How to Escape the Busyness Trap

As we move toward the year's end and December holidays, you’re likely busy with end of year wrap-up and experiencing holiday hustle from greetings, gatherings, and gift giving. 70% of our clients consider late November - early December the busiest time of year. In the tech sector right now many are experiencing the uncertainty of layoffs or a decreasing stock price. So if you’re feeling busy or stressed you’re in good company. 

Here’s a gift you can give to yourself right now that takes mere minutes and is worth your time because the eye of the storm is when self awareness matters most.  It’s a gift of perspective. 

Though you’re busy… 
Your to do list is full of what needs to be done. 
Your state of being determines how you do it.
But what really matters is why you’re doing it all in the first place.
These 3 questions will help you pay closer attention to why and how you’re doing all that you’re doing right now.  

1. What is one of your top values? 

2. What’s one thing you can do to embody this value?

3. (Observe, ongoing) What changes as a result of your embodiment of that value?

Here’s an example:
Writing this piece in time for the holidays is what I’m doing.
1) I value grace/ease. It’s one why behind many choices I make.
2) I can embody grace and ease by softening my jaw, relaxing my forehead and releasing the tension in my shoulders. This is how I can approach what I’m doing.
3) I notice that as soon as I do this, I write the next sentence as if words were like water flowing through me. I’m still writing this piece. But my how just changed and now it’s just easier to do because my why is clear and ease is my focus, not the writing itself. 

A colleague tried this, here’s what happened:
A senior global tech leader didn’t realize how stressed she was until she nearly backed into someone while holiday shopping at lunchtime. She was quieter than normal and admitted that she was anxious about her job with the next wave of expected layoffs. But she still paused and gave this a try and here’s what happened:
1) She values impact. Impact is her why.
2) Pausing to remember that value was big. She realized that it’s not about achieving or accomplishing – though she’s very good at both. She realized she could embody impact by being still (deliberately patient, waiting, watching) when she would normally spring into action. Stillness and slowness become her how, even though it’s uncomfortable for her. But it’s kind of like surfing - waiting and watching for the next big wave to come rather than pushing and paddling for no reason.  
3) Observing herself as she paused, she describes a feeling of excitement: “I feel happy and my mind is now flooded with ideas, when before I felt blank.” As I observed her in conversation, her eyes lit up, her shoulders dropped. I felt energized in her presence. Of course she’ll find another opportunity. And being still - waiting, watching could be a key to how she’ll find it. 
 
Your turn, values
Identifying values is something we frequently do in coaching. So you may already know your top 3. But if you haven’t uncovered your values (in the past 3 years), go here or here to identify them. Both tests are free and take about 10 minutes to complete. If you’d like an even faster option, go here and pick one value that speaks to you right now.

Then,
What’s one thing you value? Choose just one. 
What are two ways you can embody this value? If you had to pantomime or act it out, how would your body express this value?* 
What do you observe as a result? How does your BEing (in the body) shift your DOing? 

*If you find yourself getting stuck here, you can reverse engineer the process by observing yourself doing the task. Let’s say it’s writing Christmas cards. While you’re doing that task, notice where you feel tension in your body. Maybe your wrist feels heavy. Imagine your value being infused into that heaviness. If your answer to question one is joy…imagine joy (if joy could act perhaps it’s lightness) in your wrist. Just for a moment. What happens next as you continue to write?

While there’s no escaping life and the stressors at any given time
We have a choice in how we meet those stressors. The process doesn’t have to be hard. It entails pausing to reflect and then taking one small but deliberate step at a time. One small step leads to one small shift which leads to even more shifts. Each step is something to build upon and celebrate. This is how you Access Alignment. This is what conscious leadership is all about.

If you like this concept but aren’t able to engage with it right now,
I invite you to bookmark this page for later…and when you’re ready to envision how you want to be in 2023, use this 3-step process to guide you.

How to Be that Zen Calm Leader - Be Proactive

Image by Evan Sharboneau

I often hear leaders say - how can I be more Zen in my leadership?

One assumption we often make is to assume there’s a magic switch that we can turn on or off. “I’m not centered. Yikes!” Flip a switch…”Now I’m centered.” As lovely as that would be, it’s unrealistic for two reasons. One, it’s never as black and white as that and there are variations in how present or centered we are. And two, if you’re trying to be more Zen - more calm, more clear and more centered - when that challenging moment is upon you, it’s already too late.

A lot of what happens in the moment can be anticipated in advance.

One way to cultivate more Zen in your leadership is to be proactive and strategic – know your self, know your triggers

Being proactive, stepping back and getting perspective - these three things can dramatically reduce spikes in your cortisol levels and help you be less frazzled in the moment.

Most people are not only busy, but they also confuse busy with productive. Habitual busyness often leads to lack of planning, poor choices and poor judgement. Cultivating presence is a conscious, strategic step that increases clarity. If you are always busy, frenetically busy, start saying no to anything that does not align with your key goals. Trim the fat in your calendar. Be ruthless. Polite and kind, yes, but ruthless about your focus and where your energy is to be aimed. Having better boundaries and saying no to things at both at work and at home is essential.  What percentage of time do you spend thinking strategically? How might you increase this by 1-5% each week? If you could get more done in less time it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?

Once you’ve made time for reflection, think back to the situations, events or people that typically cause you to lose your center. Triggers come, seemingly out of the blue, but even these follow patterns. Look for and become aware of your patterns.

It’s easy to become anxious or unbalanced when:
a. We’re in unfamiliar situations, people, places, events (people really underestimate how quickly and easily this happens).
When was the last time you were in a situation you’d never been in before?
What was new about it? How did you respond to this unfamiliar or uncertain condition?
What worked? What didn't?
What would you do differently if it happened again?

b. There’s a lack of trust – relationships that don’t have strong trust or conflicting styles and viewpoints.
When have you had to work closely with someone you didn’t trust or like?
What made it so difficult for you?
How did you find common ground? How did you consciously or unconsciously connect with that person? What worked? What didn’t?
What would you do differently if you were to work with them (or someone like them) in the future?

c. There are threats to your status, beliefs, sense of self
This takes a lot of self-awareness – definitely advanced work. (and it’s also linked to trust above)

When have you worked with someone who had a lot of power over you who was threatening in some way? When have long-held beliefs and your identity been challenged?
What went through your mind? How did you feel?
What was your body’s reaction? What enabled you to stay present?
What would you do differently if faced with the same (or similar) situation in the future?

d. Seasonal or project-based stressors are occurring – holiday season, back to school time, before or after time off, preparing for board meetings, an offsite, end-of-quarter, etc.

For some, back to school season or the holidays create an underlying build-up of stress.
For others it can even be more subtle, like the anniversary of the death of a loved one. Any or all of these can cause you to be off center without fully realizing it.
What seasons and stages in work or life are most stressful for you?
How do you know that you are off? What are the signs and signals that you are stressed?
When have you navigated some of these seasonal stressors with the most grace and ease?
How did you do it? Who or what helped to reduce the pressure and stress?
What could you do differently when faced with a particular seasonal stressor in the future?

e. Daily (“healthy”) routines that get disrupted.
We do our best to sleep well, eat well, exercise, etc…but what happens when we don’t and we can’t and we simply aren’t in control? What happens when even the very rituals that help sustain you are thrown off? I write this on a day that the power went out and I was dropped from a virtual meeting I was facilitating.
For a parent – the baby sleeps or doesn’t sleep. Or an aging parent or family member is needs unexpected care.
What happens when unknown or uncontrollable factors upset our continuum? This is when centering practice is most essential.
When was a time that you handled uncontrollable disruption well?
What were the factors that contributed to this? What might have been helpful that you didn’t do?
How will you know when it’s time to use that helpful thing in the future?

f. Unhealthy routines
Which of your regular routines may be hindering rather than helping your ability to be both awake and relaxed?
Do you check the news the moment you wake up – reading about the latest disaster and then start your entire day on your back foot rather than from center?  What daily habits help you stay present and calm? What daily habits take you away from center? What is one daily habit you might shift? How will you shift it? What could support you in making that shift? What might get in the way?  

Cultivating Zen in your leadership takes practice. It also entails being proactive, anticipating stressors in advance and maintaining perspective.
We invite you to pause…step back from life for a moment and take a conscious breath. Just doing that, right here, right now, is being more Zen in your leadership.

How to Reduce Anxiety with Breathing - Short and Long Term Solutions

Photo by Bartochette on Unsplash

We're often told to breathe to reduce stress but did you know?…

How you breathe can either help or hinder your progress. The nervous system is soothed by one type of breath - a breath that is low and slow - and agitated by a different type of breath - breath that is fast, shallow and high in the ribcage.

When you feel anxious the breath naturally speeds up and it typically rises up in the chest. Prolonged anxiety can create a physical pattern of tightness in the ribcage as the body repeats this shallow breathing. Shallow anxiety breath becomes the norm. And as shallow breathing increases so does the anxiety.

It’s a chicken and egg scenario:
You feel anxious and therefore the breath is shallow OR
the breath is shallow and therefore you feel anxious. 

 In either case, shallow breathing does not help.

To reduce anxiety in the short term and for instant stress relief, breathe slowly and lower in your abdomen. You can use a simple 4-count breath or just practice exhaling for longer than you normally would.

To take this a step further, deliberately pay attention to the weight of your body on your chair. Allow yourself to relax more into your chair as you breathe. You can use gravity and the sensation of relaxing down as a practice whenever you notice self-doubt or the inner critic popping up. Since the breath moves upward with anxiety, consciously drawing your attention downward helps counter the pattern.

For immediate and short-term relief for anxiety, remember: breathe low and slow.

If you find yourself feeling continually anxious for no apparent reason or if you find that your anxiety level does not match the severity of the incident that triggered it, you’ll greatly benefit from a more permanent and long-term solution. To gain long-term relief you need to change the mechanics of how you breathe and you do this by undoing the pattern of contraction in the body.

The body is pliable. Our life experiences shape us. When we brace ourselves for conflict or a challenging event our body is doing something. It is tightening or bracing. If a pattern repeats itself long enough, we become hard wired. This happens with our neurons and it happens with the fabric of our body.

Different healing modalities work with the body and can release these reactive patterns that have hardened the body over time. Working with a somatic (body) based practitioner can help.

In the case of anxiety, Chi Nei Tsang is a modality that can be especially powerful. Chi Nei Tsang helps undo the pattern of tension that is held in the belly and rib cage. Over the course of several years of receiving Chi Nei Tsang the tight anxiety breath pattern can unravel. When the rib cage is no longer restricted the diaphragm can move more freely and expansively. With more room to move, the breath can flow lower in the abdomen and it expands the ribcage in all directions (front, back, and both sides). With this type of breathing the body is telling the brain "you are safe” and “all is well.”

Begin Again

Photo by Luis Alfonso Orellana

I love this prompt. I first heard it from Claire Alexander at a 5 Rhythms Improv Dance class. As we moved to the music, and found ourselves repeating a pattern over and over we could just stop. And begin. Again.

In dance this process is visible and obvious. I feel the music. My body moves to the beat. Let’s say I’m making a circle with my right arm and a boom, tap with my foot. I might keep that pattern going for a while, as long as the music keeps playing that pattern. Maybe the shapes I make with my body will evolve into something else. Maybe the circle becomes a figure eight and the foot tap becomes a bigger knee bend foot stomp.  Maybe I keep that going and it’s fun and feels good. Maybe I keep that going and am bored with it but don’t know what else to do.

Begin again, as a prompt gives me permission to just stop. To not have to have a pattern at all. Begin again means I don’t care if the music keeps going I can start again from scratch. I pause. I watch. I wonder: what new thing will emerge now?

How often do we keep doing something just because we forget that we can begin again? 

Begin again is the invitation to stop being a hamster on a wheel.
It’s the antidote to going nowhere fast.
Sometimes we keep doing something because we think we should or we think we have to. Is that true?
What if you don’t have to scrap everything, you can just stop. Listen. Feel the rhythm and see what happens next.

The New Year is an obvious time to begin again. But I invite you to use this prompt to interrupt yourself at any time. In fact, you might want to remember this prompt a few weeks from now. Perhaps it’s a moment of self-doubt. Or perhaps you’re in the middle of a difficult conversation. What if you gave yourself (or someone else) permission to stop? Take a breath. And begin again.

How to begin again
At any time (particularly when you feel stuck or not in the flow)

Allow yourself to stop what you’re doing.
If it’s during a conversation, you might say, “Do you mind if we pause for a moment?” (they’ll likely appreciate this, particularly if you are butting heads or spinning your wheels)

Get really still. More still.
And listen.

Feel your breath move in and out.
Feel the rhythm, the beating of your heart.  

What does the rhythm need now?
How does it move you?

As leaders it’s easy to fall into a pattern of reacting and responding to whatever comes our way, particularly in times of stress. Begin again cultivates the space to stop briefly and resume from a more conscious, deliberate place.

Regulate before you react

Ever wish you could rewind your reaction? Here’s why breathing is such a big deal.

For all who wish to be more proactive and less reactive:

Share this with anyone who experiences stress or anyone who is doing something for the first time.

Time Management Trick for New Habits

As we kick of a new year and a new decade, many of us gear up for personal and professional improvement. In order to improve something in your life a typical approach is to make time for a new practice. You have to add time to make it happen. If you want to lose weight, you start going to the gym. To make more money, you increase the amount of work. To be more present, you wake up earlier and meditate. But if you are a leader in any capacity your life is already full of things to do. For the perpetually busy, what could be more stressful than adding yet one more task?

An alternative approach would be to subtract. If you want to lose weight, eat less. If you want more money, spend less. If you want to be happier see what Bob Newhart says in this SNL skit. (If only it were that easy.) 

But what if there’s another option; something neither additive nor deductive. Rather than starting something new, or stopping something old just shift what you’re already doing.

You already have to breathe, eat, drink and transport yourself from one place to another. You already attend meetings and have 1-1 conversations.  How can you make the most of these moments? Here are a few examples of what our clients have done:

A seasoned VP felt constantly edgy and combative with the less experienced co-founders of his startup. A shift in his morning commute made all the difference. Instead of a news packed radio hour full of the latest shootings and world problems he listened to his favorite up-beat music. The music made him smile and he naturally felt more at ease and happy when he entered the office each day. He was less tense right out of the gate and therefore more open to their fresh ideas and perspectives. 

For an engineer who wanted to speak more clearly and succinctly it wasn’t as simple as stopping his habit of speaking fast or rambling. For him, the shift was in posture, from slouching to standing straight instead. First, this unraveled patterns of tension and anxiety in his body. Second, it signaled to his brain that he didn’t need to be casual, slouchy or buddy-buddy with his co-workers. He needed to stand comfortably tall and in alignment. He practiced improving his posture daily during regular meetings. Nothing changed in his schedule, he just used meeting time more productively by practicing posture while listening and engaging. This micro shift practiced repeatedly over time led him to a game-changing conversation with a top level exec. He calmly and succinctly shared his idea and his skip-level superior quickly adopted it and rolled it out to the rest of the organization.

A new partner in a firm wanted to increase engagement with her team. When a move from the city to the suburbs increased her commute time she used her drive time as a valuable time to shift gears, connect, and have important conversations with her directs. She learned things about them and issues for the company as a whole that she would have missed had she not invested the time in connecting with them.

But wait, this sounds too simple. In Legacy, James Kerr tells the story about the famous All Blacks rugby team famous for their haka - a mighty ritual they use at the start of a match. According to Kerr such shifts are game changing. The All Blacks take their shifts to a new level by making them rituals. “You must ritualize to actualize.”

Step back…consider the flow and pattern of your day. Where could you simplify, slow down and be more deliberate? What small shift in effort will generate maximum return for you?  What purpose are you trying to fulfill right now and what’s the easiest way to integrate that purpose into things you are already doing?  This is where rubber hits the road. Cultivate habits that are uniquely powerful for you based on your specific purpose and your daily patterns. Then chart a path that starts where you are.

The problem-solver’s dilemma & tools for being more strategic at work

I work with people who are highly skilled problem solvers. As an addicted problem solver myself I would often create problems to solve just so I had something to work on in my head. Not consciously, of course, but I think I was that afraid of being bored and sitting still. As a practicing meditator I catch myself doing this all the time. Worrying about something, planning, prepping. Problem solving was a means to try to control my world. To reduce uncertainty, risk and….well, problems.

You don’t have to be problem solver addict to suffer from this. You could be someone who doesn’t beat your chest in victory because you are quickly and resolutely moving on to the next challenge. You might be someone who struggles to sleep at night as you play back the conversations/emails of the day and think “if only…I said or did this…” or perhaps you’re playing scenes from tomorrow’s critical shareholder meeting or the conversation you’ll have tomorrow when you have to let someone go. If stress and anxiety is a constant for you - you’ll definitely benefit from being more strategic at work.

Being more strategic at work doesn’t mean that you stop solving problems, you just start seeing them from a much wider lens. It means stepping back and looking in from a hundred feet up; Or from a the outside in rather than the inside out. Changing your perspective and vantage point is critical. When you are that far away, the problem of the day is far less personal. It’s not nearly as close to home, therefore the charge and the body’s primal reaction of freeze, flee, fight can relax. You can take a deep breath and see with clear eyes not just the challenge but a much bigger context and many more contributors or factors that could be influencing the situation at hand.

Being strategic requires not only the space to look from a new angle but a different rhythm and timing. It is very hard to be thoughtful and strategic when you are rushing. We humans have certain wiring. Rushing triggers adrenaline and increases stress hormones in the body. The stress reaction takes energy away from the highest level processors in the brain and sends it to your extremities so you can run or fight and survive the situation. This is why I will frequently start a meeting or coaching session with clients by centering and deliberately slowing down. Just one minute and heart rate slows down, breathing settles. Every time we do this the meeting is far more productive, the insights deeper and richer and overall clients seem much happier and supported. My questions don’t feel like a threat, but an opportunity to explore. Sometimes you have to go slow in order to go fast. Going slow increases your leverage and the ability to discern if you are headed in the right direction in the first place.

Part of being strategic is asking the question what went well? Problem solvers are quick to ask what went wrong and how do I ensure that doesn’t happen again. It takes some practice to deliberately ask what went well? If you a) have a harsh inner critic or b) dip into imposter syndrome or b) even if you have a hard time with approval and compliments from others then grab these questions below and make them part of your daily practice. At a minimum use them at the end of the day or week or quarter….or as you prep for your next offsite and next year’s planning. What went well? and then dialing in a little deeper…What were the conditions to make it so?

Autumn is a fabulous time to ask what went well. We even have a ritual for this in the United States. It’s called Thanksgiving. If asking what went well is new for you, I dare you to use the prompt right now, while the cycle of nature and the season of harvest supports this. In order to get to the next level of wherever you aspire to be…pause, reflect, go slow, look wide. See, feel, sense the richness of all that has happened and how even all the challenges are fuel for growth. See all that has happened like falling leaves. Look at the pile. What made it so?