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Let go! (it’s all impermanent)

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Shot by Adrian Alston

At the risk of my readers suspecting that I own shares of Buddha Corp. (BCOR) I’ve decided to indulge my need to write yet another post about the benefits of meditation. 

In an earlier post: Go Fetch! I only mentioned in passing that while sharpening my meditation skills at a Buddhist monastery, I also learned about impermanence.  This morning, after coming out of a Bikram yoga class, I realized that when I wrote that last week, I only knew that the concept impermanence existed.  In other words, I did not really know what impermanence is.  Today is when I experienced impermanence for the very first time.

The aha! moment hit me this morning when I went to pay for parking.  For three years I’ve been making sure that I leave my yoga class in time to get to my car within 2 hours so that I pay $1 for parking and not $7.  Today my system went wrong and I got zapped by a $7 dollar fee for going over just 2 minutes.  Those 2 minutes cost me $5 bucks.  Okay so it’s not a big deal, it’s just $2 bucks.  However, I’m ashamed of myself to say that the last time that I went over and had to pay $7, I went totally nuts.  First I felt pangs of anger in my belly, the temperature in my body rose and angry thoughts started to swirl in my head at a million miles an hour.  Admittedly a totally extreme reaction, but that’s what I experienced. 

Today though when I saw the $7 dollar charge come up on the parking meter, I acknowledged it with a gentle ‘oh’, and took out a bill from my wallet.  Calmy and feeling undisturbed by the mishap, I walked back to my car. 

Has meditation damaged my amygdala – the region responsible for emotional reactions in our brains?  Or has meditation allowed me to let go off things at the speed of light?  Because I still cry of laughter whenever I hear something funny, and I’m still in love with my husband, I know that the latter has to be true. 

Taking it a step further, I realized that if anything, meditation has turned me into a more rational human being.  (Notice the focus on human – other living beings have the capacity to feel – just think slaughter house – but their ability to reason and make decisions is still questionable)  How am I more rational? By not holding on to anger, I did not occupy my mind unnecessarily.  Instead I used it to think of my options.  I now know that if I park out on the street for 5 days in a row, by not paying a $1 each day, I’ll make up for the extra $5 bucks that I paid today.  That’s an option right there, which even gives me the opportunity to change my scenery and get more fresh air.  Maybe it’s a bit extreme to go through that process for such a triviality, but this realization is certainly worth testing on the bigger issues that life throws my way.  

What does this have to do with impermanence?  Right now, take a deep breath and hold on to it. Hold it. Hold it a few more seconds.  Keep holding it.  Okay let go!

What were you thinking while you were holding on to your breath?  I suspect that like me, all you could think of was how great it would feel to breathe out.

Then my question is, if it’s inevitable that the breath will go out, that things are impermanent, then why hold on to them in the first place? 

By holding on to things we’re only hurting ourselves and certainly not being part of the solution.  We become part of the solution by thinking through our options, not by holding on to things.

Next time that you’re holding on to something, like a big important problem, you might want to ask yourself: “Why am I taking up head space and energy holding on to this?  Instead why not use my mind in smarter ways, like thinking creatively and looking for solutions?”

Namaste.

Stamping out mistakophobia

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Mistakophobia, an intense fear of making mistakes, is up there with career -suicide as one of the killers of career growth.

The afflicted mistakophobes are so afraid of making mistakes that they never leave their comfort zone.  Going about their work-lives feeling comfortably numb, because they seldom make mistakes, they miss out on all kinds of important lessons.  Consequently they never grow.  And the cycle repeats itself.

There is a thin line between a good mistake and an unforgivable one.  The kind of mistake I’m advocating is the inevitable one that comes from taking risks and trying new things.  It’s also the one that we make a point to learn from so that we don’t make it again. 

How can you tell if you’re on the right side of the line?

1.     You’re genuinely surprised by your mistake.

2.    You accept full responsibility.

3.    You’re quick to find out what went wrong for the sole purpose of finding a solution – not to dodge blame.

4.    You don’t dwell on the situation.  Instead you aim to find solutions and get on with things quickly.

5.     When faced with the same or a similar situation, you’re able to apply what you learned.

Go Fetch! (lessons from inside the walls of a Buddhist monastery)

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Contrary to what most would think, that the reason I went away for 3 days to meditate and observe Noble Silence* at a Buddhist monastery was to take care of my spirit, my main objective was to take care of business.  By learning from those who know best about meditation, my goal was to improve my practice and sharpen my mind.  In the process I did learn about loving kindness and the impermanence of things.  But those were only fringe benefits and pale in comparison to what I learned about how to control my mind by keeping it still.

My main hope in sharing this with you is for you to realize that, like me, you too can benefit from sitting down and doing nothing for 30 minutes a day – talk about a great return on an investment!

The reality is that as much fun as it looks like a dog is having when it’s playing fetch with its owner, something tells me that just like me, you would much rather be the one throwing the stick.  Not the one panting from chasing after it.

The question is, are your thoughts sending you to go fetch?  In other words, are you mindlessly reacting to situations around you, chasing after your anger, your worries and your doubts? Or are you in control of your mind, taking time to think and respond to the world around you? 

Aside from your pride being threatened if you are in fact the one running breathlessly after your thoughts, the more important thing that is at stake here is your ability to think clearly.  When your mind is too busy going on an emotional errand, you’re not able to experience your mind’s full capacity to think.  It’s a well-known fact that your mind performs at its peak when it’s calm and clear like the surface of a pond on which you can see your own reflection.  A still mind is a clear mind.  A clear mind is a thinking mind.

The great news for you and me is that we can learn to make our mind stay still – and not go fetch – in spite of what happens around us.  The simplest way that I know how is by meditating.  By sitting down to focus on your in and out breath, you’re learning to take control over your mind by keeping it still.  The whole point is to keep coming back to your breath as it enters and leaves your nose, over and over again, as you watch your thoughts go past.  The more you do this, the easier it becomes for your mind to stay in one place.

I know that sitting down and doing nothing does not sound like much of a party.  But you tell me, what would you rather do; pant as a result of fetching after your thoughts all day long and continue to think with an impaired brain, or spend 30 minutes of your day to make your mind sharp as a diamond?

Take a deep breath (with a little smile).

*Noble Silence: silence of the body, speech and mind. Speaking is allowed only in case of an emergency or to ask staff about your practice.

The Buddhist monastery that received me with loving kindness: www.sunnataram.org

 

Soul Food for Your (one) Reputation

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Employed, self-employed or unemployed, in the world of work you have one reputation – one.

Just as Apple and Mini Cooper have a brand that represents them in the public eye, your reputation is your own personal brand. Depending on how you manage it, it can either open doors for you or potentially repel opportunities.

I’m not implying that you don’t already take care of your reputation, but humor me for a few seconds and think about what you would do differently if you would take it as seriously as Apple takes their brand image.

The good news is that it’s possible for you to look after and develop your reputation, while being yourself and not feeling like you’re walking on egg-shells.

The following tips are based on my own experience and some come from working with doctors – a group of professionals whose careers live and die by their reputations.

Tip #1 – Follow the ‘Golden Rule’: Do onto others as you would like done onto you. ‘Nough said. By parting from this point you’re acknowledging that others are as important as you are. When you respect others, the likelihood is that they’ll respect you in return.

Tip #2 – Work as if you matter: This isn’t about feeling cocky and giving your ego a boost. Rather, it’s about knowing that your skills are needed and that through your work you have the potential to make a difference in your company and the community at large. Not to idealize the medical profession, but most doctors know that their work can make a difference and feel proud of it. By believing that your work makes a difference you also have the potential to feel proud about your own contributions.

Tip #3 – Take responsibility: Take full responsibility for any mistakes you might make. Nobody is error free (that’s why there are erasers on pencils). Playing the blame game or getting caught in a lie can tarnish your reputation. Face your mistakes and other difficult situations head on. If you live by this, your co-workers will have much more respect for you.

Tip #4 – Work to be respected, not to be liked: Bill Cosby says it best: “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” Through your actions, you can influence whether you’re respected or not. But in reality, just as you can’t control whether a peer likes cocktails or beer, you can’t control whether you are liked by everybody or not.

Tip #5 – Be assertive: While trying to get your point across and influence others, don’t be aggressive but don’t be passive either. Sure, this has been stated almost ad-nauseum in self-development literature time and time again. However, that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a lot to be said about someone who can be firm yet nice at the same time. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind and ask for what you want but do so in a way that respects the personal boundaries of others. Trust me, I learned the hard way that being too aggressive and pushy can result in the opposite than what you’re looking for.

Tip # 6 – Build trust: Trust isn’t something that is given to you, you must earn it. And you’ll find, as I have, that it’s not that hard to earn, as long as you’re willing to make the necessary deposits in people’s emotional bank account. All it takes is a few baby steps. Make a small promise, one you are 110% sure that you can keep, and keep it. Through making promises and keeping them is how you pave the way and eventually earn others’ trust.

Tip # 7 – Follow-through relentlessly: If you’ve taken a tennis or golf lesson, you’ll understand that your stroke is only as good as your follow-through. This also applies to work follow through. By not responding to work related matters in a timely manner you’re projecting a message – whether intentionally or not – that certain issues don’t matter to you. If workload is what’s keeping you from responding, just a quick note to let people know that you received their communication and by when you plan to respond, will make a world of difference. To make sure that you follow-through, set rules for yourself. I personally believe in returning emails within 1 day of receiving them and phone calls the same day. Don’t wait until you need someone you met to get in touch with them. Use the follow through to create the bridge that you can walk on to get to them when you need them.

Tip # 8 – Deliver what you promise: Talk is cheap. Do what you promise that you will. Start by being honest with yourself about what you can deliver and then be honest with others, don’t over-promise. If you’ve fallen into the habit of talking up things, be it because you mean well and genuinely want to help or that’s just your style, practice under-promising. This is not about being mediocre or a slacker. It’s about learning to work within the bounds of your own reality.

Tip # 9 – Be on time: I learned that if you’re late you’re ‘dead’. While working as a baking & pastry apprentice in an industrial kitchen, I saw first-hand how tardiness messes up a whole day of production. In the office world, tardiness communicates: ‘I have more important things to do than to meet you!’ Think about it. In the absence of an emergency, we all know that we’re late because we decided to do something else on our way out the door. In other words, we did not make it our highest priority to respect the other person’s needs. Being on time is not rocket science. Simply work backwards from the time that you need to be somewhere and figure out by what time you need to leave. It will do wonders for your reputation because it makes others feel important and shows that you’re organized.

Tip # 10 – Mind your appearance: Yes, your image is part of the package of how people perceive you. This includes the way you dress and how you communicate when you speak and write.

Dressing: A simple rule regarding wardrobe is to dress according to the message you want to project. I tend to look at people I admire (in & out of work) and use them as a guide as how to dress. It’s not about stripping away your personality, it’s more about bringing it out where it really counts and makes a difference. And sure, in certain environments it’s the norm to make a statement with what you wear – I say, go for it!

Speaking: Just as well, how you say things is as important as what you say. When it comes to speaking in public, practice does make perfect. Recently I became a member of a Toastmasters club. I’m finding that  it’s a safe environment to practice skills that most certainly apply to work. I suggest that you check them out: www.toastmasters.org (No I will not get any commission or brownie points if you join. I’m serious).

Writing: In writing, to get your point across aim to make your point early on, use simple language and be consistent in your use of verbs and terms. Make it a habit to proof read documents at least once – don’t just rely on spell check.

Now that I’ve shared with you my thoughts, I’d love to hear what you’re feeding your reputation.

Stop the Self-sabotage – Play it Forward

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It’s a no-brainer that our decisions have consequences – the question is do our actions reflect our knowledge of this simple fact?

It was the know-it-all comment by a teen-age girl to her mom that prompted me to re-examine my own actions.  As I was going about my own business in the locker room at the local pool where I go for my weekly swim, I over-heard a mom and her teen-age daughter arguing.  At the crux of their argument was the daughter’s refusal to place her bag inside one of the lockers.  I did not find it surprising that the daughter refused to do so – or even that she rolled her eyes in the process.  On the other hand, I found it fascinating to hear how the daughter justified her decision.  With some attitude, she told her mom, almost verbatim: “What’s the point mom? It’s such a waste of time to put my bag in a locker.  What for?”  Now, I’m far from being a mind-reader, but after watching ‘What Women Want’ (2000) I’ve become quite good at listening to people’s thoughts.  I could hear the mom thinking: “Yeah right, taking 30 seconds to put your bag in a locker is a waste of time!  I’ll tell you what’s a waste of time…taking weeks to replace your stolen documents and to earn back your allowance!”

From how that argument unfolded – the mom lost – I learned that what may seem very minor decisions throughout our day, deserve more of our attention because they could end up disturbing our lives in a major way.

For example, while I was working as a pastry apprentice in a hot hotel kitchen in Miami, some days standing on my feet for 12 hours at a time, the last thing that I wanted to do at the end of my shift was clean my tools.  A shower and a bed was all that was on my mind.  But I learned the hard way that dashing out with a tool-box full of sticky knives and piping cones was not a smart move.  After spending an afternoon cutting chocolate cakes and then plating desserts until mid-night, I decided to go home (a shower & a bed) without properly cleaning my serrated knife.  That’s when I found out that staying back 10 more minutes after a shift to run my tools through hot water was a piece of cake in comparison to having to empty out my tool box to get rid of the ant colony that was inside having a feast.  What about when writing a document at work, be it a contract for a client or a board paper, or a fax.  Do we feel it’s a drag to stop every few minutes to hold down the Control and the S keys?  (for my Mac it’s Command and S)  Realistically, how much of our time does doing that take?  On the other hand, how long would it take us to re-produce the document if our computer crashed? (okay, Mac’s don’t crash as often, but still you get my point)  One situation that I’ve been struggling with for the past 9 years is every time – without fail – that we leave the house, my husband asks me as I’m about to walk out the door, if I have my house keys.  Almost each time – without fail – I can feel myself roll my eyes (just like the teen-ager in the locker room) and say to myself: “here he goes again!”.  But, here I go.  For the first time ever, I’m willing to admit that he’s doing the right thing.  He’s thinking about the consequences.  And I’m hoping that following my almost indecent exposure that you’ll agree that as annoying as it may be to check for house keys, that it’s much more aggravating and time consuming to be locked out of the house. 

With this I’m not advocating that we lead paranoid existences.  I’m proposing that we become more preventive and think through our decisions – even the small ones. 

Which decisions could you play forward and stop the self-sabotage?  

Same city – Different outlook – Totally different experiences

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Peace and quiet in the middle of the hustle and bussle

It’s day 12 since I started my 30-day “happy no matter what challenge” – and I’ve decided to write an update because it was earlier today that I noticed something was different in my life.  While writing this, I’m mindful that my progress report might disappointment some.  For those of you who were expecting to read that I’ve found it easier to find parking spots, nope, the Law of Attraction has yet to solve that for me.  In fact, I just come from spending 30 minutes feeling very frustrated while looking for a place to leave my car for all of 5 minutes so I could grab some lunch.  In that regards, I can’t say that I’ve been better at keeping my cool when those small things get in my way.  As far as becoming a billionaire, I feel that I’m getting close, but I haven’t had a call from a rich relative to let me know that I’ll be getting a big chunk in advance.

So if it’s not the small stuff that I’m attracting and it’s not the big stuff either, then what is it that I’ve noticed is different in my life?  By minding my feelings and aiming to feel happy even if it means tickling myself in public, I’ve noticed a significant shift in my outlook on things.  That may sound minor in comparison to what you were expecting me to attract – convenience and instant wealth.  But based on the experiences that I’ve had in the last few days, that is no small thing for me. 

Let me explain.

Last week, while I was in Hong Kong (HK), I had the benefit of meeting someone who clearly needs to, as Lynn Grabhorn says in her book Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, “open the valve” to let some happy in.  One night, while sitting outside of my hotel room so that I could work without waking up my husband, a very chatty neighbor approached me.  I let him interrupt because I was curious as to what the universe would bring to my door-step at that time of the night. (you can relax because I’m not a murder-mystery writer so you don’t have to worry about my safety)

The universe brought me a very important life lesson.  My neighbor, a pearl farmer from Seychelles (East Africa), was in HK attending the jewellery exhibition that was taking place in town.  Soon after we met, he went on to speak his mind about how he thought that HK was one of the most rotten places on earth.  He complained about the pollution, the frivolity of the people, the traffic and on and on and on he went.  I let him go on because I found his rant quite amuzing.  Like an anthropologist doing an ethnography on an indigenous tribe in Africa, there I was, doing a study on the power of perspective (on an African just as well).  Clearly, my neighbor and I were experiencing the same exact city.  Yet he was spending most of his free time cooped up in his hotel room, looking to avoid what he saw as overcrowded, polluted and noisy city streets, while I was busy seeing, tasting, and feeling new things.

Of course there was traffic and pollution and noise 24/7, but there was also a world of experiences to be lived.  On most mornings before work, I went for a walk through Victoria Park where I watched locals practice their daily Tai-Chi ritual, while others danced Abba (with a straight face) and others swam laps. I experienced new and unusual flavors at one of the city’s oldest vegetarian restaurants – which happened to be just 3 blocks away from my hotel (Tung Fong Siu Kee Yuen at 111 Wan Chai Road).  If you’re a vegan – like me – or a vegetarian and you’ve been to HK, you would know that such a spot would feel like an oasis in the midst of all the dead ducks, pig’s body parts and who knows what that are hanging from almost every other restaurant window.  On the week-end, I met a friendly local who drove me around the art galleries and antique shops on Upper Lascar Row – in a hip convertible mini-cooper.  And the greatest highlight of all was spending a morning meditating at the Chi Lin Nunnery.  Founded in the 1930s, this monastery was built in the Tang Dynasty style.  It’s all made out of wood and no nails where used in its construction.  The energy in this quiet place – which happens to be in a busy neighborhood – is both intense and calming – like nothing I’d experienced before. 

It’s questionable and hard to prove whether I attracted these experiences into my life.  But I can say that I did not go looking for any of this, because like my neighbor, I did not know that all this existed in HK.  Like him, I too could’ve stayed locked up in my hotel room during my free time.  But I found that somehow, these flavors, sights and sounds flowed into my life – quite effortlessly.

Now that I’m back in Sydney, feeling energized and fulfilled from my trip, I plan to do exactly what I’ve been doing – feeeling happy no matter what.  

Stay tuned.

The method behind my job-switching madness (The Secret)

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I’ve been asked more than once why on earth do I switch jobs so often.  To set the record straight, in this post I’ll let you in on the biggest secret of my career so that hopefully a. people stop dropping their jaws when they hear that I’ve had 12 jobs in ten years and b. you learn a few tricks that will benefit your own career.

The main reason I consider myself a strategic job-hopper and not a hopeless one is because at my core I am an entrepreneur.  Let me explain.  Aside from being born into a family of enterprise builders (who have set up multiple manufacturing plants of 200 + employees), since the age of five I have been setting up businesses.  (Click here to find out more about my mango stand).  But as a college graduate, when the time came for me to make a living for myself, it made more business sense for me to get a job than to set up a business.  That’s when I became the first adult in two generations of my family to be an employee.  Because until that point I’d only either worked with my family’s businesses or owned my own, I only knew about business ownership not employee-hood. So by default I viewed my career just as I viewed a business venture and approached it in similar ways.  I’m far from being perfect, but I believe that my entrepreneurial view of my career is what has driven me to switch jobs at the rate that I have – and to succeed because of it.

To share the wealth, below are the main philosophies and strategies that have guided my career for the past ten years:

  1. I work with an employer, not for them.  In essence I see myself as an employee-owner, not a vanilla-flavored employee who’s at the mercy of an employer.  Admittedly this is merely a play on words, but believing that as an employee I work with an employer not for them, has been the lynchpin of my career.  This approach to work is what allows me to feel that I’m in control of my career and the master & commander of my own ship.  And in my mind, just like restructuring is a fact of life for businesses to succeed, resigning from a job is a naturally occurring change of course, not an underhanded ship jump.  For that very reason I’ve always made it a point to exit in style and maintain the relationships that I’ve worked so hard to build with my boss and colleagues. (check out this post to find out how I exit in style)
  2. I know my key assets. Whenever I’ve considered a business opportunity I’ve performed a feasibility analysis to learn about strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (i.e. SWOT).  As an employee I’ve followed a similar logic and I’ve made it a point to frequently self-assess my key assets:  my interests, my skills (& my strengths) and my values. (If you’d like to find out what assessments I’ve used, check out this post)  Aside from being aware of my priorities at different points in time, I also know what I bring to the table and what I need to improve to get to where I want to.  Having this information about myself guides me during a job search and also increases my negotiating power during interviews.  In fact, the last three times that I changed jobs, I received pay packages that were 30% higher than my previous salary.
  3. I have a strategic career plan.  Since day one of my career I’ve made it a point to work with the end in mind.  In fact, for the past ten years I’ve been planning my career in five-year chunks.  So not only do I know where I want to be in five years I also know what I need in order to get there.  This does not mean that my final destination hasn’t changed after I’ve set it.  In fact, in ten years, I’ve changed my destination more than once.  For example, after I worked for over a year as a pastry chef fantasizing almost every day that in 5 years I’d be a top pastry chef, I realized that industrial kitchens were not a place for me.  I decided to change courses and to use my business degree to make a living.  But before I made my move, I spent time assessing my key assets and drafting a 5-year plan based on the opportunities that I could access with my non-existent office experience.  There’s also the time when I was working as a medical sales rep selling prescription drugs with a pharmaceutical company.  Selling prescription drugs was meant to be a training ground for me to be able to sell medical devices, which is where the big bucks are made in the world of medical sales (I suggest that you make a mental note of this fact).  But six months into my role selling prescription drugs, I realized that I did not enjoy chasing doctors around, no matter how good a living I had the potential of making.  Again I went back to drawing board and I dropped the idea of working with a medical device company.  Instead, months later, I accepted a job as a consultant, which still got me the big bucks that I was looking for.  Quite simply, by working with the end in mind, I’ve always had a very good idea of how long I need to stay at a job in order to get to the next job that will get me closer to where I want to be at the end of the five years.  It’s my plan that tells me when to sell and when to buy, not my mood swings or my boss’s.
  4. I approach my daily tasks systematically.  I learned to work systematically while training to be a pastry chef.  As an apprentice I learned, mostly by burning myself, that in the kitchen there’s an efficient way and a not so smart way to do almost everything – and the more senior chefs have a blast letting you know the difference. And if you insist on ignoring the rules, stuff will either burn or be late.  Both big no-no’s in the food business.  By transferring this approach to an office environment (be it a home office, a car or a cubicle), I’ve been able to consistently deliver high quality results throughout my career.  And it’s because I deliver results and have a formula to do so consistently that I’ve remained very employable – and have been able to get interviewers to look at what I bring to the table, not how little I’m likely to stay at a job.
  5. I seek to improve myself.  My ongoing search for being the best version of myself has led me to learn a series of techniques that are based on Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), Positive Psychology and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT).  By applying these techniques to my work-life, although I’m most certainly a work in progress, I have the insight and tools to change habits and behaviors that get in the way of my goals.  For those who either frown upon or walk fast past the self-improvement section of the bookstore, I suggest that you think again.  Based on the premise that knowledge equals power, my self-knowledge has certainly placed me in the seat of power of my career.

Happy days (NO matter what!)

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Here’s the deal.  At 19 I thought I was doing my mom a favor whenever I worked up a smile on my face.  (look ma’ I can smile!)  Later on I thought I was humoring my life-coach by being a good client and following her advice to look for the positive side of things.  (look coach, I can reframe!)  But after reading Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting and learning about the Law of Attraction, I now know that I am the one who stands to benefit the most – not my mom or my coach – from looking for ways to feel happy, no matter what. 

WHAT in the universe is the Law of Attraction?

Note: for some this might take some mind-bending.

My intention in sharing this with you is not to question any scientific theory or to support Quantum Physics.  Instead I intend to make your life (and mine) better by applying some simple logic.

According to the Law of Attraction, like attracts like.  Which means that positive attracts positive and negative attracts negative.  Yes, I know, according to my 9th grade physics teacher, and to Coulomb’s Law, it’s opposites that attract.  So that would mean that negative attracts positive and vice versa.  But open your mind (and put your physics book down) and think about the following.  Have you, when you’ve been in a positive mood, feeling great, willingly sought to be with a negative person?  For example at a party, when you’ve been having a blast, have you gone to hang-out with the party pooper in the corner?  My guess is that your answer will be a resounding NO WAY because you much rather be with your friends who are also jumping up and down feeling great just like you.  I’ll make this more relevant to your work-life.  If you look close enough at how your colleagues at work gather at lunch-time, it’s very likely that you’ll notice that all the complainers and whiners tend to sit at the same table.  I can speak for myself that when I was working within an organization in corporate Australia, I made it a point to avoid negative people as if they were a plague.

Now do you see what I mean?  Negative people definitely repel positive ones and positive ones attract positive ones.

Following that same logic, in order to attract more positive into our lives, we MUST feel positive.  Simply put, according to the Law of Attraction, we emit energy of the physical kind through how we feel.  Positive feelings, like when we’re feeling excited and happy, emit positive energy.  Negative feelings, like when we’re feeling frustrated or bummed, emit negative energy.  It follows that based on how we feel, positively or negatively, we attract either type of energy into our lives.  Got it? (read that one more time if you’re like me and need to know how things work before you jump into action)

And that’s exactly why it’s in your best interest (and mine) to feeel* positive – to attract positive things. 

I’m not suggesting that we need to be fake – and pretend to feel happy even when the going gets tough.  To begin with there’s a time to feel down.  Like when a parent passes away or when s*** happens, of the real kind. Feeling down at times means that you’re human – and that’s a great thing.  But also, pretending, according to the Law of Attraction will not do the trick simply because to emit the energy you must feel it.  On the other hand, intending to feel a certain way will in fact get you to shift your energy. Based on that, the key is to allow yourself to be in that down state for as little as you possibly can because quite simply, being down, although is part of the human condition, doesn’t solve anything.  Worse yet, it attracts more negative things.  In other words, when we remain in a negative state, emitting negative energy, we run the great risk of attracting into our lives more of what is making us feel sad, frustrated, angry. 

So the trick is to say to yourself – “fine, it’s okay for me to feel down, but how can I get out of this state ASAP?”

Inspired by my new-found knowledge and determined to attract all the good that the universe has stored for me, I’ve decided to spend the next 30 days (okay 27 cause I started on Saturday) feeeling happy NO matter what!

Because I’d LOVE for you to join me, here I share with you exactly what I’ve been doing.

How in the universe can you feeel happy NO matter what!?

Since I started trying to keep up my positive feeling, I’ve noticed that I’m really good at focusing on what I don’t want in life.  For example, while I was driving to the gym this morning, a driver turned unexpectedly into my lane and bam, I felt my anger rising.  And just like that, at the snap of a finger, my energy went from positive to negative.

So step 1 in getting rid of negative energy in my life is to shift my focus from what I DON’T want to what I DO want.  To do that, whenever I feel a negative emotion, like anger or frustration or anxiety, I simply observe myself get angry, frustrated or anxious and then when my temper tantrum is over, I ask myself: “What is it that I do want from this?”

In this all too common situation in my life, here’s my wish list:  I’d like for my driving not to be interrupted by clueless drivers!  I’d like for the world to be free of clueless drivers!  And I’d like the flow of positive energy to continue in my life, uninterrupted by clueless drivers.  So I see, I want to feel good.  Aha! There it is. That’s my clue.

If I want to feel good, then why don’t I just feel good?  Duh! (I can almost hear you saying).  Because a clueless driver just crossed my lane, right?  Fair enough.  But what if I could learn to somehow feel good regardless of what just happened?  I know, it’s so hard.  Believe me, I know.  I’m there with you all the time.  I’ve only being doing this for 3 days so I’m no pro. 

Thankfully there is a way for us all to shift feelings. Here are the set of techniques that have helped me survive the past three days. (thanks Lynn Grabhorn)

I hope that they enlighten you too:

1. Plan A:  Smile. To get me warmed up, I try, as hard as I can to make myself smile.  I can’t say that this is an easy thing to do.  Frankly, the last thing I feel like doing when I’m feeling angry or down is smiling.  Somehow my facial muscles don’t work.  But because I’m determined to feel happy no matter what for the next 28 days, I’ve been fighting gravity and hard.  And you know what?  I’ve been getting good results.  Whenever I force my cheeks to move up, I feel a minor rush of happiness.  And that gets me going on my way to shifting my energy.  I’m quite surprised by this finding because even though I’ve read research papers that show that when we smile, our body releases certain chemicals that make us feel good, I hadn’t experienced it first-hand.  Which simply tells me that I hadn’t tried hard enough.  And I must be smiling quite a bit lately because more than once my husband has asked me what I’m smiling about!

2. Plan B:  Ask myself if ANYTHING is worth risking attracting negative stuff into my life.  My second ammunition against negative feelings is to tell myself: “So what if (fill in with negative event such as: ‘that clueless driver cut across my lane’)? Is that event worth risking attracting negative stuff into my life – by allowing it to shift the energy that I’m emitting?” Of course not. 

3. Plan C:  Flip the switch.  In case plans A or B don’t work, I’ve developed a mental list of things that make me feel happy.  Lynn calls this technique ‘flipping the switch’.  To flip my switch back to positive, I refer to my mental list to remind myself of all the good things in my life.  And I have no doubt that if you look hard enough at your own life, that you’ll also find things to be happy about.  Do you have a trip coming up?  Did you recently win a bet?  Do you have cute nieces and nephews?  Did you recently get a gift from someone?  Did someone cute poke you on facebook?  I promise you that if you look close enough, you’ll find that you have plenty of things to feel good about.  To get me through my 30-day challenge, I developed a list of 30 things that make me feel a tingle, one for each day.

What do you say? Are you feeling up for feeling happy- no matter what for the next 30 days – and attracting all the positive things that the universe has stored for you?

(Stay tuned for another post where I’ll share with you the positive things that come into my life after I complete my 30-day challenge)

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*thanks Lynn Grabhorn – spelling it that way just feeels much better

For yu’ my friend: If you’d like to learn more about the Law of Attraction, I suggest that you read one or all of the following: The Law of Attraction by Esther Hicks, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (available in DVD too), and Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting by Lynn Grabhorn.

You become what you read

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In line with an earlier post where I talk about taking responsibility for outcomes in your career and striving to give work the best version of you, I believe that one of the best (and easiest) ways to self-actualize is through reading top-shelf publications, including books and journals – both on-line and off.

Reading – of the good kind – is perhaps one of the best things that I’ve done for my career.  That is why it irks me every time that I see a girl on the train, wearing what look like excruciatingly painful high-heels* and too much make- up for day light, holding a New Idea magazine (I prefer to call it No Idea – it’s Australia’s #1 gossip mag).   To me that train ride is a missed opportunity for her to learn something of value and do something with her life.  While I believe that a little brain candy is necessary to keep sane in life, it should by no means be something that a. one spends much time on or b. any money on.  You read right. 

My personal rule of thumb for keeping sane and staying actualized is 90/10. That means that I spend most of my life time reading worthy material and only 10% reading mind-numbing stuff.  If you’d like to stick to the infamous Pareto Principle, by all means shoot for 80/20 – or risk turning into a personality-less consumerist. 

I think I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve bought (with my own money) a beauty magazine.  (Okay, I admit that getting beauty and gossip magazines from doctors’ consulting rooms, was one of the perks of working as a medical sales representative)  However, I cannot keep track of the number of National Geographic, The Economist, Time, Business Week, Harvard Business Review, inc. and Entrepreneur that I’ve invested in. 

While I do believe that EVERY publication, whether top-shelf or not, has SOMETHING to offer, I don’t believe in looking too hard to find gold.  More so, statistics say (and don’t ask me how statisticians come up with this stuff) that you get an average of 10% from any book that you read.  So if you insist on reading crap, well, you do the math…

By far the book that has had the most positive impact on my career has been (drum roll please) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (http://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php). My intention is not to give you a summary here – my intention is to get you to get off your bum and read it if you haven’t.  I read it for the first time more than 10 years ago and some of the principles that Stephen writes about continue to guide me.  Sure, his writing can sound like a sermon at times – but for those of you looking to take your career seriously, this is the Bible. 

(I know that my dear friend James Adonis – a very successful twentysomething, would agree. Check out his new venture: www.teamleaders.com.au)

3 of Stephen’s habits that remain on the top of my mind are:

1. Be proactive.  In my world, this has meant quite literally: ‘get off your bum and go get things done for yourself – cause no-one will make things happen for you’.  Maybe that’s the reason why I get up at 5:10am every day to meditate for 20 minutes, then I read for 20 minutes and then I go to the gym for an hour.  All this is to make sure that I give my work the best version of my self.  That includes a focused mind, an actualized self and an oxygenated brain & body. 

2. Begin with the end on mind.  I remember that when I finished reading that chapter, I took out a pen and paper and wrote down what I’d like my life to look like when I looked back on my 100th birthday.  Doing that exercise sure fired me up.  That was when I realized that it was up to me to make out of my life what I wanted my life to be.   It became clear to me that if I did not know where I was going, then I’d be leaving myself for the taking of those who did know.

3. Put first things first.  I’ve taken this habit to a more practical level. The time management matrix that he offers for separating the urgent from the important is probably the best model that I’ve seen for getting things done at work. Ever since the days when I was working as a pastry chef, almost 10 years ago, I’ve been following a time-management ritual.  I plan my weeks on Thursday afternoon and my days the night before.  Every Thursday I jot down everything that I’d like to get done the following week; my to-do list.  Then I go through the list and for each item I ask myself: ‘is this urgent? or is this important? or both?’  Then I mark the urgent and important with a letter A, the important with a letter B and the urgent with a letter C. Every night of the week, to get closure on my day and to get psyched up for the next day, I go through my to-do list and re-prioritize it based on what I’ve accomplished so far.  By doing this I’m making sure that I’m focusing on what’s most important in my life – not in someone else’s.

What have you done for your mind lately?

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*For the record, I believe in wearing stilettos at work. But please, if you need to walk on hard city pavement for more than two blocks, do me a favor.  Get yourself a nice-looking shoe bag so that you can keep your high-heels in your purse.  Then change to them in the elevator – feet binding is so passé ladies!

Note: I do not and will not get any remuneration from any provider if my readers – you – buy or use any of their services…I’m just sharing the wealth cause I care about you!

Does it matter if you’re a Baby Boomer, a Gen Xer or a Gen Yer?

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(Thanks Jane for your question)

When it comes to career ownership, in my book, it really does not matter if you’re 50, 40, 30 or 20. In an interconnected world, where we are all free agents we must be able to own our career and run it like a business. For that reason the advice that I give about career ownership in this blog (and in my upcoming book), has no generational boundaries. 

To not risk being dragged by someone else’s vision or risk working towards someone else’s dreams, you need to follow a set of principles and have strategies in place.  The fact is that it’s never too late or too early to be in the seat of power of your career.

To achieve that you need to:

  1. Work as an owner-employee.  In career-speak this simply means that as an employee you should work with an employer, not for them.  In my mind, continuing to see yourself as ‘someone who works for another’ (which by the way is the dictionary’s definition of employee) is a form of self-imposed slavery. In my book that makes for cog-employees.
  2. Take full responsibility for your career growth – and do something about it.  As the one responsible for the outcomes in your career, you need to be able to change behaviours that get in the way of your goals.  I’ve personally found that by applying to my work-life a combination of techniques from Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Positive Psychology, I have been able to improve myself on an ongoing basis.  Doing so is what guarantees that I don’t get stuck in self-sabotaging patterns.
  3. Know your key assets.  Self-assessing your personality style, your skills (and strengths), your values and interests is what enables you to know what rewards motivate you and what you offer to an employer.  Aside from this information being crucial for your sense of self-worth, it’s also very powerful when negotiating your next pay-package.
  4. Have a strategic plan.  A strategic career plan is what will enable you to make sound decisions for your career.  I personally find that planning my career in 5-year chunks gives me enough vision forward yet leaves me flexibility to change my course.  Regardless of the time-frame that you use to plan your own career, what’s most important is that you set out working with the end in mind.
  5. Have systems and processes in place that support your day-to-day work.  Quite simply, having a formula for consistently delivering high quality results is what ensures that you add value to an employer.  In exchange for great work, you have the option to command more money and more benefits.