Joelle K. Jay

The Inner Edge

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Where is the Secret of Happiness Hidden?

There’s an ancient Hindu story about the gods arguing over where they should keep the secret of happiness. Afraid that humans didn’t deserve or couldn’t handle this secret, they debated where to hide it. At first they considered putting at the top of a high, high mountain, but reasoned that humans would eventually be able to find it. Likewise, they might find it in the darkest forests or at the bottom of the ocean. Finally, an idea struck one of the gods:

“I know the perfect place. We will hide the secret of happiness in the deepest depths of their own hearts. They will never bother to look there.”

The question, “What fulfills you and makes you happy?” is one of the central questions in the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. To learn more, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find an overview of the book, endorsements by such thought leaders as Marshall Goldsmith and Stephen Covey, and more.

It’s not easy to find the secret of happiness and fulfillment. But you have the ability to do it; the answer lies within you.

 

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The Value of Values

Values are the cornerstone of fulfillment. When you live in alignment with your values, you experience harmony. When you live out of synch with your values, you experience dissonance and stress. But how do you even find out what your values really are?

Here’s an exercise you can try to discern what’s really important to you, way down deep.

  1. Mine for your values. Think of a time in your life when everything was just right. What was true for you at that time?
  1. Identify the values that were being honored at that time. What was present that was so meaningful as to make it a memorable time?
  1. Work with those values a bit more. Name them, define them, rank them.

With this kind of thought process, you can get a preliminary list of the values that make your life worth living. You can use your newfound clarity about those values to make better decisions and align your life to what really matters in your heart.

To take this values clarification process further, you might be interested in participating in a FREE visualization exercise I’ve posted on my website. You will hear me guiding you in my own voice through the visualization in Step 1 above, which will help you connect more deeply to your ideal experience and uncover the values more easily.

Here’s how to find it. Go to www.TheInnerEdge.com and click on Worksheets and Audios (on the left). Scroll down and find the FREE audio called The Values Visualization Audio. You can get started immediately!

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Let Them Hit You

When you go looking for feedback, do you get feedback from the people who will give you the bad news?

Go ahead. Let them hit you.

Don’t worry – it’s not as bad as you think. Actually, one of the smartest things we can do is to ask for feedback from the people who don’t think all that much of us. The ones who are mad at us. Who are thorns in our side.

It’s not just because you’re going to get an enlightening perspective. (And oh, you will!) It’s also because the simple act of asking for feedback can improve the relationship.

Says Dave Norton, a senior vice president at The New York Times,

It’s so disarming. When you turn around and ask feedback from the people who wreck havoc in your world, it facilitates dialogue. It’s hard to be mad at someone who’s genuinely asking you for your opinion. Just the act of asking communicates trust.

When you go to look for feedback, ask yourself, who around me will give me the best feedback? Who will give me the worst? Who will give me a perspective I’ve probably never heard before?

Then go ask them. Easiest way: ask three questions.

  • What am I doing that’s working?
  • What am I doing that’s not working?
  • What one thing do you think I should work on to improve?

You may find those enemies were on your side all along.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here for more information.

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Beliefs of a Leader

Your beliefs are a powerful driving force that can work for you or against you. Some beliefs empower you, while others limit you. By becoming aware of your beliefs, you can keep the ones that serve you, weed out the ones that don’t, and choose the ones that will support who you want to be.

Here’s an example. A common belief of busy leaders is, “I have to work hard to get ahead.” Immediately the limitations of this belief are apparent. Working from this belief implies that you must sacrifice parts of your life (home life, health, and hobbies come to mind) to “get ahead.”

Now consider this belief instead: “I have to be my best to get ahead.” This belief is more empowering, because it opens up the possibilities. It still accepts the potential for working hard if that is what’s required, but it also allows for the fact that getting ahead sometimes means taking time for the rest and renewal that keeps you at your best.

An example can illustrate how to turn a limiting belief into an empowering belief. Andy was the president of a structural engineering firm who was raised to believe that if you compliment people too much, they become lazy. He was afraid to commend his team, because he believed that to do so would take away all motivation. His belief limited his ability to praise the people who worked for him, and they were becoming bitter and resentful.

To turn the situation around, Andy studied his limiting belief:

“If I praise people too much, they will become lazy.”

As long as he believed this, he would never be the supportive leader his firm needed. He could see that unless he tried something new, he was going to lose support. He tried this empowering belief instead:

“If I praise people more, they will become inspired.”

Andy rehearsed his new belief by trying it out 100 times. Every time he hesitated to praise someone, he stated his empowering belief to himself and gave them a sincere compliment. Before long, the results – a more agreeable, cooperative staff – convinced him to retain the new belief.

Beliefs are fundamental to the way your life plays out. The difference between a limiting and an empowering belief is quite literally the difference between a limited and a powerful life. Choose your beliefs carefully. They make you who you are.

Developing empowering beliefs is a three-step process.

  1. Become aware of your beliefs. You can go after them directly by asking yourself, “What do I believe,” or you can go after them directly by noticing your behavior and asking yourself, “What would I have to believe to behave this way?”
  2. Write down your beliefs. Take a look at them on paper with some objectivity. For each one, ask yourself, Is this belief limiting or empowering?
  3. Turn limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. Just change the words, looking for the exact opposite of your limiting belief to find one that’s more empowering.

The process of distilling your beliefs takes time. Allow yourself time to try on different beliefs and see what fits and what doesn’t. Notice when you feel limited and deflated, and when you feel expansive and energized. Keep working with the wording of your beliefs until you’ve created the ones that you can claim with conviction—the beliefs that will help you be the leader you really want to be.

 

Exercise
Use the Your Beliefs worksheet in The Extension to identify a few beliefs that guide your thinking and actions. Assess them. Are they limiting or empowering? How could you develop new beliefs to help you achieve your vision?

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.

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A 360-Degree View of You

When was the last time you looked in the mirror? What were you hoping to see? Did the mirror show you how you’re showing up as a leader? As a mother or father? As a role model?

The mirror is a good metaphor for what we need as leaders to understand how we’re showing up, and what might need to change for us to be the people on the outside that we so want to be on the inside.

Think about this. When it comes to your appearance, you can get a sense of yourself with a small hand mirror. But you’ll see more with a full-length mirror, and even more with a three-sided department store mirror. Even then, there are still some things a mirror can’t tell you: the overall impression you make when you walk into a room, the way your presence makes people feel, and how you look when you walk around. For these, you need other sources of input.

Just so with the way you show up as a leader. You can get some information on your own, just through reflection and self-assessment. But the more strategies you use to find out about yourself, the more complete your view will be. A variety of strategies will help you flesh out your view.

You can reveal some things about yourself by asking open-ended questions.

  1. Where are you especially talented?
  2. What do you love to do?
  3. What do you do without even thinking?
  4. What do people count on you for?
  5. In your social life, what role do you play?
  6. At work, what are you recognized for?
  7. Given the freedom to do things your way, how do you do them?

To find out more about the rest of you, ask:

  1. What activities would you gladly never have to do again?
  2. What do you wish you could pass on to someone else?
  3. When do you feel dragged down?
  4. What do you dread?
  5. When do you procrastinate?

As a coach, I deeply respect the insight leaders have into their own answers, and the knowledge you discover from these questions is invaluable. But it’s not enough.
To really get a sense of what you’re like, you also need some outside opinions. Here are some ideas.

Ask your friends, family and coworkers what they notice about you. How would they describe you? Get the positive and negative take. You’ll learn more about how you strike other people and discover more about what makes you brilliant.

Take profiles, assessments, and research-based quizzes to reveal your attributes. Each assessment will yield different information.

More customized and personal than most assessments, a 360-degree profile is a survey you conduct to get feedback on your effectiveness from the people “all around you” (hence the name). Traditionally, the survey is developed by a third party – say, a coach, consultant or research group – then distributed to a group of people who know you well enough to give you input.

How to get great feedback you can use to improve your effectiveness is the topic of just one of the information-rich chapters in the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. To learn more, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find an overview of the book, endorsements by such thought leaders as Marshall Goldsmith and Stephen Covey, and more!

When you take the steps to get good quality feedback, you’ll make the positive changes you need to make in order to like the leader you see in the mirror.

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Get Off Crack

Are you an addict? Let’s find out. Check the statements below – which apply to you?

  • I answer my phone in the middle of a conversation.
  • I can be reached by phone, text or email 24/7.
  • I’ve been known to check my PDA in movies, at the dinner table, or in the middle of the night.
  • I attend meetings at two levels – one above the table where the action is, and one under the table with my PDA.
  • If I can’t find my PDA I start to shiver, sweat and shake.

There’s a reason so many of my clients call their BlackBerry their CrackBerry. It’s addictive. And unless you want it to take over life, you’ve got to take some control.

Because it’s not just about turning off the machine. It’s about turning off the distraction. Paul Melchiorre, the vice president of global strategy at Ariba, puts it bluntly.

Even if you were good at managing your time before PDAs came along, now you need to adjust to this CrackBerry world. You have to know when to turn it off – not turning the BlackBerry off but being able to turn off the work mindset.

Time management now isn’t about having slots of time for home and slots of time for work. It’s all in the mix. What most people have done is learn how to shift back and forth from what’s happening in the present to what’s happening on their PDA, much the way my husband is right now flipping the channels back and forth between ESPN and the news.

But if you want to be effective as a leader, you need to stop flipping back and forth. You need to focus.

I don’t care if you’re the CEO, Barack Obama’s own attorney or the highest paid entrepreneur ever to cash a check – your family wants you there at dinner. Your team wants you in the meeting with them now. You deserve to work an uninterrupted hour.

Try this trick every time your PDA rings. Imagine the person trying to reach you is actually physically present. Feel the sense of intrusion when they barge through the door mid-sentence in the middle of meeting, or tap on your shoulder incessantly as you’re trying to work.

Do you have the power to turn away from the spectre of efficiency and take back your life?

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here for more information.

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Father Tom

A friend of mine once told me a tale relayed to her by her pastor, Father Tom. Father Tom was given a jar of glass stones. The number of stones equaled the number of weeks, based on his age and demographic, that Father Tom could be expected to live. Every week he took one stone out of the jar. As he held the stone in his hand, he reflected on what it meant: one less week to live. Had he made that one week count?

Learning to make every moment count is a theme of the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. To learn more, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find an overview of the book, endorsements by such thought leaders as Marshall Goldsmith and Stephen Covey, and more.

The way you spend your time is the way you spend your life. Enjoy it; make it count.

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Stopportunities

Have you ever had one of those days where you just can’t seem to get into action? It seems like instead of steady progress your brain is stuck in stop-and-go traffic. That can actually be a symptom of a larger issue – an overfull life.

To prevent this from happening, you need to press “stop” in the right places, so you can free yourself to drive along faster toward your goals.

I call them Stopportunities.

Stopportunities are those actions that you should stop doing because they don’t help you achieve your vision. Take something off your plate for once. Free up some space.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins reports that stopportunities distinguish good companies from great:

The good-to-great companies at their best followed a simple mantra: “Anything that does not fit with our [primary focus], we will not do. We will not launch unrelated businesses. We will not make unrelated acquisitions. We will not do unrelated joint ventures. If it doesn’t fit, we don’t do it. Period. (p.134)

You can adopt the same approach, refusing to do what doesn’t advance your vision as a leader and for your life.

Are you ready to learn to STOP so you can GO? I’ve written a longer article on Stopportunities along with some exercises to get you started and posted it (for FREE), on my website. Go to www.TheInnerEdge.com and click on Worksheets and Audios (on the left). Scroll down a bit to the heading called The Third Practice, and there you’ll find the Worksheet called Stopportunities. Happy stopping!

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Priorities – The Key to Balance

What does it look like for accomplished leaders to have “balance?” Does “balance” even exist?

When I coach executives on the personal side of leadership, I try to steer them away from this hypothetical question before it spins into a useless debate. The question isn’t whether or not work/life balance really exists. The question is, are you getting what you need to feel fulfilled and renewed so you’re thriving in every part of your life?

What helps you stay sane? What do you love to do? What’s your down time? Where’s your rest?

Lisa Weber was the president of individual business at MetLife – a job that requires high visibility and extensive travel. She has been named one of Fortune Magazines 50 Most Powerful women several times, she is a beloved mentor, and on top of it all, she’s also a mom. And yet, as busy as she is, she’s able to find a sense of balance by prioritizing the kinds of activities that sustain her every day.

I don’t compromise my morning run or going to my daughter’s school and reading them children’s books. To be able to sustain myself and work the long hours I do, I need to keep my priorities straight and keep everything in balance.

“Keeping her priorities straight” is key for Lisa, who has learned not to fall into the balance trap.

You can’t allow yourself to use balance as a measure for your life. You’ll always feel like a failure but when you think that way. It’s a mistake to ask, “Do I live a balanced life or not?” – as if it’s left to the whole world to judge.

The question isn’t, “Do you have balance or not?” The question is, “Do you feel balanced right now? What do you need to prioritize today in order to feel your best?

In other words, the point isn’t that you, too, should go running or read a children’s book. The secret isn’t in the activities, it’s in the prioritizing. Lisa explains:

No one can measure your priorities but you, so accept the priorities of your work and life. If prioritizing means you want to work a flexible works schedule so you can get home at 2:00 to take your kids off the bus, then you’ve set the agenda, you’ve prioritized what’s important to you, and you are going to feel a sense of balance. If prioritizing means you want to work a little harder to meet an important goal, then do that.

In the mornings, when I choose run, I prioritize running over sleep, or I prioritize my run over going to an early meeting. But other mornings, if something else feels more important than the run, I prioritize differently.

The only way to do that is if you are in control of what your priorities are. What are your priorities? How do they relate to each other? What decisions could you make today to help you feel more balanced? What decisions could you make tomorrow or in the coming week to help you align your activities with your values and goals? Says Lisa,

Balance is not a thing you achieve or a place you arrive. You constantly rethink and reprioritize your activities. If you’re feeling balanced, you’ve got it right. If you’re feeling out of balance, you need to go back and reprioritize your activities again!

Work and life are closer together than most people think. When you integrate them more fully, you lose the guilt and anxiety that comes from second-guessing your decisions. You make the decisions that make you feel at peace.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to order.

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Go to the Calendar

Having trouble getting everything done? Come along with me on a trip. We’re going to the calendar.

“Going to the calendar” is a strategy I often recommend for leaders who want to make changes but aren’t quite sure they’ll be able to stick to them. Going to the calendar means literally

  • opening up your calendar,
  • turning on the PDA,
  • getting out your schedule,

or in any other way physically putting in front of you the written, concrete system you use to organize your life. Then you write down the commitments you’ve made, transferring them from your head to the page where they become real.

For example, Gloria wanted to set up what she called “Customer Contact” hours five hours a week, during which the only thing she would do would be to circulate among the customers in the winery she ran to discover what their experience was like. After three weeks of “flaking out,” as she put it, I made her go to the calendar and schedule those five hours a week. She wrote “Customer Contact” between four and five o’clock each day for the rest of the year. From them on, customer contact wasn’t just a good idea, it was an appointment she was scheduled to do. Her calendar never let her forget.

This strategy is most helpful if you use a calendar system that matches your strengths. Most calendars are arranged into tidy hour-sized boxes into which you’re supposed to compartmentalize your life. When you go to the calendar, give yourself permission to break out of the boxes. Just as you can control your time, you can also control your calendar. Don’t let it control you. Some examples:

Ann:    Every year I get a fresh paper calendar. I claim the days I want for myself and block them out with an opaque permanent marker. Then I use those “blackout dates” however I choose.

Nico:   Once I took a whole month of pages out right out my calendar. I had been wanting to take a vacation, but somehow it always got bumped. When the pages weren’t there, the time stayed free and for once I actually took that vacation.

Rick:    I gave a list of times to my assistant that I wanted to keep free for working on projects. Now my assistant turns down all requests for my time that interfere with those parameters.

Mitch:  My PDA locked me into a very linear way of thinking. Now I do all of my planning on a white board where I can scribble and draw and make diagrams; later I pin the ideas down into the system.

Peter:   I don’t like calendars at all. I think in terms of projects. I started a project wall where I can pin up all my action plans instead.  If you want to maximize your time, you do need to keep track of it by going to the calendar. You decide what that calendar should be.

Exercise

Think of something you’ve been wanting to do to achieve your vision. Go to the calendar now and figure out how you can make it happen. Be sure to put it in writing.

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.