Archive for June, 2010

We’ve all heard the stories of the amazing things people have done on little rest. I recently heard that former General Mcchrystal only slept somewhere between 4 and 6 hours per night. We often celebrate those who sacrifice well needed rest in order to serve the greater good. We are often impressed that people can function at such an intense level with so little rest. It may be impressive, but that doesn’t make it good for you.

A June 2010 Newsweek article entitled “The Surprising Toll of Sleep Deprivation”, discusses a research study that only allowed participants 6 hours of sleep per night for a two week period. The study found that even though the subjects felt some sleepiness and “they thought they were functioning normally, formal testing showed that their cognitive abilities and reaction times progressively declined over the two weeks. By the end of the two week test, they were as impaired as subjects who had been continuously awake for 48 hours”.

When you look at these results, it’s very clear to see that many people are not performing at their optimal level. Add year upon year onto those 2 weeks and you can see where being tired turns into burn out. And if the burn out isn’t apparent on the outside, it is definitely noticeable on the inside. I’m not going to spend a lot of time scaring you with statics, but it is important to note that sleep deprivation is linked to several health problems including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. When you look at it from that perspective, getting enough sleep seems like the best way to retain and excel in your career.

How do you find the time to add the 2 more hours of sleep you need?

• There will be days when you have a late night in the office, but they should be the exception. For people who can’t seem to leave the office, give yourself a time and stick to it.

• On the weekends, cook the meals for the week and plan the clothing you will wear each week. This will save you a lot of time in the evenings that you can now devote to sleep.

• Put a limit on how many activities your children are involved in. Not only will this free up some of your time, it will give you more time to spend with them before they are off to bed.

• Set a time in which you will commit to turning everything off:  TV, computer, and blackberry.

It’s not that you don’t have the idea; it’s that the big F word is standing in your way. FEAR. I spend a lot of time working with my clients on their fears and developing strategies they can use to move past the roadblocks that fear creates. This week I found an inspiring way to look at the fear that may be holding you back.

If you are interested in Entrepreneurship or are ready to finally take the first step toward your ultimate goal, I found some wonderful advice from Jonathan Fields. Jonathan Fields is a multi-time health & fitness industry entrepreneur, entrepreneur-coach, speaker and writer; who started out in the career world as a lawyer. Wow, sounds like a long list! The length is actually an indication of someone who leads his life without fear.

In a recent speech at the Tedx conference at Carnegie Mellon University he discussed how to “Turn Fear into Fuel”. He shared his decision to leave a successful law career to pursue his dream of opening a yoga center. It is a dream that not only came to fruition, but grew into one of the largest and most successful yoga centers in NYC. He often gets asked about how he overcame his fears and has an interesting way of helping others ask themselves the important questions about fear.

Fields says that it is “often things we don’t notice, questions we don’t ask, and things we don’t see that stand in our way”. These are the things that “really take fear, and let it blossom”. We focus mainly on fears of failure, judgment, and success. We create doomsday scenarios that make fiction into reality, then we repeat these fears over and over again; and poof, the dream is gone.

According to Fields what we often miss is asking ourselves how we will recover from failure vs. how doing nothing will feel. He suggests the following:

• Write out a clear description of what failure in your circumstance would look like. Now create a recovery plan. Give specific details of how you could recover. Giving equal attention to how you will recover disempowers fear. It gives you a sense that all is not lost, it is recoverable.
• Then ask yourself: What if I do nothing? Look at your life 10 or 20 years from now, what would that nothing look like? Chances are it looks more horrible to do nothing. When you compare doing nothing to recovering from failure, you get a more realistic view of your fear.
• Then ask your self: where am I going? What if I succeed? What does success look like 5 years from now?  Write it all down. Compare these three scenarios.

Now ask yourself, how great is your fear? Are you ready to move forward?

A large part of being successful is realizing what you can control and what you can’t. There will always be annoying bosses and pushy co-workers, and a never ending list of deadlines. Even if you are a solopeneur (self employed) there will be parts of your career that are frustrating. The trick for thriving in any environment is learning to not take anything personally. You may not be able control what happens, but you can choose how to handle it.

I have worked with some clients who are people pleasers and will say or do anything to make their co-workers happy. Even if they are presented with requests that are unappealing and may be way out of their comfort zone, they will still say yes for fear of disappointing someone. They wind up smiling on the outside and boiling with anger on the inside. It doesn’t sound like a good formula for success right?

Other clients I have worked with feel misunderstood and mistreated at the workplace. They don’t feel they get the respect they deserve and they wonder why they can’t get others on board with their ideas. Like the people pleasers, they are taking every interaction at the office personally, making it mean something about who they are as a person. Their sense of self worth is wrapped up in the responses they get from others. This is a dangerous path because when we look to others, not ourselves for validation, we are often left feeling disappointed and in the end defeated.

In order to be truly confident and effective in the workplace it is crucial that we let go of trying to control every circumstance. The thing you can control is your own clarity. Being successful is a result of being very clear; being clear about your objective, mission, and the expectations of the people around you. It doesn’t mean you have to be forceful.

To be clear you need to:

• Understand who you are and how you work best.
• You need to realize the value you bring to your work situation.
• You need to set boundaries around your work and your time.

When you are clear there is less confusion and miscommunication. People know what to expect and you can work as a team based on mutual respect. Even if everyone is not on board, you’ll understand that it’s never personal.