True Currency and How We Control It

Working with clients and with my own stewardship of resources over the last economically challenging year, I've seen so much attention being focused on money issues and frustration that I wanted to share an "aha!" awareness that came forward for me recently.

Thought is the real currency of life. Directed, deliberate thought is the stuff from which everything flows. We act as if it all comes from the dollars in our bank accounts, and later down the creation pipeline, it does show up there. But that isn't where it began. All abundance we consider to be good, whether money, love, health, friends--all of it began with thought. Stay with me, I know this will be as good a reminder to some of you as it was to me.

There are days when we feel great: smart, capable and believing that life is good. From that place, we agree to do something that is a bit of a stretch for us. As the day to deliver on that promise comes closer, let's say we are in a bit of a funk emotionally and we cannot imagine what persuaded us to make such a commitment. We literally don't have access to the perspective that gave birth to that idea. What?

I'll say it again: in every moment, we have a certain perspective on life, ourselves, our world. When we feel good and are thinking uplifting thoughts, like "life is good," and "I am capable and intelligent," we have access to a point of view that vanishes when we are plugged into less positive thoughts like, "Life sucks!" or "I'm a loser."

Every time we consciously direct our thoughts to looking for the best in ourselves, others and the world, we are in a creative mode, generating positive energy that eventually becomes and idea we act on and somewhere down the line generates the cash that lands in our bank account. But it all began with a single, deliberate thought.

Your Magnum Opus

We hear about the great works of brilliant people like famous composers or artists or writers and how a certain one of their works stands out as their best. The dictionary defines Magnum Opus as the single greatest work of an artist's life--her masterpiece.

I propose that we shift that idea just a bit to see that we are the greatest masterpiece of our lives. We are constantly growing, perfecting and refining ourselves to be better than we were yesterday, and last month, last year. We are constantly evolving into our greater selves. We are the Magnum Opus of our lives, and the works we produce are merely vehicles to allow us to work on ourselves, express our creativity and brilliance. We do it moment by moment, day by day, choice by choice.

Knowing this frees us to be involved in our unfolding in a more patient and loving way. We are in it for the long haul, constantly improving. We are masterpieces in the making, and knowing that allows us to experiment and take risks with the work we do, because each project is another opportunity to express a part of ourselves never before expressed. We are a work in progress, and looking at our lives in wide swaths of time, we see the magnificence of our own unfolding selves, and each other.

Today, look anew at the people in your life. See them as master craftsmen, shaping themselves in very specific ways to be the best they can be.

Learn to Discern

You know that feeling you get after overindulging, kind of like after Thanksgiving dinner? My brain starts to feel bloated in that same way. Sometimes we overload our thought system with too much data, and it makes us feel sluggish. Information is so readily available at our fingertips now, that we must develop a new skill: discernment. Here are 3 questions to ask to help keep your focus on what's most important:

1. What are my top 3 priorities this week? Today?
2. How much time is required (ball park) to give them my best?
3. How can my professional reading time be best used today, and how much time, exactly, am I giving to that?

Once those priorities are identified, be true to them. Decide in advance how much time you will devote to answering emails or on returning calls. Idle curiosity can lead us to a news site that becomes like a rabbit hole that we don't emerge from for two hours. That leaves no time for our best creative expression or the realization of our dearest goals. No one else is going to stand over us and encourage our most inspiring contribution. That is up to each of us. Discernment is a skill worth cultivating.

Authenticity

Ever notice how easily we compare ourselves to others and feel like we come up short? I noticed over the weekend how many fashion mags show perfect young women with no laugh lines or visible flaws. Then saw how many wrote in to a magazine that published a photo of a model comfortably baring it all even though she had a bit of a tummy pooch. Readers wrote in that finally, they were seeing a woman who looked like them. Can't we all relate to that?

I caught myself this morning feeling a bit critical of my own work process, until I stopped and realized that it is my natural process which works well for me and so what if it doesn't follow a 9-to-5, Monday through Friday format? As a writer, I gather for a period of time and then when it feels just right, I synthesize what I've gathered, re-package the information into an article, book, workshop and distribute. It isn't always linear. I enjoy the organic nature of my work. I love having clients come for coaching at just the right moment in their lives to make the greatest impact. My process may not look pretty on a chart, but it feels just right and feeds my authentic self and my soul. Who can ask for more than that? What a relief it is to say, "My way is a little different than most, and it works for me."

Listen--Can You Hear It?

How often does the quiet, confident voice of intuition speak, and we aren't listening? Often. The world can be noisy and we fill it with busyness. When we do have drive time or time to simply be, we often fill it with music or television. Nothing wrong with that. However, I challenge us all to an experiment. Today, or tomorrow morning, present a question you would like clarity on, and ask your intuition to provide the answer. Then give it some room to be heard. Take ten minutes of your commute to be quiet and listen. I wonder what answers we will hear when we simply get still and hear that steady, calm voice.

I'll get back to you on that. On the way to my next appointment, I plan to listen.

To Get Better Solutions, Ask Better Questions

The ideas and solutions we generate depend largely on the inner dialogue that we have with ourselves and more specifically, the questions we ask and answer.

Most of us have an inner conversation rolling along all day every day in those moments when we aren’t engaging with others. The quality and nature of the questions we ask determines the ideas and solutions we are able to see.

Here is an example: David, a product design engineer, has been working on a widget for three months and learns this morning that there is a major defect resulting from faulty test equipment. If the question he asks is, “What are they going to think of me in tomorrow’s design review?” he will head down a thought path quite different than if he asked a more positive question like, “What’s the fastest and best way to get accurate test results now?” or “Who might have the equipment required to re-test?”

When we learn to ask better questions—the ones pointed toward solutions and possibilities, we get better results faster. Here are a few examples of open-ended questions that lead to positive exploration:

• How can this situation be a win for everyone involved?
• What possibilities might exist that I haven’t thought of yet?
• What possibilities might exist that I haven’t thought of yet?
• If we looked at this from the perspective that the challenge was resolved successfully, and went step-by-step backwards, what would have happened right before it was resolved, and before that, etc.?

By asking these kinds of questions, we give ourselves access to fresh perspectives and often create breakthrough ideas.

To-Do Lists and Not-To-Do Lists

Each of us is many faceted, managing career, relationships and life. Our daily lists of tasks have grown so long, many of us have transferred them to the computer. At the risk of being called a heretic, I'm suggesting we do two things to take back the true feeling of accomplishment and be more effective in the things that really matter:

1. Limit projects on To-Do lists to the top five, and preferably keep it on paper. Why? Because psychologically, five is a manageable number and 67 isn't. If you are working on the top 5 priorities for the day, and you get each one complete, you can always add five more, but you'll get a bigger dose of the achievement high we all crave by focusing in on the most important items and making headway on those. If we keep it on a calendar page or index card, there is a satisfaction in crossing it off that is missing with a computer, plus it simply is too easy to keep adding to an electronic list until it becomes distorted beyond reality and we stop taking it seriously. There are so many items on that list that we simply begin to ignore them--we are overloaded.
2. Make a list of things not to do--those distractions that often take you off course and eat up precious chunks of time. E-mails, calls, drop bys, Pottery Barn catalogs. We get to decide which ones move us toward our goals and which ones slow us down.

By taking five minutes at the beginning of the day to decide what 5 things are top priority and what you will postpone, for now, your achievement and effectiveness will rapidly improve. We sometimes put ourselves under enormous pressure to stay up with all this information coming our way every day. No one can. There is simply too much. By necessity, we must become specialists who focus on those things we excel in and give our attention there. Prioritizing is a skill worth cultivating as our pace becomes crazier. We must be on target with knowing what is important to us and maintaining our focus in the face of distractions.