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.

Harness the Power of Your Heart’s Desire

 

Consider the essence of what you most want to achieve, create, or become.  Perhaps it is not yet concrete, but rather an inkling of something that is calling to you.

Every great accomplishment begins with a dream and a vision.  It requires imagination and an openness to receive its gifts.  As Albert Einstein once told us, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”

And imagination is big and amorphous – it’s not easily captured, quantified, or broken down.  It is something that must be welcomed and nurtured.  The reward of having done so is that it will reveal itself to you in ways that make you feel alive with possibility.

We are often encouraged to set goals before we even have a vision of what we want to accomplish. But doing so deprives us of the dream that provides the fuel necessary to achieve those goals.

There is wisdom in your desire – even if you cannot yet quantify it, break it down in tangible ways, or even articulate it. In fact, sheer inklings and aspirations can become powerful seeds for the most innovative and ground-breaking accomplishments.

What is your vision? And how can you breathe life into it?

If you’d like more on how to gain the clarity necessary to envision and chart a path to your desired future, download my special report, “Why Real Leaders Don’t Set Goals (and what they do instead)”. 

Life is meant for more than checking boxes…

 

Can you remember the last time you were so excited about something that you could feel the hair on your arms or the back of your neck stand up? Or the giddiness of a five-year-old at the prospect of visiting an amusement park?

Maybe it got you out of bed in the morning or put a little spring in your step.

When the promise of a future state brings a smile to your face or makes your heart beat a little faster, lean in. Give yourself to the dream – and the dream will give itself to you, taking on a life of its own in ways that will surprise and delight you.

Author, philosopher, and civil rights activist Howard Thurman once said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

I couldn’t agree more.

What is calling to you right now? And how can you make the space necessary for it to reveal itself to you in all its grandeur?

Why SMART Goals are Often Dumb

 

Early in my career I (like many driven professionals) was prone to setting SMART goals. You know, “Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timebound”. It’s the conventional teaching we have all heard before.

But after time I came to realize that this approach leaves much to be desired – that in fact, it can actually keep us from getting where we most want to go.

Goals are something we’re encouraged to stick to. But sometimes the goals we set for ourselves no longer match the direction we find ourselves wanting to go.

When a goal no longer serves you and you stop wanting to pursue it, you may feel as though you’ve failed. However, the real failure might well be what happens when you stick to a goal that is no longer a fit with what you want, who you are, and the person you are becoming.

Getting where you want to go requires that you have an intense desire to get there. The pleasure and satisfaction of your destination — and your journey — need to be greater than the pain and discomfort you will endure to get there.

What might start as a very compelling goal may lose its appeal when your priorities change, and your very preferences and passions begin to change and evolve as well. Sometimes goals that were relevant and appropriate at one point in time will no longer serve you at another.

People grow and evolve at a pace that may not be aligned with the time frames identified in a SMART goal. When you lock yourself into achieving a particular goal, it can become a blinder that keeps you from recognizing and acting on a course of action that is far more aligned with who you really are and want to be.

If you are someone who regularly sets goals, take a moment to determine whether your current goals are working for you. Do they reflect what you really want? …how you are evolving as a person? Do they inspire you — or constrain you?

And whether you have set goals or not, consider the essence of what you most want to achieve, create, or become. Perhaps it is not yet concrete, but rather an inkling of something that is calling to you.

There is wisdom in your desire, even if you cannot yet quantify it, break it down in tangible ways, or even articulate it. In fact, sheer inklings and aspirations can become powerful seeds for the most innovative and ground-breaking accomplishments.

If you’d like more on how to gain the clarity necessary to envision and chart a path to your desired future, download my special report, “Why Real Leaders Don’t Set Goals (and what they do instead)”.

From DOING to DONE: The Power of Simplicity & Focus

 

You’ve carved out the time, eliminated the distractions, and sat yourself down to finally do that important work you’ve been meaning to get to.  But you just can’t get yourself to start.

Suddenly, all manner of things become more appealing… checking your inbox, thinking about what you’ll eat for lunch (or dinner), reorganizing the piles on your desk.

Before you know it, your time is up, and you feel like you haven’t really accomplished much.

If that sounds familiar, you aren’t alone. I’ve been there too. And I work with executives all the time who have similar experiences.

One of the most common assumptions people have that keeps them from executing is that they won’t be able to do justice to the work in the time they have.  And when projects are large, sometimes they don’t even know where to start.

A confused mind is not a productive one. So, see if you can make things as simple as possible.

Break it down.

And ask yourself, “In the time that I have right now, what does DONE look like?”

Maybe you don’t have to have the whole problem solved or project completed. Perhaps you just need to do some research to find the answers to a few questions, make a couple of calls, or break out the steps you need to take moving forward.

If you can make the expectations you have of yourself realistic, you may find yourself more inclined to jump in (and less prone to distraction or derailment).

This is consistent with Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation, which has been a solid operating principle since the 1960’s.  There are three components:

1.) The level of perceived satisfaction you’ll have when you achieve a goal.
Check in with your why. What is it about making progress on this thing you’ve set time aside for that is rewarding? How can you make it meaningful to you?

2.) Your belief that the effort you put in will allow you to perform.
If your definition of DONE is about moving the needle incrementally forward versus having everything finished (or perfect), you can proceed with greater confidence.

3.) The degree to which your performance will allow you reach your desired outcome. If you know the actions you take in the time you have will bring you closer to your ultimate goal, your desire to take that step will increase. (This is why many digital surveys feature progress bars that show how close you are to finishing.)

Never underestimate the power of simplicity. Sometimes you can do more when you focus on less.

Here’s to moving forward!

Diane

Sometimes Falling Back Allows You to Move Forward

Busyness Is Not Good Business

 

Ever feel like you’re running harder than ever but not really getting anywhere? If the road you’re on won’t get you to your desired destination, moving faster won’t do you any favors.

When you put more importance on the tactics than you do on your vision/goal – and cling to a plan without continually reevaluating it, you’ve sacrificed the strategic in the name of the operational.

As an executive coach, this is one of the major challenges I work with executives to overcome. Operational is clean. It has defined edges and finite solutions. You can check the boxes and feel a sense of closure and control with an operational approach.

Strategic on the other hand can be a bit messier. It involves stepping into uncertainty to address challenges and opportunities that are new and unfamiliar.

There is usually no one right answer. It often involves taking steps out of your comfort zone. And it requires that you slow down instead of speeding up, something that most of us tend to resist because slowing down flies in the face of what we’ve been conditioned to do.

To avoid this discomfort, many executives prefer being busy to being strategic. It gives them the illusion of being productive and the burst of adrenaline that is a nice (yet ultimately unsatisfying and addictive) placebo for real progress.

But busyness isn’t going to help you hit the target necessary to advance your business (or your career).

Because until you slow down long enough to assess your environment and allow your intuitive mind to partner with your rational mind, you may not even realize what your true target is, let alone how to get there.

Malcolm Gladwell echoed the wisdom of Albert Einstein his iconic book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. He wrote, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”

Knowledge is the product of absorbing information. Understanding is the product of insight. And insight comes from the integration of information with experience, from slowing down long enough to practice reflection and discernment.

So the next time you feel compelled to speed up, try slowing down.

Take some time to check in with yourself to identify what is most important to you right now. Reflect on the changing nature of your environment and see if you can tune into ways to proactively interact with it. Give your very best ideas a chance to land softly in the space between your thoughts.

And when you get those insights, act on them – even (and maybe especially) if they nudge you to move in new directions and do things you haven’t done before.

Don’t be afraid to deviate from your routine or stray from your plan – to strategically blaze a trail into the future you must be willing to break away from the constraints of your past.

Here’s to boldly creating your future!

How to Connect, Communicate & Collaborate with Greater Influence & Impact

 

Are there people in your office (or your life) that drive you nuts because they insist on doing things so differently than you do?

We’re led to believe we should treat others the way we want to be treated.  But if one person’s preferences are another’s irritations, using that approach to connect, communicate and collaborate doesn’t always work very well…

When people don’t say and do things the way you’d like them to, you might believe they are intentionally trying to make you crazy – when in reality they are just operating with a style that is different than yours.

This week’s video will give you a leg up on understanding people’s differing styles in a way that’ll transform frustration into appreciation, collaboration and synergy.

And if you’d like to find out what is likely YOUR most dominant behavioral style, take this complimentary 14-question quiz.  Along with your results, I’ll provide you with tips to help you not only understand but also LEVERAGE your unique style to maximize your effectiveness, influence and impact – with others who are both similar to and different from you.

Here’s to your success!

Diane

P.S.  If you know of others who might like to learn about their style  – and how to best connect, communicate and collaborate with others too, you can direct them to www.LearnYourStyle.com to take the complimentary quiz as well.

Four Questions to Supercharge Your Success This Season

 

Did you know that this is officially the first full week of fall? Every time of the year brings gifts that you can leverage to improve your work and your life.  Four simple questions covered below can help you supercharge your success this season…

Fall marks the transition between the bright and dark halves of the year – and it brings with it opportunities that are easy to overlook in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives.

This week’s video will help you make the most of this auspicious time in a way that’ll help you get where you want to go in the coming months (and year ahead).

For more on how let go of the old to make room for the new, check out How to Soften the Pain of Growth.

Here’s to fall… and to leveraging its gifts to not only finish the year strong, but to setting yourself up for continued success in 2024 and beyond!

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, Diane Bolden, Executive Coach and Author of “The Pinocchio Principle: Becoming a Real Leader How to Unleash Genius in Yourself and Those You Lead.”

Can you believe it’s fall?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t know where the summer went. It seems like time is such a blur.

That’s why I love the changing seasons because they kind of jar us awake and you can’t help but notice because you can see it and you can feel it. The days get shorter, and the nights are longer. The temperature drops. The leaves start to change colors and fall from the trees, and even the air smells different.

It’s a time of letting go and preparing for regeneration. Animals start to hibernate. The leaves fall from the trees – but also, did you know, that the energy of plants actually moves from creating and growing new leaves and flowers to developing a really strong root system that’ll help it make it through the winter?

Fall perennials that are planted grow really strong roots so that in the spring they can burst forward with vigorous growth and a profusion of flowers.

And we can take our cues from nature also… slowing down long enough to just catch up with ourselves and connect the dots.

I don’t necessarily think we need to hibernate, but just being able to kind of reflect on where you’ve been, where you’re going, what’s most important to you, and how you can take good care of yourself is so important.

Here are four questions that can help you supercharge your success this season.

1) What is it that you’ve already accomplished over the year so far that you’re proud of, that you can celebrate? And what is it that’s calling to you in the future? What’s most important to you? What is it that you really want to focus your time and energy on?

2) What are two or three things you’ve learned this year? Maybe it’s a skill that you’ve picked up, maybe it’s an insight as to what’s been getting in your way and how you might overcome that. Maybe it’s something that you’ve learned about yourself or even life.

3) How can you take care of your own root system? What is it that you need to do in order to strengthen yourself and prepare yourself to move forward with greater boldness, and ease, and momentum, and get where it is that you really want to go in the coming months – and perhaps, even the year ahead?

4) And finally, what is it that you can let go of? What is it that perhaps has run its course, and is no longer serving you? Maybe it’s a habit or a pattern, or something that you’ve done for a really long time that just really isn’t working for you.

Letting go of things can be hard, even when they no longer serve us because they’re comfortable and they’re familiar. I actually wrote an article about that a few years ago, which I’ll put a link to below. It’s called “How to Soften the Pain of Growth.”

But in the meantime, here’s to fall – to all the things that you’ve accomplished and have yet to accomplish; to taking the time to tend to your own root system; and to honoring the passage of seasons within your own work, and your life to supercharge your success this season!

Thanks for watching.

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!