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Category: Health and Wellness

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Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Skills Women In Business

Why Asking Better Questions Can Fuel Your Performance

Have you ever looked back at something you did, such as a decision you made or something you said, and wondered why you did it that way? You may feel surprise or regret. It might not even be a big deal, and yet, you spend a lot of your time thinking about it.

Now if it were a big decision that did not work out as intended, you might even beat yourself up about it. Mentally of course. And it might also affect you emotionally. Now don’t get me wrong, reflecting is a good thing. It’s how you reflect that is the issue.

Two questions that get us stuck:

Do you ask yourself one of these questions?

  1. Why did I do it?
  2. What if…?

Both questions can get you stuck in a story you are telling yourself about who you are and why you did something.  We waste so much time looking back and wishing we’d done something different, or looking ahead, worrying about the outcome before we even figure out how to do it.

Looking back with regret and ahead with fear, both get us stuck, wasting time and affecting not only our productivity and performance, but also our emotional, mental and physical health and wellbeing.

What does the mind have to do with it? 

The mind believes what we tell it.

Consider the classic story about two monks walking on the path at dusk, talking about how their journey might get dangerous if they do not make it to town before it is dark. All of a sudden, one of the monks point toward the bend in the road ahead, stops and says, “I think there is an animal there on our path.” The other monk stops and looks and says, “Yes, I see it. It is sitting there waiting for us. Maybe it’s a tiger.” So they jump behind the tree to hide. As they peek out from behind the tree, the animal is still sitting there waiting for them. As the night comes, they are more and more scared, and they stay behind the tree, peeking out from time to time but as it gets dark they can no longer see the road. Eventually, they fall asleep behind the tree from sheer fatigue.

The next morning as the sun rises, the two monks talk about what to do. As they look out from behind the tree, they realized the tiger is still there waiting for them, except the tiger is not a tiger, but a boulder on the side of the road.

What is the change we can make?

Our unconscious mind is our best friend. It protects us from harm and helps us get what we ask for. It will do what we tell it to do and it will try to find the answers we are asking for, often without our help. Even in our sleep, our unconscious mind works on our questions. That is why it is so important to become mindful about how we interact with our unconscious mind.

The mind-gut connection

Have you ever gotten up in the morning feeling a pit in your stomach, but you are not quite sure why? All you know is that a pit in your stomach tends to warn you that something is not quite right or maybe even dangerous.

Some scientists say our mind is in our gut, some say our second brain that is in our gut. Point is – our brain and gut are interconnected, because all the neurotransmitters in our gut send messages to our brain. It is part of our warning system, the one that has kept us alive for centuries, however it is also how we mis out on taking charge of our thoughts. Now we tend to call it our mind because it is the consciousness of mind, rather than just the organ that is the brain.

Our mind is extremely powerful

Our unconscious mind also does not really understand the difference between something happening in real-time or a story being told about what could happen. Now this is actually a good thing if we use that knowledge mindfully. It is how athletes train themselves to break records and it is why visualization can be extremely powerful. It is also how we can bury ourselves in anxiety and fear. It is how movies draw us into the experience that is happening on the screen. And it is how we can create change.

Ask for what you want

So what is not working about the questions I shared?

  1. Why did I do that? Your mind will give you all the reason why you messed up.
  2. What if I do that? Your mind will come up with all the reasons why it might not work, if your question comes with a grain of fear or dash of doubt.

Of course, we have to be aware of the possible dangers and things that can go wrong, but we should use it as information to plan what to do about it if it does not work, rather than fuel stories about why we might fail.

We need mindfulness

Mindfulness helps us ask better questions about we need to focus on to get what we want.

Our mind automatically looks for danger.  In today’s world, we call it “what is not working” or the negative. Studies have shown that 70% of our mind-activity automatically looks for “danger.” It worked great when a tiger was lurking, but that tiger is not a boulder in the office hallway. That tiger has become your boss, your teammates, your clients, your projects, your problems.

Most people go to work every day spending far too much time looking for what is not working and who is not doing what they were supposed to do. The modern-day version of the tiger is stress.

Use AAA

Acknowledge & Accept: This happened and it did not work. Accept how you feel about it, but don’t get sidetracked into telling stories about why it happened. This part is important because this is where we tend to get stuck in wishing it were different… if I had only… then…. Or telling stories like… see that happened because I am …. (usually something nasty we tell ourselves like stupid and not good enough).

Ask: How can I…. What will help me…. What do I need so I can…. And notice what your gut is telling you. Learn to trust the connection between your gut and your mind. Not intuition, but information based in your unconscious wisdom.

Act: Choose the best way forward, even if it is not within your comfort-zone, to get the result you want.

Mindfulness in action means:

  1. Learn to ask questions.
  2. Learn to listen.
  3. Learn to act, not react.

You can use this to work with yourself and with your team. When we can bring more mindfulness into the workplace, we can learn to work better and perform at our best without burning out. We can nourish relationship and fuel a culture where we spend our time working on solutions to problems rather than getting stuck in the problems. A culture that feeds our need to belong, contribute and be successful.

To learn more about how to re-think performance and create a culture of care: jeanettebronee.com

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

Categories
Health and Wellness Marketing Technology

AI Automates Tasks, Not Jobs

I keep reading scare-mongering over how AI is going to make everyone unemployed. Some others say that it will give us a life of leisure. Maybe we should all stop to realize that both are saying the same thing–we are just learning who are optimists vs. pessimists.

But both of these points of view gloss over the real truth–AI doesn’t eliminate very many jobs completely. Yes, if self-driving cars come to pass, Uber drivers and truck drivers are at risk. But no matter how much automation is applied to Quickbooks, we will still need accountants–they just might not be entering and analyzing the transactions anymore.

AI, in general, automates tasks, not whole jobs.

The reason for that is that what we have today is called Narrow AI–it can be better than humans at discrete tasks, such as chess or Go or Jeopardy. It can make predictions within small spheres. But we are nowhere near General AI, where the judgement of a human across many spheres is possible. Humans need to be guiding all automation, especially AI, for the foreseeable future. So, while there will be some jobs that get largely automated away, we will likely still need humans to do parts of those jobs and there will likely be new jobs created we don’t even dream of yet.

In 1790, 90% of the US workforce were farmers. 200 years later, in 1990, less than three percent remained on the farm, yet we didn’t experience 87% unemployment. And that doesn’t even take into account the massive growth in population or the major expansion in the workforce as women joined.

We found other things to do.

No one knows what will happen in our AI future, but you can expect that it won’t be as bad as people fear nor as great as they expect. After all, if I had told you 20 years ago that you would willingly carry around a device 24×7 that allows your boss to call you any time of the day or night and know that you could be reached, you’d have labeled me a nutjob.

But we all carry our cell phones religiously and would fight to keep them if pressed. So, we are often better at seeing the downside of new technology than the upside and we should imagine that AI will probably turn out the same way.

Categories
Growth Health and Wellness Leadership

Are You Ready for Back-to-Work?

How do you prepare for peak performance?

Kids get new pencils and back-packs, maybe even a new lunch-box. How do you prepare for getting back to work after the summer down-time?

When I was a kid I loved the excitement of getting back to school. Maybe because of my new pencils and outfits, but I actually liked the action of being engaged and using my brain. During the summer-break I would miss feeling productive. I know you might wonder what kind of kid is thinking about feeling productive. I did not call it that at the time of course. I think it was more like feeling I did something that other people responded to, learning stuff and showing my teachers that I was getting better and better at what they were teaching me. Reality is that is still what drives us as adults at work but let’s discuss that in another article.

Be a kid again.

Kids don’t have the same dread of “crazy-busy-no-time-to-myself” that adults do. Later when they are teenagers and studying for an exam though, the perfection-performance-mode already sets in. It is that mode, where we think our brain is the key to performance and that we just need to keep going without feeding, fueling or nourishing it, or the body that it is attached to that keeps it working. It is like thinking the computer can work without battery and electricity.

How did we go so wrong?

When did we start thinking of our bodies like a machine that just keeps going until it burns out? We don’t even treat our cars the way we treat our bodies. Maybe it was during the industrial revolution, where humans became less important than machines and we thought to compete we had to be like them? The thing is, we knowthat pushing harder does not make us more productive, and yet that is our solution for getting the work done.

Work less, get more done.

In 1926 Henry Ford introduced the 40-hour work-week. He found that when he reduced the work-day from 10 to 8 hours and the work-week from 6 to 5 day, productivity went UP. And yet most leaders work 10 hour days (or more) and 6 day work-weeks.

Kids in Finland started performing better in school when they had more play-time. They added a 15 minute break after each lesson, and their focus and attention improved. No surprise really, because neuroscience also tells us that we only focus optimally for 45-90 minutes at a time, and then we need 15 minute brain-off time, so that we can reset our nervous-system and re-boot our mental energy, so we can focus optimally again for the next 45-90 minutes.

So getting back to work, take a look at your schedule and make some performance changes. Cut your meetings from 60 minutes to 45 and take the 15 minutes in between for performance self-care.

Work better on food.

I consistently hear that people are not hungry or thirsty all day so they don’t stop to eat or drink water. It is probably not true that you are not hungry or thirsty! You are just not pausing for long enough to pay attention to your body.

Your body needs water and food, just as much as it needs a pause throughout the day. But when you are running on survival-mode your body tries to keep up with you being chased by a tiger (this tiger could be your boss, a deadline or your board of directors). When you are working on survival-mode, your body stops sending you messages of hunger and thirst, because all systems and hormones are on go-go-go, and you don’t get the “memo” that you are hungry until you stop late at night, – and realize you are starving. But by then you are also burned out.

Burnout prevention.

We don’t have to burn out. To avoid this cycle of burn out and recovery as the way we work, we need to bring self-care with us to work. We work better this way. It is how we can achieve peak performance, work better and go home happy with energy to spare.

Learn more about how to integrate burnout prevention into your company culture or your personal work-style find me at  jeanettebronee.com for keynotes, workshops and 1-on-1 coaching.

Photo: Jeremy Lapak via Unsplash

Categories
Growth Health and Wellness Leadership

Do You Have the Guts to be a Great Leader?

Leadership is changing.

Our relationship with work is changing. We want more meaning in our daily lives and that also means more meaning at work. Let’s face it, work is where we spend most of our time and at the end of our lives, work has consumed most of it. We don’t look back and say, “I wish I had worked harder,” but we might look back and say, “I wish I had made a bigger impact.”

Now I am not trying to encourage regret here. My dad, when he was dying, did not realize how many people he had made a difference for. He received letters and emails thanking him for the impact he had made in someone’s life, simply by listing to them, having conversations with them about their hopes and dreams, and encouraging them to see the best in themselves and dare to show it. You know that thing, we think we have to hide. Our vulnerable self, which then turns out to be our golden nugget and what makes us not just a great human being, but also a great leader. Not a weakness, but a strength. Especially as leaders, we tend to think we have to hide our humanity at work.

Let me add here – we knew he was dying for about 6 months, so we spent the time talking about what mattered to him in his life. He reflected and learned about himself even till the end. And I learned so much about making conscious choices by listening to him. I learned to dare live my true convictions and passions and to stand for what is important to me. Even if I would stand alone for awhile. He did, and then people joined him. He was a leader in the 70′, 80′ and 90′ and he passed away in 2001, so you can imagine he was ahead of his time, bringing his humanity with him to work.

Will you stand for something?

Now this is not a tribute to my dad, it is a tribute to leadership with guts. And it is going to take a slightly different turn that you expect I think. I am not going to talk about daring and believing and standing alone and going for it in spite of fear. I am going to talk about, how we take care of ourselves as leaders every day AT work so that we can pay attention, be present and emotionally and mentally available to the people around us.

Stop stressing.

The other side of that could be slow down. But it is not. At least not quite. I do encourage pausing, because that is how we can observe, reflect and then act according to our higher purpose and intentions. Or focus on what matters rather than what is just urgent.

The first step in becoming a conscious leader, a caring leader, a mindful leader, a leader with impact and a culture around her or him that is engaged, committed and healthy… is a healthy leader. We have to come out of survival-mode and work on performance-mode instead.

Most cultures are not practicing healthy habits at work and most are working on survival-mode, waiting for relief around the corner. It is not sustainable to work in that way.

What is important?

What is important for me, is that we can take charge of our health AT work. I had to leave my career to take care of myself. It is simply not fair to ourselves, that we have to choose between our health and our work and that we leave self-care behind, instead of bringing it with us to work.

Will you be the leader who practices good work-habits and leadership self-care AT work? Do you have the guts to take better care of yourself AT work, so that your people can do so too? Do you have the guts to pay attention and listen, so that your people feel that they matter? Do you have the guts to pause and ask, “how are you or what do you think?”

It takes guts to stand for something, to change a culture that is used to pushing forward without taking care of ourselves and include our humanity at work.

To stop the burn-out epidemic we need self-care AT work. Please also read the article “Leaders who lunch are better leaders” too.

Let me give you a few steps to start practicing:

1. Drink water – and drink even more water. Quit the sugary drinks, the coffee with milk and all the stuff you use to keep you “pumped up”. It is not working long-term, it depletes your energy and your health, -and it takes your attention away from what is important because of how the caffein and sugar affects your brain.

2. Get your sleep – 7-8 hours. No discussion. Otherwise you end up looking for sugar and caffein to keep you going. Research now compares lack of sleep with being drunk.

3. Get your 3 meals a day. Make it a time away from the work-mindset. Not only does your body need the fuel (nutrients and calories) to keep going all day, your mind needs the pause to stay focused and engaged all day.

Stay tuned for the next article about how to have a healthy gut and why it matters, not just for leaders, but for anyone who wants to achieve peak performance at work, at home and on the go.

To learn more about leadership self-care and how it can change your culture visit jeanettebronee.com, where you can also learn more about executive health coaching, speaking engagements and company workshops.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

What Emotional Currency Do You Accept?

“Emotional currency is the exchange we engage in when seeking self-satisfaction.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“I was just promoted and received the title of ‘Junior Assistant’ in the PR department. I don’t care if others in the department with my skill set are making $13k more than me. I’m a ‘Junior Assistant’!”

Those were the words of a very jubilant individual that was more satisfied with a title than money. His fulfillment came from the emotional currency he’d received that made him feel complete.

What emotional currency do you accept when seeking to placate your needs and wants? The more you’re aware of how and when emotional currency moves you, the greater the chance you’ll have to control the degree of your acceptance of it.

Emotional currency can come in many forms. It can be in the form of a raise; you have more money and thus, you feel better about yourself due to your new financial status. It can stem from acceptance of you by a group or others; you feel wanted. It’s also born from the elevation of your mental wellbeing as the result of how you see yourself. It can also be a manipulator used against you.

So, why should you be aware of the emotional currency you accept and when you accept it? The answer lies in what you’ll do to obtain it based on the circumstances you’re in. A moment ago, I stated that emotional currency can be a tool of manipulation. That means, when you’re emotionally depressed, you’re more likely to leap at the opportunity to enhance your emotional state of mind; a high state of emotional satisfaction is something that everyone seeks. All of us should know our limits so that we don’t merge into a limitless desire to obtain what we need. Plus, the more attuned you are to your emotional needs, the better you’ll be at making decisions that are beneficial to your long-term wellbeing.

You’ve more than likely heard the statement, ‘get a grip’. That means you should control your desires. Once you raise your awareness about the emotional currency you deal in, and the sources from which it’s refilled, you’ll be more mindful of determining the sources you’ll allow to replenish your needs … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations? 

In a negotiation, value is perceptional. That perception is based on where you are in the moment of the negotiation. If someone attempts to assuage your feelings by telling you how great a negotiator you are, depending on your emotional state of mind, that compliment may be all it takes to take you for all you have.

Be keenly alert when someone begins to heap praise upon you during a negotiation, especially if it seems to appear out of nowhere. More than likely it’s a ploy to enhance your emotional currency. The real thought may belie the exact opposite of the compliment that’s used to mollify you. To keep from being ‘played like a chump’, accept compliments given to you, but don’t let them deter you from your goals of achieving what you want. Be steadfast in your quest and see what becomes of the compliments. Therein will lie the uncovering of their real intent.

Remember, you’re always negotiating! 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Emotion #Currency #Business #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #liars #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Industries Management

Peloton: The Poster Child of Intentional Customer Attention

Create an Exceptional Customer Experience with Intentional Attention

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I’m obsessed with Peloton. What’s a Peloton, you ask? It’s basically a bike that goes nowhere. It is also a case study in my book, Attention Pays.

John Foley, the CEO, is the brainchild of Peloton, a stationary bike with a tablet attached. But what John will tell you is it’s a technology company, not a fitness company.

They are the poster child for intentional customer attention for many different reasons. John is very attentive to the community which has over 80,000 subscribers on their Facebook group. This active community posts questions about features they’d like, and then, the company incorporates them in the software.

They carefully choose instructors they know will resonate with riders. Their instructors have become so adored, they even have their own cult following. These instructors are like celebrities. Each very different and very talented, attracting a certain kind of customer. Instructors often times have their own Instagram and Facebook pages that riders can follow as well.

Peloton pays attention to their community, which is made up of home-riders. These home-riders use their bike in the basement, their home gym and on their patio while following instructors they love. Riders can choose to ride live recordings or ones previously recorded. They can select from many different scenic rides when the class model isn’t what they desire.

They even created the home rider invasion where riders leave the confines of their home and travel to New York. There, they get to meet their favorite instructors and do classes in the studio. Because their rider community is so strong, meeting each other in the home rider invasion is as much of a perk as meeting the instructors.  I a very loyal customer and any day I’m working from home, I take advantage of my Peloton. I love their instructors! Jennifer Jacobs is definitely one of my most favorites.

Peloton’s business model demonstrates how one leader paid intentional attention to the customer and created a revolution in the fitness industry. Are you ready to do the same in your business?

Categories
Best Practices Growth Health and Wellness Leadership

Self-Care is Not a Perk

It is the foundation for peak performance.

If you think you have to wait to take care of yourself and your needs until you are home from work, you are not alone. I had a boss one time, who told me that he did not need to eat lunch, so neither did I.

Now thankfully I am a Danish girl, who is used to eating lunch, so I told him that he would not want me around, if I did not have lunch. He sort of snorted and huffed at me, but I got to eat my lunch, though admittedly at my desk, while working, to avoid being yelled at.

There is something seriously wrong with our work-culture, when we get yelled at for taking a lunch-break. When I was working at ESPRIT in Europe, lunch-breaks were mandatory.

Everyone had to come to the canteen to eat together. It would not only build better team-work, because people who eat together chat and bond, it would also assure that everyone had the energy to work at their best for the rest of the day. Mind you everyone worked hard there, or maybe I should say focused. See work seems hard when we struggle to focus or have the energy. Or of course if an assignment or project is difficult, but when people say they work hard, it often means they feel drained and they are not having fun.

Not perks, essentials.

Lunch-breaks and health benefits are equally essential, but the difference is that one is preventative and the other we often don’t use until we burn out or get sick. Same thing with being able to pause and go get some fresh air to boost mental energy or take a walk to get rid of feeling stuck, starring at the same sentence in the presentation you are trying to write. These are all essentials for a good work culture. Not something we wait to do until we have time or we simply cannot keep going any longer and need to take a break. Pushing ourselves to the point of burn-out is a culture of struggle at work, a fight and flight mentality, that pushes us into survival-mode.

Survival-mode is not performance.

Being on survival-mode is not the same as performance-mode or the kind of stress that we thrive on to go beyond our comfort-zone for growth. On survival-mode we are hyper focused on getting out of trouble, we are in a fear-based work environment and we are trying to get to the finish-line of a project, because we are scared of what might happen if we don’t. It can be anything from; my client is going to fire me, my boss is going to yell at me, or even just missing a dead-line that is affecting other people if missed. If you add lack of water, food, pauses and rest to the mental state of stress, you are working on the edge of burn-out rather than the edge of creativity, performance and innovation.

Self-care is the foundation for work-performance.

When I consult with companies and leaders about how to shift from a personal and organizational mindset of survival to a mindset of performance, we start with self-care and how the daily work habits support each individual in doing their best work. Nourishment of a healthy work-force happens from the top down. When the leader eats, everyone eats. When the leader is healthy and practicing good self-care habits at work, everyone gets to take good care of themselves at work too. Now this is not just because we want everyone to be healthy, the point here is whywe want everyone to be healthy.

Health is not the goal, it is the foundation for doing our best work and peak-performance, because a healthy business comes from the inside out. A healthy business is about healthy people, happy people.

People who work healthy and go home happy with energy to spare. That is healthy work/life integration. Are you ready to change your work-habits around?

Find more information at jeanettebronee.com or get in touch on email to learn more about how you and your company can get healthy.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Categories
Best Practices Growth Health and Wellness Management

The Pressure of Stress

Photo by Romain-Peli

I am sure you know the feeling.

Time feels like it is going faster and faster and you cannot seem to control the speed, all you can do is hold on. The more you try to control it, the faster it seems to run. It feels like a rollercoaster or a run-away train and you don’t know where the next turn or challenge is coming from.  You feel as if things around you are getting fuzzy and your vision is getting blurry, all you can do is keep staring ahead of you to stay focused on holding on. It feels as if you are in a tunnel and there is no way out. You keep wondering when the train is going to run off the track and all you can do is…

Pause…

Stop for a moment and check in with your body. Are you holding your breath? Are you feeling the pressure in your chest or in your stomach, or both?

This is what it feels like when your thoughts are running off with you.

Time does seem to go faster these days. Because of technology, we can do so much more in less time than we could years ago. Wait… stop for a moment. Did I just say that because of technology we can do so much more in less time?

Time goes at the same speed as it always has and we all get the same 24 hours in a day. Unless you are orbiting earth, where you in one 24 hour day would experience 4 sunrises and 4 sunsets that is. That really messes with your perception of time, my astronaut friend Steve tells me. But here on earth, we can actually master our time, by becoming aware of our relationship with time and choose what we pay attention to.

The most easily accessible tool that we have to shift the build-up of stress inside of us, is to pause, even just for a moment. To breathe and shift our attention inward. Just noticing the pressure of stress inside of us can help ease the pressure. It is the power of pausing and taking a few mindful breaths, with the intention of giving some kindness, life and movement back to the tightness in our bodies.

Our relationship with time.

The pressure of stress comes from the inside out and so does the solution. We cannot control our surroundings or what happens, but we can only control, or rather master, how we engage and interact with what happens. That is the skill of a leader. To be able to pause, observe, acknowledge, reflect and then choose how to act.

The short version of this method is AAA.

Acknowledge – Accept – Act.

Acknowledge is the pausing and noticing of what is happening. To observe the situation and acknowledge the facts of the situation, not our thoughts about it, -the facts. The thoughts, as you saw above, can drive your stress. You were not on a run away train, you were imagining that you were on a run away train. Our thoughts are that powerful that they can create a sensation in your body, that has you believe you are in the situation that you are imaging. Stress gets worse because of our thoughts – if not we are just busy solving problems.

Accept is to stop resisting what is. Too often, we spend to much time and thought energy wishing it were different. If only… Why did… How could you… These are all a waste of time, energy and focus because it is looking backward. We only want to learn from the past, no need to rehash it unless it carries a lesson. It is the resistance to what could happen or rather the thoughts what might happen, that causes us the most stress. Action is the anti-dote to feeling stuck in this run-away train. And the pressure chamber inside your body.

Act is once we accept what the situation is, we can choose how to act from a constructive and creative, no-stress-induced mindset. We can act based on how to move forward, how to solve the problem and how to re-direct the plan. It is a bit like pulling over on the highway when you realize you are driving the wrong direction and reset your GPS. You would do that, right?

To learn more about how to fuel your performance and company culture from the inside out, contact Jeanette Bronée and let’s figure out if your company needs training, a keynote or if your leaders need coaching. To learn more at JeanetteBronee.com

Photo by Romain Peli via Unsplash.

Categories
Growth Health and Wellness

Put Your Phone Down – WARNING: Attention Fireworks Rant Ahead

If you know anything about me, you will know my most favorite thing in the world, besides my honey, is fireworks. I mean I love them, I’m totally captivated by them.

And what you may also know about me is as an Australian, the only night that I get super homesick for Sydney is New Year’s Eve, because if you know anything about Sydney and New Year’s Eve, it’s summer, and I used to live on the harbor and I had an apartment that looked at the Harbor Bridge. So, can you imagine the fireworks display?

Every year when I’m freezing cold on the East Coast, I get homesick. So, one year my honey and I decided to go back to New Year’s Eve in Sydney, so that I could fix my homesickness. Just recently, I celebrated New Year’s Eve in Turks and Caicos, what a beautiful place.

But let me tell what happened that totally made me crazy. First, you should know,  I’m little.  I’m four ten and a half.  I have to work hard to see above the heads of others in a packed crowd. Can you imagine my horror when I looked up in the sky, only to have my view blocked by people’s outstretched arms holding up their cell phones? Every single person all around me pulled out their stupid devices in a crazy attempt to record the display.

It’s not just that it made me crazy because I couldn’t see, it made me crazy realizing they weren’t being present in that moment. There they were in the presence of the most magnificent fireworks display. I mean in Sydney it was incredible, and this year in Turks and Caicos it was right above me and spectacular. Yet all people did was record it on their cell phones, which, by the way they will probably never watch. And I asked my honey why on earth are they doing this, his response surprised me. “They just want to post it on social media and show off to their friends.” Sad, yes, and likely true.

I mean seriously, this has got to stop. This is crazy. We need to make the most of every moment. Start by putting away devices, be present and make the most of the moment.

So, if you ever watch fireworks with me I warn you now, put away your cell phone. I just want to be with you and experience the joy and the magic of the captivating fireworks. So, this year I challenge you, start paying attention. Join me in the attention revolution and realize distraction decays, but attention pays.

Categories
Best Practices Body Language Culture Health and Wellness

Ever Been Bullied? It Could Be Your Fault!

Wait, before you start sending hate mail, please hear me out.  As someone who was bullied for years, I learned to cope with the humiliation and despair, but always felt there was something “wrong” with me.  When other people wanted to make me feel better they would almost always say the same thing, “Oh honey, there is nothing wrong with you, those kids are just mean…it’s not your fault…they are jealous of you.”  I was a sweet and loving kid that would never do anything to hurt someone.  So, it was easy to understand that it wasn’t my fault, but it was much harder for me to believe there wasn’t something wrong with me.  Oh, and jealous?  Jealous of what??  Jealous of feeling less?  Jealous of feeling ugly and rejected?  Jealous of being laughed at by bystanders that watched and did nothing?  Jealous of being scared out of my wits to go on the playground every day?  That statement “they’re just jealous of you” was just a straight up lie!  Don’t ever say that to someone being bullied!

If you have ever been bullied, you understand what I am talking about right now.  You didn’t want to hear another rousing encouragement attempt, no matter how sweet it is that they tried.  You wanted to know what was wrong with you that would make people treat you that way!  Well, I am here to tell you that there was, and maybe IS, something wrong with you that is causing all the bullying, but it may not be what you think.

Look at your life and ask yourself if the same type of people keep showing up.  I am going to share some traits and see if this describes those people that seem to latch on to you.

  • Has no patience with “stupid” people and at times tries to make you feel stupid
  • May complain about a clumsy waitress and be rude when not waited upon properly
  • Always finds a way to bring the conversation back to themselves
  • Has a constant need to be admired and respected, almost demanding of it
  • They don’t seem to have any kind of empathy toward “weaker” people
  • Always must be right and has a very difficult time believing they are wrong
  • Must always be the center of attention and can be quite charming

Think through your life and imagine the people that bullied you.  Did they have any of these traits?  Can you identify anyone in your life that you are currently dealing with that meets more than a few of these traits?

Now I want to ask you about your own personal traits.  Do you have any of the following traits?

  • Get overwhelmed when there are a lot of people around you
  • If there is someone angry in the room, you feel like any minute it will be turned toward you
  • When talking with someone new, you feel like they are going to “figure you out?”, so you keep a wall up and feel awkward
  • When you are around sad people, you can feel yourself getting depressed yourself
  • It is difficult for you to watch someone doing something embarrassing and you can feel panicked for them

Now, I know that I can’t fix everyone’s issues with this article, but what I hope to do is send you on a journey of understanding.  I believe that if you can put all the pieces together, life could begin to make more sense to you.  Even if you have never been bullied before, what I am about to share could change your life!

Every single one of us, broken down to our smallest particle, is made of energy.  We learned it in science class as an elementary student.  Protons, neutrons, electrons, you remember those elements, don’t you?  You and I are made of these elements.  It has been proven scientifically that even our thoughts have energy.  It can be physically measured!  Now I am going to share a term that you may or may not have heard of that has gotten a lot of attention over the last ten years.  It is called The Law of Attraction and it was brought into the light by a cheesy movie called “The Secret”.  It was mainly focused on getting rich and learning to get everything you ever dreamed of by simply thinking of it and feeling strongly about it as you thought about it.  That is the simple message, but most people think it’s a bunch of bull and would never stick with it long enough to see anything come to pass as the movie would suggest.  If it was true that we could just think it and it will happen, then everyone would win the lottery, be driving Lamborghinis, and be on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous!  Right?  Well, even though there are a lot of holes in the movie, the Law of Attraction has merit and is worth looking deeper into to gain understanding of the world around us.

So, back to bullying and how it could be your fault.  The traits we identified earlier are the traits of people on opposite ends of the energy spectrum.  The first guy, who always must be respected and admired and seems to have no empathy toward others, is considered a “narcissist” or someone with narcissistic tendencies.  The second guy, who is uncomfortable around lots of people or becomes panicked when someone else is being embarrassed or harassed is called an “Empath” or “highly sensitive”.  People can fall anywhere on the energy scale, but the two described above are the extremes on both ends.  If you are a Sci-Fi nerd like me, it can be looked at as “the dark side” or “the force”.  Those that are on the dark side can appear to be good, but the energy they draw from is extremely negative and self-serving.  Those who have the force has potential for great power for good in the world and have an almost magical sense of feeling the energies around them.  Unfortunately, like in Star Wars, people who once were driven by the force can turn to the dark side when they are overwhelmed by the negative energy.  They can become cynical, negative, and hateful, even though they hold the power to be extremely positive and lift up the people around them.  Once the force is understood and these empaths begin to control it, they can become the light in the room instead of feeling awkward.  They can instantly feel the pain the people around them are feeling and pull them out of the darkness!

So what does this have to do with bullying?  I believe that most children that are being bullied are those meant to bring good to the world.  They have a special gift that God gave them that is not only extremely special, but can be used to bring about amazing change to the world around them!  When told “it isn’t your fault”, they know intuitively that this response is not exactly true.  While they can reason that they haven’t done anything to bring it on, they know that something is wrong with them and it is happening because of them.  It took me years to put the pieces together and understand the power I have and the reasons why I was bullied as a child and felt so uncomfortable around people.  I didn’t understand that I was special or had any kind of power.  I somehow had the ability to allow the bullying to “pass through me” and still love the person doing the bullying, but it still played havoc on my mind.  I still didn’t understand why!  There were times growing up that I was confident and felt the power, but as soon as I felt like something good was happening, it would be squashed by someone attacking me and throwing negativity on me.  I felt many times like a wounded dog about to be torn apart by the pack.  So, I learned to become numb and allow people to treat me badly, but cope with it.  My power for doing good was kept within the walls of my identity as a person not allowed to become happy.

If you have ever been bullied, then you are probably identifying with me right now.  That is a good thing, because I am here to tell you that you have something very special that needs to be understood and cultivated.  You have an ability to do great good and the reason all of this has been happening to you is because you draw people from the opposite end of the spectrum into your life.  These narcissists lack empathy and it is true that opposites attract in this case.  They love to attach themselves to you in some way to literally draw the energy out of you!  They want to make you feel less, so they can feel superior!

Can you see it?  I don’t know where you are in your life right now, but I am imagining that the people reading this article will range from those who were never bullied that are angry at my title to those that were intrigued or maybe even excited that somebody finally said it.  You may have already been pulled over to the dark side and feel like you have already completely lost your mind.  To this person I want to say that it is not too late to stop being controlled by the negativity that bombarded you and continues to be drawn into your life.  The great thing about the Law of Attraction is that you can choose to end the negativity and start moving in the other direction.  You can learn to remove those thought patterns that keep drawing more junk into your life and start seeing a brighter future.  It won’t happen overnight as the movie might suggest, but if you build one block at a time and realize how special you are, then it can happen over time.  For some, it may happen very quickly and you will learn to walk freely in your newly found power!

If this article is resonating with you, then I would encourage you to study The Law of Attraction and the personalities on the energy spectrum.  Specifically study the “Empath” and the “Narcissist” and allow God to direct you back into what He intended for you.  Although you may not know what it is yet, I can tell you without question that you have a great purpose to change the world around you in a positive way.  Like Luke Skywalker, you will bring balance to the force and maybe even free a Darth Vader or two!