Category: Goals, Habits

BOOK YOURSELF! The Challenge.

Posted on by Senia

The February 23rd challenge!

I challenge you today to book yourself for an event in the next 30 days (by March 23, 2007) that is just a little more difficult than you are used to. An event where you need to perform just a little more than you are used to!

I challenge you to challenge yourself to play the Book Yourself game with a specific goal and time.

I do my BEST work when I put a goal in front of me – a goal that is just a little higher than I am used to, and then I strrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeetch.

Streeeeeeeeeeeeeetch A woman named Laurie that I know is an amazing volleyball player. She played competitively in college, and I played with her several times in grad school. When she played with us, she was many leagues better than our grad school intramural team, BUT…. but she played as if her life depended on it. She played as if every block, every serve, every hit was the one. Was the one that would make us win. Was the one that would count.

And the single best thing that she did when she played with us was that she would shout out just in time “streeeeeeeeetch” to the person at the net going for a spike. It didn’t matter that more than half of us didn’t jump up when we spiked – we spiked from the ground. It didn’t matter if it was the best player on the team or any player. Laurie yelled “streeeeeeeeetch,” and each of us stretched!

That’s what I’m talking about. Streeeeeeeeeetch yourself. Do that one thing that seems just a little bit above where you are! Streeeeeeeetch and GROW!

Some examples:

  • Exercising a certain number of times a day (that’s self-regulation), and doing a workout that’s just a little harder than is comfortable (that’s streeeeeeeeetching).
  • Booking yourself as a speaker at a conference before you have the full outline prepared (that’s streeeeeeetching). Then working regularly, repeatedly, deliberately on creating a superb presentation for that day (that’s self-regulation).
  • Expanded your business in a direction you’ve never tried before (streeeeeeeeetching), and preparing for each new milestone in the new direction by creating a process (self-regulation) that you can rely on in the future.

So, for the next 30 days, what can you book yourself to do that will challenge you?

(BTW, in case it EVER seems like I have all the answers, please don’t think that could be true. I have a whole bunch of fun questions. I’m changing things about my life and work while I’m writing this website. My answers in the comments. If I suggest something on this site, it’s because I’m thinking about it myself. Streeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch!) :)

Sometimes you need a challenge in order to move yourself into action.
What’s your challenge? :)

CONGRATS for doing this for yourself – for playing this Book Yourself game.

How to Choose an Executive Coach

Posted on by Senia

How should you choose an executive coach? If you are in an organization or if you are working on changing careers, how do you know who can help you with that process? How can you choose someone who will know enough about you, about your business, and about your goals that that person can become like a sports coach for you – giving you exercises, training, homework, and most importantly, direction? In the case of executive coaching, often the direction comes from the client but with the in-depth question-asking and assessment-taking of the coach.

How do you find the best executive coach for you or your organization?

1) Know what you want to work on. (The Topic, The Goal)

You can’t start training unless you know whether you’re training for a marathon, a dance recital, or a mountain bike ride. What are the general parameters of the question you’re asking? What is the general topic? What even is a goal – whether at this point specific or not?

Do you want to be promoted? Become a stronger manager? Create a full work-life balance? Become a better salesperson? Become more valuable to your organization? Grow your own business?

In positive psychology coaching, the goal is the question and the answer. It can always be further refined – and should be! because people are changing. In positive psychology coaching, the client knows – whether logically or not yet logically – but the client himself and herself knows what the goal is. It’s the role of the positive psychology coach to draw out the larger goal and then work on creating subgoals and plans and a training routine (and potentially even some veering directions off the main one), but the formulation of the goal comes from the client. The client knows.

2) Know how you want to work. (The Style)

Are you a rusher or a through planner? Are you in a hurry or do you want to cover all the details? Are you a multi-tasker or a single-tasker? Are you looking forward to this goal or is it a chore?

In positive psychology coaching, there are many assessments that the coach usually presents to the client – many upfront and many during the coaching process. Again, as with the goals, in positive psychology coaching, we believe that the client knows. These self-assessments are just that – self-assessments. They are ways for the coach to isolate certain parts of a client’s personality so that both the coach and the client can examine the subparts together. For example, an assessment may be about strengths or learning style or optimism or various routes to happiness. When the coach and client look at the summaries of the self-assessments, this allows the coaching experience to be more targeted.

3) Know how the coach works. (The Fit)

Do you like to be challenged? Do you like to be listened to? Do you prefer many exercises or few? Do you prefer more general talk or more specific exercises?

In positive psychology coaching, exercises are important for two reasons. Trying something in a new way through exercises allow the mind to play (which is question #5) and exercises isolate various experiences.

Know how the coach likes to work. What kind of exercises does the coach prefer? How frequently? Is this how you like to improve? Is this how you like to train? Does the coach’s demeanor fit with yours? Does it complement yours? These are all questions of fit.

4) Know how much you want the goal. (The Motivation)

Sometimes motivation and self-regulation are large issues and sometimes they almost disappear as issues. Coaches can provide motivation and increase a client’s self-regulation. Is this part of your goal (your answer to #1)? In most cases it is. The key is to realize that for some reason, the client may not have made certain changes before, and that the client may be looking to the coach to change the experience so that in this case the changes stick.

In positive psychology coaching, both self-regulation (mindful self-control) and self-efficacy (the belief that one can do something) are key parts of a coaching experience. Like an athletic coach giving exercises and training regimens, an executive positive psychology coach creates the environment for success in the coaching. Some of the tools of positive psychology make self-regulation fun, and the tools that do this for hte client are the best ones to use for that particular client.

5) Know what is fun for you in coaching. (The Play)

How do kids learn best? By playing. One of the only ways to learn so that it doesn’t feel like learning is by playing. If it feels like learning, often the brain closes down, and says, “not now, no thank you.” Play jumps right through that barrier. The brain never knows that it’s working. Some of the best ways to learn are by making mistakes and trying new ways. The best place to make mistakes is in practice (although often in real events the mistakes stay stronger), and that practice can come in the form of play.

In positive psychology coaching, there are many tools and techniques that you can play with on an active level, experientially. But you don’t ever need to be “working” or “intellectually learning” to get something. A lot of the tools from positive psychology allow a person to get himself fast and thoroughly. Many of the assessments and exercises in positive psychology do not appear to be work or effort, but appear to be unusual and sometimes inexplicable until they are completed. That’s what makes many of these tools games as opposed to work.

In summary, you will end up choosing an executive coach based on the coach’s jizz, that overall impression of Goal, Style, Fit, Motivation, and Play. Enjoy!

What’s your best organizing tip?

Posted on by Senia

Q: What’s your best tip for organizing? What do you do well in organizing that you think works great?

My answers:

  • My biggest new find is Backpack! Love it. The free, 5-list version works great. This is like a to-do list on drugs! It’s so easy and so useful to have everything laid out simply. A lot of people have raved about Backpack, including Kathy here and Dave here and Jeff Bezos here. I’m a new convert!
  • I plan the night before (mainly!) so that during the day I can spend time doing, not planning.
  • There are some things that I always do – there is no no-doing (a la Yoda). These are the constants – such as exercising a certain number of times per week and replying to emails within 24 hours and completing at least three important things every day. Because I have these rules for myself, it helps me organize everything else!
  • I use Dave Seah’s tools, especially the Emergent Task Tracker (Flash version) to do things faster within the day.

What are your best tips for organizing? Would love to hear them. The more tips, the better. This is Question Friday. Looking forward to reading your thoughts! Thanks and great weekend.

White Lies are Bad for the Soul

Posted on by Senia

“Whether you are a villain or a good person is for you and you alone to decide: you are worth precisely what you want.”
~ André Comte-Sponville

We talked earlier about how being good can be hard. And yet…. And yet…. At the same time as potentially being hard, being good can feel so right. As Will Smith says, “Think of yourself as two people, and one of them is inside of you, and he’s a scorekeeper. And he keeps score of your idea of the world. … And when you have a conflict with your scorekeeper, that’s unhappiness. Happiness is being completely in sync with your own perception of goodness.”

White lies are bad for the soul.

White lies can harm your soul. Every time we take an action, we strengthen the neural pathways for that action. Why would you want to strengthen the neural pathways of deceit?

Alvin talks here about how showing yourself personal commitment can strengthen your emotional core. While lies can be like worms. One won’t phase you, and you can just brush it off your pant leg. But a whole bunch of them can … well, you get the picture.

Imagine a seesaw. “One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good – he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad – he and the world is destroyed.” ~ Maimonides (from here. Related: this and this.)

Every time a person makes a white lie, a person’s inner scorekeeper says, “Huh?” We are people and we use some types of defense mechanisms, so our brains would need to give that “huh?” an answer. And the answer can be, “It’s ok that I white-lied – I need to / I was in rush / It doesn’t hurt anyone anyway.” Or the answer can be, “No, that’s wrong. I feel wrong about it, and I don’t want to feel wrong. I won’t white-lie next time.”

People are always doing things to be in sync with their beliefs about the goodness of themselves. Whether it’s rationalizing something away or belittling the importance of being good or just adopting an attitude of not-caring. And the simplest thing to do to be in sync with your own perception of goodness? The easiest thing to do is to be good.

How can you decide whether to white-lie or not?

You could decide very logically, “Is the worth of the white lie worth more than the harm of it?” Almost an economic approach. When has it been worth it to say to yourself, “No, I’m not a bad person?” Why would it ever be worth it to put yourself into a situation in which at the end of the situation, you have to reassure yourself that you actually weren’t being bad? …. If you have to reassure yourself (even it it takes a nanosecond and even if the thought is semi-automatic), then your mind already knew that you had done the wrong thing. Why would you ever take an action that embeds into your brain that you are ok with sometimes doing something that feels a little bit wrong?

Another way that you could decide whether to white-lie or not is that you could decide from a very principled stance, “Is that something I do?” Here’s where our earlier discussion of self-regulation and creating new habits resurfaces. Perhaps your self-regulation for yourself is that generally you do not white lie. It’s just not worth the thinking about it. It’s just not worth the questioning of your core principles. (I’d recommend putting the “generally” in there because on the extreme side if it’s a question of life-or-death vs. a white lie, of course you’d white-lie. An extreme position just makes it easier to fall later. I just had a talk with a friend about rarely using the words “always” and “never.”)

“Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It’s not hard. Character is doing what’s right when nobody’s looking.”
~ Anonymous (from this set of quotes)

Create New Habits: Self-Regulation

Posted on by Senia

Welcome to February. Has your life changed since the New Year? Do you want it to?

What is the #1 habit you want to create right now? Do you want to eat healthier? Become more organized? Remember where you put your keys? Give up alcohol?

Here are some new results from Positive Psychology that could help you create new habits and break old behavior. Let’s look at the stories behind these new results to see whether they work for you.

Self-Regulation

Self-Regulation It turns out that one of the strongest things you can do for yourself to create a new habit is to exercise self-control in some area of your life. Roy Baumeister of Florida State University and his colleagues sum up three studies of self-control in a pre-publication.

The posture study: if you ask college students to watch their posture for two weeks – simply to improve it whenever possible – and then have the students take a self-control activity test, those who had been asked to work on their posture improved their self-control. Moms and ballet teachers all over the world must be celebrating this news.
Self-Regulation as a Muscle Self-control is often referred to as “self-regulation,” and the fascinating thesis of Baumeister and colleagues is that self-regulation can act as a muscle! What are some things that we know about muscles? 1) Muscles can be trained to get stronger over time, and 2) If weak, a muscle can be easily fatigued.

Baumeister postulates that the same two ideas can be applied to self-regulation. If a person is tempted multiple times, “Have a drink…. Come on, have a drink…. Have just one drink,” then each time, it becomes harder to say no. On the other hand, if a person trains his self-regulation, then it becomes easier to say no to temptations. How can you train your self-regulation? Self-regulation is your personality process to exert control over your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Baumeister proposes an interesting result – if you do ANYTHING that requires self-regulation, then that makes it EASIER for you to have self-regulation in EVERYTHING.

Self-Regulation Improves Many Habits

Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Baumeister reports on two studies – the exercise study and the money study. In the exercise study, students were taught a cardio and weights exercise regimen and were told to follow it closely for two months. At the end of two months, not only did their self-regulation increase under test circumstances (link how do scientists measure self-regulation?), but also the exercisers had less junk food, cigarettes, alcohol, and caffeine. I know what you’re saying – those things are all related to getting healthier and exercising. True. But additionally, the students reported studying more, watching TV less, and doing more household chores like washing dishes. Why is it that if you start to exercise regularly, then that may result in you getting better grades or being a neater person?

Baumeister attributes it to a well-trained self-regulation muscle. In the money study, participants were asked to manage their finances for four months by following a specific system. Not only did the participants increase their average savings rate over four months from 8% to 38% of their income, but they also improved study habits and doing household chores and decreased cigarette use. Baumeister and colleagues use these results to say that self-regulation is not specific to one domain… being self-regulated in your money management leads to self-regulation in other areas. Does that mean that a person who develops great study habits may suddenly lose a lot of weight and become amazingly buff? Maybe, says Baumeister.

In the current issue of Health Psychology, Peter Hall of Ontario’s Waterloo University studies which part of the brain leads to good self-regulation. His answer is the strong executive function of the frontal lobes. Hall gives participants the Stroop test (try it here) in which the word GREEN may appear in red color. As one author describes, “to answer correctly you have to mentally override the impulse to read the word. The same effortful overriding—and the same underlying neuronal activity—is presumably needed to keep showing up at the gym, even when it hurts.”

STARTING Self-Regulation Today

What is something you can start doing today to put more self-regulation into your life? You can create more structure. Whether you decide that you will pre-pack your lunch so you don’t have something unhealthy at the local café. Or whether you schedule out exercise time for the remainder of the week. Or whether you clean your room. Or whether you decide to pay attention to posture. Or decide that you will open your email only every three hours – 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm – for no more than a half hour each time. Structure something concrete into your life. That’s the best way to develop self-regulation. Structure something simple into your life so it doesn’t turn everything in your life upside down but so that it does create some structure.

Start with a little bit of self-regulation – to get an effect across many habits.

This article is part of a series on creating new habits and behavior modification and originally appeared here.

Senia Maymin Senia Maymin, MBA, MAPP works in the financial industry and consults to corporations about Positive Psychology. Senia is the Editor of Positive Psychology News Daily, and runs a blog about positive psychology at Senia.com. Senia’s bio.

Senia writes on the first of each month, and her past articles are here.

What’s your advice for good sleep?

Posted on by Senia

What is your advice for good sleep?

I suggest these three things:

  • Create a relaxing bedtime ritual. Create cues for sleep.
  • Go to bed 10-11pm.
  • Read in bed until you’re tired enough to fall asleep.

Q: What do you find are the best things for you to do to get great sleep?

This is Quetion Friday. Thanks and happy weekend! For fun, check out yesterday’s quotes on sleep.

When 95% of Your Brain Says Yes

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When everything else says, go, doubt says, stop.

A friend of mine has a big belief that people don’t do those things that they fear. He thinks fear is the most dangerous of all the beasts. Like an addiction, fear moves slowly, taking over a little bit, then a little more. When you are 95% sure, then the remaining 5% is doubt. Doubt is ok. Doubt and weighing options is why we can advance. Doubt, worry, caution – they all have a role in life.

And then at some point, you just have to let all of them go.
Just let the other 5% go.
Just let it go, man.

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.
~ Maimonides

Just decide. When you are 95% sure of your decision, then let me tell you something, you are sure of your decision. It’s better to make the hop. It’s better to act than to spend the day, the hour, the minute CONCERNED about not deciding. Concerned?! Who wants to spend his life concerned?

“What did you do in your life?”
“Well, I spent a lot of time beign concerned… and, um, I spent a lot of time worrying too. Some good worrying time. And then I accomplished this, this, and this.”

Who wants to spend time being concerned? Yes, yes, yes, YES! There are things that take a long time to figure out, but then once you’ve figured them out…
JUMP.

Do. Act. Live.
That’s all I mean. Don’t spend a significant part of your brainspace worrying about the 5% outlier effect. Act. Live.

Making a decision was the most important thing that my favorite professor in business school always told us as students to do, “Make a decision. The CEO needs to make firm decisions fast.”

And the most important thing after you are at the 95% sure threshold, and you are about to jump… don’t look back. Don’t WASTE your life in saying, “Well, I did have that 5% that I wasn’t certain about, so maybe that’s why this entire project went wrong.” No, that’s not why.

Once you make the decision to go, then just go. It’s as if you mentally rip away from all the disputing quotes in your head that are holding you tied to the mental torture cahmber of doubt and concern. Just go. And make an active decision that if you look back on this decision, it’s something you wanted to go into. It’s a path you want to take. Don’t sabotage your success by turning back, and looking over your shoulder. You will turn into salt if you’re looking back and not forward. Even the peacock faces forward these days. :)

Why It’s Sometimes Hard to Be Good

Posted on by Senia

You’re buying lunch for a group of people, and the man at the counter says, $22.11. But you know the total is $42.11. You say, “Um, excuse me, it’s $20 more.” He says, “Oh, let me see – oh, thank you, that’s great! That’s great. Thank you.”

And you stand at the counter among the chips and the chewing gum while he rings your credit card through again. And you mumble to yourself, “It’s hard to be good.”

…”What?” he actually heard you. “You mean it’s hard to not eat the chocolate bars we have here? Oh, come on, get it anyway, don’t worry, you’re not being bad!”

I says, “Thanks, bye,” and I leave. I wasn’t talking about any chocolate bar. I was talking about how it’s hard to put yourself in a position of rightness when being unright is easy. And there are many situations where being unright is easy and being right is not easy. Returning the shopping cart to the shopping cart drop-off. Not being bad to your body, and instead eating healthily. Not taking your temper out on people you know well, but curbing it, or announcing, I have a temper, and I’m not going to speak loudly right now, or it’ll run away. Doing exercise. Taking time for yourself instead of overburdening. Finishing all the most important priorities first. Not giving in to excesses, like drinking, eating, smoking, etc.

All of us know that those things are GOOD. But are they necessary?

Maybe they are.

Why might they be necessary? The good things. The this-can-be-helpful and this-is-a-strong-should things. They could be necessary for two reasons:

1) The Universe Knows. The universe knows when things are right and things are good. The universe knows when you are clean and right and good. The universe knows when you have justice, truth, peace, beauty, and accountability on your side. The universe knows.

2) Aristotle says, “Do good.” Aristotle makes a multi-part argument about the goal of people, how people desire to reach the highest good, how people can achieve that highest good for themselves, and what the highest good must be for mankind.

Here is the summary of Aristotle’s thoughts:
* The highest human good – the underlying reason why people do anything (if you peel back enough layers) – is happiness, the desire for happiness.
* There are many definitions of happiness (pleasure, virtue, study), but most people agree even within happiness there is a highest possible type of good that would would be universal and single and would subsume the other goods.
* What is that highest possible type of good?
* (This part added by me: if you look at a knife, the best it can do is to be the best kind of knife – sharp, precise, the best qualities of the knife). If you look at a flutist, says Aristotle, then his highest good is to be the best possible flutist. For a craftsperson, to be the best possible craftsperson. And what about for a human?
* Aristotle says, it is to be the best possible human! And to be the best possible human, a person needs to seek goodness – to do good things, to do virtuous things – because those are the highest, best possible ways of being for a human.

Finally, similar to the idea of “the universe knows,” Aristotle says, “Happiness is acquired by virtue, and hence by our own actions, not by fortune.”

Aristotle starts his second chapter by instructing how to achieve virtue, and then from that, happiness: “Virtues … we acquire, just as we acquire crafts, by having previous activated them.” Thus Aristotle instructs us on having good habits. “So also, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.”

Therefore, doing good makes us good which is the highest thing a human being can do, and thus this will in the long run make us happiest.

Recommended Reading: Nichomachean Ethics and Leadership and Self-Deception.
Note: More to come on this topic.