Book Review: Being Genuine

Thomas D’Ansembourg, Puddle Dancer Press, 2007

 (review originally published Feb. 2009)

Being Genuine is simply stated, one of the best books I have read all year. It very clearly and effectively conveys a process for communicating with others in a genuine and non-judgmental way. Thomas D’Ansembourg is a student of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication Process but rather than simply restating Rosenberg’s principles, he enhances and adds a new dimension to non-violent communication based on his experience as a psychotherapist and youth counselor. Anyone who learns and practices his four simple steps will quickly discover that their everyday communication becomes clearer, less judgmental and less conflictual because they are taking responsibility for their feelings and actions and creating a space to connect. I have never come across an easier way to show people how they can get their needs met without fear of conflict.

Originally published in France in 2001, the English translation has only recently been published in North America. As D’Ansembourg cares deeply about the language he uses, the book is beautifully and elegantly written, a joy to read with a terrific translation. He wears several hats at appropriate times in the book. As a psychotherapist he delves into the psychology of why and how we become disassociated from ourselves. Being nice is a function of neglecting our needs, of not listening to ourselves so we can fulfill the needs of others. As a philosopher, D’Ansembourg examine larger theoretical issues of the individual in society and the meaning and value we place on language. As a coach, he is gentle and thoughtful but persistent as he guides us through our confusion and anxiety with practical, easy to follow steps and appropriate actions.

As one who reads a lot of self help books (and contributed to the genre) I am happy to say that this book is a cut above the rest. The principles he outlines are so basic and so crucial to good communication, every child should be taught them at an early age. He makes the point that if a fraction of military budgets were devoted to teaching communication skills, there would be fewer conflicts and less crimes of aggression. So go our priorities. The basic problem is more of us are taught to ‘be nice’ rather than to be genuine. The result is that we grow up servicing the needs of others and even when we know something is wrong, we lack the language and the skills to be our authentic selves. As a coach I see this “servicing” behavior all too often. Having a resource like Being Genuine makes my task of transforming clients easier.

I can best describe Being Genuine as a highly readable manual of authentic communication, full of examples, theory and genuine warmth. D’Ansembourg describes the four steps:

• Observation: We are reacting to something we observe, we hear, or we’re saying to ourselves
• Feeling: The above observation generates within us one or more feelings.
• Need: The feelings guide us to our needs.
• Request: Aware now of our needs, we can make a request or implement concrete action.

That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. The trick for the learner of being genuine is to break free of old beliefs and patterns but this can be done with a bit of awareness and some practice. D’Ansembourg believes that what passes today for communication is aggressive and violent. For instance when judgments and blame come up, it’s like slamming a door in the conversation. The receiver of this treatment usually responds defensively and often returns the blame and aggression. His method of communication is like opening a door and inviting your partner through it to come in and have a chat by the fire. But rather than waiting on them hand and foot, it’s about articulating your needs and feelings to help ensure that you get seen by the other. If their needs are not the same as yours then a compromise can be negotiated, but this is only possible when each side is aware of each other’s needs. 

Although his respectful techniques may be a bit too touchy-feely for the office bully, the spirit of his teaching can easily be adapted and integrated into a clearer awareness of how humans communicate or more likely, fail to communicate. I have integrated D’Ansembourg’s simple and effective techniques into my coaching with great success, especially for clients who have spent too much of their lives being nice at their own expense. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to communicate authentically or to any professional who is in the business of working with clients who can use a boost in the communication area, which in my experience is just about everyone.

Bradley Foster is an experienced Toronto-based life and executive coach with clients on three continents. He is the author of Deep Coaching: A Guide to Self Directed Living and regularly contributes articles and reviews to magazines and journals. He can be reached at bfoster@giantstepscoaching.com or you can visit his website at: www.giantstepscoaching.com.

Holiday Greetings

I would like to wish all my current and former clients and readers of my blog the best holiday wishes.

Thinking of New Year’s resolutions? It’s not too early to start assessing changes you would like to make. Have a look at my previous post about my Report Card.

For those of you who are curious, I persisted in making the changes and it’s going well. I feel much more engaged, challenged and social. Consequently I feel much more satisfied with my life. So here’s a challenge to you…consider how you spend your psychic energy each day. Are you investing it wisely to give you the maximum results? If not then it’s time to give yourself a report card. See you in the New Year! Just a reminder, I will be on holiday until January 12. Talk to you soon!

Time to Give Yourself a Report Card?

New Year’s eve is the time when most of us typically make resolutions to better our life. For the vast majority, resolutions last a couple days at best. There are no quick fixes. Looking over the year ahead we see the benefits of our resolutions. We see our health improved over the long term but by the time January 1 rolls around we have to deal with the short term pain of refusing another donut. I propose a more effective way of resolving the conundrum of short term pain versus long term gain. Give yourself a report card.

A report card is taking time to step back and look at the big picture of your life, your goals, habits and intentions. This takes objectivity and it might take some time to get good at it. Identify your goals first. Your goals should be general enough to deal with any changes in your life. For instance, rather than having the goal of keeping in touch with friends and family, broaden it to something like nurturing relationships. Make sure your list of goals is as comprehensive as possible.

Once you have your goals, write a list of all your habits under headings of good, bad and neutral. You can get a spouse or a friend to help you with this. If you are impartial you probably will begin to see clusters of habits. For instance many of my bad habits tend to cluster around isolating myself in colder weather. I tend to disengage and many of my bad habits revolve around doing things in seclusion. I spend more time on the Internet, I play too much Majong, I’m not as social as I would like, I don’t exercise as much, I tend to drink a little more, I tend to have less structure, I get less accomplished, I challenge myself less and generally mope around some days. This can lead to lower energy, feeling sad and empty. I see all these bad habits as connected, like a spider web. Losing one of these habits won’t effect the over all pattern, in fact changing just one habit would be extremely difficult.

I focus on my good habits as well. There is a lot I do well that I want to continue. Have a look at your list of bad habits. Are some of them are connected to each other? Now have a look at your goals. I have goals around maintaining my health, being social, challenging myself, nurturing relationships, supporting myself, learning and travel that my bad habits undermine. None of my bad habits support these goals. I gave these habits a poor grade because they reduce my quality of life. It’s not how I want to live. More importantly, these habits affect my mood and outlook. The result? There is a disconnect between my intentions and what I actually do. What we actually do is what determines our quality of life. It’s clear that way of living required a tune up.

After the shock wore off I came up with a plan of action. Looking at the web of habits from a holistic perspective I see that they circle around boredom and a lack of challenge. I realized if I could break the cycle I would free up time, feel better about myself, be more engaged, challenged and happier. So I wrote a new list of things I could fill my time up with that are in line with my goals. How many of us have a list of things we would love to do if we only had the time? I started writing them down and was surprised to see how long it was. Each item on the list engages one or several goals and gives me the opportunity to break my cycle of bad habits.

Since bad habits are usually well entrenched, how do we break the cycle? One thing I did was to create a new intention—to break out of isolation. To do that I had to plan my time better so I didn’t have so much time to drift into laziness and malaise. I circled some of the items on my to do list and began to fit them into my spare time. I looked into volunteering, downloaded the schedule for the local pool, called up some old friends, signed up for some workshops, and since one of my goals is to write more, I’m writing this post.

My report card was a wake up call for me. It’s not so much about using my time wisely or keeping myself busy, it’s about living the life I want to live. It’s about living with intention. The report card and what you do about it is where the rubber hits the road. I still need solitary time when I can read, write, reflect and even waste a bit of time browsing the Internet. I just do it with a little more intention and choice.

If I notice I am sliding into seclusion again, which may well happen from time to time, I will self correct. I’m hoping that I get momentum going that makes those bad habits difficult to practice. I already feel my mood shifting, I feel more engaged and even happier. Go easy on yourself. Habits take a long time to shift. If you notice yourself engaged in one, do a quick check in to see if there is something your would rather be doing. There is no point in waiting until December 31.

Speaking Circles

Public speaking strikes fear into the heart of many of us because of the risk of humiliating ourselves so publically. If you feel panic when you have to get up on stage, forget everything you have ever learned and listen to Lee Glickstein‘s take on public speaking.

“Speaking Circles programs transform the way people communicate by focusing on the essential first step missing in conventional public speaking trainings — the connection between speaker and listeners.” Lee Glickstein, the founder of Speaking Circles has written a couple of books on the subject, holds workshops and speaking circles and has produced a nice introduction via DVD called Relational Presence Intensive DVD. I spent a couple hours with the DVD to get a flavor of how he creates relational presence in a workshop environment. The DVD is basically raw footage from a weekend workshop but the power of Lee’s techniques are apparent. His approach is revolutionary because he creates intimacy between himself and individuals in the audience.

You can watch short videos he has produced on his Youtube Channel or you can attend one of his teleseminars to get a sense of what Speaking Circles is all about. If you want to know more, I would recommend one of his books or the DVD.

Getting Ready for Winter

Squirrels always remind me of storing up reserves to get through the winter. I admire their curiosity and their industry. Now that it's colder and there is less to do around the house, I have been spending my time reading and going for long walks. This month I have reviews of a couple of the books I thought might be of interest to clients and those interested in self growth. You can read them below. I am currently reading Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and What you can change... and What you Can't, by Martin Seligman (the founder of positive psychology). I hope this newsletter finds you in flow and energized.

Bradley Foster

Resilience

My colleague, coach Ruth Garret PhD has produced a clearly written, fun and engaging eBook on resilience. She nicely straddles the gap between a well-researched scholarly book, referencing all the current studies and motivational and inspirational self help.

Topics are neatly broken down into easily understood, informative chapters and illustrated with wonderful anecdotes and metaphors. I would recommend this eBook to my clients. It’s available from Ruth’s website: http://www.icoachingandmediation.com. So, are you a carrot, an egg or a bean?

A Master Class in Gremlin Taming - Book Review

Book Review:

A Master Class in Gremlin Taming: The Absolutely Indispensable Next Step for Freeing Yourself from the Monster of the Mind

Rick Carson, Collins, 2008

By Bradley Foster – Giant Steps Coaching

One of the joys of being a coach is reading books that help me become a better coach and have the added advantage of helping me as a person. Rick Carson’s book is one of these volumes that has a two fold advantage and it was a pleasure to read on both levels. Reading it gave me useful tools that I can use to help clients and it gave me useful reminders that I can put into practice each day.

Rick Carson’s Taming your Gremlin is a classic book of self-development, written over 25 years ago. It has helped hundreds of thousands quiet negative voices in their heads that hold them back. Although Rick has revised the original work, his Master Class goes deeper with new techniques for freeing yourself from the “Monster of the Mind”. Rather than focusing on what’s going on in our heads, the Master Class is more focused on being genuine with ourselves and responsible in our relationships. His writing couldn’t be more clear, his techniques more elegant, practical and effective for achieving intimacy with yourself and others in your life. Time and time he reminds us to focus our awareness and being aware of our breath. So let’s take this one breath at a time.

One of Rick’s techniques of interpersonal communication is called Peeling the Onion. If you follow his system, even in conflictual situations, you will reach a deeper level of understanding and communication with your partner.

Quite simply, the system is:

Simply Notice

Describe

Hush

Breathe

Listen

Or as he playfully refers to it: SNDHBL. It’s hard to describe how powerful this system is when communicating with others. Simply noticing refers to what is true for you in the moment rather than what you are thinking which tends to be more about what was or the way you would like things to be. This is the authenticity about yourself that is so important to describe to your partner. It takes a lot of practice to get this down. Having said what you notice, hush, breathe and listen creates a space for your partner to reciprocate. Beautiful. Simple. Elegant.

If you haven’t read Taming your Gremlin, you will find this book gives you enough of a review of the basic principles so you won’t feel like you are missing something. His chapter on hypnotic preconceptions is especially good. I love the way he talks about beliefs, “remember, beliefs, even the noblest of them are just opinions you have developed loyalty to.” Hypnotic preconceptions are how we have figured out how the world works. It’s our stories, our beliefs and they are almost always wrong. Our beliefs keep us from being genuine, of living a heart-felt existence and gets in the way of intimacy with those closest to us. This book is a guide to showing you how to develop greater intimacy.

Rick’s book reminds me how simple effective, genuine communication can be when we can get out of the way. It’s all about being heart-centered rather than being in your head where gremlins and hypnotic preconceptions hold sway. Rick provides an elegant methodology to living a responsible, authentic and self aware life.

Welcome to October

I’ve spent a large part of the previous month talking to a lot of different people about self-discipline. I’ve learned how differently we all master our days, and about how I work too. You can read the article I wrote about self discipline in the previous post. I also gave a workshop on motivation and self-discipline for a group of entrepreneurs in Whitby.

I have recommended Dr. Timothy Pychyl’s podcasts on procrastination to many clients for his learned and practical approach. I highly recommend one I found very useful for understanding human behaviour. The link is: http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/a_useful_theory_for_understanding_our_behaviour

In today's world, balancing school, work, kids and more, most of us can only hope for the recommended eight hours of sleep. Examining the science behind our body's internal clock, Jessa Gamble reveals the surprising and substantial program of rest we should be observing in this short TED video.

If the TED video player is not visible on your email, you can view it on my blog at: http://giantstepscoaching.blogspot.com.

Self-Discipline: A Balancing Act

For me, the phrase self-discipline conjures up images of being strict, tough and perhaps even rigid to force myself to get things done. For the purposes of this article I use the phrase to describe the way we regulate and direct ourselves. What self-discipline looks like to you may not be what it looks like to me. How we do things is a deeply personal expression of our wants, needs, intentions, self-care, strengths, responsibility, beliefs and values, an outward reflection of what is important for us. I think of self-discipline as a continual recalibration and adjustment of what’s important in my life. All of us struggle with doing what needs to be done versus doing what we desire. None of us are immune from distraction. We live in an age of distractions that tempt us from good habits and intentions. How comfortable are you with your ability to balance competing needs and desires in your day?

Self-discipline is a balancing act. We are a collection of values, motivations, intentions, fears, potential, abilities, quirks, strengths and stories we tell ourselves. How all of this translates into self-discipline depends upon how aligned we are with our goals and how we balance priorities day to day. The balance you strike is reflective of your personal style of self-regulation. Are you happy with the way you balance your life or do you tend to let things slide a long time before you notice things are out of whack? One thing I notice about people who are content with their ability to regulate themselves is that they are aware of their priorities, they are clear about them, they take responsibility for them, they take time to focus on them and they have a way of balancing competing demands on their time. My intention isn’t to judge or tell you that you should be more efficient, just be aware of how you feel about what you do in a day and notice if it works for you.

As self-discipline is so deeply personal, let me tell you about what I do and don’t do well. I learned some of my self-discipline from my mother who has a lot of good habits and pushes through her resistance like a bull. Although I developed some good habits, I am not a creature of habit. I tend to do things as I feel like them. When I exercise good self-regulation, this feels good. When I’m not, the train slips off the rails pretty quickly. I tend to put off things like paperwork, collecting overdue accounts or cleaning. I have to face the fact that I may never ever feel like doing paperwork or making difficult calls. I put these things on a weekly list of action steps related to my goals. I want to be financially responsible and have a neat house. So even when I don’t feel like doing paperwork, it goes into the hopper and usually gets done in the course of a week. When I face resistance to doing something onerous like doing my taxes I break it down into small achievable steps like sorting receipts, invoices and bank statements. I do my best to make it feel like something I want to do by listening to music, having a cup of coffee and having a time limit to get it done.

As I write this article I am aware of the tug of many distractions: checking email; wanting to have a cup of coffee; wanting to get up and stretch; feeling my neck is sore. Sometimes it’s tough to focus on my intentions. If I am not responsible and I don’t hold myself accountable, I find myself emptying the dishwasher instead of doing what I intend, which is to sit and finish this article. The tug of distraction eventually proves irresistible so I use it as a way of taking a break and even rewarding myself for having applied myself and resisted distraction as long as I could. So let me tell you how I regulate myself …

I understand self-discipline as the practice of noticing what’s going on in my life, identifying and clarifying my priorities (my weekly list), balancing and making adjustments as I go along. The best metaphor I can think of is it’s like driving a car. Imagine looking over my shoulder while I drive: I have a goal or an intention (to go somewhere), I get in the car and make myself comfortable, I check conditions, make adjustments, scan the road and set off. While I am driving, I continually check the mirrors, stay focused, adjust my speed and watch for other drivers, all while keeping my eye on the road. Not only am I interacting with other vehicles and responding to them, I am tempted by distractions and aware of other things I want to do. If I avoid distractions and stick to my intentions I will make it to my destination without turning into a fast food place or sending a text message while driving.

When I face a challenge, I take a deep breath then I check in with myself and notice what happens. I feel things moving around. What I notice is a dynamic balancing as I mentally move around priorities and make things fit together again. I might do this dozens of times a day, whenever I have to switch from one activity to another, to make sure I’m applying myself in the way I intend. I think of my brain as having a shifter. When I complete a task my brain is always asking, “what’s next?” The question, ‘what’s next’ is the shifter. As long as I have a clear idea of my priorities and stick to them, shifting from one priority to another is effortless and clear. When that happens, I have a productive day and feel satisfied. When I am unclear about what’s next, I become prone to distraction. I’m prey to procrastination until I feel I know what’s next. This is where my list of action steps helps me figure a way out. Spending too much time in distraction mode gives me that sweetly sick empty feeling I had when I was a kid when I ate too much candy. That’s when I know it’s time to get back to doing something more satisfying.

I noticed that many distractions came up for me while writing this article because I found it difficult to wrap my head around this topic, making distraction and avoidance almost welcome. Now that the piece is almost finished I am beginning to feel a sense of accomplishment, empowerment and satisfaction. It takes focus, determination and persistence to push through resistance and avoidance. After all, I’m the only one who cares whether I write this article.

Let me leave you with one more element of self-discipline – self-care. I think it’s important to be responsible and balance my goals because it’s a way of caring for myself. If I don’t care enough about myself to do what I say I want then who will do them for me? I am constantly balancing self care with care for others. Think of a spectrum that ranges from selfish (extreme self care) to being in the service of others (an absence of self care). I balance my needs, wants and desires, but not at the expense of others I care about. It takes discipline and self-awareness to strike a balance that’s right for you. I can care for others but not at my own expense. It’s a balancing act. It’s about you. I think I’ll make some coffee and empty that dishwasher now…

Swimming in a Sea of Ideas

Swimming in a Sea of Ideas

Bradley Foster

Giant Steps Coaching

Creativity can be one of the best strengths to have. It helps you to solve problems, makes you versatile and able to roll with change, which in this world is a real plus. Typically my creative clients tell me that they usually do well at anything they put their hand to. For all its merits, creativity can be one of the most incapacitating strengths because sometimes there are just too many ideas to follow. Having choice is a good thing but having too much choice can be debilitating. Being focused, having choices, and not too many of them, helps creativity work for you.

Creative people are like curious divers in a beautiful coral sea. They are free to explore the colorful shapes, new and interesting adaptations. They can sit and watch a tiny crab searching for its dinner or follow a clown fish to see where it goes. Maybe they get distracted by something more interesting and follow it for a while just as one idea replaces another. Synapses fire and recombine in fascinating and odd ways, which can be inspiring and rejuvenating. This is the ideal part of genius, a head swimming with ideas. The ability to be curious and open minded spits out new approaches and ideas no one has thought of before. One thought begets another.

A client once told me that she wasted a lot of time watching her bird feeder. To me, this was how she relaxed, replenishing her creative and spiritual needs; hardly a waste of time. She was opening up to what was, living in the moment. This is most definitely a good use of time unless she does it all day. Sometimes our need to be productive and efficient gets in our way.

Among the clients I work with are creative people who get stuck. I believe everyone is creative to some degree. They want more out of life; they recognize they have some talents but they either lack focus, discernment, or confidence in their abilities. After a lot of trying, they have little to show for their gifts but feelings of confusion and a sense of frustrated potential. It doesn’t help that generating ideas and solutions is generally underappreciated and undervalued. It’s no wonder how a lot of creatives feel like they are spinning their wheels in the mud.

Creativity is pretty amorphous. It means different things to different people and the general sense I get is that most people seem to think it has to do with being artistic. To me, creativity means making something out of nothing: generating a solution, a useful idea, a song, or solving a problem. The emphasis is on create. It’s all well and good to have lots of ideas, lots of choices but what good are all they if you don’t use them to create something, especially for your own benefit? It’s when you know you have a great idea and follow it with all your drive and passion that you can be truly creative. If you are not actually creating, you might be facing some obstacles.

Let’s have a look at these obstacles:

Lack of focus: Creativity by its very nature is unfocused. Productive creativity needs a container to help focus ideas. Having goals and a vision of where you want to be in five years may be all the focus you need to follow some ideas and ignore others. By container, I referring to parameters or a bit of structure that helps you focus.

Lack of Discernment: Some creatives never met an idea they didn’t like. We all need a way to discern how we want to spend our time. Creatives are notorious for starting something then abandoning it when an even better idea comes along. To be able to create means you have to see things through to completion. When your needs, values and goals are in alignment it is easier to discern what ideas will take you to your goals.

Lack of Confidence: As creativity is generally misunderstood and underappreciated, it’s typical for creative people to give their ideas away for free and fail to reap the rewards. When others undervalue our strengths, it’s easy for us to undervalue them too, leading to a lack of confidence and frustration.

Lack of Responsibility/Awareness: Not taking responsibility for our strengths lead us to down play them, even make a joke of them. There may be underlying fears or a lack of awareness of the power of their ideas that keep creatives from taking them seriously. Creative people who are still “in the closet” tend to downplay their abilities, make jokes about them or tend to be humble about their ideas.

With creativity being so nebulous and individual, you may be wondering how I coach my creative clients? Although each style of creativity is exclusive to the individual, creatives tend to get stuck in the same ways.

Focus: I encourage my clients to narrow down their goals and their vision of how they want to live their lives. I help align their needs, goals and values so they can understand how to make creativity work for them in a focused and sustained way. I encourage them to consciously create “containers” or structures where their creativity can grow.

Discernment: By being a mirror, giving them perspective and questioning them, it helps give them a bigger picture that puts their ideas into context. Looking at past decisions we narrow down the criteria for discernment in accordance with their values, beliefs and needs.

Confidence: Through feedback my clients begin to understand and value how unique and important their creativity is to them. Helping my clients understand how to turn the flow of creativity to their benefit can really boost confidence and awareness.

Responsibility: I help my clients understand, become aware and take responsibility for who they are and what they can accomplish. Being creative is who you are and you have a responsibility to use it wisely, make it work for you or be overwhelmed by it.

Having some awareness of how creativity generates its own obstacles will help you avoid them. Not only will you be more adaptable, you will be more productive and get what you need. Appreciating and valuing your own strengths is the first step toward having others appreciate and value you. Knowing yourself if the key.

Creativity is fluid, sometimes it’s there and then it’s gone. Like anything to do with us, our own creativity is too close for us to judge. It’s like asking a fish to describe what water feels like. It doesn’t have any idea because it has nothing to compare it with. It helps to have a second pair of eyes to look over your shoulder, be a mirror and give you feedback. Like the shoemaker’s children who went shoeless, creatives are often the least likely to benefit from their ideas.

Creativity doesn’t thrive in a vacuum; it needs some sort of a container just like a builder needs a blueprint to build a house. Most creative people rankle at too much structure and many believe that they need little or no structure. It’s my belief that creativity needs a container to be most productive and focused. If I told you to be creative, I’d probably get a blank stare. But if I said I had a particular problem that I needed a solution to in ten minutes, I’d probably get some pretty good solutions within the time limit. It helps if you can make your own container, some parameters, dimensions and yes, even a bit of structure to make creativity work for you and helps you focus on productive solutions.

To make creativity work for you it’s important to nurture your creativity; learn how to discern great ideas from ephemeral ones; consciously create a container for your thoughts, keep focused until you see the idea through and take responsibility and value your ideas. If you find yourself getting stuck, see if you fit into any of the categories above and harness your creativity to get going again (or call me). Good luck!

Back to School?

It’s that time again. The air is fresher, crisper in more northern locales and many people are heading to school or starting classes. It feels ingrained in me to seek learning this time of the year. I have a stack of books to read, a few courses on DVD I plan to get through and a few workshops I am planning to attend this fall. It feels great to feel that excitement for learning again. What’s new for you? What are you going to learn this fall?

Gratitude gives you so much to be grateful for…

I’ve been considering gratitude a lot lately. I never used to think much about it, maybe because it was something I always took for granted and when we are a certain way we don’t give it much of a thought. I notice it now and appreciate expressions of gratitude whether it’s because of something I did or just noticing it. I really notice it when someone is lacking in gratitude. Don Draper, the main character in the hit series Mad Men could be the poster boy the absence of gratitude. He Is probably one of the luckiest men on Madison Ave. yet he never acknowledges his good fortune. Lack of gratitude can make your life much emptier and unhappy, never mind those around you.

Gratitude is one of what I call a keystone strength. When you are grateful a lot of other strengths come along for the ride. For instance, the ability to love and be loved would be more difficult if not impossible without gratitude. Perspective is a strength that is reinforced by using gratitude. You might be down on your luck with everything working against you but a bit of gratitude can show you that other people are worse off and in fact you could be doing much worse. Faith and spirituality are hollow without gratitude. Have you ever noticed that it’s uncommon to find someone who is both negative and grateful.

Gratitude is an optimistic and particularly social strength; used primarily in interaction with other people but we can also be grateful for things. For instance it is possible to be grateful for the beauty of the day or for flowers or for spiritual fulfillment. It is a strength that gives us perspective and appreciation for how lucky we are. Anyone who has been through or been close to someone who has gone through Alcoholics Anonymous understands how they use gratitude to build a future for themselves. Gratitude gives you so much to be grateful for. But it isn’t enough just to feel grateful, it is important that there is a corresponding articulation of it too. That is, it’s not enough to feel grateful, you have to express it too. Gratitude is a transcendent strength, something that connects you to something outside yourself that is larger.

If you can express gratitude, you are “luckier” because people will be drawn to you. I like helping people and I feel so much more engaged and appreciated when I feel gratitude come back to me for my actions. I feel like helping them more. How do you feel when you go out of your way to help someone and they don’t appreciate your efforts? You might feel a bit of resentment toward them. How likely are you to help that person again? I noticed that just now when I held the door open for a guy who was coming in behind me at Starbucks. He didn’t thank me, he didn’t acknowledge me in any way. Then scooted ahead of me in the line up for coffee. What, am I a sucker? I feel irritated to be treated as a non-entity but to have my kindness taken advantage of makes me feel resentful.

You don’t need to understand what gratitude is to notice when it is totally absent. When I experience a lack of gratitude, it’s like a social vacuum that sucks all that is good into it. This week, as an experiment, notice gratitude or lack of gratitude of it in those around you, then become see if you can become aware of your own. Remember, it’s not enough to experience the feeling of gratitude but it is the expression of your gratitude that is important for those on the receiving end. It’s all about impact and gratitude makes a huge impact.

Bradley Foster

September, 2010

Review: Richard St. John Presents 8 To Be Great

I saw Richard St. John present a talk on his new book: 8 to be Great: The 8 traits successful people have in common. He interviewed hundreds of successful people to find out what they all had in common (spoiler alert: I’m going to tell you what they are). He distilled the interviews down into various qualities these people (who include Warren Buffet and Bill Gates) and figured out what they all had in common. He discovered that they all had 1) passion, 2) They had fun working and spent a long time at it; 3) They had the ability to focus on just one thing; 4) They had the ability to push themselves harder; 5) They had great ideas; 6) They got good at what they did through constant improvement; 7) They all believed in the idea of service; and 8) They persisted, even in the face of failure.

I believe Richard has done his homework and has a lot to tell us about how to be successful. I have to quibble with his notion of success though. He takes it for granted that these people are successful, yet he never defines what he means by success which I felt was a bit odd. His subjects are all well off and in some cases, ridiculously so, and they are all good at what they do but it’s a bit of stretch to attribute success to them without saying what he means by success. Richard believes that it’s okay to get out of balance, to work long hours, to sacrifice time with family and friends, even skipping the gym all in the name of being successful. That’s not my definition of success. It sounds more like being a workaholic in my books but then one of my definitions of success is to lead a balanced life.

So what is success? I believe that we all succeed on our own terms and it’s key for each of us to be able to articulate our conditions of success. How else will we know when we have succeeded? After all, using Bill Gates as a measuring stick for success is bound to make us all feel depressed. One way to measure success is to set goals, both short and long term so we know what we are shooting for and we know when we’ve arrived. We can certainly take a page from Richard’s book to help us on our way but why not measure success on our own terms?

By the way, I think there are a couple elements key to success that Richard ignored, maybe because they are not identified as traits. Luck and timing are just as important to you as they are to the multitudes interviewed by Richard St. John. After all, how successful would Bill Gates be if he founded Microsoft in today’s business environment? Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Having good luck is really a matter of doing the groundwork and keeping your eyes open. Timing is a little more ephemeral but it requires perspective and a bit of strategy to make it work. Luck and timing can give you a leg up the ladder. May luck be with you and your timing be right!

Summer Newsletter from Giant Steps Coaching

Summer Newsletter from Giant Steps Coaching