Course correction may be required…

Have you ever noticed there is really little one can control except how we choose to react…. I wrote this while winging my way back from Philly the other day. It really was an uneventful flight, yet after watching 100+ people board the plane; I can only assume that "control" is not something everybody understands, yet. 

I don’t think they even realize they are behaving from a place of overwhelm, thus the reason I titled this "Autopilot." To be fair, overwhelm isn’t just an emotional response, it’s a physical response. You can just see it in their faces and the way they move…. The feeling of overwhelm is part of the physical response stress, together these two are commonly called the fight or flight response (no pun intended.)

Fight or flight is the rapid surge of high levels of the hormones adrenaline and cortisol released in our body. These hormones affect reasoning and thinking. They are not bad guys though, at low levels, cortisol actually facilitates our mental functions.

Since I’m on a plane, I’ll steal a flying analogy– Did you know when you fly, if you start out just one degree off course you end up in a totally different part of the world? It’s the law of exponential growth. You start at Airport X, you fly one degree off course, soon it becomes two degrees, than four, than eight off course…. Same idea holds true for emotions, they can infect an entire group.  A study by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis titled Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership states that "destructive emotions infects an entire group and inhibits its performance. Leaders are themselves not immune to the contagion of stress. All the more reason they should take the time to understand the biology of their emotions."

Train yourself to control your emotions instead of being controlled by them, notice when you begin to feel overwhelmed and take action to calm yourself so you can maintain clear thinking when it is needed most. Being able to think clearly under stress will increase your effectiveness as a leader. Awareness is key, many notice the physical sensation first, some call it a gut response, a knot in the stomach… my favorite "turtleing," that sensation of shoulders so high that your ears disappear.

Under stress the typical first response is to revert back to old habits, no matter how unsuitable they are for addressing the new challenge. As they just told me, "put your mask on first, then help others…." To be a true leader one must have an awareness of and control over the autopilot button. 

To Success! To Life!

Sharon

I’m sitting here serving jury duty and can’t do my regular routine. (I’m not opposed to doing my civic duty, it’s just the timing.) Sitting here is leaving me feeling swamped with my To Do List and sucked-under… lots to do, plus it’s finally summer here in Oregon (we get so little summer, it is hard to buckle down.)

Well, what to do when surrounded by quicksand, alligators and swamped…. First, researchers from the University of Amsterdam have concluded that "a person trapped in quicksand is not in any danger of being sucked-under completely, that is, as long as they don’t flail around…."

Flail around?

So, that would mean movements without forethought cause the "trapped" to sink deeper. That would suggest it best to stop struggling before the "quicksand" pulls you deeper and ask, "How did I find myself knee-deep, right here, right now?"

Once you remember what got you knee-deep… determine a firm bottom-line for what you will and will not accept. Often times, that involves setting and maintaining boundaries with people.

Stay focused on this bottom-line. It is all too easy to be re-sucked into those old defeating attitudes and behaviors. This isn’t always easy. The quicksand research states that the "required force to pull a foot out of quicksand is about the force needed to lift a medium-sized car." Sometimes it feels that way when you are trying to change long-held habits too. Stay strong! When looking for that new bottom-line consider:

• What am I demanding or not demanding of myself?
• What will I accept and no longer accept in my life?
• What do I aspire to be?

Not desire, ASPIRE
Accept where you are now (No fantasy thinking allowed.)
Stop the momentum
Prepare for new direction
Innovate and integrate
Review all possibilities
Envision, Enact and Enjoy

Have a great day whatever your adventure!

To Success! To Life!

Sharon

Coach Sharon Sayler’s Beyond Lip Service is sponsored by www.impressionengineers. com, today we welcomed Anjuelle Floyd is author of Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident, a collection of interconnected short stories, and a novel, The House, due for publication in Fall 2009. She is a wife of twenty-seven years, mother of three, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in dream work. Her number one communication tip is Listening (not hearing.) Listening is active, noticing the tone and the speaker’s body language, even looking for what they are not saying… What they are not saying can tell you as much about the "issue" as what they are saying. When we respond, we want to choose the right words, being careful to let the other person work through or solve it for themselves. We want to stay out of the trap of "Let me take care of that for you." We can acknowledge that we heard, have empathy for what was said and still not have to accept what was said. Being from North Carolina, Anjuelle shared a great metaphor for watching for patterns. "Stick a pin in it," meaning place a mental marker and then each time it comes up again, you place another mental marker. After awhile you being to see a pattern of how the person chooses to communicate with you. Perhaps they are requesting many things and you feel compelled to say yes… that’s where her other secret to communication is beneficial. Knowing when to say "no." Good listening involves boundaries too… To learn more about Anjuelle visit her blog http://anjuellefloyd.com She also is the host of her own weekly blog talk radio show, Book Talk, Creativity and Family Matters http://www.blogtalkradio.com/anjuellefloyd What is your best communication "secret?"

Anjuelle Floyd is author of Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident, a collection of interconnected short stories, and a novel, The House, due for publication in Fall 2009.
http://www.anjuellefloyd.com/books/keeper-of-secrets/
http://www.anjuellefloyd.com/books/the-house/

Anjuelle is a wife of twenty-seven years, mother of three, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in dream work.

A graduate of Duke University, she received her MA in Counseling Psychology from The California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, she has attended the Dominican Institute of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, California.  Anjuelle received her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, Port Townsend, Washington. She has also received certificates of participation from The Hurston-Wright Writers’ Week and The Voices of Our Nations Writing Workshops. She teaches online fiction classes at Perelandra College.

A student of Process Painting for the last decade, Anjuelle has participated in The Art of Living Black Exhibitions 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 held at the Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California.

Anjuelle facilitates writing groups and provides individual consultation of fiction projects. She also gives talks on The Need for Family, The Writing Process as a Path Toward Self-discovery and Healing.

Anjuelle hosts the weekly blog talk radio show, Book Talk, Creativity and Family Matters
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/anjuellefloyd

Read Anjuelle’s blog and more about her @ http://anjuellefloyd.com

A visual can sure add a lot of impact to a website or your blog. It can give an immediate “ah-ha” to the reader and attract attention to your articles. Adding an image or creative work to your web page or post can make a big difference on the impact of your message. Images do grab readers’ attention, but be careful, you can’t use just any image… Using a copyrighted image without permission from the creator of the work or the copyright holder is copyright infringement. This article is a short introduction to copyright and creative images. Please check with an intellectual property attorney for more specifics and to answer your specific questions about copyrights and creative works.

You can’t just use any image you find and like in blog posts, on your web site or in printed material. The law automatically grants full “copyright” over any creative work a person makes. This includes any creative work such as drawings, photos and text. Copyrights are applied to all intellectual property such as books, websites, blogs, photographs, audio and video recordings, e.g. songs, music and YouTube videos too. When choosing a creative work to use, make sure that it has a creative common license, a full-usage, licensed or granted usage, or is royalty-free.  All have limitations and except for full-usage, rarely grant complete usage rights. Ask for a copy of the usage license rights and restrictions before purchasing or using an image. Many places like www.fotosearch.com and www.photodisc.com have the licenses they use posted on their sites.

Images marked as “All Rights Reserved” are copyrighted and require permission from their creator. Images marked as “Some Rights Reserved” have a creative commons license applied.  There are several types of creative commons licenses. Each license imposes different restrictions on how you use the images. There are four main types of creative common licenses, “Attribution,” “Share Alike,” “Noncommercial,” “No Derivative Works.” Each of the four categories has a variety of license types for different usages, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ to learn more.

Creative Commons is an organization that provides free content licenses that the person developing the creative piece can apply to their work. (http://creativecommons.org/license/) The artists that choose to use this license are giving people permission to use the licensed piece without having to ask permission, provided they use it in the manner stated in the Creative Common License. Read each Creative Common License carefully as they do vary.

When using an image with a creative commons license, it is important to note the attribution with the image; e.g., Photo by John Smith licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. Check with the creator of the image or the website that you get the image from, e.g. Flickr, for guidelines. This will ensure you are compliant with copyright requirements and give credit where credit is due.

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This article is not meant to be legal advice and you are encouraged to further educate yourself about copyright and the implications to your site. Copyright laws vary internationally.