Look out world! My theme for this year is to re-energize my life!  And because it’s my theme for the year, any decisions I make will be evaluated with this theme in mind to determine if I am truly aligned and making choices that support my goal.

I must say that just the process of identifying this theme has already given me more energy, but more importantly, it has helped to me evaluate what in my life right now is draining my energy. I’m sharing this process with you because I feel so strongly that most of the time we don’t realize what deflates us; what brings us down. And if we do recognize it, sometimes we don’t even have the energy to deal with it.

This blog is not about being a super woman or super mom. As women we often take on too much and don’t give ourselves a break when we don’t meet our own expectations. This post is about energy. What fuels our energy? What drains our energy?

Where are your energy leaks?

1. Work

Are you doing the type of work that fuels your energy; that validates your sense of accomplishment? Because we spend much of our lives working, this is SO important. Key questions to ask yourself are:

• Do I look forward to going to work?
• Am I tired before the work day begins?
• Do I procrastinate completing projects? (this could be due to other factors as well)
• Do I enjoy the people I work with?
• Do I feel respected at work?
• Do I spend more time being frustrated than fulfilled?

2. Personal Relationships

Our personal relationships provide a support system for us, but how much of our time and energy is spent supporting others?

• Do I get the support I need from my friends and family?
• How much time do I spend in relationships that drain my energy?
• Who are the people in my life that give me energy and support?

3. Lifestyle Choices

• Am I getting enough exercise?
• Does my diet reflect healthy choices that provide me with the energy I need to support my lifestyle? (P.S. Caffeine is not the answer)
• Do I take time out for myself on a regular basis to recharge my batteries?
• Do I have a hobby or sport that I participate in that rejuvenates me?
• Is my home environment organized and functional or am I always struggling to keep up?
• Why do I live where I live? Do I spend too much time commuting? Is it worth it?

I know from my own perspective as I evaluate new work projects this year I will look very carefully at the type of work to determine if it aligns with my talent and strengths. Though it is sometimes difficult to turn down opportunities, I know how toxic it can be to choose projects that drain my energy and leave me feeling deflated in the process. I already have plans for a new website, a new radio show, a book and much more. Stay tuned!

I will look to spend more time with the people in my life who stimulate me intellectually and inspire me to be the best I can be. That’s a great energy source.

Let me ask you: What drains your energy? How can you re-energize your life going forward?

I was on the train this past week headed into New  York City to give a presentation. It was late afternoon and the train was filled with high school students commuting home. As you can imagine, there were many animated conversations going on at once. I couldn’t help but hear the conversation four girls were having who were seated across the aisle from me.

One girl was telling her friends all about her plan for the summer. She planned on doing nothing; just lying on the beach, listening to music, and hanging out with her friends. She said with great conviction, “I so deserve it. I’ve worked hard all year.”

So upon hearing her declaration,  I had to ask myself how often I have  thought that or said that to myself or anyone else for that matter. How often have I honestly felt entitled to taking a break or time off because I’ve been working so hard.

What happens to me more often than not is that I hit a wall. I work really hard for long periods of time without a day off and then I find myself brain dead and exhausted. Can you relate?

It would be great if I could give myself permission to take a break and feel that I truly deserve it without all the guilt. How wonderful would it be for me to plan these breaks ahead of time so that I don’t reach the point of running out of steam? When I reach the point of exhaustion, I have no choice but to recharge and recover.

I’ve often heard that the millennial generation has a sense of entitlement, but is that really a negative? This teenager was acknowledging that she works hard and is deserving of some kind of reward or break from the push and stress to perform.

I seem to spend more time dealing with my guilt than praising myself and embracing the feeling of entitlement. Is this a generational issue or gender issue or both?

Note to self: You can learn valuable lessons from anyone anywhere as long as you are open to listening (in this case eavesdropping) and receiving the lessons.

PS. I’m now planning my own summer break!

What about you? You so deserve it!

I did something really important last weekend. I took a whole day off! I have been consistently working seven days a week for months without a break and my coach strongly suggested that I try to take one full day off each week. Well, if my coach told me to do this and it was part of my assignment, I could not refuse.

I have to admit I was very anxious about this. If I do indeed take Sunday off, what will my Monday be like? Won’t I be even more stressed than if I worked the whole week?

I had to make a plan. I knew that if I stayed around the house, I would be compelled to look at my computer and blackberry and do some work. I know myself all too well. So I planned a trip with a friend to go to Provincetown for the day. It was a beautiful day and a perfect time for an outing on Cape Cod. We took the ferry from Martha’s Vineyard and drove the length of the Cape, listened to great music, ate a fabulous lunch at an outdoor café, and shared some small talk.

My next challenge was to not discuss business all day. I didn’t do too well in this category, but this “taking a break” thing is a process for me, and at least I was off to a fairly good start. After all, I physically removed myself from my office and work environment. (I do think I might have cheated though when I came home that night and did a little work before heading to bed. Don’t tell my coach!)

Monday morning I felt refreshed and energized and not at all stressed. It was a good experiment for me and a great lesson as well.

Sometimes our drive to be successful drives us to work compulsively. Can you relate to this?  Intellectually, I’m sure we all recognize this is not healthy.  I know that I certainly do, yet pulling myself away from work once a week to do something entirely different makes me anxious; a clear sign to me that this is unhealthy behavior.

I am mindful that at least once a day I need to leave my desk and my office and do something unrelated to work. I am mindful that once a week I should take twelve hours of respite to renew my energy, spirit and passion for my work. What I have discovered is that when I step away from work my creativity kicks in and I can actually think more clearly.

Case in point, for weeks on end I was trying to think of a new name for my radio show. Women Mean Business is trademarked by NAWBO and though I was unaware of this when the show launched, I did receive notice from them to stop using the name. I loved the name and racked my brain trying to think of something equally sticky and clever. I even ran a contest on LinkedIn to get more ideas. Trying to get a new name was on my mind night and day. Here’s the lesson though. As soon as I let it go and stepped away from the problem, a solution came to me.  Miraculously out of the blue, the new name, Head over Heels, popped into my brain. WOW! I could not believe it. This process of “letting go” really worked.

If I can pass along any wisdom about this it is to be mindful yourself of how your drive to be successful can work against you at times if you don’t take a break and let go. Not only is it not healthy, but the consistent compulsive need to work actually stifles your creativity and is counter productive.

This is a process that I’m just beginning myself.

Well, need to get back to work. :>)

Sometimes I look back on the earlier days of my business career and wonder how I managed to raise two children as a single parent and still maintain and advance my career; most of all, I wonder now how I maintained my sanity and how I managed to focus any attention at all on work. I think my children, now grown and successful in their own right, turned out pretty good, and my career flourished as well, but it was not without an undercurrent of stress and guilt, and a constant juggling of babysitters and after school programs.

With this experience behind me and the knowledge that work/family balance is an ongoing challenge for most women, I applaud the White House conference on flexibility in the workplace for the attention it has brought to the topic.

The Economic Office of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers  released a 35 page report , Work-Life Balance and the Economics of Workplace Flexibility, which addresses not only the need to create flexible solutions for work, but also the benefits to companies who embrace these initiatives.

According to the report, there is a greater need now for flexibility in work than ever before. Why? because women now make up almost half of the labor force in the United States. The majority of children now are raised in households where both parents work. Another key factor is that more adults are attending school.

The report also states that flexible work environments can vary tremendously by gender, race, work status, education, and industry.  Flexible hours and location of work were considered.

The most impressive section of the report focuses on the economic benefits, the business case, for companies that provide flexible work solutions. These companies experience a decrease in employee turnover and absenteeism along with an increase in productivity and the ability to attract new talent to the organization.

With these types of statistics behind us, women now need to take the lead to move these initiatives forward in their own work environments. It’s time to speak up and rally the troops. Flexible work solutions benefit men and women as well as companies.

The Glass Hammer’s article on the subject provides some guidance on how best to do this from their interview with Flexpath’s CEO, Meryl Rosenthal.

This is a guest post from Art DeLorenzo, CFP, ChFC, CLU, MSFS, a retired Group Vice President at a Fortune Magazine top 100 firm and Frederic Luskin, Ph.D. a psychologist at Stanford University. Mr. DeLorenzo, Dr. Luskin and Dr. Rick Aberman are co- owners of MYT Group, LLC. MYT is an emotional competence development programs. Details about this program can be found at www.maximizeyourtalent.com.

Here are some thoughts and tips on how to cope with fear and anxiety to help people understand the impact that fear and anxiety have on them physiologically and emotionally and then some steps to help deal with those feelings.

Things to Know:

1. It is natural to feel anxious during financially stressful times so do not think that you are alone or that you are odd. It is natural and there is nothing wrong with you for thinking in an anxious way. A recent TV interview between Donny Deutsch & financial newscaster Larry Kudlow revealed that Mr. Kudlow was no more prepared for the onset of the recent market collapse than you and I were.

2. It is natural for the brain to create fear and anxiety. Therefore experts surmise the brain is trying to protect us by bringing a difficult situation like the economic crisis to our awareness. When in our awareness the brain is saying find a solution because there is something wrong here. You can read more about this in Margaret Wehrenberg’s book “The Anxious Brain”.

3. Psychologists distinguish between fear – which has a specific cause (the Saber Tooth Tiger finds you in the woods) and anxiety whose cause is more general and vague.

4. Anxiety creates cognitive distortions according to Myra S. White a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School who focuses on workplace performance. Cognitive distortion weakens our judgment which causes decision-making to be impaired. Bottom line – we make more mistakes.

5. When we experience cognitive impairment from anxiety we do not listen as well and instructions need to be repeated more often and our memory is weaker.

6. When we are cognitively impaired we tend to have shorter fuses and we often feel impatient.

7. When we are cognitively impaired we tend to obsess about the past and/or worry about the future both of which impair our present performance.

8. If during a stressful time like this you are not cognitively impaired, you may become so if someone else in our office has high anxiety. That occurs through a process known as emotional contagion according to Professor Sigal G. Barsdale associate management professor at the Wharton School of Pennsylvania.

9. Anxiety wrecks havoc on the body and the mind according to psychologist Dr. White.

10. According to a study released by CNN in mid March of 2009, 8 of 10 Americans are experiencing stress over the economy as evidenced by their concern over their jobs and their perceived loss of their life style.

What can you do?

1. Encourage your people to express their anxieties openly so that leaders can provide honest information about what is occurring. The leader of the group can convene a meeting so that individuals have an open opportunity to share their thoughts and fears. Set a start time for the meeting and an end time. Explain that once the meeting is over, everyone is advised that “worry time” is over until the next meeting and productivity time is at hand.

2. Be strategic about your anxiety. When you experience it, acknowledge it and then practice stress management so that you can move on. Take two or three slow deep breaths into and out of your belly and relax.

3. When you catch yourself back in your anxious spot, remind yourself that you were there before and it is not necessary to remain there. As a practice: Consider the difference between the mind, the brain, & the body. The mind controls what the brain does. So if you remind your brain, to be grateful or optimistic it will do just that. When you do this the body receives less stress hormones and your mind stays clear. Imagine then your body says to your brain, wow, less adrenaline…thank you.

4. Remind yourself on a regular basis that right now you are fine. You are healthy. Your loved ones are healthy. You have food, water, and shelter. Today, at this moment, there are no real threats to your safety and the safety of your family. Fear is not needed and you have the tools to deal with your anxiety.

5. Create a meditation and or regular exercise routine. Both produce natural mood elevators that will dispel the symptoms of anxiety according to Dr. White.

Some of this information came from a NY Times article written by Phyllis Korkki on Sunday, October 19th on page 11 in the Business Section.

With the advent of birth control in the 1960′s, women had a choice for the first time. They could plan their family/career path strategically. Often women started their careers and then took time to have a family. Whether or not they returned to their previous careers, they did have choices.

But with more and more mothers in the workforce who contributed to the income of the family, discussions began around work/life balance and how best to manage both a career and family. Women were still responsible for most of the childcare and housework along with their jobs. It became obvious that to do it all at the same time was a difficult, if not impossible task. The emphasis on self-care for women and work/life balance became a hot topic.

The lack of flexible work solutions, therefore, was initially focused on women who wanted options for balancing career and family. This assumed little if no participation from their male counterparts in childrearing. The lack of flexible work solutions was also tagged as an obstacle to women’s advancement in business as more and more women were forced to drop their careers to seek better alternatives than their companies were offering.

The concept of flexibility is emerging now as a gender neutral issue that focuses more on the need for everyone, male and female, to have a more flexible, healthy workplace. Flexibility is not just related to working mom stress as more and more men share household responsibilities. It encompasses alternative work solutions such as part time work, job sharing, telecommunting, on site child care. Men are now more interested in having options to take time off whether it’s for childcare, elder care, or personal pursuits.

Businesses are becoming increasingly aware that there is a business case around flexibility in terms of reduced overhead, improved recruitment and retention of talented employees. as well as the importance of a flexible work force.

To learn more about the options and benefits of flex at work, listen to my interview with Karol Rose, Chief Knowledge Officer at Flexpaths. www.flexpaths.com.

Whenever I hear people talk about re-discovering their inner child, I have noticed more often than not that it’s about connecting with the innocence and joy of childhood. Usually the quest to re-discover our inner child is focused on incorporating more playfulness and happiness in our lives. It’s a call to “lighten up”. And boy, do we most of us need this!

I’m a business coach and I help women achieve their professional and personal goals. Setting intentions, creating action plans are all part of my coaching work. But I’ve noticed more and more lately, that the more we push to accomplish our goals, the less we accomplish unless we incorporate joy in our lives as well. Quite simply, we need to “lighten up”.

Is it OK then to set our intentions, create goals and then just let them go? No, of course not. We should do the daily work, take the necessary steps toward reaching our goals. But as we perform the tasks, keep in mind that plodding through our work each day is not the sum total of our existence. We take ourselves way too seriously. Finding ways to connect with your inner child, to incorporate joy in your life is another important part of any daily plan.

Set your intentions and visualize your success every day. If you are someone who requires structure, then set aside time each day to do an activity that brings you joy, that will give you some distance from your work. I find that sometimes these foster our most creative moments.

Think about moments in your early childhood when you experienced the true bliss of life. What were you doing? What did that feel like? How can you re-create that feeling?

It’s that feeling of joy that fuels our life energy and our success. The best path to success still includes planning and hard work, but what fuels our continual determination and productivity? What keeps us motivated and moving forward?

Connect with your inner child and re-discover that joy and you will reach your goals faster. It will provide the energy to move you forward in whatever direction you choose.

How do you bring joy into your life? I would love to hear from you.

As women, we are continuously striving for work/life balance because we believe it’s possible. All the subject matter experts (myself NOT included) tell us that we can achieve balance in our lives and we should make every effort to create this equilibrium for ourselves. It is doable.

We are all superwomen. As a result, we have an ongoing list of things we “should” do for our career and our family/personal life. We seem to punish ourselves with this list of “shoulds”. The “shoulds” contribute to our guilt on a daily basis and we often give more focus to what we “should” have done or “should ” do instead of everything we have accomplished.

I propose that we create a different type of list; a list of things that we choose NOT to do. This new approach is a powerful guilt-free antidote to the “shoulds” for we are CHOOSING not to do the things on the list. I choose NOT to volunteer to make brownies for the class picnic. I choose NOT to do the laundry before work this week. I choose NOT to stay late at work one night a week.  I will NOT have the dinner party this weekend.

So many of our “shoulds” actually add very little value to our lives. Take a look at your list and  see if you agree. So why do we persist on focusing on them everyday?

Let’s try to let the “shoulds” go. Take back your power and intention and focus on your accomplishments and success. Don’t beat yourself up with guilt. Try a new approach and create a list of what YOU CHOOSE NOT TO DO.

The choice is yours!

It’s not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it. ~ from the television show The Golden Girls

This post today is to honor all my clients, colleagues, friends, and family who are mothers. Words can barely express my admiration for all the wonderful talented women that I have the good fortune of knowing through business and pleasure.

Everyday, I speak with women who are balancing their roles as mother, wife, and business woman. They accomplish this with elegance and grace. Their daily routine of running a household, running a business, and running around to baseball practice and games, piano lessons, hockey, girl scouts, dance lessons etc. seems effortless. They are on auto pilot most of the time and manage to make it through their busy schedules and keep everyone happy. It is truly amazing to see. How do we as mothers manage to focus on our profession and family and do everything so well?

Of course, we are not perfect though we try so hard to achieve perfection. We expend a lot of energy attempting to keep the many different balls in the air and hope that nothing drops. Most of the time, we are as near to perfection as is humanly possible. Super heroines!

Each role that we take on as women whether it’s motherhood or career or relationship partner and spouse is a really a full time job and we are constantly under pressure (though most of it self-directed) to perform all these roles perfectly (or at least to the best of our abilities). We rarely let any one down.

So let’s take the time today to honor our mothers and also to acknowledge OURSELVES  as mothers and give OURSELVES credit for being the amazing women that we are!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Bonnie

This is a guest post from my friend and very talented colleague, Katie West.

You know the drill. Head down, nose to the grindstone, work first and play later. Sure, there is merit and reward in focus and drive. They are crucial skills that help us attain our goals. But what happens when we realize that our drive and determination have driven us right into the ground? It is hard to meet our goals or enjoy their achievement if we have been left so ragged by stress and exhaustion that we are barely standing, much less smiling and laughing.

By constantly prioritizing values that drain us, without re-supplying ourselves with values such as joy, play, and fun which serve to energize and rejuvenate us, it becomes increasingly harder to find the power necessary to make significant progress towards our goals.

One way to think of it is to imagine putting your hand very close in front of your face. It is hard to focus on our hand because of how close it is to our eyes. Now, move it out as far as your arm will reach. It becomes much easier to focus on it and discern the details of it, right? The importance of levity in our lives is that it provides that critical distance and perspective we need in order to view our experience. By placing emphasis on lightness, joy, and possibility in our lives, we are able to be more productive, creative, and energetic in our responses to our work and home lives.

Sometimes people still hold firmly to the notion that fun and levity prevent or slow down efficiency. Studies show that the opposite is true. Companies who value fun and play in the workplace, rank higher in surveys of workplace satisfaction. Also, the same companies repeatedly tend to be more successful in their overall goals.

Levity boosts our ability to think outside the box and be able to generate the innovative solutions necessary to solve a problem. We stand out from the crowd. It is an easy choice when we think about it: Either working with someone who complains, uses their intelligence to find flaws, and rarely smiles OR working alongside someone that readily shares their positive spirit, their zest for a particular project, or whose creative ideas inspire you.

How can we bring a little more levity and joy into our lives during such a challenging time in our society?

First step, we have to choose to bring this powerful energy into our lives and this means we are willing to seek it out in full confidence it will help us live our lives better, perform more optimally, and create a climate of wellness within us.

A couple of simple ideas for more joy, possibility, and lightness in our days:

Watch a movie that you find funny.

Practice laughing (it is okay if you are faking it-you still get the happy benefits) on your drive or walk to work by pretending you are listening to something funny on the radio or pretending you are on the phone having a funny conversation.

Call a friend and leave a laughing message on their voice mail and ask them to do the same.

Write 3 things you are grateful for each day.

What ways can you bring levity into your life?

Katie West is The Levity Coach. http://levitycoaching.com