Saturday, August 13, 2011

Productivity Playhouse Workshops

My partner Katleen and I in Productivity Playhouse are offering a suite of workshops starting this fall. So far we are booked at the Rotman School of Business at the university of Toronto and with Toastmasters! We are looking forward to bringing our talents to a wider audience.

Workshop offerings 

Leadership
Cooperative Leadership
Authentic Leadership
Personal Branding for Leaders
Writing skills
Public Speaking For Leaders
Presentation Skills
Team Building Skills
Focusing Skills
Polarity Management
Playful Productivity
Challenging Beliefs
Brainstorming Skills
Goal Setting for Leaders
Performance Enhancement
Stress Management for Executives
Coaching Skills
Communication Skills

Personal Skills
Self-Management
Personal Branding
Writing Skills
Public Speaking Skills
Presentation Skills
Focusing Skills
Communication Skills
Polarity Management
Challenging Beliefs
Brainstorming Skills
Time Management
Stress Management Techniques
Goal Setting
Recalibrating your life
Performance Enhancement
Life Coaching Workshop
Reinventing Yourself

Creativity
Polarity Management
Creatively Challenging Beliefs
Igniting Creativity
Brainstorming Skills
Reinventing Yourself
Fostering Open Mindedness and Curiosity

Health and Wellness
Work Life Balance
Meridian Tapping
Emotional Freedom
Recalibrating your life
Stress Management
Discovering your Mission/Purpose in Life

Friday, August 12, 2011

Reinventing Yourself -- Part II: Take an INVENTory


In part one of Reinventing Yourself the first step I discussed was having awareness that you are ready for reinvention. The second step is to get clarity on what isn’t working anymore. This step helps you avoid the pitfall of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Chances are, most of the things in your life are going pretty well. Consider reinvention when some things in your life need to change. 

I see this time after time in my practice: a client tells me the joy had gone out of his life, even when he has a decent job, good family and supportive friends. In the mad rush to become established, he left behind many of the things that gave him joy. We often have to go back 20 to 30 years to salvage memories of things he used to enjoy. At some point this client reinvented himself as an employee, a husband, a father and left behind the things that gave him joy and meaning. To avoid running into the same problem, take an inventory. It’s interesting to note that the word contains the word “invent”.

Creating an inventory is simple. Just take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle of it. At the top of one column write down “Working” and “Not Working” at the top of the next. This process will help you understand what areas you need to focus on and it will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed. Often when change is vague, we make it big and unwieldy when it can actually be discrete and manageable. If you have a few areas of your life that need to be inventoried, use separate sheets. For instance, if you are breaking up with your partner, you want to change your job and you might want to relocate, use three separate lists.

For most of us, change is scary and often stressful because we fear the unknown. Paring down the scope of change and being certain what doesn’t have to change makes change knowable. It also keeps us from the inevitable swing from one end of the spectrum to the other. How many people do you know who, in crisis, swung from one extreme to another? That’s because when we are unaware of the good we have, we are tempted to discard it and seek the opposite. The cliché of the mild mannered middle aged guy who, feeling like time is running out, buys a hot red sports car and acts like a twenty year old, is all too familiar.

A common response to fear of change is often paralysis, which is how we get stuck. We can’t move forward and we can’t go back. Knowing the small, often subtle, shifts we want to make and knowing what is working for us makes change knowable and doable. It also keeps us grounded and not tempted to over react.

Once you have come up with your list of lists of what’s working and not working, you can start to move forward. Take a close, hard look at what’s not working and ask yourself, how were you not being authentic. I believe that if we are being authentic, we create the life we want and avoid digging these deep holes that feel impossible to climb out of. For every item on your list, write a corresponding point that comes from your authentic self. For instance, if you are leaving a relationship where you were belittled and disrespected, how did you tolerate and allow that to happen? What will you do in the future to stand up for yourself? If you merely change partners without becoming aware of your need to change, you are simply shuffling the same cards and will get similar results.

What you are now doing is creating a list of authentic change. which becomes a list of personal change goals. This is your key to reinventing yourself. Rewrite the list as a set of personal change goals. For instance if you tolerated being disrespected, your goal might be to act more assertively when you feel slighted. So rather than changing the people or things in your life, you are changing yourself. Focusing on personal growth is the essence of reinvention. Change may not be easy and it may not happen quickly. Focusing on your goals is the best way I know how to realize the changes you want.

Remember there is always help available to make change happen faster. If you feel uncomfortable asking for help, then maybe that's an area worth looking at. Self reliance is held up as a virtue and we have to realize there are times when we just need to ask for help. It took having prostate cancer for me to realize this. I hope it you realize it without such extreme circumstances.