Thanksgiving and end-of-the-year holidays can mean get togethers with your family of origin or extended family. While that can include comforts and joys, it can also mean interacting with people who control, frustrate, criticize, or burden you.

There are so many other stresses you are likely facing this year, here are some tips to deal with that difficult family member and still have an enjoyable holiday experience.

Its time for you to heal from these upsetting relationships because they are keeping you from the happiness you could have and the contribution you were put here to make. You have two choices about how to deal with someone who is difficult:

1. You can try to make things better with them OR
2. You can stop trying to make things better and stop trying to get their respect.

Here’s my philosophy: Start with #1. You can “try” to make it better, BUT here’s the rule: After this many years, you have to assume the other person can’t or won’t change. You can only try if you try to improve YOUR contribution to the interaction, not change them in anyway. Examples of this are owning responsibility for what you have contributed; speaking to them respectfully; acknowledging things that are important to them (like their birthday, their kids, etc), setting better boundaries, making your requests more clearly, etc.

If #1 isn’t working, or hasn’t worked for a long time, then do #2: Stop Trying. And Use the strategies below instead.

1. Sort out “my stuff” from “their stuff”

Know that what they say tends to be about them, rather than about you. You don’t feel heard or understood because they are stuck in outdated perceptions of you. The way they see you reveals more about where they are stuck than about what is factually true about you.

However, if you are truly hurt by their negative perceptions of you, its usually because you have the same view of yourself as they have of of you (much as you hate to admit it!). Their words only serve to activate your own doubt about yourself.

If this is the case, then your real opportunity is to stop being upset with them, and to start 1) accepting who you are now or 2) taking action everyday to become a person you are proud to be. Click here if you want the shortcut to being confident and specific strategies to hold your own with that difficult person.

If you see yourself more favorably than they see you, you will be more disappointed rather than angry. It is truly sad for both of you that they are stuck or obnoxious, because its causing both of you to miss out on a much more mutually satisfying relationship. But all of your efforts to make the situation better are really just your efforts to put off the grief over not having the love and respect you deserved from that person. The best thing you can do is to create a new family of people who you can feel connected to, feel seen by, and enjoy.

2. Protect yourself from their negativity

To protect yourself, surround yourself with an imaginary shield. Use whatever metaphor works for you (e.g., surround yourself with rays of white light, place an imaginary glass cone around you). Another thing that works well is to imagine the person is speaking in that garbled tone like ‘Charlie Brown’s teacher’, so you are paying attention to them but not taking in the specifics.

3. Kill them with Kindness

If I ever start killing you with kindness, beware! I recommend Kill the person with Kindness for situations in which you’ve given up on trying to improve the situation. Use this strategy when you have to stay in the situation, and you just want to survive – not inflame – the bad behavior. Try to be genuine, at least as much as possible!

4. Be Thankful

Remember that the way that person talks to you is the way they talk to themselves all day long. So, be thankful that you only have to hear it a few hours a week/month/year, etc. rather than every minute of everyday like they have to. Think about when that person won’t be on the Earth anymore, and try to appreciate what you can about them for now.

Your takeaway: Accept the other person’s level of evolution and work on yours!

(Print this out and carry it with you to Thanksgiving dinner if you need to…)

With great appreciation to you for following my work,

Sharon

Please leave your comment about how to deal with a difficult family member at Thanksgiving?

The reason I’m asking if you leave work at a reasonable hour is that I’m concerned about how stressed or how happy you are at work. A recent survey indicated that 89 percent of happy people versus 49 percent of unhappy people leave work at a reasonable hour.*

You know what else they found? 87% of workers report that work-life balance stress affects their health negatively. Are you one of the 87%?

Here’s a piece of practical wisdom you can take from the study: People who take breaks during the work day are much happier (68% vs 41%).

Often you may feel guilty taking a break, especially because you have so much work to do. But did you know, the world’s elite athletes maintain their energy and focus throughout long games by practicing a Sprint-Recovery pattern?**

It’s been proven for ‘business athletes’ like yourself as well. The best way to have All Day Focus and Energy, is to concentrate intensely for 60-90 minutes, then take a 10 minute break to rejuvenate. Do this whenever you are not in meetings.

Here’s where the gender issue comes into play. Ok, don’t shoot the messenger! Women are 35% less likely to take breaks than men.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that the study found women are 33% unhappier than men in the office??

If you don’t leave work at a reasonable hour, or you are a woman who thinks it would be impossible to schedule in time for a mental reset break, then choose one of the following and do it right now:

1) Register for my upcoming call Success under Stress for Women: How to Double your Effectiveness at Work and Your Energy at Home. I will show you how to organize your days so that you take breaks AND get your most important work done. You will learn how you can have energy all day long and not come home exhausted at night.

or

2) Respond to this email and schedule a strategy session with me to determine if it’s right for us to work together individually. If so, you will get handfuls of tools to get your important work done efficiently, and be present for the people that are important to you after work – I personally guarantee it.

* http://officepulse.captivate.com/work-life-balance
**The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

We’re coming to the end of summer, what has the highlight of your summer been? Sure, go on…relive that moment now.

For me it happened last week while in the San Francisco Bay Area after doing a training on Influence and Friction-Free Relationships for a company. I took off a handful of days to go mountain biking in Lake Tahoe and then visited with my two oldest friends – healthy organic food,lots of laughs, supporting one another’s direction.

Most of the time I was able to be ‘off’, but there were still some moments that thoughts about work still made me feel ‘on’.

Does that happen to you too? Is it a challenge to stay present and relaxed during your free time or when you are on vacation?

Those moments obsessing about work still exist but have become “fewer and farer” between for me (in particular, that’s why I love to mountain bike…I HAVE to be ‘out of my head’ and ‘in the moment’ if I want to return home in one piece!).

As the gates close on summer, and we face our last 3 day weekend to take off on vacation, here are some reminders to be able to enjoy your free time:

1) Regain control. Decide before your vacation what you expect yourself to do/not do, and also communicate that to colleagues. Do a brain dump and write down everything in your mind, then make a plan for how to tackle the overwhelm when you will do the work. Don’t do the bad compromise of saying you will hang out with family but then not be present. Instead, create clear boundaries of time and space between when you are doing your free time and when you are doing your work. Do a brief routine or visualization that helps you decompress and mark your transition from one to the other.

2) Amplify your positive sensations. If you are with family members and friends you love, amplify your feelings for them. Fill your mind with the things you love about them. Fill yourself with gratitude that you have such opportunities to be away from work, that you have people you love, that you have the degree of health you have, etc. Those thoughts will crowd out and put in perspective your overwhelmed thoughts.

3) Learn meditation. In the past months I’ve learned the meditation technique called Transcendental Meditation. I’ve always had a hard time ‘stilling my mind’ (some of you can relate!), but I find with this technique I am very easily and quickly able to get into a deep state of relaxation – more easily than with any other form of meditation. The benefits last throughout the day. You can read about its benefits in a recent book called Transcendence. I ‘feel’ noticeably calmer and present (ok, those of you who know me personally can weigh in here…).

4) “Get over” your perfectionism and procrastination. Are you the kind of person where everything needs to be done first (and perfectly), before you can relax?

Are you needing to do work on your free time because you put it off during the week, and now the deadline is approaching?

Perfectionism and procrastination are different but often have a similar root cause. You can get rid of them quickly and permanently, click here to get started.

Are you too hard on yourself?

Do people tell you they really like you, or think you are great at what you do – but still inside you think you are ‘not enough’

Do you criticize yourself to try to motivate yourself, but really all it does is stress you out and get in the way of success?

Here’s the irony: You work so hard for other people to think well of you, and once they do you don’t even take in their compliment.

You work so hard to achieve progress, and once you do, you just set the bar higher and keep working harder. That’s not a lot of enjoyment or peace of mind, just hard work.

Get over your critical inner voice so you can stop the hammering inside your own head and start being your own champion (and not pass your stern voice down to your kids!)

Do this instead:

Be tougher on yourself. Tougher? Yes.

When you focus on falling short and what you did wrong, you are dwelling. Dwelling is the easy way out, it’s talking about it but not doing something about it.

You consider yourself a hard worker? Great, work hard at this: Learn from situations by asking questions and acting on the answers.

Let’s take an example: Is there someone you are comparing yourself to who is further along?

1) Is that person making good use of their unique talents? Probably.  Are you?

2) Do you have a gut feeling you should be doing something differently but haven’t acted on it? Why not?

3) Have you been too overwhelmed to pay attention to improvement? If you agree with your current priorities, no excuse to beat yourself up. If not, shift priorities to free you up.

4) Has that more successful person worked smarter or procrastinated less? What can you do to be more efficient and take action on what you should?

5) Does that person have a written articulation of what ‘enough’ means to them? In the absence of a clear idea of ‘good enough’ you will always perceive yourself to fall short.

6) What is the tone that person uses to talk to themselves (and therefore the people around them?) How can you make a soundtrack your mental iPod that energizes you?

Don’t beat yourself up and deprive yourself an opportunity to learn. The ‘easy’ way is to dwell, the ‘hard’ way is to make it better.

Let me make the ‘hard’ way EASY for you. In my online interactive Confidence at the Core training starting in early April, you will get a toolkit to get rid of that negative voice.

You CAN have the confidence to have the success you’ve imagined personally and professionally.

Think YOU can’t get rid of that negative voice in 5 weeks? Read this and see for yourself!

(Do it now because the early 50% off webinar-based registration is coming down with the last webinar on Monday)

P.S. Thanks a ton for all the friends and colleagues you’ve been sending to the webinar on 3 Steps to Own the Room, Earn What you are Worth, and Ensure your Hard Work Leads to Success. Just from attending, people have made more profitable sales calls and worked out stressful familysituations. Click here to attend yourself or forward the link to your friends.

Have you spent the last 2 years working even harder but for less return?

Do you think you can’t move on because another opportunity may not be out there, or do you fear what you’re doing won’t provide the level of income you need?

Many of you have told me your confidence has taken a big hit during these times. Even though you put on your game face each day, there is a part of you that has become defeatist – feeling that not matter how hard you push yourself it’s just not enough.

Yet some in your industry/company seem to be doing better than ever. You may wonder “why does it look so easy for them”?

I’ll tell you – -  the foundation of their success is confidence.

Their confidence allows them to respond to an absence of results with creative ideas, the courage to reinvent themselves, and a deepening of their relationships.  They ‘go for it’, ‘ask for it’, and inspire others to follow them. They don’t hold back to avoid possible criticism or failure.

No matter what your position, you are selling yourself everyday and the first sale is always be to yourself. If you’re not inspired by yourself, if you are not convinced that you should get the business or promotion (or even the personal relationship), how will someone else be?

Learn the techniques to get that self assurance in “Confidence at the Core: 3 Steps to Own the Room, Earn What you are Worth, and Ensure your Hard Work Leads to Success.”

If you live in NY metro, register to attend the presentation live in NYC.

If you live outside NY, register to attend the presentation by webinar.

How much money does your self doubt cost you?

This Top 10 checklist shows you a few of the ways self doubt keeps money out of your pocket.  Take it as a quiz and see how many opportunities you will have to get ahead financially once you have Confidence at the Core:

10. You’ve never acted on those ‘killer ideas’ (e.g., You’ve had an idea for a business or product that could really be a break out, but get stuck in ‘what ifs’ and never put your ideas into play.)

9. You don’t sell yourself effectively (e.g., You pass up opportunities to speak up or, when you do speak you freeze, play down what you do, use boring general words or understatements, gloss over deserved credit, or make self deprecating jokes. Or you say articulate words out loud but inside doubt whether you are smart enough)

8.  You sell yourself short on fees or you don’t negotiate a salary or a raise. (e.g., You ‘cave’ in the moment you start to ask for the higher fee, or you don’t ask for the raise when its merited – out of fear the person won’t think you are worth that much.)

7.  You stay in your comfort zone (e.g., You avoid rejection by calling or interacting only with people you know like you, rather than branching out. You second guess by assuming others don’t want to talk with you.)

6.  You remain undistinguished, a commodity, not someone who leads. (e.g., You don’t introduce new ideas or services; You don’t take the lead on a needed reform or speak up when others aren’t willing to; You don’t write blogs that are thought-provoking and authentic; You are afraid of being judged, or that innovation won’t work, so you stay with the status quo.)

5.  You spend time managing politics (e.g., you try to get senior people to think well of you through people pleasing or by hiding, instead of getting them to think well of you through your effectiveness and big results!)

4. You leave opportunities on the table. (e.g., You don’t follow up on referrals you perceive are at a higher level than you are, or don’t volunteer for stretch assignments.  You don’t ASK for the business, you wait for the other person to volunteer to hire you; You don’t raise your hand for opportunities or promotion, you wait for your boss to read your mind or wish that mentors would advocate for you.)

3. You don’t stand your ground when interacting with difficult people. (e.g., You take blame on yourself and believe its ‘your fault’, thus overlooking all the constructive responses you could have to understand that difficult person and make a better working relationship with them. You fall back on your heels when talking with someone intimidating)

2.  You don’t own the value of your time. (e.g.,  You let people interrupt you; you let people take advantage of your advice without setting boundaries and then get aggravated; you try to be all things to all people and aren’t as effective at one thing; you tolerate others bad behavior because you are afraid of what they will do if you speak up)

And drum roll please…my personal favorite:
1.   You don’t do things that others wouldn’t dare to do. (e.g., A realtor who took my Confidence at the Core program handed out his business cards to Lehman Brothers employees on the morning of their bankruptcy – he ended up featured on the evening news, getting a handful of new clients, plus a 5 figure commission for a referral deal he did zero work on! Not bad for 60 minutes worth of work!) Would you have the confidence to do that?

How many ways is your Confidence level costing you money?

Don’t let your doubts cause you to leave real income on the table.

Learn the shortcuts to achieve Confidence at the Core. I will share with you the 3 step process you need to go from self criticism to self confidence quickly and permanently.

If you live in NY metro, register to attend the presentation live in NYC.

If you live outside NY, register to attend the presentation by webinar.

To your success,

Sharon

P.S. Learn the shortcuts to achieve Confidence at the Core. I will share with you the 3 step process you need to go from self criticism to self confidence quickly and permanently.  Click here to attend the live presentation in NY,  or if you live outside of NY click here to attend the presentation by webinar.

P.P.S.  Did you take the quiz?  How many ways is your self doubt costing you money?

Do you take it personally when:

• You don’t hear back from a person you’ve called?
• Your boss recognizes your colleague’s success but not yours?
• A family member criticizes you?
• What is the impact to your productivity when you take it personally?

Does it put you in a bad mood and make you sulk? Do you waste time venting to a friend or surfing the ‘net? Do you lie in bed replaying the situation in your mind, wondering what you did wrong?

To reverse this trend you need to understand why you take things personally. It’s because of your self doubt. You question yourself: Am I enough, or Am I not enough? Is it my fault?

That causes you to seek ‘what other people think about you’ as the answer to your questions. You make it ‘all about you’.

Each time you take something personally you reinforce your self doubt. Each time you take something personally you act in a way you’ll regret.

The result is not only lost time and focus, but also credibility (which impacts your bottom line.)

Let me explain to you how to free yourself from taking things personally and show you how to get rid of your doubts.

Join me for “Confidence at the Core: 3 Steps to Own the Room, Know your Worth, and Ensure your Hard Work Leads to Success.”

You will learn:

• Why you have tried for years to become more confident but still doubt yourself…and the exact toolkit you need for fast and lasting confidence
• How to ‘own the room’ and get noticed for promotion
• How to stop taking things personally and stop worrying if you will be criticized
• How to make your hard work result in the success you want
• How to clear your mind of mental chatter and get peace of mind

If you live in the NY metro area, click here to attend the presentation in-person.

If you live outside the NYC area, click here to attend the presentation by webinar.

Does your ‘to do’ list feel like the never-ending stream of clowns getting out of a Volkswagen?

Conventional wisdom suggests that to reduce your overwhelm you should ‘Prioritize’. But your challenge is that Everything Seems Urgent.

Below is the formula to win in situations of ‘too much to do and not enough time’. Be sure to read to the end because it’s my birthday today and to honor it I’m giving you a very extensive gift that will help you manage all you have on your plate.

1) Know your Purpose and Personal Strengths

Are you someone who is trying to be all things to all people because you haven’t identified your personal strengths and established a clear purpose for this next stage in your career? Knowing your purpose and personal strengths will give you the filter to choose work and commitments that will help you reach your next level fast, rather than getting caught up in whatever urgent priority presents itself as a shiny object in the moment.

2) Problem-solve at root causes:

a) Push-back on your Manager (if you work in an organization)

When your boss piles on more assignments, you can say: “I am currently working on x, y, z projects and to take on this I’ll need to free up some bandwidth. Where does this new assignment fall within my current priorities?”

Or, address the 3 legs of the Project Management stool: Time, Scope, or Resources. For example:, “In order to get that to you in the time requested I’ll need to either increase my resources, or reduce the project scope”.

b) Position Yourself Effectively (if you work for yourself)

You are overwhelmed by having to service your clients and develop new business. The less clear you are in your positioning, the more you will waste time running around doing the ‘spray and pray’ approach to your marketing. The more clear you are in your positioning, the easier it is for people who need your service to know whether you are the right provider (making your sales process quicker) or not the right service provider (preventing tire-kickers and people who will waste your time). Know why a prospect would come to you rather than your competitor, and put all of your marketing efforts into differentiating yourself based on that strength.

3) Prioritize results

Are you the type of person who gets bogged down in the details, keeps saying you need to figure it out or ‘let’s discuss, or always has balls in the air without completion?

If so, you are keeping too much on your plate and you’ve got to quickly learn that talking about it and making lists about it are not the same as doing it! Ease away from your focus on process and become a heat-seeking missile for results!

Are you the type of person who gets a small high from ticking minor, low-value items off your ‘to do’ list? If so, you want to develop a results focus so you will work to complete your “A-list” project whenever you have available time in the day, and not get distracted with your B or C projects until A has crossed into the endzone (Yes, I do encourage you to do the end zone dance after completing meaningful projects, like the football players do when they make a touchdown)!

4) Prune your time-wasters with a “not to do” list

Learn how to sift through all your projects and identify the low value and high value work, and cut out the low-value, energy-sapping work. Then change the culture on your team so that everybody agrees to focus on the high value work and not disrespect others’ time.

5) Practice Productivity Habits

A few examples include: Implement a daily “Focus Hour”; Do daily planning with the right kind of ‘to do’ list; Build in preparation time at the time you schedule meetings; Establish on-ramps and off-ramps for new habits, etc.

Warning! Your never-ending stream of demands and projects is going to keep coming and coming. You must take control of solving the problem in order to prevent critical items from falling through the cracks and losing out on your personal time.

You can learn how to apply this step-by-step formula in my Productivity Mindset program (along with many other strategies to know exactly what to do when you have multiple competing priorities). In addition, the program shows you how to:

• Eliminate 85% of Interruptions and Distractions
• Stop procrastinating
• Overcome confidence blocks blocks that get in the Way of your Productivity

The Productivity Mindset program even guarantees you:

• Peace of mind (knowing you are keeping up and won’t let critical items fall through the cracks)
• Balance (from gaining an extra hour of time with your family each day)
• Income (Expect thousands more in income each month or more recognition as a respected contributor to your organization because of your increased productivity)
• Control over your life (Rather than being stressed out and consumed by never-ending tasks)

Being a perfectionist will keep you from getting work done and getting home earlier. Why? There is the time you waste agonizing over every word in emails. Then there is the time wasted worrying over whether the finished product will be good enough. Finally, there is energy wasted procrastinating.
Perfectionism is not a Mindset that will help you increase your Productivity!

How can you keep high standards but not let perfectionism get in your way?

Try these shifts in your mindset to get control of your productivity:

1) Old mindset: “Perfect is the only way to get it done”
Productivity Mindset: “Done is better than perfect”

2) Old mindset: Figure it all out in your head, worry what people will think of your ‘smarts’, and deliver something that is perfect on the first go around.

Productivity Mindset: Put together a well thought out first draft, get colleague/client/customer feedback. Then rapidly iterate a next ‘better’ version until your project or offering is highly responsive to its audience and has wide buy-in.

3a) Old mindset (for corporate employees): Your work needs to be 100% perfect all of the time.

Productivity mindset (for corporate employees): Employ the “80-20″ rule to get work to the point of ‘good enough’ to be sent out (because you have 5 other projects you have to deliver by the end of the day!) Further, make decisions rather than putting them off, expect that your judgment will be correct 80% of the time (and learn from the 20% it’s not.)

3b) Old mindset (for business owners): Every thing I say and write will be scrutinized by prospects and clients to determine whether they want to work with me.

Productivity mindset (for business owners): You leave an impression on prospects and clients through your consistent presence, empathy, and provision of solutions to their problems. There will rarely be one particular memo or meeting that is a referendum on whether a client wants to work with you.

This mindset shift is just 1 of the 29 strategies to End Procrastination revealed in my Productivity Mindset program, which I am offering to you as a valued member of my list at 50% off the regular investment. In it you will also discover every strategy you need to:

• Control the never-ending stream of tasks and prioritize when you have multiple competing projects.
• Eliminate 85% of Interruptions and Distractions
• Overcome Confidence Blocks that Get in the Way of your Productivity.

The Productivity Mindset program guarantees you:

1) Peace of mind (knowing you are keeping up and won’t let critical items fall through the cracks)

2) Balance (from gaining an extra hour of time with your family each day)

3) Income (expect thousands more in income each month or more recognition as a respected contributor to your organization because of your increased productivity)

4) Control over your life (rather than being stressed out and consumed by never-ending tasks)

Thank you to all of you who applied for the complimentary Strategy Session I offered last week. It was awesome to talk to a large handful of you about the challenges you are facing.

Since I couldn’t speak with all of you personally, let me fill you in on a theme I heard a lot: You KNOW what you SHOULD be doing, but you aren’t doing it. You tell yourself that you “really need to” do something to turn your situation around, and are baffled why you don’t. Each day you do the same things and sink deeper into your stressful situation and personal misery.

The first step to taking action is knowing what your block is. One way you can start to get clarity is to set aside time to do the project that you know you’ve been needing to do. Write it into your calendar, protect the time, and have serious intent to carry it through. When it comes time to do it, notice what images come to your mind. You will have a mental picture that will reveal your block.

Read on so you can ‘listen in over my shoulder’ as I give you examples from the Strategy Sessions this week how your fellow list subscribers got unblocked and started taking action.

1) A salesperson knew he needed to make more phon calls but couldn’t even though he was near being fired. When he imagined picking up the phone to call prospects, he expected a response of no interest because he had heard this so many times. His block was that he expected his efforts wouldn’t work. So we wrote out a whole new script giving a valuable free benefit to the prospect right up front and compelling the prospect to schedule a follow up meeting. The next morning the salesman used the approach and made a hefty sale.

2) A middle manager at a big state agency needed to do a high-visibility audit done, but he couldn’t get started. His blocks were self-doubt and self-centered thinking. He was worried that the final deliverable would be judged unfavorably and that the recommendations of the audit would be politically unpopular. We changed his focus so he saw the audit as an opportunity to clean up corruption in state agencies, help millions of state consumers get better rates, and protect the environment. He stopped making the project about what others would think about him and started making it about what he could contribute. He was immediately motivated to get started.

3) A woman investment banker wants work life balance but keeps staying late at the office. She knows she’s not happy but didn’t know what would make her happy. Her block was not knowing. We identified that her priority is a successful relationship that leads to marriage. But she didn’t know what her passions were, she didn’t know how to meet men of caliber, and she didn’t know how to have successful courtship. So we started with an exercise that reconnected her with her longtime passion of education, which led to a smile! Then we made a plan to start getting on Boards of organizations in the educational reform field where lots of male investment bankers serve. She was ready to rock n’ roll!

Tip: The first step to taking action is to know what is getting in the way of you doing what you know you should be doing.

Schedule a good block of time to do what you know you need to do on your calendar and then see what mental picture comes to your mind. That will give you a clue what your block is. Please leave a comment about what you find out…

More next week as I give you some tips on getting over your own perfectionism..