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Kathy Stoddard Torrey

~ Leadership Coach and Trainer

Kathy Stoddard Torrey

Tag Archives: Heart

Working at Renewal

30 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness, Positivity

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#LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays, #mindfulness, #renewal, Emotional Intelligence, Heart, Meditation, Mindfulness, Positivity

I had a revelation while meditating one morning.  It wasn’t a World-Altering Revelation.  It was more of a Well-That-Will-Make-Life-Better Revelation.  Frankly, I have those pretty often because I’m a thinker, an analyzer, a how-can-we-make-this-easier kind of person who usually has her brain turned on and in high gear.

I don’t meditate as regularly as I’d like, but I’m working on it in light of research by Richard Boyatzis, coauthor of Primal Leadership.  He found that one of the antidotes for leadership burnout is mindfulness and that can be achieved with meditation.  (In case you are wondering, the other avenues of renewal are compassion, playfulness, and hope.)  The key in all categories of renewal is that you must do at least one from any category EVERY DAY!  You have to work at rejuvenation!

Well, that isn’t exactly true and the idea of “working” at meditation was altered by my morning revelation.  I’ve always looked at meditation as an exercise in self-discipline and mind control.  The goal is a sort of Vulcan-like ability to stay laser-focused during meditation.  The result is the ability to carry that focus and calm out into the world.  Don’t get me wrong, self-discipline is important; it’s one of the major pieces of Emotional Intelligence, but it wasn’t helping me on the renewal front as a way to meditate.  Convincing my brain to sit still and be quiet is exhausting, not rejuvenating!

I discovered my new way of viewing meditation by accident.  I was trying different mantras and imagined what words or sounds my leadership series participants would come up with if I had them do this exercise with me.  With each inflow and outflow of breath, I could hear them thinking, “Hate…… this” or “Help….. me.”  They have resisted my meditation exercises in the past.

Then I started thinking of things I could suggest to them instead.  I started with:  “Love…. Joy,” “Peace…. Harmony,” “Calm…. Life.”  Then I started getting silly: “Puppies…. Kittens,” “Sweet-smelling….. Babies,” “Brilliant… flowers.”  I was reminded of the pictures that I flashed up on the big screen during one of our sessions.  I showed them cute puppies, adorable babies, alluring kittens, and beautiful flowers to let them feel a Positive Emotional Attractor state (PEA) – a term used by Boyatzis to describe a state when we are more open to influence and more creative.  I’ve called it “Finding Your Happy Place” in the past, but now I think it’s more accurate to describe it as “Relaxing Into Your Happy Place.”

 

It occurred to me that getting into the PEA was the real fuel for renewal.  I felt lighter, happier, and more relaxed as I continued to visualize happy thoughts. I maintained the focus on the feelings I was having, and it felt like I was activating my heart.  I like that phrase – activating your heart.

The lovely side effect of activating the heart is that it deactivates the brain.  When I focus on feeling, it’s really hard to think.  What I realized is that for meditation to have a regenerative effect for me, it must be an exercise in feeling and activating the heart.  Once my heart is in the driver’s seat, my brain really can get some rest and that results in me being a calmer, nicer person.

Now that I think about it, this revelation could lead to a more positive world if we all managed to improve our outlook and increase our positivity through heart-activating meditation.  Maybe it was a World-Altering Revelation after all.

Motivating Self and Others: It’s a Matter of Heart

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Motivation, Uncategorized

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#externalmotivation, #intrinsicmotivation, #priorities, Heart, values

heart v. brain 550 px

We talked about the Elephant as the representation of our heart in the Rider/Elephant/Path model from the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. The Elephant and our hearts are the biggest influencers on our motivation. When I work with coaching clients, it’s pretty easy to find the logical reasons for doing something. It’s also not difficult to set up some accountability structures. However, tapping into the emotional purpose sometimes takes some digging.

First, it can be difficult on our own to find the emotional purpose for an action or task when we are stuck in our own Frame of Reference. Earlier, we talked about asking ourselves why we want to do or accomplish something again and again until we get an answer that resonates with our hearts. Sometimes it’s clear and easy. Other times, it takes some work. A friend who is a good listener can help, but a life coach is trained to ask the questions that will get to your most basic and motivating reason to do something.

If an item has shown up on your New Year’s resolution list more than once, you probably haven’t found a reason to do it that resonates with your heart. I see in my clients that it is a “should.” They feel that they should do it, but they don’t really want to. Usually we work together and find the core need that would be met by accomplishing the goal. Sometimes, they realize that it isn’t their goal in the first place; it’s someone else’s goal for them that they’ve taken on. It’s a “should” that they can forget about.

There are other ways to activate your heart and get it engaged in the process. One way is to identify your values and priorities. A goal isn’t motivating if it isn’t aligned with our values and priorities. It’s worth taking a few minutes to figure those out.

Values are traits and characteristics, like honesty and integrity. Priorities are areas of our lives that are important to us, like family and career. Values usually stay the same throughout our lives. Priorities change as we move through the different phases of our lives.

So when I am looking for reasons to accomplish a goal, I need to make sure that the goal in alignment with my values and current priorities. If it’s not, then I need to rethink the goal. If it is, then I need to know which values and priorities – and why.

I have had “write daily” on my New Year’s resolution list for decades! I wanted to write but didn’t make the time. I was in full-on family mode, and writing felt like something that took some of my time that was so precious back then. I also dealt with my inner critic, who said that I wasn’t a good writer and that there wasn’t a reason to write. I’d never be a successful author, so there wasn’t a point. I also a had an external critic in the house who didn’t like my writing style. I wanted to write but wasn’t motivated enough to do it.

Now it’s different. I have a structure or Path clearly set up. I publish a blog every Tuesday, and a lot of people notice if I don’t. I have to explain to a few coach friends why I missed the deadline.

I also know that writing once a week helps my business by getting my message out in front of people. No one knows what I know unless I tell them. The blog is a basic piece of accelerating my business. Very logical reasons my Rider likes.

However, neither of those things happened for years because I didn’t have the heart for it. Now I do. First, my health isn’t fantastic. I have platinum coils in my brain that give me some weird symptoms like fatigue, dizziness, and an irregular heartbeat. The symptoms come and go, but the important thing about the whole situation is that I’ve been reminded of just how mortal I am.

I had a huge shift in how I view the world. My time is finite. It’s true of all of us, but there is nothing like a near-death experience to bring that fact home. Facing my mortality made me question my effect on the world. Was I leaving it better than I found it? I had a renewed sense of purpose in helping others create the life that made them feel happy and satisfied. I’d seen the positive effects of the skills that I teach on people’s lives.

Then, along came a granddaughter. Someone who owns my heart. I realized that I would be long gone before she became interested in communication, conflict resolution and motivation. I desperately want her to have these skills available. I know that there is hope that she will be interested at some time. Her father and his brother have recently begun to ask me questions about what I teach and coach. They were in their late 20s when they started asking me about the leadership concepts that I teach.

Now, I have my heart reason for writing. It isn’t an academic exercise that catalogues what I know. It’s a legacy for a group of people who I adore. In writing, I leave the wisdom that I have gained for children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren! I know that I will be much more interesting to future generations when I’m dead. I want to leave them something interesting.

Could I have found a motivating reason earlier in my life? Probably. I could have dug in with a coach and figured it out, but I didn’t. The writing goal wasn’t in line with my current priorities of family and working with Army families.

The bottom line is, can you find a reason that motivates you to make achieving your goal a priority? Does it mean enough to you to put it ahead of other tasks that lay claim to your time? If the answer is yes, then you’ve found your heart’s motivation.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This!

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Emotional Intelligence, Feelings, Leadership, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#EmotionalIntelligence, #emotions, #KathySays, #stuffing, Feelings, Heart

valentine-dog

Feelings

February is the month of Valentine’s Day and declaring our feelings. Therefore, it feels like a good time to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly emotions that we all experience – and what to do with them.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this!

We all have feelings. In my mind, that isn’t always a good thing. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with emotions for years! I am not a natural touchy-feely type; however, I have learned that there is value in all types of emotions.

If we think about emotions as light and dark, then we know one type by comparing it  to the other. For example, we experience joy in the context of sadness. We can’t experience one without the other. If we only feel one type o emotion, it’s like looking at something white on a white background.

One quote that I heard in high school has stayed with me for almost 40 years: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” – Kahlil Gibran,  The Prophet (I will admit that I did not remember where the quote came from, and I had to look it up.)

There was a time when I was awful at dealing with my feelings. That is to say, I stuffed them most of the time. If a feeling made me the least little bit uncomfortable, it was banished. I was very good at not feeling my feelings.

I began my life coach training in 2005, and they wanted to talk about feelings a lot. I didn’t want to play in the beginning! The instructor would walk past some poor person trying to coach me around my feelings, and he would say, “Get her out of her head! She’s always in her head.” Hmmm. Let me think about that.

I do have a tendency to live in my head. I am very logical, but I saw the value in embracing feelings so I changed how I respond to emotions. I decided to view emotions as friends rather than enemies.

The first step to embracing your feelings is to know that dark feelings are not bad and light feelings are not good. Feelings just are, and all feelings are okay. We can react poorly to any emotion, but the emotion is just a natural part of being human.

The next step is to figure out exactly which emotion is visiting. When I feel an emotion, I accurately name it rather than stuffing it. For example, if I feel angry, I would say to myself, “Wow! I am feeling very angry, and disappointed, and frustrated!” Stepping outside ourselves to objectively define how we are feeling takes away some of the power of the emotions.

In the beginning, I wasn’t even good at labeling light emotions! I wasn’t sure about what I liked or what brought me joy. I’d spent many years as a stay-at-home mom who did what everyone else liked to do. I did enjoy those things, but I didn’t know what I enjoyed in a vacuum outside of other relationships. I spent a lot of time asking myself, “Do I like doing this? Does this bring me joy?” and “What emotion is this creating?” It was a little unsettling to realize that I didn’t know myself well at all.

It took me a while, but I did improve. It helped to go through a list of various emotions and then decide which one felt most accurate. I would think, “Is this happiness? No. Is this relief? No. Is this contentment? Yes, I think I am content.” A written list of emotions can help you explore your feelings. If you search online for “list of human emotions,” you will get a bunch of results.

Embracing emotions can be scary. I find comfort in the fact that they are just visiting, and not setting up a permanent residence. I guess that one could argue that depression is sadness staying too long. We definitely should get help if a dark emotion won’t go away. However, most of the time our emotions will come and go.

Lastly, it’s a useful exercise to take a few minutes and examine why we are feeling a particular emotion. A dark emotion can be the result of something challenging  a value that we hold or our ego reacting to something that makes us feel small. A light emotion can tell us what we like to do and who we like to be around.

Remember that you aren’t a turkey, and you shouldn’t be stuffing yourself with unwanted and unexamined emotions. It’s better to label the emotion, give it a hug, and then figure out the source of it. To feel is to be human and we are all human. There is no need to have a bad feeling about that!


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Creating Goals

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Fresh Start, Uncategorized

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#achievement, #goals, #gratitude, #HappyNewYear, #KathySays, #perspective, #progress, Heart

2017-start

January Series: Fresh Start

I love January! A new year always feels like a new beginning to me. We get to decide who we want to be and what we want to focus on this year. We also have the opportunity to leave behind traits, mindsets, behaviors, and people that don’t support our goals for the year. It’s the time to wipe the slate clean and put up nice, new, neat lettering that clearly shows who we want to be this year.

Creating Goals (a.k.a. New Year’s Resolutions)

Happy New Year! During this time, lots of us choose to make New Year’s resolutions. These resolutions are goals; things that we want to achieve. The problem with resolutions is that we tend to start strong, but our determination slowly fades. At some point, we end up asking ourselves why we didn’t stick to our resolutions.

The actual choosing part of the goal is the most important piece. The goal must resonate with our hearts. If it is not something that we truly want, then we aren’t going to put in the hard work to achieve it. We must find the Big Why for our goal and hold onto it. Here is a link to a blog I wrote on finding your Big Why: https://kathystoddardtorrey.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/goals-big-why-and-little-hows

Even if we really want to achieve a goal that resonates with our hearts, it sometimes still takes a little creativity to achieve it. Let’s say that becoming fit and lean is a goal that I really want to achieve. I know that I will feel healthier, have more energy, and keep up with my granddaughter better. However, I hate to run, and I detest crowded aerobics classes. In order to accomplish this goal, I need to get creative. Maybe I could learn a martial art or take a kickboxing class. Perhaps I could join a bike club. It could be that I just need to find a buddy to go walking with me. The key is to think creatively and find a way to accomplish the goal without forcing myself to do things I hate.

Sometimes heart goals need a dose of realism attached. For example, I am physically limited in the exercise that I can do. I had brain surgery in 2009 that resulted in a few tiny platinum coils of wire being inserted into my brain. Since the surgery, if I exercise enough to break a sweat, I become ill. I get nauseous and a little dizzy. For up to a week, I will have a rocking headache.

I must accept that I am never going to run a marathon or even a 5K, no matter how much I want to do so. Although those could be real, heart goals that resonate with me, I need to acknowledge who and where I am, and honor that.

Trust me, I went through a huge pity party when I first figured out that I’d recovered as much as I was going to recover. I wasn’t fond of my new normal at all. However, there wasn’t a way to change my limitations. I had to work with them ad adjust my goals accordingly. I can still reach my own highest level of fitness, but it requires creativity as well as some trial and error.

Since I usually work from home, I take short exercise breaks every hour or so. I use three pound weights and straps that attach to a door to do exercises throughout the day. The straps are in the bathroom so I do modified squats each time I go in there. I don’t break a sweat, so I can be dressed for the day. In addition to strength training, I try to walk 30 minutes each day. That gives my heart and lungs an extended workout at a pace that I can handle.

I do have fitness goals, but they are realistic goals that I can achieve without making myself ill. Setting goals that are challenging (and a little intimidating), but also within reach can be a difficult dance best done with a partner. A life coach or trusted friend can help you sort out dreams from pipe dreams. Spending time and energy on a goal that cannot happen is an exercise in frustration and a waste of time.

So here is our summary of how to achieve our goals:

1. Establish a goal that resonates with your heart.

2. Make sure it’s doable. It’s OK for the goal to feel scary and little out of your reach. However, do a firm reality check on it. One way to know if something is possible is to make sure you can do the actions needed to reach that goal. Make the goal achievable. I can’t run a 5K, but I could work up to walking one!

3. Get creative. We can overcome a lot of obstacles, both mental and physical, with a little creativity. If you feel stuck, a life coach is a great person to help you expand your awareness and create new possibilities.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

 Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

 If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

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