"No" is the New "Yes": Four Practices to Reprioritize Your Life
TONY SCHWARTZ — 8:12 AM Tuesday January 17, 2012

Excerpt:

I was sitting with the CEO and senior team of a well-respected organization. One at a time, they told me they spend their long days either in back-to-back meetings, responding to email, or putting out fires. They also readily acknowledged this way of working wasn't serving them well — personally or professionally...

Truth be told, there's also an adrenaline rush in saying yes. Many of us have become addicted, unwittingly, to the speed of our lives — the adrenalin high of constant busyness. We mistake activity for productivity, more for better, and we ask ourselves "What's next?" far more often than we do "Why this?" But as Gandhi put it, "A 'no' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble."

More...
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/01/no-is-the-new-yes-four-practic.html

Source: HBR Blog Network: TONY SCHWARTZ: Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything. Become a fan of The Energy Project on Facebook and connect with Tony at Twitter.com/TonySchwartz and Twitter.com/Energy_Project. 

You're in a "funk." You've noticed that your state of being is other than "go-go-go" or "carefree" or whatever your preferred default state usually seems to be. So now what?

Three options...

Option 1: Live through it. Be the funk... Until it shifts. If it is truly just a funk, then it will eventually subside. (If it is a more chronic condition, then seek support from a confidant, coach, and/or healer.)

Option 2: Practice being the observer of your funk rather than being the funk. Understand that a funk is merely like passing weather within. Be the weather man, not the weather. Practice being in observance of your state, and then choose to act according to a plan or a vision for your actions. Act according to plan rather than according to your internal weather.

Option 3: Take direct action to alter your state. Go for a walk. Engage in physical exercise. Splash cold water in your face. Drink a cool, refreshing beverage. Drink a warm and soothing beverage. Listen to compelling music. Read inspiring ideas.

You are the author of your experience. You choose.

---

Source: Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° Achievement Coaching
http://www.360achievementcoaching.com

So, what are your values as you seem them today? (Do you EVER ask yourself this question? Most people rarely, if ever, do.)

What are your high-level goals (your vision) for the rest of the week? For the next few weeks?

What are your action items today? Tomorrow?

Do your action items align with your vision?  (If not, it's time to re-commit to your values.)

http://www.360ACHIEVE.com

THIS IS YOUR MIND ON MEDITATION: LESS WANDERING, MORE DOING
By Melissa Healy/Los Angeles Times/For the Booster Shots Blog
7:41 p.m. EST, November 22, 2011

The brains of experienced meditators appear to be fitter, more disciplined and more "on task" than do the brains of those trying out meditation for the first time. And the differences between the two groups are evident not only during meditation, when brain scans detect a pattern of better control over the wandering mind among experienced meditators, but when the mind is allowed to wander freely.

Those insights emerge from a study to be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which looked at two groups: highly experienced meditators and meditation novices, and compared the operations of the "Default Mode Network" -- a newly identified cluster of brain regions that go to work when our brains appear to be "offline."

"I think it's safe to say this is brain-training at work," says Yale University psychiatrist Judson Brewer, who conducted the study with psychologists from Yale, the University of Oregon and Columbia University. "It makes sense," adds Brewer. "Anything you train to do, you do better."

By the definition of the latest study, mental control was defined as the ability to keep two key nodes of the default mode network from becoming active during meditation. The posterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex appear to be hubs of the brain's "neutral" setting--areas that come alive when we are not engaged in a task that requires more specialized attention and let our minds wander. (Not coincidentally, they are also areas that tend to become active when we remember events in our past and think about other peoples' motives and intentions.) In the 12 veteran meditators who participated in the current study, those two regions were quieter during meditation than they were in the brains of the 12 meditation novices with which they were compared.

The study also detected greater connectivity between some of the brain's key cognitive control areas and elements of the default mode network. During meditation and in the mental rest periods in between, a brain region known to be important in focusing and maintaining attention, the dorsolateral anterior cingulate cortex, was more likely to activate in tandem with the posterior cingulate cortex in regular meditators than in those who are new to the practice: that, says Brewer, suggests that during meditation and in everyday life, meditators may have more skill in reining in their wandering thoughts and bringing the brain back "on task"-- than those who don't routinely meditate.

Why would mental control over our daydreams make us more healthy? It turns out that having a well-functioning default mode network--one that lets us explore ourselves and our lives but doesn't intrude into our efforts to concentrate when that's what's needed--is critical to mental health.

Those of us who daydream more often are more likely to be depressed--either because we get caught in a cycle of rumination or because depressed people have poorer concentration (which comes first isn't clear). A study that tracked the daily activities and moods of iPhone users-published in Science magazine last November--found that those whose minds were wandering off task more often were more depressed. People who suffer from attention deficit disorder also have difficulty keeping mind-wandering at bay, which may be why many studies have found that meditation helps those with attention deficit disorder.

In fact, Brewer cites the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, who is quoted as saying" Practice doesn't make perfect: perfect practice makes perfect." Meditation, suggests Brewer, appears to be "perfect practice" in the skills that make undistracted work a possibility: the ability to detect the first signs of mind-wandering, to recognize and essentially forgive the impulse, and then gently to draw the mind back to the task at hand.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

This article brought to you by...
Present² Awareness (P²A)© — http://www.PresentAwareness.org
360° Achievement Coaching — http://www.360ACHIEVE.com

By Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° ACHIEVEMENT COACHING and Group Coaching Forums

As a student of human performance, a productivity consultant, and a professional coach for more than twenty years, I've identified "Effects of Coached Collaboration" that help create and sustain change for individuals. It is human nature for an individual to become comfortable with discomfort and to procrastinate—even when s/he knows better. It is the habit of the mind to be preoccupied with the past and fearful of the future. Your willingness to strive for achievement beyond the foibles of the mind and to exceed your basic human nature improves greatly when a trusted partner engages with you to create and support your goals. "Coached collaboration" differs from mere collaboration in that a client's investment of trust with a coach creates a uniquely powerful and productive synergy. Several effects of coached collaboration that create and sustain change for individuals are...

The Partnership/Commitment Effect: It is a phenomenon of the human condition that commitment to intentions and goals intensifies and partnership is generated when a coaching client invests his/her trust and chooses to engage in collaboration with a performance and achievement specialist who is professional, broadly knowledgeable, trustworthy, unbiased, fun, enthusiastic, and whole-heartedly dedicated to the client's achievement.

The Awareness Effect: Peaked awareness, clarity, reflection, and heightened creativity are achieved for the coaching client through coached collaboration.

The Focus Effect: Collaborating with a trusted partner to give attention to the present moment and real-time circumstances produces focus on what is really going on and what has greatest priority.

The Discovery Effect: Coached collaboration allows for the realization of questions and the discovery of answers that cannot otherwise be realized if an individual attempts to explore alone.

The Revelation Effect: Engaging in collaboration with a coach reveals to the client that which the client did not know that s/he did not know. In other words: You can't have a breakthrough about what there is to do to succeed if you don't become aware of what you didn't know that you didn't know.

The Accountability Effect: Responsibility, confidence, keeping one's word to others, and follow-through increases and the client does not settle for that which does not work when engaged in coached collaboration.

The Momentum Effect: Coached collaboration fosters rapid turnover of methods and action-plans resulting in fast and efficient discovery of the best methods, processes, and action-plans to achieve the most desirable results.

The Breakthrough Effect: Each of us manifest beliefs and behaviors that seem second-nature, automatic, and sometimes even unconscious to us. When coached collaboration is at play, we have the unique opportunity to expose and become aware of judgements and attachments hiding-out in our "blind spots." Amazing breakthroughs happen when we become aware of and take responsibility for what's been going-on in our blind spots!

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Article: Effects of Coached Collaboration
By Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° ACHIEVEMENT COACHING and Group Coaching Forums
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When I look back, I realize that I was essentially arguing with myself.  Or a manifestation of myself anyway…  That’s what they say, right?  That each character in your dream is just “another projection of you” interacting with your main-character/dream-self, right?  So, that’s how my dream ended before I woke up with my heart pounding and adrenaline pumping:  I was arguing with a woman, who must be just another version of me in the dream, sitting behind a cluttered desk as she explains to me dumbfoundedly why her circumstances, grounded in ignorance and bureaucracy, are going to continue to block my path and prevent me from making way back to the conference room where Bill Gates is waiting for me.

She said to me, “Ooooh, Bill Gates.  Who’s that?”

Flabbergasted, I snorted, “Bill Gates, the founder and CEO of Microsoft!  The software-on-every-other-computer-in-the-world guy!  The richest man in the world!  Bill Gates!”

She didn’t seem to believe me at first, and then a wide-eyed look of realization slowly rose into her face as her cheeks became flushed and her eyes shifted from dim to bright looking back at me somewhat startled by her awakened state.

Then I woke up with a start in bed anxious and in a rare state of stark recollection about the dream my unconscious mind had just generated.

Although I am an ACHIEVEMENT COACH, I am still just a guy who lives with the day-to-day (minute-to-minute really) challenges of my human nature…  The very nature of who I am, and who you are, is to procrastinate, rationalize why “not good enough” is “good enough for me,” and to be comfortable with discomfort.  As an Achievement Coach, I “know” better and yet, being human, I still need a coach to support me in my efforts to achieve other than ordinary, or put another way, to be and to act extraordinary.  In addition to having a coach of my own, I also practice various techniques of relating extraordinarily to my mind and to my Self to heighten my self-awareness, accountability, effectiveness, and productivity.  These various techniques of relating extraordinarily to my mind and to my Self allow me to live as many of the moments of my life as I can with peace of mind and empowered to choose my state of being and my actions rather than allowing my mind to live my life for me as if I am walking through all of life semi-conscious in automatic-pilot mode.

One of the techniques I use to awaken my self-awareness, discover insights, and re-establish peace of mind is to meditate.  So, I immediately began to meditate on the clear and detailed memories I still had of the dream from which I had just awoken.  The insights I uncovered during that meditation are so profound that I am strongly inspired to share them with you here now…

It all boils down to this:  Bill Gates is waiting for you in the conference room.  Are your ready?

Put another way, the message that rang for me loud and clear over and over again during my post-dream reflective meditation is this:

What would it take for you to consider the next few moments of your life as so valuable that it is as if one of the richest and most influential people in the world was waiting for “you” in the next room?  And what would you be willing to do to be ready for that opportunity?

So, the dream started out that I am in a familiar role as a project manager and team leader inside of an unfamiliar (it is a dream after all) corporate setting…  A dreamscape of a what appears to be a mid-sized business building with a professional air yet somewhat dated décor as if the division of the company in which I am working isn’t the executive level, more likely the middle-management level where there’s a lot of maintenance of records, files, reports, accounting, and accountability.  The hallways are dark wood-paneled walls cluttered with file cabinets, stacks of paper and files, and rolled-up bundles of flipchart pages.

I’ve been rushed to my office through several crowded halls and hurried past the secretary at the junction of the last hallway on the way to my office.  As I am ushered through a backdoor into my office, I am told that “he” is here, and he is waiting for me, just standing there, on the other side of the front door to my office.  I know who “he” is, and suddenly my adrenaline spikes, my heart races, and I realize that blood has rushed from face and I am losing my composure.  My escort darts from the room, and I am left standing alone.  Rather than rush to the door, I turn to a shelf and I begin rifling through some papers as if I am looking for something that is important enough to make “him” wait standing on the other side of my office door.  As I rifle through the papers searching, searching, I can feel the tension rising, and I ask myself, “Why am I making him wait?”  Every second I know that he’s waiting, I am growing more and more tense.  So, I cease my busy fidgeting and I turn the door.  I’ve gulped down my tension and suddenly put forth a face of professional warmth and confidence albeit beleaguered.  I open the door.  The door slides open in slow-motion at first.  The door is open and Bill Gates is standing there.  Without hesitation, he blithely says, “Hello.”  And the tension I’ve gulped down into the pit of my stomach churns up my throat and erupts out of my mouth as a sputter and stammer of incomprehensible gibberish.  I abruptly step back startled and aghast at my outburst embarrassed by the baffled expression on his face.

I regain my voice and my wits just enough to apologize and say, “Excuse me.”  He immediately nods with a glance to me which communicates that he is used to people acting oddly and being nervous around him, and he forgives me nonchalantly for my spastic behavior.  My head somewhat down, I inform him that our conference room is ready, and I lead him out the back of my office down a corridor to a conference room.

When we arrive in the conference room, I offer him a chair.  He sits.  I excuse myself momentarily and step into the next room to ask my team of professionals to join us for the meeting.  As they begin to make their way into the conference room, I slowly realize that the room is very warm, the lighting is bad, and the room feels dank and uncomfortable.  In an instant, feeling the urgency to get this meeting started, yet suddenly preoccupied with the inadequacy of this conference room, I declare that I am going to go secure us a different room for our important meeting.  Before I consider the implications of abandoning my guest and my team who now sit waiting for me to lead them in a meeting, I dart out of the room compulsively to find a more ideal conference room.

In short order, almost instantaneously (again, it is dreamtime), I’ve found a brightly-lit, cool, modern conference room at the other end of the building.  So, I rush from my present location to make my way back across the building to round-up my team and escort my esteemed guest to the newly identified and greatly improved conference room.  The trip back across the building to return to my team and guest is daunting and at times harrowing as I navigate cluttered and crowded hallways, occasionally get lost, and come to realize that the building in which I dream-work is apparently not just a cluttered mess of information—but it is also actually a maze!  (Dreams!)

I am one hallway from my destination now, just down the hall from the original conference room, and I am very anxious about how long Gates and my team members have been languishing in my absence.  I am back at the intersection where a secretary sits like a gatekeeper to the hallway.  Unlike when I departed this hallway some time ago, the pathway is now blocked!  She has stacked boxes and piles of papers and folders in the intersection of the hall, and she is insistent that it is of the utmost importance that this clutter of stuff remain right where it is because she is working with the information.  I am insistent that she must move the stuff so I can pass and get back to Gates and my team.  “Ooooh, Bill Gates.  Who’s that?”  So, you know the rest.

Upon meditation about this dream I kept hearing these questions come up for me:  What would it take for you to consider the next few moments of your life as so valuable that it is as if one of the richest and most influential people in the world was waiting for “you” in the next room?  Bill Gates is waiting for you in the conference room…  Are your ready?

The states of affairs that led up to Gates’ arrival also revealed themselves to me…  I realized that the main character of my dream spent the workday as if it were any other—preoccupied by the work-a-day this’s and that’s to be completed on the day’s to-do list.  All the while, knowing that Bill Gates was coming in that day, yet allowing himself to be pre-occupied with the this’s and that’s that just popped-up throughout the day.  That’s human nature…  Just show up, if you show up at all, and then just react to this and that.  He neglected to survey the idealness, or even the appropriateness, of the conference room before Gates arrived.  He neglected to be fully prepared to greet him.  I don’t even know if he had an agenda prepared for the meeting?!

So, I meditate, and I hear:

(1)  Why do I allow mundane expectations to engage so much of my time?

(2)  Why do I allow myself to run on automatic-pilot mode being a reaction to this and that when I can empower myself to be aware and awake and a chooser-and-doer?

(3)  If one of the richest and most influential people in the world was waiting for me in the next room, what would I be willing to do to make the most of that conversation?  Will I be ready?

(4)  Ultimately, why don’t I experience many, or at least more, moments of my life with as much value, importance, and excitement as the experience of meeting Bill Gates in my dream?  Moreover, why don’t I chase down more opportunities that can be that valuable and exciting?

I actually know the answers to all of these questions…  The answer to each question is one or another attribute of human nature.  The attributes of human nature are who we show up as automatically.  Yet, these attributes do not need to be the last word on who we are, what we choose, or how we act.  Achievement coaching provides answers to these questions and strategies for making use of these answers for ambitious and excellence-driven executives and professionals who know that excellence and extraordinary achievements are accomplished through values, vision, emotional intelligence, ethics, accountability, and facilitated human performance.  At the risk of sounding to frou frou about dreams and dream analysis and the power of the sub-conscious mind, I came away from my post-dream meditation almost certain that the work I’ve been doing recently with my own coach resulted in the generation of this dream in my unconscious mind and in my mind’s trigger to awaken me with such a clear recollection of the dream…  Maybe not.  Or maybe so.

Either way, this story begs these questions:

Are you living the ever-valuable and ever-fewer moments of your life with the extraordinary possibility, enthusiasm and excitement of meeting with Bill Gates (or whomever my inspire you)?  Are you reaching for such opportunities?  What’s more, if Bill Gates is waiting for you in the next room, are you ready?

~   ~   ~
Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° Achievement Coaching
Providing a 360° Perspective, Strategies, and Coaching for
Personal Empowerment, Professional Productivity,
Business Growth, and Extraordinary Achievement

Contribute your opinion to the poll and see the answers so far...

What is a 10% increase in productivity or sales worth to your business? 20%? Or 30%? What if you could improve the effectiveness and productivity of the most critical members of your business by even 10%? What is that worth in additional revenue, cost savings, and ROI?

Please join me, Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore, on Tuesday, July 13th, at 3:00 p.m - 3:40 p.m. for a free teleseminar to explore the benefits and value of Achievement Coaching.  Following the 20-minute presentation, I will open-up the call to any questions for 20 minutes.

Have you ever wondered...

• What is coaching?
• What is the difference between coaching and consulting?
• What is the difference between coaching and counseling?
• What is the difference between Life Coaching, Professional Achievement Coaching, and Sports, Fitness, or Wellness Coaching?
• Why do people procrastinate about "doing what it takes" to achieve their goals?
• Why is Achievement Coaching valuable?
• How does Achievement Coaching work?
• What are the benefits and value of Achievement Coaching to professionals and executives?
• What are the benefits and value of Achievement Coaching to businesses and organizations?
• What are the different ways coaches price their services and why?

Achievement Coaching changes everything...

• Emotional Intelligence
• Responsibility
• Accountability
• Effectiveness
• Strategic Thinking
• Communication
• Productivity
• Empowerment
• Fulfillment
• Wellness and Fitness
• Work-Life Balance
• Clarity
• Focus
• Rewards

For more event details and free event registration, please visit Teleseminar Presentation and Q&A: How Achievement Coaching Empowers People, Maximizes Human Potential, and Produces Extraordinary Results.

TAKE ACTION NOW! Arrange for a confidential no-risk meeting now at 360° Achievement Coaching offered by Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore.

We all have our weak suits.  And some of them may be moving into the area of mission-critical or values-critical.  And there are things we all need to learn to give us the edge we want or to unlock the potential we strive to fulfill.  One of the two greatest values of a coach has always been the consultant's role:  to give us new and useful points of view.  Perspective is the slipperiest and most valuable commodity on this planet.  No matter where you are, no matter how low you go, your viewing point about where you are and where you want to go and how you could get there will be a priceless commodity.  We need to see "outside the box." We need to hear non-invested opinions about what we're doing and how we're doing it.  This is, and always will be, the value of consultants.

But if we want it to happen now, and we want it to stick, we need to put ourselves in the hands of a coach who coaxes and coaches us through the new behaviors in real time in the real world.  We often need professional help in real time to install new behaviors and to get and keep us at the enhanced levels we want to function.  It's about consistently applied high-leverage responses and activities that happen on cruise control.  It's about what we can be trusted to be doing, by others and (most importantly) by ourselves, when the pressure of the real world is at hand.  To rapidly make those kinds of permanent changes and enhancements to our life-styles and work-styles, we need models, mentors, and most importantly, personal coaches, whom we spend real time with, getting us to do the real things we really need to be doing, from now on.

We need to groove new grooves in our patterns. The fastest way is to commit to a coach whose job and contract is to hold a focus and a format that helps us retread.  It could be a new way to think, a new way to feel, and/or a new way to act and respond.  But if it's a "new way" at all, it's unfamiliar territory to the unconscious part of us, and it needs to be made much more friendly to our basic nervous system.  We want to become "unconsciously competent."  We know that ultimately we need to be just doing it ourselves as a way of life and work. But we have to acknowledge that the path to that freedom is not free.

This conventional behavioral model identifies four stages of moving to permanently changed conduct:

(1) Unconscious incompetence

"I don't even know that I don't know what I don't know."

(2) Conscious incompetence

"I know now how to make it happen, and I know I can do it, but I have to keep reminding myself to do it, and I fall off the wagon regularly."

(3) Conscious competence

"I know now how to make it happen, and I know I can do it, (but I have to keep reminding myself to do it, and I fall off the wagon regularly.)"

(4) Unconscious competence

"I just do it.  I only think about it when I don't do it, and I then just go do it."

Coaching is a high-leveraged way to get from stage (2) or stage (3) to stage (4).

Professionals must master critical personal behaviors that are required in the new world of knowledge work:  how to collect, process and organize all the inputs, ideas, information and commitments that are potentially relevant to their life and work.

The challenge is to frame and address the more subtle behaviors, the ones that limit or expand our effectiveness in the world. We need to do this in the same way many of us have identified physical exercise as a strategic behavior to install in our lives, for which we have found the coach we needed and wanted to have, to make it happen at a new cruising level.  To commit to a hands-on, real time coach is not a sign of weakness.  It is rather the indication of a sophisticated awareness of the effectiveness of leveraging the best tools to restructure our automatic response systems in ways that create ever greater opportunities.

Adapted from The David Allen Company 2002. All rights reserved.

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GREG L. KILGORE, Achievement Coach
360° Achievement Coaching:
Creating Awareness, Accountability,
Action, and Achievement