Unprecedented...Really?

I noticed something about the conversations I was having with my clients last week. I was repeatedly using a word that, until recent weeks, I don’t think I used all that much.

Unprecedented. 

The word means “never done or known before.”

On one hand, there are a lot of specific things I am experiencing for the first time. 

For example:

• This is the first global pandemic I have been through in my lifetime

• According to the Wall Street Journal on April 16, 2020, over 22 million people sought unemployment benefits

• People are wearing masks at the grocery store

• It is hard to purchase paper towels and toilet paper

• A drop of 2997 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average

• I can’t fly to Peoria and have coffee with my mom at her kitchen table

• I can’t fly to Ohio and hug my two grandbabies! 

All of these seemingly unprecedented events were starting to cause me some stress. I could feel it all building. As I would think about the pandemic and the many people dying, I get a little stressed because I don’t want to get sick and die. I go to the grocery store and see all the people wearing masks and I can not buy paper towels and I get a little stressed.  When I read the news at night, half of the stock market pundits say the market is going to recover and the other half say it is going back down. This uncertainty adds stress.  I can see my two precious granddaughters on FaceTime, but I cannot hug them…wanna talk about stress?!

Pretty soon, I can feel all of this stress adding up. I can actually start to feel the weight of it all. I think it is starting to affect my mental game, my positive attitude, my overall optimism.

Then it hit me like a blinding flash of light, what I know about stress is killing me.

That last statement might seem a little odd, but hang with me. I want to unpack it with you.

Henry Thompson, in his book, The Stress Effect, draws this conclusion, “When stress increases, cognitive and emotional intelligence are compromised. Perception changes and, in many cases, become less accurate and more biased.”  When complexity increases and our control decreases we do not see things as they really are and we mentally run to our familiar comfort zones.

And if that is not enough the Mayo Clinic cites body, mood, and behavioral effects like headache, anxiety, and overeating, along with stomach upset, feeling overwhelmed, and exercising less.

Like you, the last two paragraphs were not new information for me. I know that stress affects my decision making and I know it makes me anxious and causes me to feel overwhelmed at times. I also know that if I let myself slip, I will take on other unhealthy behaviors like overeating and sleep difficulties. 

What I know about stress is indeed killing me.

As I was feeling the weight of all this stress, I came to realize that I needed a very different response. So, in my journaling this morning, I spent some time just writing and trying to figure out all this seemingly unprecedented stuff, and the stress it was causing me.

Out of nowhere, another blinding flash of light: is this event that we are experiencing really unprecedented?

Just Hear Me Out

At first glance when thinking about the impact of Covid-19, there might be an argument for describing it with the word “unprecedented.”

I don’t ever remember not being able to go out and have dinner in a restaurant. Certainly, that has never happened before in my life. From my very first memories as a kid growing up I could go into Steak and Shake with my Aunt Betty and order a fried egg sandwich on white bread and those classic french fries.

But as I was thinking about this micro event of dining in at Steak and Shake back in the 1960’s, it really isn’t the dining in the restaurant, but more about my ability to have control to do what I want, when I want.

Yet none of us always gets to do what we want, when we want.

Is this unprecedented feeling I am having really all that unprecedented? Or is it a lack of control I am experiencing in the moment?

I have been pretty open in this column, and in my conversations with my clients, and even on the Facebook Watch Parties (sign up for my next one here) I have been hosting about how I am starting my day. In fact, just yesterday I was on a coaching call and a client said to me, “So, Scott, tell me how you are starting your day?”

Here is what I told him:

• I am walking the dog

• I am exercising

• I am having coffee and reading my Bible 

• I am spending some time in quiet reflection and meditation

• I then go into my office and start working

Then I told him I am really digging this routine. One thing I did have to change was looking at the news. I open the Newsfeed on my iPhone and skim the headlines to see if there is something new or breakthrough that happened overnight. Then I close the app.  I don’t want to infect my day with a bunch of news I already know is bad.

Why am I telling you all this, you might be asking?

The Point

Today I am in my morning routine and reading my Bible and one of the verses in the study I am doing is Ecclesiastes 1:9 which reads, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

I really had to stop dead in my tracks.

How could something be unprecedented and yet there be nothing new under the sun?

While the microcosm of what we are all experiencing right now might be new, the lack of control we are experiencing certainly is not.

The inability to control our situations or our circumstances is not new. For centuries, people have had to adapt and change because of what is going on around them. And for centuries, these events have been stressful.

What I am asking myself is, “Do I have to succumb to the stress of the situation?” 

What I know about stress is killing me, and if I don’t change something, the stress just might do me in.  

I will have a free tool for you to download after my Facebook WatchParty event this Thursday at noon Eastern time.  I hope you will be able to join me!  I have a very special guest who will join me to help us continue this discussion around stress. See you Thursday!

5 Strategies to Be Resilient in Stressful Times

I don’t know about you, but this last week was a tough one for me. Not hard in a physical way, but more just feeling the weight of what is going on in our world.

Anytime I go through a tough time in my life I am always looking for lessons that I can learn.  I really think it is during the tough times in life that we can learn the most about what we need to do to live in wisdom.  Last week I wrote quite a bit on the subject of Fear and Wisdom. If you missed it, you can grab that blog by clicking here.  I also did a free tool download to help you make wise choices in your life and if you missed that tool you can click here for the free download. 

One of those tough lessons for me happened early in my college career. But I have to give you a little historical context for it to make sense. 

In high school, I loved chemistry. I really think it was a combination of my teacher, Mr. Valosio, and being able to have a Bunson Burner to play with during the labs. Chemistry just sort of made sense to me for some odd reason. It was fun because all the known elements in the universe were pictured on a poster behind where Mr. Valosio taught. All you had to do was combine two or more of them and “Bam” you had something like water. Combining Carbon and Hydrogen gave way to the very backbone of all life.  Again, I know I am weird, but I just got into it.  

Hence, like almost anything you enjoy spending time doing, you tend to do pretty well at it. My high school chemistry grades were always pretty good. Just to be clear, my grades in other subjects were not always as good as chemistry, which I think puzzled the guidance counselor when I was making applications to college. She could be puzzled, I really didn’t care, I just liked chemistry.

So when I went off to college and was in Chemistry 101, the lectures were really quite boring. I had already learned everything the professor was talking about, so I decided that attendance at that 8 am class every Monday thru Friday was…well…optional. No one took attendance. There were 400 kids in the lecture hall. I already knew everything they were talking about, so I decided an extra hour's sleep never hurt anyone.

The first test came around about 3 weeks or so into the semester.  I went to class that day to take the test.   

You couldn’t tell by the grade I got — a “D.”

Mr. Valosio would have been so disappointed in me. I was so disappointed in myself. I loved chemistry. How could this happen?

Part of the deal in Chemistry 101 was if you did not get an “A” on the first test, you had to make an appointment with your lab instructor to go over the exam. So I did. 

I walked into Professor Brown’s lab and showed her my test. It was embarrassing for me. Her first question for me cut right to the point.  “How much did you study for this test,” she asked?  

“I didn’t” was my honest reply. I proceeded to tell her I had all this stuff in high school and I already knew it…Her second statement cut right to the point, “Obviously you don’t know it” she said.  “I recommend you find some discipline in your life, Mr. Livingston, or you might just find yourself not a part of the Drake Pharmacy program much longer.”

Some very well-timed words from professor Brown. Quite a stressful moment for me in my young college career.  But one I learned from.

5 Strategies for Being Resilient in Stressful Times

I think anytime we go through something difficult, it is all about learning. In order to learn, we have to develop some resiliency.  As I reflect on the conversation I had with Professor Brown back then, it would have been easy for me to just quit. Pharmacy was a difficult major. No one would have blamed me and I am sure I could have done something that would not have required an 8am class every day of the week (which I had, by the way, for every semester except one my entire college career).

I know things are tough for you right now.  Tough maybe not physically, but for sure emotionally. Everyone is experiencing this COVID 19 in a unique way.  So I thought perhaps some strategies might be useful as you navigate these difficult times.

1. Reframe the context. Most of us are sheltering in place these days. Instead of a burden and feeling the heaviness of being at home, why not make the most of it? My wife and I are taking the opportunity in the evenings to connect with some old friends over FaceTime.  I have one client whose family cooked dinner together over Zoom. They all had the same ingredients for the meal and they talked to each other while they cooked, then ate dinner together.

2. Choose your focus.  I am really trying to limit the amount of time I am looking at the news. I am addicted to the story; the epidemiology, the race for a vaccine, the updates on treatments, how it spreads, the whole thing. What I have to do is choose to only look at the news once a day. I do this in the evening after I finish working. I choose to start my day reading scripture and listening to an inspirational or informative podcast. I want to be in the right frame of mind when I start working.

3. Find the good.  There is a lot of seriousness these days. People are dying. People have lost their jobs. Businesses are going under, some to never return. A lot of seriousness. But just because something is serious doesn’t mean we cannot find the good. I am not saying there is something good about someone getting sick or dying. I don’t want you to think I am that dark or so optimistic that I don’t live in the real world. What I am asking you to consider here is whether in the midst of all of this, is there something good?  I had a client tell me the other day that he no longer has a 1.5hr commute, so after work, he and his 10-year-old daughter are going for a walk. Now that is a commute that has value!  How can you find the good in what is happening in your world?

4. Helping or Harming? Consider your thought life.  Are my thoughts and emotions helping me or harming me right now?  I was reading the news the other day I started to get a bit anxious about the impact that COVID 19 might have on my business. What if my clients started to close? What if there was not enough business when things returned? None of that thinking was helping me. So I sat down and wrote out a one-page plan on what I need to do to stay engaged with my clients. If you really are in danger, it is helpful to be afraid. If you are really not in danger, then a plan is a much better idea.

5. Make stress your friend.  We all have stress. If you are feeling it, then it is trying to communicate something to you.  If you are feeling cooped up and it is stressing you out, then go outside for a walk. I know its raining, who cares, take an umbrella. If you are feeling lonely, like most of us are these days, then pick up the phone and call a friend. You have friends. If you don’t have a friend, pick up the phone and call me. My point here is that your stress is telling you something. Look it straight in the eye and do something productive and positive that will help to make it go down. 

You don’t have to do all 5 of these. This is not a list of steps to walk through. If you are feeling stressed, pick the one you think might be the most helpful.

I picked up the phone after my meeting with Professor Brown and called Mr. Volosio. He talked some sense into me. I thank him to this day for helping me in my time of need and for graduating from pharmacy school. 

Next Steps

If you are interested in learning more about these 5 strategies, I’d like to extend an invitation to participate in a (4) session development opportunity, facilitated by me, utilizing Facebook’s video streaming platform. I guarantee there will be no sales pitch or advertising - just content. You can join one of them or all of them, as each session is independent of the others. Join as many as you would like. I would love to have you!

All you need in order to participate is a Facebook account (free to create if you don’t already have one) and a desire to connect and learn. Over the 4 weeks, I plan to cover topics such as:

•  “5 Strategies for Staying Resilient During Times of Ambiguous Change”  

• “What You Know About Stress is Killing You” 

• “Making Wise Decisions in Scary Circumstances”

• “Leading with Emotional Intelligence When Stress is High”

To begin, simply CLICK HERE and request to join my private Facebook group. All content will be facilitated within this group each Thursday at 12pm Eastern Time for 4 weeks, beginning Thursday, April 16th and ending Thursday, May 7th. 

If you know of a leader who might benefit from this opportunity, feel free to forward them this email. I would love to connect!

Every Leader Needs to Acknowledge This One Thing Right Now

I LOVE MY TEAM’S AMYGDALA!

Let me explain why...

These are for sure some crazy times we are living in. I just spoke to my neighbor, Bill, who is almost 80 years old at the mailbox. “I have never witnessed anything like this in my life,” Bill told me.

Then I called my mom, who is 83, and asked her, “Mom have you ever experienced anything like this in your life?”  “No, I do remember your Aunt Betty telling stories of when she was a baby (Aunt Betty would be 98 this year if she was still with us) of being quarantined with your Grandmother because she had developed a case of Scarlet Fever.”

So, unprecedented for sure. And full of emotion for all of us and the people we lead on our teams.

My daddy always told me there are 3 situations where I needed to be really careful when making decisions:

1. When I had been drinking. 

2. When I was in a heightened emotional state.

3. After a significant loss.

I think the first one is self-explanatory, except on occasion I will get a call from a client who has said something or done something or punched something when too much alcohol was involved. I have witnessed first hand at least 5 people lose good careers over too much wine or whiskey at a company dinner. 

Now, on the heightened emotional state, I am pretty sure this was a warning from my daddy about being with a girl. However, with the current state of affairs in our world, are we not in a heightened emotional state? Fear and panic have gripped our society. 

I was listening to a podcast of Dave Ramsey the other day. For those of you who do not know Dave, he is famous for helping people get out of debt so they can lead generous and giving lives.  A lady called in who was 67 years old, along with her 70 year old husband. They were frightened by the “crashing” of the stock market and sold everything they had invested. Please try to resist judging these souls. I am sure we all have opinions about if they should be in the market, or if they should have sold or not. Fine, you can have your opinion, but I was stunned by the emotion and lack of logical, rational thinking that had overcome them.

Fear and panic will cause all of us to do things we normally would not do.

Here is a short video where I explain, in very simple terms what happens in your brain when this is going on.

The final situation we leaders need to recognize are times of significant loss.  

In my younger days I used to do some counseling type work at the church we went to. Often times we would be called to provide support to someone who had just experienced the loss of a spouse or loved one.  In our training, we learned to listen to them and help them unpack their feelings. In addition, we were to encourage them to not make any significant decisions for about a year. People need time to grieve the loss and they need time to process what has happened to them. We tried to help them form a plan for moving forward day to day without making any big decisions that would be life-changing. 

You may know some people who have experienced a significant loss right now. Many of us know people who just 3 short weeks ago had vibrant careers but are now being laid off or furloughed. With that in mind, I wanted to give you some ideas to help you connect with the emotional moments we are all experiencing.

3 Strategies To Love Your Teams Amygdala

1. Find ways to reduce or eliminate unneeded stressors. You may have someone who needs to go comfort a spouse who just lost a job very unexpectedly, and your policy doesn’t allow for something like this.  It is time to put relationships and people ahead of policy. Or someone might be working from home and their internet speed isn’t high enough for quality HD video. This is not the time to call them out and create stress because of petty items. 

2. Choose leadership strategies that engage the Neo-Cortex. Remember the Amygdala is the strategic inflection point if good, creative, and reflective thinking is occurring, or if the person is going to be in Fight/Flight/Freeze mode. Here are some ways to help engage the thinking part of the brain:

   1. Tell Stories - Rather than give orders or lists for people to do, engage them in a story and remind them of how their task is helping the organization or the customer during times like this. Stories calm people down, help them think about the characters, and engages their personal creativity.

   2. Be Optimistic - Optimism is not pollyannaish, it is being hopeful for the future. We all know this virus is going to be short-term. In 10 years we will look back and likely be critical of many things we did in the moment. Help your team have hope for the future. We are all going to ride on airplanes again, and stay in hotels, and go on vacation again. Sure, there might be some short-term adjustments for all of us, but the future is bright for your company. You are in a storm right now, but storms do not last forever.

   3. Express Gratitude - At the beginning of every day let’s thank people for being on our team. And make it the last thing we do at night. Thank them for coming to work (even online). Tell them how important they are to the organization.  How much you appreciate them.  Gratitude that is real and heartfelt calms things down and helps people pull through tough times.

3. Give Them A Plan. A few years ago, my good friend and colleague, Dr. Tim Gardner, and I wrote a one-day training called: What You Know About Stress Is Killing You. (The title is meant to be cute and is not a typo). One of the most important things you can do as a leader right now is to sit down one on one (social distancing rules apply) and help them identify places they are stressed and to help them write a plan that would alleviate the stress.  Once it is written down, they can cognitively focus on what to do. Sure, it might feel a little directive, and it is!  If they are stressed and the amygdala is preventing clear thinking then a written plan to follow is just what the doctor would order.

It is my hope that these strategies might be useful to you. If you are a leader of leaders, why not sit down with your team and go over this list? Talk about how they can help their team perform under such trying and difficult times.  

If I can help, please do no hesitate to call or write.  If you think a workshop on emotional intelligence or stress would be helpful for your team, I would be happy to do this for you. We can do it online in a day or take an hour each day, whatever might work best for your team structure.

Best Hopes,

Scott

Give Me 1 More Week and I Will Improve Your Stress Resilience - Making Stress Your Friend

Since this post will hit your inbox a day or two prior to Christmas, I am going to keep it relatively short.

Over the last few weeks I have been working through a series on describing the habits I have noticed over the years of stress resilient people. You know the types, it seems like their world is caving in around them and yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure. If you’d like to catch up or review the previous posts, you can find them by clicking here.

If you don’t want to click back and forth, I will give you the first 4 steps in improving your stress resilience:

1. Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “Why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.

1. The second lesson I have learned about being more stress resilient is when you are undergoing adversity, to carefully choose where to focus your attention. When things come into our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, we are meant to learn something from them.  But we can get so wrapped up in the wrong little details, or in the emotions surrounding the event, that we can miss the learning. Choose wisely where you focus your attention.

2.  The the third observation I have made about people who seem to have high stress resilience is they have an ability to find the good in the circumstance or the people. How they frame life seems to be very appreciative.

3. The fourth thing that I have noticed about people who are resilient in times of stress and ambiguity is that they can answer one key question for themselves. The question is this: “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?”  Our focus as leaders needs to be on the kinds of things that will actually help me instead of making my “stress hole” even bigger.

My perspective

The final post in this series is the most important of all. The reason is, for example, you can do your best to ask yourself, “is what I am doing helping or harming me?” which is the fourth suggestion I made to improve your stress resilience. And indeed, if you focus on this question, your resilience to stress should improve. 

However, what I have observed is people who ask themselves the question, “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?” will work really hard to convince themselves that the harm they are actually doing to themselves is not really hurting them. 

This is why human connection is so important in creating stress resilience. In one of the most impactful studies I have reviewed on the subject of stress resilience actually has to do with living longer. Poulin, Brown Dillard Smith (2013) out of the University of Buffalo monitored participant mortality and time to death for 5 years by way of newspaper obituaries and monthly state death-record tapes.

Mortality revealed a significant interaction between helping behavior and stressful events. 

Specifically, stress did not predict mortality risk among individuals who provided help to others in the past year, but stress did predict mortality among those who did not provide help to others. 

Bottom line is, creating human connection and helping others can help you live longer.

And not just creating human connection, but when you do, listen to those who you connect with. 

Story

My wife and I were back home in Peoria, Illinois this past weekend to celebrate Christmas with my mom. It was a really nice weekend connecting with mom and my siblings. We spent the afternoon together on both Saturday and Sunday. At the end of our time together on Sunday, my wife and I went to a Christmas show at one of the local churches in town. ‘

When we went into the church the weather was a bit cold and the sky was overcast.  About 2 hours later when we came out of the show, there was about 2.5 inches of snow on the ground and near blizzard driving conditions. It took us quite a while to get out of the church parking lot, and once we got on the main roads they were snow packed and very slippery to drive on. 

I have been driving on snow and ice since I was 14 years old in my dad’s old pickup truck, usually in a parking lot somewhere just to get some practice. So, I know how to drive in pretty treacherous conditions.

However, about 7 years ago my wife and I got out of the midwest snow belt, and moved ourselves to sunny Florida.  Not much snow to drive through in the Sunshine state! 

Needless to say I was a bit nervous driving, not as much for me, but as we made our way back to where we were staying there were cars all over in ditches. The result, no doubt, of forgetting the important rules of driving on snow and ice. My nerves had more to do with not knowing the skill level of other people driving then knowing myself what to do and not do. 

It was all a bit stressful, to say the least.

I was really glad I had my wife along with me because her human connection really made me want to make stress my friend and listen to what my body was telling me. Having Kim in the passenger seat next to me heightened my own sense of self-awareness and self-preservation. 

I could feel the stress with every quarter-mile that we drove. Sometimes the back end of the car sliding, sometimes the front wheels just not get anyone traction on the wet surface. Feeling the stress and embracing it helped me in the moment to realize this was not a time for heroics. Not at all a time to “see how fast the car could go” or “how close could I get to the car in front of me.” My stress was actually my friend in that it was telling me to keep a safe distance from other vehicles. 

I also really tried to listen to my wife as she became my copilot, searching for the best route for us to take and making sure I was still on a drivable road surface.  I think so many times we get into stressful situations and our knee jerk reaction is to just bear down and do it all ourselves. This is a time, when you are making stress your friend, to really listen to others.

This listening can really help you answer the question “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?” If I am willing to listen to others input then I am less likely to make a mistake; convincing myself that something that is really destined to harm me will help me.

My Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Stress Resilience

In summary here are my top 5 ways for you to improve your stress resilience

1. Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you. 

1.  Choose where to focus your attention.

2.  Find the good in the circumstance or the people. 

3. Ask Yourself; “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?”  

4. Make Stress Your Friend

Now go out there and have a stress free Christmas and a very happy new year!

Give Me 3 More Weeks and I will Improve Your Stress-Resilience: Find the Good

Over the last few weeks, I have been working through a blog series on describing the habits I have noticed throughout the years of stress-resilient people.

You know the types, it seems like their world is caving in around them, yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure. If you missed them, you can find the first two posts in the series here.

If you don’t want to click back and forth I will just give you the first steps in improving your stress resilience:

1. Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine, per se. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.

2. The second lesson I have learned about being more stress-resilient is when you are undergoing adversity, carefully choose where to focus your attention. When things come into our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, we are meant to learn something from them. But we can get so wrapped up in the wrong little details, or in the emotions surrounding the event, that we can miss the learning. Choose wisely where you focus your attention.

These two posts lead me to the third observation I have made about people who seem to have high stress-resilience;

They have the ability to find the good in the circumstance or the people. How they frame life seems to be very appreciative. Before we unpack this, let’s go over some data on the topic just to cement the need.

Coping Successfully With Stressful Life Events

There is a really good chance, even if you are someone who is fairly stress-resilient, that as you are reading this, the person on your right AND the person on your left is not so good.

A recent (2013) survey of adults and teens commissioned by the American Psychological Association showed 65% of people said managing their stress is very or extremely important (I found this a little lower than I would have thought), but just 38% said they do at least a good job of managing stressful situations.

So, we as humans think something is important and we recognize we are not very good at it. And for way too many of us, that is where the story ends. But not for people who are more stress-resilient. And it turns out that for most of us, it can be a simple shift in perspective.

Lets examine the most prevalent emotion people experience in stressful situations…Anxiety.

There is data to suggest that 1 in 5 Americans will suffer from a diagnosed anxiety disorder in a given year. Anxiety is the most prevalent emotional stress response.

A common definition of Anxiety is "…facing an uncertain threat.” We see something in our future, either real or perceived, that we don’t know or understand as going to do us harm. A situation or a context like this will cause us to feel anxious.

Our anxious feeling is telling us something about our uncertainty in the situation and often gets compounded by other negative thoughts or emotions until we get ourselves so worked up that we can not even remember what the root cause of our anxiety really is.

A Personal Story

Let’s play with this definition for anxiety a bit and see if we can build some stress-resilient muscle in the process.

I’ll offer up a personal story as a frame for our learning.

This time of year always creates a bit of an anxious time for me as a solopreneur. Many of the coaching and training engagements that have been running in 2019 will be coming to an end. Many of my clients are changing approaches in how they are using services like the ones I offer.

I can become anxious about where my business is going to come from in 2020.

5 Things to notice in this short story.

1. The main character in the story is me.

2. The story I created in my head is that business is uncertain (see the definition of anxiety).

3. The story I created has a threatening tone (see the definition of anxiety).

4. The timing context of the story is a perception I am feeling.

5. Clients are changing so that means they won’t need me any longer.

Being Stress Resilient

People who are stress-resilient have adaptive resources in both cognitive and emotional arenas to be able to handle the story they are perceiving.

One of the most important adaptive strategies is to find the good in the situation.

I know what you might be saying because I have said it myself…”What could possibly be good about losing clients or business in 2020?” Frankly NOTHING! But we are not working at the right level to deal with the anxiety. There is nothing good about losing business, feeling rejected, or having to experience lean times in business. Please hear me; I am not one of those Pollyanna overly optimistic leader development guys. You know the type, they just don’t seem to live in the same world as I do when it comes to being anxious about losing something important.

What I am advocating for here is letting go of the outcome.

Since what I am projecting in my stressful and anxious situation has not happened yet, there is time for me to do something about it. In essence, I need to Find the Good in the inputs that will ultimately drive the outcome.

Focus on Quality Inputs

If I can let go of the outcome, just for a moment, that is causing my anxious feeling and focus on Finding the Good in the inputs, will this lessen or eliminate my anxiety?

That becomes the central question for people who have the ability to be resilient.

What I am going to do is to Find the Good in the 5 elements of my short story above and see if I feel less anxious. Here they are repeated with a reframing of each of them to find the good:

5 Things to notice in this short story.

1. The main character in the story is me. This business has never been about me. It is about the clients I serve and the good we do for them. Part of my work here is to get the story off of me and to focus on those I serve. In doing so, my needs, whatever they are, will be met.

2. The story I created in my head is that business is uncertain (see the definition for anxiety). Business is complex, it is not uncertain. Now more than ever in recorded history organizations need leadership development. My clients are good people who can use my objective perspective on developing leaders in their organizations.

3. The story I created has a threatening tone (see the definition for anxiety). The threatening tone I am picking up is one of perceived loss. That this loss will mean a loss of income, so I won’t be able to meet the needs of my business. I may have to close my operation and do something else that I don’t love near as much. I hope you see in this how a threat can cycle down into a negative vortex of things that are so far from being real at the moment. But this vortex of fear can become paralyzing, and none of it is real. The good in the story is for me to get excited about some of the plans I have for 2020, rather than how I can make my reality less horrible than I am seeing it. I want to be excited about the opportunities I have and not just see how I can squeak by.

4. The timing context of the story is a perception I am feeling. Coming to an end feels like such a threat. While I do have some engagements that are ending; 75% of my business comes from existing clients. So that I may have individual clients that will rotate off my schedule, but that does not mean that my relationship with the organization has to end. The good in this is that nothing is ending, it is just an opportunity to start over and learn something new.

5. Clients are changing so that means they won’t need me any longer. My clients are changing. Fact. But this does not mean they no longer need a service like the one I provide. Change doesn’t have to be a threat. It can be a golden opportunity. I need to become curious about what life is like for them and find additional ways to partner with them using the services I provide.

So, there you have a nice little reframing exercise.

Step 1. Don’t focus on the outcome

Step 2. Focus on the quality of your inputs by finding the good in your story.

Spend some time with this little exercise. If you are feeling anxious about something, write it down. Then find the inputs and turn them from negative toward the good. See if this helps you become less anxious about your situation.

I love feedback, so if you try this I would love to hear your story.

Give Me 4 More Weeks and I will Improve Your Stress Resilience

Last week I began a series describing the habits I have noticed throughout the years of stress-resilient people.

You know the types - it seems like their world is caving in around them, yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure.

To recap, the first step in improving your stress resilience is:

Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “Why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.

The second lesson I have learned about being more stress-resilient is to carefully choose where to focus your attention in times of adversity. When things come into our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, we are meant to learn something from them. But, we can get so wrapped up in the little details, or in the emotions surrounding the event, that we can miss the lesson.

Last week I wrote about losing one of my biggest clients, quite unexpectedly, and really through no fault of my own. I had been teaching for years in their company’s management development program. I would do some work with emerging leaders; helping them define their leadership principles as well as teaching other leaders the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. I did this work for over 7 years and got great reviews every time we did a class. Then, I got a phone call that the company was reorganizing and they were not sure how they would be approaching training in the future.

So in one phone call, I lost one of my biggest and best clients. At least, I lost that opportunity with the client in a very ambiguous sort of way.

According to Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss, “People hunger for certainty.” We all like stability and to know, or at least to have the idea that we know, what is going to happen in the future. So, according to Boss, “…uncertainty makes ambiguous loss the most distressful of all losses…” This is because the loss is often very confusing. People can actually become immobilized by not being able to make sense of the situation. In my case, it was tough, because I always held a belief that if you did a great job for a customer, work would always follow. And while I think the basic tenant is true, there are just things that happen in business that are not in my control.

Second, the ambiguous loss felt very much to me like it was irrational. How could they no longer love me? How could such a great company no longer invest in leaders? As I thought about all of this, my mind became fixated on the loss. So much so I was starting to get physically exhausted. By focusing on the wrong part of the loss, I was losing my perspective.

My Intervention

I was telling this story to my coach during one of my monthly sessions with him. After our session, as I am prone to do, I sat and summarized the coaching in a journal I keep. Here is my entry:

-Don’t lose what you have to what you lost!

-What do I need to be learning through all of this?

At the same time this loss was happening to me, I was teaching a group of doctoral students at Indiana Wesleyan University.. I had been reviewing an article by Lila Davachi, Tobias Kiefer, David Rock, and Lisa Rock titled Learning that lasts through the AGES.

AGES is a 4 part acronym:

• Attention is critical.

• Generating insights takes time.

• Emotions govern.

• Spaced learning sticks.

Here is what I learned from each part of the AGES Model during my stressful time:

Attention is critical and I needed to focus on the customers I am still able to serve. Just because I lost this one thing should not affect how I serve those I am still blessed to work with.

Generating insights takes time. I have a tendency to want to rush things. If I am going to learn from this loss, I needed to give myself some space and realize that time does have a healing component to it.

Emotions govern and I get to choose how I feel. Sure, I was going to miss these great folks I had worked with and to some degree, I mourned the loss. And I am also joyful that I have other clients and in fact, I have been able to keep relationships with many folks at this company. So it turns out I really didn’t lose them, the work there just changed for me and looks very different.

Spaced learning sticks. I needed to process this learning over time and in chunks. You can not learn everything you need to learn all at once. Spacing things out, keeping them fresh in your journal, will really help you maximize your learning.

Summary Thought

For those of you wanting to improve your stress resilience, one of the most important points is to carefully choose what you will focus your attention on. You get to pick. You can focus on the pain and stay there. You can focus on how you were treated and dwell.

Or

You can appropriately accept and mourn your loss, and then focus on all the good things you still have.

Choose wisely.

That last thought actually will be the focus of next week’s post…Appreciate the good.

See you next week!

The Secret for Being Stress Resilient | Part 1: Getting A Grip

Spoiler Alert.

Over the next 5 weeks, I will be writing on the idea of becoming more Stress Resilient. I thought going deep on one particular topic might be kind fo fun, so let me know what you think about the series format! I hope you enjoy it, but if not, I’d love to know that as well.

So many of the clients I am working with these days are undergoing very fundamental changes in their business models. How they used to do things even two years ago are being drastically altered by changing customer demands or big shifts in market dynamics.

One of the things I have noticed when changes like this occur is the desire people have to go back to the way things “used to be.”

There is something innately comforting for us all in the known, even when the known is not our most desirable state.

Many years ago, I used to get on an airplane and fly across the country to teach a one day class in a management development program. I really loved the experience and developed many great relationships along the journey. The travel was hard. Exhausting even. But there was real comfort for me in getting on a plane on a Tuesday, flying all day. Then teaching all day on Wednesday. Spending the night in a hotel and flying home on Thursday. This work ended up taking 3 days for one day of actual work. And I loved it! No matter how hard it was, or how tired I got, I loved the work.

My wife would often say things like, “Why do you do that to yourself? Why don’t you find a client who is local so you don’t have to spend 2 days on an airplane for one day of work?”

Sometimes the truth really hurts.

Did I listen? Heck NO! I kept getting on the airplane. I loved this client. My wife could tell, so much so that from time to time she would suggest we move to California.

Then all of a sudden, it was all gone. The company reorganized how they were doing their training and the work I loved was no more.

All of that comfort was gone. All of those great relationships vanishing into thin air. All the fantastic people I was able to interact with and learn from…poof. No more.

All of this happened over the course of a single month.

Lesson 1

After I got off the phone with my client who explained to me that they were moving in a different direction with how they were going to train leaders my initial reaction was, “Oh no! Now what am I going to do?” I think this is pretty typical for us as humans during times of change or ambiguous types of loss to get self-referential and concerned for our own well being.

I can remember not knowing what to do exactly. I had an appointment with my coach the next day and planned to talk it through with him at that time. So, in the meantime, I did something that made me feel good, I went and worked out. I thought a good cardiovascular workout to the point of exhaustion was just what I needed to clear my head and think about what my options really were at the time.

I made it to the gym and got on the treadmill and my trainer Thomas said this to our group: “This is going to be a rough 23 minutes on the treadmills today. You are going to have increases in the incline of the treadmill every 2 minutes. I want you to start running at a push pace and maintain that pace as long as you can as you ascend.”

Then the gold came out of Thomas’s mouth, “This is not going to be easy, but as the climb continues I want you to envision: Your Future You!”

That is exactly what I needed to hear. I finished my workout and when I got home I went straight to my journal and wrote:

Adversity doesn’t discriminate. It happens to all of us as humans. It is really part of the human condition. I need to better understand that shit happens. I don’t want it to happen but it does.

Then I started to do something that I work with my coaching clients all the time - I reframed the adversity.

I started with “why not me?”

Look, I had a really good ride with that client. Almost 10 years and we really had a fantastic relationship. It was really awesome. Now they are doing things differently, and so I need to do things differently as a result.

WHY NOT ME?

This is exactly what needed to happen in order for me to start doing some things I had wanted to do all along.

The climb is not going to be easy (now my trainer Thomas is in my head), and I need to start to design my Future Me!

How about You?

Are things changing really quickly around you? I guess you can just sit there and take it and let the chips fall where they might, randomly without much of your input. You could bury your head in the sand and hope that the change that is happening doesn’t see you and just passes you buy.

Or, you can sit down and start to design your future you.

I wonder when you get to your future what your future you will say to your past you who decided to take the bull by the horns and create its destiny?

The other thing I would like to add is just a thought for all of you who are leading others through times of change and ambiguity.

And that is, in order to reduce stress, an important leadership challenge is to reduce follower uncertainty. Part of your job is to make the change as transparent as you possibly can. Even if you have to say you don’t know, be authentic and do your best. People still need a feeling of security, even when you don’t have the answers.

I believe that in a dynamic environment, leaders can reduce this uncertainty by continually communicating and reinforcing five key questions for the organization: who we are, what we are doing, why we are doing it, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. Answering these questions for followers can tap into some basic needs that influence human behavior.

If you don’t know what to say, then maybe just articulating some answers to these questions might be helpful.

Focus Here to Reduce Your Stress Today

The past two days were really busy for me, but they were not necessarily stressful. 

Have you ever noticed that when you ask someone how they are doing, a common response is “really busy..." and these words are usually followed by a heavy sigh, an eye-roll, and a shrug of the shoulders.

Being busy carries some sort of identity for us. We can’t just “be” who we are, we have to “be” something in order to have identity.

We've decided that to be busy is to be stressed. And if busyness is stressful then this fills our identity, bringing some sort of value to who we are. I am amazed at the thinking on this. Just because we are busy and stressed we are somehow more valuable and have more self-worth.

A lie straight from the pit of Hell!!!

I completely disagree with these lies we tell ourselves:

Lie #1: I am busy so I have to be stressed.

Lie #2: I am busy and stressed so I must be bringing more value to my work.

Lie #3: I am busy and stressed and bringing more value so even though I am exhausted I have a higher feeling of self-worth.

When are we going to stop equating busyness and stress with self-worth?

My Point

I think you can be really busy and not be stressed out.

My good friend Dr. Tim Gardner is famous for saying, “What people know about stress is killing them.” Think about that for a minute. In the world of stress and stress management, there is not much new information that has come around over the last 20 years or so. You know everything you need to know about stress and how to manage it and yet you choose it anyway.

I am not talking about temporary stress here like the tension felt in Game 5 of the National League Division Series between the World Champion Chicago Cubs and the Washington Nationals. A four and a half hour, nine-inning baseball game that had more ups and downs and tense moments for both teams.  While it that was a really tense 4 and a half hours, that is not the kind of temporary tension I am writing about.

What Dr. Tim means is that most of us know we are going to be busy, and this busyness has the potential to be stressful, and if you let it be stressful it can have a detrimental effect on your overall health and well being.

The question I have for you today is: If you are busy can you choose not to be stressed?

Main Idea

Many of you know that for the past 20 years or so I have been involved in the emotional intelligence movement. Now when you teach something like emotional intelligence, I think folks watch to see if you are a theorist or a practitioner. A theorist knows what the main ideas are and can pass any exam they might take on a subject. A practitioner is someone who understands the theory and works hard to put it into practice.

One of the things we are really excited about in our organization is the certification work we are doing with the EQi 2.0.  The actual certification class is a 2-day virtual training that is filled with a lot of practical strategies for implementing the EQi 2.0 assessment.  It is exciting for us to work with professionals dedicated to the growth and development of others. We love the work and hearing the great things the participants have to say in training.

One of the competencies we work on is stress management. This idea of managing stress really has two components:

1. What to do in a particularly stressful moment?

2. How do you manage stress so you lessen its overall effect?

It is this second strategy I want you to think about today.

Management is by definition a planning and organizing function. So if you know you are going to be busy, then how can you plan and organize your life so that the busyness is not stressful?

We often talk about how to deal with stress after the fact, but what if we were more observant of stress before it began? Here are 3 keywords to a proactive stress plan. These words may sound familiar, but pay attention to their definitions. Putting a word to feelings you might not associate with stress can make all the difference when it comes to preparing to overcome our obstacles by helping us create clearer goals. While you're reading, see if any of these definitions relate to your relationship with stress in ways you may not have been able to put words to before. 

   3 Strategies To Change Your L      

FLEXIBILITY: The ability to adapt to change effectively. Any change in life is going to bring emotion. How flexible are you with these feelings? This is a different question than "are you able to take the needed action in a crisis?" Instead, flexibility asks if you are able to flex and choose a different emotional response when you are faced with obstacles. If not, ask yourself: can you put strategies in place to do so? Do you have the flexibility to overpower your emotion and choose a different one, or are you subject to the emotion?

Tolerance: How much can I hold until I break? Tolerance equates with strength. Think of metal: There is a certain amount of weight it holds until it will break. You are the same. There is a level of stress you can hold until you will break. Tolerance measures where that level is for you. This sounds abstract, but it is not. Make a list of all the stressors you are juggling. Can you cross one off or delegate some of that stress? 

Optimism: To be optimistic is not to be a shiny happy person who refuses to see harsh realities, but to be resilient. Optimistic people know that it is not a matter of if something will go wrong, but when and are prepared to respond with resilience. It is a constructive response to setbacks. This is where self-talk comes into play: How you talk to yourself when things don't go your way? Are you able to say "This setback happened, but I am still myself apart from this situation and will move on," or do you equate the even with your personality, saying things like, "This is who I am, this sort of thing always happens to me." To be optimistic is to perceive reality properly by not using words like "always" and "never," and to instead to see the situation as what it was, and be ready to separate it from your future self. 

Are you going through the motions without examining your stress management? Use these 3 words this week to help you evaluate yourself in these areas, and open up a dialogue with yourself. Ask yourself difficult questions about how much you can really take on, what you are allowing to define your worth, and whether or not you are a slave to your emotions. 

When Negative Self-Talk Creeps In

A good friend of mine (and an avid reader and commenter on this blog,) Ken, submitted my name as a speaker for an organization he is affiliated with. He emailed me asking if I would consider giving a talk and facilitating a dialogue on the value of emotional intelligence (EI). I am always humbled when anyone thinks that I might have something valuable to say when it comes to EI. It is one of my favorite subjects to talk about, and I often use the EQi 2.0 in training programs I do and with almost every coaching client I work with does a self-assessment that shows them what their leadership habits may appear like to others.

Now, here is what you need to know about Ken. His job is to serve as a hospice chaplain in Polk County Florida. His request was for me to come and speak to a group of his peers and his boss on the subject of how EI can be of value to a hospital chaplain.

Gulp! I have to admit, the email produced mixed feelings in me. Like I said above, I was humbled for sure, but scared out of my pants as well. Hospice chaplains...really?! While I might know something about EI, my immediate “knee-jerk” reaction was, I don’t know anything about hospice chaplains!

Then the negative self-talk started to creep in:

• You’re no expert in hospice care.

• What do you know about how to fit EI into their world?

• You have never even studied EI in this context, what if there is no data?

• Your not a very good public speaker.

• Maybe you should call him up and back out.

Now, am I the only one this happens too? When you are hit with a complex, tension-filled situation what do you do? Do you immediately become filled with fear, anxiety, and self-doubt? How do you stop the negative self-talk from creeping in and taking over your thinking?

Here is a quick and easy method that I use when this happens to me: I use an acronym I call "STOP." It is a four step method that helps me turn my negative thinking into a more positive and constructive use of my time and energy.

STOP

Stop: Do something to interrupt the cycle of negative thinking.

Take a deep breath: Breathing relaxes your tension, releases dopamine, and calms you down to think more clearly.

Other focused: Exercise empathy and become curious about what it is like to be in the other person's shoes.

Purpose a question: Asking questions can have a calming effect and bring you more into a zone of safety than one of fear.

Here is how the model helped me get rid of the negative thinking and increase my confidence in this situation:

When I first noticed the negative thinking creeping into my mind with the thought, you’re no expert in hospice, I should have taken the time to put this model into effect. Unfortunately, even though I teach this stuff, I got all the way down to, maybe you should call him and back out before I put this into practice.

Stop: Psychologists call this pattern interrupt. I noticed the negative thinking and I did something physical to draw attention away from the negative thought. In this case, I was sitting down when I read the email. When I finally noticed the negativity, I stood up. I concentrated on doing something different. Distract yourself away from the source of negativity.

Take a deep breath: When I stood up, I took several yoga style breaths. Focused on bringing my belly button to my spine. I actually could feel myself starting to calm down. This is often when I will also say a prayer, asking God for wisdom as I navigate these treacherous negative waters. I distracted myself from the negativity for a moment. That is the goal with this step.

Other Focused: I tried to take the thoughts off of myself and my shortcomings. I put my thoughts onto Ken and his team instead. I began to think, what might they need from a model like emotional intelligence? What value could it bring them? Notice the questions starting to form when I start to turn my thinking from self-referential to other-focused.

Purpose a question: I crafted an email back to Ken asking him, what are some common situations that hospital chaplains find themselves in where they need more EI? What had other speakers done that the chaplains found valuable? How had he used EI in his work as a hospice chaplain?

I noticed, then, that my fear and anxiety were dissipating into curiosity. I was moving from a lack of self-consciousness into a state of confidence by focusing on the value I could bring to this group of dedicated servants.

Self-Actualization and Optimism

According to authors Steven J. Stein and Howard E. Book, EI always exists in balance. This is pretty easy to see when we think about a leader who is very self-confident but lacks any empathy or interpersonal ability. We often put a label on a leader who has this balance of qualities as being someone who is arrogant at best, and a real narcissist on the more clinical side of the psychology

In my case, I am usually a fairly self-perceptive person. This means that in part, I get a lot of meaning and purpose out of my life and the work I do. This is a real strength for me.

Most of the time I am optimistic, which means I have a positive outlook on the future and am fairly resilient in the face of setbacks. However, this ability can come into question, especially when fear or anxiety enter the stage. My optimism can turn into a negative downward spiral of self-critical thinking.

What I need when I am faced with these fears and anxieties is to balance my self-actualization and my waning level of optimism.

The STOP model helps me to put the brakes on the negative thinking, so I can use all the meaning and purpose I get in my life to teach and coach emotional intelligence, regaining my level of optimism.

I am happy to report that Ken and I have a call scheduled to talk through what value EI can bring to the hospice chaplains and the talk is scheduled for mid-April.

Homework: Where do fear and anxiety creep into your leadership? Can you anticipate when these events occur? When you feel your thoughts going negative, try using the STOP model to see if it can bring you back into emotional balance.

You Need This More Than Anything Else to Lead Effectively In 2016

Last summer my wife Kim and I ran a “Hit & Run 5K” This was a traditional 5k with an obstacle course built into the run. It was a blast, and even though my 5K time was pathetic, we laughed so hard it made my side hurt. As you ran this 5K you would come up to an obstacle that had to be navigated in order to continue the course. These obstacles were of the blow-up variety, so they all had some bounce to them and many of them included a water feature as well.

Atlanta, GA USA - March 5, 2014: A woman begins to slip and fall into the water trying to run through the wrecking balls event, at the Ridiculous Obstacle Challenge (ROC) 5K race.

One of the obstacles we had to traverse was a rubber air mattress that had plastic pillars all around it that were filled with air. People stood behind the pillars and pushed them into you as you ran across the mattress. Their goal was to knock you off balance so that you could not go straight through the course and finish the obstacle. These pillar pushers were trying to keep you from hitting your goal time.

Many of you, during this week between the Christmas holiday and the New Year, find yourself on such an obstacle course. You are trying to get in some meaningful family time while closing out 2015 and preparing for 2016. It is like your family, 2015, and 2016, are plastic airfield pillars that are trying to knock you off course, inhibiting your ability to finish the race you are running.

There is an important leadership concept that is continuing to surface in the leadership literature, and my guess is that it is only going to get more study time as the years go on.

What I am going to continue to reinforce with those I train and coach is the idea of Rejuvenation.

If you are going to run through an obstacle course, from time to time you need to recharge your batteries. No leader can stay on the course, being battered from all sides, all the time.

Henry Thompson, in his most excellent book The Stress Effect states that leaders have an effective energy zone they run in. If the stress gets too high, they can be subject to burn out. If the stress is too low, they can rust out. As you prepare for 2016, how are you going to be intentional with your rejuvenation?

I hope you didn’t miss that last sentence. If you did, go back and read it again.

Here is the key: Be intentional with rejuvenation.

Leaders face immense stress and pressure from all parts of the organization and their lives. You have to be equipped to handle the stress that is going to come your way. One of the best ways to be equipped is to plan for different types of rejuvenating events.

Here are some tips to help you rejuvenate as your day goes along:

• Be self-aware of the impact that stress of others can have on you. Many of us have a habit of picking up on the emotional stress that others bring when we interact with them. Own what you can own, but do not be subject to stress that someone else is feeling. Be empathetic instead of sympathetic with them.

• Pay attention to what you eat for breakfast and lunch. I had a conversation with my physician recently about my diet. I told him I loved hamburgers. You see I really lovvvvve hamburgers. I just know that when I eat one, I go into a food coma for about 3 hours. So, if I have one for lunch, I might as well take the rest of the day off.

• Drink 100 ounces of water every day. This will rejuvenate your cells as they dehydrate. It wall also get you up and moving to the restroom more which will give you the short break you need to refocus when you get back to your desk.

• Find an exercise you like and commit to it. I love my boot camp and exercising 5 days a week. It works for me. It might not for you. Try yoga, try walking in the park, get a dog and walk it. Ride your bike. I know this one isn’t new, but if you are going to rejuvenate and be an effective leader, you have to find some way to release the cortisol that is accumulating in your muscles throughout the day.

• Find a leadership group to join. Talking with like-minded peers is therapeutic. When done once a month for an hour or two , it can revitalize your energy. There is real power in sharing where you are in your leadership life and hearing where others are as well.

• Get a coach. If you have some intense conversations that need to be released, there is nothing like a coaching relationship to help you clear your head so you can navigate your leadership course.

Homework: Pick one of the 6 Leadership Rejuvenators outlined above and implement it starting the first week in January. Commit to doing this one thing for the next 6 months and see if you can notice any change in your leadership energy. If you decide to implement one of these, please let us know. We would love to hear your story so we can learn and grow as well.