“Because I feel like it” and its inverse, “because I don’t feel like it” are often derided as childish, naive, and unprofessional when used as explanations for why you chose to do one thing and not another.
But the truth is that doing what you feel like, if you’re being honest, is really the same as following your intuition. And that’s the most mature, informed, and professional way to work, bar none.
As coaches, one of the things we strive to do is follow the client’s energy. There may be many topics at play in a conversation, and some may at the surface level seem weighty and others trivial. But in deciding which one to pursue first, it’s best to follow the client’s energy.
If your energy is in one area, but we end up talking somewhere else, we’re not using our time together as effectively as we could. Some of your energy will be away from the conversation.
The same goes for your work. If your energy is in doing a marketing plan, but you really ought to finish up this proposal for a new client, then try and see if there isn’t a way to let the proposal wait until your energy leads you naturally towards it. Could it possibly wait another day or two?
And if your energy never happens to lead you to writing the proposal, maybe it’s not a good project to be bidding on. Just consider it. Allow the possibility and be honest with yourself.
The next time your boss asks you why you haven’t completed that feature or report or sales call he asked for, try telling her that you didn’t feel like it. And take the time to have the conversation with her that follows.
One of the great benefits of being a coach is that you can’t help but grow yourself in the process.
Of course, growth is required. You have to walk the talk and be a role model.
But when you coach people, it’s impossible not to notice similar patterns in yourself or pick up a good idea for how to do things a little differently.
Since a lot of what I do is spiritual coaching, which is less lofty than it sounds but amongst other things means we spend quite a bit of time meditating together and paying close attention to our senses, it’s impossible for me to not get more present along the way.
Today I had two sessions, both of which involved meditation. And tonight, I recognized for the first time a sensation in my own body that I need to work with. It’s something I’ve felt before, especially, oddly enough, when I drink red wine, and I’ve always passed it off as just a physical thing, an intolerance to something in the wine, perhaps.
But tonight I noticed that it can also be provoked by hunger and by feeling sorry for myself, and that there are actually some negative emotions stuck there. Overwhelm, self-pity, choking. Thankfully, I know exactly what to do to release them.
I’m certain I’d have picked up on it at some point, but I’m also convinced that being primed with presence from those sessions sped things up a lot.
Being a coach is a job with a bonus.
December 27, 2007 · 1 comment
I recently learned an interesting piece of inside info about certain policies at telcos that I just can’t help sharing. They’re dubbed customer retention programs, but in reality they’re about the opposite.
What I was told is they do the math to calculate which customers are most profitable and which are least, and then they program the customer service call center to give their best customers the best service and their worst customers the worst service.
Specifically what that means is that when the voice system asks you to key in your phone number, it looks up which category you belong to. If you’re a top-tier customer, you’re immediately put through to one of their top customer service reps with authority to fix problems on the spot. If you’re the bottom tier, you’re left on hold indefinitely, or handed over to some newbie who doesn’t know shit after waiting almost forever.
It’s simple and obvious once you think about it. I just never thought they’d have the cojones to actually do something like that.
The problem for the telco is that they can’t easily show their worst customers the door. So instead they try to make the experience so miserable that the target customers choose to leave voluntarily. A tactic that’s as old as civilization itself, I’m sure.
Evan Williams, founder of Blogger and Twitter, brings up the need for a startup to be personally compelling, and notes how there’s two parts to it: Making something you’re a user of, and making something that’s meaningful to you.
I want to add that they’re really two almost totally different issues. One is a nice-to-have. The other is a need-to-have.
Solving a problem you have yourself is nice. It’s nice because it cuts down on your market research costs, it allows you to try out different ideas faster because you don’t have to wait for your customers to find the time to meet with you, which in turn allows you to be more creative and intuitive.
The flip-side is that if that’s all you have, you easily end up with products that are really little features. A slightly better invoice generator. Yet another time tracker. That gets old pretty quickly.
Making something that’s deeply and personally meaningful to you, on the other hand, is crucial. You can start a business without it, but the odds are stacked high against making it a successful growth business.
Making sure your business is truly meaningful to you will do two things, specifically:
First, it’ll be a guidepost. It’ll help you make decisions, tell you which direction to go in, shape your vision. In short, it’ll connect you with your intuition.
And second, it means you’re in it for the long haul. That when things get difficult, you persevere and find a way. That when the first attempt didn’t work, you’ll tweak it and try again. And again and again, until you get it right. It makes you resourceful because it’s important to you. It’s meaningful.
As a corollary it also gives you something credible to tell your family when you need to work long hours. Not that I believe long hours are required. But there’ll always be peaks.
How do you know if you’ve found something meaningful?
One sign is that it makes you want to cry. But tears are not required. It could also make you really excited. But do me a favor and be really honest here. Don’t talk yourself into believing something is meaningful to you if it really isn’t. Look me in the eye when you say it. You’ll know if you mean it.
Trust that there is something that’s meaningful to you out there, even if what you’re doing now, or what you’re considering doing now, is not. Trust that you will find it. Keep looking. Don’t settle.
Sure, you could stick with something less meaningful. But it won’t be fulfilling, there’s a good chance it won’t succeed, and it’ll only delay the day when you can do the thing that is meaningful to you. Why on earth wait?
We all have emotions we’d rather not have. Perhaps you feel anxious before a meeting. Afraid to be a nuisance. Regret over something you’ve done. Needing other’s approval. Fear of not having enough money. Sad about not being understood. Feeling not okay. Sorry for yourself. Afraid of being found out. It can be a lot of things.
But how do you deal with them?
The key is to allow them to be.
Our natural reaction is to avoid negative feelings, suppress them, ignore them, resist them. We want the negative emotions to go away because they’re painful. If only we could be positive and resourceful all the time, we’d be happy.
Sure, but that’s never going to happen.
Negative emotions are part of life. They’re there whether you want them or not. You can choose to resist them, which only causes them to grow stronger and stay longer. Or you can invite them in, and they’ll flow through you and make room for other emotions. Life is a river, let it flow.
For this exercise, start with a situation where you felt something uncomfortable.
So close your eyes and take a few minutes to get present. Feel your body from the inside. If this is the first time you do this, it can be quite a pleasant surprise to feel the warm subtle vibration of life.
Start by holding out your left hand, palm up, and without moving or touching it, just feel it from the inside. Be with that for a minute, focusing all your attention on sensing your hand. Then do the same with your right hand. Then your feet. And finally your entire body.
Now, think back to that situation where you had a negative emotion. Replay the scenario in your mind and really get back into the feeling.
Then ask yourself: For this moment, can I allow this to be?
For most people, that’s an eye-opening right there. Most people never thought you could just stay with the feeling. But you can, and it turns out they’re not really that dangerous.
Notice the direct sensory experience of the emotion. Not your interpretation of what it means. The sensation. Locate the emotion. It can be a tightening in your neck or shoulders. A pit in your stomach. A bleeding sadness in your heart. It’ll always have some representation in your body.
Now just be with that emotion for a while. Allow it to be. Meet it with love and understanding.
Know that it’s a part of you that got stuck when you were young and didn’t know how to deal with the emotion. All this time, it’s just been asking to be seen and loved. And all this time you’ve kept rejecting it.
So let today be the day you change that. You’re able to deal with the emotion now. Invite it in. Meet it with love.
While you’re still in this state, ask yourself what you truly need. Maybe you need some time alone, a pause, maybe you need to love yourself more, breathe quietly, go to a sauna, whatever. Just quietly wait for the answer, if one comes. If not, that’s fine, too.
Stay with the emotion and the question for as long as you can. They say that a shift happens after 19 minutes. I’ve never timed it, but I’ve definitely experienced how I suddenly fell deeper into consciousness after what felt like a long while. But don’t let that scare you. A minute or two is much better than nothing.
And don’t worry if you have trouble staying focused. Your mind is going to be afraid and try to talk you out of it. “What a waste of time.” “Am I doing this right?” “I’m losing concentration now, might as well quit.”
Just notice the thoughts, know they’re just thoughts, and bring your attention back to the direct sensory experience of your body. Praise yourself every time you get your attention back on your body after your thoughts have drifted. Praise yourself for making the effort.
It can be much easier if you get someone experienced to help you. I often have my coach help me, where we sit in silence on the phone together for up to an hour. Having him there helps me get much deeper into presence than I’m able to on my own. I have no idea why it works, but it does.
What you’ll find over time as you do this that the emotions will stop having power over you. It turns out they’re not dangerous at all. They’re just there. A little tightening in my shoulders. So what? We run away scared from them, but the reality is they’re the ones that are scared and need a little love.
Some of them will stop visiting altogether. Most will keep coming back for a while and bring you new opportunities for getting to know yourself. Once you’ve healed some of them, others will start making themselves known. And that’s great, now you know what to do with them.
There are other techniques you can employ, certain visualizations you can do, entering into dialog, etc. But it’s all based around this core of getting present and meeting what is with love.
Play with this over the holidays. Christmas is a time when you’re probably with your parents again, and parents have this uncanny ability to bring up all sorts of negative emotions that you thought you were over.
That’s wonderful! Because now you know what to do with them.
Let me know how it goes.
Elon Musk in Inc.com:
Who gives you the best advice about your business?
My brother Kimbal. Sometimes I want things to be true, even though they’re not, and Kimbal is good at pointing those out.
In the past 6 months, what have you wanted to be true that simply wasn’t?
Jeg vil holde et foredrag om personlig udvikling for iværksættere til januar.
Jeg leder efter noget, der:
- Har plads til 10-20 personer
- Har stole, men helst ikke borde
- Er lyst og behageligt
Kender du til et passende lokale, jeg kan leje til formålet? Eller har din virksomhed evt. et lokale vi kan benytte?
Så fortæl mig om det her eller i kommentarerne.
Now there’s a way to waste your Christmas Holiday.
Asking that question is a dead-end.
Asking that question intensely and insisting on getting an answer is a wasted holiday.
Asking that question and not relenting until you have a definitive answer is a wasted life.
Really, it’s the wrong question. The real question is: What does life want to do with me?
And guess what? Life dosen’t reveal its plan in the places you’re looking for it.
Let go of the need to answer the question. Focus instead of being present.
The intention behind the question is almost always that the present moment is not good enough, and you want a picture of a future present moment that will be better.
But life is now. Life is always now. The past and the future are just thoughts in your head. You’re always living right now. And right now is perfect and divine. And it better be, because it’s all there is.
So the answer to what you should do with your life cannot be in the future. The answer is now.
What should you do with your life? Right now, you should read this blog post. In a minute it’ll be something else.
What you should do with your life is to be present, and life will reveal what it wants you to do moment by moment through your intuition. You’ll be moved to do something or other. You’ll do it because you feel like doing it, right now. Because you enjoy doing it, right now.
Yes, sometimes we do need to plan and think ahead. But that’s the exception, not the rule.
Get present and the question won’t matter, because you’ll simply do what you’re moved to do. You’ll follow your intuition. No big plans needed.
Enjoy your Holiday.
Six years ago today, my wife and I landed in Copenhagen airport after living in New York City for a couple years. I was all fired up and ready to start my own business.
And so I did.
Originally I had wanted to do a product business, but I ended up doing services and quickly lost sight of the product.
After about a year, I gathered an advisory board to get some direction. At this meeting, and after discussing several different strategies and tactics, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal took a step back and asked: “Where’s Lars Pind in all of this? I can’t feel you. Where do you want to go? What’s driving you?”
I didn’t have a good answer, and it bugged me. And in the following years, I still didn’t manage to come up with a good answer.
Not that I didn’t come up with any. In fact, I had lots of answers. But they were all phony. Fake. Constructed to sound convincing. And they probably did convince a few people. But they didn’t convince me.
I figured it was because it was a service business, and I really wanted to be in the product business. So I tried my hand at a few of those. And came up with esoteric, complicated explanations for how this product idea was meaningful to me. “It allows people to express themselves.” Or something. I guess. Again, I wasn’t truly convinced, though I tried to sound like I was.
Over the past year, I’ve been attacking that question increasingly head-on. And I’ve had to admit that I really truly don’t care that much about software. Yes, it can be really beautiful and cool, and great design and beauty is meaningful to me whether it’s in software or hardware or art or music. But ultimately, I find people and life so much more interesting.
I used to think everyone is like this. That was one of my blind spots. “Of course everyone would spend their time learning about how humans function if they could. We all have to do real work first, then we can do what’s fun,” the voice inside my head opined. Alas, it had it wrong.
As a side note, when you find yourself saying “once I’m successful with this, I’m going to write a book about __”, it’s a good sign you might want to skip the “this” part and go straight to the “__”. Keep that in mind.
Answering that insidious little question has been a process.
Around this time last year, I hired my first coach since starting my own business. She helped me realize that working with personal development, for example by becoming a coach myself, was actually an option.
That was another blind spot. For one thing, I thought I was a bad listener because I suck at remembering things like where my friends are going on vacation. Turns out I’m actually a really good at hearing people’s true desires and seeing their potential. Incidentally, I really don’t care one ounce where people go on vacation, but I deeply care about their development and their potential. Funny, that.
Accepting that coaching might be the thing I most enjoy doing, even though there’s no clear path to the billion-dollar product business was a third blind spot. I’m still working on that one. For some reason I was always convinced that I was not only destined to build a billion-dollar company, but that I couldn’t fully accept myself unless and until I did.
I’m trying to let go of that now. Trying to let go of the need to make and believe in big plans, to know what’s next and what it’s going to look like in the end. I’m trying to just do what I enjoy and what I’m moved to do every day and see where it takes me. Trying to not think ahead any further than I absolutely have to for planning. That’s a challenge, but an important one for me.
It’s not a process that’s over yet. It’s more like a love-affair with yourself. It never ends, it just keeps getting better.
How about you? What’s driving you in your work?
December 12, 2007 · 1 comment
Are there things you wish you had known before you started your own company?
Of course there are.
I’m planning a talk on entrepreneurship from the inside out, and I want to address those things you wish you’d known. I need your input.
My focus is on how you can best use yourself as an entrepreneur, an “Owner’s Manual to Yourself”, if you will. Nothing about market segmentation or product portfolios or anything like that. It’s all about you.
It’s about personal growth through entrepreneurship. Because in order to be the best entrepreneur you can be, you have to be the best you you can be.
Sounds interesting? I thought so.
Here are some of the topics I’m considering:
- Start from the heart and do what you love
- Define clear, specific goals and you’re halfway there
- Negative thoughts and emotions are friends: How to deal with fear, worry, regret, loneliness, etc.
- Be a leader: Essential leadership skills
- Be a boss: Be clear, and focus on the delivery, not the person.
- Manage the process: Define the outcome, make a scoreboard, follow up.
- Fall in love with reality: Hope is not a strategy; wishing things to be true don’t make them so.
- Techniques for dealing with the workload
- Common fears: Fear of rejection, success, failure, and uncertainty.
Which three would you most like to hear?
What would you love to hear about that’s not on the list?
If you are already an entrepreneur, what are the top 3 things you wish someone had told you before you started?
Entrepreneurs are a self-confident bunch, and we often don’t realize we could benefit from some outside help. How could I market this talk to get you to come? What are the key challenges I could address? What are the key phrases that would pique your interest? How would I best reach you?
I’m planning on the first talk being about 2 hours with some break-out exercises, so obviously only a few of the items above can be covered. What would you pay to attend such a talk?
Do you know of a good venue in Copenhagen I could use for the talk? I’d expect between 10 and 20 people for the first talk in January.
Thanks for your insights, I appreciate it. Respond in the comments or my email to lars at pinds dot com.
Have you ever thought you were meant to do more with your life than what you’re doing now?
Having a worthwhile and inspiring goal that challenges you to be your best is one of the most important things you can do to be fulfilled and successful.
But how do you find that goal? Will it just fall from the sky some day?
Not bloody likely.
No. You have to start by finding what you love to do. The only way to do great things is to do what you love to do. That’s the only way you’re going to be truly motivated to get really great at it. Because you can’t not do it.
And your goal must be something that involves doing what you love doing, something that would be the direct result of doing what you love.
So let’s look at how you can go about finding what you love.
Step 1: Take money out of the equation. If you love doing it, you’d be willing to do it for free. If you do what you love, money will follow. So focus on what you love doing so much you’d do it for free.
Step 2: Focus on what you enjoy, rather than what you’re good at. It’s pretty common to be good at something that’s not truly your passion, and everyone around you is trying to persuade you to stick to what you do so well. But if you feel drained rather than energized after doing it, it’s not what you love. Get rid of it.
Step 3: Ignore outside recognition. If you truly love it, you’d do it even if no-one saw you do it or recognized you for it. Your motivation has to come from the inside.
Step 4: Focus on the feeling, not the thing. Think about the activities you’ll be doing and how they’ll make you feel, not the end result – company you’ll build, the prize you’ll win, etc. Finding what you love is about the process, not the outcome.
Step 5: Don’t overlook the most obvious things. Sometimes we believe that what we do with the most ease, is easy for everyone else, too, so it’s not a differentiator. But that’s typically not the case. Your passion might be right in front of your eyes.
Step 6: Think back to at least 3 situations in your past that you loved, where you felt you were on a roll. What were you doing? What about the situation made you love it?
Step 7: For the next week or two, keep a small notebook with you at all times, and write down every situation that you love, and every situation that you hate. At the end of the week, take a look at the situations you loved, and find out what specifically about the situation made you love it. Do the same with the situations you hated. This will give you insights into what activities you love.
Expect to meet resistance within yourself. It could be the thought that you’re not worth it, that you should be doing something even though you don’t like it, fear of what the consequences might be, and so on. For now, just allow the thoughts to be without believing that they’re necessarily true and move forward with your work finding what you love.
Trust that you will find what you love. It may take a while, but keep looking. And trust that it’ll be worth it. Life’s too short and too important to give up on this.
In the words of Steve Jobs:
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
Let me know when you’ve found what you love, and please share with me what it is.
And let me know how the process worked for you, and please share your own tips and additions and alterations.
Just a quick note to say that I passed my coach certification exam today. I’m now a certified coach. Yay :)
