Seriously.

It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Take some time away.

Spend some time with your family.

If you’re in Colorado like me, get out and ski.

I’m writing this for me, too.

I’m writing this on December 21.

And yet I know that I am likely succumbing to the temptation to “catch up,” to send out a few emails, to see if I can catch someone in the office, to get a jump on 2024 planning.

I, too, fall for this need to be PRODUCTIVE ALL THE TIME.

And I know it costs me.

Let’s Agree To Talk Next Week

I would love to talk to you about this. About how we both can get better at this. At taking the time away that we need. That is good for us and our families.

I love helping people get to the point where they are both killing it at work AND they have plenty of time for their families.

But let’s agree to push it to next week, ok?

Enjoy your time.

And I hope for both our sakes that it is as far away from work as it can be.

How To Go Deeper

More and more corporate people are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

 

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions.

The failure rate is off the chart, but it has only been recently that I’ve discovered why.

The Typical New Year’s Resolution

The typical resolution looks something like this—

—I want to lose weight.

—I want to eat better.

—I want to get more exercise.

—I want to get more organized.

—I want to be more productive.

What is wrong with these? I can see at least three reasons why a resolution like these could fail.

They Are Too General

First, they are too general.

How much weight do you want to lose? By when? What is your plan for doing that?

How would you measure your organization or productivity? How would you even start that?

(Other than cleaning my office occasionally, I haven’t had much success on the organizational front. I think a lot of it is that I really haven’t defined “organized” for myself.

They Assume Something Is Wrong With You

I should be thinner/more fit/healthier/more productive than I am, right?

And if I can’d do those things, I AM A BAD PERSON.

How has that worked out all these years?

Self-flagellation is generally a horrible self-improvement strategy.

Have you ever noticed that? Do you ever berate yourself for being “a certain way”? No matter what that way is, at least for me, it doesn’t seem to go away when I am determined that, no matter what, I should NOT BE THAT WAY.

When I get curious, when I love myself, when I accept myself as I am first, then I have a lot better chance.

When I start to change the underlying habits, in a sustainable way, I make a bit more progress. When I love myself for being amazing, and for wanting to be even more amazing, it gets just a bit easier to make change.

If I am ok just as I am, and I would like be organized, I can hire help.

In fact, I just did.

I could see that as a failure, or as victory. Which do you think is more helpful?

But even if you get specific and you are more kind to yourself, I would argue you are still likely to struggle.

Why?

They Aren’t What YOU Want

What? What do you mean? Of course I want to be thinner/fitter/healthier/more productive!

Do you really?

Or do you just think you SHOULD want these things?

This is the insight that I had just recently that really soured me on resolutions.

They are about what other people want. Or what I think I should want or who I think I should be.

If I really wanted these things, wouldn’t I already be doing them?

Or You Want Something Else More

Sometimes I DO want them, I just want something else more. This is what Robert Kegan calls a “competing commitment.” Another desire that seems to get in the way of the first, often unconsciously.

That could look like a fear of success. If I do all these things, I might become so busy I never see my family.

A real life example of this for me is around organization. I SAY I would like to be organized. I know my wife would like me to keep my office (which shares space with our family room) cleaner. But I am also afraid that neatness will stifle my creativity. I get really uncomfortable if my work space is too clean. It means I’m not busy enough!

What Is It You Really Want?

Here’s the great thing about resolutions. If you really want something, you are probably already doing it.

And the best way to know that you really want it?

You want it just because you want it. You can’t explain why.

This is why I have written in the past that desire is a gift from God. It’s a mystery why we love the things we love. Why we do the things we do.

If a new one of those shows up, by all means go for it. But don’t feel you have to make a resolution about it.

Be sure to celebrate this New Year. Be thankful for how far you’ve come. Get curious about what is next. And no matter what, remember to do things that YOU want, not the things that you think others want from or for you.

Going Deeper

More and more corporate people are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

I still occasionally suffer from imposter syndrome and it can stop me dead in my tracks.

Just as an example, who am I to be charging people six figures to coach them, when they are doing things I have never done? Running companies, employing hundreds of people, spending millions of dollars?

But when I look at it more closely, the question, really, is who am I not to be doing that?

I have so much experience that my clients do not.

I have thirty years of personal development work.

Twenty-seven years of regular meditation.

Twenty-five years of coaching and mentoring, the last seven full-time.

I have coached several of my clients through investments and exits. Time after time I have helped them grow their businesses simply by getting out of their own way. By helping them to see through the unhelpful stories they are making up about themselves.

Like, for example, their own imposter syndrome!

So why do I still freeze up?

What Is Imposter Syndrome, Really?

My experience is that Imposter Syndrome is a feeling, a fear, that I’m not up to the task that have in front of me. That if people REALLY KNEW the real me, they wouldn’t be asking me, or paying me, to do that task.

Put another way, Imposter Syndrome can show up as a thought or series of thoughts any time I have any concerns for hesitation or fear that what I am doing might not succeed.

It’s an instinct that keeps us out of danger by keeping us entirely within our comfort zone.

If we allow it to, it keeps us small. If I listened to my Imposter Syndrome, I probably wouldn’t be writing on LinkedIn. Because you might laugh at me or ridicule me or disagree with me or not like me, and all of those things feel incredibly risky.

But I have learned that there is another way to use Imposter Syndrome.

As a pointer. As a gift. And there are at least two gifts that Imposter Syndrome can give you.

The First Gift—The Gift Of Growth

There is a reason you sometimes feel like an imposter, a fraud. Like you don’t know what you are doing.

You feel this way because you actually don’t know what you’re doing.

If you are running a company or even trying something new, you run into things that you don’t know how to do. Things that, to be successful, you have to figure out how to do.

Your Imposter Syndrome lets you know when you are on this edge. If you are a leader, if you are a high achiever, if you a lifelong learner, you will face this edge often.

It means you are continuing to stretch and grow.

If I’m not feeling this, regularly, I take it to mean that something is wrong.

What would it mean for you, for your potential growth, if you were to do the same?

The Bigger Gift—The Gift Of Insight

Another way of thinking about Imposter Syndrome is that the identity that you have taken on does not fit the task you have taken on.

It makes you uncomfortable. There might be skills you can learn to increase your level of comfort. Books you can read, certifications you can get. But there will still be that moment when you have to apply what you have learned. Providing feedback to someone on your team or implementing a strategy.

And these real world things will test you until your identity adapts to them. Until you begin to feel more comfortable and the story you tell yourself begins to accommodate the new learning.

In the gap between your old self and new self there’s an opportunity to see that any story you tell about the self (about the fact that there is even a solid self to begin with) is made up.

A convincing illusion.

I was just talking with a client about this. That the meaning he is giving to the upcoming sale of his business, about whether one multiple is a success and another a failure, about what one multiple means about himself as a success or a failure, is all made up. Even what he says other people are thinking about him is made up.

There is freedom on the other side of this.

Not that it is meaningless. “Meaningless” is a story, too.

But that we are free to live into whatever assumptions we want to make about life. We are free to define our own journey. We are free to take on whatever stories we want to tell ourselves and to experience those stories in their full resonance.

I would love to hear what this might mean for you.

How To Go Deeper

More and more corporate people are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journal to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, at all stages of this journey.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

I first read about the Zone of Genius in Gay Hendricks’ book The Big Leap from a few years back. The idea is that, beyond our Zone of Excellence (the things that we are really good at), there is a place where we really shine. Where we light up. Where we are so good at something, where it comes so naturally, that it is even hard for us to see it.

It can be hard to see your Zone of Genius because it’s second nature to you.

Let Me Tell You About A Coach Friend Of Mine

I know a coach who so instinctively connects from his heart that he CANNOT SEE IT.

Everyone talks about his big heart. He knows no other way of being. It simply does not occur to him to be other than that.

He’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

How To See Your Zone Of Genius

Ask other people.

Ask your customers, your clients, “Why did you hire me?”

Ask your partner, “Why are you with me?”

Ask your colleagues. Your friends.

You will likely hear something that you have heard before. And been quick to dismiss, in that “aw, everybody can do it.”

They can’t. YOU can.

Here is the most important thing to do with what you find.

OWN IT.

Your Zone Of Genius Is Yours Alone

And the world needs it.

It’s time to own it and create in the world with it.

If you need some help seeing yours, let’s talk.

Because my Zone of Genius is seeing yours. And holding you accountable to finally creating everything you can with it and from it.

How To Go Deeper

I am convinced that more and more people are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, their Zone of Genius, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, at all stages of this journey.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.