Thank you for being patient with me as I finished my book Success under Stress, I’ve missed you! Though you haven’t been receiving emails from me, I’ve been talking to you through my fingers on the keyboard every day. I wrote a 100,000 word book, then my publisher told me I had to get it down to 72k…back I went to the keyboard!

In the last few weeks, I gave a number of trainings at companies like Procter and Gamble, Pfizer, and GE so I had a chance to talk to a lot of business professionals like you. One of the themes I heard was the importance of turning obstacles into opportunity. According to Accenture (2010), 71% of senior executives say it is the trait they are looking for in making retention and promotion choices. Business owners who can do this well keep their business afloat in difficult times.

To help you think about turning the obstacles in your life into opportunities, try turning the obstacle on its head and seeing it as the gateway to your breakthrough success. Here are two illustrative stories:

1. In an outdated by illustrative story from Benjamin Zander’s delightful book, The Art of Possibility, two shoe salesmen are sent to Africa. After checking out the territory, one writes back by telegram, “No one in Africa wears shoes. I’m coming home.” The other salesman writes back by telegram, “No one in Africa wears shoes. Send the whole sales team!” The former salesman saw the obstacle, the latter saw the opportunity.
2. Any obstacle you face can be turned into a goal in which you build the solution – and thus take yourself to the next level.

   I had a front-row seat to watch this agility in action as I’ve coached the fearless CEO of the non-profit Foundation for Social Change, Louise Guido. Despite a partnership with the United Nations and early successes in creating path-changing outcomes for children, the Foundation could not find funding for its education programs.

   As the CEO was on the brink of discontinuing the Foundation, we looked at the lack of funding as an opportunity instead of an obstacle. She decided to start a “for-benefit enterprise” that would fund and sustain the non-profit, i.e. “we’ll fund it ourselves”. Within six months, they developed a mobile application version of its curriculum. The CEO flew around the world and inked partnership deals with eight telephone handset operators on four continents to distribute mobile phones pre-loaded with their curriculum to girls and women entrepreneurs. Revenue is now generated by sponsorships from companies wanting to reach this “bottom of the pyramid” demographic, and by micro-payments made by the mobile users themselves each time they download the apps. These micro payments may be pennies on the dollar, but when you have 200+ million users it adds up! Now the Foundation is funded, millions of people around the world receive beneficial education and large companies “do well by doing good.” Can you think of a better example of turning obstacle into opportunity?!

What is an obstacle you face in your life?

How can you re-frame it as an opportunity?

Elite athletes, such as the two champions who recently stayed at peak performance for a five-hour tennis match, demonstrate an optimal natural pattern to their exertion. It is a Sprint/Recovery pattern, in which you focus intensely and then recover and replenish your energy by doing something that fully disengages the parts of your brain focused on work and effectively rejuvenates you. For most of us, the optimum pattern is 90 minutes of intense focus followed by renewal. This number is based on our natural circadian rhythms that go in 90 minute cycles throughout the day.

With this approach, you are getting energy from the natural rhythm of your body. In contrast, most of us work in a pattern that could be characterized as ‘push-push-push’ all day long, then fall over in exhaustion at night!

Tony Schwartz of the Energy Project is a central advocate of this sprint-recovery pattern. His recent blog (http://bit.ly/vZFh5G) summarized below, shows the results of two people working the same 10 hour day but with different results:

One works without stopping, juggling tasks at her desk and running between meetings all day long. Because of the law of diminishing returns, by the end of the day, is down to 30% capacity. Out of a 10 hours at the office, this person does 6 hours of work.

The other by contrast, works intensely for approximately 90 minutes at a stretch, and then takes a 15 minute break before resuming work. At 12:15, s/he goes out for lunch for 45 minutes, or works out in a nearby gym. At 3 pm, s/he closes his eyes at her desk to breathe deeply for a few minutes. Finally, between 4:30 and 5, s/he takes a 15 minute walk outside. S/He feels comfortable working at 90 percent capacity, because s/he knows s/he’s going to have a break before too long. S/he is still at 70% capacity at the end of the day. This person delivered 6 ½ hours of work – a half hour more than the first – and has made fewer mistakes and has energy left over for her/his family.

Women – you in particular think that you have no time to take breaks. Read the passage I just summarized again!

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in writing the book is that our problem is not that we are ‘always on’ and push all day long. Our problem is that most of us can’t find the ‘off’ button. We don’t follow expenditure with renewal so we start to get depleted and have little reserve left. That’s also why it’s hard to get to sleep at night, you haven’t trained your body to exert and renew, you’ve only trained your body to stay on. That’s also why when you finally put yourself in a situation to relax, you crash.

The best thing you can do to have ‘all day energy’ AND to have relaxation is to start to implement the Sprint-Recovery pattern into your day. Start with the times that you don’t have meetings so it will be easier to schedule.

When I interviewed Tony Schwartz I learned that it’s the quality of your recovery, not so much as the quantity. Even if you only have 5 minutes in between meetings, spend it doing deep breathing or vigorous exercise. Spend even 1 minute doing this breath that will clear the harmful stress hormone cortisol from your blood stream: Breathe in slowly to the count of 3, Breathe out slowly to the count of 6.

My favorite story is of my client who has a financial firm with seven employees. Every hour on the hour the alarm goes off and one person leads all the women in the office in 3 minutes of vigorous exercise. The women in that company are keeping their brains and bodies fit and fabulous. Three minutes of Lady Gaga can get me going, how about you?

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?

Do you ever have the experience where you are worried what is going to happen in the future? It’s not anything specific, or maybe it’s many specific challenges that are all adding up. You might even know your anxiety is ‘irrational’ but that doesn’t help!

Here are two approaches you can use to ‘think positive’ and get back into a state where you have ease and can concentrate.

Focus on the Moment

• Focus on the specific physical feeling you are having in your body, not on your thoughts. For example, say to yourself slowly, “I feel tension in my shoulders; I have a sinking feeling in my stomach.” Don’t focus on thoughts like, “What if I lose my job” or “I have so much to do”. Before 7 seconds have passed, you will notice a shift in the feeling in your body and breathing will come easier. Keep doing this a few times until the feeling of anxiety has passed.
• Focus on what you CAN control in the moment. Your thoughts tend to run wild towards worst case scenarios and what you can’t control. Try to pinpoint something specific you are worried about, and determine specifically what worries you about the situation. Ask yourself, “What can I do right now to have more control over the outcome of this situation?” Action replaces fear.
• Train your body to get rid of fear. Do this exercise: Bring together the tips of the thumb and index finger and bring your hands up so they are in front of your chest facing away from you. You will breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth. Each time you breathe out, forcefully push your hands away from you like you are pushing away something you don’t want and blow out through your mouth. Then breathe in through your nose and bring your hands back towards your chest, with your elbows by your side. Do this exercise for 1-3 minutes and you will train your body to get rid of fear.

Take yourself out of the moment – Sometimes overfocusing on the moment keeps you stressed. Instead:

• Project yourself into the future. Picture yourself in the distant future, when this particular moment is insignificant and you have worked out your current problems. This ‘future’ version of your self has more perspective on your overall life than you do right now – ask it what the best way is to proceed in the current situation.
• Use distraction. Make the distraction productive: connect with other people, go outside in a natural environment that is soothing for your senses, do a breathing exercise, listen to music or a motivating talk. Don’t just numb out with an unmemorable surfing session on the internet or putter around at your desk. Probably the best distraction you can do is to be grateful for the problems that you have. Though it sounds trite, there are many people in the world whose problems are much worse than yours. I immediately think of a child I support in Africa barely living with running water, or a man I often see in the subway station who has no arms. It immediately gives me renewed appreciation for all that I have and then energizes me to do something with it. This works for a lot of people and may work for you too!

Here’s a link to a recording that previews the Success under Stress for Women program. We start the actual program next week so if you want to be more efficient at accomplishing work, have good concentration and energy all day long and sleep through the night, then don’t miss getting on the train that’s about to leave the station. Click here to find out more.

Here’s to you being positive when you are anxious!

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

There are plenty of aggravations these days that are out of your control. The effects of the economy, and other people’s flaws are obvious examples.

But for many of the problems that eat up your time and energy, you may have a hand in causing them yourself. This is not blame, this is good news! That means you can quickly do YOUR part to have more success with less stress.

Think of a chronic frustration or an acute challenge you are facing. Ask yourself if you are ‘causing’ it in any of these ways:

1. Your lack of clarity at the beginning sets up problems downstream. For a recent speech I had to write, I didn’t get a clear idea of the topic from the organization and I allowed myself to start without a clear idea of what I wanted to say. I ended up writing 3 drafts of it until I became clear, wasting a lot of my time and energy. It would have been better to require myself and the organization to be clear before I started.
2. You create problems in your mind that don’t exist objectively. Kathy is a senior woman in a global consulting firm. She came to me when she couldn’t leave work behind, didn’t go for a bigger position, and didn’t have balance in her life. Even though in reality she has an intimidating boss, high-stakes projects, and upcoming reorganizations, objectively speaking she is fairly secure in her position and well liked. It’s only in her mind that she believes her self-criticism is justified, and that she could be fired suddenly. Because of these fears she overworked and could rarely be ‘off’ from work. She came to understand that her whole behavior pattern was set up to not re-experience the pain and hardship she faced when her Dad abandoned the family early on. When she connected the dots she saw that her fears about others’ judgments weren’t objective and developed a realistically positive evaluation of herself. She learned to speak confidently to her boss about expanding her role, and each day she leaves feeling that she’s done ‘enough’ and sleeps well through the night.
3. You weren’t aware of the root cause of earlier forms of the problem, or chose to pursue only band-aid solutions, and now the problem is much worse. A business owner recently came to work with me, he is wicked smart yet overwhelmed with work and earning 40% less than he wants to. At first he thought it was a staffing issue and brought in a consultant to find the right people. He thought it was a time management issue, and set up schedules. He entered a business coaching program to grow his business. Together they helped just a little bit, but still he was miserable. What was the real culprit in his problem? Early in our coaching, he discovered he was creating the chaos because of his deep belief that he isn’t worthy of success. So first order of business was getting rid of his negative voice. Now that he believes in his worth, our efforts to get the right people in place and manage time better are finally paying off — in the form of more money and more time!

What are your ideas about how you might be ‘causing’ your problem?

In what situation in your life are you ignoring early warning signs of a bigger problem, or settling for band-aid solutions that don’t get at the root cause?

If you have a vague idea you are causing your problems but don’t know how to fix it, simply respond to this email and my assistant Ann will schedule a brief consultation between us. I will tell you exactly what you need to do to end creating your own problems and instead start creating your success and happiness. My online programs and coaching packages personally guarantee you will ‘get out of your own way’ and get the result you came to me for.

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.

Given that its 99 degrees outside, I think we can declare it’s summer! Bikini season…shirtless outdoor play… it’s time for you to get in shape so you don’t feel self conscious this summer. And not just physically! Read below to see if you could use a ‘mental diet’ too.

You know not to think the obvious kinds of negative thoughts. Thoughts like “I am not as smart as my counterparts” or “I can’t…” Those are easily identified as thoughts to remove from your mental diet. Here are 3 other kinds of ‘empty calories’ thoughts. Cut them out immediately!

1. Unanswerable questions – When things aren’t going your way, you often ask an unanswerable question, such as Why don’t things work out for me? or Why does it look so easy for the guy who sits next to me? or Why doesn’t the person in operations get back to me?

   You ask these questions but you are not actually looking for the answers. What you really want is progress on your situation. When you say to yourself, Why don’t things work out for me, it causes you to dwell on what’s not working, and it doesn’t set you up to get information you could implement to make things go differently for you. Better to ask a constructive question, like: “What is one behavior I see the guy next to me doing that I could do today?” Instead of staying stuck on why he can pick up the phone and you can’t, ask him what he says to himself before he picks up the phone.

2. Future worries about what someone else will do – When you have a thought about someone else, require the thought to be about what you will enjoy about them or the value you will bring to them. Too often when you are thinking about other people you have the thought, “What will my boss think?” “What will my colleagues think?” “What will my wife think?” etc. Its associated with a fear-inducing picture in your mind about a future response you might get from them. Don’t allow yourself to have future thoughts about other people unless you are able to also enjoy the thought in the moment (for example, I’m planning a special surprise for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary this weekend. I confess I have been thinking about what their response is going to be, but its associated with an excited smile. BTW, I can’t share the surprise with you because sometimes they read my blogs…).
3. Open loop thoughts – Remove thoughts that desire change unless you are willing and ready to make that change. Examples are: I know I should start looking for another position or I know I should do more social media marketing — but you don’t have a plan to get started and aren’t even committed to start the process. It keeps you in conflict with yourself. Either make a commitment, talk to at least one person who could give you advice to get started, or else take off the pressure and guilt, and revisit the intention when you are ready to act on it.

   To help you on your diet, you want to remove those thoughts that have been stuck in your mind accumulating cobwebs. Try this breathing technique, consider it the mental equivalent of a ‘fat flush’. It will help to clear out negative memories and stuck or depressing thoughts.

Use this “Mental Diet Breath” daily: Breathe in 4x rapidly through your nose. Exhale forcefully 1x through your mouth. Repeat this pattern without stopping, do it at the fastest pace you are able to do it. Start with up to one minute and work your way up to 3 minutes a day.

If you know that you need tools for a mindset reboot, I have a special opportunity for you to get Confidence at the Core (and a private consultation with me at no charge). If you are interested in finding out more about the opportunity, go to http://confidenceatthecore.com/.

This morning I was sitting in a Board meeting. Here’s the scenario: I’m a brand new member, it’s my first meeting, and I don’t have as much experience in the field as other people on the Board. You can imagine what I was tempted to think: “Should I speak up?” or “Will they think what I say is stupid?”

This topic was on my mind because several of the participants in my ‘just-ended’ Confidence at the Core* program were afraid of speaking up and taking a stand when they started the program 6 weeks ago. But now they say “I am confident. I speak what’s on my mind. The anxiety is gone.”

So I thought I’d put the question to you. Where in your life do you want to voice your opinion more?

Are you afraid of saying the wrong thing in a meeting with high level management?

Are you too anxious to say what you really feel in your personal relationships?

Do you get nervous talking about yourself in networking meetings?

Here are some strategies I used to prevent myself from being afraid of speaking up. YOU can use these to speak up in your life. (These strategies pertain to meetings but they also can be applied to discussions in your personal relationships):

1. Enjoy yourself – You are nervous about speaking up because you are worried how others will evaluate what you say. You are viewing the meeting as a performance in which your ‘respect meter’ will rise or fall (no wonder you are nervous!). You judge yourself so you think everyone else is too. Most people are judging, they are trying to keep up with the conversation and move their personal and collective agenda forward.

   Try switching from ‘performance anxiety’ to ‘enjoying yourself’. View meetings as an opportunity to showcase your value and to achieve the purpose of the meeting. If that feels like a stretch, then just be engaged and dig into what is really interesting about the meeting. Be present rather than distracted with a parallel conversation about what feedback you will get. Ask yourself constructive questions such as, “What will move the conversation forward,” “What would I need to hear to fulfill the purpose of the meeting?” Try enjoying the privilege of being in that meeting with a seat at the table. When you truly care about the meeting outcome (rather than just try to get through it without any negative feedback) its will shift your energy and make your contributions come naturally.

2. Prepare for the Moment- It’s always good to prepare. Jot down points you speculate you will be called on to provide so you won’t be fully caught off-guard, or regularly take a step back and prepare points that others might want to know about your current work. Similarly, pre-rehearse what you will say in a networking meeting.

   In addition, in an increasing complex world, we can’t expect to know and keep up to speed on everything. That’s why it makes good sense to develop your critical thinking skills. This way you can show your chops by asking good questions and showing people how to think through an issue rather than feel pressure to sound smart on every question asked (a good source to develop these skills is www.vervago.com).

3. Intravenous Confidence – Wish you could have an IV of confidence shot into your arm when you get nervous in meetings? Well, here’s the next best thing. Harness the power of your meridians to reduce your mental commotion. Just put one or both hands in this hand position (mudra). You can use this “Confidence mudra” either in the meeting, or on a regular basis to build up the effect on your energy. (If you look closely, you’ll see that President Clinton often naturally uses this hand position when he talks. We can all agree he’s pretty confident!)

If you want to get over your fears of speaking up, just reply to this email. I’ll tell you about a special opportunity how you can get confidence at your core now.

Go out and use these strategies!