So often I live my life like the guy in this video. Rushing around to get done all my to do’s while
not taking notice of those around me, not connecting, and not taking in all that is available in the moments.
This video reminds me to slow down and be mindful of those around me and to stop and take in each and every moment as if it were our last.
One of my very closest friends lost his dad in February. I have enclosed a brief part of his dad’s obituary in this post. I had the honor and privilege to meet his dad. He was an amazing man. The 2 areas of his life that my friend shared at his funeral were: Face and Hands.
Face: His dad had this incredible gift of face time. When he looked at you face to face, you knew that you were all that mattered at that time and in that space. What an incredible message for all of us to stop and remember EVERY time we meet someone. Face to Face, Undivided attention, Smile, Presence.
Hands: His dad had a warm and inviting hand shake, and he could build, fix, and do almost anything with his hands. He told one of his granddaughters: “It doesn’t have to be easy. It just has to be possible.” He lived this out. He was able to do almost anything and solve almost any problem with his hands.
I am so blessed to have my friend who has inherited Eugene Walter Egan’s gifts of Face Time and Hands that can do anything.
“Gene was a lover of sports and a longtime softball player, most recently playing on several senior softball teams at Elings Park. He was renowned for his inventive mind and can-do attitude: Gene could create a solution for anything with items on hand, often using astonishing materials. He was active in his community, with a never failing response to anyone in need. Gene loved to travel and visit with his friends and extended family, always passionate about spreading love and his zest for life to others. He was blessed with the gift of making every person feel special and was so generous with family, friends and neighbors. His welcoming smile, his sense of humor and his positive spirit will be greatly missed. ’nuff said.”
I had a fascinating conversation with a USC Business School Professor last week. He pointed out that only 37% of employees feel appreciated at their job, and the majority don’t trust their leaders. What would a world look like where employee’s felt truly appreciated?
Are these employees being shown appreciation, but it isn’t landing? What do you need to hear to feel appreciated? It is different for different people. I feel appreciated when I am verbally affirmed, but my bride feels appreciated when I give her my undivided attention.
So maybe these employees are being appreciated, but they are not feeling appreciated?? How could we better learn how to show our appreciation in the “language” that would be heard by our employees, co-workers, spouses, kids? Curious? I have some GREAT ideas on how to REALLY show those around you that you appreciate them. Email me if you are interested!
In 1946, Solomon Asch did an experiment in which he created 2 lists of attributes that describe an individual. After 2 separate groups of people were given either list A or list B, they were given an additional list of attributes and instructed to indicate other qualities an individual might have. The 2 lists had the same attributes: intelligent, skillful, industrious, determined, practical, and cautious. However list A had one additional attribute: warm, and list B had the additional attribute: cold.
Based on these 2 attributes, each group selected different lists of attributes for the individuals. List A with the warm attribute chose additional attributes of happy, good-natured, generous, humorous, wise, etc. while List B with the cold attribute chose additional attributes of serious, strong, reliable, persistent, etc.
Other research has confirmed this amazing finding of human perception. The conclusions to these experiments are as follows:
Perceptions are colored by small pieces of information, which may or may not be correct.
Initial impressions are used to create an overall view of a person. Knowing a few things, we then fill in the missing pieces in our minds.
We do not form an overall view of someone by painstakingly assembling all of the pieces.
Certain characteristics or attributes are consistently linked together.
Attributes are clustered into various dimension in the minds of most people.
WOW! I am SO thankful that I am an ER doctor as one of my careers. I get plenty of opportunities to meet total strangers and continue to work on my ability to given them the proper first impression of who I truly am.
I had NO idea that our first impressions are based on so little and often incorrect information, and our perceptions are formed with so little information.
This is further evidence that perception and perspective work in coaching is so life changing because so much of who we are and who we can become is painted by our perceptions, our perspectives, and those around us.
The search to define happiness has consumed a lot of human energy. Until recently, we’ve had little to show for it — some songs, a few poems, and a Charles Schulz cartoon about happiness being a warm puppy — but nothing of much practical use.
The best life evaluations come from people who went to college, got married, and have good jobs.
To get practical results, you need scientists. Fortunately, two of the best are now on the case: Angus Deaton, Ph.D., a renowned economist, and Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D., a Nobel prize-winning psychologist, both from Princeton University. Dispensing with romantic imagery, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Kahneman looked for happiness in numbers. More specifically, they analyzed responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (GHWBI), a daily survey that asks roughly 1,000 U.S. residents a battery of questions about their wellbeing.
After analyzing more than 450,000 GHWBI responses from 2008 and 2009, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Kahneman found that happiness is actually the result of the fulfillment of two abstract psychological states — emotional wellbeing and life evaluation. The finding is important because it offered the researchers a new and more useful way of looking at happiness.
“What did we get from these data? Everything,” says Dr. Deaton. “The GHWBI asks clear questions about life evaluation as well as emotional wellbeing. These data are just terrific in permitting research that was not really possible before.”
Evaluation and emotion
The difference between life evaluation and emotional wellbeing is vital, though the two are related. “Nobody claims that the two dimensions are independent,” says Dr. Kahneman. “They’re clearly distinct dimensions that are correlated. But they have somewhat different determinants. What improves people’s emotional wellbeing is different from what it takes to make them say that they’re satisfied with their life.”
In other words, life evaluation and emotional wellbeing refer to different feelings. Life evaluation requires a long view of a person’s overall life. Though life evaluation is colored by the day’s emotions, Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Deaton’s GHWBI research shows that people evaluate their lives based on a retrospective of their achievements. If they’ve accomplished the goals they’ve set, are financially secure, and are emotionally fulfilled, they’re more likely to have a high evaluation of their life.
And research shows that the more conventional the goals, the better the life evaluation. Dr. Kahneman notes that the best life evaluations come from people who went to college, got married, and have good jobs; other studies show that people who wanted to be performing artists when they were 18 but didn’t end up to be were generally very dissatisfied with their lives at age 45. “Having goals that you can meet is essential to life satisfaction,” says Dr. Kahneman. “Setting goals that you’re not going to meet sets you up for failure.”
Emotional wellbeing reflects a much shorter view and refers to the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience. If the day’s experience is negative, emotional wellbeing will take a hit. That said, people with good emotional wellbeing seem to get it through social contact.
“Emotional happiness is primarily social,” says Dr. Kahneman. “The very best thing that can happen to people is to spend time with other people they like. That is when they are happiest, and so, without question, this is a major story. We find loneliness is a terrible thing. So is extreme poverty. But loneliness, regardless of how rich you are, is a very bad thing.”
But the research also indicates that you won’t become happy merely by socializing with your best friends and achieving your goals. You also need $75,000.
The magic number: $75,000
Of all the important and interesting findings Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Deaton’s research has uncovered, the most reported finding is that people with an annual household income of $75,000 are about as happy as anyone gets. More specifically, those with annual household incomes below $75,000 give lower responses to both life evaluation and emotional wellbeing questions. But people with an annual household income of more than $75,000 don’t have commensurately higher levels of emotional wellbeing, even though their life evaluation rating continues to increase.
This finding holds true even where living isn’t cheap. “When we mention $75,000, the question I always get is, ‘What about New York City?'” says Dr. Kahneman. True, $75,000 won’t go very far in big cities like New York, London, or Singapore, and it makes sense that a high cost of living will make even large sums feel puny. “Our finding indicates that $75,000 is the limit even in large expensive cities,” says Dr. Kahneman. “So, though there may be places in which happiness levels off at a lower income, $75,000 is the sufficiency point in the most expensive places.”
Dr. Deaton and Dr. Kahneman are not certain why, but the data are clear: Even in high-cost cities, incomes over $75,000 don’t correlate to greater happiness. They think this is because even in expensive places, $75,000 is enough to live on while allowing for emotionally rich — and enriching — social experiences. Some places such as New York may be expensive precisely because they are such great places to live, says Dr. Deaton, because their terrific amenities may offset the higher cost of living there.
“No matter where you live, your emotional wellbeing is as good as it’s going to get at $75,000,” says Dr. Deaton, “and money’s not going to make it any better beyond that point. It’s like you hit some sort of ceiling, and you can’t get emotional wellbeing much higher just by having more money.”
Your emotional life depends primarily on your relationships with people.
Emotional wellbeing may not improve with additional money, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Kahneman think, because of several factors. One is that humans adapt quickly to the things money can buy. A mansion is a thrill the first month you live in it, but it’s just a house the second.
Moreover, other research suggests that wealthy people don’t take as much pleasure in actual pleasure as do poor people. In one test, social researchers primed some test subjects to feel rich and found that the “wealthy” subjects didn’t enjoy luxury chocolate as much as the control group, the “non-wealthy,” did.
And Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Deaton believe that when it comes to the very wealthy with high life satisfaction, their evaluations may be influenced more by keeping score than by purchasing power. If life evaluation is based on reviewing how much progress people have made in their lives, money may become a marker of success.
“Not having enough money to live a decent life really gets in the way of doing the ordinary things that make people happy,” says Dr. Deaton. “What might create your emotional wellbeing is spending time with your friends, and if your income is below $75,000, you may not have the money to do it. But for life evaluation, money represents a sense of achievement. And that just keeps on going up when you have more money.”
Stressing the subject
So people who have achieved their goals, who spend a lot of time with friends, and who make a lot of money have the most life satisfaction, while those who earn at least $75,000 a year have the greatest emotional wellbeing. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t stressed. The GHWBI data show that college graduates report more stress than people without college degrees, and Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Deaton say that stress levels are generally higher in wealthy countries.
The GHWBI data also showed that most Americans are happy and satisfied with their lives — 85% reported a lot of happiness, enjoyment, and smiling; 24% reported sadness or worry; and 39% reported stress. Comparing the U.S. life evaluation scores with data available from about 150 other countries through the Gallup World Poll, the U.S. ranks fairly high. The only nations with higher scores are the Scandinavian countries, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and New Zealand.
However, while Americans come in near the top for life evaluation and do well on wellbeing, they’re also among the most stressed. U.S. stress levels are the fifth highest when compared to data from other countries in the Gallup World Poll.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2010 poverty level for a family of four was a long way from $75,000 at $22,314 — and 15.3% of Americans earned that much or less. “It is worse to be alone, it is worse to be divorced, it is worse to be unemployed, and it is worse to be sick if you’re poor, and you get less benefit from the things that create emotional wellbeing,” says Dr. Kahneman. “There are huge emotional costs to poverty.”
And poor people are hardly carefree — in fact, the researchers found that the poor report more stress than the economically comfortable. They also don’t gain the benefit of stress alleviation on weekends, as do their better-off counterparts. And Dr. Deaton notes that there’s a big difference between the stress associated with success and the stress caused by constant deprivation.
But the data show that money doesn’t alleviate stress in the same way it alleviates unhappiness. In fact, money may go hand in hand with stress among high-earning people. “I think stress sometimes goes with success,” says Dr. Deaton. “America is a very rich, busy, striving country, and that may be associated with stress. But we sort of like it.”
With a little help from your friends
Dr. Kahneman says some studies show that while warm puppies really can improve emotional wellbeing, your emotional life depends primarily on your relationships with people. “I’d feel embarrassed to give that as advice — ‘improve your relationships.’ But obviously if people are going to get happier, it’s going to come to that,” he says.
There is one thing, however, left to mention in this discussion of happiness — individual temperament. Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Deaton’s research, and that of others, clearly indicates that some people are just born happier, or “sunnier,” as Dr. Deaton calls them. Their emotional wellbeing will always be higher than everyone else’s.
That’s not to suggest that those who aren’t “sunny” are doomed to lives of misery. Even the most pessimistic, grumpy-by-nature people can find solace in Dr. Deaton’s statement: “It may be that we’re not designed for happiness.” And what is it we were designed for? “To avoid getting eaten by predators,” says Dr. Deaton. “If nothing eats you today, you ought to be happy. At least it’s a start.”
Over and Over again the research is CRYSTAL CLEAR. Gratitude works. Those who take a moment every day to list what they are grateful for lead better lives. So this Thanksgiving, try a serving of gratitude!
New York Times Online
Findings: A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day
The most psychologically correct holiday of the year is upon us.
Thanksgiving may be the holiday from hell for nutritionists, and it produces plenty of war stories for psychiatrists dealing with drunken family meltdowns. But it has recently become the favorite feast of psychologists studying the consequences of giving thanks. Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive Thanksgiving without serious injury.
But what if you’re not the grateful sort? I sought guidance from the psychologists who have made gratitude a hot research topic. Here’s their advice for getting into the holiday spirit – or at least getting through dinner Thursday:
Start with “gratitude lite.”That’s the term used by Robert A. Emmons, of the University of California, Davis, for the technique used in his pioneering experiments he conducted along with Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami. They instructed people to keep a journal listing five things for which they felt grateful, like a friend’s generosity, something they’d learned, a sunset they’d enjoyed.
The gratitude journal was brief – just one sentence for each of the five things – and done only once a week, but after two months there were significant effects. Compared with a control group, the people keeping the gratitude journal were more optimistic and felt happier. They reported fewer physical problems and spent more time working out.
Further benefits were observed in a study of polio survivors and other people with neuromuscular problems. The ones who kept a gratitude journal reported feeling happier and more optimistic than those in a control group, and these reports were corroborated by observations from their spouses. These grateful people also fell asleep more quickly at night, slept longer and woke up feeling more refreshed.
“If you want to sleep more soundly, count blessings, not sheep,” Dr. Emmons advises in “Thanks!” his book on gratitude research.
Don’t confuse gratitude with indebtedness. Sure, you may feel obliged to return a favor, but that’s not gratitude, at least not the way psychologists define it. Indebtedness is more of a negative feeling and doesn’t yield the same benefits as gratitude, which inclines you to be nice to anyone, not just a benefactor.
In an experiment at Northeastern University, Monica Bartlett and David DeSteno sabotaged each participant’s computer and arranged for another student to fix it. Afterward, the students who had been helped were likelier to volunteer to help someone else – a complete stranger – with an unrelated task. Gratitude promoted good karma. And if it works with strangers ….
Try it on your family. No matter how dysfunctional your family, gratitude can still work, says Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside.
“Do one small and unobtrusive thoughtful or generous thing for each member of your family on Thanksgiving,” she advises. “Say thank you for every thoughtful or kind gesture. Express your admiration for someone’s skills or talents – wielding that kitchen knife so masterfully, for example. And truly listen, even when your grandfather is boring you again with the same World War II story.”
Don’t counterattack.If you’re bracing for insults on Thursday, consider a recent experiment at the University of Kentucky. After turning in a piece of writing, some students received praise for it while others got a scathing evaluation: “This is one of the worst essays I’ve ever read!” Then each student played a computer game against the person who’d done the evaluation. The winner of the game could administer a blast of white noise to the loser. Not surprisingly, the insulted essayists retaliated against their critics by subjecting them to especially loud blasts – much louder than the noise administered by the students who’d gotten positive evaluations. But there was an exception to this trend among a subgroup of the students: the ones who had been instructed to write essays about things for which they were grateful. After that exercise in counting their blessings, they weren’t bothered by the nasty criticism – or at least they didn’t feel compelled to amp up the noise against their critics.
“Gratitude is more than just feeling good,” says Nathan DeWall, who led the study at Kentucky. “It helps people become less aggressive by enhancing their empathy. “It’s an equal-opportunity emotion. Anyone can experience it and benefit from it, even the most crotchety uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”
Share the feeling. Why does gratitude do so much good? “More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship,” Dr. McCullough says. “It is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person. Gratitude is what happens when someone does something that causes you to realize that you matter more to that person than you thought you did.”
Try a gratitude visit. This exercise, recommended by Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, begins with writing a 300-word letter to someone who changed your life for the better. Be specific about what the person did and how it affected you. Deliver it in person, preferably without telling the person in advance what the visit is about. When you get there, read the whole thing slowly to your benefactor. “You will be happier and less depressed one month from now,” Dr. Seligman guarantees in his book “Flourish.”
Contemplate a higher power.Religious individuals don’t necessarily act with more gratitude in a specific situation, but thinking about religion can cause people to feel and act more gratefully, as demonstrated in experiments by Jo-Ann Tsang and colleagues at Baylor University. Other research shows that praying can increase gratitude.
Go for deep gratitude. Once you’ve learned to count your blessings, Dr. Emmons says, you can think bigger.
“As a culture, we have lost a deep sense of gratefulness about the freedoms we enjoy, a lack of gratitude toward those who lost their lives in the fight for freedom, a lack of gratitude for all the material advantages we have,” he says. “The focus of Thanksgiving should be a reflection of how our lives have been made so much more comfortable by the sacrifices of those who have come before us.”
And if that seems too daunting, you can least tell yourself -Hey, it could always be worse. When your relatives force you to look at photos on their phones, be thankful they no longer have access to a slide projector. When your aunt expounds on politics, rejoice inwardly that she does not hold elected office. Instead of focusing on the dry, tasteless turkey on your plate, be grateful the six-hour roasting process killed any toxic bacteria.
Is that too much of a stretch? When all else fails, remember the Monty Python mantra of the Black Plague victim: “I’m not dead.” It’s all a matter of perspective.
My son came home from high school today sharing the story of cat girl with us. There is a girl in several of his classes that wore cat ears and face painted cat whiskers to school today. The teacher asked why she was dressed up like a cat, and she announced to the class that it is October, and she dresses up as something new every day in the month of October.
I LOVE it! I told my son that is a girl you want to get to know. Can you imagine the teasing that she must endure at high school to do her own thing? It must be immense, but she does it anyway!
Hats off for Cat Girl! Creative, Unique, Hear Her Meow (or roar? maybe she will be a lion tomorrow?)
I am in the process of building my coaching practice. I LOVE coaching, but the marketing piece….not so much. When I ask around & share the incredible testimonials from those who I have coached, most people think or say, “I don’t need coaching…but I might know a guy who could use some coaching…”
I clearly will never be a ‘marketeer’ but coaching is not what someone else could ‘use’ or ‘need’. Coaching is the unique opportunity to learn how to flourish, to learn how to live a life of fulfillment. If we were to score on a 1 to 10 scale each segment of our lives (our marriage, relationships, work, play, parenting, etc.), what numbers would we see? Are we living life to the fullest? Coaching is a gift. It is the place to discover what a 10 looks, sounds, tastes, and feels like! Can you imagine that?
Coaching has transformed my life and the lives of my clients. It is an opportunity to learn & develop the know how to live your most fulfilling life, to live in the present (the land of the now here rather than the land of nowhere), to discover the power of choice, to laugh & live more…Now who doesn’t want some of that?!
Nerve by Taylor Clark is a great read. It is an entertaining and insightful look into fear. He shares some key methods to deal with fear, anxiety, and stress. I didn’t say overcome fear because our fears are here to stay (for the most part). The hero’s of the world acknowledge the fear and move forward with it.
Lesson #12: Open up to fear unconditionally.
“There’s nothing wrong with feeling anxious, ever, over anything at all. Fear and anxiety are part of who we are. Once we drop the pointless, wrongheaded routine about needing to get rid of them, we can carry fear and anxiety around with us through life like friendly companions. Instead of battling fear, we just let it happen, and when the fight against it dissolves, so does the torment. We slowly learn to live in harmony with fear, anxiety, and stress, expecting them to show up and welcoming them when they do.”
Nerve by Taylor Clark is a great read. It is an entertaining and insightful look into fear. He shares some key methods to deal with fear, anxiety, and stress. I didn’t say overcome fear because our fears are here to stay (for the most part). The hero’s of the world acknowledge the fear and move forward with it.
Lesson #10: Build faith in yourself.
“…developing confidence that you can handle intense fear and stressful predicaments is absolutely vital…remember, worry research shows that people handle worst-case scenarios far better than they ever expected, and therapists like David Barlow like to plunge their clients into deep terror to show them reserves of strength they didn’t know they had. And in addition to building confidence through fear exposure, we can also do it through the ways that we talk to ourselves and handle worrisome visions of the future. Here’s a useful practice: next time you imagine something you fear coming to pass, visualize yourself not enduring it miserably or falling apart but coping with it well, demonstrating grit and resilience.”
Nerve by Taylor Clark is a great read. It is an entertaining and insightful look into fear. He shares some key methods to deal with fear, anxiety, and stress. I didn’t say overcome fear because our fears are here to stay (for the most part). The hero’s of the world acknowledge the fear and move forward with it.
Lesson #7: Learn to accept uncertainty and lack of control.
“Anxiety and stress feed on our negative response to feeling uncertain or powerless over the future…anxiety expert Robert Leahy suggests…taking a hint from the well-worn Serenity Prayer, which aspires to ‘the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ When we’re troubled about something uncertain or uncontrollable…Leahy recommends a simple practice to help us accept reality…suppose you’re worried you might be laid off from your job. Leahy says that if you bask in your uncertainty (that is, expose yourself to your fear about the future), repeating the distressing thought It’s possible I could be laid off to yourself without resisting your anxious emotional reaction, then you (and your amygdala) will eventually begin habituating to it. With enough exposure, the idea loses its power and becomes almost dull.”
Nerve by Taylor Clark is a great read. It is an entertaining and insightful look into fear. He shares some key methods to deal with fear, anxiety, and stress. I didn’t say overcome fear because our fears are here to stay (for the most part). The hero’s of the world acknowledge the fear and move forward with it.
Lesson #6: Expose yourself to your fears.
“If you want to remain locked into a fear indefinitely, then by all means, avoid the situations that make you anxious. but if you want to give your amygdala a chance to get over a fear, you must exposure yourself to the things and ideas that scare you…a good rule of thumb…if anxiety is stopping you from doing something that isn’t objectively dangerous, do it anyway….get in the habit of moving toward your fears rather than running away. When you do so, even ‘failures’ become successes, each exposure two steps forward to one step back.”
Nerve by Taylor Clark is a great read. It is an entertaining and insightful look into fear. He shares some key methods to deal with fear, anxiety, and stress. I didn’t say overcome fear because our fears are here to stay (for the most part). The hero’s of the world acknowledge the fear and move forward with it.
Lesson #2: Put your feelings into words.
“…research shows that talking or writing about an emotion like fear helps the brain to process it behind the scenes…[this process literally] changes their emotions…”
“I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.”-William Faulkner
“Love woke me up this morning…”-lyric from Dreamer by Bethany Dillon
Did love wake you up this morning?
When did love wake you up?
Does love wake me up every morning, but I am not aware of it?
How can we keep that love alive throughout our days?
What if love is the fabric of our everything, but we miss seeing it?
What if love was resurrected 2011 years ago?
What if love is resurrected every day?
What would it look like for us to experience this love every moment of every day?
Happy Easter!
This year a few of my friends are helping me to explore the Upper Limit Problem(s) in our lives. I hope to share a few thoughts via movies etc. to explore this concept throughout 2011. The 1st “assignment” is watching the movie titled: King’s Speech.
WOW! This is a MUST see movie. It is about relationships, friendship, and a new concept that I am just starting to explore based on The Big Leap by Hendricks.
The Upper Limit Problem is the concept that we all live in our little box of excellence: we have acquired through experience a comfortable space of expertise.
The Upper Limit Problem is the human tendency to put the brakes on our positive “energy”/feelings when we’ve exceeded our unconscious thermostat setting for how good we can feel, how successful we can be, and how much love we can feel.
Questions to explore:
What was the King’s Upper Limit Problem(s)?
How did he overcome them?
What are your Upper Limit Problem(s)?
How can you overcome them?
C.U.L.P. New Year’s Initiative
Conspiracy to overcome the Upper Limit Problem (concept from the book titled: The Big Leap)…
Conspiracy is from 2 latin words; and it literally means to breathe together. I think that is cool.
I definitely suffer from The Upper Limit Problem.
The Upper Limit Problem is the concept that we all live in our little box of excellence: we have acquired through experience a comfortable space of expertise.
The Upper Limit Problem is the human tendency to put the brakes on our positive “energy”/feelings when we’ve exceeded our unconscious thermostat setting for how good we can feel, how successful we can be, and how much love we can feel. The items to explore are:
1. What keeps us from going up? Getting beyond our upper limit…For me it is that I am not enough so I am not worthy, not deserving, and not willing to let go of staying in the box (ex. not truly embracing/accepting compliments/good moments that happen to me).
2. What can we do to stay above our upper limit? Or better yet, what can we do to eliminate our upper limit completely? What can we do to increase our tolerance for things going well in our lives in the now? What can we do to celebrate and embrace the space above and beyond our upper limit?
3. What does it feel like when we break through the top of our upper limit box?
EQ Moment #2:
Miners Survive on Team EQ
Imagine facing what appears to be certain death for 17 days, in the dark and 90° heat, cooped up with 33 of your coworkers. The Chilean miners endured this hellish situation prior to their first contact from above ground. The secret to their success? Team EQ. There’s no better example of a work team rising—literally—from the darkest depths and triumphing over disaster. The group survived their ordeal because each individual was willing to put his own needs aside—and keep his emotions in check—for the good of the group. For the first 17 days, each man’s daily diet consisted of a small piece of tuna, a few scraps of rotting leftovers, a small sip of ultra-pasteurized milk (every two days), and a drink of oil-tainted water siphoned from the ground and machine radiators.
From the very beginning, these men formed a productive team and took bold steps to manage themselves, their emotions, and their situation. The group chose a leader, assigned sub teams to tasks such as searching for an escape, and established a majority rule voting system. Five of the 33 miners, employees of a different subcontractor, had formed their own separate camp until persuaded to integrate with the other men for the good of the group. The men consciously chose organization and balance for their life underground by keeping a schedule for sleeping, using truck and helmet lights sparingly as rewards to keep their spirits up, and honking vehicle horns every hour in the faint hope that someone might hear them. They told stories and even played practical jokes to lighten the mood and provide moments of emotional release.
Team EQ doesn’t require heroic acts from everyone involved. Instead, each team member contributing to the small things makes a difference, and improves the team’s response to the emotional challenges that inevitably surface in the face of crisis. Whether they knew it or not, each miner’s contribution ensured that the intense emotions of fear, panic, shock, and despair didn’t derail the group’s survival efforts.
I am not enough. This sentence echoes through the minds of most men (and many women) in our society. It is a burden we carry often from our dads (and sometimes our moms). We walk around doing all that we can to look good and feel like we are enough when in reality, we hear only a voice telling us that we are not enough.
My mom died this last summer, and a few months before she died, I was reminded once again of being enough. She was the voice that echoed to me that I was enough. I shared with her my newest adventure into becoming certified in professional coaching. She did what she did best with her kids. She looked straight into my eyes through into my soul, lightly wrapped her hand around my wrist, and said, “You will be great at that.”
I am reminded today, a day in which she would have turned 82, that she gave me the gift of being enough. She believed in me when I didn’t. This was her gift, and it is her legacy.
My youngest son is 8. He recently has gotten into learning how to throw a Frisbee. After every throw, he yells out, “Is that a good one?” The dutiful, worry wart, dad that I am thinks maybe he lacks self-esteem. As we are walking into the house after a Frisbee toss time, he looks at me and says, “Dad, do you think I am getting better?” Worried about his self-esteem, I ask him what he thinks. He immediately with a big smile says, “I think I am getting really great at throwing the Frisbee!” He is enough! And his Grandma’s legacy of being enough carries on in him and in all of us who she touched.
Are you enough? You are more enough than you could ever imagine. God said that you are His beloved. Can you feel His warm embrace? Can you hear His whisper in your ear, “You are my beloved. I adore you.” Even though my mom gave me the gift, I continue to live with the wound of feeling that I am not enough. It has only been recently that I have begun to embrace my enoughness. Don’t settle for the dial tone of not enough. Listen to the gentle voice that KNOWS that you are enough and so much more.
Mom is finally in a place where “I am not enough” doesn’t even exist. I am so grateful today, her birthday, for her gift. I am enough, Mom. I will always be enough. I am beloved, embraced, and delighted in. Thanks Mom. I miss you.
I just finished a very thoughtful book titled: Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Here are some brief notes that I learned about Self-Awareness. The book focuses on 4 parts to E.I.-Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social-Awareness, and Social-Management.
Self-Awareness: To know yourself as you really are & to notice and understand your emotions
1. Allow yourself to sit with an emotion and become fully aware of it especially when emotions pop up or boil to the surface
2. Know who pushes your buttons and how they do it
3. Use books, music, and books to analyze and look at your emotions
Finally, keep a journal of emotions based on these 3 key points.