Getting Over Those Humps.. Yes You Can Make A Difference.. From Survival to Significance.

Recently, I got an email from a friend who writes government contract bids in D.C., Olessia Smotrova-Taylor, President/CEO of OST Global Solutions, Inc., one of the MOST SUCCESSFUL contract bidders in DC. She wrote me saying her head was absolutely spinning after a very demanding seminar she attended, as she included an apology for not getting back to me (a few hours earlier.. ) To my way of thinking, she WAS on time, and not at all late in her response to my question. And as to head spinning thing, I thought, “Heck! It’s 2009.. Who doesn’t have their head spinning?”

I realized I held the belief: OVERWHELM…. is the Standard Operating Procedure and defining way of people in these modern United States.

Well, I am glad to tell you….I am wrong.

That same day, I spoke with….

….. my friend Gina Gaudio-Graves, aka the JVQueen (aka MOST OUTSTANDING BUSINESS COACH I have ever met; want results? Get Gina on board!). For as much as she accomplishes in 24 hours, she calmly and honestly declared that she never feels like her head’s spinning. OK: perhaps she used the term “rarely” does she feel her head’s spinning.

Last week was a good example to consider. En route to a public event at which she was speaking, after having veered 20 hours out of her way to pick up an ailing friend who needed to get to the event, Gina’s RV decided to leak brake fluid all over the place, causing her to be waylaid on the side of the road for hours. Now that! might have qualified as a head spinner.

But she made a good point. She explained to me how she deems “head spinning” as not only being 1) overwhelmed but also 2) grossly unproductive. I had to agree.

So I had to look. Olessia had continued to be productive. Gina had too. While she was waylaid on the side of the road, she completed two conference calls with client groups, dealt with her email tasks that day and went over her content in her speech, adding some vital piece she had not formerly considered. These hours were well used, despite having to decide which of the hours-away repair centers to go with despite the warranty demands. Super busy? Yes. Unproductive? No.

I had to consider where I tend to get overwhelmed and unproductive. At a crazy one week training I recently attended, I noticed at the onset of overwhelm, I tended to just throw my hands in the air and just let go, until such time as the overload frustration subsided. I would then pick up the pieces of all that I let go, and start in again – now with the added burden of having to ask others to help me catch up.

Not good. Not helpful. Not what I am capable of. Not what I really want.

The three useful solution checklists helped me completely change how Super Busy affects me. Now I really do! get to be my best me. I really do get the best out of me, even under stress I successfully and productively! get through the ultra busy trainings I attend. I easily move through the ultra busy pre-launch 24 hour days. I easily and quickly get up and over the “I’m not even going to look! – much less do – ANY! – of that stuff I have GOT! to get done” barricade.

Each solution is listed below, directly beneath the described problem.

PROBLEM 1: You Are Spinning Your Wheels/ In Serious Overwhelm.

Say you are at a training intensive. The hours are long. The first training used up all the brain power you had. ==> The rest of the day is a waste?

STOP! Look at the energy you are putting into overwhelm. You are actually using a lot of energy. You probably not only want to absorb ALL (not just what you can handle and understand right away) of the training, but also get out there and make some good contacts as well.

Answer: Ask yourself this: Ideally, what would you want from this workshop/weekend/ training intensive?
Say, ideally…. you want all the training info to sink in and get you the results you came to this thing for in the first place and you wouldn’t mind getting those few contacts that really make a difference for you and for the other. You want it all.

SOLUTION 1: Focus and Relax.

LOOK, the training is happening either way, you can glean as much as you choose to. Yes, we know, it’s a crazy weekend.. you can’t help that. SO what you CAN you do?

FOCUS: Take in as much as you can, record with your e-devices if that helps, just take the info in and you can work the understanding later.
AND RELAX: LET THE REST SLIDE OFF. (Next time you will be able to glean more.)

FOCUS: even though you are exhausted, you know! this is the time and the place to connect with all those people. They are available for connecting right now. So you get up and make a few connections, in a relaxed manner.
AND RELAX: take a deep refreshing breath, a fresh breeze. Breathe it in. Visualize it entering your body and removing the stress and leaving new fresh energy and focus. Appreciate what you did get done.

FOCUS: spend some time with your new connections, making it quality, not quantity, connection time.
AND RELAX: JUST LET GO OF THE PEOPLE YOU DIDN’T CONNECT WITH.

FOCUS and RELAX.

PROBLEM 2 I Am Just Not Getting It Done. I Start But…

Say you are at home office/ office and just can’t seem to focus to get that thing done. You feel scattered. You dread the job you have got to gather yourself to do. You are just wasting time on all sorts of things, on fun, or on some crappy waste of time. You don’t even get to eating something .. everything’s a mess.

Answer: that’s because you are right, you already said it: YOU HAVE TO GATHER YOURSELF.

In order to get anything substantial done, in order to live life as YOU WOULD CHOOSE TO LIVE IT, you must gather yourself – a life long practice. This is the make-you or break-you nexus.

Put it this way. How many sustained HUGE achievers come across as scattered and unclear? None.There’s a reason for that: scattered and unclear, like bad TV reception, make for very little impact, very little delivered. Sure there can be spurts, but it won’t be sustained results. Gathering yourself works like magic

So how do we go about gathering oneself?

SOLUTION 2: The “Gather Yourself” Checklist.
Note: Physical exercises using QiGong can help to quickly “recover” yourself. To view a couple of QiGong exercises, click here.
While QiGong is the very best I have found to gather yourself /press reset, the checklist below looks at changing what got us there in the first place.

GATHER YOURSELF CHECKLIST:

1) ELIMINATE THESE THINGS from your life…(for as long as it takes to feel like YOU again):

a) caffeine/stimulants (start this on a weekend in case you crash from lack of stimulants);
b) traveling (even just getting in to that car for something you really don’t need to do; whirlwind weekends);
c) irregular routines;
d) irregular meals;
e) excessive mental work, (take some time and stare at the clouds/fish pond (popular in Japan), go to the park and watch children play… it’s called mental relaxation and it’s a biggie ! (half hour/day is great for stimulating mental clarity);
f) windy living. What’s windy living? Going out every night cause it’s what “they are doing”… Staying up unnecessarily late reading or watching TV … Watching stuff on TV that adds to your stress… Having TV/Radio news (eg CNN) on all the time in the background.. Going to every party this week.. Skipping meals or exercise cause you got sidetracked by an email you read first thing…. All that serves to scatter you into thin air. Choose what you really need and treat the rest as if it were the plague!

2) ADD THESE THINGS to your life:

a) MOISTURE: drink more water (they say an ounce for every pound you weigh, not all at once!); shower; bathe; sauna; swim for exercise/ to relax. Water is a well known tonic for being scattered. It causes you to be refreshed, you just can’t help it.
EXTRA CREDIT: visualize a fresh color entering your body as you inhale. Allow this good clean energy to pool in your body as you visualize old stale used-up burnt-out energy going out as you breathe out.

b) SMILE: even if you haven’t got one thing in the whole world to smile about, just smile. Feel that? Its’ the endocrine system kicking in (same as when you exercise). Studies have shown where the face goes, the body (chemistry) follows… Studies show that doing this kind of visualization regularly boost a person’s confidence!
EXTRA CREDIT In a restful private place, physically smile as if the best thing you could have hoped for, has happened. Lie there and walk yourself (visually) into the picture, and go and accept that Oscar, or take that person’s hand, go swimming in that beautiful ocean … SMILE and feel the good feelings. When done, do not allow the thought “yea but that is precisely the problem: that’s what I don’t have in my life, what’s freaking me out… ” DROP THAT. We know it’s not in your life right now. Life’s a work in progress, and your joy/good feelings drive the progress.

c) WARM COOKED FOODS (it’s easy on the digestion). If you are stressed, your digestion is too.

d) REGULAR MEALTIMES: start in the am 1 hour after you rise and then eat every 3 hours. No more eating 3 hours before bed.They recommend 3 protein/veg/carb meals; 2 light snacks (like an apple and almonds).

e) GOOD SLEEP: get regular sleep starting at 10-10:30 pm, IDEALLY FOR 8 HOURS OR SO.
Facts about sleep:
The more sleep you get before midnight, the deeper rest it is.
In a recent study of weight-loss patients, those who went to bed by 10-10:30 lost more weight than those who went to bed later/had irregular sleep habits.
Between 10pm and 2am your body rebuilds muscles and other tissues, among other things.
No electrical items within 5 feet of your head: electromagnetic forces that are emitted from close proximity impact upon your sleep and hormone output.
Cell phone off: the ’seek’ signal that it emits affects REM sleep (REM’s the sleep pattern that’s essential for feeling rested).
Pitch black in the room and nothing playing all night – TV/radio/sound machine – make for deeper more restful sleep.

f) SET ASIDE TIME TO RELAX, AND THEN… RELAX. Relax does not mean clean the house, nor eat. It means relax..

That’s it. That’s The Gather Yourself Checklist.

Problem 3 I Just Can’t Get Myself To Sit Down and Even Just Start….

Say you have a deadline, the final chapter has to get written! It’s what ties in all together. You just can’t seem to sit down, you’ve been going great for weeks now… Why the wall? Why now?!?!?

SOLUTION 3: Access your inner guidance/invite your inner child to report in. Ask, listen, thank, act.

A friend of mine suggests some refreshing deep breaths breathing in gold/white, breathing out grey, while counting down (give yourself as much as 10-9-8… or as little as 3-2-1) to get in touch with your deeply relaxed self, and from that place ask your question, ” In gratitude to the Infinite and doing no harm to anyone, what do I need (to do) right now ?” Listen. Act.

In recent months I have had way a ton to accomplish in far too little time… I had been doing great, putting in plenty of 20 hour days, all of the sudden, boomp! I was burnt out. I could not get myself to so much as go near my office. No! not now… Big Problem.

I needed an answer fast. When my friend asked me what I wanted to do instead of dealing with the pile of work waiting form me, it all came out. I answered that I wanted to just go to the local swim hole and splash someone ’til they had enough and decked me. I wanted to color. I wanted to bike along the backyard alley and noisily drag a stick along the fence boards as I sang at the top of my lungs..

Boy that was a clear message from my Inner Child. Having done inner child work, I know the importance of this balance. There are scientific terms,and there are intuitive terms, each serving to describe the same thing. Balance.

For me, that day, I had to play. Once I did, all the right brain activity I had engaged in flooded my system with new and balancing energy, providing ballast for the severely flagging ship I was captaining: me!. In addressing the ultra left brain things going on in my business in recent months I worn out one part of me by not engaging the rest of me.

I had been addressing the adult me big time, while completely ignoring the playful, whimsical, random child me. My inner child was helping find the balance I had not noticed I had lost. She was yelling that she had had enough. Time for some serious play.

I took the afternoon off . I decided to drop everything and go for it.

First thing I knew I was at the local swimming hole and playing Marco Polo with an adult friend. After that, I went straight home and played four square with my husband. (He cheats! well ok, maybe he’s just good at it.) Then I took out a huge drawing pad and got the chalk pastels out and randomly drew. No forms, just color schmolor all over the place, including my clothes.

Heck! I even looked for the jacks (I couldn’t find them ) and instead grabbed 3 small hacky-sacks to juggle for a few minutes. Boy that woke up my mono track brain ( remember brain gym?). Later I found my daughter’s old beading box and randomly made a bead necklace, start to finish.. big beads.. no style.. just put them on and tied it. It felt good just to touch the beads; select them; put them on the string. Ahhhhhh.

After that, I ate dinner then watched a silly movie. I felt great. I am sure brain analysts would suggest all this right brain activity served to balance the left brain/linear activity I had recently mono-engaged in for so many hours of so many days.

RESULT: Next day, I cannot remember a day as productive as that next day at the office. A veritable fountain of ideas .. efficient and quick.. Excellent work.. Excellent communication.. This lasted for days!

I now regularly check in to see if it’s time to play in the free hours I could use if I needed to. I noticed I had been backed up, for days actually, and had been less and less productive. Those apparently 20 hour days were actually possibly 2-3 hour days. Towards the end of the big push, I had to admit that much of the 20-22 hour days were just a waste; some days what I got done could have been productively achieved in less than 3 hours. Wow.

Though one part of me was on task, the other part of me was entirely neglected. The balance had gone. The results of doing this are consistently astounding. I mean astounding.

To review:
SOLUTION 1: Focus and Relax. Recognize what you have to let go. Do what you can.
SOLUTION 2: Gather yourself. Tool: The “Gather Yourself” Checklist.
SOLUTION 3: Access your inner guidance/ invite your inner child to report in. Ask, Listen, Thank, Act.

Enjoy. Do Yourself These Favors. Your Results Will Be Your Proof.