September 2018 - Recreating YOU at Any Age

You have dreams and goals; I have dreams and goals. How do we get to the other side? It’s simple but it is not easy. Compassion…Gratitude…Persistence. Remember those 3 words and we will come back to them. For now let’s explore our blocks to success.

You have been given a life and the tools are all within you. If we are now told there is no matter and everything is energy, find yours. Dig deep. People say to start with your why. I believe this is important but it is not deep enough. Start with your feelings. Feel them, accept your humanity; you are not perfect. What are your feelings and where are you on the spectrum of your life? Is it failure – loneliness – regret – sadness? Feel them, embrace them, but don’t let them allow you to miss your life.

There is something out there with your name on it but it starts inside you. What an irony! You hold all that power and yet you feel powerless. Find the key, find your sweet spot. What will create urgency for you? What will enable you to feel the energy of the gift of life. Notice I did not say “the gift of life” – I said the “energy” of the gift of life. It has come to me that again – that energy is within you. Recently I heard messages from great leaders and speakers that have sparked my energy and led me to a passion today to write about what I believe is the key to your sweet spot and mine. There are some very big “energy consumers” and if we face them head on we can get to the other side and overcome our blocks to success.

TIME – Everyone has the same time. We have the same uncertainty and we could all be gone tomorrow. Whether you are 2 or 20 or 50 or 80 – today is ours to package and to create pockets of time. It is up to us to take away things that don’t serve our dreams and to pencil in time for what we need and must do to aspire to our potential.

POTENTIAL – Ah!! Now we are told that we only reach 1% of our potential (they used to say 10%). I cannot believe, as I read about him, that Terry Fox, the incredible hero who gave over his last few years on this earth to run a marathon a day with one leg, and leave a legacy that raised to date 38 times his goal ($1 for every Canadian) and now has people all over the world running on his behalf every year in love and community some 40 years later, did not reach his potential! Now that is an “energy creator” that surely came close to his potential and his personal best.

LIMITATIONS -The zappers of our energy are inside and not real – actually they are as real as we allow them to be. They are our feelings and they hold us back and take up enormous amounts of our time and limit our potential. Are you ready for the BIG ONE?

FORGIVENESS – There can be no forgiveness and no need for forgiveness without judgement. YES – me judging another and then thinking or processing if and when I will forgive another. “I am not my brother’s keeper” but I am always responsible for me – my thoughts and my actions. Sometimes the pain of separation causes us to seek solutions – to try to repair a relationship – to force a new start. What if we focus on ourselves and our well-being and our goals and dreams; what if we let go of being the “fixer” and the solution for anything outside us! Ask the Universe to give you the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can and the wisdom to know the difference. Remove your blocks to success with the Serenity Prayer.

SERENITY – Think about why that “Serenity Prayer” is the mantra and mission statement for Alcoholics Anonymous. Consider the path of those who have found AA and the number of people they have hurt and who have hurt them! They have created a pact in the community of the fellowship of AA to go within to change the things they can; they know it will not serve them to judge others, feel failure and hold on to regret. They realize that they will likely not stay sober unless they embrace that life changing internal power of forgiveness of self and others to heal their heart and remove their blocks to success.

My Dad gave me the legacy of the meaning of the Serenity Prayer after he spent 33 years in AA helping himself and hundreds of others. We had so much fun together and shared so many wonderful moments of joy and laughter. We also shared deep, inspiring, meaningful memories.

I never remember seeing my Dad drinking but I remember as a young daughter in my early teens before AA that sometimes my Dad would create an invisible wall between him and those he loved. He would retreat to his desk in his room and not come down to dinner and not respond to anything I wanted to share with him. I recall thinking that if I were to behave like that my Mom would not have stood for it and would have told me to snap out of it. We all learned to get on with our day, our week and our life; I came to understand the phrase, “the mask of depression”. I learned to accept then and now, that people are not born wanting to hurt others and that something I don’t understand must shift in their brain, especially if it feels as if they have chosen to upset me. But, hey, we don’t have to be at that party. We can go down another street.

This amazing poem says so much in such a simple way. I found out Portia Nelson wrote this when she was asked to describe her life in 5 short chapters and it had a profound impact on me. I think in a way it is “everyone’s story” and sadly some never get to chapter 5. I share it with you now.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

By Portia Nelson

Chapter I

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost…I am hopeless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I am in the same place.

But it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it there.

I still fall in…it’s a habit…but,

my eyes are open. I know where I am.

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

LOVEABILITY – Dr Robert Holden took me on an unexpected journey when he spoke about the elasticity of our brain and why we need to follow our joy. Then I listened to an interview with Jane Fonda, in her seventies, and she said we would have to “love” Trump; this was not a phrase one would expect from many women and especially not from such a strong political activist like her. Then she went on to say that if we don’t foster love throughout the world we are doomed and we have succumbed to “their” choices to create fear and disrespect. Wonderfully she clarified that we don’t have to like “these people” and we are still the winners. We can hold fast to our values and free ourselves of the “energy consumers” within ourselves by not “feeling the judgement;” we can choose to “be the change” and to set others free as well.

So now we come back to the three words I started with:

Compassion…Gratitude…Persistence…

As long as I can feel compassion for every living thing I am free of judging – which is clearly an “energy consumer.” Thus I have removed this block to success.

If I am grateful every day for who I am and what I have been given, whatever “they” say, and are and have is of no concern to me. I become an “energy creator” and create a stepping stone to my success.

If I persist in my goals and dreams, free of the “energy consumers”, I will perhaps get to that 1% of my potential.

What have you done recently to move you closer to reaching your 1% potential? How are you doing with your blocks to success? Share how you empowered yourself to become an “energy creator” for it is in sharing that we empower each other!

Could you imagine that a quote from Albert Einstein, long before social media, could actually be referring to branding yourself by recreating your story intentionally all these years later? How could climbing a mountain, either in real life and/or metaphorically speaking, be a key to successfully branding yourself?

Branding yourself is simply finding ways for people to connect with you. Connecting lies in your story: being vulnerable, memorable, relatable and believable – note I did not say being the best.

This blog will share how by recreating your story intentionally you can remove the biggest block to successfully branding yourself. Just as a salesperson needs to believe in their product/service, you need to be passionate about your story – all of it.

Consider the phrase: “Mind Open.” We often hear about the importance of our mind set; I propose we give it another name, “mind open.” The more I read and observe the more I believe that ideas and beliefs are not really new, they are simply presented to us in new ways. Concepts of thinking are simply packaged for us to receive them in the way that made sense to the “presenter”; then we repackage them when we internalize what they mean to us. You become the “presenter” when branding yourself; focus on connecting with the magnificence of your story and how you got up the mountain.

#1 Branding yourself and recreating your story intentionally with a mind open They say “when the student is ready the teacher will appear”; decide to benefit from new “packaging of your thoughts.” Think about some of the diverse events that have occurred in your journey and the way you described them then, and later, and now. Sometimes we forget how absolutely amazing we were/are and other times we hold on to something that we could benefit greatly from letting go. How do you allow these experiences to define your life and in turn impact branding yourself? Have your ideas about them changed at all? Have you found ways to value everything with an invincible optimism? This energy will impact people when branding yourself.

I would like to share a story about what could be deemed to be the forerunner of “branding yourself”, the elevator speech. Sometime ago when I was guiding a discussion about the best answers to the interview question, “tell me about yourself,” a lady in the group raised her hand and volunteered, “I have a memory of a performance appraisal from over 5 years ago that I think of every time I am asked that question.” She then proceeded to share what the employer had said to her, all very critical and judgmental. I remarked that she had an amazing recall of what was said. She replied, to my horror, “Of course I do, I carry it with me;” then she pulled it from her briefcase. I say “horror” because for me that took holding on to something negative from one person, in one’s whole world of experiences, to a whole new level. I asked her what it would take to tear up that performance appraisal. It was clear this was probably not an option. I then asked if we could agree that she would leave it with me overnight and consider tearing it up tomorrow or later that week. She agreed.

The next day we met privately in my office and I asked her if she could imagine the benefit of destroying this one and only poor performance appraisal she ever received in her life. “Not yet”, she replied. A few days later we met again, privately. This time she pulled another copy of the same performance appraisal from her briefcase, confessed that initially, she could not give me her only copy, and now she was ready to rip up both copies. I watched and I thought, wow, a human shredder, as she tore them into small bits of paper. I knew I was witnessing the power of “letting go” in action.

What could this story possibly have to do with branding yourself by recreating your story intentionally? Branding yourself is an art and you hold the “brush” in painting the masterpiece of who you are. How can you pick the attributes, pictures and stories that brand all of who you are if you allow anything to hold a place in your mind that might diminish your greatness? How can you imagine for your future, and help others to do the same, unlimited possibilities not yet achieved? Branding yourself includes all of your potential and that comes from within, from your belief. There is no room for doubt or holding on to what I call the blips of negativity that cross our path.

As a career coach I came up with a phrase for people’s cover letters: “everything in my life has prepared me to be an ideal candidate for this position.” This became very empowering because we talked about how even the job experiences that didn’t go well and perhaps even those that ended by one being fired were learning experiences. We let go of thinking “if it’s not a perfect match it won’t work.” Imagine if you could create the image of you as the “ideal choice” for all who see it.

It is the same with how we view our life. Can we value it all? Can we learn from it all? Can we build our brand on it all?

Recently I saw a heading: Should you break up with your old self? This came from the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza. When I read the book I became both fascinated and thrilled that science and the spiritual world could collaborate, rewire the brain, reach our deepest limiting beliefs and open up a whole new world – a chance to find the wonderful nuggets in it all branding yourself with a powerful gratitude that can make one unstoppable. This takes work and commitment to achieve but it can be done.

#2 Branding yourself and recreating your story intentionally with the gift unique to humans – We humans have a gift that transcends all other forms of life. If we master the way we think we can harness the power of this gift and turn virtually anything into a force of energy, not an anchor of defeat!

A failed marriage 30 years later, a betrayal of business partners that resulted in massive debt and losing a million dollars, an error of judgment we can never take back and so many more life events that are common place. On the flip side, what about the exciting times when we excelled, surprised and delighted the world with our unique self! Anybody, at any moment, can choose to recreate one’s story intentionally and thereby label each event as a stepping stone to what made you unique, enlightened, more compassionate, grateful, determined and so many other things that only come with time; as Albert Einstein so eloquently put it, they become: “a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.”

#3 Branding yourself by recreating your story intentionally and asking questions: What if this is my finest hour? How can I find the wisdom in failure? Recently I read something the poet John Keats wrote in a letter, “Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?” I am not a proponent that suffering is a good thing but I do believe it can be a great teacher, if we allow it. Losing and winning are both part of the journey of life; it is by embracing that little-known fact and surrendering to the process that we can find our power and rewrite our story and bring value to every chapter. Branding yourself with irresistible appeal and powerful relatability is possible now because you “own it”; you have removed the biggest block to branding yourself and you see the results of the lessons. Being passionate about your story is inevitable.

#4 Branding yourself by recreating your story intentionally is “like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views,” (of yourself) and finding the platform in today’s amazing world of technology and social media to express your value. Branding yourself is a process whereby you “school an intelligence” and make it a “one of a kind” that has immeasurable value and relatability. Your uniqueness is learned and earned so each chapter has a “winning” component to it. Over time we come to know that failure is not final and success is not permanent. Be intentional today, don’t wait. Climb your mountain, gain new and wider views, discover unexpected connections between your starting points and now; feel a gratitude and inner peace with it all.

Have you rewritten a chapter in your life recently? Share how this empowered you to move forward to greater heights. Send me your successes for it is in sharing that we empower each other!

Month: September 2018

Blocks to Success- How to get to the other side

Branding yourself by recreating your story intentionally