The leadership blog for successful women

Today I had a session with a client I've seen for the second time.

We delved into her challenge of how she could get where she absolutely wants to be (which is a particular position in academia)  - an idea she had for years!

Now - we could have started working on some strategies or tactics of how to get there.

But that's not what I do.

Deep work does not have to be a huge effort

Working on the surface would totally ignore what's at the core of the challenge and simply mean that a similar situation - based upon the pattern at the basis - will pop up again eventually.

I experienced that SOOO often in my own life until I realized I had to tackle what WAS at the bottom.

So - we went deep.

Arghh…that sounds uncomfortable and like a lot of effort and time.

WRONG.

It just required a couple of the right questions, and  - totally not modest here - I'm really good at asking those due to my very well-developed intuition and wham - it always leads to the core quickly.

Within...

We have all heard that words are powerful, right? Who has not listened to famous people in history triggering spontaneous outbursts in tears (or at least creating watery eyes for the tough ones amongst you) or touching us in whatever kind of format when coming out with sentences like “I have a dream” like Martin Luther King did in 1963.

There are many more modern examples of touching and motivational speeches – one of them was from Sheryl Sandberg in a Harvard Business School Class speech from 2012 where she said:

"If you want to win hearts and minds, you have to lead with your heart as well as your mind. I don’t believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time ... It is all professional and it is all personal, all at the very same time."

Does that resonate? Well, it does with me (in fact I LOVE this one, I could not agree more with her, which I’ve expressed clearly in this article)

So I guess we...

The year has started so long ago that we're probably all back to normal - whatever normal means. Checking numerous e-mails, fighting through endless to-do-lists, spending hours in more or less useful meetings and the relaxed feeling from the holidays wanes off slowly - or already did.

And so we forget those maybe New Year resolutions to spend more time with the family or for us and to take care of our well-being, to have more fun and joy in our lives.

I get it - it is so easy to get sucked into those habits which we have trained well over years. Sometimes decades.

When our health improves, EVERYTHING shifts.

Unfortunately true the other way round too. Or more to the point, then it shifts into a very undesirable direction.

Hence I've put together a list of self-care measures. Basically to help me remembering every day. Yes. Not just once a week. Or month. Or even once a year....oh, I'll just fight through to the next holidays.

Rather not. Unless you are a masochist ;-).

So here we go...

Have you ever asked yourself how those successful people consistently walk from one success to the next, make things happen?

It does not matter whether we’re talking business successes, personal fitness, health – you name it.

Well, there are tons of books and articles around about those habits which ultimately lead to success. I wrote one myself not too long ago which dealt with clarity, courage, productivity, intuition, energy and a few more factors.

All important.

Knowing why is crucial, knowing where to go to, or having productivity/planning tools in place definitely. So why is then that many of us who know all that stuff still don’t really get where we’d love to be?

 The “overnight” success

Some time ago, my grown up daughter came in my room just as I was getting dressed. No top on yet. She looked at me and exclaimed with surprise, “Mum, I can see your tummy muscles, that’s almost a six pack (which is vastly exaggerated)...

Have you ever wondered why some people just crush it and walk from one success to another, perform like crazy and seem to be even happier than the rest of us?

These people must have super powers, right? They were just lucky to be born like that.

Admittedly - we are all different - which is wonderful as it is. Have you ever felt a bit neglected or disadvantaged when it comes to the distribution of the good stuff? Or felt like this world is really unfair?

Let’s face it though, nobody is born with a bad or a good attitude or great skills or lousy ones. Or with being just positive or being negative.
Even if we are happy to state exactly that “Well, I’ve always been the half-glass-empty-person, can’t help it”. “I’m just not like that”, “I don’t have these powers other people have”. In fact you can, and you have - I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Some of us might even have gone through Myers Briggs...

Success (whatever your definition of success is) - amongst a list of other success factors – requires persistence and brainpower, in short: A lot of energy! So maintaining a high level of energy throughout the day  - to be able to move things forward or in the the right direction is critical.

Have you ever felt this energy hole which starts sucking you in in the middle of your day? Particularly if you are one of those people not eating anything for breakfast.

In the last 25 years of my career I had many days when I felt more and more tired the longer the day got. Quite normal? Yes, in a way. But in the evening I was so shattered and worn out that I had hardly any energy or basically none left, to do anything anymore. Which was a bit of a problem, as I was a single mom of 2…

Ask my kids and the rest of my family: I was quite well known for falling asleep in front of the TV in the evening! Even after I got rid of my TV and started reading books instead I fell asleep...