happiness Archives - Global Institute of Organizational Coaching

It’s the beginning of the new year, which typically brings a time for reflection and assessment of the past year as well as planning for the new one. Do you find yourself jumping right into setting goals and taking action or are you taking the time to listen to that small quiet voice inside that wants to guide some of the decisions? Ryan Holiday, in “Stillness is the Key” shares that there are several methods for quieting the mind; becoming present, limiting your inputs, emptying the mind, slowing down and thinking deeply, journaling, cultivating silence and letting go. This blog will focus on a discussion of these ideas.

Becoming Present

Nancy Kline in “More Time to Think” shares that listening is a creative force. In working with clients, the quiet between the question and the answer can often elicit information that was buried and is now unearthed. I was talking with a client recently who shared that she didn’t realize she was feeling guilty about a past relationship until she was talking with a friend and it came up out of the blue. This form of listening either to our own quiet or the quiet that a coach or good friend allows, is not to uncover or discover to make a move, rather it is to go deeper into what can be rather than what is.

Emptying the Mind and Cultivating Silence

Dza Kilung Rinpoche in “The Relaxed Mind” believes that it is in calming the mind that allows insights to emerge that guide us to our joys, happiness and also to know who we are. It is in learning who we are that we can determine what’s important and what is not. Until we differentiate between the important and unimportant, we make everything important and lose focus. Returning our mind to a relaxed state of presence brings a clear and undisturbed view of our lives that leads to the nuggets of truth we need to move forward.

Limit Input

Shawn Achor, in “Before Happiness” calls excessive input noise. Achor believes that noise is any information that is negative, false, unnecessary or prevents us from being able to reach our full potential. He places noise in four categories; unusable, untimely, hypothetical, or distracting. A skill for everyone to build is the ability to filter through all of the information we receive on a daily basis to determine what is factual, usable, timely and relevant. How often do you evaluate the external noise in your life based upon these criteria? How does the noise in your life prevent you from limiting input? Achor contends that if we just reduce the noise by 5% we can be considerably more successful with the endeavors we are engaged in.

Our thinking can also be noisy and add to excessive input reducing our ability to calm the mind. Do your noisy thoughts lead to positive thinking or negative thinking? Wayne Dyer in “You’ll See It When You Will Believe It” proposes that many highly respected thinkers from an array of different disciplines subscribe to the belief that thought determines how our lives will go. Our thoughts determine our emotional states. To borrow from Jim Loehr’s writings in “The Power of Story” our thoughts lead us into our emotional states which are opportunity based or fear based with noise being fear based. When I am coaching clients, one of the most difficult concepts to understand is the idea that we choose our own thoughts-they don’t just happen to us. A major improvement in your life can happen when you are able to recognize how noise impacts your thoughts-particularly the negative ones.

Journaling

When many people think of journaling, they have the image of a teenage girl writing about her dreams or even Ann Frank who shared dire circumstances during WWII. Ryan Holiday shares that many of the great leaders and thinkers journaled daily as a practice of reflection including Marcus Aurelius, John Quincy Adams, Ben Franklin, and Queen Victoria to name a few. The quiet that occurs when we are journaling can lead to a deeper discovery of ourselves. James Pennebaker, in “Opening Up by Writing It Down” shares that just 15 minutes per day of writing can lead to deeper thinking. Daily writing can also help you slow down, watch your mind, and hold yourself still. Finally, journaling has health benefits that can lead to clearing your mind which include; releasing feelings and stress, increasing self-awareness, identification of emotional triggers, and letting go of unwanted thoughts.

Letting Go

Something we are never taught yet is one of the biggest struggles we face as humans is the need to let go. Letting go of expectations about self and others and wanting things to be perfect can lead to acceptance of what is and ultimately the calm we desire. In Brene Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection”, she invites us to let go of perfection and defines perfection as “the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment and shame.” Brown shares that perfectionism serves as a shield that we believe will protect us when in reality it keeps us from letting go. When we engage in perfectionism, we need the approval of others in order to feel good about ourselves. Letting go of perfectionism is one step towards calming the mind as we no longer energize a false sense of self.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is being added as a practice that can grow stillness. Williams and Penman in “Mindfulness: An Eight Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World” share a few myths of what mindfulness is not in their book. First, mindfulness is not a religion rather it is a way to train yourself mentally to calm the mind. Second, it doesn’t require a specific position such as sitting cross-legged on pillows on the floor and can be done anywhere. I have clients who practice it on planes. Third, it does not require a specific amount of time. However, it will require you to invest, persist, and demonstrate some degree of patience when building your mindfulness practice. Fourth, it is not something you measure and give yourself a grade after doing as it is not something one is successful at or fails at doing. In fact, learning and growth can occur during every session. Fifth, it doesn’t alter desire and/or drive for success, rather it allows you to see the world more clearly so that the actions you take align with what really matters to you.

This blog provided you with numerous tools that you can use to guide stillness, mindfulness and reflection as you move through 2022. For a more in-depth discussion of stillness, please join Global IOC’s webinar and panel discussion on January 26 at Noon EST. Zoom meeting link.

Unwinding the Negative Thinking Spiral

By Ursula Clidiere, Ph.D., CBC and Peggy Marshall, Ph.D., CMBC

Few of us need reminding that 2020 was a year that represented a massive call to action on so many fronts, but first and foremost, for the helping professions. Additionally, it was a double whammy for many as it challenged most helpers in their capability and capacity, mentally and physically, to help others. It also presented us with our own needs for being helped, held, and supported.

For the Coaching profession, equally, it meant a period of stretching, learning, growth, further differentiation, research, and so much more. More importantly though, it probably made a few of us realize our own limitations in coaching others while trying to keep “all wheels on our own carriage”.

Why? Even though we were taking in mutual good advice, the good vibes, the tools, the reframing, … negativity at times creeps in like a snaky poison. Before stretching, we did learn more about our own failure than we probably ever wanted, before learning, it meant stumbling or falling. Nonetheless, as a profession we have also experienced a tremendous surge of peer support, learning opportunities (many free of charge!), networking, candor, and help. Yet, experiencing ourselves with a drop of anxiousness, and noticing what a drip of negativity can do to us, may have humbled us, and possibly broadened our own perspective, even filled us with more compassion.

Despite choosing the cloth of the Resilience Protective Factors discussed by Burger and Marshall Nine Protective Factors of Resilience (globalioc.com) to drape around us, the negativity-poison can penetrate through. Sometimes in small trickly doses that shows itself as an indistinct gray shadow that gives the day a bit of a washed-out appearance. At other times, it might come as a more tidal affront that was difficult to ignore, kidnapping thought processes, and requiring repeated centering before pushing the ‘you are now connected with video’ button on Zoom. The shapes, shades and the duration of these sensations vary greatly but on bad days, it was a trip down the negativity spiral and back. So, what propels us into the negative thinking spiral and more importantly, how do we get back out?

Both Lisa Feldman Barrett in “Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain” and Rick Hanson in “Hardwiring Happiness” propose that our brains are wired for negativity and threat. Barrett’s research about the evolution of the brain concludes that the action we are required to take is to determine if something we are about to encounter is a foe or friend. Similarly, Hanson shares that we once existed in an “eat or be eaten” environment that remains present today. The challenge becomes that this evaluation of friend or foe or eat or be eaten happens mostly unconsciously. Additionally, the evaluation becomes cumulative, so the experiences and thoughts pack a greater punch as they connect with one another.

Given these factors, the first step in getting out of the negative thinking spiral is to acknowledge that we are in it. Shawn Achor in “Before Happiness” shares that we are the creators of our own reality and advises that we choose the most valuable reality. This means choosing the reality that takes our interpretation of thoughts, events, and circumstances into the best future we can create for ourselves. Stop and think for a moment. Upon awaking, what were your first thoughts this morning? Were you looking forward to the day or were you still thinking about things that happened yesterday or anticipating something unpleasant happening today based upon your calendar? Whatever you were thinking about possibly came with a story.

As coaches we often guide clients in their narrative or the story of what is happening. Jim Loehr in “The Power of The Story” shares that stories are powerful ways that we express ourselves. “Your story is your life,” says Loehr. As human beings, we continually tell ourselves stories — of success or failure; of power or victimhood; stories that endure for an hour, or a day, or an entire lifetime. We have stories about our work, our families and relationships, our health; about what we want and what we are capable of achieving. Yet, while our stories profoundly affect how others see us and we see ourselves, too few of us even recognize that we are telling stories, or what they are, or that we can change them — and, in turn, transform our very destinies.

Emerging from our stories requires us to also evaluate self-talk that is created from the stories. Self-talk is a term that refers to the voices that chatter away in our heads. Susan David in “Emotional Agility” refers to this chatter as “monkey mindedness” and guides the reader in challenging the thoughts that are not productive. This constant chatter can be positive as well as negative. When self-talk is positive, it can uplift you when things are not going your way, bolster your self-confidence to try new activities and deepen relationships. But negative self-talk, on the other hand, can interfere with performance, put a black cloud over relationships and erode your self-esteem. Unwinding the negative thinking spiral challenges us to examine our self-talk and make changes accordingly. The key here is that since it is our self-talk, we own it. And if we own it, we can change it.

This article has provided just two ways to explore and possibly think differently about the negative thinking spiral along with ideas for changing it. For more resources and tools on “Unwinding the Negative Thinking Spiral” join, the Global IOC Wednesday Webinar on February 24 at 10 AM EST. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85671563794?pwd=TmNGbVNEYXc5LzdVcDdnUzhwdWhCdz09