The First Signs of Fear

Tonight was my children's first Christmas (they are 6-months old). What they really saw was the Christmas dinner with family. What makes this noteworthy in a business blog is the way that the kids reacted upon being brought into the house with well over thirty people milling about, talking, eating, and laughing. They were scared.

I held my boy in my arms, and it was immediately clear that this was more than just being uncomfortable or over-stimulated. My boy was literally shaking and breathing in short spurts. Even though I knew that there was no danger, he did not. He had no idea what was going on, he had no way of processing it properly, and so his body went into fight or flight, except that he doesn't even have that mastered yet either. I took him into another room that had far fewer people, was a bit quieter, and where he could just nuzzle himself into my chest to calm down.

So as adults, do we really respond to fear any better than my little boy did this evening? Outwardly, we might, but inwardly, I submit that we are often hardly much better. Our greater understanding and maturity, rather than equipping us to handle fear more effectively, merely changes what we are afraid of, and alters the way we respond. As adults, we are afraid

• of failing
• of being alone
• of looking stupid
• of being wrong
• of social embarrassment
• of loosing rank or status
• of losing control
• of making a mistake
• of being the object of scorn, ridicule, or jealousy
• of being ignored
• of being noticed
• of being big, bold, and fantastic
  
• of being misunderstood
  
• of what others think, say, or do
• of taking a stand
• of leading
  
• and so, so, very many other things that this list could go on for pages.

As a parent, my desire was to protect and comfort my child from the fear he perceived, even while knowing it was only in his head. My goal was to allow him to calm down, to become more grounded in the protection and care that I provided, and from there, to be able to enter the room with family again.

As adults, where do we turn to help us deal with the fears that range from simple anxieties, to strong aversions, to over-learned behaviors that have us, in effect, seeking to bury our heads in avoidance? Unfortunately, most of us have reached a point where we simply believe "that's just the way things are," or where we continue with the patterns set in motion from decisions we made when we were far younger in life. Often, we find ourselves stuck in our attempts to overcome the power that fear has over our lives. Many times, there are even things that we want or are committed to in our lives, yet we find ourselves unable to get out of our own way. Our fear has us unable to move forward to achieve these things that are important to us, or which would provide greater fulfillment in our lives.

Enter the coach.

As a life and leadership coach, part of my role is to provide the tools, supports, and structures to allow you to bridge the gap between where you find yourself today, over to the other side of your fears where you can thrive and make forward progress on the things that are important to you. Our goal is not to make the fears go away. Instead, it is to look at how prevalent they are, where they are showing up in your life, and the power those fears have to keep you from your primary goals. Essentially, our job together is to stand on the bridge between your present and your future, from which place you can then start making different choices.


In the end, it was my little boy who decided it was OK to face the family. I simply provided the support that he needed to calm down and be himself again. And on the other side of the fear for him was a room full of people who wanted only to love him. But he couldn't reach any of that until he made the choice that it was OK to cross the bridge.

If you consistently find yourself blocked in your efforts to achieve the future that you envision for yourself, then lets take a walk together to look at your fears, and to learn the tools and structures that will enable you to make different choices. Contact Primary Goals.

I create, I have, Be Cause

Have you ever imagined creating a new life for yourself? Maybe that means changing a few key things about your life right now, or maybe it means completely re-inventing who you are. Regardless of the degree, chances are pretty good that you've gone through that mental exercise more than once. Maybe you've even taken a few first steps to make your vision a reality.

Well, where are you today? What really kept you from achieving the greatness you envisioned or hoped for? What were the forces that brought you back to the present, to "reality" as you know it? We all have our answers to those obstacles, but what would be the impact on your life if you could actually create the possibility of something impossible, then bring it to fruition? That is, in a very real and tangible sense, what if you could make the impossible happen in your life, free from the burden of having to know how to make it so?

The key to this kind of transformation actually rests in the tail end of that question... "free from the burden of having to know how to make it sot so." For most of us, we can easily envision truly great things. In the case of children, that's what they envision almost all the time. But then as soon as we start focusing on how to manifest our visions, we encounter one obstacle after another. Our inability to change rests firmly within the three boundaries of I want, I can't have, and because -- the iron triangle of the status-quo.

So let's look at that triangle in depth, and then figure out how to transform it into something useful for us.



I Want...
The key aspect of "wanting" is to desire, and not have. That seems to make sense because if either one of those factors goes away, the want goes with it. Yet if we go back to childhood, or even just look at any young child today, we see that children are brimming over with things that they want - everything from a new fire-truck to a trip to the moon. At some point as we got older, we learned the difference between wants and needs, despite the efforts of Madison avenue to convince us that they are one in the same thing. Regardless, having learned the distinction, many of us also learned to discount our wants unless they really rose to the category of needs.

I Can't Have.
Having learned the difference between needs and wants, we somehow made it not OK to want things. We learned that wants come with a barrage of negative associations, including: distraction, nuisance, selfish, unrealistic, unreasonable, trivial, foolish, or worse. We learned this from a very young age, with the word "no" coming early in our childhood vocabulary. Further, we learned that the sooner we let go of our wants, the happier we would be. That worked for a while, except for two fundamental flaws. First, we still want what we want. Second, having made a life of trying to reduce our wants in an effort to be happy, we inadvertently quashed our zeal for an absolutely fantastic life that really works. We may believe that we don't deserve it, that it won't last, that it's unattainable, or any number of negative things, but the net result is the same: all too often, we operate from a belief that there are things we simply cannot have in our lives. Lastly, try as we might to bring our wants into being, this nagging belief or fear that we cannot have something ultimately acts as a saboteur for our greatest ambitions.

Worse still is that we often place ourselves in a vicious circle: If I want something big and fantastic, I believe that I can't have it. If I believe that I can't have it, then I'm better off not wanting it. So I tell myself that I don't really want it, and in so doing, that almost assures that I won't get it. No matter where you start in that circle, the end result is an ongoing pressure to think and act small compared to what is really possible in our lives.

Because.
Children have no concept of why they can't have the things that they want, nor do they appreciate delayed satisfaction. They also continue to pursue the reasons "why" things are the way that they are, and the reasons "why" they can't have what they want. As adults, we know that there are good reasons to deny a great many childish wants - safety, convenience, cost, difficulty, fear, protection, etc. However, as adults, many of us are still over-applying the notion of "reasons" to limit our own potential. There is a quote attributed to Mark Twain about a cat that sits on a hot stove never sitting on another for as long as it lives. However, nor will it sit on a cold one. The point here is that we have over-learned too many reasons -- reasons that keep us from really striving for greatness in our lives.

Even when there really are good reasons that we cannot have something in our life, how often do we question the reasonableness of our reasons? Seriously, take a look at the reasons that you believe you cannot have something in your life. Now stop and think about whether those reasons are even reasonable. What I mean by that is the possibility that many long-standing reasons we have for the status-quo are actually getting in our way and can be melted away simply by exploring the possibility of being unreasonable. Being unreasonable is not a negative thing. It does not mean insensible, stupid, irrational, illogical, or outlandish. Rather, it simply means not letting our reasons be a barrier to accomplishing greatness.

Being unreasonable can actually be a gateway towards a new way of being, outside the iron triangle of I want, I can't have, and because. Being unreasonable is sometimes required if we are to make the leap into I Have, I Create, and Be Cause, all of which we will look at next.



I Have
First off, coming from a position of "I Have" is not about deluding yourself with positive affirmations of things that you want to be true but which are not yet so. That would still be coming from I Want. Instead, coming from I Have is about noticing, seeing, recognizing, appreciating, feeling, and valuing all of what is presently in your life. There is a significant body of study on the value of appreciation (Appreciative Inquiry) and that whatever we focus on is what we will get more of. So what is it that you already have, that you would like to create more of?

Even in the case of desiring something that is not yet present in your life, what is present is desire. So start there. Look at what resources you have to make your desire a reality. Look at the tools, skills, and abilities that you have to make your desires real. Most importantly, look at who you are being right now, and recognize the incredible power that comes from your ability to choose who you are through the power of making a declaration, and then taking a stand for the fulfillment of your declaration.

I Create
What you have above all is the ability to create. What you create is possibility, and possibility is created through an act of declaration. We all have the ability to make declarations regarding what we stand for, simply as a byproduct of being human. There is no magic involved here. The power to create the life that you desire for yourself stems form your ability to create who you are through an act of declaration and then living into it. The power to create stems from your spoken word, and from your ability to create possibility. Yes, possibility is a noun, and it comes into being and exists only through an act of declaration. If you want to create a fantastic life, your first act of creation is to create the possibility of your life existing the way that you want it to be.

There are two significant barriers people face to creating a fantastic life. The first is that they don't really know what they want because they find themselves stuck in ambivalence, uncertainty, doubt, confusion, paradox, fear, or resistance to exercising their own power to create. After all, if we admit that we have the ability to create the life that we want, then we also have to accept that the life we have right now is a byproduct of what we personally created, rather than a byproduct of external forces acting upon us. It would mean letting go of the status quo and taking responsibility for what we have today. The second barrier is that we have to start living from a position of being the cause of our life, rather than reacting to it.

Be Cause
When you take a stand on whatever it is that is important to you and start acting consistent with that stand, amazing things start to happen. If this sounds fanciful, new age, or far fetched, the biggest reason it sounds that way is because so few of us take a stand for who we are. Truly taking a stand for who you are also entails acting consistent with your declarations, and this is often a source of significant challenge. It's challenging because there are real and tangible implications to the stand you take, and that includes the consequences that would logically follow.

For example, when I take a stand for positive transformation and greater health in the lives of people and organizations, and I act consistent with this declaration, then I have to give up certain common, comfortable, familiar behaviors in my work environment. It means I can't complain about the things that are "wrong" anymore - I have to take action to correct them in order to be consistent with my stand. And if I lack the power to do so, or to find sponsorship or influence above to make it so, then I have to make a choice about whether I am really in the right place.

In more general terms, life will find a way to challenge the stand that you take, forcing you to choose whether you are your stand (being the cause of your own life), or whether your life is the way it is because of external factors over which you have limited control. Note that this is not strictly an either-or scenario. Instead, it exists as a continuum with "because" on one end, and "be cause" on the other. The way we move the fulcrum is through the declarations we make.



I stand for positive transformation and greater health in the lives of people and organizations.



Part of my role as a coach entails working with clients to break free of the iron triangle, to have the lives they want, to create possibility, and to move the fulcrum from "because" to "be cause." On their own, each component is required, but not sufficient for transformation. Only when all three come together do we start to see real significant shifts occurring in our lives. This is serious work. It entails deep introspection, tough questions, hard choices, and often significant changes. It is also incredibly rewarding. When you are ready to break free of your iron triangle, contact me for a free introductory coaching session where we'll talk about your Primary Goals, and how to make them your dominant reality.

Tell a Good Story

For the past several days there have been two girls selling lemon at the top of the street where I live. they have colorful signs and decorations, and from 500 yards away one can see them energetically bouncing around for attention and the hope of making a sale.

Tonight as I came home from work, a group of about 5 boys of the same age as the girls walked passed, taunting and poking fun at the girl's efforts. I saw their interaction from afar, and only learned the details as I got closer and pulled up to my mailbox. That's when the girls approached me, not to make a sale, but to say how the young boys had hurt their feelings. The boys called the girls "the Wall-Mart of lemonade stands," and said that the girls were "Republicans."

OK, so it's a pretty liberal neighborhood when the latter statement is intended as an epithet. In response to the girl's complaint, I asked if the boys had hurt their feelings, or if the girls had let the boys hurt their feelings.

"But I don't shop at Wall-Mart!" one exclaimed.

"If they say you are the Wall-Mart of lemonade, what does that really mean?"

After a brief pause, the girl admitted "I don't know," with a hint of confusion in her voice.

I told her that "Wall-Mart started out small and became hugely successful because they always focused on delivering value to their customers. So if you really are the Wall-Mart of lemonade, you've got the makings of a very successful young business lady."

"Oh!" She said, with both surprise and a smile on her face.

Because I still had her attention, I continued. "So then whether something is an insult or a compliment really depends on the story we tell our self about what it means." She had a pensive look on her face, and I wondered if what I just told her made any sense at her young age.

"Then I should tell myself a good story," she said, followed by offering me a free lemonade.

So did she really understand? In the story I tell myself she did! But as adults, what are the stories we tell ourselves on a regular basis? Do we see and interpret our environment with stories that bring us life, energy, enthusiasm, and foster a sense of potential? Or have we matured, grown wise and become more cynical (which we tell ourselves is "realistic") about what is actually possible today?

We all have our stories, and we all have good reasons for believing them, based on our life experience. Yet how often do we really evaluate if these stories are even true? Yes, of course, they are true for us now, but the beauty of possibility is that as adults we can also start telling ourselves new stories. We have the ability to consciously choose to create a new reality simply by noticing the stories we tell our self, and making a choice about whether those stories really protect us, or if they restrict us in our lives. And if our stories restrict us, then for goodness sakes, tell a new story! Make it a good one -- full of life, power, passion, potential, and all that is possible.

Oh, and the lemonade was delicious.

Angles Within Us

In the movies City of Angels, and Wings of Desire, people going about their lives were often caught up in negative self-talk. The angles, who would hear all this but could not be seen by people, would occasionally come close to a person engaged with their frustrations, anxieties, or fears and the angel would touch that person. Usually, it was a simple gesture, like a hand on the shoulder, but that simple touch was actually touching the lives of those who were negatively engaged.

I have two angles of my own at home now – two infants, still less than a month old. Periodically, they will be in deep sleep, only to startle, fidget, or fuss, beginning with small whimpers, then reaching a crescendo of full blown wailing. But if I notice their fussing early on, before it reaches such an energetic apex, I can put my hand on their head or chest, or bring my cheek to theirs and they usually calm down and return to blissful sleep.

It works the other way around, too. When I find myself engaged with life’s frustrations, I can hold them close to me and everything melts away into love and compassion – for both of them, and for myself.

So what’s actually happening in these moments – the angle’s touch, my hand on the babies’ chest, or their soothing power over me? I suspect that in all cases it is all about open, genuine contact, offered lovingly, without judgment, expectation, or attachment to outcome.
As adults, we experience these moments with each other too, though they are often so few and far between, so rare and utterly unexpected, that we forget that each and every one of us has the power to touch another human being in that way. All of us have within us the capacity to be touched and soothed by that genuine contact, offered by another without judgment, expectation, or attachment to outcome.

Thus, by once again remembering that power and capacity within me, I see the model for who I want to be.

That’s also part of my draw to coaching, and a picture of how I relate to clients – open, making genuine contact, offered lovingly and without judgment, expectation, or attachment. My intention with my clients is that through my “Being,” by coming from that place and making authentic, heartfelt contact, that you reconnect with the angles within you to see more clearly the way to achieve your own Primary Goals in life.

Emergency Maneuvers as a Metaphor for Transformation

Through a rather strange sequence of events, I began thinking about how an emergency maneuvers clinic for paragliding can actually be a metaphor for transformation. This post is partly about flying, partly about life, and partly about professional coaching.

When I started paragliding, I was instantaneously in love with the sport. Literally, within the first 15 seconds of flight, I knew that I was in grave danger of spending $3-5,000 getting deeply into a new passion, and that's exactly what happened.

At some point, however, I encountered some very large turbulence, and it frightened me something fierce. As we know, the air is invisible, but I found myself wanting AWAY from whatever it was that scared me so badly. Except that after 30 seconds, I knew that despite my fear, that I had to learn to deal with that environment if I was ever going to be a better pilot. So I tried returning to where my wing went all haywire, and soon found the turbulence again. This time, being ready meant that I would not be as surprised, but in truth, that did little to make the turbulence any less scary. I experienced an asymmetric collapse or two and my adrenaline was maxed out, so I left. I was willing, eager, and motivated to get past my fear, but at that moment, my fear won out and I returned to lower, more comfortable air.

So here's the first parallel to making a major change in life. Things may be going along as normal, then through circumstance you get an idea to do something new, bold, and adventurous. Perhaps its starting a new business, or revitalizing the one you are in. Perhaps it's changing careers, or changing the dynamics that suck the life out of the one you have. Perhaps it's a renewed sense of personal commitment to taking better care of yourself, or re-connecting with deeper spiritual beliefs. The particulars are entirely unique to each of us, but the commonality is that something happens that triggers the need to make a significant shift in life, and we start out with all the enthusiasm of a new pilot hooked on the passion of flight.

But then we run into more serious challenges with our resolve (turbulence). We get scared, we begin to doubt ourselves, and we question our earlier motives. All too often we turn away from something that not long ago held great promise and meaning for us. That earlier goal may still hold all the appeal of climbing to cloud-base or of traveling to a distant point on a cross-country trip, but between here and there the obstacles suddenly seem too big, our skills too light, or the risks too great. Whether that's actually true or not is hard to say, but the fear is real, and so we turn away from our earlier goals, even if just for a while.

In my case, I recognized the need to take an emergency maneuvers course. I knew what it was, and my peers had all spoken highly of its value. In that course, I experienced things far worse than what I had ever encountered on my own. The fact that most of it was self-imposed through my participation in the course was secondary. The fear was still every bit as real, and the consequences of failure only partly reduced. So although the dangers were still present, I gained the confidence to risk and to try new things from the comfort provided by the safety net of flying over water, from the emergency reserve inside my harness, and from my coach on the radio. With those in place, I performed maneuvers that I would not dare contemplate under different circumstances, and which would have incapacitated me had I run into them "in the wild." As a result, my skills improved and I became a better pilot.

Moving back to major changes in life, where does one go to find the personal or professional development equivalent of an emergency maneuvers course? To whom does one turn upon recognizing the need to learn new responses to present and future dangers in one's career or life? How does one find the support and coaching to navigate through or around major turbulence rather than having its presence disproportionally limit or control one's options to fly through life? In a nutshell, this is precisely the service that I provide through personal and professional coaching. I help people focus on achieving their primary goals in life, whatever they may be.

My background is in adventure education (outward bound), psychology (B.A.), and applied behavioral science (M.A.). I've worked with the King County Crisis line, and the King County Dispute Resolution Center (mediation work). I work with clients by meeting them wherever they are in life and charting a path towards personal achievement, accountability, and authenticity. The lenses I typically look through focus on play, relationships, creativity, teaching and learning. If you or someone you know is interested in making significant progress toward achieving their primary goals, then contact me for a free introductory coaching session to see for yourself the value that professional coaching can create for you.

Vision, Cookeis, and Marshmallows

At first glance, it's hard to see any connection between the vision one may have for a corporation, department or one's self, and Cookies or Marshmallows. I have to admit, it was a strange set of circumstances that tied these three together, but it actually makes for an interesting story.

Earlier this evening, myself and two of my peers were in a training session for some volunteer work. On the corner of the supervisor's desk was a box of Girl Scout cookies (Thin Mint), and a paper plate with two large chocolate chip cookies. This training lasted well over two hours, and took place during what would normally be dinner time. My peers and I were silent about the cookies, paying appropriate attention to what we needed to learn. Yet I would be lying if I said those cookies were not a distraction. Eventually, one of us spoke up and asked "Are you going to eat those cookies? Because if not, you've got to take them out of sight before I do them grave harm."


As soon as she spoke up, we all laughed upon realizing that the three of us had been thinking the same thing. We were all dealing with a mix of desire, hunger, distraction, and self control. It just so happened that one of us eventually spoke up because it became too hard to focus. It was at that moment that I knew what dogs must go through when their owners put cookies on their noses and tell them to "stay."

It's the ability to delay gratification that brings me to Marshmallows. In the 1960's, a psychologist named Walter Mischel studied delayed gratification in 4-year-old children by placing them in a room with a marshmallow and leaving them alone to see what happened. He told them that they could eat the marshmallow, but that if they waited until he got back, they could have two of them. The story describes in great detail the level of pain and anguish on the children's faces as they devise ways of delaying their desire to simply eat the marshmallow. One key factor in a child's ability to to delay gratification was their ability to focus on the second marshmallow - the vision. Also, even for those that were initially unable to delay gratification, it was found that by teaching them certain visualization techniques, that increased their ability to wait longer before they succumbed to the power of the marshmallow.

Now, at last, we come back to the notion of vision. As a general rule, we can safely assume that people want good things from their work and their life. Those might include success, bonuses, promotions, pride, accomplishment, satisfaction, achievement, realizing lofty goals, or any number of other motivational factors (marshmallows). Further, to win most of these benefits one has to overcome a number obstacles, such as time, effort, challenges, competition, politics, ambiguity, uncertainty, fears, pressures and demands (delays). So maybe if the marshmallow experiment has anything to teach us as adults, it is that a clear vision for the future goes a long way towards increasing our ability to endure delays and challenges in our quest for satisfaction.

So how about you -- either personally, or within your company -- do you have a clear and motivating vision for your future sufficient to overcome the real-life obstacles that will invariably come between you and success? Take this test to find out. Then contact Primary Goals and we'll walk through the building blocks of creating a vision that will get you all the marshmallows you want.

The Quest for "Healthy" Organizations

Whether we do it consciously or not, all of us pay attention to the health of our environments, especially the organizations where we work. Depending on one's role within an organization, our assessment may range from a casual gut-check of what it feels like to work there to a detailed set of Key Performance Indicators that are actively being managed. In the case of a publicly traded company the metrics and reporting take on an added level of importance, perhaps accentuating some measures (cash flow, ROI, etc.) at the expense of others (morale, turnover, commitment).

Part of the challenge with "organizational health" is that, unlike financial terms, it is not defined in a consistent manner between organizations. Even within a single office or department, there can be differing notions of what health really means depending on what is important to whom. Yet while conversations about how to do things better, faster, or cheaper are common in most companies, as are discussions about headcounts, seldom is there much open dialog about what "health" actually means. Instead, the topic of health comes up most often when it is percieved to be missing - when people percieve something to be unhealthy.

As part of my theory of practice, "health" within an organization is comprised of many things, some of which include:

• Effective communication between various levels of the organization.


• An ability to engage in productive conflict to arive at better decisions and generate appropriate buy-in.


• High levels of trust and mutual accountability.


• Flexible rather than rigid decision making styles, allowing adaptation to the demands of the situation.


• A deliberate focus on teaching and learning at all levels for the purpose of continual improvement (Kaizen)


• A clear definition of what is valued within the organization and celebration of successes.


• An ability to manage ever increasing change at multiple levels.


• A clearly articulated vision for the future with effots directed towards achieving that vision aligned between departments.
  

More important to organizational health than any single item that I might list is that the conversation about health actually take place within your organization. Sometimes, people assume that having an off-site with senior management to create a new mission statement, or to define the vision for the next three years serves the same purpose as a discussion on health. While it may be the case in rare instances, the important part about "health" discussions is that health has a significantly larger focus on how people within the organization are going to achieve the mission and strive to make the vision real down at the level of interpersonal interactions. Health has a greater focus on how people relate to each other, and often has a considerable overlap with what is commonly called "culture."

So let's assume that you want to engage all or parts of your organization in a dialog about health. We can even assume that your organization has been around for a while and that it has a well established culture. Some aspects of that culture may be beneficial, while others exert a tax on productivity and effectiveness. Some common questions about how to discuss health might include:

• Where would we start?


• What would that conversation look like?


• Who should be involved in these conversations?


• How do we generate the level of trust required to even engage this topic in a meaningful way?


• How will we manage the diversity of ideas that are likely to surface, especially in cases where some views of health are diametrically opposed to others?


• How will we decide what constitutes health in the face of these differences?


• Once we get greater clarity on what health means for us, how do we go about addressing entrenched ways of being that differ from our stated ideals?


• How do we tie any notion of "health" back to more concrete metrics like ROI with greater external visibility?
  

These are not trivial matters, yet uncertainty about the answers need not be a barrier to taking the first steps towards defining health within your organization. An Organizational Development consultant can be of great value here by working with senior management to define an initial framework for how issues of health can best be addressed within your organization. Together, we can then plan how to most effectively involve the broadest set of people possible. The numbers really depend on whether you are trying to address health on a departmental level, within senior management, or corporate wide.

Strategies will differ, of course, but the most important factor in addressing organizational health is that somebody with appropriate authority to bring about change take the lead in starting the dialog about why health is important, and how this "soft" or intangible aspect of organizational life singificantly impacts the bottom line.

In cases when you personally see the costs of poor organizational health, but lack the sponsorship to lead the dialog yourself, making the connection between health and your company's bottom-line goals becomes all the more important as you advocate your goals and seek appropriate sponsorship for these discussions higher up. Here too, an OD coach can help you strategize the best ways to tie issues of organizational health back to the primary goals that your supervisors are trying to accomplish.

If you are ready to begin the dialog about what health really means in your organization, or if you are looking for guidance or coaching in how to make a business case for why organizational health matters, then contct Primary Goals. Together, we can make a difference.