This month is all about needing to reinvent yourself, and how you may be looking at it. What is your perspective, chickdee?
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Katie: Hi! It’s another month from Skirt Strategies – your monthly video from the Hot Flash department of skirtstrategies.com.
Carol: That’s right.
Katie: A topic every month for women of high performing achievement ability. And this month – we’ve chosen one that’s interesting. In fact, I think you titled it – “Reinventing your Leadership.” Tell us a little bit about what that means because I have no idea.
Carol: Well, right. Well, good! Finally! Something you don’t know about.
Katie: You talk.
Carol: I think what I was kind of thinking about – is a friend of mine. She had been struggling with her leadership. She was to the point where she was seeing everything negatively and not using positive reinforcement for her staff and it was just kind of spiraling down.
And I’ve been there before. I’ve been to that place and you can’t stop. All you can see is what’s going on wrong, what’s going wrong, what’s going bad. And you really do need to take a step back and say, “What about this is not working.”
Katie: Interesting.
Carol: “It’s obviously not working for me because I’m not getting what I want out of it. And I can see that it’s not working for my staff because they’re frustrated as well.”
So what do you do? You take a step back. You look at how you’re leading. Okay?
Katie: Recognizing it though, Carol.
Carol: That’s huge.
Katie: That’s huge because I think we’re very likely to beat ourselves up and just say, “Oh, I suck. Oh, this stinks. Oh, this isn’t working.”
It might not be obvious what to do about it – so we just kind of keep doing the self-beat up thing.
Carol: Well, we do the self-beat up thing and then we keep doing it the same way and we never change. And that’s why we’re here at Skirt Strategies – is really to help give you those insights to help you make the changes.
I mean, we’ve got great insights on writing your own bio, great insights on just picking yourself up and changing some of those basics that you may have always done – they may have worked for you before, they may not be working for you now. But if you get back to basics, it usually does work.
And on the reinventing part, I would just like to say – if you’re going down a negative path, you really do need to start seeing the good in people and start telling them how they’re doing things right.
It’s very hard for you to get out of that pattern, but it’s impossible for them to do the right things if you’re not noticing them.
Katie: Okay. It reminds me of the whole concept of being optimistic – which I naturally am because it works for me. It keeps me a little bit sane. I think sometimes it drives my husband crazy.
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: Pollyanna. But I’ve got a great book to recommend. And it’s not the happiness project – because I know that was a real popular one. It’s one called – The Happiness Advantage by a guy named Shawn Achor.
Carol: Love that book.
Katie: Did you love that book?
Carol: Oh yeah. I’ve got it on tape. I’ve got it on video. If you have no more time – then do watch his YouTube video. I think it’s a talk.
Katie: Oh, good!
Carol: Shawn Achor. It’s really fabulous and it gives you that just little bit of – “Oh yeah! That’s how you do this.”
Katie: Well, what really sold me on this stuff – his concept (which I’ll kind of summarize here in a minute) is that its research based.
Carol: It is always based…
Katie: “Be happy and the world will be happy around you.” That’s kind of like too squirrely.
But concepts that have been studied around when you do self-reinforcement or when you do gratitude at the end of the night – which I know you and your husband are really good at doing back and forth before you go to bed at night.
Here’s what I’m thankful for. Here’s what I’m grateful for. It actually becomes more of a focus in your life and you start to appreciate and realize all the good stuff – instead of those bad things that are popping up that you’re focusing on constantly and trying to fix.
Carol: Well, two of the other things that he talks about – and I think there’s five basic tenants of how to get your life back in order. One of them is meditating. One of them is journaling.
Katie: Are you going to ask me the third one?
Carol: No. You just said it.
Katie: Oh! Gratitude?
Carol: Being in gratitude.
Katie: Well, since I read it.
Carol: Now what I’m going to say about journaling is – I have been in that place where I was journaling hate mail.
Katie: So?
Carol: Well, no it was journaling.
Katie: Journaling to other people.
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: Err! Those were the dark years.
Carol: And I’m going to tell you something. They were the dark years.
Katie: They are.
Carol: So I then read The Happiness Advantage and I was like, “Oh! You mean I have to do this in a positive vein? I can’t just throw up on the paper?” And my husband calls it – “Coughing up a fur ball.”
Katie: But you got rid of it.
Carol: Well, you do get rid of it. But it kind of keeps your heart in that same place.
So I got a new journal. It was a brand new journal and all I wrote in that journal were positive things.
So even if I was mad at somebody or upset with somebody, it was positive about them. And I’m going to tell you. That changed my life and a couple of my relationships.
So journaling works. My husband and I right now – we just empty-nested and we’re starting meditating.
Katie: Oh, nice!
Carol: He’s doing a walking meditation because that works for him. I’m meditating in the mornings because that’s a quiet meditation, kind of guided. Quiet meditation works for me. So I’ll let you know how it goes.
But those are things that truly work. And if you’re really trying to reinvent yourself and reinvent what you’re doing with your life, get the book, listen to the ted talk and…
Katie: And our podcast this month will be a lot about those. So how’s that for positioning those podcast?
Carol: There you go.
Katie: They’re ever so popular –even more popular than they already are. I love that! Thank you for that.
Carol: Yeah, yeah.
Katie: “Reinventing your Leadership.” Where is it that you are? Take a look. Let’s just ask everybody with this right now.
Carol: Okay.
Katie: If I had to give them a self-assessment, I’d like to step back about have an out of body experience.
Carol: [Inaudible][0:06:25.8] in meditating.
Katie: It’s kind of is, isn’t it?
Carol: Yeah, yeah.
Katie: Look at yourself from an external point of view and just ask yourself, “Is there some place that you’re stuck? Is there some place that you’re driving in on the negative – where you should be driving in on what do I need to be doing differently?”
We know that the brain works better when it has an outcome focus versus a problem focus because your brain actually really does engage in whatever it is that you concentrate on.
Carol: Yes, right.
Katie: So engaging around what you want to be doing differently instead of what you’re doing wrong – is a subtle difference in managing your leadership just with a little bit of a difference. So there’s your challenge for this month.
For those of you that are our subscribed members, you’ll get more each week podcasts and it’s a PDF one page that we call – The Monday Morning Detox. So that’s on its way monthly.
If you’d like to join us with that subscription, you’re welcome to it anytime. It’s a fun crowd of women and we love it. We’d love to have you with us.
Carol: Thank you so much. Go out and reinvent yourself. It’s fun.
Katie: Go out and do it. Good idea. Thank you!
Carol: Good job.
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