September 30, 2014

Do You Know When You are Leaking Energy?

Do you ever pay attention to how much energy you have and how it impacts your mood, productivity and relationships? We know we need nourishment from food to provide us energy, but how many of you take a close look at the way we speak and how our energy can be drained?

This past weekend I spent an amazing stress free weekend away with my husband, which with 4 kids is a rare experience. On Sunday evening I decided to call a friend who I had not spoken with in a while and we talked for over 2 hours. Since it had been a while, I shared a variety of things going on both good and challenging situations.

That night I had a REALLY hard time sleeping. I never have sleep issues. I regularly get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night, but I had this anxious feeling all night long. It wasn’t like I had a lot of stuff going on the next day to worry about. It was just this really wierd energy.

Later in the day, a client of mine reached out said she felt that we needed to connect. She was sensing that I was “just out of it”. She was right. I had all of these anxious feelings that came to the surface as a result of talking with my friend.

It was like when I spent time gossiping, or talking about “negative” stuff, that my energy field was severely impacted. Many times, we live in this space of energy leaking all over the place and it just becomes the norm and hard to realize when this is happening to us. But this was SO different for me, since I had literally had a stress free weekend. I went from complete BLISS, to complete ANXIETY. My body could SO feel the difference.

My friend told me to close my eyes, take a deep breath and put my hand on my heart and think of the first word that comes to mind. PATIENCE. Ahhh. This anxiety was around waiting for things to happen. Talking with my friend about the anxiety just added to the leaking of my energy and created even MORE anxiety. While I didn’t intentionally ask for more anxiety, that is what my body and energy was creating by the words and actions I was choosing.

It was amazing to really experience it from this perspective. I had never thought of energy from that perspective before. I know its important to surround myself with positive thoughts and to keep a gratitude journal, but I never paid attention to how my words thoughts and actions completely drained my energy. All I did was have a conversation with a friend, which we all do, but this time, was a new learning experience for me.

I encourage you to think about times when you are speaking negative thoughts about something at home or at work or even just complaining about something. Maybe something happened at work and you felt the need to express that you didn’t feel something was fair. Maybe a colleague did something or didn’t do something that frustrated you. You might be unhappy with your child who is not turning in his homework on time and getting bad grades at school. It could even be worrying about how you are going to find time to run to the store to pick up a gift for the party over the weekend, when your schedule is jam packed or when you get lost and you know you are going to be late for an event and you want to make a good first impression.

When we are in the thick of it, many times we don’t see how we are allowing the circumstances and people around us to steal our energy. When we give away our energy, we give away our internal source of power. This is the life force that keeps us going. If you find yourself beginning to realize you are leaking energy, take a deep breath and refocus, remain strong, centered and grounded. This will help you to stop the leak and regain your power.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can learn to manage your energy.  Check out my new Art of Feminine Presence Class .

September 19, 2014

IGNITE the Spark in your development

attended an amazing event this week where the speaker reinforced the importance of goal setting. Only 10% of the people in the world achieve their dreams and goals and unleash their own talent? Why is that?

The speaker gave a tip and shared that successful people write down their goals and journal about them daily. Only 2 people in the room rose their hand that they actually did these 2 things. WOW! This was a room full of entrepreneurs who have amazing hopes and dreams for unleashing the talents they have to be of service to others. We all know its important to write down our goals, but do you journal about them as a daily habit?

We are all smart intelligent people. What is it that these people are doing that the rest of us still haven’t figured out? I personally am someone who loves reading leadership and development materials. There are tons of amazing authors who give us amazing tips and strategies. This week on our HR Town Hall, our new Talent Strategy Managing Director Nate Boaz recommended an amazing set of books to SPARK our development.

The people in HR that follow my blog have already seen this, however, many of you are from other parts of the organization. I felt compelled to share these great insights around some recommended reading for igniting the SPARK in yourself, your team or your organization.

I have read two of the recommended books and seen the movie Moneyball. I would love to hear thoughts from anyone who has read any of the books below and any great insights and wisdom that they provided.

Let’s continue to unleash the talent that we have within to have a greater impacts on ourselves, our teams, our families, our communities as well as our business of Accenture. ENJOY!

The Thinkers Toolkit
Naked Statistics
Drive
Leadership and Self Deception
Second Machine Age
The Innovator’s DNA
Moneyball
Financial Intelligence
Give and Take
Difficult Conversations

September 12, 2014

Follow Your Bliss – You might fail, but get back up again

This past week I had the opportunity to audition for our new church band. I love singing and have been in church choirs all my life. The day before the audition, I realized I needed to learn a new song. CRAP! I listened to it on UTUBE and then found sheet music to pluck away on my keyboard. I was nervous by not worried or anxious.

After I sang the melody, they asked me to sing harmony, and I explained to them that I didn’t hear any harmony in the video that I listened to, and I didn’t practice any. They said that is ok, just find the harmony and sing it.

Just wing it, find the Harmony and Sing IT!!!

I have never done that before. While I sang in choirs for years, the sheet music was always available to learn from. I never learned instantly by ear. They were looking for someone who could just listen to a song and pick up the harmony. “Like that.” I didn’t have the skills.

When I walked out of the building, I couldn’t help but feel crushed!” I thought to myself, if I was really that good of a singer, I should be able to just find the harmony. Tears rolled down my face as I drove home. It was devastating not to make it, but I was SO EMBARRASSED that I wasted everyones time & couldn’t do what they asked me to do.

My family reminded me everything happens for a reason. (A taste of my own medicine) Is this what they mean when they say some of the most successful people failed miserably and got back up on their feet again? Yes, I felt like I totally failed, but at the same time, I have this burning desire to sing. So why did this happen? What am I supposed to learn from this experience?

While I have been a singer all my life, I never had professional lessons, so singing has been more of a hobby. I was always told I had a strong voice, but am certain some singing lessons would uplevel my musical talents.

I have a dream to bring music into my business and it feels like this was God’s way of opening a new door for me. He knows I love to sing and I want to use music to serve others in the world. What a better way than to get more skilled in the area. It’s one thing to sing in a choir or band for fun, but it’s another thing to uplevel my talents so that I can be of better service to others. So while investing in singing lessons was not in my 30 , 90 or 120 day business plan, God revealed that it needs to be. He has opened a new door for me.

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open up doors where there were only walls”. WOW! When I focus my time on activities that bring me pleasure, God opens up new doors for my life.

If you are struggling with something in your life or have some goals you want to reach. Stop for a moment and find something you absolutely get pleasure from and spend time doing it. You may find that experiencing the bliss from this one activity could change your circumstances and open up new doors for you.

September 10, 2014

Letting Go of Control

As a busy working mom, I know that I need to block out time in my calendar for the important things in life in order to create any kind of balance. With the start of the new school year, I wanted to create an updated calendar and family action plan so that everything was organized. I decided it would be a good idea to spend an evening with my husband so that we could sit down, discuss and write down our dreams and goals for the family for the school year.

It sounded like a reasonable plan to me. It’s logical that these are things that I believe are important. And I wanted to ensure that we would be able to do this together. I was going to be prepared and put together an excel template that we could use to make things simpler. I might even have some items already filled out to help facilitate the process. I thought I was prepared for a great discusssion. AND THEN….

As I proceded to speak about my intentions and my approach with my coach, she had a few good questions and observations for me. She asked if I had tried this approach before and if it worked. I told her, that I had tried many times before to encourage my husband to do this type of activity together but it never turned out like I expected. Her guidance was that if I do things the same way as I have done before that I will get the same results. I came to the realiztion that my approach of bringing my laptop and taking notes, was NOT the way to attract the right attention and engagement from my husband. Her recommendation was…

LET GO OF CONTROL!!! YIKES!

Really? But this is something that really needs to happen and I really want his input. I realized that I had high expectations and in previous scenarios like this, my husband would withdraw and let me take control, because I was going to end up doing it anyway so why should he bother.

But this time was different. I allowed myself to shift my perspective and let go of control. I shared with my husband at the start of the evening that I was going to be doing something uncomfortable for me, that I was going to let him lead the discussion and I would talk less and listen more. He gave a little smirk, as I am sure he wasn’t sure how the evening would go. I will tell you this was NOT an easy task. There were many periods of silence and I tried to allow him to speak more and me to listen more. There were times I had to bite my lip to just SHUT UP and not say a word. At the end of the evening he said that he would put the family calendar together and write down the ideas and goals we discussed.

Amazingly enough, the next day he bought new posterboards and put up the entire family calendar on the wall for the next 3 months. (With a family of 6 you could only imagine the # of activities and the color coding for each). Then the following day my older son said he wanted to be in charge of creating and managing chore charts for the family. I thought, WOW. This is great. These are 2 things that I wanted to ensure were taken care of and now I had other people in my family willing to step up and take responsibility for them, all because I allowed myself to LET GO OF CONTROLLING the outcome.

Just imagine, the possibilities that could open up for you if you were to let go of control. What area in your life do you think you could let go of control of? Imagine what the outcome could look like if you shifted your perspective on control. I encourage you to identify one area where you could let go of control and see how your results might be different.

September 2, 2014

Take Time to “Simply Be” the Start of this School Year

With every new school year comes a new set of experiences, challenges, opportunities and life lessons. After a long summer, each year I look forward to the beginning of the school year as it is always a good time to make change and start some new routines. Being the analytical Accenture person that I am, its time to make new chore charts, calendars, schedules and new expectations for the year. I have lots of ideas floating around and want to create the best year for my family.

As I started to reflect, this year happens to be a nostalgic one for me. My oldest son Chris (14) is a freshman in highschool. My son Matt is 12 and is in 7th grade, my son Danny is in 5th grade and will be in his last year of elementary school, but lastly, my little guy Andy is starting Kindergarten. (sniff, sniff)

The older boys take the bus early in the morning, so they are up and out the door before the younger ones are awake, so taking 1st day of school pictures happened individually. As I walked my two younger ones to school I kept thinking how this was going to be the ONLY year that my two youngest boys would EVER go to school together. After this year, Andy will be in school all by himself. It totally makes me want to really enjoy this last year where they are both together.

I love seeing my boys when they want to connect and love one another. I am sure all siblings have their squabbles, but when you have a house full of all boys, the testosterone can sometimes be too much to handle. But something struck me this year about taking the time to BE, and I mean to be really present in the moment.

andy monkeyOn the first day of school, rather than rushing to drop Andy off, we sat in front of a tree and cuddled to talk about what it was going to be like going to school. We played I Spy, watched other people walk around and talked about what he most wanted for the year. He wanted some friends his own age, “A best buddy” to hang out and play with. We took a couple of selfies (per his suggestion) and then he showed me what a monkey face looked like. These are such precious times, that as the kids get older, I don’t get the chance to experience the same kind of moments.

It is truly amazing what our kids can teach us if we take the time to “Simply Be”. The next time your child says something crazy that they want to do, stop and take them up on their offer. You never know what gift they might be bringing you that today. A friend of mine reminded me that our kids are a gift to us and we need to cherish the gifts and lessons that they teach us every single day.

You know how there are some days and experiences you just remember. Well Andy’s first day of school will be one that makes the list. Not because of the cute picture he took and because it was his first day, but because of the emotional and energetic connection we made together. These are the moments that life is all about.

As you try to implement some new routines and expectations this year, remember to take some time to “Simply Be”.