Happy International Coaching Week!
Happy International Coaching Week to all my fellow coaches out there! A few years ago, I made the transition from a successful career as a technology leader to a coach. It was a leap of faith, but one that has brought me immense fulfillment and joy. Coaching has allowed me to use my skills and experience to help others achieve their goals and reach their full potential.
As we celebrate the impact of coaching on individuals and organizations, I can't help but reflect on the exciting future of our field.
With the rapid advancement of AI models like LLMs, coaching could possibly be augmented through personalized coaching tools and resources, immersive coaching experiences, recommendations that learn and adapt to the client's coaching progress, and constant monitoring of coaching effectiveness.
These enhanced tools will allow coaches to continue to deliver what we do best - Provide a safe, supportive environment for our client’s growth and development, help teams work better, and provide those breakthrough moments for our clients which can have a ripple effect on their families and beyond.
I am really curious and excited about what the future might bring to the field of coaching! Let's keep making a difference, one coaching session at a time.
Get your to-do items done, ASAP!
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
I have been experimenting with a couple of to-do list setups and this is a quick summary:
The open-ended to-do list
Items are listed without dates and you work off the top of the list. When new items are added, you decide where it stands in priority relative to the other items. You reprioritize as the situation demands.
Pros
Very easy to add items.
Just work off the top of the list (assuming it is prioritized).
Cons
No dates assigned result in deadlines not being reflected.
There is no indication when items slip.
Does not create a sense of urgency for the most important items.
The tightly-fitted to-do list
Every item has a date and the date signifies when something needs to be worked on. You can optionally add another date to indicate when something is due. If something does not make it for a date, you change the date to a new date (most probably the next day).
Pros
Know exactly when to do something and when it is due
Easy to prioritize.
Cons
When things slip (and they will!), you move them to a different date and after a while, you could be indifferent to items just being pushed to a future date.
Dates for downstream items may have to change too as things move.
A happy medium - The ASAP to-do List
When the original assigned date <= current date, mark them as ASAP. The rest of the to-do list can remain within their respective future start dates. Your focus now is to just work through your ASAP list ASAP! As your ASAP list grows, you know you have a lot to do. When your ASAP list dwindled, you know you're making progress. You are not distracted by future items since you have pre-determined when you have to start working on them. ASAP creates a sense of urgency for the most important items on your to-do list.
I will keep experimenting with this and report any tweaks to optimize it.
p.s.: This article got done because it was tagged as ASAP!
Control and Influence
An outcome is a product of our efforts against things out of our control. Is the desired outcome guaranteed? No, but you can influence its probability by dialing up and down your effort. The degree to which you think you can influence the outcome is your ‘locus of control’.
Some things in life are quite out of our control - e.g., a natural calamity, an accident, or a war. There are others that are closer to our specific situation yet out of our control - e.g., job loss, catching a cold, or a brand new car that starts giving trouble. However, we often equate the lack of control with our inability to influence them. We then focus on our lack of control because we are overwhelmed by the challenges it poses and our struggles to overcome those challenges. The narrative ends up being an all-or-none situation - If we don’t have complete control, we don’t have any control. However, in between these extremes lies the reality of influence.
Some examples
Your decision to eat a cake - You can control
Your teenage child’s decision to eat a cake - You can influence
Getting up in the morning to exercise - You can control
Your boss setting up early morning meetings - You can influence
The topic of influence versus control often comes up when I coach leaders. There is usually a perceived need for control to get things done but leaders realize through the coaching process that influence is what would make them effective leaders.
Organizations, where leaders operate through control, could experience micro-management, trickle-down policies, and burnouts. Organizations, where influence is exhibited by leaders, experience creativity, and better skills distribution, are able to be nimble and able to put the team before the individuals. Can you lead with influence versus control? Leaders who influence rally their team behind them while those who lead with control force decisions down to the team.
Next time you feel frustrated that you cannot control something, ask if you have done enough to influence it.
Picasso's The Bull
Image Credit: https://www.slideshare.net/a-mesto/the-bull-42690014
When faced with a complex problem to solve, it helps to draw inspiration from Pablo Picasso's The Bull - a series of eleven lithographs with each image abstracting away the details of the bull.
The final image depicts the bull in its essence - it is barebones but as recognizable as the first image. Apple's iMac and Magic Mouse designs are classic examples of this principle.
Simplifying a problem to its essence allows us to work on the elements of a problem that have the highest impact. It forces us to separate the noise from the signals and ensures that our highest quality efforts are directed toward what matters the most.
Let’s say that you are brought in as a leader to lead a gnarly cross-functional project. You have been warned that your predecessors have tried but failed. You have been told that the teams involved in the project are entrenched in their ways and don’t want to collaborate. You have also been updated that it is a high-visibility project but with minimal resources. As a leader, you can easily get overwhelmed by the complexities. There is the problem itself, then there is the career impact of failure, high expectations from stakeholders, lack of self-confidence, and probably the lack of enthusiasm to solve the problem. That is similar to the first image of the bull. You see elements of the problem but are quickly distracted by the non-essential features. Do you really need to see the color of the bull’s skin to know it’s a bull? However, if you step back and try to break down the problem through multiple iterations, you may find that the root cause of the issue is a misunderstanding of responsibilities. Now you are looking at the last image of the bull. You not only have clarity on what to fix but also how to fix them.
So, the next time you have a problem to solve, make an effort to find out what is really important. Ask yourself - Am I looking at just the bull or much more than that?
The Fog of Happiness
Photo by Rory Björkman on Unsplash
“Am I happy?” Take a moment to ponder on that question. Did you respond with a “Yes”, “No”, or a vague “It depends”?
“Am I happy?” is an oft-asked self-reflection question that we surprisingly do not always have a simple answer to. Your answer on a Monday afternoon after a series of tough project meetings could be different from the one when you are ready to wind down for the weekend after a very productive week. The answer can also change depending on who is asking. If your partner poses this question, you may be inclined to answer with a “Yes” compared to when your coach or therapist brings this up in a session. Most often than not, we do not know how to answer the question without a lot of caveats. Things may seem good in your life but there is this constant hum of a nagging feeling that you cannot shake off. A feeling of euphoria is juxtaposed with the depths of fear of losing that euphoria. Fleeting emotions play havoc throughout the day and happiness keeps changing like the needle on a fickle scale.
So, how should we answer this question? One ostensible way is to hold on to a very loose definition of happiness which pivots between feeling good and not so good. However, since negative feelings are overpowering, we may end up not feeling good most of the time and hence conclude that we are generally not happy. The other issue with this approach is that we could vacillate between the two extremes so frequently that any feelings of happiness are fleeting.
What if we morph the question to “What makes me feel good?”? Can this question cut through the fog of happiness and identify specific experiences that contribute to us feeling good? Turns out it can!
Within the fog of happiness, the specifics of what makes us feel good might vary. However, they broadly fall into these categories.
Joys that you can experience today
What can you enjoy today with minimal effort? What has life given you that you can relish for free? What is available in abundance?
Some that fall in this category:
Enjoying a breath of fresh air
Laughing at a joke
Being enthralled by a book
A delicious meal
Enjoying a great movie
These are experiences and material pleasures that you can enjoy effortlessly. There is no struggle. You’re also not in competition with anybody else to enjoy these. It is not a zero-sum game.
Events that you can be thankful for
This is a reminder that fate has been kind to you often. These could be advantages that you carry or lucky near-misses from a catastrophe.
Some examples:
Making it to your flight just before the gates closed
Narrowly missing an accident on your commute to work
Catching that serious error before you file your taxes
Noticing you forgot the laptop charger just before leaving for a business trip.
Being prone to a negativity bias, we recall the negative outcomes but rarely remember the positive ones let alone the ones where we narrowly missed a negative outcome. However, research shows that being thankful does make one feel good. Hence, deliberately recalling these events of near-misses and being thankful for them can further contribute to your good feelings.
Challenges that excite you
Finally, there is the excitement of a challenge! Things that you can attempt by putting in the effort, outsmarting the competition, strategizing, and executing.
Some examples:
Nabbing the job that you always wanted
Winning that tough deal after weeks of negotiations
A bet on your business paying off
Winning a competition
The reality about excitement is that it often carries a level of stress in trying to achieve it. What if your bet on the business strategy fails? What if you don’t get the job you wanted? What if you lose a bid on a house? When you attempt moments of excitement, you are also signing up to take on some stress if things don’t go your way.
The interesting thing is that we spend most of our lives chasing accomplishments and striving for success and the outcomes shape our definition of happiness. So, the last one among the three above takes a lion’s share of our perceived experience of happiness. However, as we see above, it is only one part of what constitutes our happiness. Let’s not minimize the role of the other two just because they are effortless to achieve and not as cool as the ones that bring excitement.
So, here’s a three-part strategy to infuse your life with good feelings. Each one is equally weighted and one is not more important than the other:
Savor everything that you can enjoy today (Did you notice the birds chirping today?)
Be in gratitude for the things you have been lucky with (It’s Monday morning but you can work from home!)
Try for a little excitement (Try for that public speaking opportunity)
Wanting to be happy may not always be actionable. However, there is a lot more that you’ll find if you go digging and cut through your fog of happiness.
Theory of Mind, Worrying, and Mindfulness
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
The prefrontal cortex forms a larger proportion of the brain in humans compared to other species. The prefrontal cortex enables what is called the Theory of Mind (ToM). ToM helps us understand others, what we think they are thinking and what we think they are thinking about what we are thinking. You get the point. ToM is what allows humans to think, plan, decide, strategize and show empathy ToM is a very important part of our evolution which lets us have social interactions, understand non-verbal cues, help us negotiate, and influence.
https://www.slideserve.com/nydia/biological-bases-of-behaviour-lecture-9-cerebral-cortex
ToM - Sue wonders what Sally thinks about Jane's thoughts about Sue and how those thoughts can affect how Sue would think about Sally.
Although ToM helps us effectively carry out our daily functions (e.g., dressing professionally so that your colleagues have a good impression of you), it also lulls us into overusing it even when we don’t have situations that demand it. As may be evident, ToM involves a very complex web of processing to understand the various stakeholders, their thinking, and our stakes in these dynamic interactions. The outcomes from this complex processing that leads us to act appropriately can also easily lead us to a path of worrying about negative consequences if things don't go right. Often, these negative consequences are a hypothetical projection of "what ifs" are many are not actionable. However, we get sucked in by the vortex of the ToM and that can move us away from what is really important and meaningful to us at the core. This is ToM in overdrive mode!
ToM in overdrive - Sue worries what Sally thinks about Jane's thoughts about Sue and how those thoughts can affect how Sue would think about Sally.
Mindfulness to the rescue
Mindfulness is defined as the awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally. There is some research that shows that mindfulness actually helps ToM. For example, mindfulness can enhance our ToM to develop more empathy and thus help our ability for better social interactions. However, mindfulness can also help when our ToM goes into overdrive mode leading us to worry. Mindfulness can bring us back to the present, to the core essence of a situation. It helps us to stop judging how others think about us or how others think about us thinking about them. By being mindful, we can be aware of our ToM in action and its inclination to make complex connections between different possibilities but we neither judge nor interpret them. Instead, we recognize it as a fact, take a deep breath, and move on to work on what is meaningful. Note that being mindful does not mean a fervent attempt to stop those thoughts. In fact, an attempt to do so would be ToM in overdrive again!
Mindfulness keeps ToM in check - Sue observes non-judgementally that she wonders what Sally thinks about Jane's thoughts about Sue and smiles at that thought.
Some examples of the ToM being used what it is intended for versus in overdrive mode.
You have an important presentation to make:
Studying the audience, their needs and preparing the presentation accordingly - Using ToM appropriately.
Worrying incessantly about the possibility that the audience doesn't like the presentation - ToM in overdrive.
Taking a deep breath and focusing on the content and enjoying the process of building and the delivery of the presentation - Being Mindful i.e. keeping ToM in check.
You’re planning a surprise birthday party song for your partner:
Think about what your partner would love and prepare to sing that song - Using ToM appropriately.
Change the choice of song twenty times and worrying that no matter what you do, you'll fall short - ToM in overdrive.
You pick a song, enjoy the process of preparing for the surprise and remind yourself of all the memories that go with the song - Being Mindful i.e. keeping ToM in check.
Next time you find yourself stressed over something, maybe you could step back, check if your ToM is in overdrive and exercise some mindfulness. Modern Health members get access to a library of mindfulness exercises in their app. If you are not a Modern Health member, you can sample some mindfulness exercises from UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center.
Here's to a mindful ToM week ahead!
The Joy of Taking A Break From Joy
What would happen if you engage in pleasurable activity unabated? Would your level of joy keep increasing forever or even remain steady? It turns out that our minds are pretty sneaky and do not behave intuitively. A concept from economics and another from psychology could help explain this. In economics, the law of diminishing marginal utility says that as we consume additional units of a product, the additional utility that we derive is lower than that from the previous units. For example, let’s say that you buy your favorite ice cream. The first scoop of that ice cream gives you a very high level of satisfaction as you relish the ice cream. Now, you give in to temptation and buy one more right after. You may still enjoy this second scoop but not as much as the previous time. What if you order a third one? You may still appreciate the sweetness of the ice cream but you are not enjoying it as much as you would love to. This is the law of diminishing marginal utility at play as shown in the figure below.
In psychology, this is explained through the concept of hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is the process through which our minds get used to positive or negative events. Stated simply, our minds are wired to get used to stuff. So, once we have enjoyed the first scoop of the ice cream, our mind slowly adapts to it. This increases our baseline level of satisfaction i.e. the level that needs to be crossed for us to enjoy the ice cream further. So, the next scoop fails to feel as great as the previous time. Over time, our baseline level of satisfaction increases so that it takes something more special in the ice cream for us to enjoy it as much as we did before. This is depicted in the figure below.
Let’s take another example. You watch an episode of your favorite TV show on a Saturday afternoon. At the end of the first episode, you are so intrigued that you decide to watch the next episode. Before you realize it, you have binge-watched 10 episodes, consumed 4 buckets of popcorn, and guzzled down half a gallon of soda. You realize that although the series insidiously hooked you on to one episode after the next, the last few episodes did not feel as pleasurable as the first ones. This is hedonic adaptation and the law of diminishing marginal utility at play. In the paper The Half-Life of Happiness, the authors found that even when the extremely poor population were provided with better housing, the subjective well-being gained in the first sixteen months lost 60% of its value in the next 8 months. The participants got habituated to the new housing and hence it did not feel all that great after a while.
So, what does it mean? How can we break the effect of the hedonic treadmill? Are we hostage to the tricks of the mind? Can you eat half of that ice cream and enjoy the same pleasure at half the calories? Can you watch just a couple of episodes of your favorite series and get the same level of pleasure at one-tenth of the time spent? Yes, you can.
Studies have shown that interrupting consumption can help us break the hedonic adaptation cycle. Let’s take the example of the ice cream. As shown in the figure below, if you space out your consumption by taking breaks, your baseline satisfaction level is reset and you can then enjoy every scoop of the ice cream with the same level of satisfaction as the one before. For example, instead of eating 3 scoops in immediate succession, you could have just one scoop each day. Similarly, instead of binge-watching ten episodes of the series, you can just watch one episode each day. This interruption will give enough time for your brain to reset its baseline satisfaction level and help enhance your enjoyment of each successive episode.
So, there you go. Mix your pleasurable consumption with something that is challenging or even a mundane chore. The bookshelf you that is awaiting some reorganization for the past couple of months? It could help break your hedonic adaptation. That dreaded presentation that you have to complete before Friday? It could actually help enhance your enjoyment of the next episode of your favorite series - not to mention that it will be one less thing on your todo list for this week!
Who moved my goalpost?
Photo by ÁLVARO MENDOZA on Unsplash
I recently took up skiing and was exhilarated when I finally managed to ski down a small slope, get back on the lift and then ski down again. After a series of falls in ways that seemed to completely overpower me, this was my epitome of success for the day. This would suffice for me. Then, I watched the experts gracefully slide down the diamonds and the black diamond slopes and wondered what they thought of people like me who were happy with the bunny slopes. Not much I thought. Back home, still experiencing my adrenaline rush, I stumbled upon some extreme skiing videos and saw these mavericks hike up for hours just to be able to ski down wild backcountry slopes. What did they think of those skiing down the diamond slopes in full-service ski resorts? Not much I thought.
This was a classic demonstration of cognitive reference points coined by psychologist Eleanor Rosch in 1975. Rosch defined cognitive reference points as a stimulus against which other stimuli are seen in relation to. So, for experts skiing down the diamond slopes, the reference point was the high level of difficulty of their slopes and hence my benign green slopes didn’t offer them much. Similarly, when these same skiers eventually experienced extreme skiing in the unexplored backcountry, the well-groomed attendant-supported black diamond slopes didn’t hold much excitement for them anymore. Their goalpost had moved.
Similar to sports, cognitive reference points play a role in other aspects of life too. Career is one such example. You have probably thought about your career more than once and often the mental argument runs like this - You make a mindmap of how your career should progress, what constitutes a career success, and then a comparison with others who may have had a similar progression. Then, you may go about thinking about the next milestone and imagine all the happiness that you’ll get if you achieve it. You may also put some strategies together to make it a reality. Although this process is a generally accepted strategy to make progress in one’s career, the milestones themselves are always in the context of your current reference points. For example, the value attached to the next promotion is always in context with your current job title.
So, what happens when you do achieve this next milestone? Research has some interesting answers. In her book “The How of Happiness”, Sonja Lyubomirsky says that in the study of individuals earning various levels of income (the reference stimuli), the amount of money they think would make them happy changes. Those earning $30K said that $50K would make them happy and those earning $100K said that $250K would make them happy. So, research shows that our cognitive reference points change as we earn more. Clark and Oswald (1996) conducted research on 5000 British workers to show that job satisfaction changes when they have knowledge of how much their colleagues made. When workers realized that their colleagues made more than them, their satisfaction with the same income reduced. This is an example where the cognitive reference point is somebody else’s income. Psychologists have long researched this behavior of the mind and have shown that our cognitive reference points of happiness changes because our mind gets used to stuff. They coined it “Hedonic adaptation”. As Dan Gilbert mentions in his book ‘Stumbling on Happiness’, “Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition.” So, for the skiers who have done the tough diamond slopes dozens of times or for professionals who have reached the next level in their career, hedonic adaptation will reset the reference points and create a new goal to chase.
So, what really matters? Research has shown that a few things are important to offset hedonic adaptation and keep the vitality in our lives and career. One is our state of mind while performing an activity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book - “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience “ coined the term “Flow” as a state when you’re completely immersed in an activity. When I was on the green slopes, all I focused on was to get to the bottom of the slope standing. I was completely immersed. I did not think of what the skiers on the black diamond thought about me. Similarly, when you look at your own careers, what aspects of your job puts you in that state? Those moments can be experienced again and again without subject to a comparison with a reference point. These moments will put you in a state of ‘flow’.
The other important aspect is the intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation for a job. If you derive intrinsic motivation from your work, then the pursuit of growth in your career is driven by the desire to pursue new challenges and make a larger impact and not by extrinsic motivations driven by comparison with career growth of colleagues. Research has shown that focusing on extrinsic motivation can erode intrinsic motivation thus putting more emphasis on cognitive reference points.
How can you incorporate these into your career and daily routines? What aspects of your job can you re-evaluate for intrinsic motivation? How can you leverage flow in your work? Working with a coach can help you create strategies around these and move towards a more fulfilling career.
Back to the original question - Somebody did move the goalpost but it won’t matter as much to you anymore!
Deep Rooted
Photo by John Tecuceanu on Unsplash
The events of the past few days have exposed the deep racial divide that runs through our country. It is not restricted to our country alone. A racial divide runs through the whole world. Why is that? At what point in our lives did we realize that “they” are different from “us”. Did our parents teach us that? Did our schools impart that thought? Does our desire to conform sow the seeds for these to grow? Maybe all of them in some form.
A racial divide is not the only comparison that drives our lives. We compare everything. Some notable ones - We compare beautiful people with those who are not. We compare the sophisticated with those who are not. We compare the rich with the poor. We compare the smart with those who are not. We compare the overachievers with the underachievers. We compare the fun people with boring ones. The list is long.
We don't stop at just comparing.
Our interactions with them are influenced by our comparisons. Stories, movies, books, organizations are all built around these comparisons. News is all about highlighting somebody who made it to the right side and somebody who found themselves on the wrong side of these comparisons. We let these divisions be the engine which powers our goals, ambitions, and our plans. We thrive on these and celebrate when we find ourselves on the popular side of this divide. We build affinities around these. The thrill of this is so great that we insidiously seek it in other parts of our lives too. It then extends to nationality, political affiliation, race, color, and sexual orientation. We derive a sense of achievement from being on the right side of the equation and we bring up our guards to protect them. Traces of xenophobia and bigotry soon emerge in our behaviors. We seek shortcuts to these affiliations and the color of the skin becomes a convenient proxy. The result is a racial divide so deep that the color of the skin is enough to trigger discrimination, harassment, power misuse, and sometimes murder.
So, what are we to do?
I don’t claim to have all the answers. Maybe our lives should not be driven by comparisons. Maybe the value of humans as one should be above all other values. Maybe the concept of racial divides should unequivocally be deemed as the biggest threat to humanity. Maybe politicians should stop using race for opportunistic pouncing. I don’t know. However, I am very hopeful that humanity will find a way to obliterate these divisions in the mind and when the mind sees everyone as one, we will truly become one.
How Do You Distract Yourself From Anxiety?
Photo by Lane Smith on Unsplash
Let’s look at it a bit differently.
It is not anxiety and fear that can hold you back or motivate you. It is the interpretation of anxiety and fear that can have an effect. Hence, if you interpret anxiety and fear as positive then you can use it to motivate you.
Now, how do you interpret it positively? Isn’t anxiety and fear all bad? That’s what you are probably wondering. Well, every progress in the world has its roots in anxiety and fear. When Thomas Edison went about burning 5000 bulbs till he got it right, it was his anxiety that carried him forward. Anxious to know what would work and why the current one didn’t work. If he didn’t care enough, he would have just given up. When you are called for an interview, it is your anxiety that lets you be alert and prepare well. If it wasn’t for that, you would just do a mediocre preparation. So, you interpret anxiety as something that is needed to push us forward.
Now, let’s talk about fear. Our fight or flight response system is rooted in fear. It is to alert us to be watchful. As Andrew Grove from Intel said - “Only the paranoid survive”. Fear is needed to be dissatisfied with the current state so that you want to make a change. Without fear, we would just be “ok” with the way things are.
There you go, reframe anxiety and fear as positive and this reframing will let you use it to motivate you. Once that happens, you will find that you don’t need to distract yourself from anxiety.
The Change Formula
Change is simple but not easy. Change is hard. Change takes a long time. The only constant is change. Change from within and the outside will change too. Change to keep up with the times.
Haven’t we all heard this enough? However, the million dollar question is what dictates change? What determines our ability or inability to make that change? Many models exist to model change but the one I like to use in my coaching is the Beckhard-Harris Change Model
In an equation form, the model is presented as C = [D + V + F ] > R
C = The occurrence of Change
D = Dissatisfaction with the current situation
V = Vision of the future state
F = The next immediate step that can be taken
R = Resistance to the change
Let’s take an example to illustrate how this can be put into action. Sally finds herself stagnant in her current job and wants to change. Well, she has been wanting to change for the past two years. However, she still makes the one-hour commute to her current job every week. During her commute, all she can think of is her job. Why has Sally not made a change? Why does she continue with a job that she dislikes? Let’s look at it from the lens of the change equation:
D = Dissatisfaction
Is Sally dissatisfied with her current job? You bet she is. She thinks about it all day and has to force herself to be productive at work. There is a constant nagging feeling in the back of her head that she needs to find a new job. So, her “D=Dissatisfaction” is pretty high. This is on the top of her mind consistently throughout the day.
V = Vision of the future state
Does Sally know what is the future that she is really looking for? She has not thought of it yet. All she knows is that she needs to quit her existing job. Her ideal “a day in the life” of her future job is not something that she has put a lot of thought into. It could be a similar position in another company. It could be a whole different role One of her friends had approached her to join her in a new business venture. Maybe that’s what her vision of the future looks like. Maybe not. Sally doesn’t know yet. So, her “V=Vision of the future state” is pretty low at this point.
F = The next immediate step that can be taken
Does Sally know what the immediate next step towards her vision should be? Since her vision is not clear, her next step is obviously not clear too. She spends a lot of time worrying about her situation and sporadically applies to some job positions. However, it is not a deliberate, strategic next step towards a larger goal. So, her “F=The next immediate step that can be taken” is pretty low.
R = Resistance
What are the headwinds that Sally faces towards her goal? She needs the paycheck to pay her bills. She has not changed jobs in a while and she feels that her skills might be outdated. She has some stocks waiting to vest with the current company and she would lose it all if she quits.
So, for Sally, her “R=Resistance” is pretty high.
Putting it all together through the lens of the formula, Sally will need to bump up her “V” and also bump up her “F”. At the same time, she has to keep her “D” high enough to avoid complacency. If she succeeds in doing so, she will create enough energy to overcome her “R” and that will lead to the change that she is seeking.
What about you? What change are you seeking? Why hasn’t it happened yet? Look at it through this change formula and make that change happen!
Why Stress About Stress?
When you think about stress, you are actually adding to the stress. So, what exactly are you stressing about? Often, not being able to articulate the stress or concretely ends up strengthening the stress further.
I like to put stress under three buckets. Let me outline what those are and what your strategies could be to handle those.
The stress of things not going as expected
Unexpected traffic while trying to reach the office on time for a meeting? Passed for a promotion? Your kid did not get into a college you expected her to get into? Bad performance review? The list goes on. There will always be things that will not go as expected. We experience small versions of this every day and they tend to leave residual thoughts in us.
What can you do about this stress?
You cannot always control an outcome because Outcome = Your Efforts + Things out of your control. So, just because the brain generated cortisol (since it doesn’t know any better) does not mean that you need to respond in a fight or flight mode. A better strategy is to just accept that all outcomes cannot be controlled and instead do two things. Firstly, focus on your efforts and evaluate if there is anything you can try changing. Secondly, remind yourself of one or two things you are thankful for. As this article shows, gratitude can not only reduce your stress levels by reducing cortisol but actually change your brain chemistry. So, next time you feel stressed about something that didn’t go your way, think about the things that DID go your way.
Stress of anxiety
Waiting for the results of the interview? Checking your emails every few seconds to see if the client has signed the contract? 5 minutes before your performance review discussion? Meeting with the top boss for the first time? All of these lead to stress of anxiety. These are sometimes short-lived but very intense.
What can you do about this stress?
Although related to the first one, this stress is unique because it is linked to some immediate gratification that the mind seeks. One approach to ease anxiety is to have an activity ready that you can quickly perform when in this mode. For eg. instead of checking emails every 10 seconds, you could read two chapters from your Kindle. Instead of looking at your Outlook new message indicator, you could write a couple of lines of a blog. This way, the stress of anxiety is converted into productive energy. Now, who wouldn’t want that?
The stress of work pending to be done
Then there is the stress of work pending to be done. Your to-do list has a lot getting on the list but little getting off the list. Your day seems to be busy but nothing from the list is getting done. Everything looks important so you don’t know where to start.
What can you do about this stress?
Well, this is the one that you need to spend the most time on. You can choose any item from your to-do list but the key is to get started. There is something about progress that builds the momentum to get going. The initial inertia is the hardest. Once you start chopping off the list, you’ll automatically prioritize it in the most logical fashion. This stress is the most actionable one and the one that you need to react to. Being productive is to acknowledge this stress and respond to it with full force.
There you go - 3 strategies that you can employ today. If you don’t get it quite right, don’t stress!
Feeling Like A Failure?
Stretch your hand out completely and hold a glass of water. If you hold the glass in your hands for 30 seconds, your hand will not pain. Now, hold it for a minute. Your hand will pain a bit. You’ll notice the discomfort. Now, try holding it for five minutes. You’ll experience enough pain that you will not be able to ignore it. When you keep thinking about your failures, that is exactly what you’re doing. You’re carrying the stress of what people have told you for too long. Long enough that it is causing you noticeable pain.
Now, what does that mean? It suggests that you don’t spend any more time on it. You have to just focus on the next thing to do - failure or not. How do you do that? Here are some simple but practical techniques:
Reframe the situation. Rather than calling yourself a failure or not being good enough, change your language. Tell yourself that the attempt you made at something did not work out. No big deal! If you just google for the number of things that have not worked out for people, you’ll find that you’re not alone. Everyone has things in their life that did not work out. Things that did not go your way can co-exist with things that did go your way.
Make a plan. You need to create a goal that you are going to work towards. This is absolutely essential! The plan needs to be very objective, short-term and something that you truly want to achieve. It will not help if your plan consists of a lot of wish-lists that you never really intend to get to.
Make weekly action items that you need to work towards this plan. Weekly actions are more important than daily ones. Weekly actions will give you the flexibility to ride over unplanned events that will crop up from time to time.
Execute relentlessly. This is the time to roll up your sleeves and get into action. There is no space for worries or emotions to kick in. They can wait. This is your ammunition against your thoughts of failure. Execute, execute and execute.
Celebrate the small wins. Consistent small wins build momentum to push you forward towards the next one. Along the way, you will enjoy some big wins too. The small wins will try to occupy the limited bandwidth in your memory and it’ll start pushing out your negative thoughts.
Lastly, DO NOT compare your life with anybody else’s. No one's life is better or worse. They’re just different!
You’ll now find that your mind is spent productively on actions rather than what happened in the past. The future is built on actions so go act now. Thoughts of failure can wait and you may never realize when they melted away!
Mindfulness and Listening to Music
While driving, I probably listen to music like most of you. I choose a playlist that I fancy at that moment and then forward songs until I get to the one I like. This leads to half the journey being spent in choosing the right music. At the end of it all, I am exhausted - hardly what I intended!
The other day, I decided to try a different approach. I just shuffled all my songs in my library and let all the songs play - one at a time. I have an eclectic collection of music across multiple genres and languages. First in was a rap song that I would normally fast forward but I decided to listen to. It actually felt good. Although I couldn't figure out most of the lyrics, the beats felt good. Then came a Bollywood pop song. I have listened to this one a thousand times. My fingers almost reached the forward button. However, I refrained. I let the song play and forced myself to hum along. The song felt surprisingly fresh. I actually listened to the lyrics. There was indeed good poetry in it! Another 3 minutes passed without me realizing it. I felt at peace. Next was another pop beat from the 90s (Culture Club, anyone?) Haven’t heard it in a while. Didn’t really want to hear it. However, I didn’t skip it. I let it play. The soothing music let itself into my heart. Never felt so good.
I continued this for my 30-minutes drive and at the end of it, I had mindfully listened to a variety of songs and music. I did not critique the songs. I did not rush to get to my favorite song and I did not fidget with the audio controls. I was in the moment and at peace.
That’s mindfulness at play. Everything is just another thing and there is nothing to interpret. You enjoy things at its purest without a cloud of rational thinking and worry.
As a coach, I recommend micro-mindfulness to my clients. Micro-mindfulness is spending not more than 30 seconds of mindfulness multiple times throughout the day. What do you do during these 30 seconds? NOTHING. For 30 seconds, shut down all interpretations and chatter in the mind. Just feel the sensation of touch, smell, sight and sound. If you notice a thought in your mind, just observe the thought. If you're holding a cup, feel the heaviness of the cup and the warmth of the drink in it. If you are seated, feel the pressure on the seat. If you are outside, smell the fresh breeze of spring or even the stench of waste. Everything is the same and nothing is good or bad. Things are exactly the way they need to be at that moment. There is no “what should be” and “what is”.
Micro-mindfulness will help you create your own oasis amidst the chatter of life’s turmoil. An oasis that you can retreat to anytime during your working day. It'll rejuvenate you every single time. It's like taking a retreat multiple times during the day. It'll relieve your stress of a meeting that you're about to get into or just got out of. That deadline that's worrying you. It's won't feel as bad. When done over a period of time, you'll feel more in control of your thoughts and how you perceive the world around you. Who wouldn't want to do that?
You owe it to yourself to try it!
Impact of the new 20% Pass-through tax deduction for Coaches
Note: I am neither a CPA nor a qualified tax consultant. So, anything in this article should be treated as informational only.
If you are a coach and are filing your income as a LLC or a Sole-Proprietor, you are probably wondering how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Pass-through deduction affects your taxes for 2018. The official IRS text for the deduction can be found here. What I have attempted here is to simplify it down to a quick summary:
The official name for this deduction is Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Provision 11011, Section 199A - Qualified Business Income Deduction. It is popularly known as the Pass-through deduction
The Tax and Jobs Act reduced the corporate tax for 'C' corporations to a flat 21%. Since more than 90% of the businesses report their business income on their personal tax return and are not a 'C' corporation, the Pass-through deduction was introduced to give these businesses a similar break. It is pretty awesome actually!
This deduction allows you to take a straight deduction of "up to 20%" of your Qualified Business Income. What is Qualified Business Income? Read on. Why "up to 20%" ? Well, laws are never simple :-) So, read on...
A Qualified Business Income is an income that you received through your coaching business. So, this does not apply to you if you are an internal coach working for a company and receiving salary. Essentially, if you get a 1099-Misc for your coaching services, that is considered a Qualified Business Income(QBI). You don't need a LLC to use it. (There are some others which also constitute a QBI but you would be better off reading the IRS link above to learn about those.)
So, if you made $100,000 in coaching income in 2018, is that your final QBI? Mostly no. IRS says that you have to deduct any expenses, losses etc. from it and whatever remains is your QBI. So, let's say that your business spend was $5,000 and you had to write off some client non-payment of about $1,000. Then, your QBI would be $100,000 - $5,000 - $1,000 = $94,000.
Ok. I understand QBI. What about the "up to 20%" deduction? Stay with me. If you are filing single and your total taxable income does not exceed $157,500 ($315,000 if married and filing jointly), you can take a straight 20% deduction off your QBI. So, let's say you are filing single and you had an additional income of $30,000 through a dividends and interest come, then your total taxable income would be $30,000 + $94,000 (QBI) = $124,000. Since this is less than $157,000, you can take a straight 20% deduction off the $94,000 QBI. So, enjoy the deduction of $18,800 and you can skip the rest of the article!
So far so good. So, when does the full 20% not apply? Good question. If your total taxable income exceeds the thresholds above, then IRS has made it a bit of fun for you to navigate. Stick with me Coaches. IRS says that if your total taxable income exceeds the thresholds above, the deduction could be anywhere between 0% and 20% depending on whether your business is a "Specified Service Trade or Business" (SSTB) or not. If it is not a SSTB, you're good. You can use the flat 20% deduction. If your business is a SSTB, then there are certain limits.
So, is "Coaching" defined as a SSTB? IRS defined SSTB as "a trade or business involving the performance of services in the fields of health, law, accounting, actuarial science, performing arts, consulting, athletics, financial services, investing and investment management, trading, dealing in certain assets or any trade or business where the principal asset is the reputation or skill of one or more of its employees." The closest that Coaching can come to is "consulting". Although Coaching and Consulting are two very different things in actuality, IRS probably sees them as one. One would never know till IRS provides any further guidance. So, if your income is above the thresholds, then the SSTB clause could apply to you. One could also argue that "dealing in certain assets or any trade or business where the principal asset is the reputation or skill of one or more of its employees" also applies to coaching. However, the law clarified that this refers to celebrities getting income for product endorsements because of being a celebrity. So, coaches are off the hook on that one :-)
Hopefully this gives you some clarity on what the implication of this deduction are for your coaching business. Here's to a fun April 15th, 2018!
So What?
When I coach clients, they often tell me that even with the best intentions and plans, a string of negative thoughts often blocks them from making any progress. One of my recommendations to them is that they follow what I call the ’So What?’ approach - best illustrated with an example.
Let’s say that you have an interview coming up and you’re dreading it since your last one wasn’t that great. Now, your mind goes, “Oh god! This interview is going to be a disaster! I have 5 back to back interviewers and they’re gonna grill me. Last time, I fumbled and could not pick myself up again." These thoughts put you in a negative spiral and you are now fighting the negativity rather than focusing on the interview.
So, what should you do? Rather than going down this spiral, when the first thought hits you, you should just counter with ‘So what?’. Keep doing that for the next thought and the next and the next.
Thought: Oh god! This interview is going to be really tough. There are these five interviewers and they’ll grill me. Last time, I fumbled and could not pick myself up again
You: So what?
Thought: If I don’t do well, I won’t get the job
You: So what?
Thought: If I don’t get the job, I will have to apply to another one
You: So what?
Thought: I’ll have to start the process all over again
You: So what?
Thought:Hmm…(trying to figure out the next question)
This process questions some of the basic assumptions that involuntarily drive our thoughts. Assumptions that often go unchallenged since the mind is in a rush to make conclusions. By asking ‘So What?’, this process is slowed down and it forces our brain to question those assumptions. Things which earlier looked really bad do not look all that bad anymore and those which looked good looks even better! Every time you say ‘So what?’, the energy in the thought reduces and YOU are more in control.
After a few successions of ’So what?’, you will realize that the stakes are not as high as you thought it was. That feeling puts you at calm and you can now focus on winning the situation rather than fighting the negative thoughts.
Try it today. If you don’t, so what?
So, what is coaching?
Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash
I am often asked by my potential clients and others - ‘What exactly is coaching?’. My response has been varied but the one that has stuck the most is this simple story.
Let’s say that you have had this nagging thought for the past few days that you need to do an outdoor activity. You’re not sure what that activity is but it has to be outdoors.
Now, you have this special magic box that you know can help you get to an answer. You pull out this magic box and tell it about your nagging feeling. The question box engages you with some powerful questions and through this process of questioning, you come to the realization that what you really want to do is to go on a hike on the Mist Trail in Yosemite. The magic box also helps you visualize what the destination at the end of the trail would look like. You smile and thank the magic box.
One fine morning, you put on your hiking shoes, stuff your backpack with food and water and head out for the trail. Once you reach the head of the trail, you look around but you don’t see any path that you can follow. All you see is a lot of debris. Confused, you pull out your magic box and tell it that you need help finding the trail. The magic box helps you see through the debris where you clearly see your trail! Excited, you embark on the trail all the while keeping your focus to look through and clear the debris - as the magic box suggested.
As you proceed on the trail, you find that you lose your focus often and need some help to get back on the trail again. You reach out to your magic box once more and it helps you to refocus so that you can be on track. Through this constant guidance from the magic box, you soon complete your hike and you finally find yourself at the end of the trail. Here, the vision of the destination that the magic question box helped you paint comes to life and the nagging thought in the back of your head finally gives away to a feeling of achievement!
What you witnessed was “coaching” and the “magic box” is your coach.
Daily habits worth a try
1. The habit of getting tough things done first rather than keeping them on the back burner.
2. The habit of grounding yourself every day. Remind why you do what you do. This purpose is your personal purpose and has nothing to do with what others might impose on you.
3. The habit of daily gratitude for all the things, no matter how small, that you’re lucky to have.
4. The habit of doing focused work in 20-minute intervals. No matter what your life situation is, you are able to get 20-minute slots of work done throughout the day.
5. The habit of saying ‘So What?’ when negative thoughts enter your mind. Keep asking ‘So What?’ repeatedly till the energy of the negative thought diminishes.
The Inaction to Action Recipe
March 24th, 2018. A sea of about 200,000 protesters walked through the streets of Washington D.C. to protest gun violence. Besides the obvious exhibition of the First Amendment, “March For Our Lives” was also a striking example of how ordinary people can move mountains under a combination of certain circumstances and preparedness. Teenagers — who had a day prior spent perfect teenager lives were leading a national movement crossing all demographics, geographical and economic boundaries. The trigger for their action was the shooting of 17 students at their high school — Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
What lead them to take these actions? What gave them the power to galvanize the country behind them while many before them have stood on the sidelines? This article attempts to learn from this event and create one recipe for converting our inaction to actions.
Know your end product
When you set out to cook a new dish, you need to have a very clear understanding of what the end result would look like. You cannot expect to aim for a sandwich and end up with a cookie. The Parkland survivors had a north star — “End Gun Violence”. It was so clear that they had no difficulty in marshaling their resources and the resources of the entire country towards their cause.
What will your end goal taste like? What will you call it? Visualize every aspect of it.
Choose the right Ingredients
Every recipe needs the right ingredients. Without them, the best chefs in the world can only manage to cook mediocre fare. Here are some ingredients you need to convert your inaction to action:
Heaps of Motivation
Without motivation, nothing will move. It is that engine that kick starts an action. The sight of their classmates mowed down by the barrel of a gun motivated the Parkland survivors to bring an end to gun violence. In Psychology Today, Tina Seeling gives this simple structure to evaluate our motivations. You have to identify that motivation for an end goal that you seek. Maybe it’s the desire to manage a large organization, maybe it’s the desire to make a social impact in this world. Maybe it’s a desire to get a peaceful good nights sleep. No motivation is too large or too big. It’s your own personal motivation. Go find it!
A shot of Urgency
The teenagers at Stoneman Douglas High always desired a peaceful world and an end to gun violence. However, what spurred them into action was the sense of urgency that developed immediately after the shooting. Without this sense of urgency, the movement would have died even before it began. In your life, once you figure out the motivation, progress will be tepid if you don’t give it a shot of urgency. Looking for a career change, create a sense of urgency. Looking to complete that presentation, create an artificial sense of urgency. In matters of action, NOW is the most powerful word you have. Use it!
Generous amounts of Self-Belief
Inaction to action does involve a fair bit of uncertainty the antidote to those uncertainties is self-belief. The Parkland survivors were dealing with powerful organizations and decades of failed attempts when they decided to take the issue head-on. However, it was their faith which pulled them through. Now, self-belief may not always be easy to come by and lack of faith could be a deterrent to self-belief itself. Hence, blind self-belief is often a great kickstart strategy. In this excellent Forbes article, Margie Warrell gives an excellent advice on “Acting as if…”. In your attempt to reach out to a prospect, let your self-belief push you through to action. If you are debating on whether to get on the stage to make a presentation but the only thing stopping you is your confidence, let your blind self-belief push you through.
Not only are quality ingredients important, but you need to sequence them right too. Starting your cooking by putting salt in hot oil is going to get you something very unappetizing. When you build up motivation, urgency, and faith — make sure that you don’t put the cart before the horse.
Let a clear goal lead you to motivation. Then build urgency and follow it up with blind faith.
Choose the right tools
You cannot cut veggies with a spatula. A sharp knife is indispensable. The Parkland survivors knew their tools. They understood how to leverage social media and grassroots activism wisely. Without knowing how to reach hundreds of thousands, the movement would have died with a whimper. For you to move from inaction to action, you have to know your tools. For your career move, you’ll need to understand how to use LinkedIn. For selling your services, you’ll need to understand inbound lead-gen tools. The only way to build expertise in these tools is to start using it. As you start using it, you’ll see movement towards your action.
The right amount of heat
If you simmer your dish when you need to boil, you’ll end up with an uncooked dish. Similarly, if you fry it while you need to slow cook it, you’ll end up with burnt food. Both are unappetizing options! The Parkland students did a burst of media interviews soon after the shooting incident, then worked in the background towards the March 24th event and then went full steam during the rally. In your own lives, as you move from inaction to action, apply the right heat. When you are building expertise towards a new skill, you are on steady medium heat. As you go creating some branding, you are on fire. Temper your heat and you’ll have enough energy to see you through action. Too much or too less, you’ll either prematurely kill your efforts or let it die a slow death.
Add your secret sauce.
My wife’s pasta tastes different than any other pasta I have eaten. She will not reveal her secret recipe. That’s her secret sauce. The Parkland survivors had a secret sauce -Witnessing gun violence from the brink of death, their youth, and their social media savviness. They used it to their advantage. In your quest to move from inaction to action, add your own secret sauce. It could be the emotional cover letters that you can write. It could be your ability to reach out to contacts. Your secret sauce is uniquely yours and you don’t have to reveal it. That’s why it’s called a secret!
Don’t forget the garnish
You always remember the well laid out garnish on a good meal. It is a distinctive feature of the meal and sometimes of the chef. The Parkland survivors left a unique signature with the 6-minute silence during the rally or the #enoughisenough hashtag. As you start your actions, think about what unique signatures do you want to leave with your actions. Maybe you always deliver an inspiring quote. Maybe your presentations are always full of interactive graphs and pictures. Identify them and make them your signature. It’ll not only leave a lasting impression on others but will provide an unique energy for future actions.
Celebrate Success
When you’re done preparing your signature meal, you don’t want to just put it in the refrigerator. You want to share it with family and friends and enjoy your creation and also the journey. Similarly, when you achieve success in your actions, celebrate! Make sure you contemplate on your journey from inaction to action, your learnings and how you have grown as a person. Enjoy the moment of success and then get ready to do it all over again!