Step One in learning to dance with change is to accept that which cannot be changed.

Step Two is: choose whether you are going to dance or sit this one out.

Step Three is: Determine how much of this new dance you already know.

Today we will cover the next step in Learning to Dance With Change. Step Four is:

Determine your role—are you the Lead or the Follower?

Before you can start dancing with others, roles need to be determined.  If two people get out on the dance floor and both try to lead, the dance does not go well. If both decide to follow, the same is true.  Without determining your part before joining the dance, you will step on many toes and the dance will be painfully awkward.

The same is true when implementing change. We’ve all heard the expression, “Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.”  When everyone tries to take the lead on a project, chaos ensues.  Things don’t get done because there is an assumption that someone else took care of it. On the flip side, there is often duplication of effort because the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.

What dancers will tell you is that the Lead does not have any more control over the dance than does the Follower. The Follower is being led but the dance is a partnership; they dance together, making each other look good. When one falters, the other makes up for it.

This is also what happens on a good project team.  It is up to the Team Leader to set the tone and structure; the Team members then make sure that each performs their part well so that the overall project is successful.

Too often we think it is up to the Lead to take up the slack on a project.  When you approach it in the spirit of partnership, then you realize that if s/he falters, so do you.  Just as s/he would take up the slack for you, it is up to you to do the same for your Lead.

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.  ~ Japanese Proverb

When you find it difficult to follow (or lead, for that matter), it is often due to a feeling of vulnerability, of being exposed.  When I was a teenager my father tried, in vain, to teach me the Fox Trot.  He finally gave up in exasperation because I could not or would not let him lead.  Like most people, I am extremely uncomfortable being in a situation where I feel out of control and I thought that following while dancing was one such situation. Each time I felt uncertain, instead of letting him guide me, I tried to take over. (The story of my life, by the way!)

Years later, I took formal dance lessons with the explicit goal of learning how to follow.  My inability to do so had become a social embarrassment so my motivation was high.  Today, I can relax and let the other person lead.  Of course, the better I know the dance, the more relaxed I am and the more I enjoy it.  When my partner starts to take me into unknown territory, my knee-jerk reaction is to take over but I’m now able to take a deep breath and relax into it.

I find myself applying these same concepts to being on a project team.  When I was in my twenties, I wanted to run everything. I was of the personality type someone once brilliantly described as “a massive ego coupled with an inferiority complex.” My reaction to feeling vulnerable was to take over.  It was never pretty and it didn’t do my career any good, either.

Now that I grasp the concept of partnership, it is much easier to accept the role of Follower. I finally understand that no role is better than another on a project; all are equally necessary to get the job done.

When you are considering whether to take the role of Follower or Lead, the questions below are useful. Please consider them in the context of this specific project because the answers are different depending on the mission:

• Where would your skills be most useful?
• Thinking back to similar projects of the past, in what position would you have delivered optimum performance?
• Are there gaps in your knowledge that a different Lead might have?
• Who could take the team to the finish line the fastest while achieving all the objectives?
• Could you be the Lead for one component of the project and Follower for the rest?

Whatever your role is on a project, remember that, just like dancing, delivering a good performance depends on all parties.  If the Follower doesn’t perform his/her role consistently well, the best Lead in the world won’t be able to make up for it.

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To recap:  Step One in learning to dance with change is to accept that which cannot be changed.  Step Two is: choose whether you are going to dance or sit this one out.

Whether or not you choose to dance or sit this one out, you are still challenged with a change in your life.  If you choose to dance, you must learn the new steps.  If you decide to sit it out, you are still facing a new dance because the old one is over; it’s no longer available to you. You may opt out of the new one but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to dance. There is no standing still; you’re always dancing.

In the area of change management, there is much discussion about fear and not nearly enough about the more specific concept of vulnerability.  Fear is defined as “a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc. whether the threat is real or imagined.” Vulnerability is “the state of feeling exposed; susceptibility to injury or attack.” Although this may be pure semantics, to my mind fear is more momentary where vulnerability has real staying power.

When people are faced with any type of change, they often feel exposed. This can take the form of worrying that they’re incapable, for any number of reasons, of learning this new dance. The two most popular reasons seem to be, “I’m not smart enough,” or “I’m too old.” I’ve even heard the declaration, “I’m tired of learning new things.” We never tire of learning. Aren’t you excited about learning when it’s your idea?  What we get weary of is the feeling of vulnerability when new dances are thrust upon us.

Whatever new dance you are faced with, Step Three of learning to dance with change is:

Determine how much of this new dance you already know.

When I was in the fifth grade, The Mashed Potato (not to be confused with The Monster Mash) was THE dance. I became determined to learn it.  My friend Margie had an older sister Gigi who agreed to teach it to us. It took two days of concentrated effort over a weekend to learn but it finally clicked. One minute I was struggling and the next minute I was mashing away!  The key? I finally figured out that The Mashed Potato is little more than The Charleston standing in one place!  (I had already learned The Charleston from a TV show that took place in the Roaring Twenties.) When I finally realized the steps were the same, I was suddenly the neighborhood Queen of the Mashed Potato! (At least in my mind.)

You will rarely run into a change that doesn’t include some components you already know.  Remember the first time you came face-to-face with a computer?  I’ll bet you were already familiar with the keyboard. A quick way to take the fear out of adapting to whatever new “dance” you’re learning is to figure out what you already know that can be applied.

Here are some questions to ask (Managers and Supervisors, these are great to ask your team members):

• What is familiar about this?
• When have you had to learn something similar?
• How did you learn it that time?
• Were there shortcuts you couldn’t see then that you can apply this time around?
• How can you leverage this knowledge?

People who speak several languages will tell you that the third is easier to learn than the second. This is true especially if they are in the same family, such as the Latin languages. That’s because you can apply concepts like case and conjugation you learned the first time around.

The same is true of anything you need to learn. If you’ve done something similar, you can take what you learned from that experience and apply it to what you now face. The important thing is to understand that we all feel vulnerable at the beginning. Some mask it behind indifference; others pretend that nothing could be easier. Still others act as if they already know it.

Whatever external stance you adopt when faced with learning something new, it is important that internally you understand that you already know how to learn; you simply have to apply those methods here.  Each time you successfully learn something, you get better at the process. Luckily for us, we needn’t start from scratch each time; the art of learning builds upon itself.

So the next time you are required to learn a new dance, take some time before you dive in to determine what steps and techniques you already know.  I turned The Charleston into The Mashed Potato—you can take your knowledge of one project to a new one and be ahead of the game.

When you take the time to determine how much of the new dance you already know, your feelings of vulnerability will abate. You are smart enough, you’re not too old and you know you never really tire of learning!

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To recap:  the first step in learning to dance with change is to accept that which cannot be changed.

Once you’ve accepted that the circumstances are here to stay, it is time to decide how you are going to respond. Whenever a change occurs that frightens us (and nearly all change does), one of two instincts is activated in our reptilian brains:  fight or flight.

Therefore Step Two in learning how to Dance with Change is to decide:

Are you going to dance or are you going to sit this one out?

In other words, are you going to stay and work through it or are you going to leave? Although many times leaving seems to be the most attractive choice, it is important to understand that leaving results in change, as well.

I have a coaching client who called to say she’s thinking of quitting her job.  Although I completely understood her reasons for wanting to (slave-driver boss, not enough money…) it was important for her to work through what changes would occur if she did quit.

Many of the new changes would be positive: no more 18-hour workdays; she would be free to move to the same city as her fiancé’ and she could look for a more reasonable job.  But just because a change falls on the plus side of a column doesn’t mean it’s easier to cope with.  She would also be faced with finding a new job, packing up to move and let’s not forget the adjustment of living with her fiancé’ versus a long-distance romance.

She determined that the plusses of leaving outweighed the minuses and she quit.  In doing so, she’s very clear that she now faces even more change as she moves into this new phase of her life.  She decided to sit out the dance she was in and now needs to learn the steps of some new ones.

Deciding to stay when change occurs also has plusses and minuses. Of the two choices, staying is usually the easier. This is true even in the face of grim circumstances. The statistics on abused women successfully escaping their abusers only to voluntarily return are sobering. They are often more afraid of being able to do everything it would take to forge a new life than going back to the life they are familiar with.

I see this in companies all the time. Employees have a lengthy list of complaints about how they are managed, the unfairness of their pay, and the working conditions. And yet, when you suggest they consider developing a strategy for leaving, they have an equally long list of reasons why that’s not a good idea.

For many, the theory is:  Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know. And there’s nothing wrong with that unless you make the choice to stay and then act as if you didn’t.

When a change occurs that you don’t like and you make a choice to stay and work through it, then your job is to figure out how.  Please do not stay and then focus all your efforts on fighting the change every step of the way.  This would be akin to going onto the dance floor when they are playing hip-hop music and stubbornly insisting on dancing a tango.  You might dance the most beautiful tango in the world but if the music doesn’t match, you simply look like you don’t know what you are doing and you are a distraction to the other dancers.

We face the choice of dance or sit every single day:

• Tackle our projects with vigor or do busy work to avoid them?
• Pay attention in a meeting or daydream?
• Complain or suggest solutions?
• Show up on time or straggle in late?
• Applaud the way others dance or critique their styles?
• Fully support the goals of your organization or secretly sabotage them?

The dancers who win in competition are not always the ones with the perfect form. They are more often the ones who are having a great time.  You can tell they are thoroughly enjoying themselves and they bring the audience (and the judges) along with them.

Have you ever seen dancers who clearly are uncomfortable?  They look like they hope the floor will open up at any moment and swallow them.  In watching them, we become uncomfortable as well and then nobody’s having any fun.

If you decide to stay and dance, by all means go for it!  Do not hold back. Give it your all even if you’re not a great dancer.  (Small children can’t dance but they have so much fun and are so committed that they win their audience over.)

When you decide to stay and work through whatever change you are facing and you give it your all, you will discover that suddenly you have mastered the dance and you can move your feet without even thinking about them.

Deciding to dance or sit this one out are both powerful choices. Whatever your choice, fully embrace it.

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As we enter (willing or not) the second year of this Decade of Change, we will be called upon more often than ever to adapt quickly to rapidly changing circumstances.  I can think of no more important competency for success at work and in your personal life than the ability to dance with change. As with any dance, mastering the steps is necessary before you can relax and enjoy the music.

Over the next several months we will learn, together, the steps for dancing with change. Once we master the basics, we can learn to improvise.

The process of change is both simple and complex. Simple in that it is something we do everyday.  There is not one person reading this who is the same person she was yesterday: cells have grown or died; we’ve aged by another 24 hours and the world is different than it was and we’ve adapted accordingly. Change is complex in that it is something we all do and yet resist to varying degrees and under different circumstances.

Take the weather.  As I write this, it is winter and many parts of the world are buried under snow. Some relish the change, declaring the air “crisp” and the smell “fresh.”  They love to see the white powder covering the ground. Others complain nonstop about the inconvenience of waiting for cars to warm up and roads to be plowed.  They never see the beauty of the white powder; only the roadside soot-covered snow piles.

Identical circumstances; different processes of adapting and yet, the bottom line is that we all adjust to cold by changing the way we behave and how we dress; it would be foolish and sometimes deadly not to.

Those who relish cold weather have learned that adapting to winter comfortably requires acceptance.  They do not resist the cold; they focus instead on the good things that come with it. Conversely, those who resist can see nothing good and spend the months of winter in misery. Either way, they adapt.

The first step in learning to dance with change is to accept that which cannot be changed.

Have you ever been on the dance floor when the song that lured you onto your feet ended and the next song turned out to be one you didn’t know how to dance to?  When that happens to me, my initial response is to get mad at the song or the band playing it.  I think, “Who could dance to this?  Nobody!” And then I look around to discover that better dancers than I are dancing to it, and well.

I cannot change the song so I have two choices:  (1) figure out the beat and how to move to it; or (2) get off the dance floor.

When you run up against a circumstance you cannot change, what is your initial response?  Are you determined to figure out how to go with it or do you want to flee?  This is the typical “fight or flight” response to danger.

Change, even one as simple as a new dance song, can trigger feelings of vulnerability.  The intensity of that feeling depends on several factors:

• Are you a practiced dancer, experienced with many styles of dance?
• Do you only know one or two dances?  If they play rock ‘n roll, you know what to do; if they switch to a polka (do people still polka?), you’re lost.
• Are you a complete novice?  You’re not even sure why you ventured onto the dance floor in the first place!

Our feelings of vulnerability when we are asked to adapt are directly proportional to our perceived level of expertise within the domain that is changing.  Show a Communications Manager a problem with a component of the message he is writing and he frowns for a moment and then goes to work using his expertise to solve it.  Approach that same employee looking for solutions involving how to use a company software program he has had little interaction with and his anxiety level rises. He feels vulnerable.  In many instances, this vulnerability is tied directly to the fear of looking stupid.

The good news is:  if you have learned to adapt in one domain, the same skills you learned to do so are applicable in another.  It is fear that keeps us from trying.

In today’s rapidly evolving world, we must all learn to apply these skills in different domains.  That Communications Manager, if he knew he had to learn the software program in order to feed his family would figure it out. He would have taken the first step:  accepting that which cannot be changed.

What circumstances are you faced with that cannot be changed?  What do you need to do to accept them so you can move forward?  And how can you apply your success at adapting in one domain to the new one you are facing?

Remember, the Law of Attraction says you get more of what you focus on. Therefore, whether you think you can or think you cannot, you are right.

Next blog:  Step Two of Dancing with Change

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One of the major benefits of learning how to dance with change is that it keeps your brain facile.  In fact, Andrew Weil, M.D. in his book Healthy Aging recommends learning a foreign language (a BIG change for most of us) as a way to stave off the effects of aging on the brain, “You don’t have to master it.  Just the attempt to learn a language is like running different software through the brain. You’re exercising more communication channels.”

Well, there are the traditional foreign languages and there are the new languages we need to learn as we are adapting to changes. Some examples:

Learning how to speak the same language as your boss. Even if you are both fluent in the same language, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you both attach the same meaning to words and phrases.  My favorite example is the term “customer service.” I continually tell managers that, if one of the results they want from their team is “excellent customer service” then it would serve them well to define what they mean by that. I have seen many problems arise when a team member delivers customer service according to his standards, which are quite different from those of his boss.

The same is true in home situations. We tell our kids “be good” as if they were born knowing what that means.  When we define the criteria, there are fewer arguments because both child and parent can clearly see when something is done that doesn’t fit the criteria of “be good.”

Figuring out what all those darned acronyms mean. Many years ago I went to work for a computer software company in Marketing Intelligence (which the Sales team assured me was an oxymoron). For the first three months, whenever I attended a meeting and we were talking about the computerized sales system, I thought I’d landed in the bar scene of Star Wars where every creature spoke a dialect unfamiliar to my untrained ears. So many acronyms flew around the room, my head spun from trying to keep up.

Today it’s IM and Twitter. I’m still trying to get everything straight. So far I have mastered LOL, BTW, and (:  I’m still working on retweets, direct tweets and whether one’s head could actually explode from the pressure  of trying to be hip (and I suspect just using the word hip places me solidly out of contention).

Adapting to the culture. Most foreign language classes start with the basics which include good manners—how to say please, thank you and you’re welcome.  Beyond the words, it is important when you finally travel to the foreign country whose language you studied, that you also learn what good manners are within that specific culture.  For example, in certain Mideast cultures, showing the bottom of your foot roughly translates to, “I consider you lower than the dirt on the ground.” That faux pas would be difficult to recover from.

Learning what’s acceptable at work is equally important and a moving target. The culture is in constant motion, responding to many factors: changes in the marketplace, employee turnover, new ownership, and mergers with other companies. It is a good practice to routinely raise your head up from your work to assess the culture you are in now.  Too many of us decide how to approach our work based on the shape of the culture when we first joined the organization. Are you keeping up with the culture you’re in?  Do you know what’s acceptable behavior? If you’re not sure how to assess it, a quick way to start is by observing the behavior that gets rewarded and that which gets punished.

Learning to dance with change is an ongoing process. The more we use the steps (which we’ll cover beginning in my New Year’s column), the better dancer you’ll become. Once you’ve learned the steps, the answer to how to get really good at the dance is contained in this old joke:

A New York City tourist stops a local on the sidewalk to ask, “How does one get to Carnegie Hall?” The local replies, “Practice, practice, practice!”

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Are you tired of having to deal with change?  It seems a week doesn’t go by without being asked to adapt to something new—a boss, an updated computer program or a new group of contenders on Dancing With the Stars.

Life comes at us pretty darned fast.

Whether the change in front of you is positive or negative, it will undoubtedly activate within you some unpleasant feelings.

First of all, change is an interruption and interruptions tend to annoy us. We haven’t allowed time for this change, it takes us from a routine with which we are familiar and, adding insult to injury, it requires us to learn something new! (Remember graduating from school and thinking, with that childlike innocence, “Finally! I’m done. I don’t have to learn one more thing!”?)

Having to learn something new activates a feeling most of us avoid like the plague. That feeling is vulnerability.  The kissing cousin of fear, vulnerability seems somehow worse:  it strikes at the core of who we believe ourselves to be.  It makes us feel small and dependant, like a child.

vul-ner-a-ble >adj. 1a. Not protected against harm or injury. b. Susceptible to attack; assailable. c. Easily affected or hurt, as by criticism.

Feeling vulnerable does not evoke your “A” game, that’s for sure.  More likely, it causes you to react—a chemical effect induced by adrenalin that triggers the ancient “fight or flight” instinct.

So we say things like, “People hate change,” when the reality is that it’s not the change itself that makes us cringe, it’s the feeling of vulnerability it induces.

When change occurs it causes us to fret, “Can I adapt this time? Am I capable?  What if this is the one time I really can’t do what they expect of me?”

For some, getting to the other side of the initial reaction to change happens rapidly.  These evolved beings cycle through change like Lance Armstrong up a 10-degree hill. When change strikes, they take the hit to the solar plexus and briefly panic. For a while they feel anger and a desire to punch something. Then their rational mind starts to wrest control, reminding them of how good they are at handling these sorts of situations, pointing out ways in which this could work to their advantage and coaxing them away from reaction and into response.

How are these mere mortals able to process changes so quickly?  They have learned how to manage their focus.

The Law of Attraction says that you get more of what you focus on.  Your emotions are the strongest indicator of whether you are focused on something that will please you.  When you react to change, your focus is on any number of things, none of them positive. The longer you linger in the awful feeling of vulnerability, the more strongly you are attracting circumstances that will prove that you are, indeed, vulnerable.

Self-talk is the quickest technique to managing your focus. It’s negative self-talk that sparked your feelings of vulnerability and caused you to react.  It is positive self-talk that will move you into respond mode.  Moving from react to respond is an indication that your point of attraction is moving toward things that will please you and away from things that will not.

If you’re interested in becoming more like those who quickly cycle through the negative part of change to get to the “goodies,” then practicing soothing and positive self-talk is definitely the way to go. You will feel vulnerable for shorter periods of time, adapt more quickly to our rapidly changing world and, as a bonus, you may even learn to like some of the new batch of Dancing with the Starts contestants.

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The holidays are typically a time when our routines get disrupted in very big ways.  Even if you love this season, it’s easy to get thrown off by the additional pressures.

I cannot think of a better time to deepen your understanding of how to leverage the Law of Attraction to your advantage. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1.  You get more of what you focus on.  Is your focus on how much you love this time of year or on your Inner Martyr?  (Place the back of your hand to your forehead) I can’t possibly get all this done.  Why do I do this every year?  I need more hours in the day!

Try instead to hum along with the seasonal music, enjoy the store window displays, and notice all the beautiful decorations.  Any or all of these actions will result in your attracting more pleasure AND you’ll get more done!

2.  You can tell whether you’re focused on what you want or what you don’t by how you feel. Positive emotions are telling you, “You’re on the right track; keep going.”  Negative emotions are letting you know, “If you stay focused on that, you are not going to like the results!”

Plus, positive emotions are so much more fun, don’t you think?

3.  Your attention is a request for “more of this, please.” Wasted prayers and affirmations abound.  If you pray, “Please help me get through this,” your attention is on struggle and effort. If you pray instead, “Help me to have fun with this,” your attention is on what you want.  Semantics don’t matter; what you’re paying attention to does.  Putting the word “no” in front of something doesn’t automatically place your focus on what you want.  When you say, “No illness, please, your attention is on illness and that’s what you begin to attract.

I have a cousin-in-law who takes a multitude of vitamins and extraordinary precautions during cold and flu season, all toward the purpose of not getting sick. And every year he gets sick—more than once. His focus is not on being healthy.  He is completely focused on “no illness,” thinking, as so many of us do, that the word “no” negates what follows.

Repeat after me:  words do not matter; my attention does.

4. The fastest way to change your mood is to change your physiology. You cannot smile and be in a bad mood at the same time—it would make your head explode (okay, that last part I made up). Seriously, when you’re grinning or humming a happy tune or laughing, it instantaneously puts you into a good mood. I have used this technique for years and it never fails me.

5.  Your brain doesn’t know the difference between pretend and reality.  (This is what makes #4 work.)  If you act as if you’re on top of things and everything you need to do is getting done on schedule, your brain believes you and floods your system with chemicals that produce positive emotions.  Positive emotions attract more of what you want and so, voila! circumstances line up to prove you right!

This is why self-talk is so critical.  There is a huge difference in results when you say, “This is a piece of cake” versus “I can’t figure out how to do this!” Either way, your brain believes you.

I caution you; don’t believe a word written here.  Instead, experiment for yourself! Print this, put it in your purse or wallet and pull it out when you’re facing something that is typically challenging: shopping in a crowded mall, making holiday travel arrangements or trying to stay sober while making your traditional Harvey Wallbanger Christmas Cake.

The holidays are a time when we all feel the need to multi-task and I, for one, say, “Go for it!”  Grab that “to do” list in one hand, the Law of Attraction in the other and watch how smoothly things go. When you do, you will have one of the most fun holiday seasons ever!

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What if it was your downtime, your lounging-in-bed-too-long time, your walkabout time, and your blow-Friday-off time that made possible your greatest achievements? Would they still make you guilty?

TUT-Notes from the Universe (www.TUT.com)

Never have we been so intently busy with so much to show for it:  stress-filled sleepless nights, 60 hour work weeks, health problems and mountains of debt.  Who said we were underachievers?

The tragic irony is that the harder we strain and the more we stress, the further away we push the things we are working so hard to achieve.

Stress and strain as the pathway to riches is a concept that has been sold to us by employers who want us to work longer hours. They can’t say, “Hey, I want more money so why don’t you work harder?” They don’t think we are quite that gullible. So instead, they dangle the carrot in front of us, “Work hard and maybe someday you’ll be rich—like me!”

So we fret over unfinished projects and tasks, chase antacids with coffee and count the days until retirement when we fantasize that (what, exactly?) will happen.

We look for someone to blame and the usual scapegoats line up in our imaginary firing line: parents who didn’t raise us right; teachers who were demeaning instead of encouraging; bosses who clearly didn’t know the level of talent they were dealing with; and co-workers who undermined us for their own ambition.

It was never supposed to be this hard.  Most stress is a by-product of where we place our focus and what we tell ourselves during the process.

Always remember—your brain doesn’t know the difference between pretend and reality.  When you say, “This is really hard,” it is equal in power to, “This is really easy.”  The first triggers your brain to release stress hormones; the other triggers the “feel good” hormones.  Both declarations are true to the degree that you believe them to be so.

It is time to remember how to relax and receive.  We are born knowing how to do this—we spend the better part of the first years of our life sleeping, amusing ourselves and letting others take care of us. Sometime between then and now we began to believe the ridiculously popular notion that things outside of ourselves would make us happy and the only way to obtain them is through struggle and effort. Do you see babies struggling?

I have friends in varying economic situations—some are unemployed and looking for work, others are living paycheck-to-paycheck, some are comfortable and others are rich.  I can tell you unequivocally that their level of satisfaction with their lives is not caused by their circumstances. I can also say with equal conviction that the circumstances they find themselves in have everything to do with their ability to receive.

The Law of Attraction says that you attract more of what you focus on.  The reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is because each group expects to receive what they’ve always received.  When someone who is wealthy starts to judge his bank account as “not enough,” the downward spiral begins. And the moment someone poor starts to dream about better circumstances, the upward spiral is put into motion.

How are you at receiving?  Do you allow others to do for you or are you always the one doing for others?  When you receive a gift, do you feel grateful or unworthy? If someone picks up the tab at lunch, do you feel obligated to do something of equal value for him or her?  Can you allow yourself to be happy even when circumstances aren’t perfect or are you delaying it until things line up?

The reason I wrote, “relax and receive” is because this is different from the grabby and defiant “I deserve this” mode of receiving. When you relax and receive, you are aligned with the natural order just as you were when you were a child. The difference now is that you can appreciate it so much more because it’s a leap forward from the difficult approach you’ve been using.

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Over the last thirteen months I learned something profound about myself that you’d think would have revealed itself much sooner:

I love physical adventure (and I don’t use the word “love” lightly.)

I swear I did not know. In fact, if asked, I would reply that I was definitely not interested in things like hiking, kayaking and white-water rafting. I was convinced that people who do such things were slightly off their rockers. Back when I was dating, if a man revealed that he was into any of that, there would definitely be no second date.

What a lot of fun I missed over the years.

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

Herbert Spencer, Victorian
Biologist and early social philosopher

That’s what I suffered from—contempt prior to investigation. Because I had not previously been exposed to outdoor adventure as a child or as a young adult, I dismissed it out of hand as something I didn’t like, even though I had never tried it and knew very little about it.

What have you declared as “not your thing” even though you haven’t tried it and know very little about it? Where have you deprived yourself? How have you shut down possibilities?

Too often we are like small children, wrinkling our noses at unfamiliar food, stubbornly refusing to even try it.  We are impatient when children exhibit this behavior but how often do we do it?

You get more of what you focus on. When we focus on limiting ourselves to only the familiar, we begin a subtle process of shrinking.  My friend Bill puts it this way: “There is no hover. You are either progressing or regressing.” Contempt prior to investigation feeds regression.

In my change consulting practice, I see this all the time—so-called leaders who are unwilling to try something new, employees who cling to the familiar even when it’s cumbersome and no longer efficient and salespeople who are trying to sell a solution to the wrong problem.  The more of these shrinking violets there are in an organization, the more quickly the business condemns itself to obsolescence. The world simply passes it by.

The same is true for individuals. Even when what we are doing no longer serves us, we continue on the path because it is familiar and we are afraid to try new things.  Of course, because we are so used to operating this way, we don’t even realize that we are afraid. Our explanations, said in proudly defiant voices are phrases like, “I guess I’m just set in my ways,” or “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” or my personal favorite, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Ironically, those of us who cling to the familiar in those areas of our lives over which we have control, often embrace change in areas like technology.

For some, if we approached technology like we do our lives, we’d still be watching a black-and-white television with rabbit ears for the antenna and using rotary phones that are tethered to the wall.

Contempt prior to investigation is a habit and, speaking for myself, a poor one.  Now that I’ve become aware of how much fun I’ve been missing for years by declaring, “I’m not outdoorsy,” I’m looking at other areas to see where I’ve placed myself in regressive mode:

• What software programs have I dismissed that might make my life easier?
• What board games have I declared myself not interested in that might turn out to be fun?
• Which people have I not taken an interest in because I thought we had nothing in common?

The next time you find yourself wrinkling your nose like a 4-year old, ask, “Is this contempt prior to investigation?” and investigate! You have nothing to lose and a world of adventure to gain.

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The standard of success in life isn’t the things. It isn’t the money or the stuff—it is absolutely the amount of joy you feel. — Abraham Hicks

The formula is so simple. The Law of Attraction dictates that you get more of what you focus on.  When you zero in on that which brings you joy, you begin to attract more circumstances that make you happy. If you make it your overriding goal to live happily ever after, then you will experience a life beyond compare.

What trips most of us up is that we put conditions on what “happily ever after” looks like:

Condition #1 – Lots of money. If you require a certain amount of money before you are happy, then you are on a dangerous path.  As you continuously ponder the absence of that dollar amount, you experience a feeling of lack. Now you are attracting more of the same.

My friend Peter has lots of money and an incredible lifestyle to match—homes in exotic places and first class travel at the drop of a hat. As I have gotten to know him over the past year and heard the story of his life, I have come to understand that his early circumstances were unhappy, to say the least.  I’ve also learned that he is naturally upbeat.  He has always found a way to have a blast, wherever he is and whatever he’s doing.  Because of that, he has attracted more of what matches his optimistic nature.  Wealth was never a goal—having a good time was. The more he enjoyed himself, whether in the office or out on a kayak, the more he attracted circumstances that matched his natural ebullience.

Here’s the most important thing to know: Peter is no happier now than he was when he had nothing. If you don’t have his kind of wealth, you will undoubtedly scoff at that. But think of your own circumstances.  You likely have had abundance in your life at one point, whether it was having your own apartment after you left home or even living the American Dream of home ownership. Has it made you any happier?

Condition #2 – The people I love have to be doing well. Good luck with this one. First of all, are you the one who defines what “doing well” means? Other people’s paths, including the journeys of your family, are not yours to control.  You have a full-time job with your own.

My teacher, Abraham Hicks said it better than I ever could:  you cannot get poor enough to make someone else rich and you cannot get sick enough to make someone else well.

There will always be people around you who aren’t living up to the expectations and dreams you hold for them.  The best gift you can give them is to demonstrate, through your example, how to be happy despite imperfect conditions. After all, isn’t that what you want for them?

Condition #3 – A “to do” list with nothing on it. This is the funniest one of all.  The game of life is to add things to your list, not get rid of the list altogether.

We are all incredibly busy.  We think it’s gotten worse because we have selective memory.  We forget that, ‘lo those many years ago before the Internet and cell phones and 400 television channels to choose from, we still felt rushed. That feeling isn’t being imposed on you from the outside; it’s coming from inside you.

The logical conclusion is to think that, if we had less to do, we would feel better.  I have tried it and I am here to tell you, it is a false belief.

All those items on your “to do” list summon Life Force through you.  The energy you feel when you are busy is extraordinary—unless you resist it.  It isn’t getting things done that tire us, it is fighting the work involved. Think of the difference in how you feel when you whistle as you work versus complaining every step of the way.

Living happily ever after is a decision, pure and simple. It is life affirming and a boatload of fun. Are you in?

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