Season of Opposites

Could be occurring simultaneously right about now for you…

“I love the holidays.” and “I am stressed out by the holidays.” 

“I love seeing my family, yet they also drive me crazy like nobody else.”

Being in the midst of a crowd, but feeling completely isolated. 

The holidays being truly magical for the kids, yet feeling the fatigue and stress of creating that magic for them as an adult.

My focus outward on people coming together again, yet focus inward to the impact they have on me. 

That focus on celebrating with others, and pulled into my head for personal year in review. 

...This time of year can magnify these opposites as we break from rest-of-the-year rhythm to revisit (or miss) places, people and traditions. They can play serious tug-of-war inside our heads, which is stressful even when we try to ignore it. The stress of opposing-force tension within ourselves is the hardest kind. Worse is when we’re not thinking about it consciously, and it’s working in the background of what we do, just insidiously sucking our energy… exhausting. 

What if those same opposites could be just fine and even the fun dynamic of the season? 

Here’s how…

Call out the tricky ones. 

The fastest way to de-power any problem is to expose it. So, call out these opposing forces for what they are, and watch how that strain lessens. Out loud: “This running around part is crazy. So- once we get there, let’s all take a few deep breaths and let that go to reset before we walk in.” Later, silently to myself: “I’m surrounded by people but completely disconnected… now’s the time to engage.” Calling it out like this won't eliminate the situation, but will lessen the tension everyone feels from it.

Then… try some new opposites. You can find meaning where you haven’t, connection with those you couldn’t, and peace in the midst of the swirl. 

Here's how:

Be InterestED instead of interesting. 

Initiate actual connection instead of forgettable smalltalk which we all really hate anyhow. Yet try it with some hyperfocus on them. Set all the stuff you could either gloss over or delve into about your own year aside, to get under someone else’s layers… Put the big spotlight shining down from the sky on the other person you’re talking with and genuinely lean in to enter their lives a little with some genuine questions. For shallow answers like “I’m good, thanks. Y’know- busy,” make eye contact and ask a layer or two deeper until you get to what they care about. Ask, “Of all the things you’re busy with, what’s actually your favorite and why?” You’ll get to what they’re really up to in their lives, and ultimately substantive which they’ll light up in talking about. And it'll be way more interesting than the surface-y stuff you could talk about with anyone, and both forget. 

This is when you hug goodbye at the end and can genuinely say, “I’m so glad we got to talk a bit,” having created a memorable connection. 

Sprint and recover. 

Know your tolerances. Very few people are completely extroverted (getting all their energy from others) or completely introverted (getting all their energy from solitude). You might love the energy of people in the get togethers, yet know that you’ll enjoy it more (and be more enjoyable to others) if you get yourself away from the crowd for a moment of solitude every now and then. You might be pulled by the escape hatch of your phone's feed, yet know that you need to push yourself to engage with folks instead. You know that you can dive into the gluttony of food, drink and football-watching completely, but will feel gross by the end of the weekend if you don't get your body moving significantly, too.

• During the big get-togethers, step outside when nobody’s looking, listen to the quiet, take some deep breaths for a few minutes. You’ll go back in reset, refreshed and ready to re-engage.
• Maybe that run or yoga class is more important on these indulgent days than any other, so your body can get something out of it all, too, and not shut down on you with fatigue. 
• Find what truly recharges and resets you, and do that intentionally a few times each day. 
• Get perspective. Journal, debrief, do a gratitude exercise… then re-engage with your lens cleared.

Your social and emotional stamina will stretch out, and you can come out of the holiday with more energy- just imagine that! 

Go bigger. 

One of the best ways to get out of your own head of concern is to focus on something bigger than yourself. A person, a cause, an idea, an act that gets your impact out there beyond your normal sphere of influence. Every time it brings perspective and even appreciation back to your world afterward. 

• Do something you’d never otherwise do- something out of character. Jump on the trampoline with the kids, initiate a game with the adults, share something personal. 
• Find a cause and give something real to it (time, food, some generous act). Even get someone else off the couch to spontaneously go do something positive for others with you. 
• Stretch your head, get inspired by a great big idea, and immerse yourself in it. And share it with everyone, instead of the commercial they were watching during the game. 

This is when you get to see the best side of those folks around you. Inspire them to go/think/speak bigger, and watch them expand too. You’ll love them even more after.

Go smaller. 

Intentional of not, we’re all causing ripples wherever we go which you’re often too busy to notice. Now’s a great time to turn up your observation radar and really get the nuance of impact happening all around (or in) you. It’s way too easy to zone out into the feed on your phone (while everyone else does, too), missing the cool, striking, sometimes barely perceptible shift and impact happening all the time in our live interactions, which, put all together creates meaning and indelibly cool memories. So- your phone put away (which will trigger others to put theirs away), awareness zoomed into little things, notice and capture these nuances, which are happening if you look for them… 

• an act of true kindness
• the way someone’s face changes when they talk about something they love
• how people (including you) initiate and respond to physical connection (the hug, the lean, the space between you and them on the couch)
• the shift that happens in someones eye color and voice when they shift from smalltalk to depth
• a moment that makes you stop and really think differently about something (stay open for it)

This is when you start to really get the beauty and the intricacies of people and what really links us to one another. 

So.. in this season of opposites, call them out, go to the ends of each spectrum fully, and try on some new opposites. Create and soak up the moments, snapshots and soundtracks of it all.

And… know that you’re one sentence, one gesture, one conversation away from awesome, stirring connection with people. 

Happy Holidays!

...and yes, I'll get back to you in a few days about your new year. ;)

This post originally appeared 12/24/14, and is being republished for this year's holidays, by special request. :)

©SarahSinger&Co. 2018

Moments of Truth

This is the one of a series of posts from my climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro, and some transformative perspective that came in those days above the cloudline. The lessons absolutely translate to an elevated life down here. These posts will be a bit more sharing and a bit less instructional than my typical posts, yet hopefully just as useful. 

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The morning of June 11th was a pivotal few hours I'll never forget.

Physically, I was up 17,500 feet on Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, on the last morning of an already-transformative 5-day + months-of-preparation climb up that mountain, and less than 2 hours away from the summit. While an all-in, energy leader of my team, I had been getting a strange-feeling kind of altitude sickness, which just felt like dizzy spells (didn’t faze me) and needing to push myself harder (again, ALL-in), yet meant that the level of oxygen in my blood wan't saturating (pulse ox level) as it should. Our wise and experienced leaders were monitoring us all, and while they had warned us of the potential dangers of the mountain and altitude sickness (which can hit anyone), someone just the week before died on the mountain with similar symptoms to mine… so the gravity of it felt very real. At 4:00 that morning, before we set out on the trail for the summit, I was excited, feeling strong, and fired up to go, yet my pulse-ox numbers were pushing the envelope. Our guides placed me at the front of the line, right behind one of them as we set out in the dark that morning, with the stern directive to tap her on the shoulder if I got any dizziness, and the warning that if my numbers dropped further, they’d turn me around. I was feeling good, powered by adrenaline, will, and focus on my state, yet... 3.5 hours into that summit day’s climb at 17,500 feet up, I got another dizzy burst, and tapped her on the shoulder. Our leaders stopped the whole team for a break, checked my pulse-ox, and while I knew it before they said it, all three of my leaders stood there with me, love and commitment to me and my safety in their faces… “Sarah. Your lips are purple, nose is turning purple, and your pulse ox is too low. Going on is not safe… We have to turn you around.” There were the words, piercing the flurry of thoughts and emotions coursing through me with those exact words every climber on any mountain fears hearing from their guides.

The mix of emotions in that instant was disorienting and vivid. I felt all of these at once:

Disappointment: I can’t believe I’ve come this far and can’t finish this with my team. I have to leave them right here, right now?

Fear: Holy #@%. I could actually die. 

Gratitude: I’m so glad they know what they’re doing, can see what I can’t about what’s happening to me, and are able to make the right decision for what will save my life. 

Pride: I climbed, conquered and got the lessons of this mountain, higher than 7.5billion of the world who will never even attempt it.

Surprisingly at peace: Weird that don’t really care about the summit in this moment. I’ve been so fully blown away every single time I turned around along the way to see how far we’d come/ascended, that this last 1500 feet doesn’t matter nearly as much as I thought it would. 

At that point, I’d already gotten a myriad of a-ha life insight moments from that mountain, which the next few posts will illuminate. We’ll start with the most dramatic, last lesson, which is what’s taken this whole year to unpack for me… 

In that moment of truth, realizing that my turnaround could interrupt the team’s momentum and intense focus in their home stretch, I quickly focused on them. I assured them I was fine, declared that spot my summit, cheered, hugged and high 5-ed them before they continued up the trail the last 1500 feet, then turned away, to head back down the trail toward our last camp. Taking the photo above in that moment was heartbreaking. With a kind, helpful porter carrying my pack and keeping me moving as quickly as possible (the cure to altitude sickness is to get to lower elevation as fast as possible), tears streamed down my face all the way back to our last high camp. 

I was struck with how completely different that same path we had just ascented seemed now, moments later, descending it alone. During the 5am-8am hours of climbing 2,000 vertical feet that morning, we completed it inch by inch, from pitch black with headlamps, to the sun rising with us above the clouds, that trail was narrow, filled with our team intensely focused on every step, breathing together, encouraging one another, letting out the occasional howl of adrenaline and “Rest steps and pressure breaths!” We were tightly packed inches from one another in the line, intentional, connected… THIS was Summit Day… IT… what we’d trained and prepared for over weeks and months. There was a rhythm of energy we could all feel, as we focused our headlamps on our teammates feet in front of us, placing each step in the spot their boots had just left, breathing in unison, connected. Throughout the whole ascent over 5 days, there were moments when we’d feel the energy of the person in front of you and behind you, their energy pulling or pushing our steps through rough parts where we’d otherwise stop if left to our own determination. That morning we all felt it, even more intense than the 5 days prior.  

Yet, as I began descent back down that same trail (almost running down), the silence was deafening, the aloneness unsettling, although I couldn’t quite focus my thoughts to make sense of the contrast I was experiencing. I stopped, took a few breaths, and got my head together enough to take this photo (below), knowing it could bring me mentally back to that exact moment later to try to figure it out.

I stopped, took a few breaths, and focused to take this photo, knowing it could bring me mentally back to that exact moment later to try to figure it out.

A strange sensation continued all the way back to camp and the rest of the day, part fear of was could be happening inside my body, part shift in my psyche, which I’d spend months afterward, processing all the way through.

Physically, I didn’t realize that I was in the beginning stages of cerebral edema- a kind of altitude sickness. During that quick descent back to our last camp a splitting headache, disorientation and fever kicked in. I convinced myself and my porter that I’d be okay after he got me to my tent and left me alone to rest it off, and that I’d just find a place for a pitstop, then lay down in my tent to let my body reset, since they’d all be back down in a few hours. Yet I soon realized (sort of– I was foggy) that I was losing my balance, wasn't walking straight, was taking a long, long time to do simple motor tasks, and was absolutely burning up, despite the 35-40 degree air temp and wind. I was scared. I stripped down to almost nothing, sweating, laid down outside my tent in the wind, iced my body down (water bottle still frozen from the night outside) to try to cool my feverish heat, kept repeating meditations and visualizations to calm myself, and let myself pass out. When I woke up, freezing and able to think more clearly, I knew my body was resetting, crisis averted. 

By the time the team returned from the summit, I was functioning somewhat normally, and able to focus on them, so asked lots of questions about the rest of the experience, genuinely happy for them. Yet tears kept leaking from my eyes as I talked, although I wasn’t fully processing why.

In my moment of truth at 17,600 feet, something did shift, much bigger than my expectation to summit. I had separated, and for the first time during the whole journey, I was in a completely different experience than the rest of my team. I went from being connected so completely that we were breathing in unison, to being out of sync and alone. That separation was a giant rip in my reality of the experience thus far, and it felt bigger to me than the summit. While we celebrated that last night on the mountain, descended the rest of Kili together, then celebrated more, I was different than I’d been. Every night of the trip we’d come together in our team tent after the day’s climb, sharing the lessons and connections of the mountain that day, each of us having our own insights, collectively having many. While I was normally eager to share, after summit morning I withdrew, a little quieter, fixated inward trying to sort it all out. I turned my outward focus to all the other amazing parts of the Kili journey, yet that rip was definitely still working in the background of my my mind. 

Since then (a year ago at this writing), I’ve reflected, processed, and dug into the layers of what happened for me on that mountain- physically, mentally and emotionally. I brought so many epiphanies and insights back from Kili which inspire me daily, distinct from those few hours on summit morning, that loss of sync with my team, was a lesson all its own.

Poignant right now, yet always…

Kili Lesson #1: Trust your team's expertise, and surround yourself with people who can call it when you can’t.

We all think we have more self-awareness than we do. When I’m pushing myself, I’m unstoppable, convinced that I can do whatever I set out to do. That usually proves true, yet in this moment, it didn’t help me at all. I was powering through, doggedly strong, yet I had no idea of what was happening in my body, its stakes, or what was best for me. My guides did. They had perspective on me which I didn’t, expertise I counted on them for, clarity from day 1 that safety drives every decision, and I trusted them implicitly. Because of that combination, their decision which possibly saved my life, and the immediate next steps were quick and efficient, not a debate. My gratitude for them far outweighed my disappointment, underscored by the shock that something so drastic could be happening inside my own body while I had no idea, and wouldn’t have ever known without them until it was a full-on emergency.

Down here: The more committed to a cause or direction we become, the bigger our blindspots can be, and we can miss something critical or off (especially about ourselves), which could make or break the whole thing as we power on with determination. Who do you surround yourself with who you can absolutely trust to keep perspective on you when you can’t, who’s got critical expertise you need and can count on, and who will be completely honest with you to "call it" even when it's hard? Find them, empower them, and listen to them, especially in those key moments. 

Kili Lesson #2: Moments of truth have layers, worth peeling back. 

While the moment of being turned around on that mountain was hard, it was also somewhat obvious in many ways (because of lesson #1). What wasn’t so clear was the most formative part of the whole Kili experience for me, which didn’t consciously surface until much later; that the connection to that team was far bigger for me than summiting Kili. The truth underneath my turnaround that morning: I tend to fly solo in much of what I do, and being part of that team completed me in ways I didn’t even know I needed until it was gone in an instant. I know I’ll climb that mountain again, conquer its summit and other peaks too, but I won’t ever complete that physical experience with my team. While the layers of that moment had been working their way up through my consciousness over the last year, somehow, a simple 4 words in an email this morning (“Wish you were here,” from some of my team, back on Kili right now), both exposed and completed it all for me in an instant. Those relationships, and that connection to that team were clear, rare, and irreplaceably permanent.

Down here: What might be beneath your moments of truth? It's always possible to find the most obvious, outer layers of “what is" or "what I’ll do differently next time." Yet what truths are layered under that? Beneath, often is a somewhat-conscious truth… maybe a pattern you can spot of something like this happening elsewhere (or repeatedly) in your life? Beneath that, may be more layers of unconscious truth- the ones you don’t see, but work in the background of your mind to cause those patterns. Example: a recent client had trouble confronting others, and layers beneath we discovered a time in childhood she'd stepped out to confront, and was unjustifiably retaliated against and hurt in the process. Once we revealed the base of those layers, the pattern released, and changed. For her, for me, and for most, while the reflection and processing can seem long, the release happens in unlocking it can actually occur in a single interaction, realization, or instant. 

Reflect, process, and do the work of self-actualization to get to that clarity. Even when it takes a year, it’s liberating, energizing, ultimately instant... and completely worth it.

©SarahSinger&Co. 2017

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How To Just HAVE the Conversation Already

See that lively green, healthy plant thriving right there which looks different than the others? If you look closely, it’s got tiny spikes coming out of its leaves. 

You have one of those, right now in the back of your mind, and quite possibly in your team, your culture or the project you’re working on.

That plant is actually an invasive weed, unwanted, yet growing healthily and strong in the midst of my other plants. I’ve been walking past it for weeks now, thinking “I should pull that,” since it doesn’t belong and is sucking important energy and nutrients from all of the other plants I want to grow around it. Yet it hasn’t really stood out much to others, I knew I’d get thorns in my hand pulling it out, and suspected that once I went to pull it, I’d be into a whole project, seeing others I need to spend more time pulling. 

So… I just kept walking by. 

Where are you doing the same thing… just walking by that thing you know you should actually address?

You have “weeds” like this, too. Maybe in your yard, but absolutely in your world. They are the unwanted issues, dysfunctional dynamics, and negative attitudes which are at best unhelpful for what you’re trying to achieve, and at worst toxic… which will just keep going and growing until you address them. Yep- they’re prickly, going there is uncomfortable, and you suspect in the back of your mind that if you do, you might then see way more like it you’ll have to deal with. I get it. 

Think of one person in your world with whom you know you need to address an unmet expectation, a pattern of unproductive behaviors or a dysfunctional communication. 

Yep- that one.

Leaders tell me every day reasons why they don’t address these issues (especially when I’m coaching them to do just that). Every reason has to do with avoidance of confrontation, discomfort, drama, a potentially tough conversation, or fear of causing an additional dynamic of tension with someone by doing so. Can you relate? You're not alone. 

Now identify the reasons you’ve given yourself for why you haven’t had that “tough” conversation yet. 

So, we all can predict what happened when I finally decided to pull that weed this morning. Shocker- it had become thornier, stronger and harder to pull than it would’ve been 2 wks ago when I first spotted it. It also had multiplied- I indeed found more weeds once I got in there, that had camoflagued themselves, steadily sucking energy and nutrients to grow stronger from all of my healthy plants around them, now a bit less vibrant than they should be. 

We know that in human dynamics, negative energy is infortunately more powerful and faster-spreading than positive. This is clutch for you, the culture of your team, and your own energy; the longer you leave it alone, the bigger, stronger it gets.. 

How have the invasive, “weedy” behaviors, interactions and attitudes been sucking energy away from you and all the healthy dynamics, people and things around them? How much energy and time have your spent/lost thinking about doing it or not, or upset about the existing dynamic?

While this metaphoric weed-pulling challenge might be one of the most common challenges I see as a coach from leaders across the board, it’s also the one thing that might keep your team, your organization, your energy, your leadership and your impact from being truly great unless we get it to shift. 

Imagine being able to have what you’ve thought of before as thorny conversations directly, quickly and easily, causing positive shift in people’s behavior, patterns, thinking and interactions. 

We don’t have many great models in our culture for this; we think that our choices are either a big confrontation (messy for all the reasons we fear) or just avoiding/dealing with it (which only lets it get worse). Yet there’s another way.

Here’s how: 

This simple frame, guaranteed to cut the drama, will keep the other person listening, and help you say everything you need to say directly, yet easily, in a way that moves things forward. Credit to my friends at Quantum Learning Network, who have been teaching this simple tool for decades in its programs world over. 

The steps to make it easy:

Say the following out loud (it’s an acronymn, so saying it out loud will help you remember the actual steps of the model when you need it): “Open The Front Door.” 

1. O = Observation- Tell the facts of what occurred, from a fly-on-the-wall perspective (what was said, what behaviorally happened, in what order). No assessments or characterizations. 

    This gets you and the other person in the same realm of reality- from the same reference         point of what actually occurred (which you should be able to agree on). 

    “I noticed that today was the third time in the last two weeks that we got to a deadline in the project where I expected  your team's part to be complete as we agreed, and it wasn’t.” 

2. T = Thought- what the actions triggered you to think, your opinion or assessment; the story you've made up in your head about what happened. 

    This is where you get to share the impact in your world of what occurred, the interpretation you made of it, and what you now think as a result. 

“I’m thinking that this is becoming a bottleneck as the project gets delayed further, and the team it waiting. I'm wondering how else I can support your team, yet also realizing that I'm becoming a little less and less inclined to trust that what we agree to is going to happen when we say it will, which I don't want to do.” 

3. F = Feeling- Name the emotion you have now. This tells them the upset that they’ve triggered.

“I’m frustrated.”  

4. D = Desire- Say what you’d like to have happen, and ask for a next step toward it. This gives you the place to say what you'd like to be different, and gives the other person an opening to be able to move forward actionably and constructively. This is a game-changer, as it's what truly opens the door for the other person to respond in a way that moves you both forward into a new pattern. You're giving them a directed, productive path to respond back to you without having to get defensive. Without this step, you're still just confronting them with the issue, rather than moving things forward. [By the way, if you're a person who's higher on the confronting spectrum, this will be a key new piece for you, which can make what you bring much easier for others to respond to.]

“I'd like the project to move forward, for us to get our teams to a place where they can trust one another to hit these deadlines, and have a system in place to hit them smoothly. Can we have a conversation to explore how that can happen and reset?”

Warning: It might feel weird to organize your thoughts into this order. Yet the key to this tool is the order of its parts, as it layers all the pieces you need to communicate into a sequence another person can listen through without getting defensive (try mixing up the order, and it gets confrontational quickly).

An important note on the Feeling part: 

Own it. We’ve all heard “keep the emotions out of it” and “don’t make it personal,” right? Bad advice, actually. We tout ideas like that because emotions can be strong, we don’t have great practice or comfort in understanding them or expressing them productively (when they’re negative), so we think it best just to keep them out. So one of two things happens- 

1. We go into ice mode, with no expression, no emotion, and ultimately no connection with the other person, which ironically elicits more [negative] emotion from them in feeling iced.
2. We hold it in, but then get to the point where our emotions boil over, and the communication is a confrontation, led and driven by our inflamed emotion, getting all over the other person. “I’m mad…”

Neither one of those is very smooth or effective. Yet we all have emotions, and they’re already in there. They are what make us passionate and also able to relate to others and have these relationships in the first place, right? AND, they’re also rarely a secret. People read your emotion when you want them to, yet also when we think we’re hiding it… but not always so accurately, especially in a moment of conflict. It’s all over our tone, face, and body language, and often intense in these types of moments, so unless you tell them what your emotion is, they can misread it through their own bias, and then “how the big conversation went” sharing afterward is left to their interpretation of your emotion. Don’t leave that completely to them! Call it, own it, name it, and move on. They’ll get the gravity of the conversation by hearing your emotion, plus you’ll control what they take away by making the most potentially dramatic part of it not needing to be interpreted, because you named it directly and calmly. 

This morning I actually pulled those weeds out. Done. 

My attention will never be distracted by them again as I walk by, and those other plants are already getting healthier, because it’s solved. 

And… it only took a few minutes.

The conversations you need to have to pull those invasively weedy issues won’t take nearly as much time or energy than you think they will, and I’m betting that the energy they’re sucking from the healthy dynamics and people around them is far greater than the exertion it’ll take for you to just have the conversation already. 

Decide when you’ll have your first direct conversation trying the model. The sooner the better. Tick tock. 

You can have direct, clear, non-dramatic conversations in which you address it, get the unhealthy stuff out of the mix, and move forward. Quickly. Easily. And without injury. 

Call it. 

Own it. 

(and, the best part of all…)

Move on. 

©SarahSinger&Co. 2016

The Secret Perk About Gratitude

I never really got gratitude, until I realized that I’d gotten it all along. I would hear people talk about how practicing gratitude made a huge difference in their lives - they were happier and more fulfilled - but I never truly understood how that came about. 

I always thought I was grateful. I give real thank yous, I am [usually] polite, and I mean it. I genuinely appreciate and acknowledge other people and the things I have in life. But I didn’t see how expressing gratitude could be as transformational as people referenced; I didn’t see what was in it for me.

Then, suddenly and by degrees, I experienced a shift, and realized that what I had been calling gratitude was really appreciation (not quite the same thing) - of external things, of situational experiences, of other people. Appreciation expressed as acknowledgment is definitely good (and important), but not exactly true gratitude.  

Acknowledgment is an act, but gratitude is a shift.

And once I learned how to access the shift of gratitude, that thing I never really named became a game-changer in my life.

I thought that those people who spoke so highly of the happiness and fulfillment that comes from gratitude had some sort of special ingredients that I was missing. But it turns out, they don’t. I had all the ingredients in my life for gratitude and you probably do to. The key to gratitude is a matter of shifting your perspective and feeling that important distinction between gratitude and appreciation. 

Here’s what happens…

1. Getting Stopped in Your Tracks Happens

If you’re future-oriented like me, this is huge. In focusing forward on the horizon/goal/next steps there’s momentum and progress, yet what’s what’s right here right now gets missed completely sometimes. For some of us, it takes a forced pause to get present. Sometimes it’s an occurrence- like a near-miss of a giant tree getting blown to the ground but missing you by seconds (actually happened to me the other day). Or losing someone. Or the color of the sky (which caused me to stop midrun to take the photo above). Or an inspiring act of kindness from someone. Sometimes it’s learning something we can’t ignore- like a sobering medical diagnosis. Or a private truth someone confides. Sometimes it’s a relationship- like a friend or loved one in need. Or a bolt of connection you feel with someone you didn’t see coming. These moments force us to pause, get present and pay full attention.

2. Sudden Perspective Happens 

Hearing a story of someone who’s overcome bigger challenges than we have or has found utter joy and success with far less than we have, suddenly we see the things we easily have/do with a new appreciation, right? Feeling human connection, new ease, happiness or love after we once felt struggle, sadness, or loneliness– we get the stark difference in comparison. These moments spotlight the contrast between what is and what could otherwise be.

3. Feeling Significance Happens 

In those moments of connection, pause and contrast, we can be moved, touched or inspired by what is. This takes some mental/emotional openness, and is the game-changer. We can experience a profound moment of a-ha appreciation that fills what normally feels insatiable in a unique way, clearing the lens through which we expect things from the world, allowing us to feel joy. 

Or we can just keep plowing forward, missing or dismissing it. 

This is a choice.

Every Day Happens...

Many days I do get it now- it’s not lost on me, because I've created space for those three things to occur, because I’ve created the practice to give myself a lens through which I am struck by the generosity or beauty or uniqueness or wonder of something or someone. Or the inextricable connection between people, moments and seemingly unrelated occurrences right along with the individuation of them all. These things hit me like a smack in the head (or gut or heart). Wow. Awe. Joy. ..not lost on me.

I could’ve been easily hit by that giant, falling tree the other day, but I wasn’t… not lost on me. I get the lucky, maybe miraculously precise timing of that.

The color of the clouds against the sky as the light changes is beautiful in a way humans can’t replicate… not lost on me. I get the brilliance and utter beauty that inspires me to the core every time.

I was diagnosed with cancer, then 10 weeks of process and a surgery later, I didn’t have cancer…not lost on me. I get the rare opportunity and restart in that.

I have a family of amazing people who communicate, support and are truthful with one another unconditionally... not lost on me. I get the invaluable gift of that.

I have the ability to make a huge difference in people’s lives in a powerful and unique way… not lost on me. I get the bigness and responsibility of that.

So now I get this elusive word, and its secret perk I never understood in those three things happening together...

Being Present + getting Perspective + feeling Significance = [not-lost-on-me] FULFILLMENT....as in filled up in a unique way that brings an unparalleled internal clarity and peace. 

Many days I don’t get it. I get caught up in my head just like you might. I move too fast, focus forward or back too much, and I miss it. Great things might be all around me, and it IS lost on me. I always try to show my appreciation - but gratitude is something I've built practice for so that it doesn’t get lost, and keeps my brain scanning for the good, rather than missing it.

Check out the four steps I use daily, and see what you think. My experience? 10 days of this, and you're looking at life through a different, clarified, beautiful lens...

The Four Steps to Real Gratitude

Meanwhile, take a breath, look around, and get the amazingness in and around you right this second- it's right there. 

©SarahSinger&Co. 2015

When The Debate inside your head IS Worth It

Have you had a recent moment of the conversation you were having with yourself was so loud you couldn’t even hear someone talking to you? 

Of course you have. Those self-exchanges can be fantastic or horrible, distracting or helpful... and if you're not careful, consuming. Yet sometimes they're worth engaging, in order to get to your best next iteration. 

(While you may or not be a runner, you can fill this in with a situation where you know you could do the same thing…)

I love my running time. Yet... a few minutes into my run this morning, I just wasn’t feeling it. For a full minute (yes, I clocked it), I had an internal debate with myself-

Me: I don’t want to do this. 

Other me: Too bad. Do it anyway. 

Me: I’m tired and already breathing too hard- this is going to be a slow, rough run. I worked out really hard yesterday and the day before. It’s completely overcast and there aren’t even any good clouds to focus on. Maybe I should take this as a sign that this should be my day off. 

Other me: No. Shut up. You got a rare 8 hrs of sleep last night- you’re fine. It always smooths out after the first 5 minutes. Keep going! You’ll be happy you did when you’re done. 

Me: Ugh. That’s true. I can do anything for 5 minutes, right? Some first-five-minutes are rougher than others, but it always gets easier after that. Okay- I’ll clock it. 

Other me: There you go. Focus up and out- it always works.

So, I did. Five minutes later into this hot, humid run, I was still going, but hadn’t exactly broken through anything (often I do). It was still rough, and the conversation started again. 

Me: Okay- we’re past that magical point, and it’s still not happening. 

Other me: Then call it. Enough wasting energy on the question. No more complaining. If you’re going to do it, just go and get into it. If you’re not, then just turn around and be done.

Me:  Ug. Well… maybe there’s a way to do both.  A compromise without compromising… what if I cut this run shorter than normal by half, but focus on strength vs. endurance to get just as much out of it as a longer run? I never do that, but I could. The run ends faster, yet I work a little differently, honing something else. Win-win? 

Other me: Okay. GO! 

And I did. For the rest of the run I just pushed off each stride a little stronger than I normally would, focusing down on that push-off instead of my normal up and out for the horizon. I felt my focus sharpen, my legs get stronger, my voices quiet. My mind actually woke up in a different way with this slight little change in focus, and I felt myself doing something I’d done a million times through a surprisingly new lens of experience. Worth it for that alone. As I crossed the finish line of my driveway, I felt relieved that I didn’t quit, satisfied that I found a new way to strengthen my stride, and intrigued by how a slight change altered the whole experience so much. 

Yet here’s the kicker…

As I looked down at my MapMyRun, I expected to see the much shorter time than normal, but not much change in my pace, since I was so slow out of the gate. And I was shocked- my pace actually improved by more than a full minute per mile faster! That’s a lot- even faster than some of my full-out sprints at the end of normal runs. 

So- runner or not, here's what you and I both do: 

• We have debates in our head like this all the time. 
• We make choices about pushing through our internal resistance or not every day- consciously or not. 
• We have things we do so regularly that they now define themselves in a fixed, possibly limiting way (i.e.: “a run” to me was running a certain pace, distance, way…). 

So, try this… 

1. Stay ahead of your voice.  The tricky part about your little voice is that it knows you to the subconscious core, so knows exactly how to push you… yet also how to take you down- and it’s not always clear which motive is leading that internal conversation. It’s easy to get psyched out by it, so knowing when to stand up to that voice and how shut it down when it’s sabotaging you is crucial.* Yet if you stay in it (see #2 below), only engage in that internal debate for a limited engagement, or else you get sucked into a rabbit hole of internal tug-of-war, which can stop you dead in your tracks. That’s exactly why I clocked it this morning- after a few seconds of debate, I knew I’d need to contain it to a small timebox so something could either shift quickly or I could shut it down and power forward. Do you know how to separate from your little voice enough to assess its effect on you in the moment? Practice it.* 

2. Take on the internal debate. Your voice can be your best cheerleader or your worst critic, and often it’s a combination that’s weirdly helpful. Sometimes it pushes you in exactly the way you need to be pushed, and it’s worth it to engage with it and argue through its resistance, pressure-cooking your thoughts into a better idea. My voice this morning deftly laid down the ultimatum of  ‘shut up or go home’ because sometimes I need my options to be reduced down to A or B in order to push me into creating a divergent option of C.  Had I ignored that voice and muscled through my full run this morning, I would’ve missed a huge learning, new experience and overall improvement. What does your little voice know you need, and when might it be pushing you exactly the way you uncomfortably need to go? 

3. Shift one tiny thing, and you change the whole experience. We are more habitual than we like to think, and often go on autopilot without even realizing it. The first time you rode a bike it was exhilarating; by the hundredth time, it was just transportation. Through the practiced motions of what we do regularly, our experiences start to blend together. By changing one small thing (try folding your arms, then folding them the other way, with the opposite arm on top), everything changes. A shift even that slight forces you to experience it as instantly different, and you’re snapped out of autopilot, wide awake and getting nuance you missed the last 99 times, new synapses firing, new thoughts possible, and your operating system is rebooted. What possible element can you shift or zoom in on to change an otherwise regular experience right now and notice something new?         

4. Stay present in the experience, and be open to what might emerge. The cool surprise is that a tiny shift can also cause a huge change in results which you just couldn’t get to if you’d kept on with your original plan. Listening while arguing with my little voice got me to something I never would’ve planned. Every step I took a little stronger this morning felt different in the moment, but not enough, I thought, to really change my overall time so much (nor was that my goal, for a nice change). I was so present in the new experience that it didn’t matter to me, yet in the end that tiny change made a huge difference in my time, and will now be a new kind of run added into my training from now on. Perhaps the result you’ve been trying strategically to improve for so long actually needs you to release your vice-grip focus on it for a bit to pay attention to some overlooked element along the way before anything can change overall?  

Going forward, I know my little voice will keep challenging me- that’s its job. I’ll keep looking for where it can be the catalyst for shift where I need it, experiences re-defined and results I can’t possibly predict from here. You too? 

©SarahSinger&Co. 2015

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For more thoughts and concrete strategies for getting to your best thoughts, impact and process... check out my new book, Tap Into Greatness and live workshops, like Tapping Their Greatness. To go deep on mastering your little voice, check out *Little Voice Mastery. 

Of Course You Are.

Something awesome happens. 

Something horrible happens. 

Something we were counting on falls through. 

Something we were sure would never happen actually does. 

Someone or something appears in our life. 

Someone or something goes away in our life. 

Success. 

Failure.

Surprise. 

Connection. 

Disappointment. 

Learning. 

Embarrassment. 

If you’ve talked with me much longer than 20 minutes, especially about any of the above topics, you’ve heard me say something like: 

“There are no accidents.”

"Of course you are." 

“Everything is on purpose.”

“You’re exactly where you need to be.”

“Show me someone who believes in coincidence, and I’ll show you someone who’s not paying attention.”

Those could sound like airy-fairy idealism or some kind of surrender to predestiny, right? 

Not at all, actually.

Yet let me clarify… 

More macro-approach to life than a belief system, there’s a way to pay attention to, interpret and connect the things we experience and their meaning which keeps things moving forward.

While I don’t at all believe that our lives are preset and just playing themselves out, I do think we are part of a massive, multi-layered, universally connected dominoes game all the time, in which every single thing that occurs (including what we do, how we respond, and what we don’t do) causes shift somewhere- whether we see or intend it or not.

The Butterfly effect. Precession. Perturbation… Science shows us how this is occurring in nature all the time, and it’s happening in our own human interactions and reactions, too. 

Call me controlling, but I believe that we determine the results, elements, contents and quality of our lives. I don’t mean that we have control over everything. Of course we don’t. Yet we have more control than we think, and especially of the most important part- how we experience, interpret and are effected by it all. 

While I am optimistic, I actually don’t subscribe to “just believe that it’s all good and it will be all good” thinking- even I think that’s a bit naive. 

Yet when things occur (planned or not, in our control or not), we are presented with a moment of choice. What to think about it? What meaning to assign to it? What response to have or not have? What step to take next? Those choice moments are loaded, and how we choose determines our happiness, struggle and purpose. 

Every time, it’s an opportunity to do a few key things… 

1. Own your impact, trace your steps. 

Concretely: In the most literal interpretation of “no accidents’… we end up in situations and results which we had more to do with causing than we like to admit. While it’s faster and easier to play innocent or assign cause to someone/something else, you’re better than that. While uncomfortable at first, there’s amazing power in clearly, proactively and bravely claiming the path that got you to that moment.  

A funky dynamic with someone? A huge win? A giant fail? A situation you hate or love? 

Call it, Own it, Move on. 

Look honestly and thoroughly at yourself, then call out the role you honestly played in getting yourself to this moment. Then do something about it. 

Owning it this way can be uncomfortable at first, but amazingly empowering after, instilling strength and wisdom that only comes with self-actualization.  Success is not just about luck, nor is failure- rather they are results of your own talent, choices, actions and effort. 

That said, only do this in a way that takes accountability yet doesn’t overblow. If a tragic occurrence happens or an unprovoked perpetration happens, it’s not rational or helpful to put the ownership of that on yourself, so don’t. Move forward to #2. 

Not as concretely: Beyond those visible ripples of our impact, we also have more power than we know in what’s less concrete and traceable- in our focus, intention and energy. When I think about a friend I haven’t spoken to or thought regularly about for years, and they call within moments… When a job opportunity falls through and before it’s even known, a new one lands in your inbox… When you meet a single person in a crowd with whom you instantly and powerfully connect in a rare way… When an athlete visualizes winning in a particular way down to the smallest detail, and then actually does… something’s going on there. The book The Secret was a rage a few years ago because it tapped into a real dynamic in the world- the law of attraction. While I think this is just one piece of what creates the content of our lives, it’s significant. Our presence, attention and energy has impact more potent, constant and far-reaching than just what we say and do; we’re radiating energy all the time. 

So- notice and own the energy you put out into the world and what you attract into your life.

2. Choose your meaning. 

Good and bad are a matter of viewpoint- and actual choices of judgment we can make as we want. 

As humans we are meaning-makers. Something occurs, we make it mean something- this is how we interpret and navigate the world. So moment to moment- what meaning are you making, and is it helpful to you moving forward? In Tap Into Greatness, we explore and redirect some patterns of how your internal voice makes meaning and influences everyone around you. Yet right here, right now- you can shift your perspective...

Since the opposite of accidental is purposeful, choosing to see each moment or occurrence as purposeful flips you instantly from passive to active mode, victim to initiator of what it will cause and create for you.

In my coaching and workshops, when someone shares a revealing truth (like the real issue at hand, or the thorny emotions they’re feeling), my first response is always“Good!” I always clarify, “… not good that you’re feeling that or good that this occurred- but good that we’re getting to the crux of it, so we can make some choices about how to move forward… let’s go!” 

So in a situation you didn’t expect, you can choose to see every one of them as a good thing because even when they’re painful, every one is an opportunity….

…to truly learn something you’ll carry forward, 

…to see something you couldn't before, 

…to choose something you didn’t fully consider before, 

…to broaden or deepen your thinking about something. 

While all of those opportunities when taken are productive, purposeful and keep you consciously choiceful, they’re not always quick, pleasant or fun. Yet every time they’re worth it- because they’re what define your growth as a person- evolving forward on your path different than you were before.

3. See the opening. 

Two of us can look at the same wall and see two different things. You might see the solidity of the wall, while I’ll likely see all the cracks that could be pried into openings, and focus on what’s on the other side. Seeing those cracks, and the potential light coming through them doesn’t mean I have to pry them open, or will even pursue doing so. Yet focusing on what’s past that wall or paths through it opens my thinking, my perspective and my possibility beyond what is obvious in the moment, giving me something I can do something about. That onus of control is key- because seeing the opening puts me into generative vs. limited thinking, focused on making something happen, moving to a different position. Once I see even a crack of light coming through, I can’t experience where I am the same way again, because its limits have been cracked, too. You can, too…

No matter what moment, situation or result you’re in, it’s actually in motion, on it’s way to the next thing- no matter how final or permanent it feels.  

Pause to see a possible purpose. Then ask yourself,  “What’s this on the way to?”  “What is there for me to learn in this moment, which will allow me to create the next one?”  Rigorously push yourself to consider those questions, and your mind will answer them every time. 

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While you don’t have a crystal ball and it may or may not be all laid out for us…  you do have the enormous power to own your impact, make it mean something that pushes you forward and find the openings through each moment on the way to generating the next. 

So, with the next occurrence that goes exactly how you thought it might... or the one that surprises you completely, remind yourself that there are no accidents- you are in that moment exactly where you need to be to learn, evolve and get something that will shift you as person out of it… if you’re paying attention. 

Of course you are. 

©SarahSinger&Co. 2015

BE it.

Get clear about your intention and goal in any conversation, beforehand. (definitely)

Bring more rigor to the words you choose. (absolutely)

Clarify your message. (important)

Know that every conversation you have is causing something, so be intentional. (more than you realize)

Watch and manage your tone, body language and facial expression, as they can speak louder than your words. (truth)

...Those tenets are a big, and  bring big impact. I coach to them all the time, as they start to get at the power of our communication. Because communication is so much more than the content of our words. 

There’s the intent or goal of the communication…. what we want to HAVE out of it.  So many skip this step, yet it can make all the difference, when inserted right before diving in to an exchange... Out of this communication, I want to have… agreement? collaboration? the other person put in their place? Hm. 

Then there’s the delivery. Those nonverbal messages we’re sending (tonality, facial expression, body language) as we communicate… what we DO in the conversation. 

Of those parts… people get and trust what we’re DOing in the conversation more than the content.  If I'm saying one thing, but messaging another in my tone, body language and facial expression, you'll go with the nonverbals.  There’s often a huge disconnect between the messages coming from our words and from our delivery (picture a teacher/coach/boss talking to their brood about getting fired up in an expressionless way).

And yet there’s another lesser-known key to it all.  Even more powerful than what you’re DOing in in that standard formula of words + tonality + facial expression/body language… is what comes before any of that, and could be sabotaging the whole thing for you. You’ve had interactions where you said the right things, did the right things, but actually didn’t get the impact you wanted, right? I certainly have.

In those moments of frustrated communication, we get in our own way because it’s more than what we say or how we say it.  Despite message, word rigor, causality and nonverbal awareness…

It’s about who we’re BEing. 

That is... who are you mentally, emotionally and physically being at the time?  What State are you in?  What’s your mindset? Here’s the challenge… We all have countless versions of ourselves which we end up BE-ing at any moment, without ever thinking about it. Yet rarely do we create a moment to check it, and make sure it’s the version we need to BE in the moment for what we’re trying to accomplish.

I can BE: calm, nurturing, positive, connected, excited, all-in committed, inspiring, partnering, empathetic, flexible, curious, interested, loving, patient, listening, disarming, lighthearted, open, laser-focused, empassioned, relentlessly optimistic, intense in a motivating way…

I can also BE: distracted, pushy, steamroller-y, defensive, submissive, impatient, cynical, rigid, negative, resentful, judgmental, task-y, inaccessible, fake, passive-aggressive, aloof, insensitive, closed off, already decided, intense in an intimidating way…

We could pick any one of those (BEs), and quickly predict how it would impact what I might DO differently in each one, and then what I might Have as a result. Pretty simply: 

Be: Open

Do: Really listen with full attention, truly imagine and try on every idea another person is saying, allow uninhibited connections to occur, build on them. Communicate ideas about how we can work together. Keep body language open, relaxed, possibly leaning in. Eye contact is direct, connecting. 

Have: Collaboration with my partner

Now go back through that Be-Do-Have plan changing to BE-ing Defensive instead of Open.

The whole thing changes and now doesn’t work, right? If I really tried to force those same behaviors (the DO) from a place of really BEing defensive- I’d come across as inauthentic, and in no way get true collaboration with my partner out of that conversation. This type of communication fail happens all the time. The challenge is that we focus too much on what to DO, when who we’re BE-ing may be all wrong. This is usually because we just don’t think about it, or because we think it’s not visible to anyone else. We, as the wired-for-action creatures that we are, focus on what we should DO, best practice, and steps to the goal. Yet those only succeed if we’re executing them from the right place, which we may or may not have set consciously.  I can use all the right words with the right message, even taking the right steps, but get no buy-in if I’m coming from a place that doesn’t match my outcome. That BE has everything to do with powering my impact, message, tonality, nonverbals and emotional energy… beyond the words I’m speaking.

Lately I’ve been bringing more attention and intentionality to this awareness before interactions. The results are powerful. With a client recently, I focused on BE-ing light, flexible and effortlessly positive- even while presenting a paradigm-altering idea. They were surprisingly agreeable and open to it.  This was significant since I had presented the exact same idea to the same client a few weeks before, and they not only hated it, but were resistant, upset and unhappy with me about it. After that didn’t go well, I had to admit to myself that I was irritated with them, BEing insensitive, pushy and a know-it-all (all unconscious). It didn’t matter how right for them my good my ideas were- all they got was the pushy know-it-all I was BEing, so of course they weren’t engaged by my idea! Owning that, doing what I needed to do to come back BEing authentically positive, flexible and lighter... I had a completely different result. 

The lesson for me?  

Who I’m BEing will always speak louder than anything coming out of my mouth (and can’t be hidden in my nonverbals to those who know how to read them).  Before I respond or communicate I must first get clear on what Intention I want someone to feel in my communication, and focus on it.  Get myself present- IN it.  Then go!

So…

Try this out: 

Develop an awareness in the moment of who you’re BE-ing and what it’s causing. 

After interactions with people, ask yourself: 

• What did we both Have at the end of that interaction? This is the result, the takeaway- both concrete and invisible? 

Examples: we both had frustration; or connection; or a great solution we couldn’t have gotten to alone

• What did I Do in that interaction to cause what we both ended up with? 

Examples: I didn’t really listen; I really listened and empathized; I acknowledged and built on his ideas

• Who was I BE-ing in that interaction? 

Examples: I was being impatient; present in their world; open and partnering

The more you do this, them more you’ll be able to catch yourself in the moment and make adjustments. 

Before you respond or communicate in a moment, pause to get clear on what you want someone to feel in your communication, or what you want to come out of it. Then find the corresponding way of BEing that could cause that, see if it’s different than where you are, and shift it.

Notice your patterns. Do conversations seem to end in frustration when you’re coming into them BEing defensive? Are you able to have your best moments of connection with people when you allow everything else to go out of your head and are just BEing present in and focused on their world? When you’re rushed, do your interactions become tense (perhaps you’re BEing tense when you’re slammed with other stuff)? Do you tend to have better or worse interactions/influence with certain people, or with particular settings, which may be triggers for who you’re BEing?  

Experiment with different ways to BE in your interactions. In low stakes situations (where you have a lot more control over your emotions), try isolating different versions of who you’re going to BE in a conversation beforehand, get yourself there, and notice what happens. As you continue to do this, you’ll get more precise and faster at it. Eventually, you’ll be able to do a quick reset with yourself going from interaction to interaction.

The true power of connecting with others in communication of any kind (leading, teaching, influencing…) comes down to this essence of who you are BEing in the moment. It powers your impact, message, tonality, nonverbals and emotional energy… before and beyond the words you’re speaking.

©SarahSinger&Co. 2014

Impact Everywhere

Scenario #1:                                     

I got 20 minutes with a group of bright, talented new hires last week in a new company I’m working with. It was a spontaneous decision to have them spend a few minutes with me as the expert coach since I happened to be in the building during their onboarding. I knew that this might be my only window to make impact with them (never met them before, might never see them again), so I went for it. I dove in, assessed where I could focus for the most impact, coached them individually and as a group pretty intensely, watched their thinking shift, then I was out. I intentionally made positive impact that would change some things about how they see themselves going forward.

That’s a really good twenty minutes to me. I measure my work’s accomplishment in level of  impact I have on people. In this case, I actually heard feedback today from that group last week who reported my twenty minutes with them as the most powerful in their ten day onboarding process. “She pushed hard, but not in a confrontational way, and pulled stuff out of me I didn’t know I had.” Awesome.

Overt acknowledgments are pretty nice. Yet most of the time I have to go on the cues I get in the moment (you, too, can develop the sensitivity to see the moment of shift for another person if you’re looking for it).  I maximize the moment to create a shift and then trust that it’s going to have marinating, multiplying impact as that shift takes root in their thinking after I’ve gone.

 Scenario #2:                                                                                      

A crew of city engineers were doing the final reseeding and strawing next to the street they’d been working on yesterday, as I jogged through them on my regular path .

“Thanks for doing this- it makes a big difference, and it’s going to look really good when you’re done!” 

That shoutout takes 5 seconds to say, doesn’t slow down my run at all, and can actually be the one nice acknowledgment those guys get that day for their work making a positive difference in other people’s lives.

...Which brings more meaning and satisfaction to what they do. And maybe causes them to feel more pride in their work and the positive effect it has in the world. Which makes them happy. And maybe sparks them to think about and acknowledge other people in the same way. Which carries it on…

Except I didn’t say it. 

Instead I just smiled and said “Hi,” as I continued to run past. I thought it, but it didn’t fully occur to me to verbally acknowledge them and my appreciation of their work until I was already too far down the road, out of earshot.

Missed moment. 

As soon as I ran past, I knew I’d missed it. I could’ve said something right there and made positive impact for that whole crew. I actually spent several of the next minutes of my run regretting that moment and thinking about this very idea of how easy it actually is to make more positive impact by just becoming more aware in those moments of opportunity.

So, I ran a little harder and faster, hoping I’d get back to those guys while they were still there, and make it right. When I did, many of them had gone, but a few remained. I ran up to them and delivered that simple little acknowledgment. A ten second exchange, I watched their thinking shift, then I was out. In that quick ten seconds, a little caught off guard, they went from surprise, to really getting what I said, to big-grin, standing up-a-little-straighter satisfaction of being newly proud of their work and acknowledged for it by someone in the world. They played it off casually, but I knew I’d struck a chord. I intentionally made a positive impact that would change some things a little about how they see themselves going forward that day. And I didn’t even lose time off my run.

That’s a really good ten seconds to me. Not as good as if the whole crew had been there to feel it, but a difference made for those few guys. Think starfish story,“I made a difference for that one.” Not as big and dramatic as Scenario #1, but who’s to say?

It’s right there.... 

Okay… so maybe this idea of making impact is one that I think about more than other people, yet I’m clear that this is way bigger than what I do for a living. We could consciously be making positive impact 100 times a day if we actually paid attention to the moments of opportunity we’re passing by all the time.

I can drop a pebble in a pond, and watch it as it disappears to the bottom of the pond. I may notice the ripples my pebble causes, but how often do I follow them, making impact somewhere else, 90 degrees and a good distance away from where I focused my pebble in the water?  Bucky Fuller coined the term Precession, the idea that there’s impact happening at 90 degree angles from our focus all the time, like those ripples reaching out to the edges you can’t even see in a pond. I choose to turn an otherwise disconnected moment near someone else (think standing in line at the grocery store) into one of connection and positive impact, and who knows what that might ripple into for that person?

I’m convinced of the truth that every single interaction we have in the civilized world has an impact on someone else. 

If you can think of an exception, please let me know, as I haven’t found one yet.

Sometimes it’s direct, sometimes it’s delayed, and sometimes it’s in that ripple effect that happens in the pebble-tossing of our actions/words into the shared pond of our collective awareness. Just in the range of what we intentionally do and say to make impact and the ripples that causes without our even noticing... it’s staggering, and everywhere.

Kaizen is a Japanese concept referring to small, seemingly imperceptible changes over time which yield a big difference in the end. The impact we have in the course of an hour, day and so on can be much like this. Lots of little choices and interactions, over time...

Let’s first establish that a moment of interaction can fall within a huge range from me jogging past you and just making eye contact briefly, to stopping to say something that really touches you, makes a positive difference and sticks with you. There’s a pretty big range in-between. And- there’s the negative version of this range… I could jog right by, not noticing you, or stop to say something that really offends or hurts you, which then makes a negative impact, and sticks with you.

We have so many kinds of interactions in just the course of one day. See if you can count the number of possible moments of interaction you’ve had in the last few hours. Not just the moments you interacted with someone, but all the openings when you could’ve. Just this morning in the hour before my three kids left for school, I lost count of the moments with them where I actually was or could be making impact on their state, thinking, beliefs or course of their day. Every look exchanged (smile or scowl?), every word choice, every topic chosen influences. Just in the course of writing these few paragraphs, I’ve had eight emails, two calls and one live conversation come in (I let them all go until later), all representing potential moments of impact (on me as I read them, on another, as I reply). I also posted a few times on Facebook and Twitter today, each post an opportunity to impact lots of people with a few simple keystrokes.

This is one of those concepts that worms its way into your thinking, and then you start noticing it everywhere. So- we’ve got an opening here to gain new awareness going forward. What if we started considering our impact everywhere in all of those moments, and consciously chose to make them count meaningfully with positive impact?

Here’s a start:

•  Reflect on the last few interactions or opportunities for interaction you’ve had (even with strangers). What impact did you have? Even if you ignored them, you had impact of some kind, so own it.
• Think about how you could’ve used those moments to make positive impact somehow.
• Going into your next interactions, consciously choose to connect with or contribute to someone. Notice something positive (even the most cynical can see it), then actually acknowledge it out loud to that person.
• Notice the moments you encounter everywhere, where you actually have a choice, but never even considered.
• Notice the moments you make negative impact. Maybe intentionally, maybe not, pay attention to how your inattention or sour state get on other people. (We’ve all been there)
• Be willing to give with impact in the 5-minute Favor, as Adam Grant shows us. You can create big movement for someone in very little effort.

It all counts. I assess the maximum impact for the moment, and dive in as the work I do every day. You could too. Yet the small, little moments not only make impact, but ripple and multiply into impact we can’t even measure.

Go.

Closer Than They Appear

My mom’s rear-view mirror always had etched onto it:

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

So it turns out that this standard-issue reminder about perception applies to our own psyche, as well.

When we get to the part of my training where I ask people to identify a spot in their lives where they need to step up or out or through something, many people find something BIG.  It’s often having to do with a person they need to confront or a thing they’ve needed to do for a long time, which they’ve been allowing to suck their energy and hold them back in their productivity or happiness for weeks, months or years.  Most people have a few of these things rattling around, sort of like extra weights they’ve been carrying around with them.

So, I help them to stand up to the BIG thing, and commit to busting through it to the elusive “other side” which is alot like those things in the rear-view mirror… much closer than it seems.

It often comes down to a conversation they need to have with someONE or a new behavior that they need to just DO or try.  I coach around it, sometimes even set up full plans of attack for getting their State just right, and all the support they need to hold that State, follow through and not bail at the last second.

In my work with thousands of people who have gone through this very process, I’ve found something in common which takes me back to the rear-view mirror…

Leading up to the actual breakthrough (which is often just a moment), people will actually spend hours of time thinking about it, obsessing about it, rehearsing it or just worrying about it before they actually do it.  The good news is that this is replacing the countless hours of stress, upset, distraction and worry that they had been spending regularly on it before they chose to break through it.

So finally, they get to the moment of truth.

They get into State (or not, which makes it more painful), they DO the big thing, and they’re through to the other side.  The act or conversation took minutes.  It’s over.  The energy suck that had been draining their will and focus is cut off, and there’s a proud mix of adrenaline, relief and newfound energy afterward.  Then the realization…

Obstacles are smaller than they appear.

It wasn’t that big of a deal in hindsight.  All of that worrying and prep, and they broke through it in moments.  To me as a coach, the most important thing is the equation of time spent that comes in the debrief:

Number of sucked hours of worry/upset/stress/energy you are losing in thinking, worrying, avoiding by not doing it

VS.

Moments it takes to just do it and be through to the other side

Simple equation of time investment.

Easy?  Not really, which is where Comfort Zone and coaching like mine come in.

But simple? ABSOLUTELY. For me, this math is what gets me to finally get out of my head and do the uncomfortable but liberating thing.

Maybe we should change what’s etched in our rear-view mirrors as a constant reminder, so we can save all that time and energy, and just step up and out in the first place?

©SarahSinger&Co. 2013