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5 Steps to Getting Unstuck

Posted by Lauren - 07/19/10 at 10:07:16 am

Feeling stuck or unable to accomplish your goals? Change can be difficult, and many people lose motivation to achieve their goals. When you slip up, just think of it as course-correcting. Welcome the challenge—it means that you’re taking charge of your life! Don’t judge yourself. Instead, treat yourself with compassion, and determine what’s needed to get back on course.

Below are some pitfalls people encounter and practical strategies to override them.

Prioritize and focus. If you feel overwhelmed, you may be trying to achieve too much at once. Step back and look at your goals. If you’re doing too much, it’s time to reprioritize. Maybe you need to work on two goals instead of three. Or maybe one of your goals requires a lot of steps, so it’s taking up all your energy. Identify the goals that are most important to you. If you need to, just focus on one goal at a time and don’t move on to the next one until the first one is complete.

Encourage yourself. People become discouraged when they listen to their “inner critic”—the voice that says: “You’ll never make it.” “It’s hopeless.” “This is too hard.” Whatever that voice is saying, articulate a response, drawing from the part of you that feels strong and confident. Be your own cheerleader. Review your accomplishments; remind yourself of what you’re capable of doing and being. Instead of focusing on the old voice that drags you down, actively support and listen to the part that believes you can achieve what you want.

Solicit support from others. You’re more likely to slip up when you’re trying to accomplish your goals by yourself. It may be that you don’t have an outer support system in place to help you maintain focus and provide the external encouragement everyone needs. Outer supports might include a trusted friend, a coach or therapist, or a support group. Avoid situations that trigger sabotaging patterns. For example, if you eat junk food when you’re feeling lonely, scheduling activities with others will help you bypass the old trigger and remain on-course.

Practice good self-care. Taking good care of yourself is key to achieving your goals. A lack of energy typically relates to a failure to sustain your inner support system, which provides the physical, emotional, and mental energy needed to achieve your goals. If you’re eating poorly, neglecting your health, or living a high-stress lifestyle, you’re depleting your inner resources. That will make it difficult to maintain the energy you need to participate fully and actively in your life.

Love and respect yourself. If you don’t have a loving relationship with yourself, it’s hard to sustain the motivation to take action and make good choices for yourself. Loving yourself compels you to make lifestyle choices that make you feel good and generate the results you want. If you feel unmotivated, revisit your relationship with yourself and make a conscious effort to treat yourself with respect, love, and compassion—just like you would treat a close and cherished friend.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG, OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete statement at the end of the article:

© 2010 Lauren Mackler

Lauren Mackler is a coach and host of the Life Keys radio show on Hay House Radio. She’s the author of the international bestseller, Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life. www.laurenmackler.com

Managing Up

Posted by Lauren - 06/06/10 at 12:06:59 pm

There are many seminars, books, and articles about how to be an effective leader. But what is often missing from these resources is how to strategically shape and manage relationships with superiors. As a result, many people harbor feelings of stress, overwhelm, frustration, or resentment toward their boss, but keep them hidden for fear of reprisal. Over time, their motivation and performance diminish, putting their job at risk.

Below are some practical strategies for building a mutually productive and respectful relationship with your boss, managing expectations and workloads, and positioning yourself as an exceptional leader within your organization.

Understand your boss’s work style and preferences. Is your boss formal or informal? Does he like to be briefed in writing before meetings or prefer to brainstorm issues with you? Is your supervisor a hands-on manager who likes to be consulted about issues as they arise, or will regular and informal updates make your boss think you aren’t taking the lead in performing your managerial role? While you might think your manager would be pleased that you keep her in the loop, his work style may value a manager who acts more autonomously. Pay attention to the differences in your work style and your boss’s style. Where possible, make adjustments to be consistent in style, eliminating unnecessary annoyances that can build into real miscommunications.

Know what matters to your boss. If your boss is a numbers person, quantify your results. And know which numbers matter most to her. If your boss is a customer-is-first kind of person, frame all your results in terms of benefits to customers.

Communicate like your boss. If your boss likes daily e-mails, send them. If your boss wants a once-a-week summary, then do that. Convey information to your boss in the way she likes, so she’s more likely to retain it. Be aware of detail preferences. Some people like a lot and some people like less. A good way to figure out what your boss wants is to watch how she communicates with you. She’s probably doing it the way she likes best.

Plan and organize your meetings to optimize your time together. Keep a running list of follow up and action items to discuss with your boss.

Learn to say no. Say yes to the things that matter most to your boss. So when he asks you to do something that you don’t have time to do, ask your boss about his priorities. Let him know that you want to make sure you finish what is most important, and this will probably mean saying no to the lesser projects.

Toot your own horn. Each time you do something that impacts the company, let your boss know. Leave a voicemail announcing a project has been completed. Send a congratulation e-mail to your team and copy your boss, which not only draws attention to your project success, but also to your leadership skills. Send a monthly overview of your completions and accomplishments, retaining an electronic file to use for performance review time.

Build a relationship with your boss. If all things are equal, your boss will cater to the person she likes the best. So go out to lunch and talk about what interests her. Connect with her by asking her for advice on something about work. If you are very different than your boss, work hard to find common ground in your conversations.

Seek new responsibilities. Find important holes in your department before your boss notices them. Take responsibility for filling those holes and your boss will appreciate not only your foresight, but also your ability to take initiative.

Be curious. Remember to make time to listen and ask good questions. You will make yourself more interesting to be around, and you will elicit fresh ideas from everyone around you. Your boss will feel like having you on the team improves everyone’s work, even his own, and that, after all, is your primary job in managing up.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG, OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete statement at the end of the article:

© 2010 Lauren Mackler

Lauren Mackler is a coach, keynote speaker, and training facilitator. She’s the author of the international bestseller, Solemate, and co-author of Speaking of Success with Jack Canfield and Stephen Covey. For info about her coaching services or training programs, contact her through her web site at www.laurenmackler.com.

A New View of Aloneness

Posted by Lauren - 05/01/10 at 06:05:37 am

Although being single is more accepted than it was 30 years ago, there’s still a mindset that if you don’t have a mate, there must be something wrong with you. Many people still believe that marriage is the ideal lifestyle, and we’re barraged by music and movies espousing romantic love as the answer. It’s difficult to even imagine a movie that ends with the star living contently alone instead of living happily-ever-after with a mate. The classic line in the film Jerry Maguire—“You complete me”—reinforces what many singles believe: If I can find a mate, I’ll be happy. And if I can’t, I’m in trouble.

If you’re alone and believe that “there must be something wrong with me” it will have an enormous impact on your life. You may actually be setting yourself up for rejection because other people are less likely to be drawn to someone lacking self-confidence. And feelings of low self-worth may cause you to withdraw from the very people and activities that can enrich your life. Loneliness then becomes a self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you want to live a happier life alone, you have to believe that you can. Instead of viewing aloneness as a source of loneliness and pain, think of it as one of freedom and opportunity. To reframe negative perceptions, write down the challenges of your aloneness. Your list might include things like: “I make others’ needs more important than my own,” or “I feel insecure around people I don’t know.” Identify whatever holds you back from reaching your fullest potential. Now next to each challenge, write down the opportunity it presents. Based on my examples, these might include, “Learn how to set healthy boundaries with people” and “Develop greater self-confidence around people.”

Next, start turning those opportunities into action. Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a free Saturday. You can look at it from two perspectives. You can stay home feeling sorry for yourself because you have nothing to do. Or you can look at it differently: “I have a free day to do anything I want. I can go to the gym, call a friend and go to the movies, work in my garden, or read a great novel.” Then do something that something that truly engages you.

As you take steps toward mastering aloneness, recognize that you’ll slip up. Imagine how a smoker quits smoking. He throws away that first pack of cigarettes. Then he might weaken and buy another pack, then just smoke a few cigarettes, then give it up for another few weeks, then start up again. And one day, he’s just done with it. Like quitting smoking, mastering aloneness is about changing habitual patterns of thought and behavior. Be gentle with yourself. When you slip up, think of it as getting more information about what doesn’t work for you. Committing to mastering the art of aloneness means realizing that you will slip up; treating yourself with compassion when you do, and then moving forward in becoming the person you were born to be. To view Lauren’s video interview, A New View of Aloneness, click here.

© 2010 Lauren Mackler

The Three Levels of Creation

Posted by Lauren - 04/07/10 at 11:04:39 am

You create nearly all of your life experiences—although you may be unaware of the role you play in their creation. There are three ways we generate our experiences: creating, promoting, and allowing. I first heard this concept at an Insight workshop in 1982, and it’s a valuable tool for recognizing the role you play in creating your life. By looking at events through this lens, you can see how your actions influence them.

Here’s an example. You’re going to a ball game with a friend, and you’re both standing in line to get your tickets. A teenager cuts in front of you and it turns into a confrontation. Below are behaviors that depict the three types of creation.

Creating. You say something hostile to the teenager. “Hey, kid, this is a line. Step to the back.” And his father, who was holding his place, screams at you: “Hey, shut up!” It escalates into a fight and you get hurt. You initiated that situation through your words—you created the situation.

Promoting. Your friend, who’s in line with you, is the one who says, “Hey, kid, get in back.” The boy’s father screams at your friend: “Shut up, you idiot!” Your friend threatens to punch him and you say to your friend, “Yeah, smack him!” It turns into a fight and your friend gets hurt. You promoted that situation by encouraging your friend to attack the other person, thereby helping to create it.

Allowing. Another bystander steps up to the teenager, pushes him out of line and says, “Hey, kid, you broke into this line.” A scuffle ensues and the teenager gets hurt. You stand by and take no action to stop it. By doing nothing, you’re allowing that situation to unfold.

Take any situation in which you felt victimized. If you look carefully at the situation, most of the time you’ll find it relates to something you did or said—or failed to say or do. Your actions created the situation, promoted it, or allowed it. These three levels of creation are effective tools for understanding your past, and recognizing how the law of cause and effect plays a major role in your life.

To see the role you played in a situation, ask yourself: What did I do to create the situation, to promote it, or to allow it? Once you start looking at the world this way, you’ll get a clearer picture of the role you play in every situation of your life. As events unfold, be aware of your actions. With everything you do, ask yourself: What is this the result I want to achieve? One note: As you go through this self-evaluation process, don’t beat yourself up for situations you’ve created, promoted, or allowed. Remember, we’re all doing the best we can at any given moment. By understanding your actions and taking greater responsibility for your behavior, you’ll begin to see that you are, indeed, the creator of your own life.

© 2010 Lauren Mackler
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG, OR WEB SITE?

You can, as long as you include this complete statement at the end of the article:

© 2010 Lauren Mackler

Lauren Mackler is a coach, psychotherapist, and host of the Life Keys radio show on hayhouseradio.com. She’s the author of the international bestseller, Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life. Sign up for her Live Boldly newsletter at www.laurenmackler.com.

How to Be Your Own Best Friend on Beliefnet.com

Posted by Lauren - 04/06/10 at 09:04:29 am

Read this article on Beliefnet.com and learn to master the art of living solo.

Many people spend years waiting for a soul mate to make them feel complete. Others settle for unfulfilling relationships out of fear of being alone. I believe we should fulfill our potential in life, with or without partners. Instead of expecting someone else to complete you, mastering the art of aloneness gives you mastery of your own life.

When you strengthen your relationship to yourself, you can develop greater self-esteem, personal fulfillment, and financial security. Here are eleven steps you can take to help develop … click here to read the entire article.

4 Steps to Turning Challenges into Opportunities

Posted by Lauren - 03/08/10 at 10:03:10 am

We’re living through challenging times. But inherent in nearly all challenges are opportunities for renewal and transformation. The current economic crisis offers the chance to re-evaluate how you live your life, to be more mindful and strategic about how you spend money, and to take stock of your values and priorities. Corporate lay-offs can provide the opportunity to find a more meaningful job, transition into a new career, or pursue the dream of starting your own business.

How you respond to crises has a lot to do with the lens through which you habitually perceive the world. If you tend to see the world through a “gloom and doom” lens, you may be reacting to current events with feelings of fear, anxiety, or a sense of despair or powerlessness. And even if you tend to view things through the lens of optimism, you may be reacting to the constant barrage of negative media messages with milder feelings of concern and insecurity.

Wherever you may be on this continuum of perception and reaction, deliberately shifting your focus to unearth and explore the opportunities inherent in these challenges can help you move from a state of insecurity, powerlessness, or fear into a state of empowerment, inspiration, and action.

Below are 4 steps you can take to help you make this shift:

1. Notice how often you expose yourself to the negative messages of the news media. Try to keep your exposure to a minimum, enough to keep yourself informed, but not so much that it’s feeding your fear over and over again.

2. Make a list of the ways the current crises are impacting you or your life. For example, “I’m worried I’m going to lose my job”, “I have less money to go out to eat”, “Sales are down and business is slow”, “I’ve lost 30% of my retirement savings.”

3. Write down the opportunities inherent in each challenge. Using the examples listed above, your opportunities might include some of these:

Challenge: I’m worried I’m going to lose my job. Opportunity: Get my resume updated and start networking to find that rewarding and fulfilling job I’ve been thinking about pursuing for the last two years.        

Challenge: I have less money to go out to eat. Opportunity: Download some new recipes from the internet to expand my cooking skills and start having intimate dinners at home with family and friends. 

Challenge: Sales are down and business is slow. Opportunity: Use this slow time to get my office organized, update my marketing materials, and reconnect with past customers I’ve had no time call.

4. Recognize that there are some challenges that are simply beyond your control. For those that are—for example, the decreased value of a home you may own—instead of expending energy worrying and complaining about it, turn your attention to those challenges with opportunities you can act upon.

© 2010 Lauren Mackler

This article also appeared in the Huffington Post. Click here to go to the Huffington Post article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-mackler/4-steps-for-turning-chall_b_482336.html

Alone on February 14? 6 tips to becoming your own Valentine.

Posted by Lauren - 03/01/10 at 09:03:09 am

Valentine’s Day is, for many singles, a holiday to dread instead of one to celebrate. I experienced my own loneliness on more than one Valentine’s Day. Then, several years ago, I had a revelation. I could be my own Valentine!

I know, being your own Valentine might sound like a desperate attempt to soothe the sting of single life. I thought so, too—until I actually experienced it. The first year of becoming my own Valentine, I organized a dinner at a nice restaurant for a group of single men and women. On the invitation I wrote a request: “buy, have gift-wrapped, and bring to dinner a gift for yourself in recognition of the magnificent person you are.”

It was one of my favorite Valentine’s Day celebrations! We took turns opening our gifts and sharing what we admired about ourselves. Some people were moved to tears, as they realized how hard they usually were on themselves.

Since then I’ve celebrated myself every Valentine’s Day—regardless of my relationship status. I do something special like get a massage, take a day trip, or buy a bottle of my favorite champagne. Last year I ordered and had delivered a dozen, long-stemmed roses in a box, with a card to myself that said, “I admire the fabulous woman you are.” For the next couple of weeks I felt infused with love each time I looked at the beautiful roses on my table and the card hung on my refrigerator.

Below are more ways to “become your own Valentine”—all of which will build your self-esteem and a loving relationship with yourself.

1. Plan a “Self-Celebration” Valentine’s Day pot-luck party. Ask each guest to bring their own favorite food dish and a wrapped gift to give to themselves.
2. Order in a delicious meal, put on your pajamas, and hunker down with a great book or movie. Some of my favorite Valentine’s Day movies are Trading Places, Mermaids, and The Associate.
3. Treat a friend, family member, or co-worker to an evening out. Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to return a kindness or to reconnect with someone you haven’t seen in a while.
4. Organize a girls’ or guys’ night out that includes something entertaining like karaoke, playing pool, shooting darts, seeing a play, or listening to live music.
5. Spend the day volunteering. Helping others is gratifying and makes you feel good about yourself. To find opportunities in your city, visit the Single Volunteers Web site.
6. Attend a social event. If you don’t know of any in your area, do a Google search with the words, “Singles events Valentine’s Day <your city>.” Then click on the links to find an event that sounds appealing.

Ask yourself what you would like, then commit to giving it to yourself. And remember, you always have a choice. You can either spend Valentine’s Day feeling bad, or you can do something that uplifts, nurtures, or delights you.

This article appeared on HealYourLife.com.  Click here to see Lauren’s video on HealYourLife.com.

Is the Role You Play Playing with Your Life?

Posted by Lauren - 02/26/10 at 09:02:44 am

Every living system seeks balance. In nature, this process is called homeostasis. Within a family system, homeostasis explains why members adopt certain roles. In healthy families, members take on different roles at various times to meet the family’s needs. But in dysfunctional families, the roles are more rigid. For example, if one parent is addicted to alcohol, the other may be busy providing for the family and seldom home. One child may take on the role of Caretaker, preparing meals for younger siblings while another becomes the Hero—the one who strives to do everything perfectly.

But the family dynamics that shape family roles aren’t limited to severe dysfunctions like substance abuse. One of my coaching clients grew up in a loving, close-knit family in which he was the Hero. Because his parents wanted him to have opportunities they never had, he was expected to get straight A’s, a good education, and a successful career. And while this role enabled him to become an accomplished and wealthy lawyer, his life was falling apart. High blood pressure was causing health problems, workaholism threatened his marriage, and the responsibilities of providing for his elderly parents, an expensive home, and three children in private schools overwhelmed him.

Another example is Casey, who dreamed of becoming a professional photographer. Casey was in a financial-services job she hated, but in which she felt trapped. Growing up, both of her parents struggled to hold down jobs. Casey started babysitting at the age of 12, and had been helping her parents financially ever since. She lived with her boyfriend, who was supporting his ex-wife and son. He was unsupportive of her making a career change, because they needed her income to pay the bills. By continuing to make others’ needs more important than her own, she had unconsciously recreated her family role of Caretaker in her adult relationship.

While our family role may have made sense growing up, it often wreaks havoc in our adult lives. As our primary role takes hold, parts of us become suppressed—parts we need to live a healthy and fulfilling adult life. These can include the part that feels like a worthwhile, deserving person; the part that feels intelligent and competent; the spontaneous, playful part, or the part that can feel and express joy.

If the role you play is sabotaging your life, change the behaviors that reinforce it. If you play the People-pleaser who always says what others expect for approval, start expressing your real thoughts and feelings to others. If you’re the Hero who works relentlessly to achieve, bring fun into your life. Take an improvisational comedy class, do karaoke, visit a water park, or anything else to reclaim your spontaneous, playful part.

Many people’s unhappiness is rooted in the habitual role they play. By consciously shedding your limiting role, not only will you achieve greater well-being, but you’ll reclaim the innate wholeness with which you were born, that’s critical to living a healthy, balanced, and fulfilling life.

© 2010 Lauren Mackler

 
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG, OR WEB SITE?

You can, as long as you include this complete statement at the end of the article:

© 2010 Lauren Mackler

Lauren Mackler is a coach, psychotherapist, and host of the Life Keys radio show on hayhouseradio.com. She’s the author of the international bestseller, Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life. Sign up for her Live Boldly newsletter at www.laurenmackler.com.

This article was also appeared on Sheerbalance.com.

Are You Addicted to ‘Gloom and Doom’?

Posted by Lauren - 02/12/10 at 01:02:29 pm

How affirmations really work.

Chronic negative thinking and the emotions it invokes is, like many destructive behaviors, a form of addiction.

An old acquaintance of mine recently wrote an article about positive thinking—a subject that is often misunderstood. For many years I, like many people on the personal-development path, believed that by writing down and repeating positive affirmations (positive statements about yourself or your life, written in the present tense as if they were already true), I would think more positively and the changes I sought in myself and in my life would happen automatically. I hung these inspiring statements up all over my house, memorized them, and repeated them out loud, sometimes as much as 100 times a day. But it seemed that no matter how many times I said them, the changes I hoped to achieve continued to elude me.

It would be nearly 20 years before I finally realized that while affirmations are a powerful tool for clarifying and focusing on what you want, positive action is also required to achieve it. Positive action generates positive thinking, which generates more positive action and positive thinking. Positive action and thinking are a choice, a choice that can be challenging, especially for people who have experienced much suffering and pain in their lives—but it’s still a choice.

For example, you feel lonely and sad, but instead of isolating yourself, you do something positive. Maybe you attend a cooking class, volunteer at a soup kitchen, or go out for a run—something that refocuses your thoughts and produces a more positive experience rather than sitting home alone eating cookies and feeling sorry for yourself.

Chronic negative thinking and the emotions it invokes is, like many destructive behaviors, a form of addiction. People become addicted to habitual, “gloom and doom” thoughts, as well as to the emotions they produce—such as fear and anger. It becomes their comfort zone—it may not be very pleasant, but it’s familiar.

To break this self-defeating addiction, you have to first understand its roots (almost always found in your life conditioning), and consciously change your behaviors and actions to ones that create more positive results. Over time, you’ll build a string of positive experiences that solidifies a new internal reference point and makes a positive mindset in your new habitual way of thinking.

7 Steps To Healthier Relationships

Posted by Lauren - 02/11/10 at 11:02:26 am

Healthy relationships are critical to our well-being, yet many people never learned the skills to cultivate them. Not all people have what it takes to be supportive, and not all unsupportive people can be avoided–for example, family members and co-workers. But the idea is to identify the qualities that support you, spend time with people who demonstrate those qualities, and, as much as possible, avoid people who are detrimental to your well-being.

There are many ways to cultivate healthy relationships, the first of which is to become a supportive friend to others. Below are qualities and behaviors that foster positive relationships that you can develop within yourself and seek out in others.

Be a good sounding board. When a friend wants to talk to you about something he’s going through, the best approach is simply to listen. Don’t offer advice without asking permission, because it may be… Click here to read the entire article.

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