Sometimes the Smallest Changes Spark the Biggest Transformations

“How do you like your new office?” my friend asked. I had moved from a small building to a larger one and managed to find a nice little space on the second floor at the top of a winding staircase.

It didn’t take long for me to realize it was likely the ONLY small office, surrounded by much larger suites filled with employees of organizations far bigger than my own.

“I love it. It’s beautiful and quiet… Maybe too quiet sometimes,” I added.

My friend looked puzzled.

I missed walking down the halls of my old building, seeing warm smiles on familiar faces, and engaging in an occasional bit of banter.

“It’s strange,” I told her. People don’t seem to make eye contact. Everyone stares straight ahead and silently goes about their business. It’s like an unwritten code or something.”

“An introvert’s dream.” She replied.

She was right. Kind of.

As an introvert myself, I must admit I’m not one who actively seeks conversation. But something was missing. I just wasn’t feeling very connected.

A few days later I was washing my hands in the lady’s room. A woman came out of the stall and proceeded to the sink next to mine. Something welled up in me. Before I knew what I was doing, I heard myself break the silence, suddenly blurting out a clumsy greeting.

“How are you today?”

She looked up, somewhat startled, and stared blankly at me. For a moment, I was reminded of how it felt to be an awkward teenager.

“I’m fine,” she replied after what seemed an eternity. “How are you?”

“I’m great. I’m kind of new here, and I noticed that people don’t really talk to each other much – it’s like an elevator where everyone faces forward and never interacts. And I started to do that too. But I thought it might be nice to try something different today.”

Her face softened, and her eyes brightened. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just running all the time from thing to thing and so preoccupied.”

“I know that feeling,” I responded, thinking of how many times I was kind of relieved to not have to engage with anyone.

“It really is nice to just be able to talk like yourself, isn’t’ it?” she said.

I found her choice of words interesting. We both relaxed a bit and became a little more conscious. After exchanging names and talking ever so briefly, we each went our way.

And in that moment, the trajectory of my day (and perhaps that of days to come) was changed.

As I reflected on the interaction later, I realized how easy it is for all of us to just take as given the circumstances we find ourselves in – the social norms, the cultural conditioning, the perceived constraints of our day-to-day lives.

Some of those norms serve us. But every once in a while, you might recognize one you’d like to bump up against and challenge in some small, perhaps even unperceivable way.

Do it. You may find you’re not the only one who wants to break through those unwritten rules.

Sometimes the smallest changes spark the biggest transformations – even if only in yourself.

Here’s to busting out of your box!

When Life Throws You Curve Balls… Use Them to Improve Your Game

Have you experienced a lot of change and/or challenge recently?

The last several weeks/months ushered in a series of unfortunate events in my life that had me reeling a bit.  But I learned a few things in the process that helped me get through it all and bounce back stronger. Thought I’d share that in this week’s video…

As Robert Frost once said, “The best way out is always through.” I’ve learned that some of life’s richest lessons are learned through adversity. And what you learn in your personal life benefits you professionally (and vice versa).

We tend to want to move through unpleasant circumstances as quickly as possible, but there is something to be said for pausing long enough to absorb the wisdom they awaken within you. Because those situations always come with gifts that must be unwrapped to be fully received.

If you’re grappling with a challenge right now, I wish you peace, courage, resilience, and faith. You’ve likely been through worse – and you’ll come out the other side better.

Here’s to using life’s curve balls to improve your game!

How to Stay Cool When Things Get Hot at Work (and life itself)

 

There are those days…

You know the ones – when everything seems to hit the fan all at once.  Sometimes it’s just work, and other times it happens across other areas of your life too.  Maybe it’s a bad day. But it could be a tough week, tough month, tough… year?

In times like that, it’s like someone turned up the heat and left it on full blast far too long (kind of like the record-breaking temperatures we had in Phoenix over the entire month of July).

Everything seems to take more effort than it used to. The pressure increases and your energy declines.  It might be so hot that you lose your cool and become impatient with people and things (or yourself) in a way that makes things even worse.

If you can relate to any of this, you’ll likely enjoy my latest article in Brainz Magazine, How to Survive Tough Times at Work – Three Tips to Help You Come Out On Top.

 And if you’d like more on how to not only survive but thrive during your most challenging times (both at work and at home), check out The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed: The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius. Registration is now open!

This program integrates much of the work I’ve done coaching executive clients over the last 25+ years into a thirteen-week curriculum and is especially appropriate for high-achieving professionals experiencing high levels of stress, pressure, and overwhelm.

The fall session will kick off on Thursday 8/31 and run through 11/16.  To maximize individualized attention and group interaction, enrollment will be limited to ten people and will close on Friday 8/18.

Learn more and reserve your seat here.  Attend with a friend or colleague and you’ll both get $500 off the registration (email me to take advantage of that.)

Want to talk to a real person to get your questions about the program answered?  Click here to schedule a brief call directly with Diane.

Here’s to keeping your cool and performing at your best – even in the hottest of times!

Feeling stuck? Refocus on your GOAL…

 

Research indicates that 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by the beginning of February.  And if you’re thinking to yourself, “That’s why I don’t ever SET them,” you are not alone.

BUT… we all have goals and dreams and visions that are important to us.  And achieving them isn’t always easy.  If you’re feeling stuck or stymied, you may begin to get discouraged.  You might judge yourself or beat yourself up – which certainly doesn’t help the situation.

But the solution for getting back in the game and on the path to achievement may not be as difficult as you think.  Perhaps all you need do is refocus on your goal, or better yet shift your focus to something even more compelling…

This video is about getting back in the game after you’ve lost some of your steam – or when your best laid plans have gone awry.  I’ve shared from my own personal experience (one that seems quite common) what I’ve found to be the biggest derailer – and how to avoid and/or overcome it.

Why refocus on your goal?  Because your dreams, visions, and heartfelt intentions are too important to let feeling stuck get in the way.  Watch the video to learn a powerful approach for getting out of the mire and back on the road to success.

And if you’d like more guidance on how to follow through on your most important intentions, visions and dreams – download my special report: Why Real Leaders Don’t Set Goals… (and what they do instead). 

You’ll learn:

1.) why goals in and of themselves are insufficient

2.) a simple, compelling, and far more effective approach to achievement

3.) how to minimize the chance that your plans will be derailed

4.) how to master your mindset to achieve your dreams.

 Here’s to your success!

 

This caught me off guard…

 

Quite ironically, right after I launched my newest on demand course on navigating change, challenge and uncertainty, I was hit by a sudden (and quite undesired) curve ball.

I filmed a little video before the holidays to capture some insights that came to me through the experience.

No matter how aspirational and planful you are as you usher in the new Year, life will inevitably bring unexpected twists and turns.  My hope is that this video can help you bounce back from the kind of change you would never actually wish for yourself.

Eckharte Tolle once said, “Some changes look negative on the surface, but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

Here’s to EMERGING in 2023!

Diane

P.S. You can find my latest on-demand course here:  Navigating Change, Challenge & Uncertainty: How to Unleash Unprecedented Performance in Unchartered Territory

3 Things I Learned in My Garage About Navigating Change

 

Sometimes the greatest insights come to you in the strangest places.

In the midst of inevitable twists and turns, I found myself in my garage…

…surrounded by relics of the past and inklings about the future.

And I realized a few things about the nature of change – and how best to endure it.

So I filmed a little video to capture these thoughts for you…

 

Why Believing Is Seeing – Regardless Of Proof

One day when my kids were younger, they had a play date with some friends. I heard one of them telling the other that Santa Claus wasn’t real. My son, who was eight years old at the time, vehemently defended the jolly old man, with elaborate explanations of why something not easily proven was worth believing in anyway.

It reminded me of my own childhood.

I had to laugh, as I flashed back to one of my own experiences with a little girl in my neighborhood who made fun of me for believing that a fat man in a red coat actually came down my chimney every year. I was so mad that, when she wasn’t looking, I broke all her crayons and put them back in the box (and spent the rest of the holiday season worrying that I had just put myself on the naughty list).

I have since learned that it is okay if everyone doesn’t believe what I do.

And if he hasn’t already, my son will learn that too. But he is the one who taught me something that day. I was buoyed by his unwavering belief and faith in something he’s never really seen and inspired by his example.

I can’t help but believe that those who trust in something magical will experience that magic in ways the skeptics will not. And I think the same is true in life.

There will always be someone around to tell us what cannot be done.

And there will also always be people who, upon being so told, will do it anyway. Their faith, determination, and belief in something they have yet to see will allow them to persevere until their dreams become reality.

One of my favorite authors on personal and spiritual growth, Alan Cohen, once said “You do not need to get others to believe in your truth. You just need to live it.”

Trust, faith, and perseverance go a long way.

In a world where much is uncertain and the old success formulas no longer seem to work, I believe it is more important than ever to trust in what we know to be true in our hearts, even if our minds cannot figure it all out. It may go against what we have been conditioned to believe, see, and do – but perhaps this makes it even more important.

To bust out of old paradigms that keep us from realizing our greatness, perhaps we need to stop questioning what is possible and start challenging our limits instead. As we do, we will begin to make manifest that which we previously only dreamed was possible and, through our example, show others the way to rise.

Wishing you the happiest of holidays and a bright blessed New Year!

 

If you want to enjoy more meaning and fulfillment along with stellar results all year round (both at work and at home),  The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed:  The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius can help you achieve it.

This exclusive 13-week leadership development experience goes beneath the surface of what most programs deliver, to help you learn to unleash genius in yourself and those you lead.

The Spring 2022 session will kick off in April.  Enrollment will be limited to eight participants.  Join the waiting list to have access to registration before it opens to the public.

Wishing you and yours a beautiful and blessed holiday!

 

 

 

 

 

From Frustration to Fruition: What to Do When Nothing Goes Your Way

 

Do you ever find yourself in a place where, despite your best efforts, nothing seems to be working out the way you want it to? 

Maybe you have an amazing idea that you just can’t seem to get off the ground.  Perhaps you have made progress toward a goal and suddenly feel stymied and blocked or unable to gain the resources or support you need to move forward.  You might be navigating some kind of transition that has left you wondering whether that next thing for you is ever going to materialize.

When obstacles seem to be coming from all directions and you just keep running into walls, it’s easy to lose hope and become consumed with frustration. 

Sometimes it seems that the only options are to throw in the towel or buckle down and try harder.  We are conditioned as a society to do the latter, and sometimes that is what it takes to bust through the barriers that confront us.  But when we continue to run into setback after setback, it may serve us better to stop for awhile and survey the territory before we take action again — as we may find that what we thought was a frustrating delay is actually integral to getting us where we want to go.

Have you ever had a customer that wanted something that required a great deal of preparation but didn’t want to take the time to build the necessary foundation?  If you proceeded as directed,  in time the solution could go up in smoke leaving that customer worse off than they were before — or in the very best case, less than satisfied.   But the customer wasn’t interested in hearing about why the delays were necessary and instead kept pushing and pushing for results.

Sometimes when we force things to happen, we are like that customer who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and insists on powering up the engines before they are finished being built.   He creates so much noise and distraction that it makes it difficult to focus on what truly needs to happen in order to get back on course.  That’s what our frustration and anxiety does to us when we get caught up in it.

There is a part of you that knows exactly what you need to do to succeed in any given area – a part of you that has knowledge of a bigger picture and all the moving parts necessary to bring your grandest goals and visions to fruition.   

While the part of you that is like the impatient customer that wants what he wants, this bigger part of you knows intuitively that things are happening in just the right way to yield the best results.  The bigger part of you can only communicate to you in nonlinear ways — through feelings and flashes of insight that leave your logical mind wanting more details.  And it only communicates in the present moment.

To tap this bigger part of yourself, you must learn to become attuned to what is going on in this moment, trusting that in the midst of frustrating delays and setbacks there may be something right in front of you that needs your attention.  If you do not give it your attention you may continue to experience even more resistance and frustration.  But if you move into it, you will find exactly what you need in order to move forward.

When I was writing my book, The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming a Real Leader, I hit a wall and experienced the dreaded writer’s block.  I powered through it, forcing myself to write in spite of my lack of inspiration.  Before long I realized that I simply couldn’t continue and put the manuscript away for awhile.  In the months that followed, I had a number of experiences that were critical to writing the book.  When my inspiration was renewed and it was time to return to my writing, I ended up throwing away everything I made myself write under my own duress, as it was flat, mechanical and uninspired.  I replaced it with stories about the previous months’ experiences.  As I wrote, the words seemed to fly onto the page and I was back in my flow again.

You too may be in a state where before you are ready to move onto the next phase of your greatest vision, goal or initiative, you must experience something that will give you just what you need to succeed.  So when you feel that frustration, see if you can look at your situation with eyes that see beyond what appears to be limitation and perceive the gifts it is bringing you.  It could be the very springboard you need to get you back in your game.

And if you’d like to learn more about how to ride the waves of life’s challenges and setbacks with greater effectiveness and less stress, consider enrolling in The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed: The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius. This 13-week leadership development program is designed to help high achieving professionals bring out their very best performance in a way that fills them up rather than depleting them – and allows them to make a bigger impact doing meaningful, inspiring work while leading others to do the same.

Though the fall session is now full, you can join the waiting list (with no obligation) to get first dibs on spring session seats before registration opens to the public.

 

 

How to Keep Life’s Obstacles from Stopping You

Imagine that you’re cruising along in your car headed smoothly toward your destination. And then traffic slows to a stop.

Is there an accident ahead? Construction? Some other impediment?

No worries. Your GPS has an alternate route that’ll get you exactly where you need to go.

What if you could find your way around life’s roadblocks with the same ease and efficiency as your GPS system?

You can!

The video below will show you how.

It’s an excerpt from The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed: The Real Leaders Guide to Accessing the Freedom and Flow of Your Authentic Genius, an exclusive 13 week leadership development program kicking off next week, on 9/22/21. If you’re thinking about attending there are still a couple of spots available. Click here for more information or to reserve your seat.

 

 

GPS image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay.

Lightening Your Load: Mind Over Matter

Have you ever noticed that your experience  directly reflects  your state of mind?  When your mind is cluttered, your surroundings have a way of mirroring that.  Feelings of being scattered are often accompanied by piles of unfinished business everywhere you look or lists and notes of things to do that seem to multiply. 

When you feel heavy and bogged down, everything you do will feel harder and more cumbersome.

You may think that the way you feel is a result of your experiences, and that is true — the more you have to do, the more overwhelmed you will feel.  But the reverse also applies — the more overwhelmed you feel, the more you are likely to approach things in a way that draws them out — perhaps by procrastinating, making things more complicated than they need to be, or using more energy to resist and worry than it would take to actually get things done.  If you become fixated on evidence that suggests you can never rise above the way you are feeling, you’ll trap yourself in vicious circles where you will continue to see that which you long to rise above and feel the frustration of not being able to break free.

In fact, your frame of mind with everything you do will have a direct effect on whether the experience of doing it will be exhilarating and satisfying or frustrating and heavy. 

The stories we tell ourselves have a way of coming true – “There’s just way too much to do and not enough time to do it.  I’m too busy  to do anything fun, to take time out for my family, friends or myself, to ever get beyond the day to day and into those things I dream about…”  The way out of the traps we set for ourselves is to start not with our experiences, but our thoughts. 

One day a while back, I turned into my driveway and caught sight of the hedges that needed trimming.  “Wouldn’t it be fun to drop everything and go cut those right now – to just get out there and work in the yard for awhile?” I found myself thinking.  And then I laughed as I realized that this task that seemed so enjoyable compared to the list of things on my plate at that moment was one of the very things I was dreading a few weekends ago.  The task itself hadn’t changed, just the way I was thinking about it.

And it hit me that perhaps there was a way to transform all the things I needed to do that day  — which were really bringing me down — into experiences that could be lighter and simpler — and maybe even fun.  The key had to be in the way that I approached them – in what I was believing about them, and what I was focusing on as I did them.  As I became aware of my attitude toward the tasks at hand, I realized that I was more fixated on checking the box than I was on enjoying the experience.  And I was also swept up in the belief that the work ahead of me was going to be hard, onerous and complicated.

What if all that changed?  What if instead of believing I had to get everything done perfectly, I just played at things, took myself a little less seriously, and lightened up a bit?  And what if instead of believing I needed to get it ALL done, I just focused on what was most important — most aligned with the highest priorities in my day and in my life? And what if instead of driving solely toward the outcome, I allowed myself to be fully present in every moment that led up to it? Hmm.

Marcel Proust once said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”  And I have also heard it said that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

The fundamental shift must come not in what you do, or even how you do it, but what you are thinking, believing and allowing yourself to feel about what you are doing. 

To this end, setting an intention or statement of our desired experience can be very powerful.  If what you want is greater freedom and joy, more meaning and satisfaction and heightened effectiveness, you must align your thoughts around enjoying those experiences before you even start.  And you need to become diligently aware of the degree to which your thoughts stay aligned with your overarching intention.  When they drift, you can come back to them, remember what you really want, and align yourself with the state you wish to be in once again.

In this way, you can break the vicious cycle of allowing your experiences to bring you down in ways that result in more lousy experiences  —  and begin anew.  You consciously align your thoughts with what you most want, rather than letting them denigrate into the negative emotional states you seek to rise above.  Your actions align with your thoughts, and you’ll find yourself coming up with creative ways to simplify, get focused on what is most important and get it done while enjoying yourself in the process – and sharing your joy with everyone around you.

Looking for a better way to lighten your load?

Check out the The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed: The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius, an exclusive 13-week leadership development program designed to help high achieving (and often overextended) leaders minimize pressure and stress so they can access their best work — and enjoy their lives more both on and off the job.

Registration for the fall session is now open!  The program will kick off on Wednesday 9/22 and go through early December.  To maximize individualized support and interaction, enrollment is limited to 8-10 people.  Click here for more information or to reserve your seat.