Whenever January is looming, my habitual tendency is to think about New Year’s resolutions.

Of course, resolutions are notoriously bad at motivating change. A book I’ve been reading, and highly recommend, begins to identify why.

Helping People Change, by Richard Boyatzis, talks about two kinds of efforts to help people to change.

One, by far the most traditional, is compliance. You could also call this accountability.

This fits right in the standard New Year’s resolution. You know the one. I’m going to lose 25 pounds. I’m going to stop being so lazy. I’m going to hire a personal trainer to meet me at the gym three times a week at 6 am and we are going to GET THIS THING DONE!

That doesn’t tend to work very well.

The question is why? And the answer doesn’t have anything to do with the skill level of personal trainers.

Our wiring creates our resistance

The answer has to do with our wiring. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is the part of us that reacts to stress. It is the source of the fight or flight response, among other things. When our SNS is activated, we get very focused, but also, very narrow.

The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) is the part of us that rests and recovers from stress. When our PNS is activated, we are more open, more relaxed, and more able to consider and create new possibilities in that calm, open space.

When we are making changes, by definition we are creating something new.  But our bodies and brains. want things to stay the same (this is called homeostasis), and they resist anything new. (When you can’t stop thinking about chocolate cake two days after you started your New Year’s diet, this is homeostasis in action.)

The traditional approach is to try to overwhelm that resistance with a plan, very specific things to do, through a closed, compliance-based system. The problem with this is that it also activates the SNS. This creates adrenaline and cortisol and stress, and, ironically, even stronger homeostasis against the very change we are trying to create.

A different approach

What to do instead?  Boyatzis calls this alternative approach coaching from compassion.

When we are compassionate, with ourselves or with those we are helping, we open up to new possibilities, to new ideals. And the research suggests that if we start from a place of identifying our ideal self, we have a much higher chance of success.

Maybe that ideal self weighs less, but maybe, if we look behind that initial goal, we see something else. Maybe we just want to be more active or to eat in a way that makes us better. Maybe our ideal self wants something else first—to meditate more or to spend more time with family.

But the crucial part is to allow that exploration to occur. To allow that ideal self to emerge, rather than to be an automatic reaction. Exploring, dreaming even, activates the PNS. It reduces stress and self-judgment and other negativity, and increases love and compassion and awe.

Creating from possibility

The first step, then, is to create, to visualize, and even fall in love with, our ideal self.

And then from that place, we can ask, “What kinds of habits does that ideal self have?”

And only then do we create a plan.

I ask you, as you consider 2020—

Who is your ideal self? What does your ideal self want to create in the world? What kind of habits will support that self and that creation?

If you start from there, your chances of success are much greater. And you might be surprised by what that success actually looks like.

The key is to start, and to be willing to be surprised.

Good luck in starting that journey in 2020.

Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year.

 

 

There’s a practice that my coach, the late Doug Silsbee, often used with his clients who had been able to make a significant shift, or to see themselves or their world in a different way.

He called it, “Taking in the good.” And in short, it means to enhance the effect of a change, or an insight, by being grateful for it. It’s the perfect practice to share in a time of thanks.

Beliefs that no longer serve

Most of the leaders I work with have beliefs about themselves or their worlds that no longer serve them.

And as we work together, some of those beliefs dissolve. Or they are replaced by newer, more useful beliefs and ways of being.

I was working with a client recently who I will call Jill. Jill has been given a lot of additional responsibility during the time we’ve been working together. She’s gone from leading a team of ten to a team of several hundred, and there are likely more people on the way.

Jill is seen as someone who has a good balance between being an excellent people leader and having a holistic view of the business. She prides herself on being able to look at complex problems and find and fix the root cause.

Jill is now at a point where her strength is getting in her way.

She is responsible for so much that she can’t possibly understand everything at the level of detail that she once did.

Jill was reflecting on this in a recent call, and was seeing that overwhelm would sometimes enter the picture when she tried to manage too much.

Seeing and reinforcing a shift in perspective

But suddenly, Jill got what she needed to change and how to do it.

In that moment, Jill saw that her role is no longer the person who figures out the root cause. She is now being asked to be the person who finds the people, who creates the team, that will figure out the root cause.

She is no longer the doer. She is a builder now. A creator and motivator of teams.

A leader.

In that moment of insight, Jill literally became a new person.

I reflected this back to her and talked about the practice of taking in the good.

“I want you to reflect on this shift for a moment,” I said. “Be grateful that you have seen it. And let that gratitude sink into your body as you ground this new way of being.”

We spend so much time doing what has been automatic to us that when we see a different possibility, it’s important to highlight it, to sit with it, to let the new psychological wiring solidify.

And this is what the practice of taking in the good accomplishes. If you can do this regularly, even if it’s only for a minute or two, you can help ease the path to making major changes.

When we take in the good, we give our bodies time to assimilate what our minds have seen. We hard wire the shift. Through the practice of taking in the good, my client was able to shift in her being in a way that was permanent, rather than a fleeting glimpse.

Most people instinctively go back to the thing that has always worked when stress shows up. The old way of being.

Even if it doesn’t work any more.

The practice of taking in the good can help prevent these relapses.

The journey never ends

My experience, both for myself and the clients that I have worked with, is this. One insight can change everything. But people seldom have just one insight.

When Jill and I started working together, she could not see that it would be possible network for another job. Then it was seeing that more money and more satisfaction could coexist. Then, in a big shift, Jill say that her stories of being an imposter were just stories. And now, she is working on the shift from doer to leader. She has shifted into bigger and bigger versions of herself, and become a more present and powerful leader in the process.

Everyone works through some version of this, of formerly solid parts of their identity dropping away as the next version of themselves emerges. And from what I can tell, so long as we are willing and curious, there is no end to our capacity to evolve.

A key element in lasting change

Taking in the good, as a regular practice, can help shorten the time it takes to change a habit, or a perspective. And it can lay a foundation for future change.

And as we approach Thanksgiving, it seems appropriate to share with you, much as I am grateful that Doug shared it with me.

Happy Thanksgiving.

There’s been a Warren Buffet meme that’s been making its way around:

“Busy is the new stupid.”

It links to an interview that includes Buffet and Bill Gates in which Bill Gates is amazed by Warren Buffet’s open calendar.

And it begs a question—

If busy is stupid, why are we so busy?

Busy is stupid, on one level. Busy lets others control our calendar, busy fills our days with things that we might be able to delegate, busy keeps us from paying attention to the things that we say are important (whether that’s longer term things related to our business, or simply having more time for our family, friends, hobbies).

But on another level, busy is very, very smart.

Because busy keeps us safe.

How so?

First of all, busy people are rewarded by society. There is an expectation that, if you have any level of success, you are busy. No one questions people who humblebrag about how busy they are.

But there are other rewards, too.

Urgent versus important

When you are busy, you are typically working on things that feel urgent. There is a dopamine reward every time you get one of those things done. It feels good, at a biochemical level. And the more things you do, the more you get that hit. The more productive you are, the more you can get that hit.

I have a CEO client who is the walking definition of this. He swoops in and solves crises. Every day.

But how does this equate to safety? On two levels.

First, the hit is predictable and predictable always feels safe. Predictable means known. I can insert myself into situations where I know or I can figure out the answer.

I’ve got this! I can fix this!

My CEO client has decades of industry experience. He has seen a version of almost every crisis that can come up. He is confident that he can fix it.

But here is the challenge for him. Here is his blind side.

He believes he is the only one who can fix it. And this is a huge limiter for his business.

Like many of us, he grew up believing that the harder you work, the better you are. Free time on his calendar aches to be filled.

He says he wants to expand his business into new product lines and geographies. To work on the business rather than in the business. But that requires asking some big questions—

What does he really want?

Who does he want to be?

What does he want his company to look like in twenty years?

Who is the team who can take him there?

We avoid the big questions because they are uncomfortable

These questions require time. They require contemplation. They have no easy answers. The decisions you make today could take years to play out.

And all of that feels the opposite of safe.

Are you busy? Busier than you say you want to be?

Have a little compassion for yourself, for the part of your brain that wants to keep you safe.

But then walk toward that discomfort.

Because what you actually want is on the other side of it.

 

 

When I was little, I had a nagging sense that something was wrong with me. It felt like my mom wanted me to be someone else, a smaller version of my father, the football star, the homecoming king.

Instead, she got me. The kid who was into science and reading nonstop, the “brain” at school, the fat slow kid who, at least until an early growth spurt, got picked last in gym class every time.

And I learned early on that my mom really didn’t think much of me, my friends, or my interests.

I was 12 when Star Wars came out and I convinced my parents to go with me (why didn’t I go with my friends? I suspect it’s because I really didn’t have many at that point).

It was a Saturday matinee and I remember being stunned from the very first scene, the rumbling star destroyer appearing at the top of the screen and continuing to get bigger and bigger for what seemed like forever.

For those of you who are too young to have seen the original Star Wars in the theater (now called Episode IV), it was like nothing that had every been on screen before. (I got chills just watching the opening scene on YouTube to refresh my memory.)

After Luke Skywalker prevailed and the Death Star was destroyed, I walked out into the parking lot, squinting in the afternoon sun, stunned by what I had just seen. I could barely speak. And I will never forget what my mom said to me.

“Jeff, if you liked that, you’re weird.”

And that, in a word, was my identity.

My friends were weird, my interests were weird, and even though I was active in high school (football, baseball, choir, the school paper, and yes, I was even a mathlete), I never really felt like I fit in with any of the many groups I was part of.

I probably had what would be called social anxiety (and medicated) today, but to me it was panic attacks and I finally figured out, after a decade of intermittent crippling anxiety, that meditation helped.

Meditation was weird.

Going on retreats was weird.

When I was at retreats, it was weird to be a lawyer from the corporate world. When I was back at work, it was weird to have gone on retreats.

But over the years—decades, really—I realized a couple of things.

First, that there were people who were actually fascinated by my interests, and by how I showed up in the world. They were interested in my retreats! I didn’t have to hide them!

Second, that I had a deep empathy for other people’s stories. That because I had never felt seen or valued for who I was, I was determined to really see others, in all their beautiful wounded complexity.

More than two decades of meditation practice has only deepened my capacity to witness others, and increased their willingness to tell me things they have never told another living soul.

Why am I writing this?

Because my pain—the pain of not being seen for who I really was—became my purpose—seeing others and their limitless potential.

Today I am a secret keeper, a guide, a catalyst to radical change in others because of my capacity to make space for that change without judgment.

My experience is that most people have some deep pain. Some way in which they feel inadequate. Something they hide because they are ashamed.

Much like I assumed that I was weird and unlikable. Much like I hid my personal development work for many, many years.

And yet it was the very thing I was most self-conscious about that was my biggest strength. It turned out that the work that I had done to relieve my pain could be used to help others relieve theirs. It had been my purpose before I knew it was my purpose.

What is your pain? What is it that you are ashamed of?

Could it instead be the source of your superpower? If only you would reveal it to the world?