Making it Stick!

Popular New Years Resolutions

• Get Healthy
  • Lose Weight
  • Eat Better
  • Drink Less
  • Quit Smoking
• Volunteer
• Education
  • Learn something new
  • Finish your education
• Get a Better Job
• Save Money
  • Manage Debt
• Manage Stress
• Take a Trip

Based on the statistic that 8% of people with a New Years Resolutions successfully complete them, we know that most of us make a resolution with high hopes, then something happens.  The goal is something we say is important to us, yet within a week 75% of us have already moved on, put the resolution in the junk draw and basically gone back to life as usual.  It’s like we love the idea, but we don’t have enthusiasm for the work that goes into changing a habit or working on a goal.  So, how do we continue to generate enthusiasm after the first flush of New Years has left us? Here are some ideas.

Be a Decider.  Don’t just go with the crowd when it comes to your New Years Resolutions or goals, get individual and decide what is really meaningful to you.  If everyone wants to do xyz, but your heart really isn’t in it, what is your heart open to?  Imagine looking back on 2015, what would be one or two things that would make you feel like you had honored yourself?  What would you like to say about yourself to others?  What would make you feel proud of yourself?  Write that down. Whatever goal speaks to your soul is going to be a much more interesting goal or resolution than just following the masses.

Create an Explicit Juicy Goal.  Without a clear vision that is based on your own ‘why’, most people just aren’t enthused about what they say they want.  Make your goal clear, meaningful, and fun.

Realistic Expectations.  This is one of the Super Secrets of life.  If you begin with an unrealistic expectation such as, “I’m going to lose 50 pounds in a month,” it’s going to be very hard to make this happen. It’s not impossible, but it isn’t healthy and it probaly requires a level of commitment that may be overwhelming.  If the goal is realistic, “I’m going to be dancing daily till I’m fit,” then you can develop that goal into something juicy.

Baby steps.  Every goal has many steps along the way that chunk it down and make it more easily “do”able.  Baby steps break down the ‘what to do’ or action aspects of a goal.  These baby steps will guide you along the way and help to make the goal more manageable.  Losing weight is a great goal, but you’ll need to break it down: Create a play list of music I like to dance to, Schedule it, eat more veggies, & cut the simple carbs.

Plan for Bumps along the Way.  This is really a part of realistic expectations, but it deserves its own bump.  Imagine you’re going on a trip.  You’re heading from Seattle to Boston.  You get on the plane and you’re off.  The plane has a clear destination, Boston.  The flight is not actually moving in a straight line, it’s a direction, and along the way the pilot is bringing the plane back on course with many little adjustments.  Expect that you might get off course on your own journey. Know that you can bring yourself back on course as many times as it takes to get to your destination.

Celebrate Successes.  Too often we set a goal and then we lose steam as we work and work and work.  Set mini goals. I called them baby steps above and celebrate them regularly.  I often make something I love to do into a prize at the end of the work.  If I have paperwork to do, which is my least favorite thing, I might say to myself, if I get this paperwork done today, I will go out to a movie.  I can create my own carrot.

It takes a Village.  At about the four to six week mark, people become excuse machines.  We throw up all sorts of rationalizations, reasons, justifications, smoke and mirrors to let  ourselves off the proverbial hook.  Having people who will support you through the rough spots is important and necessary to success.  It could be a person or an online support group.  When I quit smoking, it was much easier to hang out with nonsmoking friends. The more you surround yourself with people who support your goal the easier it will be for you to be successful.

Get Explicit and Make those Juicy Goals

What does it mean to get Explicit?  If this is the key to making a New Years Resolutions, or really any goals successful, then explicit is important.

ex·plic·it – ikˈsplisit/

adjective

adjective: explicit

1.    stated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for confusion or doubt.

This will be our working definition.

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     So let’s get explicit.  

When you think of your goal, begin by asking yourself, on a scale of 1-10, how important is this goal to me?  If you are not at a 9 or a 10, then why do you think this is a goal worthy of your time and attention?  What would it take to get the goal to a 10 for importance?  This is really important because we will often say something is important and then not follow through on it. This is the behavioral equivalent to saying, “I don’t really care about this…” and I am not in the habit of working with people on their lukewarm goals.  A lukewarm goal is basically a set up for failure.  Not the sort of failure where you really try to change something and you don’t succeed, but the sort of failure that you get from not really trying.  I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but those are two very different types of failures.  I don’t enjoy spending a lot of time, money, energy and not meeting a big goal, but at least I know I gave it my all.  In my mind, there is no failure with true effort.  When I was younger, I was a swimmer. I would spend hours a week at practice, back and forth laps, working on my stroke, a lot of time and energy was invested.  All this work didn’t mean that I won every race I entered, but without the time, commitment and effort, I wouldn’t have even started, let alone finished a race.  The more I trained, the better I did.

Let’s look at the example like I want to “Get Healthy”:

• Is this a real goal, or is it a goal you think you ‘should’ have? Do you think it’s a 10 value goal?
• How do you know you’re at a 10?
• What does “getting healthy” mean to you?
• What are the most important aspects of this goal for you?
• What would it look like if you were behaving in a “healthy” way?
  • Remember, “healthy” may mean different things to different people.  Be clear about what you mean.
• How will you know you have reached your goal?
• What will you have done during the year, when you look back on this goal on Dec 31, 2015?

Maybe my goal over the next year is that I want to eat healthy, or maybe I want to exercise every week.  Do these goals sound interesting or juicy?  If the goal doesn’t excite you, it will be harder to commit to.  What would a juicy goal sound like?

You might start with: “I want to exercise every week” then keep writing what you want from the goal.

• I want to move daily
• I want to feel powerful in my body
• I want to spend time outside breathing in the forest
• I want to take my dogs on regular walks

If you sum up these wants, what might the goal sound like?

• Daily tree time with my dogs, breathing in nature, makes me strong!

As you write what you want from the goal, you can begin to mold the goal into something that speaks to your soul.  Which goal sounds juicier to you?  I want to exercise every week  or Daily tree time with my dogs, breathing in nature, makes me strong!  I know which one I will be choosing.

What are the baby steps that I need to take to meet the goal “Daily tree time with my dogs, breathing in nature, makes me strong!”?  Break it down:

• Commit to X number of times a week.
• Put it in your schedule.
• Find a friend who might want to join you.
• Join a dog club that walks.
• Or start your own dog walking Meetup.
• Find the dog leashes.
• Pick some places close to your house that you can go walking outside that make you feel excited.

Figure out all the little things that you need to do to help you meet this goal.  The baby steps help you map your plan for success.  This is true for every goal you ever set for yourself.

Time to pick a goal.  Next blog we will start looking at different goals and how to suss out whether they are 10’s for you.

Hello 2015!

Hello 2015!

I’m going to do a little series, looking at a few common New Years resolutions, and think about what it might look like if we actually accomplished what we said we wanted to do. Novel idea born! I am going to ask you questions to help you think about what you really want. I have a theory that most New Years resolutions fail because we don’t really develop them in our minds before we start. We begin with a vague goa like “lose weight” without any real clarity about what our deeper goal is. Then we wobble off the track in a week or a month and the New Years resolutions gets stuck in our coat closet until the next year. I found an interesting statistic at The Statistic Brain, that only 8% of people are successful in achieving their resolutions. That’s not a lot of people being successful. It seems that people who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t clearly and explicitly make resolutions. So right here, in the last hours before 2014 ends, let’s plan to get explicit!

Creating Meaningful Stories

Every day when we think about the past, the present or the future, we are creating stories. Researchers are discovering that we all remember experiences through the perspective of our own set of filters. These filters include our past experiences, attitudes and beliefs, values, hopes and dreams, and especially our fears.

These filters affect how we interpret or experience life, as well as the stories that we tell ourselves about what the experience means to us. Stories are the way we connect with other people. Our stories resonate with some people and draw them to us. This is how people who are passionate about a topic end up with a circle of friends who think or feel very much as they do. The stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, what is important, and what we are capable of doing lead to the life we create for ourselves. This means that the stories we focus on and build upon are epically important to how we view our lives.

My mother and I were recently having a conversation about our personal historical stories. When my mom was growing up, her parents, who immigrated to America between the two World Wars, later worked for thirty plus years for the Ambassador to Norway, at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. They were servants in his household. My mom grew up with two stories: one that she “was just the ‘servant’s child’” and she lived this story out with a belief that maybe she wasn’t good enough. She told herself a complex story that she was in some way less than, less important, even disposable. The other story that she told herself, was that she was ‘just as good’ as any of the amazing people she was meeting, just as clever, smart, and capable. Her sense, as she looks back on her life today is that, depending on which story she tells herself, it impacts how she has feels about her self-worth.

My perspective on my mom’s life is from a more powerful perspective. My grandparents had gone from small war ravaged towns in Europe and found a way to give their child a much bigger future. I saw my mom as having a pretty magical experience. She lived with her parents on a beautiful Palm Beach estate, where she met the Kennedys, a Four Star General, ambassadors and royalty, as well as stars from the theatre community. She babysat Caroline and John-John, under the watchful eyes of Secret Service Agents, and she even went dancing with one of those agents. She had great times with her friends on that estate with the ocean at her back door.   While her parents may have thought of themselves as simply servants, my mom really had an extraordinary childhood, in which she was able to study the behavior of remarkable people up close.

When I asked her which way of thinking about her past led to better outcomes in her present life, her response was that when she was making choices from the position of being worthy, she chose options that led to situations where she felt successful and was seen as successful. A view of the past from a place of “what did I learn?” being ‘just as good as’ has empowered her present life. The same is true for each of us.

How we tell ourselves our story, absolutely affects how we view our life and the choices we make. We are, in this moment, the sum total of all of our conscious and unconscious choices. The more aware we are of the story we are telling ourselves, the more conscious our choices will be. Our perception of our story impacts the conscious and unconscious motivators that propel us.

I too have had to evaluate my own story. My parents divorced when I was 9, and I was fairly ripped out of my comfortable life. When I was 11, I was dragged to San Francisco and was required to bus myself across the city to an inner city middle school where I was one of twelve white kids in a sea of diverse cultures.   I am a redhead and so stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. It was a hard transition for me; I went from the relative safety of a small town to a very big city. I moved from a school where I had known everyone since 1^st grade, to an inner-city school where I was very clearly different. I experienced bullying, and I was scared; I had stomachaches all the time, sore throats, and basically was stressed out. But, there were also kids who took me under their wings. The story that I was telling myself at the time sounded like, “I’m gonna die,” and all my reactions and responses funneled through my fear.

But, I didn’t die, and I started to breathe, I began to look around me and shifted the story. As I got my sea legs, my story began to shift. I started to make friends; I discovered things I liked to do: I joined the band, I volunteered at the aquarium in Golden Gate Park, and I hung out at the horse stables in the park also. I was lucky to have some resilience, and I began changing the way I looked at my situation. In hindsight, when I think back to that time, while I can remember the fear, I also remember becoming more independent, learning to trust myself, learning to make friends in new situations. I started to embrace diversity and to like differences in people. I was learning how to move through fear. The shift from being a scared kid to feeling empowered didn’t happen overnight. It took years. The more I focused on seeing the empowering elements in my story, the more empowered I felt as a person.

How I viewed my experience created a circular feedback loop. The more I pushed through the fear, the more empowered I felt. The more empowered I felt, the more I knew I could do anything I really tried to do. The more I did, the more fun I was having, the less fear I felt, and the more empowered I felt. In a nutshell, this is how it works for anyone. Each time we meet our fear, it’s an opportunity to push through it. I am not saying that you shouldn’t listen to your fear, notice it, acknowledge it, and decide if it is a dangerous or life threatening situation. But, if it is just a negative inner story, or negative self-talk about not being capable or good enough, then push yourself to challenge it. This is not about making up a super happy story that doesn’t resonate (my life was perfect, only perfect things ever happened to me, and only perfect things will ever happen to me) – but real stories. It is not just noticing the negative, but looking for the balance, the places where we grew and developed in powerful ways.

In every situation, we are making choices in our lives. When we participate in our lives from an empowered story, then it helps us to make choices that may lead to more empowered outcomes. When see ourselves as worthy, we make choices from that perspective. When we change our stories, we allow for different possibilities. This happens on the macro level – how we respond to the world and how the world responds back to us. It also happens in on the micro level – how we feel about ourselves in the world. If I say to myself, “I’m not a writer” then I generate a block to being able to write. If I say, “I’m not good at relationships” I may find myself throwing up resistance to relationships. These are powerful stories. Saying instead, “I am a writer” doesn’t make me a brilliant writer. That takes practice, practice, practice, but it does open me up to writing and developing myself as a writer. The same is true for anything you want to do or be in the world.

The stories that we tell ourselves are important….choose wisely.

In the Words of Buckaroo Bonzai…

no matter where you go… there you are.

It seems to be a theme this week; I’ve been talking with clients about the idea of them wanting their lives to be different by either running away or having things magically change.  The underlying idea being, maybe if the situation changes, it will be easier for them.  Let me start off by saying, there is nothing wrong with leaving a situation or changing it, if you recognize that you take your baggage with you.  Leaving the situation can give you a break from whatever rut you find yourself, but if you have a pattern or habit of behavior or thinking, most likely you will find yourself running around the same tree very soon.  In order to break a habit or change a situation, you need to start with yourself.  What do you need to be aware of in order to really change whatever situation you find yourself in that you don’t like?  That’s the big question.

One question to think about is: Is there a pattern here?

Awareness can make a huge difference in outcomes.  In fact, Awareness makes ALL the difference. With awareness, we can begin to understand our patterns and what motivates us to behave, speak, fight, and make choices, etc in certain ways.  With this insight, we can begin to choose with clarity.

Another question to think about is: Where do I want to be in 6 months or a year?

Awareness let’s us know what’s going on, but in order to know what to choose, we have to have an idea of where we want to go. In his book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, Steven Covey says to begin with the end in mind, and that’s the truth, we definitely need to have a direction.

I was talking to a client the other day, she gets into patterns in relationships where she is in financial crisis and wants someone to ‘save’ her.   But, people don’t tend to want to financially rescue other people for free, so she ends up with the cost of what she has to do to keep the savior engaged in saving her.  She then begins to feel bad about what she has to do, or put up with, and ends up hating her savior.  She had to take a good hard look at the pattern, now that she knows it’s there, she has to start to develop the idea of what she want to move towards.  “I want to feel safe and like I don’t have to worry that creditors are knocking at my door.”  My thought to her was, “If you want to truly be ‘safe’ you’re going to have to deal with the financial drama you create.  Creating a different dynamic in that regard will allow you then to choose the people you actually want to spend time with, based on liking and respecting them, not because you have to put on a show to get them to do what you need… like save you.”

We do this in jobs too.  “I hate my job, but I can’t quit.”  Well, why not?  I realize that people have expenses, kids, homes, cars, insurance, etc.  But, if you really hate a job, why can’t you start to think about what you want to move toward?  Feeling stuck and choosing to stay that way is most likely a pattern too.  There are times, that with good reason, we need to stay in a job, even if we don’t love it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be planning a change down the road.  It may mean we need to take a look at what skills we need to develop, education, etc.  The pattern is just the easy place we can get stuck; it doesn’t mean we have to stay stuck forever.  Someone once said, the only difference between a rut and the grave is the depth… ruts are easier to jump out of, death is terminal.

If we have the courage to pay attention and stop running away from our stuff, life gets a lot less complicated. It’s sort of like that quintessential picture of the newlyweds driving away in the car looking over waving at the crowd with little cans hanging off the back, those little cans are actually baggage, the cans say things like: problem managing anger, commitment issues, fear, wants to be saved, and I’m not feeling so confident. The problem with the little cans is you’re dragging them along with you and until you can see them, you can’t toss them in the recycle bin.

One of the problems of life is that we can’t really hide from ourselves, no matter where we go… there we are.

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Here are 10 truths that will change your life, your career, and help you meet your dreams?

There are so many mindsets that are important to create success, but these are the 10 Mindsets that I believe are among the most important.

1. Open Your Mind. Open any closed doors in your mind and allow that there are many different ways to be successful. Some people will focus on careers, some will focus on relationships, some will pursue a mountaintop, an idea, write a book, or work to have a positive impact on the world. But, any of these areas can be an aspect of your personal success. An open mindset doesn’t limit you to just one idea. In fact, you don’t have to limit yourself to one area of success, you’re allowed to be successful in all the areas that matter to you!
2. Keep Learning. The coolest thing in the world is to know you can learn, recognizing that you can develop tools to do anything. Our brains are capable of learning new things till the very day we die. You are walking in the footsteps of giants and most of them have either been written about and you can learn from them, or they have written a book about what you want are interested in. Learn all you can from the people who have gone before you. Find the people you admire and then consciously work to learn from them. But, for that matter, create a mindset of learning from every ‘mistake’ you feel you’ve made. Squeeze all the learning out of every experience, both positive and negative. Life is a big school and everyday is a school day if you’re doing it right!
3. Develop Self-Awareness. Notice when you’re on the right path, notice how it feels, learn to hear your gut. You will feel it in your body. It might show up as a bad feeling about something, or a buzz of excitement, or a settled calm that that moves through your heart. Listen to your guts; develop your trust of yourself. Start small, but start listening to what your truth is. The more you develop the mindset of insight, the more powerfully you will move in the right direction. The more you learn to trust yourself, the better able you will be to leap off tall buildings and fly.
4. Set goals. Begin with the end in mind. This doesn’t mean you have to know exactly where you are going. But having a clear goal significantly focuses the journey. Clarity means that you have an idea about where your want to go. Having short term, mid term and long term goals can help you stay on track. We lose energy and direction when we work for a long time towards an intangible idea. The mindset of having a goal means you bring your compass out into the open and then set a clear destination.
5. Visualize. See yourself being successful. Work to create as full an image of what that will look and feel like. What do you want your life to look like in 1 year, 2 years, or 3 years. What kind of job or career do you want to have? Visualize roadblocks and then visualize yourself working through those roadblocks. See yourself becoming what you want to be is an incredible tool and a brilliant mindset.
6. Work. I don’t know that you have to work hard, but you do have to work consistently. There is no movement without action. You must plug away at your goal relentlessly. Each day ask yourself, “Is what I am about to say, think, or do, going to take me closer to my goal or farther away?” Create a mindset that pushes you, prods you, and sometimes forces you to get off your ass and get moving. Those goals aren’t just going to come knocking on your door, unless your out there working on making them happen.
7. Persist. Success often comes to those who hold on, and don’t give up when it gets hard, or boring, or scary. Life will toss you and spin you and send you spiraling out into the universe. Your job is to find good places to hold tight and hang on. Recognize fear, learn to breath, keep a clear direction and then hold tight. It takes a mindset of making choices, allowing mistakes, practice, practice, practice, perseverance, and patience to muddle on.
8. Develop Confidence. Don’t worry about what other people think about you. There will always be people who don’t agree with you, or don’t think that your direction is a good idea. They are often loud and you will hear them. But, hearing and listening are different. Someone once said, “Your opinion of me, is none of my business.” It’s a hard thing to learn to do. But, develop the mindset that you are good enough and your dreams are worthy. Worry less about other people’s expectation of you, than you worry about your own expectations of yourself. Haters gonna hate, but who cares?
9. Don’t waste time. The only wasted time, is the time we spend wishing the past was different, or blaming some situation, some person, or some circumstance for why we haven’t been successful. The past is an interesting place; it’s the moment that this moment, now this moment, now this one, is done. I don’t have Mr. Peabody’s “Way Way Back machine”, neither do you. The mindset of letting go of the past means that you shift your focus on influencing the future. You will have a lot more success when you’re looking forward.
10. Breathe. Take time to clear your mind and breathe. Allow yourself to be uncertain and then breathe through the uncertainty. Take walks, meditate, pray, read, develop your tools to maintain your internal calm. Find people who will support your idea of your healthy self. Sit in moments when you’re feeling good, calm and happy, breathe in those moments, and then learn to carry the feelings over as you breathe into more difficult experiences. Breathe through every fear that marches by.

     

    There are thousands of steps that go into being successful and your mindsets are key to the steps working. Keep adding to your list.

What is Your Body Saying?

Something like 80% of our communication is non verbal.  Do you know what you’re “saying” when your not talking?  Amy Cuddy looks at how we read other peoples non verbals unconsciously, always making assessments about what they are ‘saying’ to us by reading their body language, and yet we are often not aware of how we are being perceived.  Our non verbals govern how other people think and feel about us.  So, an interesting question was posed, do our non verbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves?  So, Amy looks very closely at the non verbal communication of power, or lack there of.  Can you fake confidence and does it help?  We know that our minds change our bodies, so could our bodies change our minds?  What do the minds of the powerful look like compared to the powerless?

Our bodies can change our minds… our minds can change our behavior… and our behavior can change our outcomes.  Brilliant!

 

em⋅pa⋅thy [em-puh-thee]

Empathy is a interesting word, the dictionary definition is:

1.	the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

2.	the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.

Do we need empathy in our lives? Empathy is often a word we use in respect to other people and our expectations of them with comments like “they don’t have empathy” or “they need empathy”. Sometimes it seems we don’t have a deep understanding of what empathy even means to ourselves, let alone what it means to others. For me, short verse, empathy means: being able to put myself into someone else’s shoes. It’s the ability to feel or imagine another person’s experience.  It often requires that we learn to suspend judgment and work to understand the other person’s perspective. This becomes most especially important, if you don’t agree with or like the other perspective.  Empathy isn’t about feeling sorry for another, but rather it’s the ability to feel compassion for what their experience is.  It’s finding a way to recognize “the me, in you”.

Empathy comes off sounding ‘soft’ or unnecessary in business, but in reality, empathy is a big part of Emotional Intelligence and it is the process by which we improve relationships.  In relationships, we often start off with positivity.  Then, due to the daily hazards of interacting with others, those positive feelings can erode. We develop habits of interactions, conversations, expectations, and arguments.  We build walls against the annoyances, the hurts and disappointments.  As we build walls, see ourselves as different than others; we can tend to lose the ability to care.  It’s this ability to care that allows us access to the other person’s emotional landscape.  This loss can cause no end of problems. We might see others’ motives maybe more harshly or negatively than we would have if we had kept our openness toward them.  In an University of Michigan,  August 2010 study lead by Sarah Konrath, she found that empathy is on the decline and that while we are hardwired to care, social and cultural impact can negatively affect our ability to empathize.  This hurts relationships, it hurts work atmospheres, and it impacts the bottom line, as wreckage takes time and resources to fix.  One positive take away, is that what can be unlearned, can also be relearned.  It just takes awareness, intention, and practice.

At this point in my life, I have come to believe everyone is a sale person.  I don’t care what you do for a living you’re selling something.  Some people sell cars, others sell widgets, or apps, some sell stories, others sell how to think, or learn, and some sell ideas.  I personally sell ideas and how to think through situations in order to be more effective.  So how do you sell your product?  What are the internal and external guides that direct you to buy this car, or that widget, or another idea?  Often it comes down to relationships, with a person, a business, a feeling, a need, and/or an idea.  We are motivated along these lines.  So, let’s say I am a nice person, but I don’t read cues well, and you end up feeling like I don’t get you at all.  Are you going to want to give me your business?  Maybe once, but to build a brand or to build a business, hopefully we are thinking a little farther than one sale.  Relationships are key to success and empathy is key to relationships.

Daniel Goldman talks about how in a growing global market, misunderstanding can arise and people need to be able to either not do damage or know how to read problematic situations, so they can fix it.  Also, how do leaders retain talent if they stomp all over them?  That only works if you’re so wildly successful that people will put up with you, are you that kind of successful?  If not, pay attention.

It’s not only about listening to your employee’s or your customers, but it’s about the ability to weigh needs.  Good employers take others feelings into account as they are making broader decisions.

 

So, what’s a person to do to increase empathy? Increasing empathy requires several key elements.  

Awareness.  In a nutshell, it’s time to wake up.  This means seeing ourselves with clarity.  We all feel things, and awareness means that I need to understand my own emotions.  If I understand that I’m happy, annoyed, distracted, angry or hurt, I can take steps to take care of myself.  Shifting from an egocentric perspective about my feelings into one of insights that allow me to access the idea that other people are feeling something too.  Our understanding of our emotions helps us to read and understand other peoples’ emotions.   Think about it; businesses often treat customers in ways that no individual would enjoy being treated.  It isn’t rocket science, it’s actually common sense.  If I were treated the way that I am treating others… how would I react?

Be Interested.  Have you ever had a boss or a co-worker, or heck even a friend, who was terminally set on “output”? It can shut people down if all we do is talk at them.  We show empathy by actually showing interest in what someone else is saying, not just about what we are saying.  Take time to ask questions, work on developing an understanding or who they are, remember peoples’ names, remember their families’ names.  Showing interest in people matters.  I recently read a book called The Charisma Myth, by Olivia Fox Cabane, and she talked about this very thing.  Charismatic people show interest in others.  You feel like maybe you’re the only one in the room, because they are looking at you, listening to you, and responding to you.  We don’t remember what people do, we remember how we feel.

Willingness to Listen.  Steven Covey called it the dialog of the deaf, when everyone is talking but no one is listening.  If you walk through the world and don’t care about the experience of others, then reread the above paragraph.  Empathy is grounded in listening.  We need to be willing to suspend our own voice, perspective, or opinion long enough to really listen to the other person.  Hearing someone is not even close to the same thing as agreement.  So, I am not necessarily agreeing with everything they say, when I listen to understand.  I am just working on really understanding what they mean and where they are coming from.  Listening is as important a tool as being able to read or write.  Many of the biggest issues I have seen in organizations and systems, stem from misunderstanding and a dearth of listening.

Presence. aka. Nonverbal Body Language.  This really fits with listening, in that we project our feelings by all sorts of nonverbal cues.  We can say, have a nice day, and mean very different things based on tone alone.  Our posture can communicate annoyance or interest.  Especially on the phone, we can hear distraction a mile away.  Yeah, yeah, what, what did you just say???  When we are paying attention and have a goal of curiosity or interest, we communicate that clearly with how we hold ourselves, the types of questions that we ask, the reactions and responses to what is being said.  All this, wrapped up in a bow, is presence.

Openness.  People have different perspectives. We come to life situations from different cultures, experiences, and belief systems.  If I care about xyz, and I want a team or an organization to be successful, I want to hear all the perspectives.  Some call this brainstorming, but successful leaders learn to use these differences to make powerful changes.  It’s important to ask the quiet folks to speak up too.  It’s really easy to get all the extroverts to share, in fact they will at times over share, but getting lots of people to share takes paying attention.  Whether we are talking team members or customers, openness means that I want to hear many perspectives, ideas, insights, and opinions.  This enriches our organizations, our teams, and helps us stretch ourselves past the limits that we can create by not entertaining enough ideas.

Basic psychology 101 says, we like people who like us… Say that a few times, because it’s important.  Empathy is easy to overlook, but we do so at our own peril.  We all want to be liked, we all want to feel like someone gets us.