Category: Life Lessons

11/16/09

Good day, team,

Here’s a challenge I wrote last year that seems appropriate to republish. Since many of the conditions that inspired it are still with us, I thought you’d appreciate seeing it again.

Lately, many of my clients are going through a particularly stressful time so I thought it would be useful to understand more about what’s actually happening to us when we become too stressed.

Here is an excerpt about the chemistry of stress from “Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatizis; it appears in the September 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review. (The entire article is well worth reading.)

“When people are under stress, surges in stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol strongly affect their reasoning and cognition. At low levels, cortisol facilitates thinking and other mental functions, so well-timed pressure to perform and targeted critiques of subordinates certainly have their place. When a leader’s demands become too great for a subordinate to handle, however, soaring cortisol levels and an added hard kick of adrenaline can paralyze the mind’s critical abilities. Attention fixates on the threat from the boss rather than the work at hand; memory, planning and creativity go out the window. People fall back on old habits, no matter how unsuitable those are for addressing new challenges.

“Poorly delivered criticism and displays of anger by leaders are common triggers of hormonal surges. In fact, when laboratory scientists want to study the highest levels of stress hormones, they simulate a job interview in which an applicant receives intense face-to-face criticism—an analogue of a boss tearing apart a subordinate’s performance.

“Researchers likewise find that when someone who is very important to a person expresses contempt or disgust toward him, his stress circuitry triggers an explosion of stress hormones and a spike in heart rate by 30 to 40 beats person minutes. Then, because of the interpersonal dynamic of mirror neurons and oscillators, the tension spreads to other people. Before you know it, the destructive emotions have infected an entire group and inhibited its performance. Leaders are themselves not immune to the contagion of stress. All the more reason they should take time to understand the biology of emotions.”

Your challenge this week is to check your stress levels and try to regain balance for your heart, mind and body. Perhaps you’ve noticed a tendency to disengage when you’re at work. If that’s the case, try finding one particular thing you really love doing and focus on that for awhile. Passion naturally re-engages us, and lends us a new source of energy. Maybe you find yourself becoming negative toward your co-workers; try getting some exercise at lunchtime to counter those feelings. If you find that your behavior is having a negative impact on others, try asking for help. Talk to someone you trust on the team. Let them know you’re having a hard time and could use help seeing things in a more positive light. Experiment with meditation techniques. Recent studies have proven that daily meditation reduces high blood pressure, high levels of cortisol, migraine headaches, and a number of other high-stress symptoms.

Whatever your experience of stress, remember that it’s not just your brain that does the work: A healthy body and an open heart are necessary to face each day as it comes, with all of its successes and failures. If you’re running at a deficit, figure out what you need to do to turn that loss into a gain. And chill out from time to time throughout the day. It might just help you think more clearly and creatively while it supports your body’s ability to be stress free.

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/2/09

Good day, team,

Last week was a whirlwind, as I traveled the East Coast presenting sales and customer service training to a client’s branch offices. One experience stands out and forms the heart of this week’s challenge: the importance of getting away from our regular circumstances and patterns to expand how we see the world.

Monday, I flew to New York for Tuesday meetings. Having arrived at LaGuardia airport at around 6 p.m., I traveled to my hotel and, since there wasn’t a restaurant in the hotel, I asked the girls at the front desk about the nearest and best restaurant that I could walk to for dinner. As everyone knows, traveling by air these days provides you with tiny bags of nuts or pretzels, a soft drink, and coffee, unless you want to pay $6.00 for some sort of happy meal, so I was pretty hungry by the time I reached my destination.

My friendly desk clerks told me that the Italian restaurant around the corner was the best place and handed me a card with instructions on how to walk there, along with the name and phone number of the restaurant. As I walked down the street heading toward “Piccolo Venezia,” my stomach growled in anticipation.

I was in Astoria, a solidly blue-collar neighborhood with lots of three-story brick attached town homes, each with a small courtyard in front that showcased many different exhibits. A plethora of Halloween decorations were on display as well as many religious icons: a statue of Mary complete with plastic flowers at her feet, a stone bird bath with St. Francis overlooking the water, and small altars with pictures of Christ, illuminated by votive candles. It seemed like a safe neighborhood, so I relaxed into my stroll to the restaurant.

Once there, I walked into a darkened bar and, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw an imposing maitre’d in a tuxedo at the far end of the bar. He stood there with his arms crossed, and it became immediately apparent that I needed to walk to him. OK, I thought: This is New York, and this is his domain, so I play by his rules.

I approached, and he asked, “Are you alone?” I told him I was, and he ushered me into a dining room that looked like the kind of place Tony Soprano would take a more important client, with plenty of fancy touches in its décor. I appreciated that the maitre’d placed me in a good spot where I had a nice view of the room.

I took in my surroundings. Various forms of red wall paper and some interesting pink stone adorned the walls. There were inviting prints of Venice placed near bright gilded sconces. Next to each table, a row of brass plates engraved with names like “Victor and Gloria Spinoza,” “Bruno and Rita Abelardo,” “Mario and Annalisa Fiorella,” paid tribute to the time-honored customers who had sponsored each table. I pondered how many times a couple would need to frequent a restaurant to pay for an engraved name plate in honor of their particular table. I realized that I was in a long-standing establishment that had a history of favorite customers, special events, and even a few minor celebrities whose pictures adorned the walls of the bar.

It dawned on me that I was no longer on the West Coast. No slow food or casual attire here. My waiter wore black pants, a short red jacket with a white shirt, and a black bow tie. A white linen hand towel hung from his forearm throughout my entire dinner. When he wasn’t attending a customer, he stood in line with rest of the waiters, who were dressed identically to him, awaiting their next opportunity to serve their customers or get special instructions from the maitre’d, who also stood in attendance quite near them but just far enough away to make a distinction. As my waiter approached and recited the specials to me, I noticed that he didn’t write anything down as I ordered, he just nodded his approval when I mentioned certain dishes and was quick to make suggestions when I needed help.

Before long, I was served some delicious homemade pasta and a large glass of red wine. I could easily overhear the conversation at the table next to me: four men discussing their families, their jobs and the state of the world. One fellow’s wife was about to have their first baby. An older gentlemen at the table gave him advice about helping out in the middle of the night if the baby started to cry and suggested good Italian names for baby boys. Another fellow talked about the state of the economy, how in all his years, he’d never been so slow at the shop and hoped that, just as the stock market seemed to be picking up, his business would too. He said, “The cars they bring in these days aren’t what they used to be: No chrome, no fins, just little plastic economy cars that people don’t seem to care too much about detailing.”

When a large Italian family across the room passed the newest family member around—a chubby-cheeked baby with bright dark eyes and lots of black hair—I could hear the older family members speaking endearments to the child in Italian. How many members of that family had had the same experience many years before at the same table in the same restaurant?

I was born in New York state, and I lived in Manhattan for two years, so I have vague memories of New York accents and old Italian restaurants, but it had been so long ago that my familiarity with these things was very faint. This is a life very different from mine, I thought, and as I sat enjoying my dinner, I was reminded how important it is to remove ourselves from our daily surroundings regularly so we can become more aware of how other people live.

It’s easy for us to become comfortable with our lives when our attitudes and routines are never challenged. But place yourself in someone elses world and you find that, although you may not understand or agree with her or him, you become intrigued with that way of life. Though we all share common concerns, our way of dealing with challenges may be very different. To expand our repertoire, it helps to keep our minds and hearts open to different traditions and customs.

When I finished the main course, my waiter approached and asked, “Ah, signora, some tiramisu and espresso for dessert?” I motioned to my very full stomach and replied, “No, grazie, but the pasta was great!” He smiled politely and swept the bread crumbs off my tablecloth with the small metal bar he kept in his pocket.

As I walked back to my hotel, I understood the importance of familiarity in our lives. It gives us stability and a sense of purpose. I learned that for 25 years my waiter has worked at that restaurant and each late afternoon as he makes his way across town to get there, he looks forward to waiting on the customers who have been coming there year after year to celebrate the important events in their lives or just have a good Italian dinner. I was the customer from Portland, some distant city he had seen mentioned in a “New York Times” restaurant review, who dropped into his life for a few hours. Maybe it was just long enough that it caused him to think about his life a little differently. When I mentioned that we enjoy locally grown produce in our restaurants here, he was surprised. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that if you live in a place where it doesn’t snow a lot, and it rains plenty, perhaps you can keep a local garden all year that can supply your restaurant. He shook his head as he pondered the thought and said, “There’s no room in my backyard to grow anything anyway, but my mother always grew her own tomatoes in a window box.” He sounded proud of her and as though he might entertain the idea himself.

This week, do something different to open yourself up to new ideas or possibilities. If you always drive the same way to work, try a different route. If you go to the same grocery store, try another one this week. Maybe you always start a meeting the same way or repeat the same routine when you get to the office each morning. Ask a colleague, “What do you do each morning when you come in?” to discover a different way to start your day, and then experiment with it.

We are creatures of habit, but we also have the ability to adapt to many different ways of being. Don’t be afraid to stretch your boundaries for a week. You may just find that it helps you see the world with a more expanded and compassionate view.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

10/19/09

Good day, team,

Lately, I’ve been on a crusade to make things less complicated. I use the word crusade because I’ve had some pretty extreme ideas about how to do this. I announced to my husband at dinner the other evening that if I had a large tractor with a big scooper on the front, I would plow through our house and scoop up everything that was not absolutely necessary to keep (which is much more than I’d like to admit) and take it all away. Of course, he asked, “Where would you dump it?” but that’s another question.

This new attitude cropped up after my recent weekend on silent retreat. If you have nothing to do but just sit and “be” and you remain quiet enough, you begin to see how simple things really are and how the the mind likes to complicate matters. I notice that once my mind has hold of an idea, it loves to explore it, chew on it, expand it, disagree with it, analyze it, add to it, etc.

Not that there’s anything wrong with this activity, goodness knows: Many great inventions and discoveries have been made though just this process. But when the mind takes something that is relatively simple and then creates all kinds of complications around it, the process can complicate our lives and the lives of others.

Here’s a good example. In the past six months, I’ve bid on two projects for the City of Portland. Having not worked for the city before and wanting to find ways to give back to the community, I thought working on a coaching project would be a good experience. The first Request for Proposal—a nasty, gnarly document that was extremely complicated and laborious—required 24 hours to complete.

It was painful to respond to every question, some of which didn’t make sense and others of which were impossible to answer given the information provided. I realized halfway through completion that if this was any indication of what it would be like to work for the city, I might not be interested. I had to laugh when, at the end, I was asked to submit my bid on double-sided paper, to be more environmentally conscious. Too bad that same standard hadn’t been applied to the eight pages of instructions.

I wasn’t exactly disappointed when my bid envelope was returned unopened with a letter saying the city had run out of funds for the project the day after the bids were received. I held the still-sealed envelope in my hand and thought, “Well, I guess I’ll chalk this up to my one and only experience attempting to do some civic duty.” The entire exercise seemed like a waste of my time, but then again, I often don’t know why I do things until much later, so perhaps I went through all of this for a reason.

Two weeks ago I received an e-mail from another department in the City of Portland. This group sent out an informal RFP via e-mail that consisted of five topics to address, three questions to answer and a request for a resume. It took be about an hour to put everything together, which I sent back by e-mail.

When I was done, I realized that the information I had e-mailed was pretty much like the five two-sided pages I had completed a few months before, but in a much simpler and more concise form. The big difference was that one agency had made its request incredibly complicated, whereas the other had streamlined the process down to its essential details.

Herein lies your challenge this week. At work, see if you continue to go through a complicated process every day just because that’s the way it’s always been done. Are you complicating a task that’s actually relatively simple, just because you think it requires more intellectual rigor? How about your instructions to others? Are you confusing people by asking too many questions and getting farther and farther away from the core issue?

If you find yourself sitting in a meeting and can’t remember why it was called, ask yourself, “What’s the real issue here? Have we gone down a road that leads us in a much more complicated direction? Are we spending too much time on something that’s really not all that important and, in doing so, side-tracking the real issues? For example, have we just spent the last hour wrangling over the issue of where to hold the company Christmas party when our sales have slipped for the fourth month in a row? Can we table everyone’s opinions for a moment to clarify what we’re really doing here?”

I’ve developed a new mantra that seems to be working for me: simpler, easier, better. Try saying that to yourself this week and see what happens.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

10/12/09

This past week Cloud Four (my website gurus) transformed my website yet again and enabled the blog feature. We did this in response to a number of requests from subscribers who wanted to connect and converse with the community of people who read these weekly challenges. So I finally acquiesced and decided to begin blogging. I have resisted blogging for quite awhile for a few reasons. One, because I don’t like it when people start a blog and and then don’t keep it up. Two, I don’t like being criticized (invariably, someone writes in and says, “you’re an idiot and what you write about is dumb”), and three, my ego got in the way.

So, let’s talk about number three, because I can see in writing this that number two and number three are part of the same resistance. When I say my ego got in the way, I am referring to a voice in me that always has a comment about my writing. It says all kinds of things like, “who’s really interested in what you have to say?” and “gee, that’s pretty good for someone who’s not really a writer” and so on. It’s the kind of ego that grows out of self-pity and self-judgment. It took me awhile to understand this. I always thought that ego was like vanity, i.e., the part of us that thinks we’re special or better than someone else (I’m afraid I have some of those thoughts as well!). But I soon came to understand that ego and vanity are exactly the same. When you tell yourself you’re not special and that you’re not as good as someone else, it still singles you out and makes you the center of the universe. It’s still all about ‘me’. It’s just reflects a negative rather than a positive self image. When I’m in that negative space I’m not thinking about anyone else. I notice that even when I do think about others, it’s often in the context of what they might think about me, or what they’ve done to me, or how they’ve affected me. So, there it is again, me, me, me.

As a coach, most of my days are involved with listening and speaking with others about themselves. There’s no end to the difficulties we all encounter. A big part of why I love coaching is that I never seem to tire of the stories people tell me. I’m fascinated by what motivates people and how they work to enrich their lives. But, I also see that our minds construct a set of ideas and an image of who we think we are. And when events don’t align with those images and ideas, we feel anxiety and struggle to find meaning.

In a way, I’ve grown to see that it’s my ego that often tries to define me. If I’m not careful, I take that definition to be all that I am. In truth, I know that I am actually not anything that my ego defines. My true nature isn’t an actual thing, thank goodness, but rather …. well, if I could define it, it would be a thing, right?

Your challenge this week is to see what’s not your ego. See when you act from that ego personality and when you don’t. Perhaps you experience something of such beauty that it takes your breath away and, in that moment, there is no definition or thought, just an experience of beauty. Maybe you say a prayer and, afterwards, you have that warm, spacious feeling in your heart – no need for dramatization or definition. Often when I’m walking, I find that my mind isn’t telling me anything about myself or my surroundings. There’s something in the rhythm of just walking that can quiet my ego.

I have a friend who loves to snow ski because he says, “when I’m skiing I’m just skiing, nothing else. It’s such a joy to do something that doesn’t require any thought or commentary. Of course, the minute I fall down I look around to make sure no one has seen me. My ego takes over and comments on my skiing ability. Right then, that moment of peace is gone.”

When we give to others in unconditional ways, we are likely to find that the mind and heart are at peace. Find what works for you this week. Find something that allows you to experience a moment when the ego is not in charge. You may find that by observing your ego at work, you might just get a glimpse into what it is not, what is beneath it.

Years ago at a retreat, I heard someone ask the teacher, “How can I get rid of my ego?” The teacher replied, “Ego just is. And if you try to make it go away you’ll see that it’s your ego that is determined to be successful at making it go away and will be monitoring your progress and commenting about it.” One of my favorite phrases comes from Papaji, and Indian teacher who advised us to allow the ego to become the handmaiden to the self, rather than the other way around.

Papaji’s teacher, Ramana Maharshi also said, “Take no notice of the ego and its activities but see only the light behind it.”

Have a good week!
Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.