What would it mean to you to improve your mental outlook?   What would it mean to feel better, have fewer headaches, fewer pains and aches, and less stress?   It is all available to you by changing your thoughts.  Change your thoughts and you change your emotions.   

Your thoughts produce your emotions.   It may take a few minutes to think about that so do just that, think about what that means.  Let’s say something happens outside of your control, like a rock hits your windshield as your driving down the road.  ”Smack” … it’s loud, and for a second you may not know what has happened.   The car is still moving forward and you are trying to figure out what has happened.  You brain is in overdrive.  The adrenaline is rushing out through the body.   Flight-Fight-Freeze, which action are you going to take.   Your brain wants you to do something but you don’t know what that something is.    Now you see a crack on the window starting to form … and now you’re wondering what the cause was.  What is it that you are saying?   What words are you using and what thoughts do you have?   The more you think perhaps the angrier you get, or maybe you’re thankful that it wasn’t worse.   You’re thinking about what happened and generating emotions of relief, anger or something different.

What if we thought positive thoughts rather than negative ones, what do you think would happen?  Well, you’d start feeling better.   A bad day could become a great day.  Whatever it is you’re making a conscious choice to feel or be something.

Listen to Barbara Fredrickson explain how to generate positive emotions.

Do you work in an environment that wants your strengths, talents and abilities?  Do you work where you are expected to do as your are told?

Which work environment would get the most out of you?   The first one or the second one?

What gets you engaged in the work you are doing?

- The work

- The people

- The culture

- The environment

- The purpose and mission of the organization

- The values of the organization

- The perks and benefits

When you have a new idea, how it is received?    Does the culture bring in the voices of the introverts?   Does the culture promote professional development?  Does everyone contribute?   Do non-performers seem to hang around forever?    Are their systems in place to help employees perform at higher levels?    Does the company move quickly or does it take forever to get a new idea or process in place?   Is there a focus on being better?

A great organization is going to help you be successful.  Your part is to make the organization successful through the skills you have.   If the work is boring or isn’t adding value, why would you work there?   If you aren’t using your skills to your best ability then find out how you can make a bigger contribution.

Does the company “reward” employees and celebrate successes?  Are there reviews when things don’t work well to find out how to make things work better? That isn’t a witch hunt, it’s a sincere effort to improve processes and results.  Business growth is based on learning and people learn through experimentation and finding out what doesn’t work (some would call that failure).

What kind of company or organization do you work for?   Is it liberating the best from you on a consistent basis?   Are you growing and being challenged with new work?   What are you bringing to the table, is it your best?

Answer the questions.   Are you working to your full potential?  Do you love what you are doing?   Are you able to do what you love?   What is important to you?

Are you engaged in the work you do?

People lament the fact that organizations don’t change in the right way.  Personal growth, professional growth, individual habits, weight loss, a better outlook on life, career, or relationships don’t change until you decide you want them to change.   All to often we wait for something else to change in the world to make us feel better.  It is really the other way around.  We have to change to feel better in the world.

There is nothing that will satisfy you or fill you up with happiness or joy unless you are open to letting new things into your life.   It means you may need to make changes in your life in order to experience life the way you would like to experience it.   Want a better career than you have to be the person that is capable of having that better career.

If you are wondering what will make you happy then find out how to make other people happy.  You grow into happiness, happiness doesn’t appear and happen to you, you have to be open to happiness.

It all starts with a change of mindset, a new state of mind.  The question is what will it take for you to make the changes to get more out of your life.   It starts with a goal, your goal, for something better in your life.

Making your life better doesn’t start with something else change it starts with your change, your desire to make a change.   It all starts when you decide that you want to make a change.   There is no treatment, no magic bullet, no amount of “others” asking you to make a change that will cause a change to happen “in” you.   It is a step that you have to make.  It is that first act of courage that says, “I want to make my life better.”    What will it take for you to take a step forward in your life today?

What do employees want?   What do you want? Are you working in an organization that is helping you grow to be the best employee ever?  I thought so.   Perhaps you’re wondering why you come into work every day.  You have ideas and you want to see things improve and as soon as you present your idea, you hear , “yes, but …”.   The “but” erased every ounce of that idea and threw it away.   We would “but” we can’t because of X, Y or Z.  That one little but said, “your idea isn’t good enough.”

Employees want their place of work, their manager to exhibit four key characteristics.

1. They want to feel like they belong and they are cared for.

2. They want the ability to grow and advance.

3. They desire feedback and encouragement from their manager’s.

4. They want to know feel like they matter, that they are respected.

Now, most companies would say, yeah, that is what we do.   In reality it is what most companies say they would do.  The daily pressures of performance have driven caring into “we only care about results”.    Maybe you hear, “Our budgets have been cut so we can’t do that.”  What they are saying is that you don’t matter and we don’t want to hear what you have to say. What is it that you hear from those you work for, “yes, but” or “yes, and”?  

The “yes, and” manager is going to be the one who is looking for ways for you to succeed or to provide options for your growth.    

As you go through your workday listen to what is being said.  What do you hear?   What is the typical type of language that is being used?   Are you hearing more “buts” or more “ands”.  

Maybe you’ve worked for someone who sucks the very life out of your soul at work and you dread going into work and performing at the level you want to.   For most people you can’t run from the toxic manager.   Running is often not the option most people have and that is just what they would want to do.    The toxic boss can be overwhelmed with the pressures they are experiencing to not really knowing how to be a leader and understanding the needs of those who work for them.   There are toxic manager’s who believe that their power is at risk unless they bully others and expect people to bow down before them.

There things you can do if you can’t leave the job and do something else.  Some people don’t leave because they fear they’ll find something worse and that may be true.   Let’s look at some ways to make the best of a bad situation.

1. Understand or try to understand the pressures of being a leader or manager.

2. Realize that if there is anger being directed at you it is often an issue with the person with the anger.

3. Have a true confidant you can talk to, therapeutic complaining works as long as it doesn’t drain the person you are talking to.  In other words be careful on how much complaining you do.

4. Meditate as a way to control and manage the stress.

5. Diffuse the anger from a toxic boss, “It is understandable that you’d be upset with _____________”

What have you experienced?  Have you worked with a toxic manager?  What was your approach?   What did you learn?

Are you really the person you think you are?   You might be thinking, this is a trick question, or of course I’m the person I think I am.   It is interesting that studies show that American’s have an inflated view of their abilities and how they perform.  This recent study about teacher’s shows that most teachers believe they are highly effective.   College professors are at an amazingly high level of proficiency where 94% believe they are above average.

Teen drivers believe they too are above average.  Startling statistics show that most people are above average drivers.     So, are all drivers above average?  Of course not.   What is happening is that people want to feel better than average.  Who can be an average driver?  It’s the other person isn’t it?

Scientific American recently printed an article on the increased sense of optimism many people have.   The optimistic self may have a better chance at advancing in society, career and life.   After all who wants to hang out with a depressed person.

When you are looking around at other people, what do you see?  Are they the ones that are above average or is it you that is above average?  Who is this average person anyway?   Is there such a person?      When you look in the mirror who is looking back?   Is it the above average person or is it someone else?

How does being above average serve you?

What do you believe about yourself?   What is your real truth?   Below is a video about people who describe themselves in one way and others describe that same person in another.   How we think of ourselves matters.

How we see ourselves impacts our ability to be our best.    Our best may be exaggerated a bit, more positive or more handsome or beautiful.   We want to believe we are somewhat better than we really are because it pushes us in some way to be that person.   If we believe we are more negative than we really are we don’t believe we can do the things we could otherwise.

We deceive ourselves for a number of reasons.  If we believe in that deception does it help us live a better life?

What do you think of yourself?   Who do you think you really are?   Are you the person you want to be?   Are you the person that others see?   What is your answer?

ADHD in the news, take a look at this story of how ADHD is impacting adult lives.   The story portrays adults who have been impacted with ADHD and their belief in their self-worth, damaged by ADHD.   Opportunities lost to a neuro-biological condition that at least in theory would go away as individuals reached adulthood.    Findings are showing that as children are being diagnosed with ADHD parents are becoming aware of their own ADHD.

What can be done?  For some there is solace in the variety of medications available to treat ADHD and often that is not enough to equip those with ADHD to function at the level they  desire to function at.    Sometimes it takes more than some medications to boost the performance of those with ADHD. Often what happens after years of hearing and experiencing less than positive messages the person with ADHD takes on those messages and believes that they are true.  ”You aren’t good enough”    and that takes more than some medications.

If you think you may have ADHD (if you have children with ADHD, you may have ADHD yourself), find out if those patterns you see in your children are patterns you have.   If you have found yourself having difficulty managing time, losing things, forgetting where you put things,  difficulty understanding directions, not getting things done on time, purchasing things because it feels good or not being able to figure what to do you may want to find out if you do have ADHD, especially if has been a persistent problem over many years.  The first step is finding out.   The second step is working with an ADHD professional to help you establish new habits and processes that will enable you to get good results.

  ADHD is not just a small problem with small consequences  it is a big problem with large consequences.   As more and more is learned about the brain and how it works there are more and new ways of managing ADHD.   If you are dealing with time management, organization, focus and procrastination you may be dealing with ADHD or just crash of constant change in your life.   In either case there are ways to help get more out of the day and reduce the frustration and anxiety often experienced as a result of ADHD.

It is surprising how many adults with ADHD in the workplace silently struggle to do more and more left brain activities.   It is expected that people who work pay attention to detail, think before they speak, manage their time effectively, show up to meetings on time, not act impulsively, and to focus on their work.  These are characteristics of the modern workforce that can’t be ignored.

I’ve heard of too many stories where an employee was dismissed from their work as a result of having ADHD (not that they told their employer).    Manager’s aren’t equipped to recognize and manage ADHD, they just chalk it up to a performance issue or a lack of desire or something that can’t be tolerated and find ways to remove the employee.   That results in a lose/lose situation.  The company loses someone who wants to contribute, is likely very creative and imaginative but trapped in a world where time management and attention to detail is seen as very important.

The best way to manage the ADHD issues is education and management.  Taking time to find new strategies or new methods to manage ADHD will help everyone impacted with ADHD.

“More than a third of companies are so dysfunctional, the best people don’t really care about what they’re doing and the worst people don’t know that they are doing a lousy job. Those are the findings of a new study by Leadership IQ, a twelve-year-old Washington, D.C. company that does employee engagement surveys and leadership training.”   (Fortune Magazine, 4/2/2013)

Imagine that your best employees are not engaged in the work that they do, what is the impact that is having on your business?   It could be that manager’s are not engaged in the process of ensuring that the people who are the most valuable are doing the kind of work that makes the biggest contribution.   It could be that people aren’t creating and setting high expectations for themselves, that they don’t have a sufficiently strong set of goals to motivate their performance.

I’ve found that some people just don’t have daily goals that have enough meaning to get them out of bed in the morning and if they don’t have a great goal what is going to drive their performance.   Work has become less and less rewarding as more and more companies have cut back on things that at some level motivate employees to put more of themselves into their work.

Work has become more demanding and more and more is expected of you.  Knowledge and skill requirements are increasing and so is the tracking and recording of information, creating reports and doing work that feels non-essential which robs the positive feelings that work can provide.   Work that feels non-essential is like having a ship at anchor attempting to sail, it just isn’t going to work well.

Employees own their success.  That is they need to develop a set of clear goals that are in alignment with their strengths that provide a benefit to the organization.   Goals that create a connection to the community in which they reside in at work and make a substantial contribution are necessary to generate  intrinsic motivation.

If you are not engaged in your work, develop a success plan and deliver that to your manager.   Let your manager know what it is that you want to do to make a contribution this year.   What skills and resources do you need?   What things can you accomplish that will help build community?   What keeps you connected to the work you are doing?    Develop a plan that has specific milestones along the way.  Take charge of your growth.  Take charge of your results.

“But I already have too much to do”.    Is that what you were thinking?   If there is too much to do in an eight hour day then what is it that you need to stop doing so that you can do more of what is in alignment with your strengths?   It may be a question that you bring up to your manager.   “I am doing to  much of __________ and it isn’t adding value from my perspective (get some real data) to the organization and these activities if I did them would make a bigger contribution.”   Find out what the benefits are to the organization for each thing you do, how does it benefit the organization.   In some cases organizations do things just because they were done before and no one has stopped to figure out if that thing is of value.

The point is to take ownership of your work and your career.     Within your job responsibilities find those things that you are attracted to and see if there is a way to increase that kind of work.   

What can you do to take ownership of your work so that you’re involved and engaged in the work you do?