“I was a little excited but mostly blorft. “Blorft” is an adjective I just made up that means ‘Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’ I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”
― Tina Fey
Are you among the many who are feeling overwhelmed by the expectation of work and home? Do you feel there is never enough time to complete all the things that are being asked of you? Do you feel like you are only able to do mediocre work? If you are you are not alone. More and more people are feeling like work expectations are growing ever higher. Employers are demanding more from their workers, more time, and more results without any new forms of compensation. Employers realize that they can squeeze more out of each person especially when there are so many people looking for work.
Fear drives the actions we take in many cases. Stress increases, frustration increases and life satisfaction decreases with each new thing that is being asked of us to take on. When will it all stop?
Where does stress show up at work?
The Wall Street Journal (March 5,2013) shows the following:
32% of women and 30% of men find that there isn’t sufficient opportunities for advancement.
33% of people are challenged to balance work and life.
31% of women and 27% of men don’t think employers have plans to help manage stress.
39% say that there is too much to do.
38% of women say they aren’t compensated well for their work.
Stress is rising. Stress is taking a toll on women at greater numbers than ever before. Some people quit their jobs rather than having stress create health issues. Some people move to places where there is less stress, jobs with less stress and perhaps lower pay.
Pay helps reduce stress to some degree, but if the work demands are too great the pay doesn’t compensate for the stress. Look at your life. What is working for you and what isn’t. What is the cost of stress in your life?
Understand what works for you. Know what you are good at. Know your purpose and live that out. You’ll find that happiness is worth a lot more than a big paycheck in the long run.
Take time to smell the flowers. Take time to look around and observe the beauty. Be kind to yourself and stress less.
“One channel is the Stress Channel and the other is the Peace Channel. We really do have a choice about what we listen to. The Peace Channel can only be heard when we are present in the moment, when we are in the now. To tune in to the Peace Channel, all we have to do is be, experience,notice, and naturally respond to what is arising in the moment. To tune into the Stress Channel, we just have to start believing our thoughts again. [...] Eliminating stress is just a matter of tuning out the negative and tuning in the positive and just being, experiencing, and dancing to that music instead of the mind’s chatter.”
― Gina Lake
The tension built and grew until the language went foul. I was listening to a person unload his stress through the use of language that wasn’t beneficial to his cause. It was just more frustration piled upon frustration and the stress overwhelmed his ability to control his emotions and language. The storm started small and just grew and grew and the more he talked the louder and more angry he became. His anger didn’t solve the problem.
Anger is an outlet for stress. It is a way of releasing the energy produced by the hormones that are leaking into the body. In most places the sudden eruption of anger is not welcome or seen as a positive event. This person is going to be looking for a job and his past haunts him. Nightmares wreck his sleep, and tide of anger swells as he confronts images of a war he participated in. The images won’t leave him alone. What does stress really cost?
Others are swimming in a sea of work, unrelenting tides of email, and urgent issues build into a wave of stress reducing confidence, results and energy. Imagine trying to go to sleep when thoughts of unfinished business race through the mind begging for some kind of answer. Where is the joy in that kind of work?
What is your stress level? What are you doing about it?
Your work or events in your life come to you four different ways
1. Urgent and important (get it done now or else)
2. Important but non urgent (this is the sweet spot )
3. Urgent and unimportant (much of the email you get)
4. Unimportant and not urgent (maybe TV)
What is eating at you? What is stopping you from getting what you want out of life?
To learn more about how stress impacts life, take a look at this video clip.
“Its complicated, on one level. On another, it’s the same old stupid story – we aren’t enlightened. We disagree, fall in love, and hate each other, the whole spectrum of human experience. We have differences of opinion, and sometimes, we can’t resolve those differences peacefully. If a disagreement goes for long enough, and is important enough, people start to take sides. Once people start to take sides, conflict is inevitable.”
Zachary Rawlins, The Academy
Conflict - a difference of opinion? A difference of values?
What is conflict? Certainly conflict involves your emotions and causes something to trigger a response in your body that creates a physical change. Some conflict is beneficial if that conflict results in creating positive outcomes. Far too often conflict results in negative outcomes where people find themselves unable to create an inner story that is peaceful.
What do you do when you find yourself in a situation which creates conflict for you?
At first conflict may look like irritation, where you start feeling a tenseness in your body, perhaps your stomach is starting to tighten and the muscles are preparing to take an action but you don’t know what that will be. There is a threat, yet unidentified you sense that there is something wrong. If the pressure continues your body not only senses a threat it starts producing in quantity the hormones that are going to provoke an action. Just one more thing and the body says, “Enough” – “get out of here or react”.
Let’s look at the five phases of managing internal conflict.
1. The initial reaction – something happens and the body wants to react. Your first step should be to announce the feeling, the emotion you are experiencing. Say out loud the emotion you are feeling. ”I’m scared that something is going to happen”.
2. Release the energy - After you acknowledge the emotion the next step is to discharge that energy and you can do that by taking in a deep breath and releasing it. Focus on relaxing and continue to do deep breathing until that wave of emotions has subsided.
3. Get back under control - Downshift your energy/emotions so that you can get the nerves and energy under your control rather than being under the control of your emotional center.
4. Refocus - This is when you can ask yourself the question, “What needs to be done next?” When you have regained control and released the emotions shift the internal conversation to a cognitive one and look for a positive action.
5. Action - Take an action, this may be re-engaging with the situation and bringing a sense of logic and control to your whole body.
With practice these five steps can be done in a matter of seconds. When you are in control of your emotions in a conflict you are in control.
“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. ” Freya Stark
What are core values? These are values that are important to you or the organization you work for. These are deep-seated values that you identify with as necessary components of you or you work. Some people value honesty, integrity, trust, intelligence, or a strong work ethic. No matter what they are if they are in alignment with who you are the more satisfied you’ll be. Your identity is wrapped up in your core values. It is what you believe in.
How well do you know your core values? I have found that looking at a list of over 300 values that most people find it difficult to winnow the list down to just a few values, just 3 or 4 values that are the most important to them. With too many values it is easy to get lose focus on what is really important and identify with values that are tangential to the real you.
Why is it important to have just a few values? You can certainly have many values that are important and without a focus on a few it leads to less intense focus on the values that are the most important. There are probably just three to five core values that you can develop with sufficient intensity to make substantial improvements on.
Identify your values
1. Take a look at a list of values and quickly choose 10 values that you identify with
2. Narrow the list of 10 values down to 5
3. Now choose the 3 values that you strongly identify with
What can you do to strengthen your values?
Take a look at Zappos values and how they apply those values in the work environment.
How are you living out your values?
If you are interested in finding your core values Taylor Protocols offers an assessment that will identify your strengths in four areas. The information is useful in finding the right career and how to resolve conflicts with others. When you know what values are being challenged in yourself you can develop strategies to reduce that conflict.
Take some time and get to know your core values today.
“To have a great purpose to work for, a purpose larger than ourselves, is one of the secrets of making life significant, for then the meaning and worth of the individual overflow his personal borders and survive his death.” Will Durant
Work … what is it? Why do you do it? Why do so many people hate the work they are doing?
1. Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something.
So, why do so many people disengage in the work they are doing? What would allow you to engage in work in a way that you were able to produce positive results and enjoy it?
George Bernard Shaw the renowned poet opined that life has a special meaning and that is to say, “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.” Not that many people say that their life is filling a purpose never mind a mighty one.
As a coach I come across many people who are less than satisfied with the work they do. For some people their work has resulted in depression. The work is so unsatisfying that they can’t do their work. They feel trapped in doing work that is meaningless because of some benefit that their employer offers that they feel unsure that they can get somewhere else. Who am I to get a better job some think. Asked what their purpose statement is and most people can’t think of one and it is no wonder that they are stuck doing work that doesn’t agree with them. They don’t know how to align their purpose, their gifts, their strengths and their talents with the work they do.
When we are able to use our natural talents and are able to express those talents in the engagement of work we become more productive. When we know what we love to do and are able to do what we love we are happier. It seems to make sense yet close to 80% of people are doing work they don’t like. Perhaps it is possible to say that most work isn’t enjoyable and that something has to be done to make money (earning a living is still important) to live on.
Read what Jim Collins wrote about having the right people in the right job doing the work that they love to do.
Disciplined people: “Who” before “what”
“You are a bus driver. The bus, your company, is at a standstill, and it’s your job to get it going. You have to decide where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and who’s going with you.
Most people assume that great bus drivers (read: business leaders) immediately start the journey by announcing to the people on the bus where they’re going—by setting a new direction or by articulating a fresh corporate vision.
In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances. Take David Maxwell’s bus ride. When he became CEO of Fannie Mae in 1981, the company was losing $1 million every business day, with $56 billion worth of mortgage loans underwater. The board desperately wanted to know what Maxwell was going to do to rescue the company.
Maxwell responded to the “what” question the same way that all good-to-great leaders do: He told them, That’s the wrong first question. To decide where to drive the bus before you have the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus, is absolutely the wrong approach.
Maxwell told his management team that there would only be seats on the bus for A-level people who were willing to put out A-plus effort. He interviewed every member of the team. He told them all the same thing: It was going to be a tough ride, a very demanding trip. If they didn’t want to go, fine; just say so. Now’s the time to get off the bus, he said. No questions asked, no recriminations. In all, 14 of 26 executives got off the bus. They were replaced by some of the best, smartest, and hardest-working executives in the world of finance.
With the right people on the bus, in the right seats, Maxwell then turned his full attention to the “what” question. He and his team took Fannie Mae from losing $1 million a day at the start of his tenure to earning $4 million a day at the end. Even after Maxwell left in 1991, his great team continued to drive the flywheel—turn upon turn—and Fannie Mae generated cumulative stock returns nearly eight times better than the general market from 1984 to 1999.
When it comes to getting started, good-to-great leaders understand three simple truths. First, if you begin with “who,” you can more easily adapt to a fast-changing world. If people get on your bus because of where they think it’s going, you’ll be in trouble when you get 10 miles down the road and discover that you need to change direction because the world has changed. But if people board the bus principally because of all the other great people on the bus, you’ll be much faster and smarter in responding to changing conditions. Second, if you have the right people on your bus, you don’t need to worry about motivating them. The right people are self-motivated: Nothing beats being part of a team that is expected to produce great results. And third, if you have the wrong people on the bus, nothing else matters. You may be headed in the right direction, but you still won’t achieve greatness. Great vision with mediocre people still produces mediocre results.”
There is a company that know how to get the right people in the right seats on the bus. Taylor Protocols can do the type of individual analysis to see if the seats on the bus have the right people on it. It makes sense to have the right people engaged in the work they do. Imagine what would be possible if everyone was able to be engaged in their work. It is currently estimated that organizational output is only at 33% and that means hiring more people to get work done that could be done with fewer people if they were fully engaged in their work.
Shawn Achor has been doing research on happiness, and positive psychology and asking some great questions and getting real answers. Happy people perform better on the job and in the job.
Take a few minutes and listen to the arguments Shawn puts forth.
Now, what are you going to do? Are you going to continue to work at things you don’t enjoy? Are you going to stay stuck in a job that you wish would go away?
Take a few steps and identify what would be better for you.
1. Define your purpose
2. Define your strengths
3. Define your natural talents
4. Create a plan so that your work or your new work, works for you.
William Dubois put down his thoughts like this, “The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work bring you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this – with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need – this life is hell.”
What do you want to do? Work in heaven or work in hell. Most people have chosen to work in hell. Where do you want to work?
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”
Corrie ten Boom
What does worry cost you? When you worry you lose your power, you give it up, and it takes the joy out of today. Think of worry as a thief, a thief that only robs you of your energy. What are you worrying about right now?
One way to shift your mind from worrying about what might go wrong to thinking about what will go right. If worry stops you in your tracks and shifts your thinking to “I can’t do _______________”, what would happen if you changed that to “I can do _______________”, instead?
Our society dwells on what can go wrong most of the time. Think about the news you are listening to. What was positive and uplifting in what you heard or watched?
We tend to use words like “don’t”, “watch out for”, “can’t” or some other negative view. What would happen if you created sentences and thoughts that were powerfully supportive? Think about what you can make happen. Think about what you can do. Think about what it will be like when you succeed. Focus on the outcome you desire rather than the one you don’t want.
Take a look at Corrie’s quote about worry. What does she say about worry, “it robs today of its strength”? Here are some thing you can do.
1. Acknowledge the issue you face. Say it out loud, “The problem is ___________”.
2. What can be done to solve the problem? List out all the ideas you have.
3. What one idea is something you can start today?
4. Focus on what you can do. Focus on the result you want.
If you don’t know what you can do then create a mindmap and explore some ways to work out the worries. Think about solutions to the problem and the positive outcome rather than what negative things could happen.
“How we perceive a situation and how we react to it is the basis of our stress. If you focus on the negative in any situation, you can expect high stress levels. However, if you try and see the good in the situation, your stress levels will greatly diminish.” Catherine Pulsifer
It’s a job, it’s barely a job and every morning getting the foot on the floor is more and more difficult. It’s a life, it’s barely a life and every day it seems that the bills grow larger and larger. It’s a relationship, it’s barely a relationship with more and more time spent in arguing about each other’s faults and failures. It’s a diet, it’s barely a diet that works, that is helpful in losing weight. It’s motivation, it barely the motivation that is needed to improve all the things that are going wrong in life.
There are many people looking for some sort of relief, a way to get through the day, to get through the moment and to feel like there is some purpose and meaning in life. For many people it is a struggle to stay focused and get something done, there is no relief in their life, just the constant struggle to make it through the day.
What if there was a way to get relief but a way to get more out of life so that everyday is purpose filled and engaging? What would it be like to feel alive everyday? What would it be like?
In many cases it is the way we think about life that makes it a struggle. The difference between an optimistic look at life and a pessimistic look at life is the difference between happiness and despair. Relief comes when we start looking at life in a new way.
2. Resilience. People who are able to bounce back from unfortunate circumstances get relief faster. Increasing positive to negative thoughts ratio increases resilience.
3. Mindfulness. Focus on creating positive thoughts that break the cycle of negative thinking.
When we shift our mental picture of what is happening to us at any given time from negative to positive we enjoy greater relief. Moving from worry to opportunity creates a sense of excitement and wonder in our lives. Ingesting positive thoughts improves our mood and ability to bounce back from bad things in our life.
Where do you need relief? What can you do today to generate positive thoughts? What do you really want to be different in your life?
Relief is available to you when you meditate, bounce back and are mindful of what can be done rather than focusing on what has happened. Relieve your mind of the burden of negative thinking and you will experience relief.
“And he, the said Wirz, still wickedly pursuing his evil purpose, did establish and cause to be designated within the prison enclosure containing said prisoners a “dead line,” being a line around the inner face of the stockade or wall enclosing said prison and about twenty feet distant from and within said stockade; and so established said dead line, which was in many places an imaginary line, in many other places marked by insecure and shifting strips of [boards nailed] upon the tops of small and insecure stakes or posts, he, the said Wirz, instructed the prison guard stationed around the top of said stockade to fire upon and kill any of the prisoners aforesaid who might touch, fall upon, pass over or under [or] across the said “dead line” ….” ["Trial of Henry Wirz," Report of the Secretary of War, Oct. 31, 1865]
A prisoner tries to escape and crosses the “dead line” and the guards have cause to shoot the prisoner. Crossing the deadline meant certain death. Newspapers picked up on that term and used it to define a moment in time where what was ready to print was put into print.
Today a deadline is used to mean it must be done by this time. The deadline to get this or that done often passes by nearly unnoticed in some domains. A deadline merely marks the desire for something to be completed. What deadlines have you watched go by?
In the civil war the prisoner’s didn’t have the luxury of watching a deadline go past, they knew that a deadline meant a certain finality. At one time a deadline was enforced, now it is a term that doesn’t carry the weight or final conclusion that it once did. You’ve reached the deadline and find that you are unable to cross it.
A deadline demarks the boundary around a prison, an imaginary line which could not be crossed. In today’s world people feel like they are living in a prison where crossing the boundary does mean a type of death. People are enclosed within the deadline by fear, the fear of failure, the fear of change, the fear of not being good enough, or the fear of success. To cross the deadline means something will have changed and that fear prevents them from crossing the deadline.
The deadline now lives in our imagination rather than being an imaginary boundary around a prison. Our boundary line which we have declared holds us back from being the kind of person we could really be. What is your deadline? How close is it to your prison walls? What would happen if you crossed that deadline?
The prison that you are the prisoner of could be a prison of debt, the prison of doubt, the prison of fear, the prison of worry, the prison of work, the prison of a relationship, the prison of time, the prison of anger, or the prison of stress. Whatever your prison is named it is hard to escape from it.
What prison do you find yourself in? What are you doing to cross the deadline?
” The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” Mark Twain
The doorway to success
What is the secret to success? It is doing three simple things. By doing these things you have more vitality during the day. You’ll feel alive and be able to think clearly. You’ll be able to feel the air pulse through the body. You’ll be able to focus and stay alert. You’ll feel happier and more grateful.
So, what are the big three.
1. Exercise – as simple as it may seem exercise increases the production of dopamine and serotonin in the body. These hormones increase the sense of well-being and can improve focus and alertness especially for those with ADHD/ADD. Exercise is something most people lack. In today’s fast paced world most of the work is done sitting down with little physical activity. Taking breaks to energize the body by increasing the respiratory rate and heart rate is a good practice. Better physical conditioning helps improve immune function. Exercise is a win-win proposition, a win for the mind and a win for the body. What is stopping you?
2. The second big secret and it appears to be a secret because it isn’t done nearly enough and that is eating a balanced diet and drinking the right amount of water. Drinking water, it’s cheap and available yet we spend a lot of money purchasing other drink alternatives. Save money and drink more water.
Diet in America is poor. Obesity rates are climbing quickly and all states exhibit obesity rates of 20% or more. The availability of cheap high calorie food might be to blame but so is the fast paced society we live in where preparing healthy meals has given way to meals that can be prepared in a few minutes or seconds.
Health issues increase dramatically as the weight increases. There is a greater risk of diabetes, a disease that can be controlled by diet and exercise and yet as a society more and more people are becoming diabetic.
The secret, eat less and eat better. Drink more water stay hydrated. Headaches are often a result of not drinking enough water.
3. The final secret even though there are hundreds of studies on this topic is getting enough sleep each day (7-8 hours). High performers get the sleep they need to continue to perform well. It is possible to get results on a few hours a sleep a night for a short period of time but for the long-term, the right amount of sleep is critical.
The formula for success is living an active healthy lifestyle. If the body isn’t healthy the mind isn’t as healthy as it should be either. Living a lifestyle of positive choices improves longevity, improves overall well-being and reduces the chances of having expensive medical care. You would think those would be great things to have but many people are making choices that push the responsibility of their health to the medical field. Why?
What are you doing to live a positive healthy lifestyle?
“Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour?s duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What do you think is your normal operating zone? By zones I mean “victim zone”, “excuse zone”, “performance zone” and “high performance zone” where you spend most of your time.
What zone do your thoughts and actions reside in most of the time?
With stress increasing daily and more and more jobs being lost in an anemic economy many people (over 10%) have lost hope, at least the hope that they would fit into a job that would pay the bills and offer some type of security. When hope is lost the focus is in making excuses about “why” they are in the position they are in. As time passes the feeling moves from excuses to being a victim. The victim mindset is characterized by withdrawal and giving up. At times the victim will lash out in anger with that anger being directed externally (it is someone’s fault) and with a strong need for sympathy.
What we need today is fewer victim’s and excuse makers and more performers. Shifting the mindset from victim to owner (performer) takes work and a lot of work. It takes recognizing that there are opportunities and it takes a desire to step towards opportunity rather falling into the pit of despair.
John Milton wrote, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” What we feed our minds we soon become. If we feed our minds and endless stream of excuses that is what we become. If we don’t believe we are good enough we will shortly become that as well. If we rise to the level of our thoughts then when are thoughts are decidedly negative our results will be as well.
We choose our thoughts as we choose our performance. Even though our circumstances may be challenging or very challenging we have a choice to make about out thoughts. Are our thoughts going to meet the challenge or be beat back by the challenge?
Maybe you know someone who has given up and fallen into the mode of being a victim. You might know someone with similar circumstances finding opportunity and taking action. The difference between a performer and a victim are the thoughts rather than the circumstances.
Take a look at Louis Zamperini’s life and see how he was able to overcome physical and mental abuse by keeping a positive attitude, a high performance attitude.
