Today Is One Word (plus a few more)

I have been thinking about one word for you, me, and my clients.

FUN!

If you are having fun, how can you have more? If you are not having fun, what can you change to breathe more fun into your life and work?

It could look like this:

• Bake cupcakes for the office
• Have hat day on a Zoom meeting (When I worked for a big medical device manufacturer, we actually did have hat day on our team to celebrate the completion of every big project.)
• Write notes to people telling them how much you appreciate them.
• Bring someone a surprise gift. (This is a personal favorite!)

As always, please write to me and tell me all about your fun. Email me You're the best!

What To Do About Your Guilt?

Time to read: 1 min, 2 seconds

From my garden

When I asked "what do you need?" earlier this spring, a number of you said, "I feel guilty about lots of things. Please say more about guilt."

Always happy to talk about guilt because guilt is a useless waste of time. There, I said it.

Here's what I mean:

Guilt is a false emotion. It's something you throw up in front of a situation or a real feeling to give yourself credit for "taking action." And yet, the guilt persists in a way that is unpleasant and unhelpful to you.

A couple of examples:

• Let's say you have a relative in a nursing home, and you feel guilty because you never visited. Your guilt doesn't help you feel better, and it also doesn't inspire you to visit.
• Or you feel guilty when you play golf with your friends instead of cleaning your garage. Your guilt gets in the way of fun with your friends, and the garage still doesn't get cleaned.

So what's happening and what do you do about your guilt? I tell clients to look for what is more real. Let's go back to our examples and unpack what might be more real in each situation.

• You are sad that you don't have a relationship with that relative that makes you want to visit them. Or you are grieving the person you loved and are having a hard time seeing them so diminished. Or you're pissed that you are the only one caring for this relative when other family members won't step in. Instead of feeling guilty, give yourself permission to experience your real feelings - sadness, grief, or anger and then do something about those feelings instead of steeping in guilt.
• You may feel like you don't deserve to have fun when there is work to do. Or you may not feel like you deserve to enjoy yourself at all. Work on those more real things rather than ruining a beautiful day out with friends feeling guilty.

Does this make sense? The bottom line is to go for what's more real and feel or deal with that. Then the guilt will lift and leave you free to make clearer decisions about what you want.

As always, reach out with your questions and stories. I love to hear from you.!

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How To Manage Your Nervous System

Time to read: 55 seconds

One of my doctor friends says, "Mental health is physical health." What she means is managing your physical body is key to managing your brain and stress. So, to our reader last week who asked about how to manage her nervous system, here are some tips:

• Pay attention to your body and the effect of stress on you. Learn to read your body's cues.
• Take care of yourself physically. Move. Eat. Drink water. Sleep. These strategies are basic yet vital to your ability to cope.
• Each of you will respond to different techniques for managing your nervousness. Find the strategies that work for you. Here are some possibilities:
• Breathe. A simple sigh, deep breath, box breathing, and other fancy breathing techniques can quickly ground you in your body.
• Rub your fingers together, draw circles on your leg, or use some other physical sensation to distract the stress and bring you into your body.
• Get up and move around if you start to feel overwhelmed. Walk and take calls.
• Get outside.

Things like yoga and meditation are excellent practices for managing your nervous system, and you don't have to go to a studio or buy special equipment to find the strategies that work for you.

I hope this helps!

Give Yourself Grace

Time to read: 1 minute and a few seconds

This picture has nothing to do with anything. It's just something I like.

When I asked you what you need, I received many responses. I am going to work through your emails and address your questions one at a time. This week's question comes directly from a reader and has a 2-part answer.

"What I need most right now is how to give myself grace and how to handle the gazillion requests and tasks thrown at me every day. This includes focus and regaining control of my nervous system when it goes into overdrive."

Part 1 of this answer will address how to handle the gazillion requests. Part 2 will be managing your nervous system.

Do you have a gazillion requests or emails or tasks every week? Can you relate to this reader?

In our hyper connected, DM, email, text, Instagram world, people can contact you anytime, anywhere to ask for anything. Here are my best tips for managing the overload:

• Set clear boundaries. Decide when you will answer email and when you will not.
• Figure out which requests are urgent and which are important. Urgent does not always equal important. Focus on important unless urgent is truly urgent (like you will get fired if you don't reply ASAP).
• Turn off notifications so you are not constantly interrupted. Interruptions drain your mental energy.
• Manage the inflow of requests. Consider how to train the requesters. Create a process and communicate it clearly so everyone doesn't think you are on call just for them.
• You likely have more than you can accomplish in one day. Get comfortable with leaving loose ends so you can go home and enjoy other aspects of your life.

I hope this helps!

Difficult Conversations: Tips and Tricks Part 2

Time to read: 1 minute, 16 seconds

Who knew that difficult conversations could be so fun! For the past few weeks, I've received many replies and additional questions. I'll address one here in another Tips and Tricks for Difficult Conversations.

Question: How do you hold people accountable when they are late for meetings or don't deliver on tasks?

Answer: Being late for meetings and not delivering on tasks are two different things.

Handling lateness

The person leading the meeting is in charge of creating the container. Make it clear from the beginning that you start meetings on time. Then start and end on time, even if everyone isn't there. When you start on time, people learn they miss important content and will adjust accordingly.

If someone is late once, let it go. Things happen.

If someone is chronically late, pull them aside in private and be curious. "I've noticed you've come late to the last 2 meetings. We value your presence. Is something making it difficult for you to get here on time?" There may be a legitimate reason for their lateness. Be prepared to listen and perhaps make adjustments to the meeting.

When someone doesn't complete tasks

When someone is not completing tasks, you want to discern what is getting in the way.

Is there a real reason they aren't completing tasks? Like...

• A sick child
• A parent in the hospital
• Sick or out of town
• Doesn't have the skills or information needed to complete the task

In these situations, offer grace and find solutions to enable them to complete the task.

If the situation is chronic, meaning, they often don't complete tasks over a period of time or they take issue with the tasks or generally have a bad attitude, then that's a bigger conversation. Refer back to the previous week's breakdown of how to have a hard conversation.

I hope this helps!

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Difficult Conversations: Tips and Tricks

Time to read: 62 seconds

I have a few more thoughts about difficult conversations that didn't fit neatly into the series. So, here they are, in no particular order:

• The best way to deal with difficult conversations is to have good relationships. Bad news and hard topics are easier to manage when the relationship is on solid ground. When relationships are strained, hard conversations rarely go well. So, prioritize connection and relationship building.
• Conflicts are almost never about the thing. They are almost always about the feelings and the relationship. I worked as a community meditator in a small claims court many years ago and learned that conflict is never about the money. They were always about feeling cheated or a friendship that fell apart or betrayed or hurt. Reactions to bad news are about sadness, fear, or uncertainty. So, address that deeper level when engaging in hard conversations, not just the topic.
• You don't need to justify yourself. When you are drawing a boundary ("We will not talk politics at Thanksgiving") or breaking up ("This isn't working for me anymore""I'm letting you go. This job isn't a good fit"), you don't have to justify yourself. Often, there is no productive argument. You are simply explaining what you will and won't do, what you will and won't tolerate. "This doesn't work for me" is enough. End of story. Except....
• When you need to deliver a hard performance evaluation or give someone feedback in an ongoing relationship, the other person deserves an explanation and additional information.

Next week: A few more tips and tricks about difficult conversations.

Please reach out anytime with your questions and comments. I love to hear from you! Email me here.

If you love this blog, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.

Difficult Conversations: What If Someone Can't Hear You?

Time to read: 1.37 minutes

We've covered the structure of difficult conversations, how to prepare and what to say. If you missed the beginning of the series all my newsletters are available on my website here.

Today I want to address a question from a reader:

Try on this situation:

You end a relationship. You follow all the steps of how to deliver bad news outlined in the past few weeks. The other person will respond. Here are some possible conversations:

• You: I'm about to say something that will be hard for you to hear. I'm ending our relationship. (Then you sit silently for a minute.)

1. Possible Response #1: Thank you so much for telling me. It's been such an honor to know you. I wish you all the best. (Ha! You wish!)
2. Possible Response #2: What? I had no idea there was anything wrong! I need more information. This is so unfair.
3. Possible Response #3: You're the worst person in the world. How could you say you love me and then break up with me? You're the problem. It's not fair. I hate you. (Fill in a series of expletives.)
4. Possible Response #4: Fill in the blank with any number of other responses.

The point here is that you have zero agency (I mean none, nada, never) over how the other person responds. You don't decide how they receive what you say. You don't decide if they hear you or not.

It's so hard if someone doesn't respond well or doesn't hear you.

And…their response gives you information. About who they are, what they are capable of and not capable of, their maturity level, what they care about.

Then you get to decide what you will and will not do, the boundaries you draw, how hard you're willing to work for the other person's sake. You get to decide if you will continue the relationship.

You can't make someone hear you. You can decide what to do with the fact that they won't hear you.

Next week: A few more tips and tricks about difficult conversations.

Please reach out anytime with your questions and comments. I love to hear from you! Email me here.

If you love this series, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.