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Manage Your Self-talk

Manage Your Self-talk

Who is your biggest critic that never leaves you alone? Who do you spend more time with than any person in your life and is that a person that encourages you or reminds you of all of your past failures (or both)? If you are like me the answer for me is me. From the time I get up to the time I go to bed I have this running commentary going in my head. It is known as self-talk and according to Scientific American everybody does it.

Reference.com says the definition of Self-talk is: “the act of talking to oneself, either aloud or silently and mentally”. It is that little voice that is constantly running in our head that seems to have an opinion on everything and we tend to use it to validate our thoughts and actions throughout the day (and night).

Given that we all have this voice and that it has a large influence on our thoughts and actions, it only makes sense that we discipline that voice to help us rather than diminish us. Just like we control other impulses in our nature, we can control that voice and harness it to help us have a more positive and effective outcome on our decisions, actions and well, about every aspect of our lives.

Since we live in our heads more than any other place, let’s make that a nice place to live. The first thing is to recognize that voice and realize that we can control it, rather than it control us.

Start by listening to that voice and see what it is saying. Is it a positive and reinforcing message or a negative and destructive message? Is it telling us that we are capable and making us stronger or is it placing doubt in our mind and holding us back? If it is providing a positive message of encouragement and support, our self-talk is actively engaged in helping us be more successful. If our self-talk is negative and introducing doubt and/or reminding us of past failures then it is working against us. If it is not a positive conversation, then it is time to learn to manage that conversation and turn it into our greatest supporter.

According to Psychology Today, “the more you talk yourself down and second-guess yourself, and see change as calamitous, the less free your mind is to roam through creative solutions of the problems you face.”

It is not as hard to make the change as we might think. However, like any other habit, it will take effort and practice to turn the corner and make it stick. If our self-talk is not positive then turn the tables on that conversation and make it positive. When we hear something like “I’m not sure I can talk in front of that group. What if I forget what I am saying or stumble getting to the podium, or…or…or…” take the effort to turn the tables and remind yourself that you are most able to deliver this talk, you are knowledgable, rehearsed and ready. If I trip on the way to the podium we will just all have a good laugh. Make that conversation work for you, not against you.

Put those negative thoughts in a box and don’t let them out. When you hear that self-talk going negative, put it aside and remind yourself of the positive and keep repeating it until the negative is gone. It is amazing how well this works. When our self-talk is positive it is as if the crowd is with us and I becomes We and we can do anything.

Make it personal. Speak to yourself by name. According to the Wall Street Journal, research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who spoke to themselves by their own name performed better under stress than referring to themselves as I. As an example saying to myself, “Skip you know you can do this,” produces stronger results than “I know I can do this”. I find that interesting, how about you?

So what can we do? Here are some practical suggestions:

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The First One to Write it Down Wins

The First One to Write it Down Wins

First to Write it Down

 

How may times have you been in a meeting to discuss new ideas or differing approaches to find that the idea that wins is not necessarily the best idea, but the idea that had been documented? Or how many times have you thought a decision was reached, only to find that the person providing the meeting summary put their bias in the notes and that became the go-forward action. I have seen it more times than I can count and I bet you have too.

At home I recall the number of times we discussed the rules for completing homework, to only end up having another discussion around the rules for completing homework. The game changed when the rules were written down and posted on the refrigerator.

Hijacking the meeting outcome used to drive me to frustration and over the years I have developed a strategy that works for me and I often suggest to others. My strategy is “The first one to write it down wins”. It is as simple as that. Be the first to put the decision or outcome in writing and it greatly increases the likelihood that your idea, suggestion, or direction will be followed.

The strategy is not unique to business meetings or our personal environment but comes from the concept of the “First Mover Advantage”, a common marketing term that refers to the advantage of being the first to enter a specific market or industry. According to Investopedia, the full definition is: “A form of competitive advantage that a company earns by being the first to enter a specific market or industry. Being the first allows a company to acquire superior brand recognition and customer loyalty.”

The term also is recognized in the game of Chess as described in Wikipedia as: “The first-move advantage in chess is the inherent advantage of the player (White) who makes the first move in chess. Chess players and theorists generally agree that White begins the game with some advantage. Since 1851, compiled statistics support this view; White consistently wins slightly more often than Black, usually scoring between 52 and 56 percent.”

It is interesting that this term is used in both Marketing, a science of communications, and Chess, a game of strategy. When we are making a pitch for a specific idea, action or outcome, we are using both strategy and marketing to sell our preferred outcome. Our strategy is most often the idea itself and the marketing is the activity of obtaining agreement. According to the concept conveyed in “FIrst Mover Advantage”, it makes sense that the first person to write the idea down has both the strategic and communication advantage and therefore is more likely to gain the advantage in directing the outcome.

So what can we do to utilize this concept in our daily lives? The simple answer is to be the first to write it down!

Here are some practical suggestions to gain the First Mover Advantage:

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What Stands in Your Way?

What Stands in Your Way?

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What stands in your way of achieving success? Is it immovable objects or roadblocks needing a new solution? Are you done or just beginning? How do you define success? Does success feel out of reach? These are tough questions. I have asked myself these questions many times and in challenging times looked to others for their advice.

When searching for these answers I have found it helpful to look at other models of success and see what advice they can offer. In this case I suggest looking at the accomplishments and career of the professional athlete Michael Jordan.

I had the opportunity to meet Michael Jordan several times as he was in the middle of his career as an NBA basketball athlete and found him to have an interesting perspective on what it took to achieve his success. He was relentless in pursuing his goals, but not every effort was a success.

Undoubtedly, Michael Jordan as a professional athlete specializing in basketball was a success. Take look at some of his accomplishments:

  • 6 x NBA Champion
  • 6 x NBA Finals MVP
  • 5 x NBA MVP
  • 2 x Olympic Gold Medalist
  • Career Points Scored: 32,292
  • Career Rebounds: 6,672
  • Career Assists: 5,633
  • Career Field Goal % .497
  • Career Field Goals = 12,192

(For those of you who are not sports minded, just take away that these are incredible accomplishments)

As I observed his career I kept track of some of his thoughts and ideas on achieving success and in them found a hint of the drive that made him successful. Let’s take a look at some of these together.

“If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

–Michael Jordan

This is pretty much on point to the topic we are exploring. From the perspective of being a professional athlete, there was always the challenge of training his mind and body to work together to assert skills beyond the abilities of his competitors.

For us the challenge may be more around acquiring the skills, knowledge and experience to accomplish our wildest dreams, or even just finding a way through the current crisis. The key point here is to recognize that we all have challenges; the road to success requires that we persevere and keep trying new and different ways of overcoming the obstacles.

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Rise Above the Issues

Rise Above the Issues so that you can see the entire horizon and the issues will seem smaller and easier to resolve.

Hot Air Baloon over Canyon

To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it. — Michael Korda

How many times has someone or something made you so angry that you feel like you are going to explode? It happens to me on a regular basis, sometimes it makes me so angry that I cannot stop thinking about it. I remember one incident that made me so angry that I fumed about it repeatedly over an entire week-long vacation with my family. Clearly, I let this get the best of me and needed to follow my own advice, “Rise above the issue”. In the end it was easily resolved, but I put way too much energy into being angry about the the issue compared to what it took to resolve it.

That was just one example for me. How about you? How many times has something at work or at home (or a combination) made you so angry you just start thinking of all of the ways to respond or get back at someone and just kept thinking about it over and over again? It happens to all of us and it drains our energy as we pour emotion into the issue.

The good news and bad news is that we respond by getting angry when things don’t go our way because we care about the topic, issue or outcome. If we didn’t care we wouldn’t think twice about it. When our emotions kick in to this level it is usually because it either impacts us directly, or is something we care deeply about, even if we didn’t realize we cared that much. Even if it doesn’t directly impact us even the idea that the outcome didn’t go the way we wanted and may require additional energy to get it back on track may set off this reaction.

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Meetings – Why Waste Your Time

Do you have time to waste? Neither do I, or at least I do not want my time consumed by things that do not produce results. If your experience is like mine there is no bigger waste of time in my personal and professional life than non-productive meetings. Somewhere along the line it became the norm that we need to get a group of people together to get something done and that by getting a group of people together something will get done.

Lighthouse Logo CustomIt is my experience that unless there is a leader, a structure and purpose to the meeting it is really just a gathering and its only meaningful result will be to have another meeting. This happens all of the time in the business world at a significant price. The same thing can be observed in our private lives as well. I think some of the worst meetings I have ever been in were Home Owner Association or Church meetings where the bulk of the time is spent socializing and the meetings tend to lack leadership. The meetings took forever and nothing was really resolved.

As it turns out, a significant number of people agree that most of the meetings they attend are not effective. Per research published by Atlassian, they found the following:

1.     62 Meetings attended per month by most employees
2.     1/2 of the meetings were considered to be time wasted
3.     31 Hours spent in unproductive meetings over a month
4.     91% Reported daydreaming during the meeting
5.     73% Did other work in meetings
6.     47% Complained that meetings were the #1 time-waster at the office

Meetings are also expensive. Based on the average wage rate for Management across the US according to the US Department of Labor a 60 minute meeting for 10 people costs $470 in wages. A meeting of 100 people for 60 minutes costs $4,700 in wages. Most businesses have cost control measures in place for expenditures of these amounts and yet anyone can call a meeting. Do the meetings really return that amount to the bottom line? Well that is perhaps worthy of another blog discussion at another time.

So why have a meeting? That needs to be the very first question. Is it necessary to bring a group of people together at all? What is the purpose of the meeting, building consensus, making a decision, sharing information? Considering the findings and reputation of meetings, we really need to make sure there is not some other way to achieve our goal. If we conclude that a meeting is necessary, let’s at least make it as effective as possible.

So here are some tips for running an effective meeting: