Tag Archives: Energy Management

Take Action Now

What are the things that you have been putting off, avoiding, ignoring in hopes that somehow they will resolve themselves and you won’t ever have to deal with them? How’s that working for you?

If you are someone who procrastinates, it’s time. Time to face the reality that the project on your to-do list that you’ve been avoiding isn’t going to magically cross itself of your list. The reality is that you have two choices:

  1. Remove It From Your To-Do List — Ask yourself if it’s something that really needs to be done. Would having it done contribute to your health, well-being, or happiness or is it something that found its way onto your to-do list when you made a habit of busy-ness?
  2. Do It Now! — If it’s something that you definitely need to do, take action. If it’s a big project, first chunk it down into manageable pieces. But don’t delay any more. Do it now.

You will feel better when you take either of these steps. Why?

  • Removing the item from your to-do list (whether you did the task or not), will help you feel lighter. It’s the to-do list equivalent of cleaning out your closet (or garage). Even if you don’t have a sense of accomplishment from having completed the task, you’ll have a sense of relief from not having to worry about it anymore. And as you discovered, it wasn’t really important anyhow. At least, not compared to other things vying for your energy and attention.
  • When you take action, you’ll get a double benefit: (1) you’ll feel good about yourself for responsibly handling something that needs attention, and (2) you’ll feel good because making progress itself always makes us feel good. It’s the difference between walking out of a meeting feeling as though nothing was accomplished compared to leaving a meeting in which decisions were made and next steps were clear.

Now on to the next item on your to-do list!

Here’s hoping you avoid busy-ness and stay focus on the most important things!

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Celebrate Anything!

I have been a San Francisco Giants fan since I first moved to the Bay Area in 1990. It’s been incredibly fun to watch Giants fever take over as people change their work schedules around games, and break out their orange shirts and Giants caps. For me, the best part of having the Giants in the World Series, though, is seeing everyone celebrate wildly when they get hits, score runs, and win games. The sports bars are filled with people laughing, jumping up and down, screaming at the top of their lungs, giving everyone around them high-fives, and hugging perfect strangers. It’s just fabulous!

Why is it that we don’t carry this we’re-in-this-together, we-can-do-it, woooo-hoooo!!, yaay-us!, we-rock! energy with us into our daily lives? What would life be like if we did?

Ever heard the term tall poppy syndrome? It’s a term used in Australia, the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand to describe the jealousy and animosity that people sometimes feel toward people who are really successful. Were you taught to avoid being a “tall poppy” so other people wouldn’t try to cut you down?

I have a brother with disabilities, and my parents taught me that it wasn’t considerate or okay for me to celebrate my successes because it might make my brother feel badly. I definitely want the best for my brother, but wasn’t it kind of twisted to believe that by talking about how excited I was that my basketball team won a game, or how happy I was that I got an A on an exam, I would make him feel badly about himself?

I often see that phenomenon show up in some form with my coaching clients as well. A woman who is having difficulty conceiving a child feels badly when she learns that a friend or colleague is pregnant. A man feels jealous of someone in another group who gets promoted because he has been unsuccessfully trying to secure his own promotion. The divorcée can’t seem to muster the ability to feel excited for a friend who announces his engagement.

Feelings like jealousy show up for one of two reasons:

  1. You believe that when someone else has something you want it somehow means that you won’t get what you want
  2. When you hear about someone else getting something that you want, you focus on what is missing or not okay about your life

So many of us seem to feel as though it isn’t okay for us to revel in our successes and kick up our heels and celebrate when life is going fabulously well — because we don’t want to come across as bragging, because we’re worried that if we get really excited about all the good stuff, we’ll somehow jinx ourselves and the other shoe will drop. What’s up with that??

I’d like to propose a different paradigm, and a different set of practices. The paradigm is this:

  • Celebrating your own successes – large or small – is not only okay, it’s a good thing! It promotes your health and well-being.
  • Celebrating other people’s successes will bring you closer to others, and also closer to experiencing successes yourself.

Here are a few practices that can help you move into living this new paradigm:

Go Ahead and Celebrate Your Successes Out Loud!

  • Look for the things you are doing well and the things in your life that are great and exciting. Find ways to celebrate them out loud.
  • Pay attention to how you feel when you give yourself permission to jump up and down with joy. It’s a pretty good feeling, isn’t it?
  • When you do celebrate your successes out loud, notice who in your life gets excited and happy for you, and who tries to curtail your enthusiasm or cut you down.
  • I’d recommend you try to spend more time with the people who celebrate your successes with you and less time with people who try to dampen them.

Celebrate the Successes of Those Around You

  • When someone you know shares good news with you, if you feel excited and happy right away, go ahead and hoot and holler with them!
  • If you don’t feel excited for them right away, take a moment to put yourself in their shoes. Imagine how it would feel to get that raise or promotion, or fall in love, or sell your business, or sign the contract they just told you about. Let yourself feel those feelings. Drink them in. Then do what comes naturally.

Most of all, make the choice to celebrate anything!

Don’t wait for some major life milestone to start celebrating. What do you have to celebrate right now? Can you come up with something/anything to celebrate? Can you invent something? How about the fact that the sun is out, or that you are able to read, or that you have access to a computer and the internet? Why not celebrate the fact that you are able to see a world full of colors, or that there are people in the world who love you, or that you are capable of loving others? Go ahead … let yourself really relish whatever it is. Soak it in. Get silly! Feel the delight of it all. Let go of whatever conditioning has been constraining you, and CELEBRATE!!

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Learn to Give Without Attaching Strings

I love the feeling I get when I help people. You know, that sweet feeling of being connected to someone and feeling like you’re making a difference all wrapped into one? I watched my mom through years of tireless volunteer work helping Armenian refugees get settled in LA, and aspired to touch people’s lives and help others like she had. And throughout my life, I’ve experienced time and again the joy of giving, of being there for others, of helping people in need.

There were times — probably more often than I really care to admit — when I gave not just for the sake of giving, but also because I was looking, hoping, trying, to elicit something in return. I gave because I wanted her to appreciate me, or because I wanted to feel like I mattered to him. There were strings attached. And when I didn’t get the response that I was trying to elicit, I felt frustrated. I even judged the people to whom I had given or whom I had helped by thinking or saying they were ungrateful. I also felt disappointed with myself, and regretted having spent my precious time or energy doing what I did rather than something that would have been more fun or beneficial for me. I had sacrificed, for no good reason!

The truth is, there was no good reason for giving in that way. I was doing a disservice to everyone involved. To myself and to the people to whom I gave. And so I stopped. I didn’t stop giving, but I stopped giving in that way. And it’s made my life a lot happier and my relationships with others a lot cleaner.

Now when someone asks for my help or when I feel the desire to do something for or give something to someone, I pause for a moment to check in with myself. I ask:

  • Is this something I want to do/give?
  • Can I give it freely – with NO expectation or even desire to get anything in return?

If the answer to those questions is “yes”, then away I go! If the answer to either question is “no” then I remind myself that it wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest for me to do or give it. And I give myself permission to say no or not give without feeling guilty.

I worried when I decided to begin doing this, that I would give less, be less generous. What I find, though, is that most of the time, I’m as eager and willing to give as ever. Maybe even more so. Perhaps it’s because it feels so incredibly good to be able to give without attaching strings!

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Perhaps What You Need Is a Shift in Attitude

Think back to the last time you were somewhere you didn’t want to be — getting a speeding ticket, in the checkout line that seems to be moving the slowest at the store, at the airport after having just learned that your flight has been cancelled or delayed, sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on the freeway, wide awake at 3 in the morning when you desperately need a good night’s sleep, etc. Do you recall what went on in your mind? My guess is that you were thinking thoughts like, “I don’t have time for this,” ”I’m going to miss my meeting now,” “I don’t want to be here,” “My insurance rates are going to go up,” “This isn’t fair!” “Why can’t I be anywhere else but here right now?” etc.

When you’re busy thinking those thoughts, it’s hard to feel happy. It’s as though you’re somehow fighting reality. And fighting reality never leads to pleasant experiences or peace or even joy. Before you start thinking that the best course of action is to try to change your circumstances, consider this:

The way you interpret what happens in any moment
greatly impacts your experience of that moment.

What does that mean? It means that the things you choose to focus on and the stories you tell yourself about anything can drastically affect whether you are happy, content, inspired and at peace in any moment, or bored, frustrated, annoyed, angry, or drained instead. You can label any experience as difficult or easy, as a problem or an opportunity or challenge.

Think of it in this way: the filter that you wear as you walk through life influences how pleasant or unpleasant your day-to-day life is. The great thing is that we can all change the filters we wear. Changing the filters, though, takes practice. Here’s a practice that I  use every time I realize that I’m feeling uneasy. Ask yourself:

What about this situation is completely perfect?

If you can find even the smallest gift in whatever is happening in this moment, the intensity of your reaction to the situation start to soften. You will find yourself more at ease.

You may not be able to change the external circumstances, but you can certainly change how you respond to them. And that begins with changing your attitude. Victor Frankl wrote of this so eloquently in his book Man’s Search For Meaning when he described his experience as a prisoner in concentration camps during World War II. He writes,

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

In every moment of every day, there is what happens and then there’s what you choose to do with it. What kind of day would you like to choose for yourself today? Can you find the perfection in what is?

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