Personal Change Management; the tools

A post entitled, Embracing Uncertainty, suggested an alternative description of the practices often recommended to support resilience.

It has become clear that the language helping professionals use, is often one of the most significant obstacles to supporting significant life and career change.

So, if you’ve embraced mindfulness, a daily meditation practice or have already found your way into a supportive recovery community – this post is not for you.

If you’ve explored mindfulness, worked with a trainer, have made multiple attempts to adopted a healthier and more balanced lifestyle, yet find it is difficult or impossible to maintain – this post is for you.

If you’re struggling with periods of malaise, outright depression, anxiety or physical symptoms which might be stress related, or if you have a sense that your work/home life could be better – this post is for you.

And if you’re living well, but have a niggling feeling that something is missing – keep reading. It can’t hurt.

Personal Change Management

Change management has been formally studied and implemented in business and industry for over half a century. In the early days it was characterized by a top-down exercise in defining goals and strategies; in recent decades the focus has moved toward ‘stakeholder-driven’ change.

This shift is important to note. Industry has determined that sustainable change and innovation follows bottom-up management by individuals, team leaders and ‘change champions’.

Our personal top-down change management system appears to need updating as well. New Year’s Resolutions are a great example:

  • I’m going on a diet
  • I’m looking for a new job
  • I’m training for a marathon

Good in theory, but arguably top-down. There’s a ring of “the boss says I should” to it.

Personal Change Champion

What would bottom-up personal goal setting look like? How different would it be when you, the ‘stakeholder’, is in charge?

  • Would you decide to diet, or would ask yourself what pain you are medicating by overeating or not exercising?
    Ask
    : What feelings are you shovelling down or numbing with sugar, carbs, drink or drugs?
  • Should you get a new job, or could you confront the stressors at this one?
    Ask: Are you bored? Is it the right field for you? Do you ask for what you need? Do you bring your best self to the workplace – or simply punch a clock?
  • Planning to train for your first or fifth marathon?
    Ask: Are you doing it to benefit from the exercise, discipline and camaraderie – or are you running away from something or for the sense of accomplishment? “Accomplishing” seems more like work than self-care.

Setting achievable goals and ultimately moving from knowing what you don’t want to what you do want, begins with more than a few tough questions.

It requires us to fine tune or re-calibrate our ‘receivers’.  Specific obstacles that have undermined us in the past, become apparent when we learn to listen in a whole new way.

Fine Tuning Receivers

Bandwidth. It’s a perfect metaphor for our attention span and focus. It’s not limitless. Which station are you tuned into? Favourite programme on 88.5? you can hear it on 88.6 or 88.4 – but through some static. In re-calibrating our receivers, it’s the static we’re out to eliminate; the noise characterised by that judging voice and negative self-talk that reinforces the message: why bother?

The Method

Take one small action every day on your own behalf. The tools outlined below are designed to be adopted into your daily life and routine.

The process is fundamentally the same as the  “DMAIC” model used for Change Management in industry – Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control.

If you’re in “I’ll do it myself” mode, we’re inviting you to embrace one small change at a time!

The Tools

These are modified slightly from their source for introductory purposes, links to the original work follow.

Morning Pages

The best case I can make for adopting this practice is laid out in journalist Oliver Burkeman’s 2014 Guardian article.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at how powerful Morning Pages proved, from day one, at calming anxieties, producing insights and resolving dilemmas. After all, the psychological benefits of externalising thoughts via journalling are well-established. And that bleary-eyed morning time has been shown to be associated with more creative thinking: with the brain’s inhibitory processes still weak, “A-ha!” moments come more readily.

Julia Cameron, who devised the practice, calls it “meditation for Westerners”. Absent our habit of embracing stillness or silence, three pages written in those early moments of wakefulness between dreams and consciousness, we can achieve the same effect. In her words –

“They are a trail that we follow into our own interior…”

After nearly two decades of doing them, I can attest that the days I write them go far better than the days I do not.

Simply put they are three hand written pages of whatever comes to mind – think of it as a stream of un-consciousness. Some mornings they flow, other mornings they look like a petty list of gripes, a to-do list for the day or a silly unreadable scrawl. They are meant to be private and not shared. They are rarely even re-read.

There is no wrong way to do them. Put your inner critic to the side, take pen to paper and focus on the fact that “done is better than perfect”. Perhaps you can consider them “mourning pages” –

“…a farewell to life as you knew it, and an introduction to life as it’s going to be”

Still skeptical? For more in the author’s own words you can listen to a brief description on her site .

It may just be simpler to try it!

Walking

Introduced in Cameron’s subsequent books, with this tool, she reminds us that

“…walking is a time-honored spiritual tradition. Native Americans walk on vision quests, Aborigines go on walkabouts…Walking brings a welcome sense of connection…optimism and ….a sense of health and well-being.”

Make it a point to take a walk of at least 20 minutes, twice a week.

“Walking is a luxury, an escape from our frantic pace. When we walk, we experience the richness of the world”.

Time Out

Relax. It’s doable – it’s only five minutes!

Once in the morning and once at night – sit quietly for five minutes. Check in with yourself. It’s an opportunity “for self-appraisal and self-approval”.

Set a timer, make an appointment, silence your inner critic and listen. Simply ask yourself, “How am I feeling and why?”

Play Date

Yes, I know Cameron calls it an “Artist Date“, but it is the single most resisted tool, usually while clients are emphatically insisting they are not “artists”. We’re taking liberty in describing it, as even Cameron calls it “assigned play”.

And to make the case for calling it a “Play Date”, consider this:

“What you begin to see when there’s major play deprivation in an otherwise competent adult is that they’re not much fun to be around,” he says. “You begin to see that the perseverance and joy in work is lessened and that life is much more laborious.”

That from Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the U.S. based National Institute for Play.

Once a week, imagine “what sounds like fun?” – then allow yourself some time alone to try it. Focus on the word “date”.
Cameron’s genius is never subtle – she is inviting you to “woo” yourself into doing something fun.

“Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy. They encourage play.”

And they need not be adventurous – a hour or two at a gallery, take in a film or a play, head off to an antique show, gaming convention or go berry picking. Just a few hours away, on our own and without a phone or technology is good for re-charging.

Techniques

The process is simple, but not necessarily easy. So choose one of the tools above and try it. If it serves you well, make a habit of it and add another. If you are struggling with one, add a different one and come back to it. And don’t go it alone!

The method, tools and techniques described are outlined in a series of books on creativity, resilience, perseverance, writing, abundance, money and starting over. Published over the last 3 decades and grounded in Julia Cameron’s own recovery, the techniques have evolved over the years, been embraced by millions worldwide and reflect much of the mindfulness based interventions for emotional well being.

You can find all of them from her first, The Artist’s Way to her most recent It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again online and in most bookshops.

Her intention was that small groups would come together into “creative clusters” and work through one chapter a week for 12 weeks at a time. There is information available on forming a cluster, joining a facilitated group, or individual coaching here.

For inspiration you can follow the hashtags #morningpages #artistdate on Twitter.

Thank you to our friends at CoasteeringNI and Firewalking Ireland for challenging us to play and push outside our comfort zone.




On Authenticity…

AuthenticityHoax_AF (1)“First, creating a legacy requires a fundamental shift in the way we think about ourselves in relation to success.  This is not about being the fastest rat in the race or the one who knows how to play “the game” better than anyone else. This is about acknowledging and honoring who you really are and aligning your goals with the opportunity to feel satisfied with your daily contributions. When you operate from this platform of strength, not only will you improve your chances of success, but you also will greatly enhance the happiness you experience along the way. 

Second, all the success you achieve will mean very little if your brand (your authentic self) and values are not aligning with the other.  Eventually and sometimes tragically, this disconnect between the two will come to the surface and when it does,  you will be faced with a legacy that no matter how great your prior accomplishments, they will pale beside the revealing light that will show you were not true to yourself.”

Roz Usheroff

This is not from some self-help book. The author is a highly respected corporate trainer and the entire blog post on Branding  can be found at: http://goo.gl/h5or8

 It is not my habit to direct folks away from my site, but this is important. We are inundated every day with Klout scores, Facebook likes and LinkedIn requests to connect. What does it all mean and what is it in service of?

You are your brand.  When you are in the marketplace can folks accept you at your word? Are you working to live, or living to work? What do you want your legacy to be?

Start reading obituarys! Ask yourself what you want to be remembered for. If your work life and your personal values are in conflict, ask yourself how to align them.

Start by becoming a story teller. Tell yourself, or a trusted friend, your story.  Say who you are. Is it who you wanted to become? If not, explore what you think the obstacles to becoming that person were and are now.

At Empowering Change in Emerald Valley, we offer programming – in a group or an individual setting to help you begin to align your human “doing” with your human “being”.

This is not a dress rehearsal, choose an authentic life!




Grown Up & Choosing Life

A gift of the discipline adopted from The Artist’s Way is the #MorningPages. Three pages written in the fugue state between dreaming and waking when we are most in touch with our wisdom. Wisdom un-soured by intellect. Our human being absent our human thinking and doing.

I am often astounded by what lies written on the page before me. Today, in the midst of a tumultuous period I ended with:

Buoyantly and consistently hopeful for the first time in my life. Not in the way of Jennie’s “when you grow up”…then again, was she right?

To explain, Jennie was the loving grandmother who would swoop into the chaos of my childhood and assure me that everything would be all right “when you grow up”.

I often remark that I learned none of the codependent behaviours learned by children of alcoholics, developmentally – over time and experience as an adaptive response.  I learned them at her knee – the express course. By the time I was five she’d taught me everything I had to know –she’d learned it by 1890 in the chaos of her own abusive and alcoholic childhood home.

She taught me to keep my head down, pretend everything was fine, foster the illusion of a “normal” family for the outside world, deny my feelings and be a parent to myself – and my younger brother. If I did all that perfectly well enough to keep tempers calm (because children really believe everything is within their power to control) I would grow up to leave home and be happy.

What I suspected in the thirty five years between leaving home and now, was that she meant well but that she’d missed the mark.  Because really, everything wasn’t “all right”.

Everything was what you would expect from the life of a child turned adult who brought to the world a wounded, un-parented self, unrealistic expectations that she could continue to “create the illusion of a normal family”, and on a mission to recover, besieged by the “two steps forward and one step back” that comes with the territory.

There were moments of blissful joy, dark despair, celebrated life cycles, achievements, depression, calm and cycles of more of the same. More dark than light.

The most significant “ah ha” moment in my recovery was in my mid thirties while mothering three young children with the wildly hectic and erratic schedules of suburban America. They had school, sports, ballet, figure skating, and religious school, play dates etc. The youngest rarely had a midweek nap anywhere but the back of a station wagon. I’d raced home between carpools to unload groceries from a mad shopping run.  With a sleeping child in the garaged car I was tearing through bags to unload the perishables.

SPLAT went a container of yogurt all over the kitchen floor. It smeared up and down the chairs, the fridge, the wallpaper – in short, beyond a mess.

And I lost it. I broke down into the keening, crying wail of someone who has lost everything. And I had.

Three decades of unshed tears, unacknowledged pain and sheer grief welled up in me. The floodgate I’d used to hold them back was gone. I heaved and cried and rocked on that floor for a long time. My cry was the hiccupping cry of a child. “I don’t want to be a grown-up” were the choked words through the tears.

What I knew in moment was that if I didn’t clean it up, no one else would. And I understood in a core way that I did not want to be a grown up when I was 5, 15, or 35. For just a while, I wanted to be taken care of – a well parented child.

Recovery for me has been that. Reparenting myself a day at a time. Trying to be gentle and to silence the critical voice that sabotages my efforts from the mundane of housework (Really, ?!  that floor looks clean enough to you?), to my appearance (Really, ?! that’s the best you can do with…..), to my work (Really, ?! that was your idea of “well prepared”).

Some days now I never hear it. Some days there is still a faint echo. But I wake every day knowing it will take discipline and the skills I have learned to keep it silenced.

It has been quieted enough and I have been rewarded with many more moments of joy in these last 10 years than the 40 before. I have been empowered to change my life significantly and I have been happier than I ever imagined being.

Still there has been a nagging, sabotaging little girl who really does not want to be a grown up.

And two days ago, for the first time in my life when I was called upon to take care of that little girl, to put her, and me, first I made that choice for her.

It was not without pain and even frankly, the resentment that would at times arise when I’d chose other’s needs and priorities over my own. There was, however, the loving resignation that there really was no other choice.

So really, Jennie Muscara, you were right. The day after I did, finally and fully decide to be a grown-up parent to my needy little girl, everything really was all right.

I am buoyantly and consistently hopeful.




Choosing Life

Sadly, last night I witnessed a poorly attended Dublin protest on the subject of the bank bailout.

This is not a post about economics.

The legacy of having lived so many years emotionally paralysed and trapped by an anorexic vision of my future, is that I am far too impatient when I witness it in others.  The old saw that “converts are the worst kind” is so very true.

That “conversion” was an emotional and creative recovery from a life where I limited the vision of what was possible. I refused to feed my hunger for a better life, a career & financial security, by focusing on deprivation and not abundance.

One perfect example was not returning to work after the birth of my second child.

Who will take care of them when they have sick days and day care won’t have them? How will I handle evening meetings and appointments? No one only works 40 hours and is good at what they do, how will I find a job that lets me work flexible hours?

That last option was not quite as common 25 years ago – but how would I know if I didn’t challenge my assumption? It really translates:

I don’t trust that in an abundant world everything I need will come to me if I take the first step.

I didn’t “test the water”; I decided in advance that even if it could be done, and others had, I couldn’t do it. So I stayed home, became depressed, self medicated with food and became morbidly obese.

I starved myself of the creative outlet of my work, the intellectual stimulation of colleagues and even the dreaded performance reviews that do leave you with a sense of accomplishment. Face it, even if we find child rearing more rewarding, the jury is out for nearly two decades. And when you’re in the throes of it, who knows how you are doing!

And lest you hear me beating myself up without cause, I had great training for it.

Many of us were reared to believe that facing difficulty is virtuous. Staying home with children was laudable. And it was hard, but hard was good, right?

Wrong.  I laugh now when I remember the day that a friend told me I was depressed because I was a perfectionist. My response: “I am not a perfectionist, look at me, I rarely get things right!”

If you can’t seen the irony in that, give it time, it took me years to really understand.

I did not coin this term “anorexic vision” – I owe it and so much of the language of my emotional & creative recovery to a book called The Artist’s Way. The author, Julia Cameron uses it to describe the process by which we empower ourselves with choice. When we refuse to feed our hunger for a better life by focusing on our deprivation we are assuming the universe wants us to have less than we want for ourselves. And I love the way she illustrates this point:

“Looking at … creation, it is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds….This creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send us support for our creative ventures.”

I believe this now, because I have lived the result. I stepped onto a plane almost two years ago leaving a secure job, a house, supportive friends and family behind. By living my intent to pick up where I’d left off at 23, I was making way for the gifts that could only come if I actually began the journey.

“I am thinking about moving to Ireland” did not cause anything to happen. Visiting a friend and setting a date opened my world up to help from friends and strangers alike. Inside of six months, people had actually tracked down the paperwork for a passport (the documentation stymied me off and on for 10 years), located a house to rent, found me a job,  and even cared for my dog and ushered her through quarantine. And if that weren’t enough, within six months of my arrival, I’d established contacts who led me back to the career I’d abandoned.

“Regrets, I’ve had a few…”

Please don’t read “regret” into this. I reared three fine young women who learned and grew with the lessons I was learning. I have been late in modelling joyful, mindful living – and it was not an easy road for them, but we have walked this painful path together. They will, I pray, accept nothing less for themselves.

Do read this as- “it can be done”. This convert to living abundantly would like to preach the message of choosing life. The only obstacle is us.

My work as a career & small business coach and in facilitating groups is informed by my own struggle and success.

So be patient with my impatience when I hear you say: “Ah sure, but you can’t change it”.

The folks around me are doing and saying what I had done for years.

Believe me, there is another way: bank bailouts, closed hospitals, & senior/disabled citizens victimised by cuts to health care, will not change because we are thinking about it. As in my life there can and will be changes when we take a first step.

Nets do appear when we leap.

Permission to give up our perfectionism came with a directive that is thousands of years old:

“It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but you are not free to desist from it either”*

Stand up, speak up, and show up for life.

* If you think that 2000 year old quote has little relevance today – read what LinkedIn Influencer and Founder of Reputation.com has to say about it in his post – it’s about the effort, not the outcome!