Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

Getting Unstuck

Longing For The Missing Thing

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We human beings are funny creatures.

Sometimes we feel the most motivated when someone tells us what we’re NOT allowed to do.

After a lifetime of being a regular Sporty Spice, I developed arthritis in my right knee and ended up with a total replacement in February of this year. Once I had checked some post-surgery milestones off the list, my kind and handsome doctor said, “Well, Michele, you are cleared to do pretty much whatever you want. You can walk wherever you want to go, you can play golf, or tennis. You can ride a bike or use the elliptical. You can ski!”

I silently contemplated the last time I had skiied (15 years ago) or played tennis (summer camp?), while he paused.

“The one thing I don’t want you to do, though, is run. Your new knee just won’t tolerate that.”

“OK,” I said, with relief. See, I’m not built for running. I have short legs and a long torso, and other than that three weeks about ten years ago where I put my heart into finding the runner’s high (eluded me), I’ve realized that I’m built more for rambling than running.

The rehab for my knee replacement involved a lot of walking. I walked to the post office. I walked my dogs. I walked just to walk.

I watched my step count climb as my knee got stronger and stronger.

And one day while walking across a bridge, the most powerful feeling overcame me. I felt the profound and urgent need to break into a run.

Me. A non-runner. A lifetime non-runner. A softball player who specialized in hitting homers because then I could trot around the bases rather than sprint.

On that bridge, I found myself inexplicably longing to do the one thing my doctor explicitly forbid me to do.

I longed, beyond all reason, to do something I’m not actually built to do. The thing I actually have never really liked to do.

I wanted in that moment, with my whole heart and soul, to run.

This is human nature, isn’t it? Whenever something is placed “off-limits”, it becomes tantalizing.

It’s like there’s a huge neon sign in our brains flashing “You can’t! You can’t! But you wanna!”

A friend of mine suggests that when anything becomes a taboo, our minds go instantly into a famine mentality and all we can think about is the thing we can’t have.

If you’re on a diet and constantly remind yourself that you can’t eat french fries, all your darling human brain will think about is the fries.

If your boss directs you to never have anything to do with the IT department, you’ll see those nerds everywhere. (And your laptop will constantly fritz out, too.)

You will fixate on the thing you feel you lack, even if the thing you lack is something you don’t really want.

Weird, huh?

So it seems to me that now may be the time to take a look at two things in your own life. One, what have you placed “off-limits” for the people in your life? Your partner, your kids, your friends? Your direct reports? Your co-workers? Are you setting them up, then, to fixate on the wrong thing?

And, two, where have you done the same thing to yourself?

The cure for this extremely human drive toward Longing For The Missing Thing, though, is deceptively easy.

Rather than say, “I can’t run now that I have a bionic knee”, simply say, “I’m the kind of  person who rambles.”

This affirmative statement makes all the difference in where you put your attention. And makes your choices easier.

When offered fries on the side, you can come back with, “Thanks, but I’m the kind of person who eats leafy greens.”

See how focusing on what you have over what you lack makes your life get easier? And more full. And you feel more effective and engaged.

And that is especially true when you no longer feel compelled to do something you never really wanted to do in the first place.

 

Worth Failing For

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Workshop and seminar leaders, Little League coaches and life coaches, parents and priests. What do they possibly have in common?

My guess is that at some point or the other they may have asked someone, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”

They ask this question in an attempt to figure out goals and dreams. To understand where someone might be holding themselves back out of fear of failing. To inspire.

All well and good.

The amazing, inspiring Brené Brown, though, asks the question in a powerful and different way.

She asks, “What’s worth failing for?”

I mean, really. Brené nails it. That is one piercing question.

So, let me ask you: What are you willing to stand up for? What are you willing to use your voice for?

Regardless of the consequences?

What do you love enough to risk everything for?

I ask it that way because I know myself and if my kids were ever threatened, I’d put myself between them and harm’s way in a nanosecond.

It comes down to this, then: Love is absolutely worth failing for.

Because I love so deeply and passionately about what’s happening in our world, I am conscious that I must my voice to say the things that need to be said. I am willing to put myself out there even if people disagree with me.

(And as an aside – disagreement doesn’t need to mean the end of a relationship. In fact, disagreement can bring people closer together as they grow to understand each other. Remember that next time you get in a Twitter war, will you?)

You may find this hard to believe, but there was a time in my life when I swallowed my words because I felt as though there was going to be a tough consequence if I spoke up. It was only after I was clear of this situation that I realized the toll silence took on me. And I felt the relief and coming-home-ness which came from learning to use my voice again.

When you look at things not from a vantage point of “how can I make sure I don’t lose?” but from the “what am I willing to lose for?” things change.

Even in the face of sure loss.

Even when things are tough.

Even when you know you are not going to win.

When you show up as yourself, put it out there, own it, love it…you’ve already won.

And whatever happens next doesn’t even matter.

Prepared? Or Just Reacting?

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There are a lot of choices you make in the course of your day.

Paper or plastic.

Doughnuts or vegetables.

Car or bus.

Honesty or fudging.

Tweeting or keeping your thoughts to yourself.

So many choices.

There’s one big, unspoken choice many of us feel like we have no choice about at all: whether to be prepared or to simply react.

When I’m called into an underfunctioning organization with underfunctioning leaders, know what I see most often? Folks in back-to-back meetings from 8:15am until 6:30pm (or later), every single day with no time to prepare for any of these meetings let alone prepare for tomorrow’s meetings. They just sit in their chair at the table in the conference room and do their best to wing it based on what they know in the moment.

What’s the problem with that, you ask? Doesn’t that just mean that the work they’re doing is critically important? That they are a fast-paced, high-stakes, high-pressure, cool kids sort of organization?

Let me get back to that and tell you a story first.

I was an advanceman at the White House, and in a bunch of campaigns. The job of the advanceman is to go ahead of the principal and set everything up in advance (get it?) so the events flow easily and go off without a hitch.

For multi-day meetings with other foreign leaders, we might have five to six weeks of preparation and would get our schedule down to a minute-by-minute timeline.

This was all about being prepared.

Which really paid off when the event was underway and something unexpected happened. Like, meetings ran too long. Or news broke elsewhere. Or the button popped off the President’s suit coat (really happened. It was sewn back on by the traveling nurse with suture since no one had a sewing kit).

Through all my years of this kind of work, I discovered that the more prepared I was, the better I was able to react. Preparation had given me a container to work within, and even if something happened I hadn’t planned for I was able to get back on track quickly – because I was prepared to execute successfully.

Today’s workplace has lost the ability to prepare, it seems to me. We’re all about reacting.

And there is a certain adrenaline rush to being fully in reactive mode. It’s like being on the back of a bucking bronco, holding on for dear life. That frisson of energy: Can I pull it off?

Plus, there’s a lot of drama involved with living in a reactive mode which is entirely intoxicating to many, many people in the average office.

Finally, when you’re simply reacting with no preparation, it’s super easy to say, “Well, that went badly. Too bad we didn’t have time to think it through! We’ll get ’em next time!” and folks escape all responsibility for a less than ideal outcome.

Some folks like this. A lot.

So they spend more than 95% of their time reacting and, if they’re lucky, less than 5% prepping.

I’d like to propose a new approach to our days. What do you think would be different in your life if you spent 60% of your time preparing and 40% reacting? What could you achieve?

What if, rather than back-to-back meetings, you had back-to-back planning time?

What if every meeting you did attend was focused on preparation? What if every meeting drove toward decision-making, backed up by prep done in advance of the meeting?

What could you accomplish if you actually had time to think during the day?

The current paradigm of “You know you’re important if you have no time to actually get anything done” has got to go. People who are too busy to perform – don’t answer email, can’t take phone calls, winging meetings, on the road and unavailable all the time – are not cool.

They’re actually holding everyone else back.

I challenge you – especially if you lead a group of people and are intent upon reaching certain goals and even if you’re a full-time parent or retiree – to flip your paradigm away from willy-nilly reaction to purposeful preparation.

The promise is that you’ll get what you want more quickly, easier, with a greater ability to flow with anything unexpected which might come your way.

And that is how the real cool kids roll.

 

Talking About The Elephant In The Room

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Missed me the last couple of weeks? Yeah, it’s been frustrating for me, too. Try as I might, I’ve been unable to write anything I felt good about.

And that’s because there’s a very large, very gray, very wrinkly elephant in the room. Standing right there between us.

See, it’s like there are competing voices in my head. One says “write things people who might hire you will like because you are a business person, after all.” And another voice says, “Wow, writing like that feels contrived and inauthentic. Don’t do that.”

After some reflection and journaling and a few macaroons (the kind dipped in dark chocolate, if you’re interested), I’ve realized that when I merely show up and show myself, things tend to work out just fine.So that’s my intention with this space.

It’s a crazy world out there and – elephant alert – I want to write about how to cope and how to manage dealing with it all.

Here’s this week’s critical topic: How can you express yourself – how can you show up and be seen – in times like these?

Times where partisanship is applauded more than cooperation.

Times when trolls with screen courage unleash blistering vitriol at the slightest provocation.

Times when you’re not sure if you can take one more news report, one more headline.

But I’m here to tell you that if you swallow your voice, if you make yourself mouse-like, if you keep your head down and mind your own business, you will feel increasingly more awful than you feel now.

You will begin to feel as though you’re vanishing.

I work with clients who are Democrats, and clients who are Republicans, and clients who are independents. And some who live in Europe, Latin American or Asia. All of them – each and every one – are stressed by the tenor and tone of even chatting with people we’ve always thought of as friends these days.

Want to know how I try to navigate?

First, I never assume that anyone believes what I believe or interprets situations exactly how I do. As Stephen Covey suggests in his classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I seek to understand and then to be understood.

This means that sometimes I get to say, “I get what you’re saying. I don’t happen to agree – can I tell you why?”

The best case scenario is when they say, “Yes, I’d love to hear your perspective.” And if they say, no, they’re not at all interested in what I have to say…I move along.

Second, I remind myself all the time that I am a learner. Curiosity is my hallmark and my day is not quite complete if I haven’t satisfied that particular interest. With that framework, I can hear your perspective with and open heart and mind…

Unless, third, you are voicing hateful, exclusionary, racist beliefs. If that happens, I will tell you directly that you are wrong and I will not stand for slurs, epithets or threats. And then I get myself out of your presence.

Because what we need in our world today is far less hate and far more cooperation.

We need people to show up and show themselves – the best parts of themselves – as we find solutions to all the problems we face.

I’m going to do my part in my own little patch. Join me by doing what you can in your own patch. And, patch by patch, we’ll become the change we seek.

Go Ahead, Criticize

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Loading the dishwasher can be very instructive.

Once, during a family gathering, a lovely person commented as I added the dishwashing soap and closed the door, “Oh, my mother would kill you. That dishwasher isn’t full – she never let us run it unless it was completely packed.”

I smiled as I turned on the power button and let it run, knowing that we’d need those dishes for the next family meal, and we’d have another huge load to run afterwards.

So, the dishwasher was 7/8s full when I ran it rather than 9/8s full when she wanted to run it.

And I was completely confident in my choice. Because I knew exactly why I was running the dishwasher at that moment. Plus, it was my damn dishwasher.

Some of us go into things with a highly critical approach. We’re wired like Mr. Spock from Star Trek to look at things logically, analytically, coolly. When a kid comes home with an A-, our first instinct is to ask “Why wasn’t it an A?”

Doesn’t that make you wince to see it written like that? But some of us just can’t seem to help it.

And if your critical nature is getting you the results you want, then by all means keep going. If, however, you’re not building the bridges you want, creating the relationships you seek or getting the results you aim for, then you owe it to yourself and others to change your approach.

The drive for analytical perfection eats people up. Executives who create unrealistic standards, impossible goals and nitpick results are executives who have employee churn and, ultimately, lower productivity.They think they’ll do better by applying pressure, but exactly the opposite is true.

I mean, even Spock was half human. And it’s tapping into your human side which changes things.

It’s “I’d love to understand your process – tell me how you came to this conclusion.”

It’s “I can see you worked hard on this and I appreciate it.”

It’s “May I give you some feedback on this?”

It’s “Wow, I would have never approached it this way, but what you’ve got here is really good.”

You might feel like perfection is a dishwasher crammed your way – as full as it can possibly get –  but I’m here to tell you that real perfection is paying attention to the reality of the moment. It’s knowing what’s needed yet being aware that someone else might have a very good plan you simply hadn’t thought of before.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a dishwasher to run before I start making dinner.

Making It Through The Chaos and Noise

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I saw my friend Nancy at a party the other night. After the obligatory, “Oh, it’s been too long!” and “You look great!” and “How are your kids?”, she said:

“Michele, you used to write your blog every week. Every Sunday I looked forward to hearing from you and getting a little insight and inspiration. What happened?”

Nancy said what’s been in my own mind. I started writing you all in 2006. Every week – every week for over ten years. It has been a very big part of what I do. And for some reason, I just stopped doing it.

I got into 2017 and felt myself sputter. I mean, over more than ten years hadn’t I said everything that needed saying?

Then, too, I started experimenting with longer posts on Facebook to great results. (If we’re not friends there, you can find me here.) So my writing needs felt somewhat satisfied.

But not totally.

The Wise Nancy said, “Michele, write about transitions. Write about dealing with the chaos we find ourselves in. Write about change, and coping with all the craziness. Write about that.”

Which is somewhat ironic because I have found myself in the same transition Nancy’s feeling. And I bet you’re feeling it, too. How could you not?

I used to think about transition in a very linear way – you started here, traveled a bit, then found yourself there. Finally, blessedly, relieve-adly there.

But now I see transition in a different way. It’s a bunch of stuff going on all at once. Different starting points, different middles, different endings, simultaneously.

You could be a person who’s sending a youngest child off to school while changing jobs while guiding an elderly loved one through hospice while starting a healthier routine while settling into a new house and getting marriage counseling.

Am I right?

And rather than there being a definite end point where you can breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Woosh. Glad that’s done” you end up saying, “OK, done. What’s next on my plate?”

Right again?

My best advice to you if you are human and dealing with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as Shakespeare would say, is to appreciate that a continual loop of  beginnings, middles and endings is the nature of our existence. It’s living.

Rather than resist, or pretend that it’s not happening by sticking your fingers in your ears while muttering “nanna nanna nanna, I can’t hear you!”, why not get curious? Ask yourself what there is to learn at this point of the process. Learn whatever it is. Then find the way to love that you are on a distinctly human journey, accompanied by other people on their own human journey.

You can call it transition if you want – but really what it is… is living.

 

Things Have To Change

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Pot Of Gold Coins

 

The more I live this life the more I am sure that in order to get anything I have to be willing to let some things go. Sometimes what I need to let go feels very precious – until I release it and realize that what shows up afterward is even better.

I often tell a parable to illuminate this point:

Let’s say you’re walking down the road one day, completely minding your own business, carrying a gold coin held tightly in each fist because they’re the only gold coins you’ve ever had and you want to keep them safe. And, as you’re walking down the road, minding your own business, you happen to meet the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow, sitting by his pot of gold.

He says, in his best Lucky Charms voice: “Good day to you! Dip your hands into this here cauldron of shining gold coins and you can keep whatever you can hold.”

Now is the moment of decision for you.

Do you hold tightly to the two gold coins you have – hey, they’re a sure thing! – and try to scoop with closed fists? How much gold do you think you can gather when your hands are closed?

Or, do you open your fists – maybe losing your two precious gold coins – so you can use your open hands to gather as much as you could manage?

I know myself and I know that I would, without hesitation, make my hands as big as they could be and attempt to scoop up twenty or thirty gold pieces – even if I ended up losing the two I came in with. This is probably why I’ve been able to keep my business running since 1997 – I have a high tolerance for risk and for not knowing how things will turn out.

[The truth is I generally assume things are going to turn out all right and you know what? They almost always do.]

However, if you have a high need for certainty, control, comfort – well, you might just tip your hat to the leprechaun and keep walking down the road. Because, for you, the assurance of your two gold coins matters more than the risk of losing them.

And this is where people get stuck. The proverbial bird in the hand. The demon you know. The at-least-I-know-what-to-expect.

The comfortable.

For all of us, though, there are times when the comfortable becomes uncomfortable. When the demon you know becomes a demon who’s destroying you. When the bird in your hand flies away. When the rules change abruptly or no longer apply.

And those are the moments when you have to – must – let go.

It’s so hard. It can change your definition of yourself. It can hurt.

But to become unstuck – to be happy and fulfilled – you must let go of those two gold coins you’ve been clutching in your tight little fists for so long, and begin to claim the treasure that’s being offered you.

Open your heart and mind. Rethink your assumptions. Allow your open hands to scoop as much as you can hold.

I promise you – it’s right here for the taking.

 

 

A Few Words On Joy

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me-and-grace-stockholm-2016

 

Phew. I’m just back from a wonderful week in Stockholm visiting my dear daughter, Grace, who’s studying at the Stockholm School of Economics this semester.

It’s a long trip from Washington, DC to Stockholm – almost nine hours by air – so I loaded my Kindle with a couple of books and a Great Courses program on Herodotus (which seemed really appealing when I bought it…).

The book I devoured on the plane and while Grace was in class was the new book by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu – The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness In A Changing World.

If you haven’t read this one yet, put it on your list. You won’t regret it.

The idea is simple – put these two spiritual leaders in a room for a week and have them talk about joy. What is it? What gets between humans and joy? What can we do to get more joy in our lives? Writer Douglas Abrams asked the questions and compiled the answers into an engaging and provoking book. I highlighted so many wonderful passages I nearly wore out my index finger. Here are a couple that might resonate for you:

“‘We are meant to live in joy,’ the Archbishop explained. ‘This does not mean that life will be easy or painless. It means that we can turn our faces to the wind and accept that this is the storm we must pass through.'”

“As the Dalai Lama has described it, if we see a person who is being crushed by a rock, the goal is not to get under the rock and feel what they are feeling; it is to help to remove the rock.”

“The only thing that will bring happiness is affection and warmheartedness.”

“If you have genuine kindess or compassion, then when someone gets something or has more success you are able to rejoice in their good fortune.”

“Deep down we grow in kindness when our kindness is tested.”

“God uses each of us in our own way, and even if you are not the best one, you may be the one who is needed or the one who is there.”

And, “When we accept what is happening now, we can be curious about what might happen next.”

My trip to Stockholm was pure joy, my friends. Being with my daughter, seeing the city through her eyes, learning about a new culture – it was a delight of discovery and connection. And with the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and The Dalai Lama frontmost in my mind, I was open to the light of joyfulness that was right there for me.

Which is precisely what these two Nobel Peace Prize winners – and dear friends to each other – are teaching through their new book.

Joy is found by being present where you are. By coming to terms with how life is. By showing kindness and compassion. By being open to other perspectives, and to changing your own mind.

They say, “True joy is a way of being, not a fleeting emotion.” To which I say, “Yes. Wholeheartedly, unreservedly, yes.”

If you worry that your life has too little joy, read this book.

If you can’t figure out how to be more joyful, read this book.

If you fret that our world is becoming a joyless place, read this book.

If you want to change your way of being to become more joyful, read this book.

If you want to nourish your soul, well, you will find a soulfeast when you read this book.