Have you ever lost sleep thinking about what someone else said or did? I know I have, and the worst offence, in my experience, is when you feel that person has judged you unfairly.

This week I’ve had two conversations and some personal experience to remind me that, “What other people think about us is none of our business.” This is a tough mindset to master because most of us want to be liked and respected by others. Hell happens when we are not liked or loved or when people do not behave in the way we think they ‘should’.

A coachee of mine, let’s call him Simon, received his performance review this week. Whilst most of the document was positive there were some comments from somebody on the management team that were, in Simon’s view, not factual and he was ticked off. I read the review and the comments in question were certainly subjective, historical and not based on actual observation of Simon’s current behavior. Notwithstanding how unprofessional it is to write such things in a performance review, my job, as coach, was to help Simon process this information and move on.

In my book (Self-leadership, published by Mc Graw-Hill in 2012) I explain that we are responsible ‘For’ our thoughts, feelings, speech and actions – we are not responsible ‘for’ what somebody else thinks, feels, says or does. Our sense of ‘Self’ our self-esteem is not dependant on others and we give up our power of choice if we allow others to define us.

As a child you did look to others and to define you because you had not yet developed your autonomy;  and as an adult you can carefully observe the behavioral norms from any group/team you decide  to join an choose to ‘fit in’, but ultimately who you are is your choice.

Simon was particularly angry because his reviewer was not seeing him the way he saw himself. Her comments were based on an incident that had occurred three years ago which she had not personally witnessed and so was basing her judgment on hearsay. What can I say, “Life is not fair”, and people are going to do ‘unfair’ things. Also this week, I consoled a friend who had been contacted for a dream job. This would have been great if it had not been for the fact that a friend of hers had applied for the same job and considered it “hers” – On learning that my friend had been contacted; she was furious and stopped speaking to her friend.

Should we consider the feelings of others? Of course we should.

Are we responsible for the feelings of others? Absolutely not!

Hell would be trying to please all the people all the time. We must live according to our values and our vision; if we are part of an organization or team we choose to align our values with the values of the group. When other members do not behave according to those values then we can bring this to their attention in a respectful but assertive way. If we say nothing but just judge these people in our minds then we create a hell for ourselves.

We all have a mental bias that what we do is right and what others do is wrong. As I was driving to work today car moved rapidly into my lane and I cursed his driving; just a few moments later I needed to also rapidly change lanes and because I indicated expected to be let in. The car behind beeped me, and I am sure he judged my driving as bad whilst I am convinced I was in the right.

There is a story about two monks walking in the forest when they come to a stream. There is a woman struggling to cross and so one monk picks her up and carries her to the other bank. The monks continue on their journey but the one who had not carried the woman was, despite not saying anything, obviously furious. After some miles he broke his silence and said, “Our order prevents us from touching women, I can’t believe that you would carry that woman across the stream!” He is met with a smile from the first monk who says, “Brother, I put that woman down five miles ago, why are you still carrying her?”

Choose to put down the baggage; don’t carry other people around in your head. If you need to say something, say it but remember they will often feel as justified in their perspective as you do in yours.

Research shows that more sick days (MC’s) are taken on a Monday but moodiness and low engagement can happen equally on any work day. Whilst it’s easy to blame the boss or the company for your lack of energy and commitment to work, I thought on this Monday that I would share some Self-leadership strategies for having a great Monday.

1) Look Sharp – Monday is the day to spruce up after a casual Sunday. Wearing our best clothes makes us feel good and radiate confidence.
2) Say “Hello” and ask after the wellbeing of your office colleagues. Showing interest in them will likely make them feel positive and supportive towards you.
3) Think about what you want to achieve this week – find some challenge for yourself that you will feel good about when you achieve it. In reality all motivation is really self-motivation.
4) Consider how you are going to reward yourself for being focused and in the flow this Monday. When we create small rewards for ourselves, (chocolate, a massage, a movie) we stay motivated.
5) Snap Out of it – If you are prone to lag on Monday, put a rubber band on your wrist and each time you feel yourself becoming down or sloathful – give it a big twang.
6) Stretch and take deep breaths – Get some oxygen to your brain, it’s a safe and natural high.
7) Say, “Thank you” to at least two people for something they have done. Gratitude has been proven to increase happiness.

Have a great Monday, or for that matter Tues, Wed, Thur or Fri!

What is Self-leadership?

Self-leadership is about intentionally influencing yourself to achieve your objectives.  Self-leaders have the drive for autonomy and so can make thier own descions. Self-leadership Part 1

Self-observation and Resilience

Self-leaders demonstrate resilience and we have discussed Self-observation in a previous blog post. Self-leadership Part 2

Self-leadership and Communication

Self-leaders are intentional about what they say and do; they can communicate assertively and manage thier emotions. Self-leadership Part 3

Have you seen the TV series ‘Lie to Me’?  Lie to Me is based on the work of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has been a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. The show is compelling  because the main character can read when people are lying and appears to have an almost supernatural ability to read minds.

If you are in any kind of relationship; whether it be work, social or romantic the ability to read the other person’s thoughts and emotions about a topic will improve communication providing the skill is used ethically.

I have previously written about psychometric tests which are used in a corporate setting to understand employees personalities and get the best from them, but what about being able to read people on the fly? It is certainly possible and I have taught this skill to managers, coaches, trainers and even intelligence services.

To read people you need to learn to listen with both your eyes and your ears. People are always transmitting what they think and feel, the same way a wireless network is always sending a signal so that you can connect – it’s just that some people are more  encrypted than others!

Mastering the ability to decipher body language, speech patterns and micro expressions takes time but even the novice can get results by learning to notice what people are actually saying.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) provides an excellent framework for noticing and calibrating; eye movements, breathing, gestures and facial expressions. The language we use and how we use it gives clues to what’s important to us and topics we feel strongly about as well as our preferred way to process and respond to information.

Here are a couple of exercises to get you started:

Reading Yes / No

Ask a friend to not speak but respond to a series of questions with a definitive “Yes” or “No” in their mind. As you ask them questions that you know the answers such as; your name is, you are x years old, you like icecream – notice how they respond with their; eyes, face, mouth, breathing, jaw tension. When you are clear that you can read yes/no then ask them some questions to which you don’t know the answer and see if you can guess based on what you see. Once you have mastered this you can calibrate people in general conversation by noticing how they respond in the affirmative or negative. With this information you will never be left guessing about whether you have got the sales order or if they will call you again.

Reading Values

Values and beliefs drive behaviours and so if you can read someones values you can predict how they will behave. As you listen to someone notice what they talk about and particularly what they talk about with emphasis. Emphasis can be demonstrated by voice tonality, volume or non-verbal gesture. You can check your read by asking clarifying questions such as, “that seems important to you, can I ask what’s important about that?” This line of questioning delivered in a curious, non-threatening way will uncover values.

These exercise are just to whet your appetite and of course will improve with the right coaching from someone who knows what they are doing. If you would like to learn more then contact us at Self Leadership International.

An intention is a frame of mind that drives action, when you have a clearly defined intention you gain a laser like focus and begin to take action. Effective execution occurs when intentions are transformed into well thought out behaviours.

People can often read your intentions but the world rewards your effective execution. Here are four questions to ask:

• What is it you want to do?
• What actions do you need to take?
• What will be the effect of those actions?
• Will these effects be in line with your intention?

Here is a short video on intentionality when it comes to public speaking:

Now while I never present the genius state as a hypnotic process and state, it absolutely is.  When you experience this naturally occurring state (and everybody does at some time), it seems to happen to you, to come upon you, and when you look back on it, you typically remember it as a wonderful experience.

What induces it?  Usually something that’s very important to you, something that you actively engage with and when you do, you get lost in it.  You become thrilled and absorbed in it.  It could be reading a book, it could be walking in a Redwood forest, it could be gardening, it could be playing catch with your dogs, writing, watching a great movie, having a fantastic conversation with a friend, making love, climbing a rock wall, playing a video game, and on and on the list goes.

The key is absorption in something that you care about, an absorption that pulls you into it so much so that you can get lost in it.  Then, in that moment when you are in that “flow” state, you are not multi-tracking.  You have lost all of your meta-mind awarenesses about all of the other things you need to do and track and you have become of one mind about the absorption.   Now in that moment, you won’t realize this!  If you were aware of it, you would be double-tracking.  But you’re not.

It is only later when you look back on the experience that you realize that you during that time you were all there— fully and completely. And during that time you realize that many of the central factors of your consciousness disappeared.  Time disappeared and you were lost in the now, this moment, and your awareness of time just vanished.  So did the world and others and even your self vanished.  These facets of the matrix of your mind were still there, but you lost consciousness of them.  You became self-forgetful, time forgetful, world forgetful.  All you were aware of was the subject of whatever the focus was about.

Athletes experience this as when a gymnast disappears the audience and they are there alone with the high bars or the floor.  A baseball pitcher similarly disappears a whole stadium.  In their focus-flow-genius state all that is there is the ball and the batter.  When an athlete goes into this special state, they typically call it being in the zone. And a couple years ago Tim Goodenough and Mike Cooper, two Meta-Coaches modeled out 13 distinctions from top South African athletes (Olympiads and national champions) in their Neuro-Semantic book, In the Zone.

In the field of NLP the first work on the prerequisites of the “personal genius state” was developed by John Grinder and Judith DeLozer (1983- 1987).  The processes that they came up with were interesting, but quite convoluted and therefore ineffective.  They were fooling around with meta-levels as they were trying to figure out how to utilize the guidance of Gregory Bateson and his principles of the higher levels.  And they even wrote that they knew the secret would tie in somehow with managing the meta-levels.  They got thta from Bateson, they just didn’t know how to apply it.  That came later after I created the Meta-States model (1994).  One of my very first applications of Meta-States was to the genius state prerequisites and that brought about the Accessing Your Personal Genius state or induction (and hence the APG training).

What Meta-States was able to do as a process, and as the ultimate hypnotic state, was to set the required meta-levels (as meta-states or frames) over the primary state so that you can let go of the meta-awarenesses and be fully present in the primary state. Doing this commissions the higher meta-states to operate as an out-side of conscious awareness structure.  It’s paradoxical, as is many hypnotic states.  To release the multi-tracking kind of consciousness, you learn how to embrace your meta-level states and use them so that you are freed for letting them go— from your immediate awareness.

Then you can be all there— with all of your resources available for the flow or in-the-zone state.  Then when you read, you fully comprehend because you are there (and not elsewhere!).  Then when you write, you don’t suffer the dreaded “writer’s block.”  Then when you are there with a client or loved one, you are there and they can feel your full presence. And now you know why we use the APG training to create your genius coaching state, genius training state, genius writing state, wealth creation state, etc.  It is the ultimate Neuro-Semantic state for operating from your highest and best.  So that makes it a self-actualizing state.  And now you know why APG — Accessing Personal Genius— is the flagship training of Neuro-Semantics.

2009 could be associated with many negative emotion; fear, anxiety, uncertainty, regret etc. This is not all bad because emotions have ‘motivational consequences’. If we view our emotions as a feedback system, we can use the information to change our behaviours or make better choices.

Positive Emotions

My opening paragraph is unlikely to be a surprise because there has been copious research into so called ‘negative’ emotions, in fact studies into negative emotions outnumbers those on positive emotions by 25 to 1!

What has been revealed is that negative emotions, narrow our focus and actions but feeling good broadens our interests and helps us build our capablilities. Positive emotions make us more curious and interested and therefore more likely to try new activities and develop new skills. Postive emotions have been shown to make people more creative and better problem solvers and therefore an essential ingredient for innovation.

Benefits of Positive Emotion

A 2005 article by Lyubomirsky, King and Diener in Psychological Bulletin listed the proven benefits of positive emotion. I have summarised them here for you to consider your outlook for 2010.

At Work

Being positive is associate with:

• Higher salaries
• Better supervisor evaluations
• Better customer evaluations
• Less absenteeism
• Less employee turnover
• Better organizational behavior
• Better relationship with colleagues

Health and Social

• Positive people are less likely than negative people to develop a cold, and when they did the symptoms were far less severe.
• Positivity linked to less pain, physical symptoms, fewer hospital visits.
• Good relationships associated with better health and mental health.
• Happiest 10% are more sociable, have stronger friendships, and romantic relationships.
• Positive people volunteer more and are more willing to help others.
• Positive people are more extroverted and are less selfish.

The list speaks for itself and I know having had a few days off at Christmas, spending time with family and exercising has increased my positivity. Speaking to friends and colleagues all have mentioned a more positive and optimistic outlook for 2010 and so I for one will be making ‘being more positive’ a goal for next year – how about you?

In 1990 Peter Senge published a book that has become a classic, a book that most people in leadership and management roles in business, most who consult or coach within organizations, and those who seek to stay on the cutting edge of business have read.  I’m speaking, of course, about the book The Fifth Discipline. The theme and central focus of this book is on learning to think and work systemically.

Senge was convinced that the key to business success rested in five disciplines, which when synergized by leaders and managers, will launch an organization or business into a creative mode and take it to a whole new level of effectiveness.  Like the five critical component technologies that came together in 1935 for the McDonnell Douglas DC-3 and which ushered in the era of commercial air travel— Senge argued that the five components he discovered would create great companies.

What are those five components?  Systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning.  Together “each provides a vital dimension in building organizations that can truly ‘learn,’ that can continually enhance their capacity to realize their highest aspirations” (p. 6).  Then unlike most contemporary organizations that are reactive, companies can become responsive or even generative.

Senge focuses on enabling companies to become “learning organizations.”  He writes about organizations going beyond the old traditional hierarchical structures to an enlivening vision, people collaborating and experiencing team learning, a whole new level of openness, and leadership that evolves beyond being politically power oriented.  Now does that sound like self-actualization or the self-actualizing leaders and companies that I describe in Unleashing Leadership? That’s what I also thought!   The Fifth Discipline is about self-actualization in organizations.

Yet because Senge did not use the term self-actualization or frame things in terms of moving beyond Theory X to Theory Y of management, I did not make the connection.  In spite of not using the language, throughout the work the vision and premises of self-actualization psychology informs his argument for the emergence of a whole new kind of organization— self-actualizing organizations.

In fact, for Senge “systems thinking” and “personal mastery” are two of his expressions for self-actualization.  What I suddenly now realize in re-reading The Fifth Discipline is that “personal mastery” in this model is what we call “self-actualization” in Maslow’s model!  Here’s my evidence.

Senge described “personal mastery” as a high level of proficiency in an area that deeply matters to you.  And to develop that level of mastery, you need to do two things: 1) Clarify what’s truly important to you and 2) See current reality more clearly. (p. 141).  Senge says that personal mastery goes beyond competence.

“It goes beyond spiritual unfolding or opening, although it requires spiritual growth.  It means approaching one’s life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.” (p. 141)

In an amazing paragraph where he described people of personal mastery, Senge’s description sounds very, very similar to how Maslow described self-actualizing people.

“People with a high level of personal mastery share several basic characteristics.  They have a special sense of purpose that lies behind their visions and goals.  For such a person, a vision is a calling rather than simply a good idea. They see ‘current reality’ as an ally, not an enemy.  They have learned how to perceive and work with forces of change rather than resist those forces.  They are deeply inquisitive, committed to continuing seeing reality more and more accurately.  They feel connected to others and to life itself.  Yet they sacrifice none of their uniqueness.  They feel as if they are part of a larger creative process, which they can influence but cannot unilaterally control.

“People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode.  They never ‘arrive.’ … Personal mastery is not something you possess.  It is a process.  It is a lifelong discipline.  People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas.” (p. 142)

“People with high levels of personal mastery are more committed.  They take more initiative.  They have a broader and deeper sense of responsibility in their work.  They learn faster.  For all these reasons, a great many organizations espouse a commitment to fostering personal growth among their employees because they believe it will make the organization stronger.” (p. 143)

And systems thinking?  Senge describes this as “contemplating the whole as a pattern,” being able to see the unity of snapshots of isolated parts and how they work together.  He describes the building blocks of systems thinking as feedback loops and delays in the system and from there the recognition of patterns that arise that indicate specific kinds of systems (archetypes).

When we apply systems thinking to human beings, we recognize that our experiences are made up of multiple systems—our mind-body system, our meaning-making system, our neuro-semantic system.  And within these systems are reinforcing processes, limiting processes, balancing (stabilizing) processes.  And as in a business or political system, we also experience problems at various levels.  Some of our problems are mere symptoms of the system rather than the fundamental causes.  That’s why the symptoms keep resurfacing over time.  That’s why “solutions” which work at one level or for the short-term, never actually takes care of the real problem.

So what do we discover when we “contemplate the whole” and look for patterns in human beings?  We discover that there is within us an inner drive to self-actualize and that this is itself our most fundamental inner dynamic system.  This is our primary system for growing, developing, and actualizing our highest meanings and performances.  And Self-Actualization Psychology is the psychology that describes this whole.

NLP is a model of how humans think, feel, behave and communicate. When NLP was developed in the 1970′s by Bandler and Grinder it was a radical departure from the field of psychology, which at the time was focused more on human dysfunction than peak performance.

Today, with the acceptance of positive psychology, NLP appears less radical can be viewed as an excellent framework for learning to communicate effectively, to model people and systems and to design strategies for peak performance. Learning NLP can improve the performance of athletes, sales people, business people, coaches, trainers, teachers, therapists and parents.

NLP for Consulting, Training and Coaching

I use NLP and NeuroSemantics in my consulting, training and coaching and I enjoy sharing the technology through public programs that I hold in Singapore and other parts of SE Asia. You can get a list of the upcoming programs by clicking here. I highly recommend NLP Communication and  Coaching Essentials which is the first 3-day of a NLP Practitioner program and covers how to communicate and coach effectively plus we are conducting  a full NLP Master Practitioner training in October.

NLP  Association of Singapore Video

If you like watching videos on YouTube then you can watch part of my presentation to the Singapore NLP Association.

With self leadership coaching he came to the powerful realisation that it his ‘Mind’ his ‘Choices’ and his ‘Life’.

If, like my client, you are lacking ‘permission’ by taking ownership and responsibility of your mind, your choices an your life puts you in the drivers seat and enables you to create the personal or business success you want.

Confirmation of this power to choose is the theme of the final part of The Matrix movie trilogy. The character Neo is able to triumph over Agent Smith when, after prompting from The Oracle, he re-discovers his power of choice.

Is there an area in your life or career that you have been saying “I have no choice”? I wonder what would happen if you were to take responsibility and say; “My mind, my choice, my life!”

My coaching client did take control and left a low paying, menial job and started traveling; he settled in Vietnam where he started a business and met the love of his life.

If you would like coaching to assist you achieve this positive and powerful choice then connect to a coach or attend one of our self leadership programs.