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Apparently it is not as simple as “yes or no.”  Kelly McGonigal talks about a Harvard study that shows that, how you think about stress matters.  If you see stress as bad, causing illness, and hurting you, it will.  Almost magically, the crucial difference between the stress that makes you sick and the stress that doesn’t hurt you at all, is how you think about it.  The mind is truly a powerful tool.  When you change the stress story, and you see stress as your body’s way of rising to a challenge, you fundamentally change your body’s reaction to the stress.  Your body believes your thoughts and your stress response becomes healthier.  It’s brilliant!  This is a great scientific example of changing the your world with your thinking.

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Have you ever played pool? Did you notice how you might be a ½ millimeter off when you tap the white ball, but by the end of the table the white ball is off course by inches?  Such a little thing as a ½ a millimeter can radically change through time and space. The same thing applies to any change we want to encourage in our lives. We are actively living in time and space. Any small changes you adopt to improve yourself, will grow through time, if you keep at it.

Things that might empower you:

• Power List!  Write a list of all the things that you have accomplished.  Make sure you add things like, I graduated from…, I taught my child…, I am a good friend to…  Find accomplishments from your education, your personal life, your work/career, and volunteer jobs.  Have you every gotten a compliment about being smart, or creative, or funny?  Write it down.  Keep the list somewhere that you can find it and add to it as you go.  This list will help on the days you feel less than.  It will help you challenge your thinking, when you may be more negative than is useful.
• Leave yourself Love Notes! These aren’t love notes in the traditional format, but rather you telling yourself the things you need to hear. I am capable! I manage stress well! I am likeable! I care about people and they care about me! I am smart and getting smarter!  Put these post it note messages up all around your bathroom mirror, you will have to see them at least twice a day and they will be good for you.
• Try Power Posing! Stand like Superman or Wonder Woman. Raise your hands in the Victory V and smile to the sky. Sit with your legs up on the desk and your hands behind your head like a big shot. Find a power pose and then practice it in private, but over time, you will change the testosterone and cortisol levels in your body and will develop a more powerful sense of yourself.
• Visualize! See yourself handling anything you need to do well. See yourself being successful in anything you might normally be scared of, such as talking in front of people, or in a job interview, going to a party where you don’t know people, walking into a classroom the first day, whatever might be scary. Then see yourself doing that thing with confidence.
• Let Go!  It can be hard to let go of regrets, resentments or worries, it seems you’re hardly human if you don’t have a few of these.  All these things are either past focused or future focused, and they take attention away from ‘now.’  And, unfortunately,  the more you focus on the negative aspects of the past or the future, the harder it is to feel good about yourself and/or your direction in the present.  When we focus on things we have no control over, the past especially, it’s really difficult to move forward.  Looking backwards is only helpful if you are learning from it or letting go of it.  The future is open and unknown,  we can work to influence it in positive ways, but worry and resentments rarely get you where you want to go.

Try these tools to help you keep your energy high as you move toward your goals.  We also need to support ourselves through the journey.  Just like in pool, these tiny tweaks will lead you to new outcomes.  As you make these small adjustment, see how they are working, if you are feeling more empowered, then make another, and then another, and another.

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Authenticity.  It’s about being real. It’s about knowing yourself. It’s about courageously confronting the parts of yourself that don’t fit with your vision of you.  Authenticity can be a moral compass that directs your actions toward your own true north.  It’s a feeling of being comfortable in our own skin.  Yet as much as we understand this in theory, being authentic is one of the hardest things to do in practice.  Think about how many people you know who are in your mind truly authentic.  If you’re lucky, there are a handful of people who you can name.  Now think about times when you have felt authentic.  You may be one of the special few, who always feel confident in your ability to interact with the world from a solely authentic place, but most of us have to work at it regularly.  There are areas where we shine our authentic selves like a bright light in a dark universe, and if we are being authentic, we also know that there are places that we still need work to grow the light.  Most of us still have the dark closet or corner where our fear gets triggered.

Like any other trait, authenticity is an aspect of ourselves that we can develop.  Part of that development comes from acknowledging who we are and that we want to become more authentic.  When I was 18, I looked at myself and saw a person that I didn’t like.  I saw a lot of negative qualities in myself and I focused on them. While I wasn’t a mean or bad person, I wasn’t very compassionate, or forgiving, I was often afraid, I was at times reactive and this didn’t fit with the type of person I really wanted to become.  I pretty consciously decided that I needed to determine what sort of person I did want to grow into.  I began to develop a picture of who I wanted to be.  This included an inventory of my values and these values became the map I actually wanted travel by.  These are not the values that we may say to other people because we think they are right or appropriate. These are the values that live in our truest hearts.  I decided that I wanted to be an authentic person, honest about who I am and courageous enough to share that.  The more I worked on authenticity, the more I needed to have compassion with myself, and the more I shifted my negative self talk. The more I could explore my strengths, the more clearly I saw myself honestly, and the easier it was to act or respond in ways that deepened my ability to be authentic.  It was a positive growth circle.

I taught anger management for years and one of the hardest things I saw people struggle with was the willingness to be honest and vulnerable.  We spend so much time worried about other people’s judgments of us, and fearing that we might be taken advantage of, that we stop ourselves from being fully present in relationships.  The truth is that we often judge our insides by other people’s outsides, yet it’s our own opinions of ourselves that matter.  Our view of ourselves is the guideline that every other person will use with us too.

There are steps that will put you on the path, as you journey, you grow.

Steps to developing your authentic self:

1. Knowing yourself

• Understanding your deep values
• Recognizing your triggers
• Developing compassion for yourself and others
• Focusing where you have influence

2. Willingness to be vulnerable

• Ability to acknowledge your feelings
• A willingness to not know everything
• Giving yourself permission to let go of yesterday and its mistakes
• Learn to clearly speak to your truth
• Being willing to let go of the idea of perfection
• Recognition that you are courageous

What developing your authentic self gives you:

• A feeling of empowerment in you life and your choices
• Breakthrough’s that allow you to push through resistances (fears)
• Ability to trust yourself and then to trust others
• Map to find your tribe of people

My favorite people to work with are the ones who want to forge themselves.  Are you a person who is willing to be brave and face your life with authenticity?

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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.

This is a repost from my other blog, I’m moving posts over to Creative Human, as I move forward.

What the Navy Seals Know

I was watching a show on the history Channel called “The Brain.”  It was a fascinating program for several of the pieces that they documented.  The program really looked at how the brain operates under different circumstances. One of the segments of the show was a piece on training the Brain to manage stress, and specifically how the Navy is working to improve the passing average in the Navy seal program. What they found was about 25% of the troops in training the program were passing, but the Navy found that there were 5 to 10%  of each group of men that should have passed the Seal’s training, yet didn’t.  Some of these men quit in the last week, last days, or hours of the training.  So, the Navy set out to find out what key things these men needed in order to be able to pass the training.

What the Navy found was there were four areas that needed to be addressed and taught to the men, so that these 5%-10% of men might be successful in the Navy Seal training program.  The four areas that they discovered needed to be addressed were: Goal Setting; Visualization; Self Talk; and Arousal Control/Breathing.

Goal Setting: What the Navy found about goal setting was this, people needed to have very clear short-term, midterm, and long-range goals. What I mean by short-term goals is this, the person might need to be saying to themselves, “I can make it through this next minute,” “I can make it to lunch,” “I can make it one more step or I can make it one more mile.”  Midterm goals might look like, “I can make it to the end of this training day,” or “I could make it to the end of the week.” What long-term goals are, is the ability to remember what the greater purpose is, of any action. For instance, “I want to be a Navy Seal.”  And, for mere mortals, we might have a long term goal of being an Artist, or Writer, or own our own business.

Visualization or Mental Rehearsal: I’m using the terms, visualization or mental  rehearsal, interchangeably. But the Navy found was it was very important, for the person, to see themselves practicing training successfully in their mind. For instance, one of the images that stands out for me, was the underwater test. A Seal trainee, would be in a pool and their trainer would swim down and mess with their air supply. This would trigger a primal fear of drowning. The trainees, who visualized how to handle this situation successfully, tended to be far more successful in actual practice. Another example of this is something I saw most recently the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver Canada, while watching the downhill skiers, you might see them practicing turns or jumps in their heads moving their bodies around as they visualize themselves competing on the course or making a complex jump.

Self talk: They mentioned in the piece that the average person says between 300-7000 words per minute to themselves.  If the majority of that self talk is negative, it’s really no wonder that we can freak ourselves out of completing tasks.  Part of making self talk manageable is to first become aware that you are actually saying so much crap to yourself and then working on challenging the negative words and beliefs.

Dr. Amen of “Change your Brain – Change your Body” talked about asking 2 important questions when you were flooded with negative beliefs.  1. Do I know that this self talk or belief is 100% true?  and 2. What do I know that contradicts the negative self talk or belief?  So, for an example:  “I totally can’t finish anything I start!!!”  Question One: is this 100% true? I don’t know, maybe… maybe not.  Second question: what do I know that contradicts the thoughts? Well, I finished the laundry… I finished brushing my teeth… I fed the dog this morning… I finished this blog article…  Ok, it cannot be 100% true.

Breathing/Arousal Control: When we are having a stress reaction or Arousal Response to a situation (getting scared, anxious, nervous, angry, worried, etc – any strong negative emotion) our brain can have an amygdala trigger, flooding our body with the chemicals Cortisol and Adrenaline.  There are some other chemicals that the body also produces, but these two are very powerful.  We may notice that our hearts start to beat really hard, or our breathing gets quick and shallow.  Our bodies may start to shake or tense up, ready to Fight, Flee or Freeze.  Unfortunately, when we are in the middle of a intense arousal response, our ability to think through the situation is lost and we become very reactive.  What the focus on breathing does, is shift our attention away from the situation and as we work to normalize our breathing, we can calm our responses to situations.  This then will help us stabilize our brain back to a place where we can start thinking again.  Creating the wiring in our brain to calm ourselves in a stressful situation will help us make more effective choices, be less reactive and ultimately help us to survive the situation as best we can.

The Navy has the Seal’s train for stressful often combative situations over and over again.  These men learn skills and develop strategies to manage their reactions in the most intense and deadly situations.  As a quick aside, I am so humbled by how much they do in a days work.  And, I appreciate what they do for me each and every day.  But, the coolest thing we can learn from their training, is that we, mere mortals, can work on training our brain’s reactions and responses to be better!

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This is a nice video about some key aspects of success.