Monthly Archives: March 2012

Coaching: Time Management

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Time management is not a very exciting topic. But time management is what ensures our balance. Time management creates time for important relationships. Well-managed time reduces stress. The discipline of owning our schedules instead of letting them own us is often what needs to be brought into play as a first step in gaining control in many, many areas of life. With that thought in mind, let’s close the week by moving through a mini coaching engagement. As always, I invite you to really think about and write down your answers.

Here we go…

When was the last time you really paid attention to how you spend your time? How often do you ensure you have time planned for friends, family or yourself? If you haven’t been paying attention (or if one of these areas has been neglected), pick one – friends, family or you – to focus on in the next two weeks. What will be your first step to get more time allocated to this priority? When can you make that happen?

How purposeful are you in choosing what you do every day? How often do you say “yes” to whatever lands in front of you without giving it much thought? What would happen if you paused before saying “yes?” In that pause, think about what purpose it would serve to have that event/meeting/gathering on your calendar. No purpose? I challenge you to say “no.”

I wish you a weekend – and a lifetime, for that matter – filled with friends, family and a little time for yourself. Live with purpose and remember, as Stephen Covey has said, the key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Visit the Breakthrough Strategies website!

Where Does The Time Go?

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Do you know where your time goes?

If we’re going to get control of our time and schedules, we have to first know what the starting point is.  As with any situation where a change must be made, knowing the stone cold reality is a must.  Honesty with oneself is key.

In order to do that, you’ll have to consciously pay attention to what you do for a day or two or a week.  And you’ll have to tell the truth.  Did you spend 30-minutes taking to a coworker about his weekend?  When you cruise Facebook while on a conference call, which is getting your full attention and how would you honestly count that time?  Do you find a way to be productive while your computer is booting up or while an important program is experiencing “technical difficulty?”  Do you truly seek to use each minute productively?

And yes, this will create some overhead as you record what it is that you do.  The thing with time management is that there often must be an up-front investment of time to reap benefits.

Once you have an idea of what it is you are doing, then you can look to make changes.  Are you doing what you want and need to be doing?  Could you schedule a break or lunch with your Monday Chat Coworker?  What can you do to stay focused in conference calls (if you can’t, perhaps you aren’t able to find what purpose you have in being there and should drop it from your calendar)?  How can you be more productive during “down time?”

It requires a lot of discipline to have true control of our time.  As the American businessman Jim Rohn is credited with saying, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”  To have what we really want, including a schedule that is within our control, we need to have the discipline to make it happen.

Yes, I’m a coach ~ and I’m also a keynote speaker, retreat planner and business consultant as well.  Learn more about the services I offer by navigating to my company website, Breakthrough Strategies.

The Choice Is Yours

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“Oh, I’m too busy to….”

Complete the sentence with what you’ve said or what others have said to you.  To check Facebook, to go to coffee with a friend, to exercise, to go on vacation, to watch T.V., etc., etc., etc.

No you’re not.

Millions of people do all those things.  Often.  Sometimes every day.  Do you really think you’re busier than all of them?  I don’t.  I think you’ve prioritized differently than all of them.

Not everyone, but many who use the “I’m too busy to…” line also wear the my-crazy-life martyr hat as well.  After all, all the things these people must do have been thrust at them, right?

Wrong.  Each one of us has more control over our lives and our time than we take.

Read that again.

You are busy because you have made yourself busy.  Of course, kid events, charities, church and work are important.  But the time they take from your life is completely up to you.

So next time you hear yourself beginning to say, “Oh, I’m too busy to…” remember that the truth is more like, “I choose other events and activities before doing….”

And the choice is yours.

Check out this week’s Coaching Tip on improving productivity!

Find Purpose In What You Do

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While speaking on productivity last week, I shared this example with the audience.  At the heart of time management is making sure that we do only those things that we really need or want to do.  This is a great way to get to that place….

Scheduling With Purpose - Originally posted on April 11, 2011

Doesn’t it seem like there’s a ton of focus on finding our purpose as of late? A quick “purpose” search on Amazon.com will bring back over 33,000 results. Discover your purpose. Awaken your purpose. Find your purpose. Pursue your purpose.

All this sounds great, but the most significant wisdom I found about purpose is this: if we find purpose in what we do, we live with purpose.

Think about it.

I did. And then I discussed it with my coach. What would a day look like if I found purpose in every single thing I did?

From that discussion I set out with a plan to find purpose in each thing I did in one day. I made a list with the day’s meetings in one column and then listed my purpose in them in the other.

If you do this, something different might happen for you. Two cool things happened for me. First, as I went into each meeting knowing my purpose and why I was there, I was FAR more present than had the day simply happened to me. I was engaged. I had a reason to be there and I knew what it was.

The second thing that happened is that I found a few things where I couldn’t find my purpose in being there. Just like that a recurring 90 minute meeting dropped off my calendar and I was in pursuit of finding the right person to take my place. I simply wasn’t the one to add value in that environment. Knowing that I didn’t really have a reason to take part helped relieve any guilt I might have had if I would have simply dropped the meeting in another context. It also made it pretty easy to explain my decline.

Unfortunately I’ve done this pretty infrequently; however, I can see where there would be benefit in this level of examination every day – or at least at the start of the work week (hey, that’s today!).

I need to go find a pen and some paper…

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Time Constraints

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Where does the time go?  We make time, give time and waste time.  We manage time, have time taken from us, and run out of time.  Most of us feel like there isn’t enough time and that it goes too fast.

How can we cope with this rigid constraint of only 24 hours each day?  Some days it seems impossible, doesn’t it?  Even if we were magically granted six more hours in each day, deep down we know that wouldn’t be enough.  Family, work and all that is both good and bad in our lives would simply expand to fill it and after a few weeks we’d feel the same as we do now.  I’m guessing…

There’s this quote by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. that is meant to be inspiring:

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

It just makes me feel guilty.

Of course, if you look at that list, most didn’t have children (a coincidence?), had people around them to assist with their cause, and each of them was able to completely devote their lives to their passion.  While they all are famous in their fields, there are other measures of success where they may have not done as well – finances or personal relationships, perhaps.

Given how far I am into this life, the chance of having the success of these storied individuals is small.   Really, I’m looking to reach a lower bar: I simply want to raise a couple of remarkable men, create a successful business, and have strong and wonderful relationships along the way.  If I can do those three things, I’ll feel as successful as anyone.

I just need to find the time to pull it off.

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Coaching: Future Focus

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Whether looking forward ten years or just to next week, focusing on the future gives direction and hope that can’t be found when looking back at what got us to where we are.  Just as you can’t run forward when looking behind you (Have you tried this on a treadmill?  Dangerous!), it’s difficult to move toward goals and ambitions with a gaze firmly on the rearview mirror.

So let’s look forward.  Here we go….

What are your long-term goals?  How much thought have you given to them?  What exercises have you done to envision your future?  Options include the Best Possible Future Selves Exercise, vision boards, or simply writing a bucket list.

There are many who will tell you that setting long-term goals is more difficult than setting short-term goals.  I’m going to challenge that thought.  It is easier to see the goals we need to set immediately because we don’t have to take the time to find them within ourselves – what we need to do is right there in front of us.  As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve never seen anyone struggle with writing a bucket list!  Long-term goals are not hard to set; making the time to set long-term goals is what eludes us.

With that in mind, what would it take for you to take the time to vision your future?  How can you make it a priority?

There is so much benefit to aligning short-term goals to long-term goals!  I hope you are able to make the time to find your future.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Why Bother With Long-Term Goals?

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When leading goal-setting workshops, I often begin with participants taking time to share their bucket lists with a partner and, if I can get them to do it, with the broader group.  Whether people have taken the time to really think about the things they want to accomplish before they “kick the bucket’ or not, everyone is able to come up with experiences, accomplishments or things that they want.  Why do I start here?  Because these are long-term goals and long-term goals have a lot of power.

How so?  I’m glad you asked.

First, knowing and acknowledging our long-term goals helps to guide our current activity and goal setting.  Identifying gaps between where you are today and what you hope to achieve can define what needs to be done to get there.  Have a dream to retire at 55 or own a new boat?  Short-term financial goals can be set to begin the journey.  Want to be healthy and active in your retirement years?  Short-term health goals will surface as important.  Desire to scuba dive in the Caribbean?  Setting up lessons on local lakes now will prepare you for the adventure.

Second, long-term goals help to motivate us.  When we see the gap between where we are and where we hope to go get smaller and smaller, we are energized to do more to get to that final destination.

Finally – and I think this point has the most power – tying short-term goals to future aspirations removes failure from the equation.  Meaning, when we “fail” at reaching our short-term goal, instead of seeing it as a failure we see it as an opportunity to reassess our path to the long-term goal.  We no longer have setbacks; we have points of re-evaluation and then continue on the journey to our dreams.

Setting any goal is a positive activity.  When those goals are tied to our dreams, we give them more power than they have when standing alone.

Yes, I’m a coach ~ and I’m also a keynote speaker, retreat planner and business consultant as well.  Learn more about the services I offer by navigating to my company website, Breakthrough Strategies.

Just Getting Through Today

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Maybe this week isn’t a good week for you to figure out what it is that you want so that you can fix your eyes on the horizon.  Perhaps the end of your workday is the only destination you can see right now.  Looking to the future means getting to 5:00PM on Friday without quitting or giving someone a piece of your mind.  The future, it seems, is tomorrow and beyond that… well, it will just have to take care of itself.

Sound familiar?  Well, I hope not… but for some, it’s reality.  And if you aren’t there now, you likely can remember a time when a job, a relationship or a situation left you feeling like there was little hope of anything ever changing.

What to do?

When those doldrums take hold, we need to take charge.  Here are a few ways to create an attitude change when circumstances have you down.

  • Take care of yourself.  When the focus is on the immediate negative circumstance, it seems that this is also the time when we give up exercising, choose to have a glass of wine to unwind, or avoid friends who might provide a blessed pick-me-up.  Remember to breathe.  Eat right.  Get a good night’s sleep.  These things all help with perspective and provide more willpower to take on the next day.
  • Remember who’s in charge.  That’s right; it’s you.  When we can take an honest look at where we are and what we can do about it, that’s when circumstances begin to change.  Even if it’s only a little bit at a time.
  • Release.  Stress has a way of building when bottled up inside.  Find an understanding confidant.  If it’s too personal, find time to exercise or write or whatever it is that allows for stress to be channeled outside of you.  If needed, hire a professional to help you through this time.
  • Recognize and acknowledge the good stuff.  Every day things happen that we can be grateful for.  Challenge yourself to complete the Three Blessings exercise each night.  Thank God, the heavens, your luck or the universe when something happy happens.  Don’t let the little things slip by you.
  • Remember, this too shall pass.  Really, Grandma was right.  As the familiar bible passage and The Byrds remind us, to everything there is a season and seasons always change.

Finally, sometimes simply getting through today – or even this moment – really is enough.  Accepting that alone can bring welcome relief.

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Fix Your Eyes On The Horizon

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When we find out what it is we want, then we are able to look ahead at the path to travel there.  Only then can we see our destination….

See Your Destination

It’s heartbreaking to see a friend who feels stuck in his circumstance.  Actually, if the person feels stuck there, it’s likely true that he is stuck.  One has to see the way out in order to get out, after all.

That’s what happens when all we can see is the chaos, disappointment and fear around us.  Getting out requires us to lift up our heads and see a better place down the road.  It requires us to see a new destination.  It requires us to ignore what is going on around us to move toward that new and better place.

And that, Dear Reader, is more easily said than done.

It’s easier to stay in a hated job than to update a resume.

It’s less frightening to stay committed to a spouse lost to addiction than to venture out into the world, alone.

It’s more comfortable to stay unemployed than to go back to school.

It’s less demanding to take pills for high blood pressure, high cholesterol or back pain than to commit to a workout plan.

However, if you can feel the happiness of working in the right job, believe you have the power to take care of yourself, realize the control you have to determine your health or understand what a new degree could do for your life, then the statements above cease to be true.

The current circumstance doesn’t change, does it?  The destination does.  If we believe we are destined to live the life we have today, then today is what we will have for many todays to come.  On the other hand, if we lift up our heads and look to the horizon a new destination might be revealed.

Moving toward a destination turns the current circumstance into a part of the journey, not somewhere we are destined to live.

Fix your eyes on the horizon.

Visit the Breakthrough Strategies website!

What Do You Want?

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What do you want?

Do you know?

Oh, it’s fairly easy to list out a few things.  Perhaps there’s a new car you’ve been eyeing or a piece of exercise equipment you’d like to buy… I’m talking about longer-term things.  Bigger things.

What do you want in your job?

What do you want out of your relationships?

What do you want from your community?

Not long ago as I was leading a goal-setting workshop, one of the participants looked up from her goal worksheet and said, “This is hard.”

Completely agree.

Figuring out what it is that we want is tough.  Finding that some of the things we want conflict with other things we want is frustrating.  Reaching a goal and realizing that it wasn’t exactly what we’d hoped for can be an embarrassing letdown.  What we want might not fit nicely into our other plans.

It can be hard and it must be done.  OK, we won’t stop breathing if we don’t figure it out.  But we can spend a great deal of time spinning instead of going forward if we don’t figure it out.  Time wasted.

So, what do you want?

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Coaching: Honesty

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As stated earlier in the week, honesty is a tough subject to take on because most of us see ourselves as honest people.  That said, most of us likely recognize that we have room for improvement in this area as well. I suppose that may be true for many of the topics tackled here.  As always, I invite you to really think about your answers and write them down if that makes the exercise more powerful for you.

Here we go…

Starting with yourself first, what area needs a more honest look?  These usually are areas that we’re avoiding – like my example of avoiding the scale because I didn’t want to honestly know what my weight was.  What are you avoiding so that you don’t have to really know about or deal with?  Your finances?  Your boss?  A coworker?  The scale?  How can you lean into your discomfort and make a true assessment of reality?  Once you know where you are, you can better define a new path to make changes.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. ~Sigmund Freud

Moving on to the definition of “honest” and what that really means, how has it changed for you after reading the posts this week?  Did you, like me, see honesty as simply truth-telling?  When have you shared a truth with intentions that weren’t pure and upright?  Would you handle it differently now?  How?

Sometimes it’s good to look at ourselves and figure out how we can make some honest changes.  Of course, that requires that we have the courage to be honest with ourselves.

Visit the Breakthrough Strategies website!

What I’ve Honestly Learned

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This week’s topic of Honesty has been a learning experience for me.  I came into the week thinking about the subject in the rather black-and-white terms of lying versus truth telling and now I’m coming to understand that there is so much more to it than that.  Now I find honesty aligning more with integrity and authenticity.  Truth is still an important component, of course; however, it’s not the only piece.  Perhaps not even the most important piece.

We can tell the truth and not be honest.  That thought never occurred to me before.  Now that it has, I can think of many examples where the truth was told with bad intention, without fairness or uprightness, with insincerity in the hoped-for result.

Confession time: I can even think of a time or two where that truth came from me.  I suppose that’s why this has been a learning experience for me.

So, I’m an honest person… as are most of you.  What’s changed?  From here on out, when I share a hard truth with someone I will also examine my principles and intentions.  I’ll be sure that I’m speaking with fairness and sincerity.  I will be genuine and authentic.

If I have ulterior motives, I now know that telling the truth may not, in fact, be honest.  Honestly, the truth may need to be kept until the time comes when it can be shared in a way that meets this new, higher standard.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. ~Thomas Jefferson

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Honest Or Truthful?

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There’s a lot of buzz in the media today about a New York Times op ed written by a departing Goldman Sachs executive.  As I read the piece I thought that this must be a brave and honest soul, having the courage to call leaders of such a powerful institution to task in this way.

Then I recalled the definition of honest that I shared with you yesterday… And I wondered…

Did he share his thoughts with those leaders before he was ready to leave? Or did he instead stew on them and leave in a glorious, dramatic huff?  Did he work to become a catalyst for change before he gave up?

Asking these questions, it occurs to me that timing is important when sharing the truth. Giving those impacted an opportunity to change before sharing it with the world seems more honest to me than taking shots before that chance is given.

Of course, I have no way of knowing how it all went down with this particular guy, but it made me think….

Perhaps thoughts like this will help me be more honest versus simply truthful in the future.

Haven’t seen the article yet? You can read it here.

We’re All Honest, Aren’t We?

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Honesty is a tough subject to take on because, honestly, we all think we’re pretty honest.  Oh sure, there are a few George Costanzas out there who see their way of bending the truth to be a gift; but those are few.

The fact is, we strive to be honest and we all fall short of that goal.  Even in studies where researchers simply ask people how often they lie, the average is almost twice a day.  And that’s completely dependent on those people in the study telling the truth!

But there’s more to being honest than simply telling the truth or not.  In fact, checking out Dictionary.com shows that “truth” isn’t in any part of the black-and-white definition of honesty.  That definition of Honest is:

  • Honorable in principles, intentions, and actions; upright and fair: an honest person
  • Showing uprightness and fairness: honest dealings
  • Gained or obtained fairly: honest wealth
  • Sincere; frank: an honest face
  • Genuine or unadulterated: honest commodities

So when you answer the cashier at the grocery store with “yes” when he asks you if you found everything OK – and you didn’t – this alone doesn’t make you a dishonest person.

Conversely, when the truth is told with dishonorable intentions, perhaps this isn’t honest after all.  We’ve all heard people share a hurtful truth followed by, “I’m just being honest.”

But were they?

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Be Honest With Yourself

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A few people have made comments lately that lead me to believe that I might not be the only one who has found it difficult to be honest with myself from time to time.  When it comes to being honest and having integrity, how can we really exhibit those values externally if we aren’t able do so with ourselves?  In addition to living these values, being honest with ourselves is important in setting and achieving goals, too.

Several months ago I began a new fitness plan.  As part of the program, it was suggested that participants should take “before” pictures and record measurements.

I didn’t.

While I knew my physical situation had gotten bad enough so that I was ready to start exercising, I wasn’t ready to be honest about the specifics of where I was.  And while that didn’t keep me from starting, I don’t know what my actual progress has been.

So what does that hurt?  In this example, not much.  It did, however, show me how we protect ourselves from the truth from time to time.  Similarly, there are times when it can be harmful if we fail to hold up a mirror and look at the truth about who we are and what we hope to be.  When we’re defensive about feedback given, when we make excuses to skip events, or if we ignore our finances, not only do we lack integrity internally; we’re likely not being very honest with those around us as well.

What have you been ignoring or avoiding?  Maybe it’s time to hold up a mirror.

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Coaching: Luck

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Are you ready to be a little luckier?  See more serendipity?  Take advantage of chance?  As the Roman dramatist, philosopher, and politician Seneca said: Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.  Today we’ll think about how we can better prepare to be lucky.

Here we go….

How have you been “lucky” in the past?  What would the outcome have been if you hadn’t been prepared to grab your good fortune?  How did your choices make the difference?  What can you learn from that experience?

When you look at your goals, what kind of luck do you need to achieve them?  Is there a certain person you should meet?  A place you should visit?  An experience you need to have?  How can you prepare for the opportunity before it presents itself so you’re ready when it comes?  What is the possibility of moving yourself into Luck’s path sooner versus later?

How do you respond to events that happen to you?  Are they problems or opportunities?  What if you shifted negative thoughts instead to curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism and risk-taking?  How would that change things for you?

Are you open to being lucky?

Yes, I’m a coach ~ and I’m also a keynote speaker, retreat planner and business consultant as well.  Learn more about the services I offer by navigating to my company website, Breakthrough Strategies.

Being Open To Being Lucky

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The articles, theories and studies that center on cultivating luck or taking advantage of happenstance all have “flexibility” and “openness” as necessary behaviors needed to take advantage of chance.  And while there are other traits listed, in my experience being open and flexible is more important than others.

How so?

When we’re not open to change or inflexible when it comes an outcome, we’re unable to recognize when something has happened that could be to our advantage.  When that happens, we are (obviously) unable to take advantage of it and luck floats on by without our knowledge that there was something that could have been grabbed onto to change the outcome.

Being open to new experiences, events, and people is exactly what brings “luck” to us.

Isn’t it lucky that you knew the person who hooked you up with the hiring manager for your last job?

Isn’t it lucky that you were able to arrange your schedule to go to an important meeting on behalf of your boss?

Isn’t it lucky that you were able to take advantage of those free tickets when everyone else was busy?

Adjusting schedules, being open to meeting new people, and figuring out how we can be flexible to make things happen can make our lives seem pretty lucky.

Turns out, luck is what we make of what happens to us.  We simply need to be open and flexible when it comes our way.

Visit the Breakthrough Strategies website!

Harvard Business Review On Being Lucky

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In a recent Harvard Business Review blog, Anthony Tjan shared how he and his collegues found that “a surprising number of company founders and business-builders attribute much of their success to luck.”  Quoting the article:

As we dug deeper, it became clear that it was not just random chance that these people were talking about. Luck in business can be cultivated, through the combination of what we call a lucky attitude and a lucky network. A lucky attitude is a disposition open to serendipity and, well, luck. A lucky network is a wide network of relationships that may at first have little to do with any business objective, but somehow later come into great relevance. We can all think of an example.

Are you open to serendipity?  Would you like to be?  Read on to learn more about how we can cultivate our own luck….

How Leaders Lose Their Luck – Anthony Tjan – Harvard Business Review

Your Response Can Change Your World

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Events happen every day that could change the course of our lives.  These events can be good, bad or neutral – and our reaction to them can be good, bad or neutral.  Essentially the very same experience can create profoundly different consequences for various people as well.

A job loss can be the best thing that happens to one person and yet seemingly the worst thing to someone else.

An introduction to a particular person can be a single, non-event to somebody and life changing to another individual.

A college job can be “just a paycheck” to one student and the beginning of a life-long career to his or her co-worker.

How we respond to events creates our future, explained in part with Dr. John Krumboltz’s Happenstance Learning Theory.  This theory states that if we are to respond positively to happenings in our lives, we need to answer with the following:

  • Curiosity
  • Persistence
  • Flexibility
  • Optimism
  • Risk Taking

In thinking about a job loss, for example, approaching the future with curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism and risk taking is bound to bring more positive results than wallowing in apathy, feebleness, rigidity, pessimism and hesitancy.

Our perspective and attitude can impact so much.

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How Lucky Are You?

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Ever have anyone tell you you’re lucky?  Ever have it happen when you were feeling far from it?  Perception is interesting, isn’t it?  Like those who have “overnight success” after years of hard work, what seems to be lucky to others may not have been.

However, there are those times when we just KNOW we’ve had a run-in with serendipity.  Where we were in the right place at the right time and something marvelous simply happened.  Pure luck.

Or was it?

As you think about your run-in with luck, what part did you play?  Did you know the right person?  Go to the right place?  Learn the right thing?  Say “yes” when you were inclined to say “no?”  How did you place yourself in Luck’s way?

Maybe you did have something to do with it after all.  And if you brought a little luck into your life before, maybe you can do it again.

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.  ~Ovid 

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