What's on Your Mind?

What success can you share about living into your brilliance?

What challenges and struggles are you facing now?

What opportunities might help you come more alive?

We'd love to see what's on your mind so let us know!

Your Story

One of our clients expressed a desire to more fully engage her team in their work. It’s a common theme we’ve explored with many clients: how to engage people’s passion so work is more than ‘just a job.’

We suggest using the Energy Map to guide people to a stronger connection to their work. Find out what people’s passions are. Combine this knowledge with what they’re good at, and what’s important to them, and you have the formula for an engaged employee.

However it’s important to remember that employee engagement is not enough. People also need an environment that welcomes their engagement and passion. Too often we’ve seen leaders talk about empowerment and even move in that direction, and then back track to more controlling behavior when energy rises.

Who creates an environment that welcomes employee engagement? The senior leadership of an organization sets the tone. Leaders in positions of hierarchical power must ask for the stronger engagement and performance that they want, and then be willing to do what it takes to continue on a more vital and inspired path.

To learn more about the Energy Map, take a look at our video at:

www.iam_video.com

Getting Personal

The KT&A group continues on the path of practicing what we teach. We’re learning as we get more and more client work that glowing and flowing can be challenging when you’re working at top capacity. Slipping back into type A patterns of behavior is tempting and easy.

 Type A ways of working use tension and bracing for ‘what’s to come’ as a source of energy. When we’re glowing and flowing, we use relaxing and trusting as an alternative source of energy.

 What the heck does relaxing and trusting look like? An example: working toward a goal to meet a client need created a ‘push’ to meet the goal date and time for delivery. Instead of bearing down to ‘get ‘er done’, we consciously chose to laugh, play, talk about what’s good enough, explore easy and quality paths forward, expect fun and inspiration … we talk about these things as we go.

 Commit to fun and it will happen! We invite you to join the party …

What's New

Last month’s ‘What’s New’ has already changed. Things are moving fast!

In continuing to hone how we communicate about IAM, Karen kept coming back to ‘it’s about Essence – of individuals and organizations’. This mantra led to a realization in our group: we are best at guiding people to their Essence.

Our realization led to a renaming of all of our offerings. Our core pieces of work are now called:

·      Essential Everyday Communications (a powerful alternative to Crucial Conversations)

·      Essential Everyday Leadership, made up of Personal Everyday Leadership and Organizational Performance Leadership

·      Coaching the Essential (our coaching skills training)

·      Living the Essential, made up of: Identifying the Essential, Trusting the Essential and Engaging the Essential

Our work efforts with one client organization guided us in renaming our offerings. In preparing to deliver Performance Management tools and processes to this client, we realized that everything they were doing needed to be connected with a strong sense of identity. Hmmm…

We suggested a workshop, Engaging the Essentials, and indeed this client felt the new offering met their need. Who would have thought that our coaching skills deliverable would turn into a workshop to more fully engage an organization in their identity! We’re thrilled to be developing this important work; please let us know if you are interested.

 In the meantime, be on the look-out for new workshop descriptions on our www.individualawarenessmap.com website. Right now, we can’t keep up with how fast the work is moving!

Communications Corner

In support of our work on Essential Everyday Communication, we are introducing a new column in our newsletter to support clients working on the skills from this 2 day workshop we are developing.

What conversations are you struggling with?

Please let us know and we’ll respond here with coaching and advice.

Call To Being

A call to being is an opportunity to connect more deeply with the aliveness and possibility that has been awakened in you by reading this newsletter.

In pushing this button, we invite you to the "other side" to clarify intentions, launch them into your larger Life, and open to the delightful certainty that you will be met.

 

Flow and Glow: Wiktionary

flow (countable and uncountable; plural flows)

1.  The movement of a fluid.

2.  The rising movement of the tide.

3.  Smoothness or continuity.

The room was small, but it had good symmetry and flow.

4.  The amount of a fluid that moves or the rate of fluid movement.

Turn on the valve and make sure you have sufficient flow.

5.  (psychology) the state of being at one with.

Wikipedia: Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

to glow (third-person singular simple present glows, present participle glowing, simple past and past participle glowed)

1.   give off light from heat or to emit light as if heated.

2.  To radiate some emotional quality like light.

The zealots glowed with religious fervor.

The new baby's room glows with bright, loving colors.

3.  To gaze especially passionately at something.

4.  To burn with bodily heat.

After their work out, the gymnasts faces were glowing red.

5.  To shine brightly and steadily.

6.  To sweat

Women glow, men sweat.

 

 

 

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -- Whoo Hoo-- What a Ride!"

~~    Attributed to Bill McKenna,    Anonymous and in a Nissan ad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I Become Myself (excerpted)

            By May Sarton

 

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"

(What? Before you reach the morning?

or the end of the poem, is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)…
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density! …
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant. …
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move

I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!

Glowing and Flowing

Spring is peaking out in North Carolina, reminding us of the beautiful and delightful life-force energy within us all.

In the March 2008 issue of Playing in the Gap! we explore the creativity and possibility of our glowing aliveness and the fun and easy flowing that happens when we dare to come alive more every day. 

Table of Contents

Being Messy 
I Glow and Flow Except for When …
What to do when obstacles get in the way of your good time.

Being Messy
I Glow and Flow Except For When... - by Karen Tax

Imagine a time when you were glowing and flowing: you felt confident, alive, in the right place with the right people, enjoying success, looking forward to the next thing. Life felt good.

And then something happened:

·      the vacation ended

·      one employee blamed another employee for incomplete work

·      your boss told you the results you’ve achieved didn’t matter (true client example)

·      a colleague alluded to disappointment in your work

·      your husband was surprised at your frustration that the home repair is still incomplete

·      and a myriad of other things, small and large, that can trump a good day.

What do you do when being at your best is hindered, rather than helped, by struggle?

I recently realized that some very fun volunteer work I was doing had turned into a struggle. I quickly did what I could to shift the situation into one of joy and ease, only to encounter more struggle. Hmmm. I don’t do struggle, so it was time to get out. The result was even more struggle around me.

How do I get back to glowing and flowing, when choosing to step out of struggle results in struggle for others?

I realized that I was feeling guilty about going for my glowing and flowing. My choices felt selfish and counter productive.

As I fret over the mess I had caused, I remembered the following mantras:

·      choosing to be happy is good for everyone

·      any struggle outside of me is a reflection of struggle inside of me

“What was I still struggling with?”  I wondered!

Sadly, I realized I was feeling left out of the ensuing struggle! I know, how sick can you get? Re-committing to glowing and flowing became important.

When I looked anew at the struggle around me, with my mantras in mind, I realized that people were:

·      paying attention to issues that had been over looked

·      seeing how they, too, could choose glowing and flowing

·      working through issues quite fine without me

The results were positive, tangible and stunningly quick, for both myself and others.

My challenge to you is to get messy and find the gift in “and then something happened!” What looks like an obstacle is always a guide to deeper and stronger glowing and flowing. 

Calling Passion
Hammer Time - by Diane Craver

I’m sitting here looking out at the ocean, listening to the waves crashing on to the shore, enjoying the serenity of the moment because I know it’s not going to last.  You see, one of the neighbors in a condo two floors above me has decided that this week, out of all the 52 weeks of the year, is the week they are going to rip up the tile with a jackhammer in their condo. Imagine yourself sitting in a dentist chair from 9 am – 6 pm for a week. That’s what it sounds like. I have the “Jackhammer Blues!”

As I thought about this month’s theme, I was annoyed because my flow isn’t glowing and my glow isn’t flowing. So, I’m thinking, “How can I write about glowing and flowing when I’m just not feeling it?”  My life has been pretty frantic as business owner, grad student, wife, friend, and all the other roles I have assumed. I’m so irritated because all I wanted was a quiet place to get away.  So, of course I decided to take matters in my own hands. I asked to be moved – nothing available. I meditated on that machine so that my brain waves might make it break – selfish, I know, but it didn’t work. I left and went to the movies – movie was stupid. Went to lunch – food was bad.  Okay, okay, you get the picture.

What does this situation have to do with our careers?  It has everything to do with it. Have you had a job where everything seemed to be going wrong? There are perpetual jackhammers everywhere! We are not glowing and flowing with anything except when we get in our cars and drive away from that building.

So what do we do?  We stop trying to control everything.  We cannot control others and we cannot control every situation – believe me, if my brain waves could stop that machine, I would do it.  What we can do is detach from things or people and our own concept of what is right or true. We stop struggling, consider other options, and the energy takes another form – glowing and flowing.

What I have found is that once I got detached from my original idea of how I wanted to spend my week at the beach, I found other ideas that were even more interesting. I feel pretty confident that had I stayed in that condo I would have worked more and “dumbed down” in front of the TV. Sometimes it takes a jackhammer to wake us up (literally)! 

Finding Courage
Allowing Your Heart and Spirit to Guide You - by Lorraine Cohen

Two years ago I made a deliberate decision to listen more closely to what my heart was encouraging me to do. Over the years, listening to and following my instincts has been a muscle that has become stronger and easier to recognize. It takes practice and testing the results to deepen that trust. Each time I have felt a strong pull to do something that "just felt so right" and taken an action to move in the direction of what was calling me forward, things have really flowed in my business and personal life.

Some people call it listening to their inner guidance or spirit, hearing God, following their gut, and trusting their "knowing". When I really listen and trust, the answer comes with such peacefulness. I find myself saying, "I just know what I know. It feels right." There's no confusion or internal conflict. It's easy. 

Combining instinct, intuition, and skills with strategy produces amazing results called FLOW!

How often do you override your instincts because you are afraid to trust yourself? Any regrets?

How often do you listen to your heart's calling even when it makes no logical sense?

How often do you allow the opinions of others to sway you from what feels right for you?

It takes time to develop this muscle! I recommend the practice of being present. Notice what you are thinking and feeling, mentally, emotionally, physically. Your body has an amazing intelligence and is communicating all the time- when you're feeling stressed, when rest or food is needed, and when something feels right or wrong. The key is slowing down and stopping long enough to be still and quiet so you can hear!

If your business or life isn't going the way you want, paying attention to the ways you’re in conflict with yourself is a good place to begin making some changes. Weariness and stress heightens confusion and negative self-talk which makes it harder to hear over all that mental noise! Commit to practices and experiences that invite self-reflection so that you can move with the flow rather than against it.

Look for opportunities to test what you feel guided to do. While the outcome you expect or desire might be different initially, be open to see the gifts the experience brings that might ultimately bring you what you really want. 

It's a journey that is well worth the ride!

Leading Edge
The Poo on My Shoes - by John Berkley

I grew up a long time ago in New York City. As a small boy, I always managed to step in dog poo. I don’t know if it was more of a function of daydreaming or of a lot of dogs in the city…these were the days before the pooper scooper laws. Or maybe I was starting to learn early about being a guy and the inevitability of stepping in “it”.

My mother countered with asking everyone in the family to take off their shoes before we entered the apartment. I guess that I wasn’t the only one stepping into poo. As we all grow up, we each step into a lot of metaphorical “poo” that gets stuck to our “shoes”. Sometimes we don’t even realize how much we carry around with us.

Poo can be represented by all our old, limiting beliefs. It can be habits that we have carried from childhood which may no longer serve us…I still ask everyone to take off their shoes when they come to visit many decades later! After many decades it can really stink.

Along comes spring, the season of new growth and rejuvenation. Raise your awareness by stopping and taking stock of all the “poo” you may be carrying around. Then question how it serves you. Maybe it is time to do some spring cleaning.

“Poo” can also be represented by physical things. My fiancée Cathy spent 3 hours helping me clean my kitchen cabinets. Seven large black trash bags later, I was a lot leaner. She keeps reminding me that I have 3 closets to go.

It was difficult for me to let go, plus Cathy constantly made fun of me for holding on to so much. But in the end it was freeing and worth it. The more open and lean we are the more powerful we are to react to all of life’s challenges to grow. After all, it is difficult to shift, dance, and just get out of the way if we are carrying a lot of “poo” under our shoe.

And spring is when we have the opportunity to smell the sweet wildflowers, to be open to grow, and to seize our divine brilliance. Don’t keep yourself from breathing huge gulps of clean air. Let the “poo” go.

Seizing Joy
Living The Life That is Mine to Live - by Robin Renteria

In a recent commencement address Steve Jobs advised new graduates not to waste any of their time living anybody else’s life.  Yay!  Everybody spread the word, because it’s only when we live our own life, from our own wholeness, our own heart and soul that we glow with that unmistakable inner flame that ignites joy and inspires a more compassionate world. 

Yet finding and living our true life isn’t an event or an easy linear path.  When I think of my journey I recall the May Sarton poem, ‘Now I Become Myself,’ printed on the left.  Knowing what is ‘my work, my love, my time, my face’ is a journey of exploration.  Taking it, with as much courage as we can muster, yields an intentional life ‘made so and rooted by love,’ a life for which Time is young and we flow in harmony with it.

How do we do this?  May Sarton tells us to stand still, to be here now, to feel our own weight and density.  I like this advice.  We begin by listening, noticing from our full-body breathing awareness.  From that awareness we can better discern the choices that are really ours to make, the work that is singularly ours to do, and let go of all the rest.  This is a journey of faith in ourselves, our worth, our vision, and our contribution to the larger life.

Couples, families, and groups take this journey, too.  An individual continually asks and lives into Who am I?  What is the purpose of my life? How do I breathe life into that purpose?  An organization asks and lives into these questions together.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, who works with people who are terminally ill, believes that every human being ultimately wants to know that their love has mattered to the world.  Whatever forms our love takes, when we live it we glow and flow with vitality.  We stop the sun.  And it matters to the world.