You Versus You - Who's Winning?

"We miss life's greatest opportunities not because of our inability to negotiate with others, but because we can't negotiate with ourselves."  - Erica Ariel Fox

At the recent 20th anniversary of the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit, those words from Session Five Speaker Erica Ariel Fox cut through me like a fine ginsu knife.

Ms. Fox started her talk with those words and while I did hear and retain many other great points from her talk, those words reverberated in my heart since that day.

Being the typical type-A personality who has recently discovered many of her deeply introverted characteristics, understanding and managing myself has been (and continues to be) the greatest challenge of my life. Even as a wife, mom, entrepreneur and public servant, managing my own heart/will and subsequent actions is my greatest feat every single day.

I often look at my "performance gap," which Fox described as the distance between what you ideally want to do when you living your best life versus what you actually do in real life. And while I mind that gap pretty closely, it is indeed still a gap. Here are three actions I find helpful in closing my game and winning the battle of you versus you:

Solitude

I absolutely crave and need solitude. Daily. Each day, I start the day in a raggedy yet comfortable green chair in my family room. Whether it's reading or praying or just being still - and it's really all three - I do not start many days without my "me" time. Solitude is my best place to hear from God. It is the time I hear myself as well. I tap into my deepest desires each day in the quiet. I reflect on the good, bad and everything in between in the wee hours of the morning when no one else is moving. I have also scheduled "me" time away from my house. When I was writing my first fiction book, I went away for a night to a hotel to finish it. Being alone really stimulates good and ways for me to look closely at who I am versus who I want to be.

Wise Counsel

Not a day goes by that I do not seek out wise counsel from a variety of sources.  From my posse of fellow elected women officials to my very best social worker friend from college, I look for opportunities to hear from others about how I'm doing. I also have a personal board of directors. This unpaid but richly compensated group serve as a sounding board for my ideas, dreams, frustrations and battles. There are baby boomers and millenials. Spanish speaking folks and black folks. Gays and straights and of course, men and women. This very diverse and eclectic group has a cornucopia of knowledge between them. Yet, they all know me well and I know each of them well. That mutual trust and confidence gives me the ability share my heart and expect theirs in their words and deeds.

Own It 

The buck stops with me. I own my every move. Right or wrong, I take responsibility. That gives me the freedom to truly go for all I desire because in the end, it's all on me. This is especially true in my dealings with others.  Even as self-aware as I am, it is very easy to look at others as I maneuver through life.  A client. A spouse. A child. Another parent. People do impact our lives and our ability to get where we want to go. No denying that. However, our own responsibility trumps all others. We own our actions and reactions. We own our feelings and behaviors. And until we truly embrace that ownership, we will find ourselves with a larger gap between the life we want and the life we have.

While the battle rages, I can honestly say, the "me I want to be" wins more often than the shadow me. And by making space to be with me, seeking wise counsel and owning my journey - I am certain I'll continue to negotiate well with me. And win.

3 Ways To Empower Yourself When You Receive Negative Feedback

Negative feedback is part of life. Unless you do nothing and are totally irrelevant, there will always be people who do not like you and will tell you about it if you ask. One way people avoid negative feedback is to never ask for any feedback at all. Feedback is necessary to growth and negative feedback helps keep us on our toes. While it is natural for us to be hurt by negative feedback, we should never let it derail us. I stress again, negative feedback means you are doing something. And doing something is way better than doing nothing. However, we should make the most of all the feedback we receive, even the negative.  Here are three ways to empower yourself when you receive negative feedback:

Consider The Source

Seems obvious but one of the most important things to understand is who is giving the feedback and what their motivations may be. Do not spend too much time digging but do take a few moments to pick apart why the specific source of negative feedback is negative. Reflect on the interactions you had with that person. Often times, negative feedback comes from a stark difference between the giver and receiver of the feedback. Differences in style, tone and disparate frames of reference are often behind negative feedback. Knowing some of the "back story" of the giver can help you put the feedback in perspective.

Accept Specific Constructive, Dismiss Vague or Ambiguous

When seeking feedback, always give room for explanation. That way you can get at the "color commentary" around what is driving the answers. When you get negative feedback, accept specific constructive comments. Those comments give you something to build on or work with. I recently had a survey on a project come back where I specifically asked about how we were managing time. The responder gave me a good rating (there were better choices) and then wrote that I needed to "build in more breaks." Regardless, the reason I did not build in the breaks  -now I know that is an important driver to the answer of that question. I can do something with that. On the flip side, you have to let go of vague, negative feedback. Let it sting, feel it but if the giver the feedback does not show you how you can make it better, then there is nothing you can do but shake it off.

Focus On Your Overall Feedback Versus The Outlier(s)

The tendency in this life is to focus on the one dissenter. People spend many fruitless hours trying to convince the one person who dislikes their work versus focuses on the many who do. Unless your overall feedback from a specific project is all negative, you need to spend more time on the positive feedback. Build on the good comments and responses. Look for ways to reinforce the relationship with those who like and understand your methods. On the same survey I referenced in the previous point, I had one bad overall review and it stung. I kept playing in my head the responses until I remembered that it was one out of 18 participants in the project. All the other responses were good. Some even gave constructive comments to help me get better while the one person who responded negatively did not take the time to tell me why. My time and effort is much better spent focusing on how to improve and move forward relationships with the other 17 people and let the one person go.

Feedback, both positive and negative, is a necessary function of doing life. However, feedback by its nature should always seek to improve both the receiver and the giver. The next time you receive negative feedback, take a few minutes to look for the ways it can improve you.

Perspective: 2 Tips To Broaden Yours

With 22 days before Decision 2012, we are all more than ready for the presidential contest to be over. Regardless which side of the election you fall on, we are all fatigued and ready to move on. One thing I'd love for us to learn from this arduous race, is the value of understanding our own perspective and how it shapes our lives.

Over the life of this blog, there have been no less than 5 posts on the topic of perspective. It is of utmost importance to recognize how our perspective impacts our actions, inaction and so much more.

There have been two debates to date and both times I have scratched my head trying to sort out and reconcile what the pundits, my network and my own perspective has told me about those debates. It is indeed mind numbing as it relates to politics but I challenge - isn't that the case with all areas of our lives?

Success or failure?

Contentment or discontent?

Opportunity or adversity?

There are always pundits in life who pontificate on what makes us successful or not. There will always be opinions on how to be content or even happy versus the alternative. There are countless thoughts on opportunity and adversity.

It all boils down to our individual perspective.

Merriam-Webster defines perspective this way:

a : the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed perspective

>; also : point of view

b : the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance perspective>

 

Know someone who, no matter what happens, believes that the world is "out to get him or her?"

Have you ever met someone who is perpetually positive and upbeat?

Each of these people see their world based on what they are looking for. It plays out in political contests and it plays out in other areas of our lives.

How can you harness the power of what you look for?

Be Open
Not on paper but in real life. Be flexible and ready for where life may take you.  This scary because it requires surrender. Surrender of imagined power over outcomes and people. You have to even let go of your current view of yourself. Sometimes our perspective of ourselves are the biggest thing holding us back from who we can become. Let go of what you know and see what could be. Americans like to say they are open but in reality, we tend to be more myopic about many things versus our global counterparts. Start looking for opportunities to be open - with our kids, our co-workers and (GULP) our spouses. Openness does come naturally to some and to many it leads to discomfort and we tackle that next.

Be Uncomfortable
Yes, embrace discomfort. You know that feeling you get when you are listening to someone from an opposing view expound on their reason for thinking the way they do? It's a sickening "want to retreat immediately" sort of feeling - embrace that and see what happens. That is the same feeling you get when you want to push the envelope on an idea at work or with your partner. If you don't practice it, you'll never do it. In politics, it's insignificant - temporary, no better place to practice embracing discomfort. If you can withstand feeling uncomfortable for a few minutes on a Facebook string with a friend - you will build that muscle for other areas of life where you need it. And you need push through discomfort to do just about anything good in life. What you want in life is really on the other side of the fear in front of you.

Try on these two ideas as you go through the world "looking for" answers. Being open and being uncomfortable will surely clarify your thought process on life. I would not expect this to change your point of view drastically but it will certainly broaden it. Half the battle is understanding that what we know is merely a product of what we look for... And if we can re-think what we look for, who knows what we will find?