How can you not be amazed by your body?

by | Jun 4, 2014 | Ezine

There are 37.2 Trillion Cells in Your Body The “raw clock speed” of your brain is 20 million billion calculations per second or 20,000,000 GHz (though it is estimated you can only do conscious calculations at the speed of 2 GHz per second), according to Cognitive Neuropsychologist Chris Westbury. Your second brain (your gut) has a mind of its own, meaning it can act autonomously and even influence behavior by sending signals up the vagus nerve to the brain.

Your vitality, your energy level, the clarity of your thoughts, your connection with creativity—ALL depend upon how well your body, including your brain and digestive system, are operating—and influence how you show up in each role you play in life.

So what are you doing to prioritize the care and feeding of your body?

What Platinum PracticesTM on your list of personal best practices support you in nourishing yourself on every level: body, mind, and spirit?

If you’re in a state of overwhelm and you most often decide that the next thing on your work “to do” list is more important than taking care of yourself, then you need to be aware of the cold, hard facts:

  • STRESS is the number one killer (if you don’t understand the role of stress on the body, take a few minutes to take the National Geographic’s Stress Quiz)
  • Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older (18% of the population), according to the ADAA
  • Among adults age 20 and over, nearly 26 million Americans, or more than 11% of all people in this age group have diabetes
  • About 1 in every 4 deaths in the U.S. is caused by heart disease, according to the CDC
    • The risks for heart disease? Eating a poor quality diet, not getting any or not enough physical activity, using excessive amount of alcohol, having diabetes, and being overweight or obese

AND, the vast majority of these health issues are PREVENTABLE with simple changes in diet, physical activity, stress reduction, and—often most important—changing your mindset.

How can you improve your diet?

Eat real food, not packaged food, 80% of the time. That’s simple enough.

How can you increase your physical activity?

Move your body more than you are now. The American Heart Association recommends “at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity at least 5 days per week for a total of 150 minutes”.​

How can you reduce your stress level?

  • Shift your mindset (see below).
  • Practice conscious breathing.
  • Spend time in nature.
  • Take regular breaks throughout the day (ideally one every 90-120 minutes).

What does it mean to change your mindset?

  • Acknowledge your choices helped shape the reality of your current work and life
  • Accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change what you can, and cultivate the wisdom to know the difference (as the oft-quoted Serenity Prayer so wisely states)
  • Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. What are you over-complicating? What can you let go of? What can you delegate to someone else who would enjoy or benefit from taking it on?

But, still… you do not do what you know you need to do. Why not?

The most common answer I hear is “I don’t have enough time.”

Reality check? You do have enough time, you just don’t know the best way to perceive time and enlist its help in supporting your most important goals.

To learn more, schedule just 15 minutes with me to talk further about your unique situation and challenges.

It’s time you took a stand for your health and well-being, your amazing capacity to do great work in the world, and took care of yourself for all those who depend upon you.

We’re all connected and I want us all to thrive to enjoy life more and get the best possible results at work and at home. Call me!

No foolin’: Be Mindful of the Seeds You Plant

by | Apr 1, 2014 | Ezine

This year is powerful.

Most everyone I know—friends, colleagues, clients—are being pushed to their limits. I am too.

Are you complaining and playing the victim? Or, are you grabbing the reins and shouting for joy as you bolt forward in life?

I choose the latter. How about you?

As I shared in the January 31st post about the energy and potential that this Year of the Horse offers us, you will be tested. You ARE being tested.

That is what makes it even more important that you…

Be Mindful of the Seeds You Plant!

What do I mean by that?

Each thought you have—good or bad—is an invitation for more of that thought. If you quietly worry in your mind about money, you’re inviting more financial stress and scarcity. If you’re silently expressing gratitude for each experience, you’re inviting more of those good people, opportunities, and generosity into your life.

Each word you speak—good or bad—is an equally powerful invitation. Remember my 2nd foundational principle: Wherever you direct your attention, energy follows. If you want more positive attention from your loved ones, be sure to kindly and positively compliment them or thank them for those moments when they do listen to you or give you loving attention. Like attracts like, and you want to nurture those good seeds.

Each choice, each action—whether it be how you spend your money, or the people you choose to spend time with, or how you allocate your time during the week—speaks to the world: “I want more of THIS in my life!” So choose carefully.

Even in the toughest moments, when your limits are being tested, make sure you:

  1. Keep everything in perspective. What is shifting? What good changes are coming on line for you? Did you consciously or subconsciously ask for what you’re creating in your life?
  2. Affirm the good stuff. Express gratitude out loud to the world (the universe, to God): thank you! Express gratitude to each person in your life for how they support you, contribute to your well-being, help you to be your best.
  3. Plant more seeds for what you want more of. Be mindful of your state of mind and your thoughts. (Use a practice like journaling or meditation to cultivate greater awareness.) Think carefully before you speak. And wisely allocate your time and make choices that support what you want more of in your life now and in the future. Do you really want to work late again? Do you really want to miss your loved one’s special event? Do you really want to skip another workout?

It’s time to… plants seeds for what you want more of in your life! With your thoughts, your words, and your actions. Bring the smallest details of your life into alignment with the bigger vision you have for your life—YOU ARE WORTH IT!< Set-up a free 15-minute call with me to explore further how you can be more mindful about the seeds you plant with time management, relationships, career decisions, financial management, and more.

Here’s to you getting more out of life and getting better results at work by mindfully planting your seeds!

Backbones and Boundaries: How Strong are Yours?

by | Mar 25, 2014 | Ezine

How strong are your backbones?

How clearly defined and well patrolled are your boundaries?

When you are really clear about what is okay with you, then it’s easier to draw a line in the sand and say to others: “Do not cross this line!” (In a nice way, of course.)

That line is a boundary, and your ability to clearly, consistently, and strongly uphold that boundary is a reflection of the strength of your backbone.

You can have many boundaries and many backbones.

Time management boundaries and financial boundaries are the ones that get most of us in trouble.

Struggling with Time Management? 

If you say “yes” too often to requests for your involvement in projects, in community commitments, in helping your dependents do what they are fully capable of doing on their own, then you need to clarify your time management boundaries and strengthen your time management backbone.

It’s time to… let go of the idea that “it’s nice to be needed” because—reality check: you have TOO MUCH going on in your life!

Having weak boundaries and backbones drains your mental and physical energy. Can you afford to let that keep happening?

Stressing about Cash Flow and Finances?

If you do not have clearly defined savings and investment goals, if you do not have a clear idea of your monthly cash flow guidelines, if you make spontaneous purchases or find yourself saying “yes” too often to “just one more”, then you need to clarify your financial boundaries and strengthen your financial backbone.

It’s time to… put positive time and energy into what you want more of: financial security and abundance!

With clarity about your goals and what’s most important to you, you can create clear boundaries in your life. The more consistently you honor yourself, your plans, your dreams, the stronger your backbone.

Set-up a free 15-minute call with me to talk further about your boundaries and backbones here.

Here’s to YOU conserving and revitalizing your vital life force energy with clearly defined boundaries and strong backbones, so you can get more out of life!

Survival mode or Creative mode? Which mode are you in?

by | Mar 12, 2014 | Ezine

My older son is addicted to Minecraft, an incredibly creative online game with nearly limitless possibilities.

In the beginning, we only allowed him to play in Creative mode. He could build without the threat of zombies attacking him.

But then he (and we) realized he could do even more in Survival mode, which required him to find his own resources (like seeds), so he could plant and grow his own crops for food. It also presented the challenge of evading threats from monsters and needing to survive the elements.

In Survival mode, my son has learned to be incredibly resourceful and resilient. It’s scary sometimes, but the rewards seem to be greater.

The other night at dinner, my husband posed the question: are you playing in Creative mode or Survival mode?

And it hit me: what a great question for us all!

When you have to put dinner on the table and pay the bills, you are often more motivated to be creative, resourceful, and resilient. When everything is safe and provided to you, it’s easier for your brain to become sluggish and to become lazy.

What comes to mind is the recently coined term “affluenza”—the disease of overconsumption and disconnection that comes from having everything provided to you.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m neither promoting poverty and suffering, nor trash talking wealth. (Nor am I equating Creative mode in Minecraft with affluenza!)

But, I do observe that the desire to have “more” is tightly connected with the culture of overwork in our world. The habit of working longer hours to make more money to get more stuff results in greater disconnection from oneself and those people who are most important to us. That disconnection leads to unhappiness and then a desire to have more stuff to make us feel better. A truly sad and unhealthy cycle.

So, maybe there is something to living in Survival mode. The question is: what is “just enough” and how can we ride that intelligent edge between being just comfortable enough and having too much?

I invite you to not only ask yourself whether you are in Survival Mode or Creative Mode, but also:

What helps you to feel truly alive in your life, motivated to keep striving, but—and here’s the key element—present and grateful for all who are in your life and all that you have now, in this moment?

I know what helps me to feel this way: the practices of yoga and meditation, as well as general mindfulness in each moment of the day while doing everything from observing my children play to feeling the temperature of the water when washing the dishes.

How about you? What helps you to feel this way?

I look forward to your reply!

2013 Work Performance Survey Report

by | Mar 4, 2014 | Ezine

What can you do to sustain your energy and get more out of life and work?

What drives effective work performance?

Introduction

It’s a challenge for you to get it all done, regardless of your line of work or the number of formal and informal roles you play in life.

And most everyone knows that being an entrepreneur is hard. When you think of the entrepreneur’s difficulties, however, you most likely focus on just the work-related challenges of launching and sustaining the business: defining a product or service, finding and reaching your market, raising and earning money, managing growth.

Far less attention has been given to the personal challenges of being an entrepreneur: managing the insane workload, doing ten jobs at the same time, dealing with stress, and sustaining the energy and focus needed to do all of the above. This is strange given that, as an entrepreneur, you are your business. (And if you lead a company or a large team within a company, your reality is the same: how you show up at work affects the performance of your team and company.)

What I know from personal experience and my professional experience working with hundreds of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and private individuals is:

If you are focused and energetic, your company will be more productive. If you’re scattered and exhausted, that will be reflected in the work you produce and impact your interactions with colleagues and clients.

I wanted to know more about how entrepreneurs and business owners manage these challenges, so I asked them. In 2013 I administered a survey to 78 people, of whom 60 identified themselves as entrepreneurs. I asked them a little bit about their background and overall views of what has allowed them to make their vision a reality. But mostly I wanted to know about the personal challenges they faced and how they dealt with those challenges. This report summarizes what I’ve learned.

The top-line results are not especially surprising:

  • Having a clear vision, strong partners, and good communication skills are critical to executing vision.
  • Keeping up with the workload is a major challenge, one that is often solved with caffeine.
  • Common ways to de-stress include socializing, eating and drinking, exercising, reading and watching TV.

Beneath these general observations, however, emerged more intriguing insights about how people deal with stress and sustain energy, and about the challenges of “success.”

  • Which key behaviors correlate with having more sustained energy?
  • Are people who do yoga and go to therapy more stressed out than the rest of us?
  • Which of the following do experienced business owners find more important for executing their vision: having a business plan? taking care of oneself physically and mentally? or having strong partners/team?
  • What do entrepreneurs find to be the biggest major challenge in executing their vision: Staying organized? Managing stress? Sustaining energy and focus? Or finding time for everything that needs to get done?

I invite you to read on to learn the answers to these questions, including how entrepreneurs who had been in business longer and had higher reported incomes face different challenges and how they respond to them in different ways than those who were less experienced. You’ll also learn what people do to take care of themselves in the face of different kinds of challenges.[1]

To read the full report, please enter your information on this form so we can email a PDF of the full report directly to you.

[1] There are a few important caveats to keep in mind here. This was a small survey with what we call a “convenience sample,” meaning that who responded is not necessarily representative of the broader population of entrepreneurs out there. It’s also important to remember that correlation isn’t causation. There are interesting patterns and relationships here, but we can’t say from these data what leads to what. More than anything, what the survey provided me was some very helpful food for thought. I hope you’ll find the same.