Category Archives: relationship

On You, Team Captain and Tribal Leader

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 29

To Patients Who Think What You Do Doesn’t Matter:

Think again.

Yesterday I described You, the Elite Athlete.  All great athletes know they do not succeed alone.  They also appreciate the unique contribution they make to their teams.  What teams do you serve?  How do you lead?  It doesn’t matter whether you have a title or designation.  One of my favorite ideas is that no matter our instrument in the orchestra, according to Ben Zander, we can lead from any chair.

For now, think of yourself as Team Captain, or Tribal Leader.  You have invested in yourself by fueling and training, resting and recovering, managing your stress, and cultivating excellent relationships.  Now you can take the returns and reinvest in those around you:

Appraise:  Prioritize self-care

  • Like on an airplane: “Put your own mask on first.” Tribal leaders know that to effectively care for others long term, they first need to be healthy themselves.
  • Practice awareness and management of your emotions, and prevent emotional hijacking, so as to be emotionally available to our teammates and tribe members.

Empathize:  Speak the team’s language(s)

  • Think of your favorite teachers and coaches—they were able to relate to learners at all stages of development and team morale—and lovingly lift us all up.
  • “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” –T. Roosevelt

Inspire:  Lead by example

  • Effective leaders reject victim mentality, take responsibility for our actions, and model accountability for fellow tribe members.
  • When we captains can take our own mistakes in stride, as learning opportunities rather than shameful horrors, we make it safe for our teammates to do the same.
  • Everybody is then free to take more risks, voice more ideas, offer more of their authentic selves as a contribution to the whole,
  • Because they see us, their leaders, the ones who set the tone for the group, doing it, too.
  • Key here also is leading out loud—excellent captains articulate and coach the methods of self-awareness and self-management that help us all succeed.
  • By inspiring individuals to pursue personal excellence, leaders create a supportive milieu for collaboration and collective achievement.

Motivate:  Empower team members

  • Effective captains (coaches, leaders) recognize team members’ strengths and potential, as well as areas for improvement.
  • Rather than shaming teammates for mistakes or deficiencies, good tribal leaders provide feedback and encouragement, and more opportunities for practice and development.
  • They take into account each team member’s personal goals, and help to align them with those of the collective—excellent captains connect individuals to the whole.

If your actions cause others to

Dream more, learn more,

Do more and become more,

You are a leader.

–John Quincy Adams

What would happen if you treated yourself like a true leader?

On You, the Elite Athlete

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 28

To All Patients:

What would happen if you thought of yourself as an elite athlete?

I present tonight the first phase of the presentations I have given this fall to physicians, corporate executives, and tomorrow, a corporate design team.  See how it applies to you:

***

What makes you exactly the same as Pat Summit, Martina Navratilova, Michael Jordan, Dana Torres, Peyton Manning, Serena Williams, Wayne Gretzky, and Walter Payton?  You are an elite athlete.  You have a specific skill set which you spent years training and honing.  You continue, through practice and discipline, to refine it.  It’s an upward striving, just like an Olympian—Higher, Faster, Stronger!  And, you’re part of a team.

So how should you take care of yourself—your very valuable, elite athlete self?

Fuel & Train

  • “Regular people diet and exercise. Athletes fuel and train.” –Melissa Orth-Fray
  • Our bodies are our vehicles. Elite athletes’ vehicles require premium fuel and meticulous maintenance.
  • We all struggle with the same challenges—time, motivation, discipline.
  • Each day we have an opportunity to walk the talk, and practice what we preach. Every good lifestyle choice, no matter how small (apple instead of candy, stand rather than sit), is a step of intention toward health.

Rest & Recover

  • Chronic sleep debt increases risks for diabetes, obesity, impaired immune function: GET MORE SLEEP.
  • Rest and recovery are integral for sustaining long term performance and injury prevention—ie burnout. This applies for both physical and mental exertion.
  • Take your allotted vacations and really disconnect.  The world will still function (temporarily) without you.
  • Broaden your methods: 15 minute walk, 10 minute meditation, 5 minutes of journaling—unwind, unload.

Manage your stress

  • How do you know when you are ‘stressed?’ How/where does stress manifest in your body?
  • What are your existing resilience practices? How quickly do you abandon them when things get busy?
  • Exercise mindfulness: Live in the moment; breathe deeply; speak and act intentionally, not incidentally.
  • We are no different from toddlers—easily emotionally hijacked when tired, hungry, over-extended.
  • Elite athletes use the disciplines above to manage their emotions and stay focused.

Cultivate positive relationships

  • Coaches, teammates, trainers, psychologists, equipment managers—no athlete succeeds alone.
  • We thrive when we feel seen, heard, understood, accepted, loved, and safe.
  • It is only when our relationships are strong and we feel connected, that we can truly care for ourselves and our teams.
  • Who is your support network, and how do they hold you up?
  • Who do you support, and why/how does this fulfill you?

 

What is your sport?  Who is your team?  How does caring for yourself benefit those around you?  And finally, what can you do today, tomorrow, next week, next month, and in the next year, that will elevate your own health and well-being, and that of your team?  Please share your ideas in the comments!

On the Golden Positivity Ratio

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Courtesy of Bryan Jorgensen, Las Vegas, NV, 2016

NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 25

To Patients Seeking Positivity:

Aim for the Golden Ratio!

As many of you know, I have recently undertaken to re-evaluate my Facebook usage.  Not long after I established my account c.2008, I decided to make my page a monument to positivity.  I realized that after I die, it would be the most visible and accessible legacy I leave, and I have total control over what I post.  I minimized complaining and ranting, and when frustrated I would try to write with an attitude of learning, of moving forward.  Lately I tend to leave off the latter.

Somewhere along the way, I think over the past year, but I’m not sure, pessimism and cynicism snuck in, no doubt related to politics.  The layers of consciousness infiltrated by the negative campaigning this time around extend deeper than any other election cycle in my memory—but maybe I just don’t remember.  I think humans have evolved to forget pain as a survival mechanism.  If women remembered all the pain and anxiety of pregnancy, delivery, and caring for a newborn, we would never do it more than once, are you kidding me?

I used to review my Facebook posts and feel elevated.  Today they often bring me down; it feels terrible.

Thankfully, I have some tools to resist the negativity.  I was reminded recently during my 3 Question Journal Shares with Donna over at A Year of Living Kindly.  I remembered something about healthy relationships maintaining a 3:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.  Turns out it’s actually 5:1, widely attributed to observations by Dr. John Gottman, renowned marriage and relationship psychologist.  I think the same thing applies in other realms, too, such as self-talk—a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.  It’s not a far leap to see how this idea pertains to news, social media, and any other human interactions.

Business researchers have discovered a 5.6:1 ideal ratio in highly functioning organizations, whereas low-performing teams’ ratio landed close to 0.3:1.

For more information on the science behind the theory (and motivation for practice), I highly recommend Positive Psychology in a Nutshell, by Ilona Boniwell.  For a brief overview, check out this PDF.  The book summarizes the origins of positive psychology as a field, and the research and wisdom of its study and application.  For example, psychologist Barbara Frederickson has described how positive emotions contribute to our personal growth and development (taken from Boniwell’s text):

  1. Positive emotions broaden our thought-action repertoires
  2. Positive emotions undo negative emotions
  3. Positive emotions enhance resilience

So hereafter, I will pay more attention.  I will likely continue to share articles that illuminate my concerns for the future.  But I will aim for the 5:1 positivity ratio.  Holy cow, can you imagine if that’s actually what we saw on the news and social media?  And why not aspire to 5:1 in my personal interactions, too?  That’s taking charge of my own happiness, yes.