Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

Martha Beck

How You Do One Thing Is How You Do Everything

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She stood very still, feet firmly planted in the dirt beneath her.

In her entire career, even in countless meetings, presentations and speeches, the Senior Vice President had never really been challenged in the way she was being challenged in this moment.

She took a deep breath, and mustered every ounce of focus she could find.

She made eye contact.

And the huge horse standing alone in the ring with her was at full attention.

Equus Work 2014 2
The Senior Vice President

Without a word or sound, using only her body language, her energy and intention, she asked the horse to walk around the outside of the ring. For a moment, she entertained the idea that the horse actually weighed more than a SmartCar and smiled at the thought. The horse walked, then she got it to trot, then it broke into a full gallop.

Standing in the center of the ring, her eyes glued to the beautful animal she was connected with, the Senior Vice President was filled with a sense of accomplishment, of personal power, of…awe.

She had done it. She could do it.

It dawned on her as we discussed it afterwards, that maybe she wasn’t giving herself enough credit at work. Maybe she was a little too hard on herself. Maybe, just maybe, she was stronger and more capable than she realized. Maybe she could be a little bit bigger in the office, and be seen for the visionary leader that she is.

Oh, I am absolutely certain that awareness went with her to the office on Monday morning.

This is how I spent last weekend, working with women executives and coaches intensely in an Equus coaching program in Haymarket, Virginia. The methodology was created by my friend and fellow Master Coach Koelle Simpson after her apprenticeship with both horse whisperer Monty Roberts and author/coach Martha Beck. Koelle knew that horses can sense human authenticity and pure intention, and will let you know if a human’s walk and talk are not in alignment.  And they’ll let you know instantly.

After testing her theories and getting quick and powerful results with clients, Koelle began teaching her techniques to a select group of coaches four years ago who are now spreading her work around the world. Two of the best are Renee Sievert and Dixie St. John. I asked them to partner with me to bring their work to a small group of my clients, and also with a group of coaches I have mentored because I knew it would be the thing that would move many of them from an anxious striving here to… relaxed and productive there.

Dixie and Renee
Dixie St. John and Renee Sievert

The Senior Vice President who motivated a huge draft horse was not alone in her ability to fine-tune her own energy to create a productive bond with a horse. There was also the breast cancer survivor who was reminded that there is so much she can still do. And the business owner who realized that it was important to ask for help. And the COO who found her center after a trying and difficult several months in her work. And the executive whose entire department was eliminated in a re-org? She got her mojo back.

There is just something about being one-on-one in a round pen with a horse that shows you the fundamental truth about yourself.

In the afternoon, the group moved into a large, covered arena where two to three people worked together to herd a horse in an agreed upon pattern through cones, barrels and other structures. Oh, and they did it without saying a word to one another.

She Did It!
Another Vice President

One team of three run a division for a large organization. Our mantra for the entire 3-day retreat was “How you do one thing is how you do everything”, and never was this more clear than when the work team attempted the joint project of herding the horse. First, there were misunderstandings about where the horse was to go. Then, one person thought another person was supposed to do one thing, while that person expected someone else to do another thing. It was chaotic and until they got their own energy under control the horse was not going to budge. An inch.

Once the exercise was over and folks could talk, you should have heard the parallels they saw between their work in the office and their work in the ring. My guess is that they have now created a shorthand and a trust that will allow them to amp up their productivity in a way other people will notice.

It gave me the chills.

For me, Equus work is another access tool to get people crystal clear about who they are and what they bring to the world. As a coach, there’s nothing better than seeing a client completely get past a block and move toward what they truly want – and the horses provided a shortcut to that for everyone involved in the weekend.

As we unpacked the learning afterwards, I said to Renee, “You know, Equus work is really the ultimate 360 review,” and that’s what it really is.

That is, if you’re cool with getting notes on your performance from a 2,000 pound, four-legged colleague who can’t talk – but can still tell you a whole lot.

 

The Crisis of Self-Confidence

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Seems to me that people are feeling kinda uncertain. Maybe unsure. Sorta like they have, well, y’know, no self-confidence. But I could be wrong. I dunno. What do you think?

Self-confidence is one of the top reasons people seek a coach, according to a new survey from the International Coach Federation. I have to tell you, I found this rather surprising — my clients come to me to work out a job search, or figure out how to have those difficult conversations, or get clear on handling their challenges. Don’t think I’ve ever had anyone come to me to say, “Help me grow my self-confidence.”

But when I think about it, increased self-confidence is definitely a by-product of the coaching process. And it’s my aim to help people figure stuff out so thoroughly that they have the confidence to coach themselves.

The move toward greater self-confidence can be tricky. When you’ve lived with “I can’t” for so long, “I can” might feel impossible. In that case, it’s often enough to start with teeny-tiny goals that are meet-able, and grow confidence slowly and surely.

And then there’s the “jump out of an airplane” kind of confidence boosting. You know, the kind of challenge where you tell yourself, “Hey, if I can do THAT, then I can do ANYTHING.”

But let me tell you about a third way.

What would you like to have, or be, or do? You want to be healthier? OK. Here’s what you do: You act the way a healthy person would act.

That’s it.

When faced with a choice about what to eat, you choose what the healthy person would choose. Exercise or not? What would a healthy person do? See a doctor?

You know the answer.

And, guess what? This small shift will make a profound change in your overall health. In just a short period of time, you won’t have to ask what a healthy person would choose — you just have to choose what you would choose. Because you are the healthy person.

Another example? You want to be financially secure. Then, how would a financially secure person make money choices? How would she spend? Save? Invest?

My friend calls this “act as-if”. While another pal calls it, “fake it ’til you make it.” Either way, it’s a useful tool for making progress toward getting what you want. Which is a huge self-confidence booster.

Two things to consider when using this approach. First, if you can’t see yourself as someone who’s healthy, or financially stable, then you may find yourself unable to act as a healthy person might act. To attack this limitation, focus on the potential positive outcome — remember Change or Die? What’s something great that will happen when you’re living healthier? Focus on that. Eyes on the prize.

Second, other people in your life may not want to see you change, because they might think that they will have to change, too. While your change can be an excellent opportunity for group self-confidence boosting, sometimes fear of the unknown will cause people we love to act like complete jerks. See my friend Martha Beck’s terrific article from O! Magazine about dealing with the “change back attack” .

Bottom line? You have every right to have whatever you want in your life. You have the power to lose weight. To find love. To de-clutter. To save money. (Gosh, what a great title for a book!) Little old you. You can do it. And if you have to fake it ’til you make it, that’s OK. Better than OK — it’s great. And I have every confidence that you’ll do it.

The Results Club

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My friend and fellow Master Coach Chris Brandt and I were talking about how we could contribute to the world in 2009. If we were to use our skills to “be a force for good,” as I put it, what would that look like? How could we put our skills and talents together to meet a need? The result of that conversation is The Results Club.

The headlines tell the story: “Unemployment Rises,” “No Sector Untouched,” “Executives Downsized.” The global unemployment is higher than many of us have ever seen. And finding a job right now can be tough. Especially for a mid-career executive who’s highly skilled, and highly paid.

To answer precisely this need, Chris and I have built an 8-week support program for mid/upper-level professionals who find themselves in job search mode, called The Results Club.

This unique and innovative program provides a step-by-step approach to any executive job search. Plus, each class is supplemented by a secure discussion forum, where tools, ideas, tactics and information can be shared within The Results Club community.

Drawing on our own networks and our many years of experience — Chris as a Human Resources executive with organizations like News Corporation and Swiss Re, plus various financial services companies and startups, and my leadership positions in corporate America, with dot-com startups, and at the White House, as well as my job as Career Advice Coach at www.BettyConfidential.com — we have assembled a fantastic slate of speakers who can offer cutting edge advice to today’s job search.

Each webinar class will feature an interview with an expert, offer innovative tips & tools, and the opportunity for one-on-one coaching with me and Chris. Here’s the schedule:

January 28th – Taking Stock & Making a Plan: Featuring an interview with Dr. Martha Beck, author of Finding Your Own North Star and Steering By Starlight

February 4th – Creating a Resume that Works: Featuring an interview with Bonnie Kurka, Vice President of the National Resume Writers Association

February 11th – Speak Up! How to Interview: Featuring an interview with Cyndi Maxey and Kevin O’Connor, co-authors of Speak Up! How to Present Like a Pro

February 18th – Networking: Featuring an interview with Liz Lynch, author of Smart Networking

February 25th – Maximizing Social Media: Featuring an interview with Pam Slim, blogging expert and author of Escape From Cubicle Nation

March 4th – Reinventing Your Career in Mid-life: Featuring an interview with Mary Beth Sammons, author of Second Acts That Change Lives

March 11th – Salary Negotiations/Working with Recruiters: Featuring an interview with executive recruiters

March 18th Staying on Course: tips, tactics and plans to keep your job search moving forward, featuring a panel of career coaches.

The total cost for the 8-week program is $375 (USD). Space is limited – register today!

Story Fondling

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Some time ago I wrote an essay on forgiveness where I suggested that “Forgiveness is when the hurt you’ve suffered no longer drives your decision-making, nor defines who you are.”

Believe me, I’ve returned to those words time and again. And recently I came to see that people who are stuck are often unwilling or unable to let go of the hurt they’ve suffered. They are stuck in the hurt because somehow it defines them in a way that feels, oddly enough, comfortable.

It’s the woman who will tell you, with great bitterness, how unfairly her ex-husband treated her. How he screwed her out of money. How he turned the children against her. How he cheated on her and walked away scot free. The jerk. When did this happen? you might ask, and be shocked to find out — it was 30 years ago.

It’s when your friend starts to complain once again about how intolerable her workplace is. What a psycho her boss is. How brown-nosing her office mates are. How favorites get recognized but hard work is never rewarded. How she has no energy and barely drags herself into work every day. And you’ve heard the same complaints over and over without cease for the past five years.

Being stuck — feeling powerless to change, not knowing what to do, fuzzy thinking — happens to all of us at some time or other. We have a problem and can’t seem to find a way out.

Why is that?

It’s as if staying fully engaged with the problem prevents people from having to come up with a solution. There’s a issue, poppets, when we love the story of our problem so much that we can’t bear to let it go. We’re “story fondling”, as my friend Martha Beck calls it. We love our story. We absolutely adore it. We hold it close, as if it were a tiny baby needing our tender, loving care.

But when we story fondle, we allow our problem to define us and shape our decision-making.

Which is the opposite of forgiveness.

And only prolongs the pain.

The only way forward, as you may have heard, is through. To get unstuck, once and for all, you have to stop focusing on the problem and start focusing on the solution.

You have to break up with the problem and start dating a solution. Or play the field if you want and try several solutions.

Sure, sometimes we fondle our problem in an attempt to understand it. And that’s important — understanding the pain can help us craft a solution that works. But 30 years of fondling? Excessive. That’s 30 years of living life in pain, and on hold. Which might feel safe, but is ultimately a waste.

What you’ve got, for sure, is today. Yesterday’s gone and tomorrow is not promised. Laying the problem aside and living right here, right now, focused on solutions — that’s the key to arriving at the most powerful point of forgiveness — self-forgiveness. Which is the path toward a vibrant life, worth living.

Thinner Peace

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A few weeks ago I wrote about Being Perfect. One of the common ways many of us strive for perfection is in our weight or body shape. We think: If only I could lose 10-20-30-40 pounds, then life would be perfect. Truth? If you did lose 10-20-30-40 pounds, you’d just be skinner… with the same old problems.

This pursuit of perfection is endless — and those of us in pursuit often pay a high emotional and psychological toll. It’s like this: we weigh too much, so we can never be enough. That is a stuck mindset. It’s a limiting place. It’s no fun. It really hurts.

It’s time for the anguish and suffering to stop.

It’s time for Thinner Peace.

Among the clatter of competing weight loss approaches, arrives leading life coach, author, O Magazine columnist and friend of mine, Dr. Martha Beck. In The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace, Martha provides a funny, thoughtful, erudite, practical approach to losing and maintaining your best body size. It’s a diet book for all of us who think diet is a four-letter word.

Even if you don’t usually buy diet books, don’t you think you’d love a book with chapters like “Eat Whatever The Hell You Want”, “How To Stop Eating When You Can’t Stop Eating” and “How Not To Be A Big Fat Liar”?

What I love about this book is that Martha gives a thorough, intelligent explanation of how the mind works (would you expect anything less from a gal with three degrees from Harvard?) — and bases her approach on cutting edge research. She tells you not only “how” – but gets you to understand the all important “why”. You’ll find out how traditional diet programs based on deprivation, willpower and suffering work on our minds and help us stay heavy.

Martha undertook this work in as a consultant to Jenny Craig, to help them better understand the psychological aspects of weight loss. Her key finding, after working with plenty of Jenny Craig clients as well as her own private coaching clients, is this: when you set up a famine situation in your brain, you are undermining your ability to lose weight. Psychologically, when you say, “I cannot have even one cookie. If I have a cookie, I will be bad. I will have no willpower and be a loser if I eat just one cookie. Nope, no cookies for me!” – you actually program yourself to only think about what you’re missing: cookies. And if you have the opportunity, you’ll satisfy your cookie famine with a cookie binge.

I know that where I put my attention will grow more central to my life. Martha’s approach plays on the same idea. If you focus on what you can’t do, can’t eat, can’t be, you’ll be stuck there and won’t even be aware of what you can do, can eat or can be.

Martha suggests that we have three aspects of our consciousness: the impulsive overeater in all of us is our Wild Child; the Dictator is the punishing, judgmental part. To really achieve Thinner Peace, you have to take the third way — you have to be The Watcher. The Watcher expresses loving kindness toward the recklessness of the Wild Child as well as the demands of the Dictator, but asks “why” frequently. Why does the Wild Child want the ice cream sundae? Why is the Dictator punishing me for having a french fry? It’s the Watcher who is forgiving, self-loving and self-nurturing. And in charge.

For most people, this shift away from having the Wild Child or Dictator rule the roost is a significant move. The reason your diet has not worked in the past is because you’ve been ruled by impulse or guilt. You have eaten to soothe your emotions. But under the Watcher, you can be in a loving, caring, responsible position. And the Watcher helps you lose weight because you are free to just be – and eat when your body tells you you’re hungry. If you’re sad, the Watcher will notice that and turn your attention to lifting your mood with something other than food.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the book, and a good indication of why I gush about Martha Beck: “Almost all of us assume there’s only one way to lose weight: by willpower, by white-knuckle resistance, by forcing the body with an aggressive, adversarial, disciplinarian mind. This can be achieved sometimes, though not often. Maintaining it long-term? I don’t think it can be done. I’ve seen numerous clients deploy incredible discipline, using their Dictator selves to trap, dominate, and starve their Wild Child selves. Losing weight this way is as draining as keeping a violent criminal pinned to the floor with sheer force. But even if you manage to do it, you can’t hold your own Wild Child in a hammerlock for the rest of your life. The minute you get tired, distracted or sick, the Dictator loses control, and the Wild Child goes into a feeding frenzy.

“That’s the whole reason I wrote this book. Simply going on a diet program, without changing your mental set, causes backlash and weight gain. This is an inevitable reality, based on the way our brains and bodies are designed. But if you use 4-day win techniques to become a Watcher and bring yourself to Thinner Peace, your brain changes, as well as your body. Weight loss happens without backlash or resistance.”

Thinner Peace. Count me in. Because it’s time for the war to stop.

Meaningful Change

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There’s been a lot of talk about the making and keeping of New Year’s Resolutions. I have been asked, “How do you make a resolution and actually keep it beyond January 12th?”

I have an answer. Which I will reveal. Keep reading.

First, let’s look at the typical Resolution Making Process.

Susan says to me: “I am resolved to lose 15 pounds this year. How can I do it?” [Now, notice my brilliant coaching technique in action!] “Why do you want to lose 15 pounds?” I guilelessly ask.

The wonderful Martha Beck, who writes for O Magazine and trains coaches, taught me a deceptively simple coaching tool — The Five Whys. Ask the question, “Why?” five times, she says, and you will get to the root of any problem.

So asking Susan why she wants to lose 15 pounds is the first Why.

“So I can be thinner,” she responds.

“Why do you want to be thinner?” I ask (the second Why).

“Because if I’m thinner, I’ll be more attractive.”

“Why is being more attractive important?” (the third Why).

“Because maybe then I can get a boyfriend.”

“Why do you want a boyfriend?” (the fourth one).

“Because, then, I guess, I might get married, which I’d like to do.”

“Why?” (the fifth, and simplest Why).

“Because if I’m married I won’t be lonely any more.”

So there it is, dear readers. Losing 15 pounds is the surefire cure to loneliness. Didya know that?

And we wonder why people don’t keep New Year’s Resolutions! Losing weight can be a terrific goal. But it’s not the perfect solution to feeling lonely.

Loneliness is not cured by being skinny. Skinny people are lonely. Heavy people are lonely. Single people are lonely.

Married people are lonely, too. If you ask me, Married And Lonely is the worst kind of lonely there is.

What do we want in our most intimate relationships? To be known, to be understood, to be accepted? Sounds about right to me. Faithful readers, you know my mantra, “can I give this to myself?” Why, yes, you can. Knowing yourself, understanding yourself and, dare I say it, accepting yourself — these are the first steps toward alleviating loneliness. And here’s the bonus: once you do these things, you make yourself extremely easy to love.

Yep, loneliness needs to be tackled with a game plan that doesn’t necessarily include weight loss. Here are three more practical things anyone can do to be less lonely:

1) Find Meaning and Purpose In Your Life: volunteer where you are appreciated and can do good. You’ll find connection with a group of like-minded souls, and your life will expand to include them.

2) Stop Waiting For Other People To Call You: call them! Organize a girls night, or a book club, or a poker group. Or an All Girl Poker Playing Book Club. Which invites men! You’d certainly draw a crowd!

3) Focus On What You Have, Not What You Lack: Whatever you focus on expands in your life. It’s true. If you subscribe to the “oh, I’m so lonely, woe is me” school of thought, then you will constantly reinforce your sad state, and feel sad — well, all the time. Plus, you won’t be particularly fun to be around, what with that black cloud following you everywhere you go and all that heavy sighing, weeping and moaning… If, however, you allow yourself to look forward to your Friday night All Girl Poker Playing Book Club meeting, or working with your tutoring client, or staffing the church bazaar, you will be happier. Organize your life around what you have, not what you lack. And revel in it!

Making a resolution to change behavior never works unless you understand the fundamental, underlying reason why you want to make the change. Resolutions fail because we’re making the wrong resolutions! Susan doesn’t really want to lose weight, she wants her loneliness to be fixed. So, find the true problem — not the perceived problem — and address that with specific solutions. Doing so will give you a reasonable shot at making lasting and meaningful change. And keeping your resolutions all year long.