Why You Don’t Need to Have It All Figured Out

You’re busy – scurrying from one thing to the next, tending to the most pressing needs of the day. The starting gun goes off in the morning and you are off and running. It might feel like a race that you just can’t win, despite the fact that you are moving faster than ever. And the closer you get to the finish line, the farther it seems to recede into the distance.

But every once in a while something breaks through that beckons to you.

Maybe it’s the thought that life and work could be better, easier, more satisfying, less stressful. Perhaps you’re ready to take things up a notch – play at a higher level, make a bigger impact, finally wade through the minutia and get to the juicy stuff that you’ve been pushing to the back burner until all the other urgent stuff gets done.

But you may not know exactly where or how to start.

You might feel like you don’t have the time to do anything different even if you did. And until you have what you think is an executable plan, you could be inclined to continue to just do what you’ve been doing – even though it isn’t really getting you where you really want to be.

If you feel that way, I encourage you to watch the below video.

Because the place to start something new – something that feeds you and unlocks your potential and opens new doors of possibility and purpose for you – is in your mind. And despite how busy you are or how little time you have, the technique I’ll share with you in the video is something that is not only doable, but world changing.

You can break that cycle of running yourself ragged to enjoy greater effectiveness and fulfillment. Watch the video below for an example of how it’s done. And then try it for yourself.

If you want to go deeper and learn more about how to not only dream big but also bring those dreams to fruition (and overcome all the obstacles that have kept you from doing so in the past), check out The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed: The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius.

Registration for the fall session is NOW OPEN! Enrollment is limited – so save your seat as soon as you can.

Living the Dream

NOTE FROM DIANE…

Last week I did a Facebook Live video on how to overcome the three biggest obstacles to achieving your intentions, visions and goals.  The below article elaborates on some of the points I made in that video.  If you haven’t had a chance to see the Facebook Live, I encourage you to check it out.  It’s only my second one – something I’ve been inspired to do as a way of fulfilling my own personal vision for 2019.

Stay tuned (or subscribe) for more, and scroll to the end of this message for a time sensitive opportunity to work directly with me in an exclusive program that will kick off in April.  Now for today’s article…

What do you find easier – dreaming big, or finding a way to make those dreams come true? 

Most of us have more difficulty with the latter.  If you don’t, you may not be dreaming big enough.  I remember a time when one of my clients and I were musing about what makes realizing those dreams and visions so difficult.  We felt that the toughest part is connecting the vision to reality: Identifying and executing the steps that must be taken to get from here to there.

FROM VISION TO REALITY…

For years, I was convinced that having a vision and goals meant perceiving a clear and specific picture of what was to come and creating a plan that would ensure that certain milestones were met at designated intervals.  I was taught that goals had to be specific, measurable, and time bound (and have spent a good part of my career teaching others the same).  I would spend a significant amount of time wordsmithing these goals and creating something similar to a detailed project plan as though I could bend reality to my will.   And then life would happen and I’d get exceedingly frustrated when things didn’t fall into place the way I had planned.

The part of us that wants to identify a course of action that mitigates risk and controls all the variables is akin to a manager, whose responsibility is to plan, direct, organize, and control.  The challenge is that preconceived ideas of what must be and all that has to happen to bring it to fruition can never take into account all the unexpected twists and turns that each day throws at us.  So, the manager in each of us needs to take its orders from a higher authority.

FOLLOW YOUR HIGHER AUTHORITY

This higher authority is our inner leader.  The leader lives in the present, takes its cues from its inner and outer environment, and speaks to the hearts as well as the heads of its people.  It is often that part of us that rises up and recognizes when we must make a change in course in order to realize our greater visions.  It blends concrete data with intuitive hunches and moves much more fluidly.

The manager in each of us often wants to fix things and tends to place more attention on what is wrong than what is right.  It is so concerned with problems that it has a way of identifying with them and unwittingly propagating them.  The manager would have us set goals about the behaviors we want to stop, and the things about ourselves that aren’t good enough.

These goals almost always fail because they lead us to identify with the very state we wish to rise above.  We enter into them from a state of lack, and though our behaviors may temporarily change in accordance with detailed plans we have outlined for ourselves, our thoughts about who we are and what’s wrong keep us tethered and ultimately lead us to act in ways that reinforce old habits and patterns.

MOVE INTO POSSIBILITY AND POTENTIAL

The leader focuses on possibilities and speaks to that part of ourselves and others that has the capability and potential to achieve it.  It sees through the eyes of someone who has already realized their goals and visions rather than identifying with the experience of not having been able to do something in the past.  The leader in each of us knows that action follows thought and invests time in identifying limiting beliefs and trading them for something more empowering.  Rather than moving away from an undesirable place, it focuses on moving toward that which it desires to create.

With the leader in charge, the manager’s willfulness is balanced with willingness – willingness to change and adapt even the best laid plans, to reach higher, and to trust that something greater than ourselves will help us get where we most need to go.

Interested in more on how to bridge the gap between vision and reality and follow the cues of your inner leader?  The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed: The Real Leader’s Guide to Unleashing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius is coming soon!  Registration will be limited to 25 people, and I’m in the process of hand selecting participants.  If you would like to schedule a complimentary consultation call to see if you (and/or others from your organization) are a good fit, contact support@DianeBolden.com.

Why Losing Your Passion for Work is a Bigger Problem Than You Might Think

Has work become a bit of a grind?

You might tell yourself that work isn’t supposed to be fun – that’s why they call it work. But when you spend the majority of your waking hours just getting through the day or counting down to the weekend, you have a bigger problem than you might think.

Most of us don’t start our professions that way, but over the years disappointment, frustration and pressure can lead to disillusionment, disengagement, and burnout. Lack of passion and joy on the job will hit you hard in three major areas:

1. Personally
2. Professionally
3. Organizationally

Let’s take a look at how work becoming a grind affects you personally.

You might think that as long as you can enjoy yourself after five (or six, or seven) and on the weekends, you will be just fine. But when you spend the better part of your day on a kind of autopilot, feeling like you’d rather be somewhere else, it’s hard to keep that negativity from spilling over to the rest of your life.

You may find yourself irritable, preoccupied, exhausted or just brain dead.

And whether you know it or not, that infringes on your ability to fully enjoy the things, experiences, and people in your personal life that you hold most precious.

You may even have a decent paycheck and enjoy a position of influence and status in your organization. But when the work you spend more of your waking hours doing is a continual grind, it’s easy to begin feeling as though life itself lacks meaning and fulfillment.

Perhaps you’ve made the decision (consciously or unconsciously) to put your personal happiness on the backburner in the name of your professional success and upward mobility.

Well, unfortunately lack of passion and joy on the job has a negative impact on your professional effectiveness as well. Let’s take a closer look at that.

Productivity

 You can try all you want, but when you are exhausted and overwhelmed you will work very long days spinning your wheels without getting a whole lot done. You may think you just don’t have enough time to finish everything on your plate. And while it is true that time is finite, your real problem is lack of energy.

Creativity and Problem Solving

Lack of energy makes everything take far longer than it should. It blocks you from accessing your creativity, leads you to unnecessarily complicate things, and pushes the solutions to your problems just out of reach. All of this will contribute to a feeling of being unable to get important things done, which will cause you to work longer hours and become even more exhausted.

Influence

If your job requires you to have even the slightest degree of influence over others, consider this: getting someone excited about doing something is largely a matter of sharing your enthusiasm. But enthusiasm isn’t something that is easily feigned. And when you try to fake it, you will come across as being disingenuous, which will keep others from trusting you.

It’s exceedingly difficult to get anyone — whether they are your coworkers, your direct reports, or your customers — to become excited about something you can’t muster up the passion for yourself. And while we’re on the subject of coworkers, direct reports, and customers, let’s talk about the impact lack of passion and joy on the job has organizationally.

If you are a leader of others — whether you know it or not — you are setting the tone for the entire organization.

If you are not feeling emotionally committed, passionate, enthusiastic and connected to your work and the people you partner with to do it, chances are the people you lead will not be feeling it either.

Employee Engagement

Research indicates that as much as 70% of U.S. workers are not engaged. That translates into people who are physically present on the job, but not emotionally or mentally all there. When people are disengaged they go through the motions, doing as little as possible to fly under the radar.

The Cost of Complacency

This complacency causes all kinds of problems, including low quality products and services, plummeting productivity, low creativity and innovation, strained customer relationships, intra and interdepartmental conflict, absenteeism, high turnover, and ultimately low profitability. It does little to attract key talent, and certainly does not contribute to having a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

What does that have to do with you?

Engaged employees are people who feel part of something bigger than themselves — an organization with a shared purpose that has meaning to them. And they want to work for a boss who is turned on and tuned in to the organization and them as people.

If you have no passion or joy for your own work, you will be hard pressed to inspire it in others. In fact, you could end up unwittingly sucking the joy from those who already are engaged, and/or driving them to look for work elsewhere.

In Summary

Losing your passion and joy at work has significant implications for you on three different levels:

(1) Personally. You just can’t turn it on and off like a light switch. If you are feeling a lack of passion and joy at work, chances are good it will translate into your personal life, like a dark cloud that follows you around despite your insistence that you can shoe it away. You deserve more out of life than that.

(2) Professionally. The overwhelm, frustration, and exhaustion you feel is likely keeping you from performing at your best. While you may be working very long hours, your problem is not lack of time but rather lack of energy. Lack of energy is accompanied by lack of creativity, problem solving and influence. Energy comes with passion and joy. And when passion and joy are lacking, your performance will be lacking too.

(3) Organizationally. Just as passion and joy can be contagious, so too is the lack of it. A leader’s lack of passion and joy gets translated into disengagement, both for the leader, and the followers. Disengagement negatively impacts productivity, innovation, customer satisfaction, employee recruitment and retention — and ultimately profitability.

So if you feel like work has become a grind — but not a problem you have the luxury to address right now, think again. It may well be that you can’t afford not to. Rejuvenating your passion and joy on the job is easier than you think. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to find another job.

Consider making reigniting your passion at work a priority.

And if you are interested in receiving some support and guidance, I encourage you to check out The Real Leader’s Guide to Freedom and Flow Group Intensive, an exclusive twelve-week small group mastermind/coaching program/online training course kicking off on March 20. Sign up before March 10 and receive a 15% early bird discount!

How to Create Moments of Meaning (Even in the Midst of Mania)

“You ready for the holidays?”

It’s a question people often ask each other this time of year. I don’t know if I’m ever ready – from the standpoint of having all the boxes checked, anyway.

I know there are people out there – you may be one of them – who finished their holiday shopping weeks ago, had their houses beautifully decorated on or before Thanksgiving day, and seem to find the time to send handmade cards to everyone they know. I have secretly dreamt of being one of those people, and maybe someday I will be.

I tend to identify more with those still scurrying around at the last minute. You know, the ones dashing to the mall on Christmas eve for that one last present they forgot about and return home to feverishly wrap gifts before people come over – all the while swearing that next year will be different.

What I really long for is to simply enjoy every aspect of the holidays.

It is a season of giving, sharing, and celebrating something bigger than ourselves. It brings us together and transforms our everyday lives into something sacred.

And this opportunity is always available to us.

With every gift we buy or wrap, every card we send, or every decoration we hang, we have the ability to infuse it with presence – our ability to be truly engaged not only with whatever it is we are doing, but with the bigger reason of WHY we are doing it – even if we get a late start.

Perhaps the ideal is not in being able to do more things sooner, but to put more of ourselves into the things we are able to do now despite whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.

When people pour their hearts into whatever they are doing, you can feel it. 

The cards that arrive in our mailbox that have been perfunctorily generated don’t seem to move us as much as those people have taken the time to hand write something on – even if it is just our name. Likewise, the gifts that had some element of thought in them often end up meaning more to us than those someone spent a lot of money on. The true spirit of giving is more about the spirit than the gift itself.

And the spirit of giving and celebration doesn’t have to end in December.

We have the ability to enrich every moment of our lives with it. Albert Camus once said, “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.” That means forgetting about all our preoccupations and busyness and being right here, right now – truly engaged in the purpose of whatever it is we are doing and deeply connected to whoever we are with.

In business and in life, this practice separates the most truly prosperous and successful people from all the rest. They have a knack for making others feel valued and for infusing meaning into whatever it is they do or invite others to do. They spend their time doing what is most important and pour their hearts and souls into it. As a result, they are living examples of whatever they believe most strongly in.

Perhaps this is the true art of giving, living, and leading – one that transcends holidays and spills over into our every day lives.

It’s never too late to start bringing more presence and engagement into your life amidst the frenzy of a crazy schedule and ongoing demands, despite the time of year. Stay tuned for more information on my upcoming online course and group intensive, The Real Leader’s Guide to Freedom and Flow, or click here to get on the waiting list and get first priority (with no obligation) at the limited spots that will soon be available.

Wishing you and yours a beautiful and blessed holiday!

Bringing Leadership to Life

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, The Pinocchio Principle — Being Real:  Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be, which will be released on 1/11/11 and will soon be available to pre-order.  I hope you enjoy it!

 Our foundations are shaking.  Corporations are going under.  People are losing their jobs and having difficulty finding new ones.  Frustration is finding its way into every crevice of our daily lives.  The ground that so many stand upon is crumbling.  It can be a scary time.  But these changes can also be an exciting time of adventure and reinvention.

For years, many of us have been living in ways that are inauthentic — doing jobs that are not a match for our true talents, striving to achieve pinnacles of power, prestige or wealth.  And each step has increased the chance of us falling further away from our true selves and from what truly satisfies and nourishes us.  As our foundation collapses, we are forced to ponder what is left, what truly has value, and what is actually genuine and meaningful in our lives.  This dissolving façade, while painful, enables something more powerful to emerge and bring with it gifts that will benefit all of humanity.  We are becoming real again.

With the dramatic changes the world is experiencing, perhaps now more than ever, it is time for each of us to recognize that we no longer need to rely on others to show us the way to genuine “success” — however it is to be defined.  We are wired for it.  It is in our blood, in our DNA, in our spirits.  We have everything we need to get there.  And to find ourselves, we must become engaged in the greatest adventure of our lives.  In fact, we have already begun this adventure, and through it we are reaching a place of creative tension, where the plot thickens and we are sitting on the edge of our seats to see what will happen next.  We are the stars of our own shows, the heroes of our own stories.

The changes for greater peace and true prosperity and the happiness we have been praying for are coming about.  Lasting change must come from the inside out.  Our world is made up of many nations, many communities, and at its core, many people.  The truest change must start from within each of us.  We can no longer wait for something or someone to rescue us, to solve all our problems, or to make right what is not working.

The greatest thing a leader can do is help us unearth our own authentic leadership so that we, in turn, can do the same for others.  True leadership is about bringing out the best in people.  We can all be leaders.  And we all must be.  There is something greater ready to emerge.  And it is within each of us.  It is the treasure we have been dancing around in our own backyards.

The old structures are crumbling to make way for the new.  And as uncomfortable and challenging as it is, this falling away is an essential part of our own renewal and liberation from whatever no longer serves us, to everything that allows us to bring to fruition our greatest visions and dreams.  Seeds cannot sprout from hardened ground.  The ground must first become soft and fertile.  And that is what is happening now.  The old protection mechanisms we relied upon may have kept away the things we feared, but they also kept us from our greatest selves.  In the end, we will realize we never really needed that protection anyway.  We are much stronger than we thought we were.  And now is the time to truly experience that strength, that fortitude, that determination, and that grace.

My new book, The Pinocchio Principle — Being Real:  Becoming the Leader You Were Born to Be is a road map to help you navigate the perils and possibilities of your personal odyssey.  Using Pinocchio as a metaphor, it blends wisdom, inspiration and humor and includes numerous stories and examples of personal and professional transformation as well as practical tips and tools that will help you become a true leader to others in the only way possible:  by starting with yourself.  To hear about free upcoming promotional events such as teleseminars, videos and speaking engagements, subscribe to my free monthly ezine at www.DianeBolden.com – you’ll also receive my free report on 10 Traps Leaders Unwittingly Create for Themselves – and How to Avoid Them.

Though comments are currently closed, please feel free to email me at Diane@DianeBolden.com with your feedback, questions and thoughts.  Have a specific challenge you’d like to see a post written about?  Let me know.  I’d love to hear from you!

Leader, Know Thyself

Feel like there’s got to be more to being a leader than running from meeting to meeting, repeatedly fixing the same problems, and beating your head against a wall trying to get people and things to change?

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~ Gandhi

We’ve all been to a lot of classes – whether on leadership or related subjects – where we sit passively and listen to someone teach us things from a workbook or a PowerPoint presentation. Some of these classes may have infused us with new ideas and inspirations, others may not have. Either way, the chief challenge is coming back to our daily work and implementing what we have learned. Class or no class, putting into practice the ideas and insights we get on a daily basis is a challenge. It is a challenge because it calls for us to integrate them into a way of doing things that we have established for ourselves over a long period of time.

In order to change, grow or improve in any way, we must consciously look at ourselves – at what is working and at what is not. Often we are so accustomed to running from project to project and meeting to meeting, that we aren’t even aware of the dynamics at play under the surface. This frenetic approach leads to a pattern of similar results, similar experiences, and inevitably similar frustrations, and often the feeling that there has to be more to it than this.

There is.

The truth is, you already possess within you the most significant core essentials you need in order to be successful. The question is, are you using them? And are you using them to the best of your ability? If the answer is no, it doesn’t matter how many new tools you acquire or methodologies you learn. Our chief challenge is not to continue looking to others for solutions and answers, but instead to take the time to tap that part of ourselves that remains our purest potential. The prerequisite for being an effective leader of others is to learn to lead ourselves.

This blog post is an excerpt from a longer article, titled “Leader, Know Thyself – Unearthing Your Best Work”.  Click here to read the full article, which includes practical steps for bringing out your best.  For more articles on Boosting Creativity, Productivity and Effectiveness, visit www.DianeBolden.com/solutions.  While you are there, you can subscribe to receive a new feature article each month.  You will also receive my free report on 10 Traps Leaders Unwittingly Create for Themselves – and How to Avoid Them.