Success Connections

Untwist Your Thinking

What comes to mind when you think of the term “Twisted Thinking”? 

I think of unhappy people who are stuck in vicious cycles.  People who see themselves as victims of circumstance.  People who blame others and create excuses for their unhappiness.  People who keep doing the same things over and over again and can’t understand why nothing changes. 

Most of us rarely take the time to notice much about our thoughts.  We simply just allow them to rush through our minds as we go about our day.  Some of them even become like videotapes that we constantly rewind and replay in the back of our mind.

Take my friend Michael for example.  Michael is a well-paid manufacturing supervisor at a local company.  He hates his job and plans to quit in the next year or so.  He simply hates the responsibility of supervising people.  Unfortunately, he allowed his company to promote him beyond his “happiness zone”, and since then, he’s been miserable.

The real reason Michael hates supervising others is because he cares deeply about the people he works with, and he despises the responsibility of doing performance evaluations.
Once each year he needs to “officially” evaluate the performance of each of his people.  He starts dreading it about 3 months in advance.  He labors for hours and spends many sleepless nights worrying about how to evaluate each person’s performance for the past year.  In other words, he allows his thoughts to make him miserable enough to leave his job. 

If Michael would untwist his thinking a bit, he could turn this grueling job into one that’s extraordinarily rewarding.

How Could Michael Untwist His Thinking?

Increase His Awareness – First he has to stop and notice all of the negative messages that are rushing through his mind

Believe – He needs to believe in his heart that he has 100% responsibility for what he thinks

Choose Thoughts That Feel Better – He needs to start catching himself thinking negative thoughts and choose new thoughts that feel better

Be Persistent – Twisted thinking is nothing more than a habit.  He simply needs to keep choosing new thoughts until it becomes a new habit.  Some say that it takes 21 days of persistence and practice to create a new habit.

Here are some examples of twisted thoughts…untwisted

Twisted Thoughts                                          

• Oh no, performance evaluations are coming up before long.
• I hope Joe isn’t going to be confrontational again this year.
• It is so hard for me to remember everything that’s happened over the last year.
• I’ll be totally exhausted by the time this is over. I think I’ll take a couple of days off to regroup.

Untwisted Thoughts

• It won’t be long before I get to sit down with the team to reflect on the past year and set goals for the upcoming year.
• Joe and I have been communicating regularly this year.  I don’t anticipate any surprises for either of us.
• The guys trust me to give them balanced feedback that acknowledges their contributions and coaches them to become even better next year.
• It’s going to feel good to get through this year’s evaluations.  We should plan a celebration.

Michael totally has the power to transform his twisted thinking into thinking that empowers and enriches his spirit.  In essence, he could create brand new reality, one thought at a time.

What about you?
What are you struggling with?
When that situation comes up, what thoughts start racing through your mind?
Which new thoughts could you choose to make the situation feel better?

Try it!  Let me know what happens by posting here.

Likeability Really Matters

When was the last time you heard someone say, “I don’t care if XXX likes me or if s/he doesn’t”?  Did you ignore the statement or did you ask more about it?  My experience has been that most people simply ignore it.  Have you ever fallen into that trap yourself?

Next time ask, “What would be different for you if everyone liked you?” 

An attitude of “I don’t care” is an excuse for people who don’t want to put the effort into building great relationships with others.  It’s a defense mechanism and an excuse.  After all, if “I don’t care” what you think, then “I don’t need to be concerned about how I treat you”.  It’s simply twisted thinking.

Everyday, more and more work is being done to measure how emotional intelligence impacts the success of individuals.  And being likeable contributes to your emotional attractiveness. 

Take a look at what Tim Sanders has to say about being emotionally attractive in his recent blog post “Make Yourself Emotionally Attractive”.  In part, he points out these facts:

• A highly likeable sales person sells more than their neutral counterparts (the Customer gives her more information to win the sale, because she wants her to succeed).
• A highly likeable employee or executive is more likely to get a positive review (the boss is so comfortable with his report, that he gives him advice all year on how to exceed expectations).

• Likeable people do better in court.  Likeable doctors are less likely to be sued for medical malpractice.  Likeable plaintiffs win more often and get higher settlements.  Likeable defendants are less likely to be convicted.

• Likeable patients get more time and follow up from doctors.  Likeable parent's kids get more time and follow up from doctors.

You see, being likeable matters.  And if your intention is to be successful, it REALLY matters.

Jump on over Tim’s his website and take his L-Factor Self Assessment.

How did you score? 

No matter what your score, choose 3 improvements you’d like to make.

For each improvement, identify at least one thing you can start doing differently tomorrow.

Post your progress here or email me personally.  I’d love to hear what you’re working on!

Final Step - How To Manage Your Hot Buttons

If you're just catching up with us, here are step 1 and step 2 on How To Manage Your Hot Buttons.

By now you should know what your hot buttons are and how you tend to react.  You should also have a good idea about how your reactions negatively impact situations.  In other words, what you regret later.

So, how do you go about managing those situations better?  The simple answer is make the decision and just do it.  But you might need a couple of more steps in there to make it happen.  So let's take a minute and go back to Brad's situation in step 2.

The reality is that Brad could lose his job if he doesn't make some changes.  His behavior is causing tension in the team, and he's alienating his customers.  Both of those situations cost the company time.  Here's a strategy that he could try:

Decide  - By making the decision to change his behavior he's more likely to follow through

Pause & Plan - He knows that every day he needs to cover the tech support line.  He has time to anticipate and create a plan.  His plan might be to change the way he thinks about it.  Instead of thinking about how much he dreads the job, he can focus on how good it feels to help his customers get unstuck.  He could even create a little game for himself.  He could keep a scorecard next to his phone and give himself a point for each customer he helps.

Practice - Changing behavior takes practice.  We're creatures of habit, and it's easy for us to fall back into our old habits, unless we pay attention.  That's why tracking his successes would be a good way to measure progress.

Reflect & Adjust - Brad needs to make time at least every week to review his progress.  Chances are things aren't perfect yet, and reflecting gives him an opportunity to recognize where he still gets stuck.  It also gives him the chance to consciously think about what he can do a little differently to progress further.

Repeat - Persistence is important when you're creating new habits.  So when you're focusing on something specific it's helpful to follow a process and keep repeating it until you get the results you want.  It's the same process that athletes use in their training.

Ok, are you ready?  If you're going to take on this final phase of the challenge, let me know!  I'm happy to help if I can!

Step 2 - How To Manage Your Hot Buttons

If you completed step 1 of How To Manage Your Hot Buttons, you should be more aware of:

1. Which situations tend to push your buttons

2. The warning signals your body sends you when your buttons are being pushed

3. How you tend to react in those situations

Now you're more aware. You have consciously gathered some very important information. Before we move on to "what to do with the information", let's look a little closer.

If I asked someone close to you about how you react when your buttons get pushed, I'll bet they could answer in the blink of an eye. It's one of those things that's easy for others to see, but more difficult for us to admit to ourselves. After all, it's usually not something you're going to brag about. And that's my point. As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that working for you?"

That leads us to Step 2. What is it costing you?  By that I mean, take a good close look at the consequences. What damage is being done, and what is the impact?

Let's take Brad as an example. Brad is an IT guy.  Part of his responsibility is to answer the "help line" for one hour every day.  He hates it.  He thinks it's a waste of time.  He thinks the callers ask stupid questions, and he does everything possible to get out of it.  When he finally does take his turn, he makes sure he let's the caller know he thinks they're stupid.  No, he doesn't come out and say it, but they can hear it in his voice.  He's impatient, he sighs, and he makes sarcastic comments.

So what is this behavior costing Brad?  Well, for starters, nobody wants to call in when he's answering the phone.  People go out of their way to find out when he's scheduled so they can avoid him.  I'd say he's created a reputation for treating callers poorly.

Secondly, his team members are tired of his excuses.  They're tired of covering for him and they're tired of his lame reasons for getting out of the responsibility.  I'd say this is also impacting teamwork.

I'm sure there are several other consequences to Brad's behavior, but you get my point.

For the next several days, ask yourself these questions

§           What are my hot buttons costing me?

§           How are they getting in the way of what I want for myself?

§           What changes am I willing to make now?

Let me know how you do!

Begin With The End In Mind

I have a friend who recently retired from a company.  She spent about 25 years doing essentially the very same job.  She's bitter, she has nothing good to say about the company, and she can give you a long list of excuses why she stayed in a job she hated for so long. 

How sad is that?  Unfortunately, I'll bet you know of at least one other person in a similar position.

Just EXCUSES!  She simply chose to relinquish all responsibility, blame situations and other people, and make excuses for not taking charge of her career and her own happiness.  In other words, she gave up.  And now she can spend her retirement looking back on her misery...at least she can take comfort in her belief that "It wasn't my fault!"

Let me ask you this... How are you making excuses in your career?  What is it costing you?