Do You Suffer from Delusions of Smallness?

by BrillianceInc | Emotional Intelligence, Energy, Leadership, Personal Development Comments | 0

Delusional Clients

I’m fortunate to partner with clients who inspire me with their courage, vision, and wit. Sadly, many of them don’t readily see what I see in them: they fail to notice the positive impact they have on others and may suffer from doubt, guilt, and loneliness.

And it’s not just top execs who suffer from this delusion.

Do You Suffer from Delusions of Smallness?

Here are some indicators:

  • You fail to give yourself the same care and consideration as you give others (or your dog).
  • You worry that all you’ve achieved is undeserved or ephemeral.
  • You treat your body as a machine that runs on coffee and doesn’t require ample rest and rejuvenation.
  • You say yes to all demands even if it means sacrificing sleep, sanity, and relationships.
  • You apologize often for things outside your control, as in “I’m so sorry I didn’t respond to your 2:00 a.m. email” or “I’m so sorry it’s raining.”
  • You compare yourself to others or to some ideal vision of who you think you should be.

Reality Check
No matter who you are or what you do for a living, if you ignore your body’s needs for rest, nutrition, and exercise, it will break down someday…almost certainly at a very inconvenient time and place. (Note, it’s possible, but highly unlikely, that you’ll get lucky and earn a standing ovation from 3,000 people after passing out stage as my buddy Steve Roesler did).

What You Can Do About It [Read more...]

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Change How You Are, Not Who You Are

by Denise Green | Authenticity, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Management, Personal Development, Strengths Comments | 2

Change for Good

As an Executive Coach, my job is to help people change for good. Not everyone is ready for such a project.  Some people just want everyone around them to change instead. And others worry that if they change their behaviors, they’ll come off as inauthentic—a fake. Truth is, if you’re unable to adapt your approach to people and situations, your relationships will suffer and your career will hit a wall.

Authenticity Misunderstood

Authenticity is about being real…not rigid.  That is, it’s not about stubbornly holding on to valued personality traits—or even beliefs—that aren’t working. The most successful leaders adapt to people and situations gracefully and appropriately. [Read more...]

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Flex Your Do-Gooder Muscles

by Denise Green | Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, Management, Neuroleadership, Personal Development, Relationship & Trust, Science of Leadership Comments | 4

(This post may look a little long because it’s packed with juicy quotes and ideas for you to put into practice.)

Dr. Jekyll

Most of us like to think we’re good people and that, if put in an unethical or dangerous situation, we’d do the right, noble thing. We claim assuredly that if given power, we’d wield it fairly; or that we’d call the police if we saw someone getting abused.

Perhaps.

But study after troubling study shows that the majority of us, when put in certain difficult circumstances, would act in ways we’d later be ashamed of. The truth is, while on the fringes of society we can talk about saints and sociopaths, we are all capable of good and evil.

Mr. Hyde

I had the pleasure of listening to Philip Zimbardo at a recent Neuroleadership Conference. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about good and evil. While you may not recognize his name, you’re probably familiar with his infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment where normal, healthy people cast as guards became sadistic authoritarians, while those cast as prisoners became hopeless and traumatized. The 2-week simulation experiment was cut short after just 6 days.

People aren’t born heroes. Our brains run on a 100,000-year-old operating that errs on the side of self-protection and suspicion. Scientists literally refer to it as negativity bias. Put in a threatening situation, our brain makes saving ourselves top priority.

While it may not be our default nature to act in others’ best interest, we can retrain ourselves. We can build a heroic brain and become the person we’d like to be — the person we claim to be. And when we act heroically, we improve our home environment, work environment, and communities. In essence, we improve the lives of everyone we touch, including our own.

Here are some essential hero-building steps: [Read more...]

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Choose Your Mood

by Denise Green | Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Neuroleadership, Neuroscience, Optimal Results, Personal Development, Science of Leadership Comments | 0

Which mood will it be?

Had any negative thoughts recently that you just couldn’t seem to shake?

Maybe someone cut you off in traffic and it bugged you the whole commute. Or maybe the company issued yet another dictum that had you steaming all day. Or maybe you keep running a frustrating conversation over and over again in your mind. Ever get home and dump accumulated frustration on the closest innocent victim?

Blame it on your left brain.

Actually, make that a peanut-sized area of your left brain.

Our left brain is our story-teller. Its job is to make sense of moment-by-moment inputs. And since it never has all the data it needs, it fills in the gaps, weaving so seamlessly that the story in our head feels like the inescapable truth. The cells that comprise this story-teller part of our brain are about the size of a peanut. Yet, they do their job so well, we ride along as if we had no choice, letting it loop and continually flood our bodies with cortisol and other stress-related chemicals.

According to Jill Bolte-Taylor — brain scientist, stroke survivor, and author — getting hooked on emotionally charged narratives of anger, resentment, guilt, shame, or fear for long periods can have devastating consequences on our physical and mental well-being because of the powerful ways they affect our emotional and physiological circuitry.

It’s vital to our health and relationships that we learn how to experience the emotion and then shift away.

And if you’re in a leadership role (at work or home), it’s vital to the mental and physical health of everyone around you because a leader’s mood is contagious.

90 Seconds of Pain [Read more...]

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Tools Are Not Enough

by Denise Green | Adapting to Change, Career Satisfaction, Coaching, Communication, Developing Others, Emotional Intelligence, Gratitude, Leadership, Management, Neuroleadership, Neuroscience, Optimal Results, Personal Development, Science of Leadership Comments | 2

Don't go it Alone

If knowledge and insight were all it took to change our habits, we could just read a great self-help book or take a course and voilà: excellence!

No Magic Wand

Sadly (for those of us who like instant gratification), it takes effort and practice to shift patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. You’ve developed your current state over years of accidental practice and attention: it’ll take some time and effort to develop new, stronger habits (aka, neural pathways). You’ll be tested a million times a day and have a million opportunities to return to your comfort zone.

Got Support to Thrive?

This is why even coaches have coaches. We all need someone who can listen without judgment and help us see things in a way that opens up better possibilities for action. Someone who can help us stay focused and support our efforts to change. Someone who can remind us why we’re putting ourselves through the discomfort and who can highlight the small positive changes that would otherwise fail to get noticed and appreciated.

“When you’re weary, find relief. When you’re strong, find delight.”

- Martha Beck, author, coach

Before You Get Support, Build Capacity

And sometimes, even that’s not enough. Knowing the tools exist, and being able to explain the tools intellectually isn’t enough. When we are in pain — depressed, sleep deprived, injured, etc. — we need triage support to build up our resources so we have the capacity to improve. Once we’ve alleviated the acute symptoms, we can pursue higher goals.

Don’t I know it.

After my daughter was born, I suffered many months of severe sleep-deprivation and anxiety before I finally sought medical advice. I was surviving, but certainly not thriving. My brain was in a negative loop. I recall thinking that I knew how to escape my negative thoughts, but I lacked the capacity to use the tools. It took two PTSD diagnoses for me to decide that I couldn’t self-coach myself out of my state. [Read more...]

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