If you don’t have empathy for yourself, chances are you don’t have empathy for others.  If you constantly beat yourself up, in the name of holding yourself to a higher bar, you might be doing more harm than help.  This is especially true if you lead teams or set the tone for others.  Brains work better when they are relaxed and ready.

To show empathy for others, you need to first show empathy for yourself.

One of the jokes we say at work is “beatings will continue until moral improves.”  The point is to highlight that people respond better to encouragement, acknowledgment, and praise, not put downs, belittlement, and threats.  To say it in a *sticky* way, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

It takes empathy to really know just the right things to say, to make somebody’ day, or to lift them when they need it most.  This goes for you too.  It’s all too easy to get so focused on output or focused on outcomes, that you lose yourself along the way.  If you have a high-personal bar, it’s easy when you miss it, to beat yourself down, when you really need to lift yourself up.

While it’s true that we’’ll do more to move away from pain than we’ll do to move towards pleasure, pain and threats are not a sustainable strategy.  Intensity does not automatically mean inspiration.  On the other hand, inspiration often brings a healthy sense of urgency.  And when you’re relaxed and ready, you are often more resourceful.

But how do you build or rebuild empathy for yourself or others, if you are numb inside, or shut down?   Enter Visualize the Child.  It’s an exercise  that Shirzad Chamine introduces in his book, Positive Intelligence.  Visualize the Child is a way to rebuild empathy with yourself so that you can build your empathy for others.

Instant Empathy

You have instant empathy if you know  where to look.  Shirzad writes:

“If you go to the playground and watch five-year olds play, you will probably feel instant empathy and caring for these total strangers.  This is in part due to the fact that at that age a child still mainly radiates with his or her Sage essence energy.  The off-putting Saboteurs that make us less likeable as adults are not as visible at this age.”

Visualize Yourself as a Child

You can instantly find your empathy again.  The trick is to remember the feeling.   One way is to visualize a scene in your mind of you as a child.  Shirzad writes:

“You can use this fact to shift your brain to feel empathy and caring for yourself or others.  Visualize yourself as a child in s setting where your essence is shining through.  Perhaps you are holding a puppy, building a sand-castle, chasing a bunny, or snuggling with a loved one.  Pick a vivid and detailed image that instantly triggers feelings of caring and empathy.  You might even want to find an actual photograph of yourself as a child in which your original personality is shining through    Put that picture on your desk or on your phone or computer so that you see it frequently.  This image will be a reminder that your true essence is worthy of unconditional caring and empathy when you are feeling beaten down by your own Judge, or other’s, or troubles of life.”

Generating Empathy for Others

You can visualize others as a child as well to build empathy.  This will remind you of the hopes, the dreams, the aspiration, the fears, and the child-like wonder that they started out with.  It’s still there.  Shirzad writes:

“The same holds true for generating empathy for others.  If you are feeling upset at someone due to their Saboteurs, you have been hijacked by your own.  To recover back to your sage, you could activate any of your five Sage powers.  If you choose to activate the Sage’s power to Empathize, visualize the other person as a child in her true essence before she started getting weighted down by Saboteurs.  Visualize  her eyes and facial expression, her manner of carrying herself, what used to light her up as a child.  Visualize her hold her puppy, snuggle with  her mom, or chase a butterfly.  Trust that essence is still inside her, underneath her Saboteurs.  You can do this in the back of your mind even while you are interacting with her in a meeting.  It will instantly impact how much empathy you feel.”

Use an Actual Photograph

Using an actual photograph might be your best way to make it real and to remind yourself to actually do it.  Shirzad shares a story:

“To access empathy for himself, I asked Frank to play Visualize the Child.  His judge was so persistent that he couldn’t access any empathy for himself by just visualizing it.   So I suggested using an actual photograph.  He found a picture of himself under a Christmas tree.  He was lit up with joy, kindness, wonder, and curiosity.  The picture conveyed Frank’s true essence, which was hiding beneath his tough corporate demeanor.  I asked him to put a copy of that picture on his smart phone and look at it every day.  Frank reported that looking at the pictures made it easier for him to feel empathy and appreciation for himself during these tough times.”

You can really make this a fun exercise.  Find your favorite picture that reminds you of who you really are and who you want to be.

My Related Posts

• Positive Intelligence and PQ
• Get a Few PQ Reps In
• Secrets of Self-Esteem

“All our words from loose using have lost their edge.” — Ernest Hemingway

The words we use and the words we choose can shape our moments and our lives.  Have you ever experienced a great leader who never get stuck?  They are always asking things like, “What’s the opportunity?” or “What the next step?” or “How can we use this?’

It turns out that our language reflects fundamental dimensions of personality.  In the book, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, Richard Wiseman says that research shows that things like handwriting analysis and graphology don’t work.  Instead, it’s the words we use that provide the greatest insight into real character.

Our Language Has Clues

Have you heard of “The Big Five”?  It’s absolutely fascinating, and as Wiseman puts it, it’s “the holy grail of personality research.”  Anyway, here’s what’s interesting.  According to Wiseman, it started in the 1930s when a group of researchers compiled a list of 18,000+ words from an unabridged dictionary that could be used to describe personality.  They refined the list to about 4,000 words to describe relatively stable and central traits.  In the 1940s, another set of researchers refined this set to about 200 words.  Over the next 40+ years, researchers used increasingly sophisticated techniques to collect and analyze data on personality to identify key dimensions.  Finally, in the early 1990′s consensus emerged across countries and cultures around a set of five fundamental dimensions of personality.  The dimensions are: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Changing Your Language, Changes Your Life

I’m a believer that language is empowering and you can use this.  I believe the key is from finding the words that move you and make you … and avoid the words that paralyze or break you.  Changing your language, changes your life.

We live in the age of insight.  It’s easy to browse the Web to find and explore new ways to say things or express ourselves more fully.

10 Ways to Use the Power of Language

Here are examples of ways to use words to shape your life:

1. Find interesting words to express specific concepts.  I’ve always been a fan of expanding my vocabulary, and learning new languages.  I love it when a word perfectly expresses an idea.  For example, ikigai roughly translates to “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.”
2. Choose metaphors that evoke your best imagery.  What does life mean to you?  Is it a tragedy or a comedy?  Maybe it’s a sitcom.  For me, it’s more like an epic adventure.  For you, maybe it’s more like a dance.  The people that dance with life, find a way to go with the flow, and bend instead of break.  It’s the willow way.
3. Study Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). In simple terms, NLP is a way to program success.  It’s a tool for personal excellence.  It was popularized by Tony Robbins as a way to model and replicate the success of others.   According to Wikipedia, you can think of neuro-linguistic programming as “(‘neuro’), language (‘linguistic’) and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience (‘programming’) and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life.”   If you study NLP, you can learn ways to dramatically improve your precision and accuracy of language.  You can then use it to reshape your thinking, feeling, and doing.
4. Quotes.  I am a fan of quotes (did you notice my Great Quotes collection?).  As Sean Platt of Writer Dad says, “Life is better with the right words.” It’s so true, especially when we find just the right quote, that says it just the right way.  One of the reasons why I build out these quotes collections is to put the wisdom of the ages and modern sages right at our finger tips.  Quotes are “wisdom that sticks.”
5. One-liner reminders.  This is similar to quotes, but in this case, the idea is to create some pithy prose that makes an idea stick.  It’s a great way to turn insight into action.  In fact, one way I remind myself to take what I learn and apply it is the one-liner reminder:  “Turn insight into action.”  Related to this, I also use the reminder, “Find three take aways.”   I use one-liner reminders to build new habits or practice new skills.  For example, the way I learned to improve my influence was “ask, don’t tell.”  It helped me to start asking better questions, and to pose better questions to help bring others along.
6. Ask better questions.  You can use questions to build a wondering mind, and to explore new ideas.  People that get stuck or limit themselves tend to ask limiting questions, or they don’t ask questions at all.  Asking questions puts you in a more resourceful state.  Your mind is a powerful problem solver, but you need to ask it the right questions.  Here is a set of 101 Questions that Empower You to get you started.
7. Model the leader.  Leaders tend to have a way with words.   The words they use help express conviction.  The words they use help express vision and opportunity.  Here are some of the words some of my favorite leaders use in their vocabulary:   learning moment, leadership opportunity,  challenge, win, excellence, connection, conviction, vision, etc.    Rob White of Mind Adventures is a great example of using inspiring words. mental models, and mantras for personal empowerment and self-leadership.
8. Leverage patterns and pattern languages.  Patterns create a shared vocabulary.  If you haven’t explored patterns and pattern languages before, your world is about to rock.   Patterns are simply named problem and solution pairs.  The benefit is that you can build a simple language around the expert knowledge within a domain.  For example, Christopher Alexander developed pattern languages to share architectural solutions.  The beauty is you can use a single word to express a hundred-word concept.  In software development, one of the ways we rapidly share expertise is through patterns.  Beyond software, a great example of patterns in practice is the collection of Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas, which creates a vocabulary for driving change leadership.   I also have a post on The Power of Patterns.
9. Make it a mantra.    According to Wikipedia, a mantra is “a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of ‘creating transformation.’  One of my mantras is, “stand strong when tested.”  Another is, “lead by example.”
10. Choose your words to use your words.   In nearly every scenario where you say you “HAVE TO” do something, there is really a choice.   The choice may not be attractive, but that’s exactly why you are choosing the choice that you are.  Empower yourself by swapping out more “HAVE TO”s with “CHOOSE TO”s.   You will gradually break the ties that bind you, including your own.

Shape your words, shape your life.  Always remember that YOU are your most important meaning makers in your life.   Choose your words and use your words with skill.

“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

People often ask me why I’ve been at Microsoft so long.  It’s simple.  It’s the people.  It’s people with a passion for more from life.

The variety of people is mind blowing.  From teachers to scientists to you name it.  There are doctors on staff who even write code.   There are world-class musicians, mathematicians, best-selling authors, outstanding speakers, and inspiring minds that bring science fiction to life.

What brings such an unlikely band of heroes together?   Values.   Values are the lightening rod that attract and bind us.

Just about everybody I know wants to change the world and make a difference in their unique way, and to leave the world a better place.  So many unsung heroes give way more than they’ll ever get, while they follow their heart, and give their best, where they have their best to give.

Values at Microsoft

Here are the shared values at Microsoft as you’ll find them on Microsoft.com:

“As a company, and as individuals, we value integrity, honesty, openness, personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, and mutual respect. … We take on big challenges, and pride ourselves on seeing them through.”

That’s some powerful stuff. If you are a fan of continuous learning or personal growth, Microsoft is the ultimate dojo of personal excellence.   There are so many people to learn from in so many ways, and the feedback loops are extreme.  It’s an arena that’s empowered me expand my capabilities beyond my wildest imagination, in leadership, business, and life.

I joined Microsoft to follow Bill Gates.  Here was a guy with all the money in the world, yet he showed up every day and worked harder than most people I know to do what he loved.   He wants to empower people.  He wants to change the world and technology is his way.

When You Know Your Values, You can Live Them

I value adventure, excellence, and empowerment.  In one of my leadership trainings, a colleague pointed out to me that adventure is a strong theme in my life (she mentioned my motorcycle, my Jeep, my passion for road trips, etc.)  She challenged me and ask me how I could bring more of that to work?

There’s no shortage of big challenges at Microsoft.  I decided to treat each of my projects as an epic adventure.  For each project I took on, I would envision what the movie poster would look like.  The energy was contagious and it helped inspire the teams I lead.  One of my colleagues said they thought of me as, “the director of block-busters.”

Excellence is another theme in my day to day.  I challenge myself to master my craft or hone my skills or expand my capabilities.  To do so, I model the best.  I find the people that are great at what they do and I learn from them.   This helps me stay in the game, and grow better at what I do.  It also helps me keep a “beginner’s mind.”  I’m always open to new ways and new perspectives.  It’s a quest for the best, and failure is an option, as long as it’s failing forward.

Empowerment is another theme that drives me.  I empower people.  I like to bring out the best in people and often that means setting the goals and getting out of the way.  People get creative and resourceful when they take on challenges.  The trick is not to tie their hands with process or style, but instead to help them internalize the tests for success.   Then they can use all their resources and passion to rise above the challenge before them and grow in the process.

Every day, there are so many chances to spend more time in our values, if we first know what our values are.  As one of my colleagues put it so well, “Do more art.”

Don’t Break Yourself Against Your Values

During my interview for Microsoft, my hiring manager asked me if I was joining for fame or fortune.  Ironically, I didn’t want either.  I told him I wanted to make impact.  He liked that answer.

I was not actually a fan of fame.  In fact, what I like about Microsoft is how many unsung heroes there are among the halls.  There are so many people with so many amazing lives and amazing achievements.  You would just never know.  For example, do you know Wikipedia?  Well, I used to work with the guy that created the Wiki platform.  He never bragged about it.  In fact, he never brought it up unless I asked him about it.

I prefer to make impact behind the scenes and to lead in a quiet way.  For me, I measure my success internally, not externally, and my bar for me is high.  I learned early on to practice the art of leadership aikido and to “shape without a wake.”  My manager’s philosophy was — make great things happen, but don’t leave a wake behind you, and don’t leave a trail of dead bodies.

Sometimes I run into a conflict where the culture values visible and vocal, while I value quiet and effective.  What I’ve learned is to blend.  What I found is that it gives me more options, and I can choose the most effective approach for the scenario.

The more important lesson I learned though is that many things that seem like conflict of values, are really conflict of styles.  Conflict of styles is easy to deal with when you see it for what it is.  You just change your approach.  A Darwin way to put it is, “adapt or die.”  The way to see through style conflict is to always connect back at the values, find the common ground, and create shared goals.

We have a lot more in common then we think we do, if we don’t get blinded by conflict in styles.

Every now and then, there truly is a conflict in values, such as one person value freedom, while another values control, or one person values routine, while another values innovation, or one person values people while another values things.

In my experience, it’s better to find a better fit than to break yourself against your values.  If roller coasters aren’t for you, find another ride.

My Related Posts

• Finding Your Values
• Guide Your Path with Vision, Values, and Goals
• Living Your Process

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.

This is my roundup of top blogs for insight and action.  The Web is a big place, but a lot of roads lead to the same town.

In the spirit of insight and action, I want to share some of the best blogs on the Web that help you get better, smarter, and faster in key areas of your life.  For this list, I looked to people, blogs, and sites that really make us think, surprise us with insight, and share news we can use (or make us laugh, cry, or feel alive..)  Many of the authors are people with a passion for more from life.

Collectively, this collection of top blogs helps equip you with “skills to pay the bills and lead a better life.”  You’ll find it’s a mash up.  The mix includes: business skills, continuous learning, entrepreneurism, fun, leadership, personal development, productivity, strategy, technology, thinking skills, and trends.

I believe these are the sites that truly help you get the edge in work and life.  It’s a living list of top blogs, and I will update it from time to time.

Top 10 Blogs for Insight and Action

1. 800 CEO Read
2. All Top
3. How To Change the World, by Guy Kawsaki
4. Information is Beautiful, by David McCandless
5. Jim Carroll – Futurist, Trends, and Innovation
6. Psychology Today
7. Scobleizer, by Robert Scoble
8. Seth Godin
9. TED – Ideas Worth Spreading
10. The Blog of Tim Ferris

Top Blogs for Insight and Action A – Z

1. 43 Folders, by Merlin Man
2. 800 CEO Read
3. 1000 Ventures.com, by Vadim Kotelnikov
4. A Daring Adventure, Tim Brownson
5. Alissa Finerman – Author, Speaker, Life Coach
6. All Top
7. Big Think
8. Blue Zones Blog, by Dan Buettner
9. Brain Pickings
10. Business Balls, by Alan Chapman
11. Business Insider
12. Change This
13. Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, by Steven Aitchison
14. Charlie Rose
15. Chief Executive Magazine
16. CIO.com
17. CIO Insight
18. Cool Infographics, by Randy Krum
19. Danielle LaPorte – White Hot Truth
20. David Zinger – Employee Engagement
21. Dilbert
22. Disease Proof, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman
23. Dr. K’s Blog – How to Click with People, by Dr. Rick Kirshner
24. Entrepreneur’s Journey, by Yaro Starak
25. Entrepreneur Magazine
26. Expert Access, by Steve Kayser
27. Forbes
28. Gaping Void, by Hugh MacLeod
29. Gartner
30. Get Rich Slowly, by J.D. Roth
31. Grow with Stacey
32. HBR (Harvard Business Review)
33. How To Change the World, by Guy Kawsaki
34. Huffington Post
35. Ian’s Messy Desk, by Ian McKenzie
36. I Will Teach You To Be Rich, by Ramit Sethi
37. IGG – Tips, Tools, and Tantalizing Ideas, by Marquita Herald
38. Illuminated Mind, by Jonathan Mead
39. Inc – Small Business Ideas and Resources for Entrepreneurs
40. Information is Beautiful, by David McCandless
41. Jim Carroll – Futurist, Trends, and Innovation
42. John Maxwell on Leadership
43. Jurgen Appelo
44. Leading Answers – Leadership and Agile Project Management Ideas, Observations, and Links
45. Life Optimizer.org, by Donald Latumahina
46. Marc and Angel Hack Life
47. Marie Forleo
48. Mental Toughness Blog, by Steve Siebold
49. Michael Hyatt – Intentional Leadership
50. NPR
51. Personal Development with Fred Tracey
52. Personal Excellence Blog, by Celestine Chua
53. Personal Success Factors, by Stephen Borgman
54. Pick the Brain, by Erin Falconer
55. Possibilities – Master Brew for Creative Minds
56. Psychology Today
57. ReadWriteWeb
58. Richard Branson
59. Scientific American Mind
60. Scobleizer, by Robert Scoble
61. Seth Godin
62. Shake Off the Grind & Begin to Thrive, by Joe Wilner
63. Slate Magazine – Politics, Business, Technology, and the Arts
64. Smart Passive Income, by Pat Flynn
65. Stepcase Lifehack
66. Steve Pavlina
67. Strategy + Business
68. Success Begins Today, by John Richardson
69. Success Magazine Blog
70. Tammy Erickson (Harvard Business Review)
71. TED – Ideas Worth Spreading
72. The Blog of Tim Ferris
73. The Changing Minds Blog, by David Straker
74. The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin
75. The Opinion Pages (The New York Times)
76. The Simple Dollar – Financial Talk for the Rest of Us, by Trent Hamm
77. The Wall Street Journal
78. Think Simple Now, by Tina Su
79. This Isn’t Happiness
80. Tim Sanders
81. Tony Robbins – Change Your Life Now
82. Top Tenz.Net
83. Victoria Vives – Strategies for Unleashing the Superhero in You

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Jason Selk Ed.D. on how to apply principles of mental toughness to improve your performance at work.

Jason is the bestselling author of 10-Minute Toughness and Executive Toughness.  His mission is “the relentless pursuit of greatness” and he makes a living training entrepreneurs, executives, and world-class athletes in how to bring out their best in any situation.  Jason has also been featured in USA Today, Men’s Health, Muscle and Fitness, Shape, and Self Magazine, an he’s a regular contributor to ABC, CBS, ESPN, and NBC.

What I like about Jason’s approach is that it’s about accountability, focus, and optimism.  I also like that Jason draws tools and techniques from sports psychology that you can apply to “win” in the boardroom and win at life.

In this post, Jason shares the same tools he’s used with the St. Louis Cardinals that you can use to change your game in the workplace. Without further ado, here’s Jason …

When spring arrives, my mind always conjures up the baseball fields in Jupiter, FL, where I spent many seasons helping the St. Louis Cardinals get into peak mental condition for spring training.

Mental conditioning? What’s that?

Back in 2006, I was hired by the St. Louis Cardinals to train them in Mental Toughness. They already had a coach that to teach them the mechanics of pitching, batting, and fielding. What they needed was to learn how to set goals, focus on their priorities, stay positive, be disciplined, and win. I became their first Director of Mental Training, and that year they went on to win their first World Series in 20 years.

The principles of Mental Toughness are as useful in the workplace as they are in the dugout. In fact, I have trained not only world-class athletes but countless entrepreneurs and executives as well, using the same techniques. Not surprisingly, highly productive business leaders and high-performing athletes have many traits and behaviors in common.

5 Ways to Build Your Mental Toughness

Businesspeople are prone to many of the same unhelpful behaviors and mindsets as underperforming athletes, which prevent them from being at the top of their game and outshining the competition.

Let’s look at five ways to train your business brain in Mental Toughness, taking a cue from the world champion Cardinals. These will prevent unproductive habits from getting in the way of your personal best.

1.  Pay Attention to Your Swing, and Forget the Home Run

If you focus on the target—e.g., finishing the report, making the sale, acquiring the new client—you may never get there. That’s because you can’t accomplish a goal without first having a sound process in place. Instead, identify those daily goals that have the greatest influence on your performance and, therefore, your success. I call these process goals. Then put all your energy and courage into tackling them every single day. If your aim is to double your client load in one year, then figure out three specific tasks, or process goals, you need to complete each day that will help you reach that ultimate target. If you are relentless and consistent about completing your three daily process goals, you will succeed.

2. Don’t Take Your Eye Off the Ball

Many high-performing businesspeople believe they can multitask and still maintain focus. For instance, they answer emails and check their calendar while talking to a client. However, recent research from Stanford University found that multi-taskers are both less productive than their single-minded counterparts, but also suffer from weaker self-control. In other words, multitasking can be addictive. Control your tendency to become distracted by keeping your eye on the task you are involved with right now. While completing the three tasks you identified above, turn off your cell phone and shut down your email. The American Psychological Association cites a study showing that multitasking leads to as much as a 40 percent drop in productivity.

3. Be Your Own Ref

If you want to be more productive, you need to establish your own limits, or “not to-do” list. This might include counterproductive tasks such as responding to company emails during family time, talking to clients after 3:30 p.m., or not saying yes right away to a new project, but giving your answer the next day, after you’ve slept on it. Be sure that you are scheduling your calendar rather than allowing your calendar to schedule you.

4. Get R&R Between Workouts

Nearly 4 out of 10 workers are regularly fatigued, according to a recent study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Lack of sleep causes fatigue, and that’s a productivity killer. In fact, the rate of lost productivity for workers with fatigue was 66 percent, compared with 26 percent for workers without fatigue. Total lost productive time averaged 5.6 hours per week for workers with fatigue, compared to 3.3 hours for their counterparts without fatigue. Make rest and rejuvenation a priority. Give yourself 7-9 hours of sleep per night.

5. Listen to Your Body

In sports, when athletes try to push through the pain, they end up on the DL with injuries. In the workplace, this is known as “extreme working,” and it results in lower performance. New research found that 69 percent of extreme workers—super high achievers who regularly work 60-80 hours a week and are in the top 6 percent of earners—admit that their extreme working habits undermine their health. Most of these workers can’t sustain this level of performance, and end up burning out, just like promising athletes who have to sit on the bench all season or retire early because of injuries.

“In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.” — J. Paul Getty

How do you make a change that sticks?  It’s one thing to temporally change, but how do you make a lasting change?

I was listening to a Personal Power II, where Tony Robbins explains the keys to lasting change.  Robbins studied and compared different approaches to change, including NLP, Gestalt Therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, and various forms of counseling.   He concluded that they all can work.  They work when your neuro associations change.

Robbins wanted to speed up change and make it last.  That’s how he found the underlying patterns for long-lasting change.  Here are the three keys to lasting change:

1. Get leverage.  You have to believe that something *MUST* change.  You need to believe you *can* change it.  You have to believe that it must change *now.*
2. Interrupt the current limiting association.  You have to interrupt the pattern or habit *when* it’s happening.  The idea is to “scribble across the record” so it will no longer affect you the same way.  For example, when the fear, phobia, or force of habit is triggered, that’s exactly the right time to interrupt it.
3. Condition yourself to the new empowering association.  For example, you can link laughter to the situation.  You need to re-enforce the new association and behavior.

The “ah-ha” part of any breakthrough is the neuro-association change.  It’s the new meaning you assign to something.  All change is about changing either your perception or your behavior.   When you make new meaning, you change your behavior.  Or, alternatively, when you change your behavior, you make new meaning.

The conditioning part is key.   Rather than a program you run once, you condition your success.  You don’t comb your hair once, brush your teeth once, or workout once and then you’re set for life.  Instead, you build a habit, and learn to love the conditioning.  If you’ve ever fallen into your old pattern or habit, it’s likely you are using your old frame of reference, and running your old pattern.

Another insight is that the gain has to outweigh the pain.   If you’re resisting the change, it’s because you’re still associating more pain to the change, than not changing.  The challenge is, you may not be consciously aware of the underlying reason.

If you have a habit or change you want to make, ask yourself how you can apply the three keys to lasting change.

Photo by lululemon ahtletica.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by best selling author, Lisa McCourt.  Lisa is here on Sources of Insight to share with you insightful and actionable steps to be comfortable in your own skin.

If you don’t know Lisa, you’re in for a treat.  Lisa specializes on the topic of self-love and her books on unconditional love have sold more than five and a half million copies.  Lisa’s latest book, Juicy Joy –  Seven Simple Steps to Your Glorious Gutsy Self is all about leading a life that is rich, real, and powerfully satisfying, while embracing your biggest, gutsiest, and most authentic self.  It’s you, at YOUR best.

I asked Lisa to write a guest post to share her best lessons learned on how to be comfortable in your own skin because of her personal experience.   I’m a fan of people sharing what they have learned the hard way or what they have had to work at.  It’s always deeper and more meaningful.   Most of all, it’s keeping it real.

Whether or not you are already comfortable in your own skin, I think you’ll really enjoy this post.  I’m impressed with Lisa’s ability to distill and share such pragmatic wisdom on the fine art of loving yourself, flaws and all.  This is more than a beautiful piece of prose.  It’s life wisdom that you can use to live a little better every day.

Without further ado, here’s Lisa with her top ten lessons learned on how to be comfortable in your own skin …

Imagine being blissfully comfortable in your own skin, knowing with the utmost clarity exactly who you are and feeling eager to lovingly, proudly share that authentic you with the world. Imagine being perpetually sustained by an inner source of joy—not the smiley, fluffy kind of happiness we sometimes associate with the word “joy,” but the rich, meaty, substantial flavor of joy that comes with extraordinary self-knowledge and self-appreciation. That’s the vantage point I want for you. From that vantage point, in the words of Franz Kafka, “the world will offer itself freely to you. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

In uber-consolidated nutshell fashion, here are the top 10 ways to be comfortable in your own skin:

1. Get real.

Do the work to get clear about who you are—not just who you routinely consider yourself to be, the person you habitually show the world—but who you are in the deepest recesses of your authentic heart and soul.

The word “authenticity” is misunderstood sometimes. People think of it as a virtue, like honesty . . . like you owe the world your authenticity and you should feel bad if you’re not authentic. That’s not the case. I’m not suggesting you should become more authentic because it will make you a better person—you already are a phenomenal person. I’m telling you that becoming more authentic is your golden ticket—to joy, to success, to vibrant health and energy, to easily manifesting the life of your dreams. It’s every bit that transformative. You’re not doing this to better serve the world; you’re doing it to better serve you. But—happy bonus!—it happens to be the best way to serve your loved ones and the world as well.

2. Adore YOU.

If you’ve been on a personal development path for a while, I’m probably not the first to suggest that you need to love yourself. But I’m surprised to discover how often my students don’t really seem to know why I’m so insistent on that point. Are you tired of hearing about how you need to love yourself more? Does the thought of it feel kind of like of a burden—one more thing to check off your To-Do list? Does the whole concept feel a bit worn-out and cliché? Maybe you just need to understand what’s in it for you.

Self-love is the fastest route to literally anything you want right now. Money, love, health, romance . . . it all hinges on your level of self-love. The circumstances of your life are always providing you a crystal-clear, precisely accurate measure of how much you love yourself and what you believe you deserve. All you can ever create is what you believe you’re worthy of experiencing. It’s an immutable energetic law. That’s why elevating self-love is the not-so-secret path to elevating everything else.

3. Trust your wants.

Stop trying to justify and rationalize your most heartfelt desires. Your desires are the clearest indicator of who you are. Denying them is denying you. No one needs to understand why you want what you want. You don’t even need to understand it yourself. Just trust it, and trust yourself to manifest it. The reason you don’t already have everything you want is crazy-simple. You don’t love yourself enough yet to deeply believe that you deserve everything you want. My students argue that sometimes, but they always discover it’s true. You might even believe, on a conscious level, that you do deserve a certain thing, but I promise you that if you were fully, wholly believing you deserved it—even in the cobwebby corners of your unconscious belief system—it would already be in your life.

4. Stop trying to vanquish the “bad stuff.”

And stop whining about it, too. Celebrate our unwanted circumstances because there’s so much valuable information for us in them. Get clear on why your unwanted circumstances are here and why you created them. Then use them as a springboard. Once you can start genuinely thanking “the bad stuff”, it’s pretty easy to move past it.

5. Take responsibility.

Own every last drop of everything you’ve ever created. We’re so conditioned to blame our unwanted circumstances on other people, or on the “system” or the world . . . What if it’s really all within your control? Taking full responsibility for the life you’ve created for yourself and the life you’re in the process of creating is hugely empowering. But it requires first getting uber-honest to a degree that’s terrifying for most people. Don’t be “most people.” Understanding that you alone are holding the reins on your life is the first critical step toward learning how to operate them.

6. Stop tolerating.

Tolerating is slow emotional suicide. It sucks the life out of you, drains your energy, numbs you, depletes you, and keeps you immobilized. There’s no reason for you to ever tolerate anything. We sometimes confuse tolerating with accepting—we all know it’s good to accept the things we can’t change, right? If we make very clear distinctions between what can be changed and what can’t, then it’s astounding the kinds of life-altering adjustments people are able to easily, joyfully make when they understand the underlying reasons they’ve been tolerating things.

7. Get out of the spin cycle.

Where in your life are you on autopilot, creating the same situation for yourself (in essence) over and over again? Maybe you keep dating the same romantic partner. Maybe the current model is better looking, or more successful, or slightly more open than the one before, but in essence you’re with a lover who triggers your tried-and-true insecurities, defense mechanisms, and familiar unhealthy spirals. Or maybe you find yourself in the same employment dynamic over and over again—even if you change careers completely. Maybe you’ve attracted a series of supervisors, or a series of friends, who stir up the not-good-enough feelings a parent invoked for you as a child. Escape the spin cycle by learning how to look closely at how these patterns develop and how to benefit from the opportunities they offer.

8. Permanently shift your beliefs.

Focus on the deliberate rewiring of your belief system because your beliefs are determining everything you experience as your reality. That’s not New-Age speak anymore; it’s common knowledge. It’s why researchers always have to use placebo control groups whenever they test any drug. If they don’t have a group taking a sugar pill, their findings won’t be considered valid by the agencies that govern pharmaceuticals. In pain-control experiments, when a new pain pill is tested, fully half of the sufferers who are given a placebo will report having less pain. The mind is that powerful and the scientific community knows it. Changing your mind will change your life.

Many of your limiting beliefs are not unique to you; our culture suffers from a long-standing epidemic of crappy shared beliefs. Most of us, at some level, harbor the same fears, the same tragic self-doubts, and the same profound longings to be liberated from our self-made prisons. In our outer circumstances, we may vary greatly, but at deeper levels, this is seldom the case. If you aren’t living the precisely blissful, richly textured life you crave, take the steps to discover which of your beliefs are keeping you from it and what you can do about that.

9. Dream loudly.

Stop limiting yourself according to what seems practical. Practical goals do not inspire enough passion to propel you toward their certain fruition. As John F. Kennedy wisely surmised, “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.” Be those men (and women.).

10. Live passionately.

Once you’ve done the self-examination work to uncover your most delicious desires, don’t pussyfoot toward them. Hurl yourself recklessly in their direction! Trust that the Universe wildly adores you and is always orchestrating on your behalf. It’s been waiting for you to get pumped and grow a pair so that it could swoop in with divine assistance that will leave you breathless.

The author Natalie Goldberg has a cake analogy I love. When you bake a cake, you have ingredients, right? You have eggs, butter, milk, sugar, flour. The ingredients are the different parts of your life. You mix them all together in a bowl but this doesn’t make a cake. It makes goop. To turn it into a cake, you have to add the energy of intense heat. To turn your life into a life worth living, you have to add the heat and energy of your whole heart and soul. Otherwise it’s just goop.

Being comfortable in your skin and living with authenticity is knowing precisely who you are and passionately adoring who you are—with all the countless accoutrements and benefits that come along with that practice. You are spectacular. Not the elaborate representation of You that you routinely show the world, but the raw, uncensored, vulnerable You underneath all of that. Find that You and learn how to deeply love and honor that You. That’s feeling blissfully comfortable in your own skin, and it’s the secret to everything you’re longing for.

One of the big ideas that stuck with me in my Change Leadership training is — “The value is in the change.”  It’s such a simple concept, but it got me thinking.

If there’s no change, then it’s like treading water.  It’s like the hamster on the wheel.  It’s like below the line vs. above the line.  The value is in the change, and the change is about raising the bar and rising above your status quo.  It’s about changing your game.  If you invest time and energy, then you expect some sort of return.  The return is supposed to come from the change.  Some of the changes might be:

• Can I do this a little better?
• Can I do this a little faster?
• Can I do this a little cheaper?

Sometimes the change is doing what you already do, but better.  Other times the change is doing something new entirely … out with the old, in with the new.  When it comes to personal change, that means changing your thinking, feeling, and doing.   The easiest thing to notice here is a clear change in behavior.

You can use “the value is in the change” as your lens, to help remind you where the value is.  Whether it’s adopting a New Year’s Resolution, or buying a personal development program, or reading a new book, remind yourself that the value is not in the thing itself.  The value is in the change.  Knowing and doing are two different things.

The more that you actually apply the new insights, strategies, and tactics that you learn, the more value you can realize from your efforts.

With that in mind, what will you do differently, to realize more value from the time and energy you already spend?

Photo by Ian Sane.

I wanted a visual that could express one of the idea of Sources of Insight.   I think the Yin and Yang is a good model.  According to Wikipedia, the Yin and Yang expresses how seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent.

I think this is true of work and life.  I think this is also true of soft skills and hard skills.

One of the things I like to do is to inject more “life” into work.  By that, I mean using work as self-expression.  I also mean using work as an arena for personal growth.  I also mean living your values at work.  So rather than see work as a task you do, I see work as a way to grow your skills, challenge yourself to new levels, express your best, and contribute your unique value to the world.

I also like to inject more “work” into life.  I learn a lot of skills that apply well beyond the workplace arena.  We’ve learned a lot about business skills.   Those same business skills can serve you in life.  A sustainable business has a vision, mission, and values.  It creates unique value.  It plays to its strengths and limits it’s liabilities.  It knows who it serves.  It considers the economic realities and it’s contribution to the world.  A successful business is adaptable, and it knows the market.  All of these same skills apply to “life.”

I think we get better at life when we borrow skills from the world of business.  For example, executive thinking skills can help us frame problems better, or make more effective decisions, or prioritize in a more deliberate way.  Strategy skills can help us better differentiate and be our own best self, in a world of too many “Me-Too’s.”  Project management skills can help us get things done in a more predictable way, and bring order to chaos.  And basic business skills can help us fund our life styles so that we can take care of the basics as we find our way forward.

So I really do like the blend of work and life and the possibilities that creates.  But that’s not all.  I also chose the Yin and Yang because I’ve always been a fan of blending hard and soft skills.  I think in this case, what this means for me is that to thrive in the world, we need hard and soft skills for work, as well as hard and soft skills for life.  I plan to bring more hard skills to life, and more soft skills to work, and Sources of Insight is my arena for sharing what I learn.