Is being motivated by success really serving you?

6 February 2012 By

Success and being successful are very powerful drivers for people, but they don’t always serve us. Some of course become successful and get a great buzz from it. For them it has been satisfying. They may achieve great things and be recognised for it and thus gain status in society. The results of successful people’s efforts may be significant contributions so that not only do they benefit but the wider community too. So, where can the trap lie, from the personal development point of view?

We might define success as achieving your goals, whatever those are. So you might be successful in becoming a billionaire and you might also be successful in attaining enlightenment. So there’s success according to your own definition. There might also be success by a common or consensus understanding. We might see success as consisting of career success as understood to involve attaining a senior status in an organisation and lets say within an industry. A politician might be seen as successful if they’ve reached say the top job. We put a great prize by “wealthy, successful” people, linking success with wealth. Then we might also see a well-known celebrity as successful.

So there’s something in there about being clear in your own mind about what success is for you. And, linked with that is then how you paint your vision, what you’re intending to create, and the intentions you associate with that.

To answer my own question, the trap is where we get attached to success, become seemingly driven by it, such that it consumes our energy negatively. It’s one I hear a lot when I hear people define their goals: “be successful”. So people might become successful as they see it but at great personal cost, or at the cost of those around them. Then there are those that want success but keep not getting it, or not as they want it.

Of course the other side of success is failure, the  other polarity. Many people say they are motivated by success when actually it is a fear of failure. I’ve heard whole groups in organisations say this. So it is worth asking yourself what is behind your stated goal of success.

Then you could take this self-enquiry even further and explore what the fear of failure is about. I’ve coached a successful property developer who made a mint from large-scale developments. His bottom-line fear was of being penniless, in the gutter, down-and-out, homeless, an object of pity or of disapproval.

The ego gets very engaged around the success/failure polarity. Classically it is associated with narcissism, since the exposure of the false self can feared as leading to failure and the collapse of the identity. Rather than being admired, one fears one might be lets say an object of ridicule. And there’s also stuff about the rise followed by the fall, a great fascination of Hollywood movies at one time.

Success doesn’t of itself necessarilly fulfil. Often people then find themselves looking for more success, and it becomes endless.

So it’s worth enquiring what your success driver is about, and whether it is serving you. It might be that other goals are more useful, that may involve success, in the sense of achieving the goal, but the real goal is more healthy and ultimately fulfilling.

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When is something a set-back or a learning opportunity?

5 February 2012 By

In a society strongly geared to success, I was interested to read today that one school is helping its pupils to take risks and to “fail well”, in other words become more resilient to knock-backs.

Resilience, the ability to sustain oneself, to take difficulties in one’s stride, and to recover or bounce back , is a current buzz-word in today’s recession-hit life. It is often used with reference to the stress and pressure a lot of people feel under, with longer working hours, constraints on pay and fear of redundancy.

One could say that it is an invaluable life skill in and of itself. Some people can easily get diverted by set-backs and lack an ability to let them go and move on. Particularly this might be so if the set-back has been severe and really hit morale and motivation. For example one who loses his job and finds it difficult to get more work might first be demotivated by the loss of the job and secondly by the difficulties in finding more work. One can feed into the other in a vicious circle or downward spiral. Each rejection confirms him in his now-low self-esteem. A more optimistic person with a stronger sense of self-efficacy might rebound more quickly. Let’s say she is able to learn from what happened and also has a view that her next job is “just round the corner” or is coming to her. Her ready response to change, and her willingness to learn means that she takes on board what she needs to do to take her forward. Her belief in a positive outcome sustains her and she comes over more positively and engenders more confidence in her from would-be employers. Resilence would be obviously stronger in the second example.

In resilience is the need to manage the mind and let go of negative thinking. Easier said than done, many might think, and that may be true for many people. It takes work and effort, but it is very powerful. This involves facing the fear and dissolving it, letting go of the negative thoughts and developing more positive ones. It also involves focus each day on activities that support a more positive outlook, for example in setting goals, getting plenty of exercise, eating healthily, and in activities that take you towards your goals. Each time you get into a negative spiral it’s about finding ways to interrupt and halt the pattern and get back on target. The more we do this, the stronger the will becomes, confidence increases and one becomes more able to achieve things. So it sets up a positive spiral instead. The key is in the effort and the management of the mind.

The mind is very maleable. It can go anywhere unless we teach ourselves to manage it.

There’s something also to do about reframing the prevailing ethos of “success/failure”. Being addicted to “success” as a value can be a set-up for knock-backs. It’s very prevalent. More on this later.

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How stress can have positively life changing results

2 February 2012 By

As our recession grinds on, there is more evidence of the high and rising levels of stress being experienced by today’s workforce. Stress can lead to illness, burnout and people leaving work. And it can throw into question their whole future.

For example one survey of several larger industrialised countries placed the UK top for stress, and stated that it now affected 35% of the workforce. In organisations where there are redundancies, the figure goes up to 40%. There have also recently been reports on more people suffering from insomnia, which can lead to heart problems and diabetes. The first survey mentioned talks about causes of stress including poor work-life balance, poor leadership, job insecurity, lack of team cohesiveness and pay concerns. It is also worth bearing in mind that one person’s stress can be another’s high energy and motivation, in other words “One man’s meat is another man’s poison. It can be a serious crisis for sufferers, leading as well as to illness and stopping work but also to guilt, depression and a sense of failure. Pulling yourself back from all that can require a lot of work and support.

For some, stress and burnout can in the long term bring about a major reorientation in the work they do and their values, priorities and the choices they make. People can make whole changes in their careers and how they live their lives as a result – and feel a lot better for it.

It can almost seem to some as if they “had” to go through all that to learn what they needed to learn, although it would be good not to have had all that pain. It can however not be easy to see where it is all leading when you’re in the midst of it, when priorities can get distorted and choices seem far too limited or non-existant. When it feels like we’ve lost control over our lives, our stress levels can go right up. One key is often to find a way to regain that control. In the meantime it is also about better management of our health to prevent things permanently damaging our health, through rest and relaxation, exercise, diet and attending to the thinking and attitude of mind that has helped create the situation. This is where skilled help can be so useful.

Very often our approach to our work and our values and strategies aren’t helping us and it can pay to work this through with someone else, such as what thinking, feeling and behaviour strategies are contributing to the situation, as well as getting support in dealing with the work situation itself that is also potentially a factor to the stress being experienced.

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When flexibility turns into resistance

26 January 2012 By

We could say that at the other end of resistance is change flexibility, an openness to change, an ability to be adaptable, to see new ways of doing things and a willingness to adjust and even to embrace the change. That sounds nice and positive, and no doubt those sponsoring the change would welcome it, but when you hit a change you don’t want, then the boot is on the other foot.

In emotional intelligence terms, flexibility can be placed with other “behaviours” within a cluster which is referred to as “self-management”, the ability to mange one’s emotional responses. These can include, as well as flexibility, the ability to keep one’s emotions under control, to be open and transparent, an achievement orientation, proactivity and drive to take action and take the initiative, and a disposition to be optimistic. This is where one is either in awareness or outside of awareness influencing one’s responses in a positive direction and perhaps the key word is optimistic.

Underlying all this is the emotional driver, how you feel about the change, or whatever it is that is calling on your ability to let go of being resistant and become “flexible”. I can somehow hear all those change-weary people saying “Oh yeah!” Of course it depends where you are on the change curve, whether you are still in the early stages of grief, let’s say, and you’re feeling those upset feelings or in the midst of feeling depressed and “in the pits”. But it might be a change too far, one that doesn’t chime with where you at, which might now be different from where others want to go. Or maybe its your fundamental interests that are affected, what you cherish and value that’s at stake.

There’s a lot of talk at present about resilience, the ability to bounce back from adversity, and it is worth seeing beyond the immediate response we have to something we don’t like to what it has to teach us. While we might get very self-righteous in our defence of our interests, we might not see the underlying lesson in our resistance. It might be that we are right, for our destiny in life, not to go along with what is being proposed, but we might need to look for the real lesson. For example, there might be another direction we need to take. In staying stuck in denial or in resistance, we might continue some battle against the change and therefore miss the breakthrough or the new direction that might be there waiting for us.

So flexibility doesn’t necessarily mean giving way, or giving up on your values, or denying your real purpose. It’s more about being able to take a step back and take the over-view, to be really honest with yourself and from a perspective free of ego, in humility. This invites us to really learn what letting go really means, and learning about allowing, and about openness to what is.

In that unconditional space, the universe speaks to us, and we really hear.

We study these crucial self-awareness and self management skills in The Point of Awareness program.

 

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In praise of enthusiasm

19 January 2012 By

It’s well-known by marketeers, sales people, educators, communicators and presenters that if you want to communicate something and get people interested, be enthusiastic. People who aren’t enthusiastic about what they are talking about are liable to switch people off. Start to feel bored by something in your talk and you can see the boredom in people’s eyes. It’s like a collective sleep takes hold. The enthusiasm needs to be genuine, since people aren’t so easily fooled and pick up on the underlying energy of the communication, where you are coming from.

What can also be challenging for communicators is that they can lose enthusiasm for what they talk about. How many of us have had bored, uninterested lessons with bored, uninterested teachers? What we might not have known is that those teachers had lost touch with that part of themselves that was enthused by their subject, or in the communicating of it over time, the communicating part had lost its shine.

So, where you are coming from needs some thought. Here’s one take. The word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek enthusiasmos, and the syllable en means “in” or “within”, or “possessed” and theos means “God”. So the word “enthusiasm” means “carrying God within” or “possessed of the Inner Lord”. Thus when you are connected with your Self within, and can speak from that space, you can have mighty communication! Thus we often speak of “being connected to your candle flame” when you speak. When you can, for example, feel that energy within, and hold it in your awareness as you speak, people really feel it.

Why do they feel it? Because your connectedness, your inner contact, then touches theirs. Thus do people resonate. If of course they allow themselves to so do. It can be almost automatic. Examples of this include laughter, which it has been shown triggers chemical responses in other people’s brains, such that they smile. Authentic laughter is also the language of the Self. Another is when people feel a “frog in their throat” such that their voice chokes slightly, others may also cough. Also, it’s well-known now that around 55% of communication is non-verbal and 38% is tone of voice. So enthusiasm will show, in the tone of voice and body language for example. The subtlety of communication.

People will feel it too because it touches something in them. This is another example of where people are mirrors for us, reflecting back to us something about ourselves. Something in us is being remembered through our observation of another. So people say things like, “I feel your pain.” It’s not necessarily the same, since we don’t really know what others experience, as it goes through perceptual filters, but it triggers something for us.

So when you communicate with enthusiasm, you are touching others, lighting them up too, helping them connect with something inside them. When you speak authentically, from your Self within, imagine what power you have, positive power, to touch others, for their higher good as well as yours.

This is where awareness training can be so useful, to connect with that Self within, so that you may speak from that space, Who you really Are.

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Convincing employers you can do it

18 January 2012 By

As we get into the New Year, the recruiting round gets going and many people will be looking to get a much-needed job, or maybe a change of scene and better possibilities. It can be a daunting prospect for many, especially in difficult times.

It seems to be a ritual that every now and again, the recruitment and outplacement industries pump out “advice” about what CV’s and resumes “should” and “shouldn’t” contain. Each time, like this one, they tell us we shouldn’t pepper these hard-won efforts at self-promotion with trite-sounding key words like “team player” and “dynamic”. They also say that employers get quite cynical about the claims people make about their skills and achievements, thinking them now prone to exaggeration, if not falsification.

Spare a thought for the poor old CV/Resume writer, for whom the English, or whatever, language may not be their strong point and getting themselves out there to market themselves is not the easiest activity, especially in tight job markets like now, and trying to find ways to convince someone of their potential can be hard work when they aren’t sure what to say, let alone how to say it.

The difficulty so many people face is lacking awareness of what their true capabilities are, or of how to evidence them. This is why it is so important to spend time working through what you’ve done in your work, where you’ve been successful or done things well, and write out “case studies” of these, like mini-stories, so that you build a catalogue of true, potentially convincing stories to tell. These then, in very concise form, go into the CV/Resume as a bullet-pointed set of achievements, ideally relevant to the position you are interested in. It’s the truth that tells it best. Maybe, if “team player” isn’t doing it, then the thesaurus is key. It also helps if thought has been given to what you’d most like to do, rather than necessarily chasing familiar old tracks that don”t inspire. Nothing sells somebody like enthusisasm for the job. If you really want it, people pick that up.

We have a download that might help any of you needing a job at present. Click here.

We also give career coaching for those who need help to draw out their preferred direction, what they could be best offering and how to communicate it both on paper and in person.

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An inspiring vision that you feel impelled to make a reality

12 January 2012 By

Vision and purpose are those things that you hear businesses talk about about, often rather glibly, but it doesn’t figure so much with individuals. When I ask people about this, they often say they “don’t know”, although if we dig around a bit then they come up with certain specific, often short-term material desires for the future. Purpose usually draws a blank.

This is quite serious given how insecure many jobs are in today’s climate. Now you could say that in itself describes a vision by default, which might be limited to one of survival, and perhaps people are thinking less of the future. That doesn’t fit so much with many Generation Y people however, as the defining characteristics of this age group are autonomy, ambiguity and meaning – and they don’t expect to stay in the same job long. Yet if the overall economic situation is uncertain then, like businesses are doing at present, people won’t invest in the future, not will they spend.

Yet to leave one’s future to chance can be tempting fate, if it were not that very many people are busy raising their qualifications by part-time study, which makes sense too if you consider the advancing sophistication of the workforce and the need for specialist skills.

So, in this situation it might well seem strange to write about vision and purpose. Rather you might expect a certain cynicism. After a period of excess, if that is what we might call the “noughties”, and with a very severe economic downturn we might think grand ideas are likely to be replaced by doubt.

However, all this ignores an underlying optimism that we humans possess, one that keeps going despite the apparent evidence to the contrary. We tend to underplay potential dangers and have, most of us, a tendency to think the future will be better.

Which can be very useful to tap into when we need it. Arguably now is the time. It is often at the bottom of an economic cycle that people start planning to develop in a new direction. It is at times like these that the more entrepreneurial start to develop new business ideas for example.

So a vision for an individual might be, let’s say, their picture or description or sense of what they would like to be doing long-term in areas like lifestyle, location, housing, activities and a preferred line and level of work if relevant. Those who I find that are thinking like this will tell me that around a certain age they planned to shift to a different but not necessarily unrelated kind of work, move location, and change their lifestyle. What such more far-sighted people do is plan their current activities and, lets say training and skill and knowledge acquisition in order to be able to make the shift intended. The purpose would be some description of what they would be doing this for, why it was important, what meaning it would be giving them, what it would be achieving, that sort of thing. Some might call this “mission” instead. Vision and purpose are quite closely related. As a coach, I’d like to get a sense that they were inspired by what they were articulating, like it was one that they strongly believed in and were motivated to take action on.

I’ve often been struck by the power of vision in TV programmes like “Secret Millionaire”, when some successful businessman returns to an environment they escaped from as a teenager to make their fortune and they say, “I always knew I’d be rich” (or successful, or whatever). Such is the power of a clear vision. It’s very common. We can do the same. Visions become realities.

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Where are you going with your life that gives you meaning?

20 December 2011 By

For many people, Christmas is a welcome relief from the hard slog of work. Not surprisingly with another economic downturn, there’s lots of change happening and motivation at work has fallen. Added to the usual pre-Christmas mania, and people can be glad of a breather. But it can leave people with longer-term issues being put on one side, such as what to do about a career that has perhaps stalled with a succession of economic ups and downs and business restructurings. “Where am I going?” is an important question that many can find hard to resolve.

You might be used to answering that familiar job interview question, “What are your career goals?” with some plausible-sounding waffle that gets you the job, but you might not have any real goals beyond getting and holding down the job you’ve gone for. Those in work might be thinking, if anything, about lateral or promotional moves, but if asked about a longer-term strategy may struggle. It’s when people lose their jobs and realise their career isn’t going anywhere and that this is now an issue for them that they might start to look seriously at the question. Even then it can leave you flummoxed if, like very many, you’ve never known what you really wanted to do. And then the jobs you’ve done have been default options.

Those who might be serious at addressing the issue can benefit from thinking about what their purpose or “mission” is, what their chosen line of work is for. For example it might be to serve some ultimate goal, such as a particular type of work for which you need to get the training and experience. Or you might have some higher goal, which your work is intended to serve, such as helping others in some way let say. If you are generation Y people for example, you might likely to be looking for meaning in your work, to some extent. The Happiness guru, Martin Seligman, says that one key driver for happiness is having meaning. It might depend on your values, what is important to you. Doing some work on what your passions in life are can help, for example thinking about what you most enjoy doing. For others, a key motivator in work is the people they work with, and the quality of the connection with people derived from their work. Working on your aspirations can link with what you want from life in general, what your drivers are, and what lifestyle you aspire to and what social values you want to express.

For those regular readers of this blog however, there may be something deeper, more urgent, that is tugging at your sleeves. It’s what you might be dimly aware of if you take a deep breath while reading these words and noticing a sense that might be there. I wonder how many of you might be actually thinking about what the ultimate purpose which you’d like your work to be serving might be. When you read words like “passion” and “meaning”, what would they conjure up for you, perhaps thoughts and more importantly feelings about what it’s all really about, and what your role or part in all this is meant to be? I wonder how many of you are feeling provoked by the continuing economic depression, which is in strictly economics terms what the downturn since 2008 has been, to ask about what this is all about, and what it really is about for you. Is the materialistic dream that so many of us were brought up on, and which has lasted we could say since 1945 (wow!), really sufficient as a way of giving meaning to our lives, to your life?

It’s that thought that I am so much more that this pursuit of meaningless goals, and it might be worth exploring who this “I am” really is, and see what new purpose and meaning emerges.

The program The Power of Awareness is very suited to this kind of journey.

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Losing your job at Christmas can be the worst time

19 December 2011 By

Around this time, companies have a knack of informing staff that they are to lose their jobs. The timing can seem perfect: how to ruin your Christmas. Of course from the companies’ point of view, it’s often at the end of the financial year, new budgets are coming in and they are having to face some hard truths for the next year. With what is widely expected to be another recession, companies will be tightening their belts.

From the individual’s point of view however, it can mean they leave with painful memories. It can be the abruptness with which they were informed, since most people find delivering bad news to be very difficult, and sometimes the isolation and being seemingly ignored by others compounds the experience. They might be left wondering why they were chosen and not others, and was the redundancy actually a way of getting rid of a less valued individual or one that was deemed to be performing less well. So there’s the feeling of not being valued, or rejected, which hurts.

This isn’t always how people react of course, since there are those that are delighted or relieved too. They may have been hoping to “get a package” in order to move on to something they’ve been planning for, to fund a course or to start a business. They may have hated the job and are glad to be paid to leave!

And not everybody gets much cash. Companies strapped for cash may only pay what they are legally obliged to, or the company may simply go bust and there’s nothing.

Whatever the manner of leaving, people may be euphoric or they be unhappy, but there’ll be the pressing need to find another job, and all the ups and downs and uncertainties that go with that. Some of course take their time, and have a big buffer to live off for a while, which can make the transition back into work slower and for some harder. The manner in which they leave can leave hurts that take a while to get over and people may need to rebuild their self-esteem. Then they may just need to get the old job out of their hair. For a few, the pleasure of not working for a while is stronger than the pain of not having a job, and procrastination sets in. So, motivation can be a challenge. And let’s not underestimate the grieving process, the adjustment to the loss of job, which can take someone through a range of emotions, from initial shock, denial, anger and upset, depression, acceptance, letting go, new purpose and moving on.

In a recession, there’s less help provided by the employer, which is unfortunate since while some may not have a clear idea of what their next job might be, others are left wondering about the way forward, and need career advice and support. And they may simply need help with marketing themselves.

Here’s a short but detailed overview of the sort of thinking that can be needed, in a pdf download.

Many have experience already of this process, and can be hardened to it. Yet, in difficult times like now, and particularly at Christmas, it is not an easy process, and if combined with other changes or upheavals going on in someone’s life, can be a very testing time. I provide help for people going through this transition.

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The power of being tuned into where others are coming from

13 December 2011 By

I had a useful reminder last week in a course I was running on Leadership about the importance of awareness at work. The group were asked to think of behaviours needed for dealing with difficult situations, and one person said “emotional intelligence”, to the accompaniment of humorous “Oooo!” from the others. When we discussed it, I explained about emotional intelligence being about being aware of and using the emotional component in one’s self-management and communication with others. The person who used the term then spoke of how her manager had a blind spot around his sensitivity to others and often rode roughshod over people’s feelings.

This facet of emotional intelligence concerns empathy, the ability to pick up on where others might be at, to have a sense of where others might be coming from, or how they might feel. Daniel Goleman, one of the leading proponents of emotional intelligence as a concept, states that empathy is one of the most vital but most under-utilised of leadership behaviours.

Empathy is distinct from sympathy, where you are in the pit with them, feeling similar things: “Yes, that happened to me last week. Let me tell you what happened…” With empathy, we seek to understand as far as we can how another might see something, while not necessarily taking their stuff on board or agreeing with them. You might sense it and even feel it, but you don’t get caught up in it. Hence awareness is so important here. Empathy enables someone to tell you something and feel you’ve got it, even if you don’t agree. It’s hugely valuable when trying to win over people who have concerns about something. They might listen to your view and let’s say hear what you want, tell you of their concerns, and then when you’ve really got it, are then more likely to hear your response and then potentially be open to be persuaded. It’s an invaluable aid in communication, particularly when leveraging the emotional component. People who resonate with those they seek to influence are more powerfully connected to them and can more easily get them on side with what they are seeking to do. Empathy brings us closer to each other, so that potentially we can be more likely to get on the same wavelength. With empathy, we listen to each other better and we are more likely to care. With empathy there is warmth in the contact between people and we feel more bonded.

So, you might get why it is so needed. Many leaders lack it and many staff instinctively appreciate one who has it. So often managers are insensitive to others and, especially in times of change, bully others into their way of thinking: “It’s my way or the highway.” So you get demotivated staff. However, empathy can be learned and developed, if you are willing!

Our awareness training seeks to develop all facets of awareness, including empathy.

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