Make your Fridays fountainheads for progress

 

Ahhh Friday – a day that marks the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend. It’s a time we instinctively want to slow down a bit and enjoy things a little more.

And it’s a great day to zoom out, connect the dots of your experiences – take stock of what you’ve accomplished over the week and zero in on what you’ll tackle in the coming week after you’ve had a little rest and relaxation.

Taking the time to do that is one of the most valuable ways to leverage the progress you’ve made and ensure you can continue to build on it.

But that’s often easier said than done. If you ever feel you can’t afford to slow down because you have too many balls in the air, you might forfeit that opportunity and just keep moving.

And the problem with that is if you continue that pattern, it’ll perpetuate a way of thinking and acting that’ll run you into the ground.

Because you can only do that so long before it catches up to you and begins to impact not only your energy and ability to enjoy your work, but also your effectiveness. You risk getting to the point where you are running like mad, but not really getting anywhere near where you want to go.

As you connect the dots, you learn from your experiences how to most effectively use your time… what to continue doing, and what to tweak.

If you can reflect on some of your experiences, you can also gain valuable insight into what you can do differently next time to be more effective.

And as you check in with your vision and desired future you can ensure that the steps your taking are going to get you there – and make any necessary course corrections.

So, I challenge you to start using your Fridays as fountainheads for progress. Even just designating thirty minutes can make a significant impact. You can begin today.

And if you’d like some support in making that a consistent practice, consider joining me for The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track kicking off on Friday September 20.

Every Friday for seven weeks you’ll have the opportunity to engage with like-minded people who are learning approaches for leveraging their progress, overcoming old limiting habits and beliefs, and bridging the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

You’ll also have lifetime access to seven video modules of powerful and practical content that will be covered each week.

Today marks day 14 in the countdown to kickoff! You can get more information and save your seat at UnleashtheExtraordinary.com. Email Support@DianeBolden.com for group or alumni enrollment.

Three quick tips for unleashing your Genius

 

 

Michelangelo once said, “The masterpiece is already in the marble.”

The same is true for each of us. Our chief task as leaders is to chip away at the stuff that surrounds the masterpiece… habits, patterns, and approaches that no longer work – and inaccurate beliefs about yourself, others, and what’s possible.

But how do you do that? For Day 15 of the countdown to the September 20 launch of The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track, below are some tips taught in the program that’ll help you unearth your GENIUS by chipping away at the extraneous stuff that keeps you from accessing it.

1) PAY ATTENTION.

You’re bound to fall into old habits and patterns but the more you become aware of them, the less compelling they become. At first you may not catch yourself until after the fact, but over time you will find you can interrupt the cycle sooner and ultimately choose a different response altogether.

2) TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.

The next time you have an experience that doesn’t go the way you’d like it to, replay it in your mind and try to identify the role you played in it. Ask yourself what you would do differently next time.

Then envision what that would look and feel like if you were to have the same situation, but a more favorable response. In this way, you can allow your experiences to teach and mold you into something better – even the ones that are less than optimal.

3) IDENTIFY WITH THE MASTERPIECE, NOT THE MARBLE.

You are not your thoughts, your patterns, or your habits. You are much bigger than that. Once you are aware of how those things are operating in your life, you free yourself up to choose new ones. Rather than chipping away at the marble, you’ll begin to grow from within it, busting through the constraints that no longer hold you captive.

Instead of dwelling on your limitations, focus on your strengths. Instead of putting your attention on the things you don’t want to see, identify with what you do want and recognize that you have the ability to achieve it.

As you begin to clear the debris from your view, you’ll see things in a whole different light – including the people you lead. They are far more likely to take their cues from your actions than your words. And when you begin to help them identify with their masterpieces too, there is nothing you cannot achieve.

If you’re interested in additional strategies for inspiring and motivating yourself and others to higher levels of performance and impact – as well as greater fulfillment both on and off the job, come join me in the Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track, kicking off on 9/20.

This 7-week leadership development program includes video and live training as well as coaching that’ll help you break out of limiting patterns of habit and thought and lead from a Genius mindset. Get more information and reserve your seat at UnleashtheExtraordinary.com. Email Support@DianeBolden.com for group or alumni enrollment.

The hidden forces that keep us stuck

 

Did you know that even your best efforts to make change are often counteracted by equal and opposite forces that’ll keep you stuck? But once you become aware of them, you can dismantle those forces and move unobstructed into your most brilliant future.

This short video will give you a leg up on doing just that. It marks Day 16 in the countdown to the kickoff of The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track, which launches on September 20.

If you want to deactivate the forces that are keeping you stuck, consider joining me in this 7-week leadership development program designed to help high-achieving and often overextended executives break out of limiting habits and patterns and lead from a Genius mindset.

It’s a compilation of approaches, techniques, and tools that my most successful executive coaching clients have utilized over the years. Through a combination of video and live training and coaching, you’ll learn to rise above stress and pressure and take your performance to the next level – while enjoying your life more both on and off the job.

Get more information and save your seat at UnleashtheExtraordinary.com. Enroll with a friend or colleague and you’ll both save $500.

Here’s to your success!

Diane

P.S. Alumni are eligible to re-enroll at a small fraction of the cost. Email Support@DianeBolden.com for alumni or group enrollment.

Why what we’re doing isn’t working

 

Have you ever felt like you’ve been working hard to change a troublesome dynamic in your work (or your life) but haven’t really made much progress?

Maybe you’ve tried to create better work-life balance but found yourself sucked back into situations where you felt more overwhelmed than ever.

Or you’ve vowed to stop specific behaviors or avoid certain things that aren’t aligned with the results you most want but find that you can’t resist falling back into old patterns.

Or you’ve tried to implement a new personal or professional improvement regimen but can’t seem to get it to stick.

This four-minute video will give you insight into why some of your most well-intentioned attempts may not be working as well as you’d like. It marks Day 17 in the countdown to the kickoff of the Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track launching on September 20.

If you’d like to learn how to make the kind of change that sticks and leads to both satisfying and sustainable results, consider joining me in this 7-week leadership development program, designed to help high-achieving (and often overextended) executives break out of limiting habits and patterns and lead from a Genius mindset.

It’s a compilation of approaches, techniques, and tools that my most successful executive coaching clients have utilized over the years. Through a combination of video and live training and coaching, you’ll learn to rise above stress and pressure and take your performance to the next level – while enjoying your life more both on and off the job.

Get more information and save your seat at UnleashtheExtraordinary.com. Enroll with a friend or colleague and you’ll both save $500.

Here’s to your success!

Diane

P.S. – Alumni are eligible to re-enroll at a small fraction of the cost. Email Support@DianeBolden.com for group or alumni registration.

Master Your Mindset and Achieve Your Grandest Visions

 

Imagine that you’ve stepped into your car, turned the key, and shifted into drive. You’ve got your destination in mind, have charted a course to get there and are eager to be on your way. But when you step on the gas, your car only goes a fraction of the speed you were anticipating. Frustrated, you push harder. Your engine revs, but the car doesn’t go any faster.

And then you realize you forgot to take off the parking brake.

Trying to achieve your desired state without getting into the right mindset is a lot like driving with the parking brake on. No matter how grand your vision or bulletproof your plan, it’ll impede your progress and lead to frustration.

What is mindset and why is it important to achieving a desired state?

Mindset is simply the established set of attitudes you hold toward any given thing. It’s a product of what you are believing about yourself and others, what you (or they) are capable of, and what is or isn’t possible, among other things.

Your mindset is important because it determines what you see and consider to be real. And it determines how you’ll behave as a result.

Studies show that our brains process a small percentage of the data we take in.

To make sense of what is happening around us, we focus on what we believe to be true and screen everything else out. So, if you have a belief that something isn’t possible, you’ll give far greater attention and weight to data that suggests it cannot be done than you’ll give to information, encouragement or even proof that suggests it can.

And what you will experience is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. As Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

So, it’s important to be aware of what you’re believing about the things you endeavor to create, achieve, or become – as well as what you’re believing about yourself and your ability to succeed.

Often our doubts and misgivings are the product of messages we’ve internalized without ever really examining them. When you become aware of a limiting belief and the impact it’s having on what you most want, it begins to lose its power.

And often, when you take the time to examine those beliefs you’ll realize they just aren’t true.

With practice, you can interrupt old, worn-out thoughts that aren’t aligned with your desired outcome or behavior and substitute them for new thoughts that are.

And ultimately, you’ll learn to shift over to a new way of thinking, which will propel you into a new way of acting — one that will help you get where you most want to go.

 If you’d like some support mastering your mindset, consider joining me for my 7 week leadership development program kicking off on September 20. The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track will allow you to break out of limiting habits and patterns and lead from a genius mindset.

It’s a compilation of approaches, techniques and tools that my most successful executive coaching clients have utilized over the years. You’ll learn to rise above stress and pressure and take your performance to the next level while enjoying your life more both on and off the job.

Reserve your seat at UnleashtheExtraordinary.com. Enroll with a friend or send a group of people from your organization and save $500 per person.

Here’s to your success!

Diane

P.S. Have you already been through the Pinocchio Principle Unleashed program? Alumni are eligible to re-enroll at a special rate of 80% off registration. And if you register with a guest, they’ll get $500 off the cost of their enrollment.

Email  Support@DianeBolden.com for group or alumni enrollment.

Is the way you’re working not really working for you?

 

 

I’ve been talking with a lot of people who feel like the way they’ve been working over the last several years just isn’t working for them anymore.  Can you relate?

Some had become accustomed to seventy and eighty-hour work weeks.  They were used to pushing through exhaustion, getting to the end of the day with nothing left in the tank, and starting the next one with very little sleep.  Their family life suffered, as well as their own sanity.

Work they once enjoyed had begun to suck the life out of them.

Covid brought things to a head for a lot of us.  We were reminded of our own mortality – of the preciousness of life, and our desire to live it fully.  It seeded a desire to seek greater freedom and fulfillment in our work and our lives and to create necessary change.

But for many (maybe even you?), there is still a compulsion to push harder even though you’ve reached a point of diminishing returns. Perhaps you’ve slipped off your groove and seem to be spinning your wheels, going faster than ever but not really getting anywhere – except more stuck.

If this is true for you, it’s not your fault.  We have been conditioned to believe the harder we work and the busier we are, the more successful we’ll be… and that slowing down to take care of ourselves is a sign of weakness.

Old habits, patterns and beliefs die hard.  But they can be replaced with better ones.

I invite you to participate in a think tank that is eager to find a better way, to unlearn old self-defeating habits and patterns and replace them with new ones, and in so doing unleash genius in yourself and others.

You can find out more about this groundbreaking 7-week leadership development program kicking off on September 20 at UnleashtheExtraordinary.com.

Here’s what a previous participant had to say:

“I’ve really benefitted from the tools and approaches taught in The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed program and often found I was able to immediately apply a concept or tool covered in a lesson or a group meeting to something unfolding at work.  I’ve kept myself from falling into traps that used to keep me overextended and replaced old unconscious ways of working with better communication, prioritization, delegation and daily routines.

Integrating what I’ve learned in the program has also helped me stay positive and not get pulled down by things around me – and as a result have a beneficial impact on others as well. I’m living my life much more consciously and intentionally both at work and home and feeling so much happier, even as lines between work and family are becoming increasingly blurred.

I’m thrilled that people in my team have also gone through the program and will continue to do so, because I believe it’s helped us restructure and reinvigorate the way we do business to maximize our strengths and better serve our customers.”

Julie Patrick, Senior Account Executive, Employer Advocates

Why your greatest opportunities may come disguised as obstacles

 

Ever wonder why some of your greatest opportunities come disguised as your most formidable obstacles?  Here’s a story of how an experience I feared would shut me down was actually the missing piece I needed to take my work to the next level…

 

For more on leveraging life’s curve balls to get where you really want to go, check out my seven-week leadership development program kicking off on Friday, September 20, The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track.

This hybrid video-based and live program will allow you to break out of limiting habits and patterns and lead from a genius mindset. It’s a compilation of approaches, techniques and tools that my most successful executive coaching clients have utilized over the years. You’ll learn to rise above stress and pressure and take your performance to the next level while enjoying your life more both on and off the job.

Reserve your seat at UnleashtheExtraordinary.com. Enroll with a friend or send a group of people from your organization and save $500 per person.

Here’s to your success!

Diane

P.S. Have you already been through the Pinocchio Principle Unleashed program? Alumni are eligible to re-enroll at a special rate of 80% off registration. Email Support@DianeBolden.com for group or alumni enrollment.

What if the setback is actually the springboard?

I used to believe things happened in a linear way – first this, then that; one building block upon another in a specific order; cause and effect.

I’ve since realized that achieving a larger vision or desire often triggers a chain of seemingly disjointed events that is in reality very connected.

It’s like watching a movie of a glass shattering in reverse motion. The pieces come from all directions, seemingly unrelated, to assemble into a perfect whole.

Each piece is absolutely necessary, in and of itself incomplete and incomprehensibly connected to a bigger picture.

There are often ups and downs and unanticipated occurrences.  And these seemingly divergent paths are absolutely necessary for us to experience the totality of our vision.

Sometimes we’re faced with trials that prepare us as leaders to help others work their way through those challenges – or to learn something we’ll need to know to flourish in our future endeavors.

We may not realize the significance or relevance of these experiences until much later, when in retrospect we become aware of the distinct reason we needed to endure any given challenge, setback, delay, or what originally felt like an irrelevant nuisance.

These obstacles give us a greater perspective on who we are, a larger appreciation for where we’ve been and where we’re going, and compassion for others who experience the same things we have along the way.

In dealing with these challenges, we realize that we’re far greater than we thought we were. And as leaders, we can help others appreciate and leverage their own chaos as well.

Taking the time to connect the dots of your experiences (even the disappointing or frustrating ones) can lead to some powerful insights about what life may be preparing you for.

It can also generate the resilience and regeneration necessary to work through those obstacles with greater ease and grace.

What’s irritating you right now?

Perhaps the experience you’d rather put behind you contains the very thing you need to get where you ultimately want to go.

The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track program kicking off on September 20 can help you make the most of anything life throws at you – not only for yourself but also in service to others. Here’s what Karen Kurtz of Dolese had to say about it:

“What I liked most about The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Program was that it gave me “permission” to take time out of my day to think about leadership, productivity, habits, etc. and really dig inside and reflect on obstacles that were preventing me from moving forward and the tools I could use to overcome them. The program goes beyond simple leadership principles and jargon and really helps you look inward into what you want and what you want to be. I would recommend it to anyone who needs to sharpen their tool belt and reconnect with their true leadership style.”

For more information or to save your spot, go to UnleashtheExtraordinary.com.

Here’s to your success!

Diane

P.S. Attend with a friend or colleague and you’ll both save $500 on the cost of registration.

Do you work for an organization that has a budget for leadership development? Download the business case for completing the program, which spells out seven powerful ways your organization will experience a return on its investment

Feeling constrained at work (and life)?

 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re at the mercy of your environment, you may be craving more freedom in your work (and your life). Do you ever…

…feel encumbered by everything on your plate and worry that if you slow down for a minute everything could come crashing down?

…experience pressure to achieve stellar success and believe you’re only as good as your last accomplishment?

…get preoccupied with what people – your boss, peers, subordinates, even your customers think of you and exert a lot of energy trying to manage their perceptions?

…feel constrained by corporate politics and compelled to say and do things to keep yourself safe, while holding back on sharing what you really think (or who you really are)?

Most of us occasionally think and act in ways that keep us feeling trapped because it may seem doing so leads to success (or prevents “failure”). But despite your best efforts, that automatic reaction will keep you from what you most want – and eventually suck the life out of you.

There is a wiser, stronger part of you that’ll show you a better way. It’s present and playful, creative and courageous, and capable of achieving extraordinary things.

We’re conditioned to keep this version of ourselves at bay, though it offers our truest source of sustainable fuel. We often don’t even realize what great lengths we go to hold ourselves down.

What would it look like if you let more of this side yourself come out at work?

Imagine a reality where you…

… are less preoccupied and more present, have clarity to efficiently and effectively get the most important things done, and access innovative solutions that would otherwise elude you.

…are buoyed by energy, enthusiasm and confidence rather than overcome with fear and doubt.

…worry less about what people think of you and enjoy stronger, deeper connections with people who are important to you, allowing you to have greater influence and stronger relationships.

…bring more of who you really are to what you do, allowing your organization and everyone around you to benefit from your unique perspective, talents and wisdom – and through your example unleash the talent and passion of people around you.

That is a state of freedom and flow. And it’s entirely within your reach. The first step is simply to envision what that would feel and look like in your life and open yourself to the possibility of achieving it.

If you’d like some support accessing and sustaining that way of working and living, consider joining me in my upcoming program kicking off on September 20.

The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track: The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius is a seven-week leadership development program designed for high achieving professionals who are ready to reclaim their freedom, unleash their Genius, and through their example pave the way for others to do the same. Registration is now open.

You can read more about it at UnleashtheExtraordinary.com

P.S. Do you work for an organization that has a budget for leadership development? Download the business case for completing the program, which spells out seven powerful ways your organization will experience a return on its investment.

How to Break Out of Overwhelm and Lighten Your Load

 

 

Have you ever noticed that your experience directly reflects your state of mind?

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

You may think the way you feel is a result of your experiences, and that’s true — the more you have to do, the more overwhelmed you’ll feel. But the reverse also applies — the more overwhelmed you feel, the more you are likely to act in ways that exacerbate it. You might procrastinate, overcomplicate things, or waste energy resisting and worrying.

If you focus on evidence suggesting you’ll never rise above the way you are feeling, you’ll trap yourself in vicious circles where you’ll continue to see what you want to rise above and feel the frustration of being unable to break free.

In fact, your frame of mind with everything you do has 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. The way out of the traps we set for ourselves is to start not with our experiences, but our thoughts.

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 that end, setting an intention or statement of your desired experience can be very powerful. If you want 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 return to them, remember what you really want, and align yourself with the state you wish to be in 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. 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 Pinocchio Principle Unleashed Fast Track: The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Authentic Genius, an exclusive 7-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 Friday 9/20 and go through November 1. Visit UnleashtheExtraordinary.com for more information or to reserve your seat.