her life, and she’s able to convey them in a way that’s very grounded in real life.  Plus, she has a light touch and a wonderfully outrageous sense of humor, which she certainly brought into the course.

Read the whole post here.