Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Alan Shelton on Awakened Leadership. Alan is a leadership coach, blogger, speaker, and the author of Awakened Leadership: Beyond Self-Mastery.
The idea behind Awakened Leadership is to transcend beyond trained behaviors to awareness, and lead a life of authentic leadership. In other words, to be a more effective leader, you have to be more of who you already are.
I’ve been reading Alan’s book. It’s entertaining and deeply engaging. The stories really bring Alan’s insight to life, as we follow him along on his journey to enlightenment.
What I really like about Alan’s approach to leadership, is that it reminds me of Bruce Lee’s approach to martial arts. Bruce Lee rose above techniques through awareness. I think of the Bruce Lee quote, “When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.” Another Bruce Lee quote says, “I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist.” In the movie, Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee said, “Don’t think. FEEL. It’s like a finger pointing at the moon.” The point is that thinking is assessment, while feeling is awareness. We can respond better in the moment, when we are actually in the moment, embracing the experience in an authentic way.
Without further ado, here is Alan on Awakened Leadership and how we can be better leaders by being more of who we already are …

Often the leadership world is divided into two categories, transactional and transformational. Transactional in how we give and receive from our learning and from one another, and transformational in how we choose to view and grow in our own personal maturity.

The reality is, in order to arrive at the doorway to transformational growth, many transactional concepts will have been learned. That is to say that there is a normal course, or arc, that human beings follow in the journey of life. In my experience this is absolutely true. In the beginning of our life we are exposed to learning which involves concepts, diagrams, and written examinations to measure our learning. All of this learning is in the service of becoming a polished ego or self. The arrival point of this process is normally designated as self-mastery. Self-mastery, however, is just the doorway to a new style of learning. And in order to pass through the doorway we must stand on the shoulders of those who brought us to this point.

Self-Mastery

In the self-mastery approach, we are taught that we are all self-contained entities to which attributes apply. For instance, we say that some people possess humility, intelligence, or even leadership capability. In this kind of learning we are the lump of clay to which all exterior forces are brought into play in which to shape us. Our goal in the end is to stand as though we were a product of Michelangelo himself.

Most of us, however, come to the end of this kind of learning somewhere in the first 10 years of our career. And then what are we supposed to do? Surely you’ve noticed that many executives continue to pursue exactly the same style of learning that they always have. If you ask many of them, you’d be surprised to find that they know that they are simply going through the motions. They can tell because of the tiredness and boredom that arises in the 10th or 20th time that they have heard exactly the same concept.

Internally they know that concepts did not translate into anything else all by themselves. It is no longer effective to onboard content and concept from the outside with the expectation that something will change.

Reactive to Transformation

Many times the frustration of learning less and less from the same activity begins to motivate managers to look for something new. They realize that this external learning of new concepts has exhausted itself yet they’re left longing for more. So, it occurs to many executives that it’s now time to take an internal look at themselves. When this observation takes root they have now entered into the transformational or developmental world.

So what is the difference? Each leader’s behavior is now seen as having the possibility of being either an obstacle or an enhancement to leadership itself. Human beings by nature arrive at adulthood with conditionings known as reactive traits. These reactive traits are unconscious and triggered by events and everyday life. Unfortunately, many times these reactions do not belong in the business process.

How many times have you sat in a meeting and watched while some moment of behavior defies any of your ability to understand it? That is reactive behavior. Dedicated leaders see that their own behavior cannot be allowed to derail leadership outcomes. The frustration of the old style of learning transforms into the challenge of internal development and transformation.

Leadership has now seen an entirely new light. No longer is it the Christmas tree holding the ornaments of personal attributes such as humility and the like. True leadership emerges from the ability of the leader to stand in his own personal authenticity. Leadership is now who you are.

Much like athletes who find that mentally processing their plays make them slow on the field, leaders begin to see that the game slows down for them. They no longer see themselves as an individual attempting to execute an idea. Now, they are part of the game and the authenticity of their leadership capability is the field on which it is played. No longer does the leader take the big space and the followers squeeze into what’s left over. Now, the leader sees himself properly situated as a member of the team and in the situation stands to respond to the action when it comes his way.

In my terms, I call this Awakened Leadership – where all the concepts have been transcended and the leader simply allows his response to occur. It is a felt experience, this new style of leadership. All transformative experiences are. From concept to ‘who you are’ indeed is an awakening.

So, what’s holding you back from embracing Awakened Leadership?

“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Are you waiting for the economy to change?  Are you waiting for your job to change?  Are you waiting for the weather to change?  Don’t wait.  Work with what you’ve got.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of playing the waiting game.  Especially if it’s a situation you don’t like.  The problem is, while you wait, the world passes you by. It keeps moving forward.  When you “just wait and see,” it takes your power away.  For example, I fell into the trap of waiting for my weather to turn back to the way it used to be.  It’s a new reality now.  The best way for me to make the most of it, is to embrace the change — rather than ignore it, dismiss it, or wait for it to change back.

Life’s better when you don’t wait for the facts to change.  You improve your effectiveness when you respond to life’s curve balls.  You also improve your resilience and self-reliance.  You also create new opportunities.  One of my favorite metaphors here from sports is, “You play the ball, or the ball plays you.”

In the book, Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It, Marshall Goldsmith writes about how we should not wait for the facts to change, and should instead play the cards we have in hand, based on the reality of our situation.  If nothing else, it helps us take advantage of whatever situation we are in.

What We Learn from Lawyers

You can’t wait for the facts to change.  You need to work with what you’ve got.  Marshall writes:

“A big part of our training as lawyers,’ Tom said, ‘was to interpret a pattern of facts so that we could advise a client.  Our teacher would give us a hypothetical set of facts and then go around the classroom asking, ‘What would you do?”  Every student would respond with a course of action.  The answers weren’t always correct or even reasonably intelligent.  Sometimes they were desperate.  But the students always came up with some rationale, some idea to act on.  At no point in these classroom exercises did any of my classmates say, ‘I’m going to wait until the classroom changes.’”

Act More, Wait Less

Waiting leads to underacting.  Marshall writes:

“When people wait for discomforting facts to change into something more to their liking, they’re basically engaging in wishful thinking.  It’s the opposite of over-committing because it leads to under-acting (or under-committing and not acting at all).  Instead of doing something, you’re frozen in place while you wait for a more comfortable set of facts to appear.  In s world that’s constantly rushing forward, this is asking to moving backward,.  That’s a Mojo killer.”

Carve a New Path

Assume the facts won’t change.  Find a a way to make the most of your new situation.  Marshall writes:

“When the facts are not to your liking, ask yourself, ‘What path would I take if I knew that the situation would not get better?’  Then get ready to do that.  If the world changes in your favor, you haven’t lost anything.  If the facts do change, you are more ready to face the new world.”

If there’s something you’ve been waiting for, maybe your wait is finally over.  Carpe diem.

Best Books on Taking Action

• Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life, by J.D. Meier
• Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It, Marshall Goldsmith
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

You Might Also Like

• Action Commitments
• Action Forcing Events
• Action Signals – Use Negative Emotions as a Call to Action
• Motivation or Action First?

“One learns peoples through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.” — Mark Twain

If you have a mental model for communication, then you can move your way up the communication stack more effectively.   You can also avoid more communication conflict.  You can also work on your communication skills more effectively.  That’s the true power of a simple model.

I was flipping through my old interpersonal skills book from college to find a simple model.  It’s a great book, the research is sound, but I found the model a little more complicated than what I wanted to share.

Instead, I’ll simply share how we tend to practice the different levels of communication in the halls of Microsoft.  I’ll simply call out the five levels that are easy to observe and actually put your finger on.  They are easy to identify because it’s where great leaders poke and prod to figure out where things are in terms of understanding, agreement, and action.

If you can see it, you can change it.  Here is a simple mental model for communication.

The 5 Levels of Communication

Here are the five levels that are easy to observe in practice:

1. Level 1.  Sending.
2. Level 2.  Receiving.
3. Level 3.  Understanding.
4. Level 4.  Agreement.
5. Level 5.  Action.

While there is overlap, and in real-life things are rarely that sequential, you can broadly think of it in terms of moving up the stack from sending and receiving messages, to understanding, then upward toward agreement, and finally action.

Communicating Your Way Up the Communication Stack

If you know the levels, then you can easily start to troubleshoot where things are broken down, or where you need to improve.  Here are some notes and insights for the different levels.

• Level 1.  Sending.  At this level, you simply send, transmit, or share your message.  Whether this is an email, or a  face-to-face conversation, you simply sent our message.  Just because you sent your message, doesn’t mean it was heard, read, or understood.  Where some people fail is they send emails or give our orders and think that was communicating.   If you don’t care about whether your message lands, or whether you have buy in, or if there are any concerns, then stopping here makes perfect sense.  If, on the other hand, you do care that the recipient heard you or read your message, understands what you want or mean, and leads to some sort of agreement or action, and has a level of buy in, then you have more work to do.
• Level 2.  Receiving.  This is where the message is received.  This is where an acknowledgement helps. As the sender, you can ask whether they read your message, or if it’s face-to-face, you can ask them to play back what they heard.
• Level 3.  Understanding.   This is where a lot of communication conflict or breakdowns happen.  You don’t have to agree at this stage.  What’s important is to first make sure the message is understood.  If you are the sender, then this is where you want to really check that your message is understood through playback. You can simply ask the receiver to play back what they heard.  What you said, may not be what they heard.  If you are the receiver and you want to practice your empathic listening skills, this is a great place to say, “What I hear you saying is …”, and check that you heard the message as it was intended.   This is also a great place to get any concerns on the table.  It’s also a great place to hear both sides, if there is more than one side.  Often there might seem like there are multiple sides, but often this is just different perspectives.  This is when people talk past each other.  A simple rule of thumb here from a Covey standpoint is, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
• Level 4.  Agreement.  This is a perfect place to practice everything you’ve learned about playing well with others.  It’s the perfect place to focus on wants, needs, and concerns.  From a Covey standpoint, it’s a perfect place to seek the “win win”, or find “the 3rd alternative.”  From a John Wooden standpoint, it’s the perfect place to “agree to disagree”, if need be, and just because you don’t agree, does not mean you have to be disagreeable.
• Level 5.  Action.  This is a great outcome for great communication.  It leads to some sort of action or decision.   This is a spectrum of action from “now is not the time” to “who does what when” with increasing clarity.   Sometimes the best action simply is a decision that both parties agree to.

You can use the five levels of communication to troubleshoot your communication skills.

Best Books on Communication Skills

Here are some relevant book recommendations you can use to help you master your communication skills:

• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
• Crucial Confrontations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
• Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst , by Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner

You Might Also Like

• 5 Conflict Management Styles at a Glance
• Best Books on Communication Skills (A comprehensive list)
• Poor Communication Isn’t the Source of Most Conflict
• The Iceberg of Conflict: A Lens for Conflict Management

“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” — Tony Robbins

Have you ever made so many decisions in a day that just one more decision, like what’s for dinner, breaks you?   Our decision making throughout the day adds up, leading to decision fatigue.  If you’re a leader, you probably especially feel the burden.

According to Wikipedia, decision fatigue can lead to a reduced ability to make trade-offs, decision paralysis, impulse purchasing, and impaired self-regulation.  I was reading Motley Fool Stock Advisor, by David and Tom Gardner, and they had this to say about decision fatigue: “It turns out that making decisions is actually very stressful.  As we make hundreds of decisions each day on matters big and small, the cumulative stress adds up.  It’s called decision fatigue, and it can often lead us to shut down and do nothing.”

We probably feel decision fatigue now more than ever with instant communication and information overload.  You know it’s bad when deciding whether to “like” something, hurts your brain.

Luckily, we can defeat or mitigate decision fatigue with proven practices.  We can learn from business executives, air force fighter pilots, fire-fighters, doctors, and intense knowledge work, like software development.

10 Ways to Reduce or Defeat Decision Fatigue

Here are 10 ways to reduce or defeat decision fatigue:

1. Use checklists for common routines.    This is a lesson we learn from pilots.  Having checklists as reminders can help you spend less mental energy on little things throughout your day.   Even if it’s something you know how to do, the checklist can help take some of the burden off.    I use checklists to help me remember key things during my projects.  I also write down procedures in the form of little steps.  This way, I can just follow the steps, and not have to think too hard.    See The Power of Checklists.
2. Set time limits.   Timebox or put a time budget on how long you have to make a decision.  If you find yourself getting stuck or mired in decisions, start setting time limits.  Give yourself five minutes to think it through and then decide.  If five minutes gives you too much time to wallow, then shorten it further.
3. Limit your choices.    Throw out bad choices quickly and narrow down to the ones you think are best bets.  The fast you narrow down your choices, the less time you need to spend shuffling over unnecessary information.
4. Satisfice to find a good enough fit for now.    This is a lesson we learn from fire fighters, police offices, and doctors who have to make many split-second decisions under the gun.  Rather than explore all possible options and get bogged down, they look for the first solution that fits the situation.  See Satisficing to Get Things Done.
5. Just decide.  Don’t dwell on it.  It’s easy to fall into the habit of over-thinking ti or over-engineering your decisions.   This is especially true if you have a need for accuracy or feel a need to do all your homework.    You can start to build momentum by making faster decisions, and acting on them.  You’ll find that many of your decisions may not be as important as you thought they were, or that you learn more from actually taking action and testing your decisions.  If you build a habit of responding to new information, then you can make decisions faster and more freely, while learning and adapting as you go.
6. Right-size your decision making effort.  Don’t spend $20 on a $5 problem.   If you keep this strategy in mind, then it will be a lot easier to speed up your decision making, or help you spend less energy on decisions that don’t matter as much.  Instead of making mountains out of molehills, learn to make molehills out of mountains.
7. Take a time out to recharge.   Your working memory burns out as you process information.   Take more breaks or take a time out.   You can quickly recharge, if you really give yourself a break.  It doesn’t need to be long.   Ten minute breaks can work wonders.  Sometimes, you just need to think about something else to do the trick.
8. Delegate more often and more frequently.  Push decisions out to the leaves.  If this were a tree, stop worrying about all the branches and leaves.  Start pushing decisions out to the leaves and branches where you can empower the people closest to the problems to do something about them.
9. Make it a group thing.   Pair up on decisions or share the decision-making process with a group.   This can help share the load, as well as add new perspective.
10. Let things solve themselves.  This is a lesson we learn from executives.  You don’t need to take on every decision.   Sometimes things really are better off left alone.  Be sure to ask, what’s the downside if you do nothing.  If you let it go, then really let it go.  If you can’t let it go, then admit it, then decide and move on.

If you can reduce your decision fatigue, then you can save more energy for more important decisions, and put your best thinking where it counts.   Find a few ways from above that you can use today, and put them into practice.  Test them out.  The beauty is you can get better at reducing your decision fatigue with practice over time.

You Might Also Like

• Avoid Mental Burnout
• How To Avoid Task Saturation
• Shutdown, Compartmentalize, or Channelize
• The Power of Checklists

Numbers are everywhere.  Whether we are reading a report or presenting, numbers are a part of our lives.   It’s another way of communicating just like writing or speaking.  The problem is, we don’t usually get taught how to present numbers.  We’re lucky if we’re surrounded by the right people or the right examples to learn from.

Not any more.

You now have access to some of the best insight and action on presenting numbers.  Randall Bolten shows us how to present numbers with skill.  Randall’s new book, Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You, is the definitive guide to show you how.  It’s the short-cut to mastering the art and science of presenting numbers in a way that’s compelling and professional.  It’s a professional masterpiece that we can use for work and life to improve our personal effectiveness.

If you want to learn what the numbers mean or how to present them in a compelling way, Randall is your guy.  He spent 20 years as a CFO in the Silicon Valley making sense of numbers, and helping others do the same.  Now he runs a consulting practice that focuses on financial management and information presentation.

Introducing Quantation

Quantation is not a word in the dictionary.  Randall coined the word “quantation” as the subject of his book.  It’s a combination of the two words “Quantitive” + “Communication.”  Randall Bolten defines quantation as — “The act of presenting numbers, such as financial results, electronically, or in writen form for the purpose of informing an audience.”

It’s a Skill You can Learn

If you don’t think you’re a numbers person, this book is especially for you.   What I really like about the book is that Randall treats it like a skill.  It’s a skill you can learn, not a natural born talent.   You would learn it just like other literacy abilities such as writing, reading, and speaking.  He puts it in plain English and empowers you to use numbers more effectively, and, even better, understand the numbers that get thrown your way.

This book is very much a book you can use to advance your career, or to help you simply be more effective in daily life, when you have to deal with numbers, whether it’s balancing your checkbook, reviewing expenses, or reading the numbers they throw your way in the newspaper or on the Web.

Problems Addressed

I tend to measure the value of a book, based on the problems or challenges it solves.  Randall gives practical and tactical advice, as well as strategic insight.  Here is a sampling of some of the problems he addresses:

• How to apply quantation to your daily life, whether it’s reading reports or making meaning
• How to improve your personal brand by presenting numbers effectively
• How to think about numbers in a way that’s more approachable
• How to read numbers in a way that improves your understanding and clarity
• How to dramatically improve the effectiveness of the information you present
• How to trade off between complete, accurate, and useful
• How to relate to your audience in a constructive way
• How to use numbers to speak the truth
• How to layout information on a page
• How to choose between portrait and landscape
• How to present the time axis on a report
• How to use “white space” intelligently
• How to use visual cues to highlight important data points
• How to line up numbers to visually stand out
• How to choose the unit of measure to present numbers to add meaning and clarity
• How to make intelligent choices in terms of what to show and what not to
• How to avoid common pitfalls such as presenting variance in the wrong format
• How to use dollar signs more effectively
• How to create more effective charts and graphs
• How many digits to show
• How to make a great balance sheet that is decision-focused and usable acorss an Enterprise
• How to design effective dashboards
• How to understand and present key indicators more effectively

Insightful and Actionable Advice

What I like about Randall’s advice is that it’s specific and actionable.  He artfully sprinkled “The Deadly Sins of Presenting Numbers” and “Strong Advice” throughout his book to drive the main points home and to make it easy for you to build personal checklists.  He is prescriptive and direct.  For example, he will say you should right justify columns of numbers, or that you should wrap problem variances so negative numbers can be picked at a glance.  He even injects career tips, such as  …

“Even if you truly believe that you are a ‘visual person,’ think twice before saying this in public.  Your listeners may instead be hearing you state that you don’t understand how to process quantitative information or that you don’t want to go to much effort.  To those listeners, it’s as if you were saying, ‘Don’t give me too many big words to read.’
To win in the game of life, this is a new book to add to your shelf.    Whether you’re a business person person, starting your own business, moving up in your career, or simply want to make more meaning from the numbers you see everyday and everywhere, this book is the key to improving your ability to presenting numbers with skill.

You Might Also Like

• Best Business Books List
• Best Leadership Books List
• Best Personal Development Books List

Why do movies like Rocky and Karate Kid help us achieve our dreams?  Because they aren’t just positive fantasies.

Instead, they show it takes hard work and effort to rise above our challenges.  They also show the setbacks that happen along the way.  Rather than hope for the best, or luck into success, movies like Rocky and the Karate Kid show how focus, effort, and practice can pay off.

You can use movies to fill your head with images, mental models, and examples of extreme effort.  When the chips are down, you can then draw from these scenes to inspire yourself to go the extra mile and really put in the effort required.  The key is to build a collection of inspiring movies and scenes that put a premium on effort and dealing with setbacks.

This is a big deal because just positive thinking or positive fantasies don’t help.  In fact, they work against us.  Here’s why:  positive visualization ignores dealing with setbacks.  Additionally, we’re less likely to put in the necessary effort to make our fantasies happen.

In the book, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, Richard Wiseman writes about the negative impact of positive fantasies and visualization.

Effort Over Daydreams

Wishing your way to better grades, or using the force, just doesn’t work.  It’s effort that pays off.  Wiseman writes:

“The experimenters asked the students in both groups to make a note of the number of hours they studied each day, and monitored their final grades.  Even though the daydreaming exercises lasted only a few minutes, it had a significant impact on the student’s behavior, causing them to study less and make lower grades on the exam.  The exercise may have made them feel better about themselves, but it did not help them achieve their goals.”

Positive Fantasies Don’t Help

Just visualizing that everything goes your way doesn’t help.  It’s better to actually imagine potential setbacks or issues that you will have to deal with.  Rather than ignore things that can go wrong, embrace them.  Wiseman writes:

“During the work, the women were asked to imagine how they might behave in various food-related scenarios such as going to a friend’s house and being tempted with tasty pizza.  Each of their responses was categorized on a scale ranging from highly positive to highly negative.  After the women were tracked for a year, the results revealed that those with more positive fantasies had lost, on average, twenty-six pounds less than those with negative fantasies.”

Put in the Effort and Anticipate Setbacks

You can improve your success by putting in effort and anticipating likely setbacks.  Anticipating the setbacks will help you prepare for things that can go wrong, and actually deal with them.  Wiseman writes:

“Why should it it be so bad for you to imagine yourself achieving your goals?  Researchers have speculated that those who fantasize about how wonderful life could be are ill prepared for the setbacks that frequently occur along the rocky road to success, or perhaps they enjoy indulging  in escapism and so become reluctant to put in the effort required to achieve their goals.  Either way, the message from the research is clear: fantasizing about your perfect world may make you feel better, but it is unlikely to help your dreams turn into reality.”

if you want more from life, don’t just wish for it.  Put in the effort and make it happen.  Embrace your setbacks and rise above them.  Draw from inspirational movies and find your “eye-of-the-tiger” in any situation.

“Give it your best shot.”   Growing up, I heard those words of encouragement time and again, whenever I was venturing into something new, or competing in something where the competition was fierce.

I learned to treat BEST as a chance, not a chore.

I never regretted giving my best shot.   Even when my best wasn’t good enough.  I only ever regretted the times when I didn’t.  The funny thing about BEST is that it’s all relative, yet everybody roots for you when you give YOUR best.  In a way it levels the playing field where each of us has the chance to rise to our own level.

When was the last time you gave something your best shot?  BEST is contagious.  It’s habit forming.  It spills over into everything you do.  That is, unless you reserve your best for special occasions.

Like anything, BEST gets better with practice.  It takes work to hit your high notes, but the more you make BEST a habit, the more high notes you’ll hit.

In the book, Little Book of Leadership: The 12.5 Strengths of Responsible, Reliable, Remarkable Leaders that Create Results, Rewards, and Resilience, Jeffrey Gitomer writes about BEST as a way of life.

Do Everything Full Force

No holding back.  Go with gusto.  Show the world what you’re made of.  Jeffrey writes:

“One of the most interesting aspects and one of the most unspoken parts of action and/or doing is the desire, your desire, to do everything full force.  Better stated, to do everything at the level of ‘best.’”

The Result Will Speak for Itself

BEST has a way with words.  Actually, it’s the strong silent type.  Jeffrey writes:

“It is better never to SAY, ‘I am doing the best I can.’  Rather, just DO the best you can, and you will never have to say it, the result will speak for itself.”

It’s Easy to Feel

You know how it feels.  You recognize it when you see it.  It’s the difference that makes the difference.  Jeffrey writes:

“The word BEST is very difficult to define in writing, but it’s easy to react to and easy to feel when you are doing it.  It’s a personal dedication, and a work ethic, not a word.”

Example of Best

To illustrate what BEST looks like, Jeffrey shares an example using Pete Rose.  Pete Rose was “walked” 1,566 times.  He could have walked to first base, but he ran every time. He was the only player ever to do so. He was also known for stretching singles into doubles with his head first slide.  He holds the all-time record for doubles.  That’s BEST in action.

When are you at your BEST and who gets to experience it?  BEST just might be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Photo by tibchris.

“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.” — Unknown

What if you could use your daily routines to build your Positive Intelligence?  What if these simple exercises could help sooth your anxiety, help you stay centered, and tap more of your mental powers and insights?

That’s the idea behind doing PQ reps.

A PQ (Positive Intelligence Quotient) rep simply involves flexing your PQ Brain “muscles.”   Your PQ Brain can help keep you centered, calm, cool, and collected.  It also helps you get innovative and resourceful to better solve problems that come your way.

In the book, Positive Intelligence, Shirzad Chamine writes about doing 100 PQ reps a day to build your PQ Brain muscles.  The goal is to develop an alert and calm, better balanced, sensory aware, creative mindset.

The PQ Brain

According to Shirzad, your PQ Brain muscles are made up of three parts.  The first part is the middle prefrontal cortext (MPFC).  The second part is what Shirzad calls the “Empathy Circuitry.”  The third part is the right brain.

According to Shirzad, the middle prefrontal cortex helps with several PQ functions including “observing yourself, pausing before action, soothing fear, staying centered in the middle of challenging situations, and gut wisdom.” The “Empathy Circuitry” are the parts of the brain that help you experience empathy with yourself and others, as well as tune into their emotions and energy..  The right brain helps with big picture and abstract thinking, non-verbal language, and mood.

A PQ Rep

To flex your PQ Brain, you need to do PQ Reps.  You do a PQ Rep by shifting your focus to your body and any of your five senses for ten seconds.   Shirzad writes:

“The PQ-Brain equivalent to lifting a dumbbell is very simple:  shift as much of your attention as you can to your body and any of your five senses for at least ten seconds.  This is a PQ rep, just like the reps you do at the gym.  These simple steps require and therefore activate and energize your PQ Brain muscles.  For example, commanding yourself to stop being lost in thought and instead become aware of your physical sensations requires the middle prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and right-brain parts of the PQ Brain.”

Example of Getting Your PQ Reps In

You can get your PQ Reps in throughout the day.  A great time to practice your PQ reps is when you catch yourself in a negative thinking pattern.  You can also get your reps in during your daily activities, whether it’s brushing your teeth, going to the bathroom, or eating a meal.  It’s about getting out of your head and back into your senses to better balance your rational mind and stay centered.  Shirzad writes:

“Say you are driving to work and you suddenly think, this meeting could go really badly, and then I’ll be in real trouble.  Since you have studied the characteristics of your Judge, you instantly recognize that as a Judge thought. You label it, thinking to yourself, there goes the Judge.  Catching your judge reminds you to get a few reps in.  So now you shift your attention to feeling your physical sensations for the new few breaths.  You feel the weight of your body on your seat for several breaths.  That’s two reps.”

100 PQ Reps for 21 Days

The key to building your PQ prowess is to get 100 PQ reps in each day, for 21 days.   Shirzad writes:

“I have never worked with anyone who has done 100 PQ reps consistently for twenty-one consecutive days and not experienced substantial and often life-changing improvements in their life.  For your sake, and the sake of your colleagues, your team, and your loved ones, I hope you will choose to do the same.”

What can I say.  I like the approach.  I like it because it’s easy to integrate into daily routines.   I especially like the idea of working our empathy muscles in a very natural way.  I also like the fact that it’s a specific daily goal that’s easy to measure, with immediate results.  It’s a great way to be more present, even in the thick of things.

“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” — Flora Whittemore

Groups don’t always make better decisions, and two-heads aren’t necessarily better than one.  Group decisions can be “herd mentality” in action.

The main issues with groups and “groupthink” are that groups can lead to polarization and more dogmatic positions. Groups can amplify or re-enforce beliefs, and peer pressure can override rational decision making.  The keys to rational decision making include probability and logic.

In the book, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, Richard Wiseman shares research and findings that help us better understand the downside of group decision making.

Extremely Risky or Extremely Conservative Decisions

Groups make it easier to adopt extreme beliefs.  Wiseman writes:

“In short, being in a group exaggerates people’s opinions, causing them to make a more extreme decision than they would on their own.  Depending on the initial inclinations of individuals in the group, the final decision can be extremely risky or extremely conservative.”

Wiseman says the rational behind this phenomenon is that when you’re in a group, you find more people that share your extreme beliefs, so it’s easier to re-enforce or amplify your beliefs.

More Dogmatic Decisions

Groups make it easier to take on dogmatic positions and justify irrational actions.  Wiseman writes:

“Polarization is not the only phenomenon of ‘groupthink’ that can influence the hearts and minds of individuals when they get together.  Other studies have shown that compared to individuals, groups tend to be more dogmatic, better able to justify irrational actions, more likely to see their actions as highly moral, and more apt to form stereotypical views of outsiders.  In addition, when strong-willed people lead group discussions, they can pressure others into conforming, can encourage self-censorship, and can create an illusion of unanimity.”

If you know the issues that happen with groups, you can better defend yourself from falling into the trap of bad thinking, or making bad choices to go along with the herd.   Stand out from the crowd.

“Every word written is a victory against death.” — Michel Butor

Writing things down is a key to effectiveness.   It helps you free up your mind, think on paper, and better organize your thoughts.   If you don’t write things down, your mind spends more time “paper shuffling” and creates its own anxiety.

Writing things down is a powerful habit.  Even if you throw it away, you still get the benefits.

What kinds of things can you write down?   Bright ideas that pop into your head.  Three wins that you want for today.  Three wins that you want for the week.  One-liner reminders.   Your To-Do list.    Your one-liner insights and “ah-has.”  All the things buzzing around in your brain.  Anything keeping you up at night.  Your hopes, your dreams, your goals, and aspirations.  Your fears, anxieties, and concerns.  You get the idea.

10 Reasons to Write Things Down

Why write things down?   Here are some key insights and reminders:

1. Your mind lies.   Your mind easily distorts things.   That’s a blessing and a curse.   If you write things down, you change perspective.  Now you are looking at it on paper.  Does it still make the same sense as it did in your head?
2. Think on paper.  When it’s on paper, you can look your challenges in the eyes, and slice them down to size.   Your mind is a powerful thing when it can more objectively look at things instead of swirling them around in your head.
3. Organize your thoughts.     To write things down, you have to think a little bit to find the words or to figure out what it means.  Right off the bat, the act of trying to write something down shapes your thoughts.   Once it’s down on paper, you can now list things in a way that helps you think.   Whether it’s because you cross things off, or prioritize them, or shuffle them to make you feel good, you are in control.
4. It sinks in better.  Writing it down creates a little more of an experience, and that helps it stick.
5. Free up your mind.   When you write something down, you free up the task of having to remember it.   That might not sound like a big deal when it’s just a few things, but you might spend your mind on better things.   And, just imagine when it’s more than a few things, and it’s lots of things on your mind.
6. Calm your mind.  The Zeigarnik Effect says we tend to hang on to things in our mind, if we don’t finish what we start.   If you write things down, you free up your mind from worrying about what you forgot or what you need to remember.
7. Let things go.     You can let things naturally slough off by squeezing them out with better things to focus on.    You can also more deliberately let things go, or simply cut them, because now you have a bird’s-eye view.  Decide what matters and what doesn’t.  Let things go that don’t.
8. Avoid task saturation.   Write things down to avoid task saturation.   Three signs of task saturation are shutting down, compartmentalizing, and channelizing. Shutting down is when you simply stop performing.  Compartmentalizing and channelizing is when you act busy, but all your doing is organizing and reorganizing lists and doing things sequentially, but not actually producing effective results.
9. Rehydrate ideas.   You can rehydrate your ideas later on as you need them.
10. Shelve things.  You can put things on the shelf to worry about at a later time.

3 Habits that Help

Here are three habits that can help you:

1. Bring a pen and paper on the go.      Bring a little pad of yellow stickies around with you.  You can easily write your three wins for the day on it.  You can also jot down your ideas or things that are top of mind.  You can also use it as a scratch pad for your thoughts.
2. Keep a journal of one-liner insights and reminders.   Write down the one-liner “ah-has” you have throughout your day.   These little ah-has add up quickly.   Stick them in a place that you can easily flip back through each week.   This will sharpen your brain and brighten your day.
3. Do periodic “Brain Dumps.” Periodically dump your brain.   You know when it’s full, or when it’s getting to the brim.   Dump it down on paper and simply write it down as fast as you can.  Get it off your mind.   Don’t correct yourself as you go, simply dump down all the stuff that’s floating around.  I do a brain dump at the end of my day, in a plain text file and simply name it today’s date, such as “2012-04-11.”   When I’m in a really fast mode, I just dump things on my whiteboard.

You can always choose not to write things down, but now you can make a more thoughtful choice.

My Related Posts

• Writing Things Down Frees You Up
• Dump Your Brain to Free Your Mind
• Tickler List of the Mind