We’re all a bit anxious at times.  We sometimes get frustated over trying too hard to get our goals met.  But we find ways to meet these challenges and our life goes on.  Yet what about the stress we generate “in support of” a loved one, friend, or client, who has expressed to us their troubles.  Our thoughts often linger over our last conversation with them, when things weren’t working for them.  Meanwhile, they have probably moved past those things.

I recently was forwarded an email from a mother talking sentimentally about how she worried her whole lifetime about the safety and well-being of her child.  She kept wondering when that worry would end and her father smiled when she expressed this.  For years she never knew why he did that.  When her own daughter grew up and worried over her, she smiled, realizing her child was grown up enough to experience similar concerns and, the email says, the “torch had been passed.”

Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to know that whenever others think of you they can rest easy, knowing you’re in good hands?  They would imagine how wisely you choose projects and how consistently well you have managed them and yourself.  They trust you’ll accept what needs to get done and not fuss over the rest.   They smile and go about their business, knowing you’ll accept your circumstances with grace.  

Sound too idealistic?  Some would stereotype me and say, “well, you don’t have kids.”  But I have a husband and family, friends, clients and so many others I care deeply about and my life is profoundly interwoven with them all.   I fall into worry at times too, but I consciously work on letting go and trusting in the direction of my own life and that includes the well-being, success and happiness of others. 

If you’re a worrier, what peace-filled practice can you put into place that will reassure you?

I was recently glancing over a book I had signed a few years back by Bill Mayer, author of The Magic In Asking The Right Questions.  He wrote me a note in it, “Questions are the answer.”  It’s well-known that we all typically jump to answers before we’ve fully flushed out our questions.  At times it’s confusing why we don’t get where we want to get when it seems we’ve thoroughly sought out solutions.  Yet it’s usually because our ladder is leaning up against the wrong wall, that is, we’re answering the wrong question.

What are the right questions?  The one’s that tease out your deepest desires, set your mental wheels turning and cause your heart to skip a beat, rev up your energy and feel a bit scary.  Mayer’s response for the right question, “the right questions are the empowering ones.”  How do you know what’s empowering for you?  What lights you up, motivates you, resonates within you and feels deeply satisfying when you ask it, because you’re considering what possible outcome it could lead to?

The Thinkx model, developed by Tim Hurson, of Think Better, says to write question after question until you pass into a third level of awareness, beyond the ordinary into the silly and wild questions that would not typically arise in a first cut.  It’s there your questions will eventually lead you to answers you hadn’t even considered.  Don’t short change yourself.  Give yourself plenty of brainstorming time before you try to neatly box up and put a bow on a solution.

If you’ve ever tried this process, what did you learn that can be beneficial to our readers?

I work with clients who are stuck in reaching their dreams.  I have family members who share their hopes with me and at times doors don’t open so they can achieve them.  Close friends struggle with relationships, finances or work.  I’ve aimed many times over my lifetime for goals that didn’t materialize.

It can sometimes be mystifying as to what your next step should be.  You question what you’ve done or not done, especially if it feels like you’ve played every card in your hand.  The loss of something you dearly intended for yourself (or others) can turn to frustration and fear. 

It’s at those times I’m reminded of Pete Seeger’s 50’s song, “Turn, turn, turn” (from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8): “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”  It says sometimes we have a gain and sometimes we lose.  That there’s, “A time to dance, a time to mourn.”  That’s when blind faith comes in - a belief that doesn’t rely on logical proof or material evidence.  It simply relies on you saying, “it’ll be okay, let’s keep going.”

I think about other things I blindly and confidently accept.  That there will be a sun rise and fall each day and air to breathe, food to eat, clothing on my back and a roof over my head.  So I know I have the ability to trust.  It’s not survival that threatens, it’s only thoughts that it could come to that.  It’s thoughts of not thriving; making it in the world as we want to see ourselves do.  And it’s then I pull out my gratitude lists and review all the ways I have made contributions in my lifetime, large and small.  How easy it is to discount that in the effort to become more.

I get back to a state of grace and acceptance and rebuild the trust I seem to have temporarily misplaced.  I am grounded again in my value and worthiness and that wholeness in others.  I still don’t know what’s right around the corner.  But I’m restored in my faith that the seasons are indeed turning and we’ll soon be dancing again. 

When you feel stuck, what renews your faith and helps you take action in new directions?

This morning I dreamt about sitting at a large family gathering and suddenly one of my fingers came off.  I was not panicked and I didn’t experience pain.  I got up to go to the hospital.  Some chaos ensued in how I’d get there and where my shoes were and getting them mixed up with another family member’s shoes.  I awoke with a realization of what had previously been in the back of my mind, barely in my awareness. 

I am about to embark on two new and exciting business ventures.  I’ve had waking thoughts of wanting to be sure that whatever I do I maintain quality time with my self, my husband, family and friends.  To me the dream symbolized my concern over a loss of connection.  I looked up in a dream dictionary and it said that loss of fingers can mean a gain.  It can also mean hard work over one’s lifetime. 

I know that how hard I work, whatever I take on, and how I relate to it is up to me.  Since personal and intimate relationship connections are important, then I can experience the gains in these new ventures as long as I keep this intention clear and observe the signs along the way that remind me of this. 

Do your dreams – waking or sleeping – remind you to stay true to your deepest intentions?

“Research has confirmed that people are poor at noticing the unexpected.”  Just when I think that couldn’t apply to me, that I’m curious, present much of the time, and keep my eyes wide open - I’ve had to reexamine this for myself.  Maybe reading this, you will too.

I was in a creative problem solving workshop and when this topic of “noticing the unexpected” came up, we were given an exercise to watch a short film and count the number of times a ball is bounced.  There was a group of college students scurrying around jumping and catching a ball and when the film stopped, I had my number ready.  Then the speaker asked who saw the gorilla walk into the center of the screen and thump their chest.  I was thinking, “they’re kidding, right?”  But when they replayed the film, sure enough there was a person in a gorilla costume who walked into the circle, thumped their chest, and walked off the screen the opposite way.  I’ve since read in Social Psychology by Aronson, Wilson and Ackert, that 50 percent of viewers miss the gorilla. 

Sometimes we assume we know what’s coming.  We’ve been in these same familar circumstances, with the same or similar people, discussing some of the same types of  things.  Or have we?  It’s not the same each time.  We need to pay attention and listen newly, because the good stuff can slip by us.  Then we become someone who cuts people off in conversations or mentally hurries them along.  We make assumptions we know where they’re going in the conversation and we already have the answer.  Warning:  there’s a difference between ahead of the curve and being presumptious.

What’s one person or situation at work where you find yourself zoning out or not being present to, and how can you bring yourself forward to listen and engage newly?

One thing I’m known for is being quick and ready for action.  This has its up sides and down sides, though.  Friends, family and clients can count on me to keep my word and follow through on getting something done, despite how busy I am.  Plane reservations?  I’ll do it.  Restaurant for a family get-together?  Fit in a client on an already full day?  No problem, I can do it.  This go-for-it mentality has a price, though.  

At times I may put aside more important projects and then feeling overwhelmed with too many details when my plate is already full.  I can make mistakes from moving too quickly.  I can not notice when someone needs a helping hand and that should be my priority.  Despite good intentions of helpfulness and delegating some of these projects, I can be sidetracked by taking on new projects (big or small) when someone else could handle them.  Here’s a few suggestions I recommend that works best for me:

- Use your daytimer or palm pilot and put down your most important projects first.  Then write down in pencil [or put brackets around in your pilot] less important tasks or personal tasks you could handle at a later time if necessary.  Set clear boundaries between business time and personal or social-related time. 

- No matter how you organize your time there will be interruptions or new time-stealing “opportunities.”  Ask yourself if you can truly take a project on with everything else you have competing for your time.  Find the balance between being helpful to others and self-sabotaging.  

How do you keep your go-for-it mentality in balance?

What are you saying to yourself when you let yourself focus on something that isn’t working the way you want it to - with you, your circumstances, others, or life in general?   Here’s a few tips you can use to choose more normal, healthy thinking instead:

1.  Recognize it’s only a problem if you say so.  You have a choice in how you are interpreting what’s happening and in how you deal with it.  Stuff will always happen and there will appear to be flow or not.  How you relate to that “stuff” and what you say about it is up to you.

2.  Feeling bad is within your control.   i.e. You notice your eyes are red and you say to yourself, “I didn’t sleep well last night” and then you say, “I feel tired.”  Or you notice that someone doesn’t call you back and you say, “He/She is probably bugged at me from our last conversation,” or “He/She’s a jerk anyway,” and you feel upset.   We give what happens meaning and often our habit is to ascribe negative meaning.  You can stop doing this.

3.  Listen to the inner dialogue you’re having with yourself right BEFORE you get upset, in other words, notice when the “flow” seems disrupted for you and whether you’re handling it well and staying focused.  Also notice if you’re self-assessing too much.  If so,  just put one foot in front of the other and get into positive action.  (You’ll shift more quickly if you can let go enough to engage with others).  Soon you’ll forget you were worried or not getting results and you’ll find yourself past the curve of the road and on to a whole new attitude and positive results!

A guide you can use is Dr. Joseph Luciani’s book, “Self-Coaching, The Powerful Program to Beat Anxiety & Depression” - even if you don’t actually feel THAT bad about things.  His simple steps help train you to break negative habits.  You can also take my ”Re-identify Self” program that permanently and quickly rids you of these negative habits or emotions.   See the “Services” page on my website.

 How do you coach yourself out of the habit of negative self-talk?  

What is the constant need to look outside ourselves for justification of our actions?  Do we need to validate our existence? 

It is our own uncomfortableness with being who we are (as opposed to our favorite movie star or our thin friend), in our own skin (wrinkled or not), and living the life we’ve chosen today, (or making other choices).  Humans have a pervasive need to compare and assess, to gauge who we are and where we stand in the world.  We can’t change that.  But what we can do is minimize the impact of those comparisons by what we make them mean.

Last week I went to my tailor and discovered that the middle-aged man who owned and managed the shop for many years (and who I’d known for over 7), had committed suicide.  I was shocked and saddened.  While there are reasons for his actions and pain he no doubt experienced that caused him to take such severe action, it’s also evident that he told himself that he was no longer valuable.  How unfortunate.  Where was he looking?

When you’re feeling your losses are outweighing the positives, make a conscious effort to refocus on all that is working, even when there appears to be little immediate evidence for it.  It is there.  You’ll start to notice how even a smile from a stranger is telling you that you matter and suddenly you’ll realize that, as lovely as that smile is, it merely reaffirms what you already know to be true about yourself. 

How do you turn negative thinking around and self-validate?

Out of work and want to continue doing what you were doing?  Here’s a 7-step list of preparatory steps I recently shared with a colleague. 

Assess, Prepare, Take Action: 

1. You  (strengths, skills, values, experience, benefits you bring to work)
2. Your financial situation (what you have/what you need to make and for what)
3. Your timeline  (whether you can afford to take time off to renew). 
4. Your risk factor (how soon you need to bring in income or other available $ sources)
5. Your strategy  (who you’ll target for new work-a well developed contact list- and how and when you’ll contact employers, networking, agency assistance, ambassadors to introduce you, informational interviews, and direct phone calls)
6. Your positioning  (a refreshed resume, cover letter and references)
7. Your attitude  (how you approach this job hunt process - with earnestness, professionalism and not desperateness, will make the difference!).

After a few weeks, reassess your well-tracked efforts and make changes as needed in your goals or approach. 

What strategies have you successfully used in starting a new career?

Having just returned from Baja California and whale watching in the San Ignacio lagoon, the effort expelled in pursuing goals takes on a new meaning for me. 

We all have lives where we want to ”get ahead” and are frustrated and sometimes worried or disheartened about not making progress fast enough.  We worry or doubt we’ll see our intended results.  We try to embrace the positives about change, but re-valuing, planning and taking strategic action steps aren’t welcome steps when we feel like they’re slowing us down.  It can be uncomfortable to move toward an uncertain outcome and still be willing to alter our course if necessary.  This getting ready phase requires patience with ourselves and our circumstances - a patience we’re not always willing to exercise. 

Waiting in our tiny skiff in the lagoon, with our goal to closely view or touch a whale, required patience.   It became about enjoying the process, the sun warming us against the the cool breezes and sprays of ocean water and the quiet interaction with others in our boat.  We scanned the vast blue lagoon waters for signs of whales, waited, scanned some more, waited.  We called out sightings and would then travel in that direction, only to have the whales swim out of view.  We’d sit quietly, the motor purring, ready to move in any direction, as needed.  Occasionally we were rewarded with these magnificent mammals coming up to us so we could photograph or touch them.  But it was no sure thing.  It was a get ready, let go, and be rewarded process.

Similarly, our goals can be restricted by factors outside our control, yet how we relate to those external controls is within our control.   Pushing against time with our goals or desperately pursuing them can nudge them further out to sea.  If you need it, find the support methods that help you during a time of change.  Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you’re stuck, to get better prepared, stay strong in your commitment and yet flexible to move in new directions. 

How have you supported yourself to be present, clear and patient, approaching goals a step-at-a-time?