The Power of Vulnerability – It’s Fear-Less
Lack of vulnerability is one reason why team relationships are so dysfunctional. The lack of trust leads to people putting on their “persona” (the root word in “personality) masks. In our culture, vulnerability is confused with the concept of “weakness”.
I’ve got news for you – vulnerability is anything but “weak”. I know this from personal experience. Early in life, I started out as passive (yes, me!). I was quite the timid one. Once I was able to get beyond kindergarten, I begin to seek my voice as I have a natural tendency to lean toward extroversion – as long as I have some “introversion” time for myself as well, that is. The concise story here is that eventually, due to a combination of my experiences and my perceptual tendencies, I started to see the world as competitive and hostile.
I started to mistrust, fear my feelings and made up my mind to not be vulnerable because I was taught like most people, that this was “weakness”. In truth, I was afraid. In fact, I went overboard to hide my fear and became somewhat aggressive and controlling whenever I thought I needed to protect myself – or my point of view. Now, here are 5 lessons that I learned:
Leadership is an Affair of the Heart – and Mind
Collaborative Leadership is a partnership between the head and the heart – the mind and the heart. It begins at this level before you can collaborate with other people. Gone are the days when people were willing to be dominated and controlled.
I’m not saying that fear can no longer be used to manipulate people. What I am saying is, that it doesn’t have the stronghold it once did in that people are now looking for engagement. They want inspiration and meaning; they want a reason to get out of the bed in the morning.
People are looking to thrive not just survive. So, though you may get their body to show up, if you don’t have their heart, they are likely to sabotage your efforts one way or the other. As Gallup shows at least 70% of employees are disengaged. Good luck coming up with new innovative ideas, passionate customer service or team cooperation if this statistic is what your employee satisfaction survey reveals.
Sooner of later, no matter what your current revenues are, you will be run over by the businesses that are evolving to meet the expectations of its employees and team members. If worker absenteeism, lack of purpose, lack of autonomy or little opportunity for personal development are characteristics of your organization, brace yourself for a change.
I don’t care how intimidating you my come off as being “the boss”. People give their best to those who they love and trust – not who they fear. One of the most common reasons cited for leaving a company is poor relationship with “the boss”. One of the most common reasons for staying with a company is a good relationship with “the boss”.
5 Tips to Boost Brain Power and Productivity
Achieving business success requires more than collecting advanced degrees and learning sales and marketing strategies. These things are useful, but we are so “dis-integrated” in our thinking these days, that we miss the forest (the big picture) because we are so busy trying to cut down trees (“doing stuff” and gathering information).
We need to integrate and do both and do it with clarity and a clear and passionate “why”. Gaining clarity and “why” though is a product of making time to slow down and reflect. If we do it this way, paradoxically, we’ll likely get more done with genuine productivity, easier and in less time. Now wouldn’t that be nice?
You may also start to enjoy your life again as you find more time for relationships and self-care…. maybe you can even nurture the source of your very life force – your spirit!
I have personally and experientially found out, even before the brain science started to document the fact that self-mastery requires a tangible understanding of how to “retrain our brain”. Why retrain? Because for the most part, the way that most people have wired their brain does not serve their highest good or support their true potential.
In this post, however, I want to focus on five things you can do to begin to boost your brain’s power and efficiency, even if you don’t yet understand techniques to rewire it. Here are 5 Tips to Boost Brain Power and Productivity the “soft” – and powerful – way:
Not Enough Time? Change Your Focus
Productivity needs to be defined as accomplishing goals and dreams, not simply being, “so busy”. If fact, if you keep talking about how busy and time poor you are, you will likely waste time and energy. Why? Because talking about it is revealing that you are focused on lack of time instead of focusing on where you want to go.
Be mindful of your words as you words reveal your thoughts. Your words speak to the quality of energy of your “being”. If you talk about lack of something repetitively, you are likely to manifest it into your life. This is how the brain and mind work. The primary mechanism of the creative process that ends up being your life’s experience is “focus of intention and attention”.
These two things are slightly different. Intention is a feeling and creates the mental image and attention is about keeping your physical eyes and your mind’s eye on the target. Here’s the catch though: if you have wired a belief into your subconscious part of your mind that you “don’t have enough time”, this powerful intention will be the dominant experience.
Most people don’t even bother to set a conscious intention daily anyway. If you did, you may have a chance, but if not, you can pretty much count on “not enough time” being your experience. You see, it’s not that you are a victim. It’s not that you have fewer hours in a day than other people who seem to accomplish major life changing goals in their lives. What it really is, is that you do not understand how weak your power of focus has become because of some of the following beliefs that you have formed over time. Here are 3 simple examples:
- Multi-tasking saves time and is effective (weakens attention – wastes energy also)
- Life is “hard” and success takes “hard work” (creates struggle)
- Reflection and quiet time is a waste of time (actually it revitalizes and restores the mind)
Here are some solutions to the above:
3 Clear Steps to Radically Change Your Life for the Better – Today
Collaborative leadership, networking, team building and communication skills are all considered valuable and vital to business success in the evolving workplace. Typically when a person decides that he or she wants to learn skill sets related to these areas, they proceed to learn “techniques”. While technique does matter, there’s much more to learning and applying skills sets than meets the eye – the physical eye that is. Most people are still not aware of the power of the brain and its “mind’s eye” to make or break their ability to influence others, break procrastination or create a viable strategic plan.
If it were as simple as taking a class or playing team-building games, organizations would be places that engage the minds and hearts of employees and effectively cultivate personal and professional development. People would be clamoring to get to work on Monday mornings, and absenteeism and lack of team trust would be uncommon challenges. Entrepreneurs would not be working themselves to the bone and worrying about payroll if purely motivational seminars really worked.
In reality, these issues are growing concerns for small business as well as for mega corporations. What is the problem here? Not to over-simplify it, but a central issue is the ignorance that we human beings have in regard to our own brain management. We simply do not understand how we are wiring our mind in a way that keeps us living far beneath our true potential. The brain itself is not the problem; it is truly magnificent and amazing in it’s capacity and functionality.
The next great shift is already beginning and that is, understanding how your amazing brain can help you to take your business and life to the next level, or keep you stuck for the rest of your natural life.
As you make your plans either in business or personal life, here are three simple tips that you can begin to use while you are busy taking all those informational classes and learning new “techniques”. Maybe you will then be able to apply what you learn and “just do it”:
How You React or Respond to Crisis Can Make or Break Your Life
Your true potential will be elusive if you are fearful of change. In fact, if you want to expand the vision for your life, you will have to stop looking for the status quo. Most people have warning signs that they need to move on before things get to the point of crisis. Yet they tend to “react” and cling to the known world, misery and all, instead of empowering themselves to “respond” proactively.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste” ~Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago
Why is this? While there is an element of the brains need for predictability, I believe our resistance goes beyond “natural selection”. Actually, once in a crisis, it can provoke us to make quantum leaps to our next level of positive growth.
Most of our fear of change is conditioned by our culture, society, and well-meaning people. For example we are taught to avoid “disappointment”. We are taught to not risk, “failure” and avoid risk taking by staying in “the box”. We are taught to focus on worry and what we “don’t want” which is a horrible idea.
The brain functions by trying to get you what you focus on with feelings. Now imagine that – you are focusing with fear of what you don’t want. Do you “want” that? The brain doesn’t even process the word, “don’t”. It thinks in pictures, the picture that follows the word, “don’t”. Chances are you are more likely to get it than not if you keep focusing on it. This is totally backwards thinking.
Instead, we can change our perception and our brain will change the way it looks at things. Why not focus on what you want? Why not feel gratitude and feel good instead of complaining and feeling fear? For example, disappointment can be meant as, “make another choice” or “try again a different way”. It doesn’t have to mean “embarrassment”. Maybe you feel sad, but then sad is a part of living! It’s time to stop the judgment and labeling as “bad” and “good”. I like “high” and “low” better. Feel it and let it go. Feeling lower vibrating feelings comes with the territory of life.
WOW Engages Mind and Heart in Business and Life
Business success requires more than “bottom line” numbers and current market share data (this can change overnight). In fact, when we are wise enough to go beyond statistics and gauging success solely by the external value of income, the paradox is, we are likely to have more income. I was listening to a video by Tom Peters and he closed out by referring to Tony Hsieh, Zappos’ CEO and the company’s first value to “Wow the Customer”.
“It’s ok to say “WOW” and it’s OK to act “Wow” – even in business” ~Tom Peters
I think that is right on if by “wow” you mean making it an experience that engages the heart along with the product or service. It’s not just a matter of how much you know, or how good the product performs. These things are important. Yet more and more, in our frantic world, people want to feel that you care and value their patronage.
They want to know that you care (a feeling) about how they are impacted and you are engaged not just for “bottom line” or “shareholder value”. This will require some reflection on the part of leadership – in other words, the people at the helm of the company that influence the culture. I notice that people talk about “organizations” as if they are homogenous, “things” instead of consisting of individuals who carry their own individual perceptions. If the leaders have old hang ups that want to repress expression of feelings, or see EQ/social intelligence as “soft skills” (often referred to in a derogatory sort of way), they are going to be hit with a rude awakening.
It never ceases to surprise me how a person can say, “people buy with emotion and justify with logic” and then turn around and deride feelings as something that should not be given attention. Well let me inform you – research from the HeartMath Institute has pointed to the fact that emotion has 5,000 times more magnetic energy in the nervous system than thought alone. In fact, it is emotion that powerfully wires behavior and belief.
If you want to learn how to “wow” people,
you will need to learn
how to get out of your head and into your (and theirs) heart.
Happiness Helps Your Business – and Health – Bottom Line
Happiness is a perception that is subject to how one sees life, how one interprets their circumstances. Brain research essentially shows we create our “reality” by assigning the meaning to our lives. Research shows that our ability to create and manage positive emotions is one of the foundations for success (and happiness) in business and life.
Whether or not we are happy is often not so much about what we do or how much money or associations we have as it is about the level of self-awareness we have to engage our mind and heart in our activity. While there are studies that connect happiness with better health, meaningful relationships and meaningful work – the key is “meaningful”. What does it mean to you?
Judging how materialistic our society is and how little attention is given by our educational system to develop the unique talents and interests of individuals, we still believe that happiness is outside of ourselves. We continue to “look for love in all the wrong places”. We still believe that we can “do” happiness, or “get” happiness through more “stuff”.
Business and material “success” does not necessarily make us happy. If it did, Americans should be some of the happiest people in the world. Polls have actually shown quite the contrary and we have frighteningly high rates of depression, obesity, debt and disease despite high-income levels. The answer lies in realizing that the path to happiness is an inner journey.
It’s not that having things is bad; it just that when we associate our identity with them, they have us – we get stuck.
When we can truly love and compassionately accept who we are, independently of what we “do” then we can “be” more joyful and fulfilled as we do our work in the world. The happier and more at peace that we are, the more likely we will be prosperous and healthy. Our choices are more likely to be done with clarity and with less effort and “hard work” (“hard” is mostly due to resistance, versus “flow”). When we recognize that our minds are conditioned to focus on what we fear or don’t want, we can learn to “retrain our brain” to change our focus of attention.
Does Leadership Really Have a Gender?
The topic of leadership is being discussed online more than ever these days, or perhaps I’m just really paying even more attention now. Since we are undergoing rapid change in our social institutions, the need for real leadership is more urgent than ever before in my lifetime.
I’ve noticed more articles and books that refer to “Male Leadership” and “Female Leadership” and every time I see those words and often when I read the discussion I heard the thought, “stereotyping, stereotyping” in my mind. When will we as a society wake up and stop trying to put people in itty-bitty boxes and let people tap into more of their true potential? Leadership is not male or female.
Now, there are masculine and feminine qualities or principles that can affect leadership style, but “masculine” does not equal “male” and “feminine” does not equal “female”. Herein lies the confusion.
As a society, we have historically equated the “feminine” only with women and the “masculine” only with men. This is incorrect. I believe the best way to bring this discussion to the table of the general public is to point out that from a brain point of view, the left brain’s role in our functioning has more “masculine” characteristics and the right, more “feminine”.
When functioning at our highest levels of awareness our hemispheres freely “collaborate” with awareness. As a tangible example, language has its linear structure, logic and process from the left side and its contextual, metaphor and humor from the right. However, the left can repress the right to a degree which may explain why when we are too “in our heads” and acting more masculine, the language expression tends to be humorless, factual and “logical” – for example science and many academic books.
Living too much on the side of the “left-brain” could also explain why a person is more likely to ignore their intuition, have poor social intelligence and shaky empathy and be spiritually disconnected to the whole of life. These traits are more of the “right-brain” (the “heart”) traits. When out of balance, repression of the right brain typically shows up as overt competition, “rugged individualism” and greed as the “survival” response will work overtime. Also assertion can easily turn into aggression.
In other words, the needs of the physical, external world would have too much focus without the balance of “going inside” to relax, reflect and re-energize – to just “Be”. Instead we become a society of “doing machines”….
…and in the process we’ve forgotten who we really are. Without the right-brain, connecting with others is challenging at best.
Getting back to leadership, there are men who are in balance, demonstrating both sides of the brain characteristics and there are women who are not and vice versa.
I Believe What I Believe Until….
…I change my mind. Seasons change. And you have a birthright and choice to change yours too when it is expedient to do so. It’s not about what you believe as “right or wrong” as much as is it expanding your sense of “self-actualization” (as Maslow would have said) compassion, love, purpose and meaning – for yourself and those you interact with.
Does it expand your light and your vision for your life or does it keep you in the darkness of fear?
Beliefs are simply thoughts with feelings that get wired into our body/mind and color our perception of our self and our life. Then they become our habits and habits can create “blind spots” – even “cataracts of the soul”. (Must be the eye surgeon in me). These are misperceptions that can keep you from seeing your true potential. As Warren Buffet is to have said:
“The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken”
Habitual ways of thinking can make or break your business endeavors, your personal and business relationships, your influence and even your health. Fortunately, habits can be broken easier when you are more self-aware. You are not just a victim of circumstances. No, your circumstances are the result of your true beliefs, i.e., the way that you think and feel.
We are conditioned to believe (there’s that word again) that we should never change our minds – that just because we were “raised that way”, we have to cling on to the beliefs and values of others, even though it doesn’t feel authentic. This will keep you from being, “YOU, Magnificently”. You are created with a particular purpose and uniqueness that no one can fully replicate. If you are able to let go of the beliefs that keep you imprisoned in your mind, you will be able to bring forth your gifts and talents that are meant to impact your world, maybe even “The World” in a highly visible and public way. Both ways are important to the whole of humanity. No one is insignificant.
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