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Just Five Minutes – Explore Podcasts

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Today’s Just Five Minutes is all about the value of Podcasts. As you can see from this video, there are a LOT of them to choose from. You can be entertained, educated and enthralled by Podcasts that are archived or added every day.

Just Five Minutes – Explore Podcasts

In the video, I mentioned one of my favorites as the Women’s Entrepreneur Association, but it’s actually the Female Entrepreneur Association Podcasts by Carrie Green.

Also, the Podcast Serial on This American Life can be found here:

Another favorite of mine is Harper Collins Presents. This link is to the iTunes subscription, but if you don’t have iTunes, I’m sure you can subscribe in another way. I’m currently obsessed with the audio retelling of After the Funeral, by Agatha Christie. It’s delivered in parts and I feel like I understand what it must have been like for my parents to listen to a radio program once a week and have to wait for the next installment.

Hope you enjoy a podcast or two. And as always, let me know what love to listen to.

That’s your Just Five Minutes for today. I’m off to find out what happened to the Abernathy family After the Funeral or to Bowe Bergdahl in the second season of Serial.

 

 

Book Review – Five Good Minutes at Work

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Five Good Minutes at Work

Title: Five good Minutes At Work

Authors: Jeffrey Brantley, MD & Wendy Millstine

ISBN: 978-1-60671-240-5 (Note – this cover image  is from a different version than the one I am providing detail for here.)

Published 2007 MJF Books in arrangement with New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

(previous edition published in paperback.)

Rating: 

As promised, I am providing a review of this book. The authors have several Five Good Minutes books for you to check out if you’re interested.

I first became aware of their work when I received Five Good Minutes in the Morning as a gift one Christmas. Several years ago, I left a rather difficult team meeting, browsed in Barnes and Noble’s bargain section and found the work version. I definitely needed it.

The writers bill the book as “100 mindful practices to help you relieve stress and bring your best to work.” There’s a Foundation chapter, followed by the Practices, which helps to introduce you to the benefits of mindfulness, breathing, listening and being present. The rest of the short practices are divided into these sections:

  • Doing Your Work More Effectively
  • Reducing Stress at Work
  • Working More Intelligently and Compassionately With Others
  • Travel, Deadlines, Frustrations and Other Opportunities

As a coach, I really see the value in these practices and can say, first-hand, that I benefitted greatly from them as I struggled to stay engaged with a dysfunctional team for several months before leaving that position. Yes, there are a lot of practices that deal with working with others. But that isn’t the main focus here. Many of them help you deal with crisis, overwhelm, setting yourself up for a productive day and more.

The authors stress setting a daily intention, which, in my experience, is absolutely a habit that will bring you into more of an awareness of your purpose for the day and feeling as though you achieved it. There is a time during each piece for breath and affirmations like “Whoops! I’m human. I’m fallible. I make mistakes just like everyone else. I accept this inevitability.” You know I believe in positive affirmations, and I think getting in touch with this reality is a very positive thing. We set ourselves up for failure when we set ourselves up for perfection. A potential downside is that some of the affirmations or meditations can seem a bit repetitive. For some folks, this may be helpful as this makes it easy to practice and remember what to say each day. For others, it may be more redundant than you’d like.

I have a lot of daily meditation type books that I love. But sometimes, reading one every day is overwhelming too. This book isn’t 365 days worth of practices – just whenever I decide to pick it up will do. Personally, I generally pick it up when I’m NOT having five good minutes. But maybe that’s when I need it the most.

Your Personal Brand

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I think all of us are aware of the effects branding can have on business. How many of you can see the familiar ‘swish’ and think, “Just Do It”? Or hear a beguiling British accent we now attribute to a gecko selling insurance and smile? Branding has a significant impact on sales by developing awareness, then affinity, and then loyalty from the consumer.

Some time ago, I was offered the chance to do a 360° assessment on my personal brand to discover what others think about me and my value as a coach, leader and team player. I had never engaged in a 360° feedback assessment before so it was a little scary.  Asking others to provide honest, anonymous feedback about you requires a certain amount of courage. There’s also the fear that they won’t think enough of you take 10 minutes out of their day to complete the survey. I pushed the ‘send’ button after much deep breathing and a commitment to learn from the experience, come what may.

Surprisingly, almost half of my candidates provided feedback, which was the first remarkable moment. Next, I discovered that they had really great things to say about me! My most common personal brand attributes were Creative, Socially-conscious, Community-oriented, Intelligent and Supportive. My brand personas were Philanthropist, Caregiver, Self-starter, Expert, Motivator and Giver. Imagine how wonderfully these words penetrated my psyche! My greatest strengths resonated along these same lines.

Then I came to the part I was dreading – the feedback on weaknesses. Short comments spoke to the fact that I overextend myself and sometimes don’t follow up. I get caught up in stress and don’t make enough time to accomplish what I would like. I don’t always trust myself to know when to say no.  Did these comments surprise me? Absolutely not. Did they make me feel bad about myself? Actually, they did just the opposite. They allowed me to see what I already knew through the eyes of the people I work with, provide service to, and collaborate with on teams, boards and projects. I understood the theory of self-care and setting strong boundaries, but I saw the effects on my personal brand first hand. It gave me a lot to unpack and examine in order to improve the way I do business – and create my personal brand.

Discovery through this lens caused me to begin the process of reshaping my boundaries and dramatically simplifying my life, to really look at the ways I can provide value to others in a new and streamlined way. The process seemed a little daunting at first, but it turned out to be an invaluable experience.  And although I may not continue to engage in such a systematic way of gathering a 360° reach, I can continue to evaluate my personal brand using external feedback and so can you.

I used Wiliam Arruda’s 360 Reach assessment and I highly recommend it. But while I think that everyone should engage in a formalized 360° assessment at some point, there are some quick and informal ways of getting to the heart of what others believe to be true about you. You can create a personal branding survey using tools like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang, which both offer a free 30 day trial and a mechanism for anonymous feedback. You can just create a set of questions or a list of words you would like your closest friends, colleagues or loyal clients to comment about. Discovering your role on a team or your projective attributes can really assist you in examining how you work best with others and where your challenges might lie. Looking at how you form boundaries or what value you may or may not provide is critical feedback if you provide client services. Do your clients or colleagues have a high level of trust in your abilities? Are you overextending yourself? Chances are, this information can help you understand what others unconsciously or consciously think about when working with you.

Sure, this process can be a little daunting. But it can also be a tremendously rewarding experience. You may not have a catchy slogan or a likable mascot for your business, but chances are the uniqueness of you is pretty beguiling!

I’m including a document Informal 360 Assessment – Words that Describe Me with a list of words that might get you started. Use them in your assessment with others or as a springboard to create your own set of words or questions.  

If you’d like to do this type of work with your staff, I do this all the time and find it be very effective in creating more cohesive, dynamic teams.  Or, if you’d participated in a 360 type assessment, but want some coaching on how to implement what you’ve learned, let me know. It’s one of the best springboards to success.

If you take this on, let me know how it goes. Leave a comment below or reach out on Facebook.

 

Word Cloud of my Assessment results

Are You Ready To Make Your Life More Meaningful?

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Thanks to all of you who were able to join the call Monday night. I enjoyed the experience of sharing what I’ve learned and listening to your shares on the call and after. It’s clear that there is a desire inside of many of us to create lives that are deeply aligned to our passions and strengths. I hope I can help you discover how to design a more meaningful life design. If you weren’t able to join the call, here is the recording (feel free to save and listen again). 

Make it Meaningful Call Recording

I am starting a new Make it Meaningful Group that might be just what you need to begin designing your intentional life. 

The group begins on Wednesday, January 28th, 2015 at 8pm EST/7pm CST and lasts for three sessions. (Note that I had the date wrong on the call – it is WEDNESDAY, January 28th!) During these sessions, participants will discover: 

  • Values – what is it you truly value and how do you design your life and work to align with these important priorities. 
  • How to make a clean sweep – What’s cluttering up your life and your mind? How do you de-clutter and remove the things that you are tolerating? 
  • End Results – what do you want to do, have or be by the end of 2015? And how do you stay on track to make sure you get the results you’re looking for? 

This group is limited, so you’ll want to decide and register soon. If you sign up by January 27th, you will be able to participate for all three, one-hour sessions for just $150! This is a significant savings over my individual coaching fees and the most inexpensive group I have ever offered. . And if you want to experience coaching, but can’t afford individual coaching rates, this group might be the best way for you to experience coaching right now. 

In addition to the group coaching experience and assessments, group members will be linked to a closed Facebook group to share during the three months of sessions and beyond. And as more Make it Meaningful groups happen over the course of 2015, those members will be added as well. So for your investment of $150, you will get: 

  • Group Coaching – three one-hour sessions
  • Three assessments to help you get closer to understanding where you are and where you want to go;
  • Access to closed Facebook group for shares, wins, resources and motivation for as long as you want it;
  • Support from a trained and certified coach and other group participants; 
  • First chance at upcoming groups during the rest of this year; 
  • 10% Discount for three months of individual coaching fees if you decide to continue the coaching experience beyond or during the group. 
  • End of the year wrap up to check in and provide you with the opportunity to assess and set new meaningful goals for the coming year. 

So – are you ready to Make it Meaningful? Registration ends at 7pm on TUESDAY, January 27th, 2015. I hope you will join me for this life changing group. There is power in group coaching and in deciding you are ready to make a change! 

Sessions will be on the last Wednesday of every month: 

Wednesday, January 28th
Wednesday, February 25th
Wednesday, March 25th 

To register, call me at 228-467-8470, email me at LaurieJohnson@4elementscoaching.com or go to the Contact Us page and fill out the form to register. Make sure I have your name, phone number and email. I’ll contact you to make sure you are registered before the call. 

My wish for you in 2012

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This is one of my favorite times of the year.  A chance for me to purge the old and welcome new possibilities exists in this somewhat magical gap between one calendar year and the next.  We incorporate many rituals in my household, including those that are familiar like eating black-eyed peas and not putting up new calendars until after midnight. We also cleanse old energy from our home by lighting a smudge stick of sage and cedar and passing it through each room of the house. We put dimes under our threshold for prosperity and we open the windows in the East just before midnight to allow fresh, creative air to pass through our home, ensuring a successful and adventurous year. If our pantry is full at midnight, we believe we won’t hunger in the near year so grocery shopping is essential if our stores are low.

As 2011 comes to a close and 2012 begins, millions of us will take at least a few moments at some point or another to reflect on our accomplishments, our challenges and our hopes for the year ahead. Resolutions and intentions abound in the minds of those who strive to change old habits or create new ones. Fears about whether those resolutions will stick surface in our thoughts as we silently wonder if this will be the year we achieve our ideal weight or pay off debt. Self deprecating thoughts sneak in unbidden, yet familiar. Whether this review is something you enjoy or dread depends largely on the process and your state of mind going into the review.

This year, I used a process created by Rosetta Thurman, the Happy Black Woman. Her Review/Preview questions were similar to the ones I usually use and allowed me to feel complete about letting go of the old and embracing the new.  I value her work and hope you’ll take a look at her blog here.

I’m not a huge fan of resolutions. I do think an intentional practice of considering what’s working and what isn’t is important. Change isn’t always easy to maintain so don’t be hard on yourself.

I do know one thing for sure – if you do what you’ve been doing, you’ll get the same results. If you’re really happy where you are, you’ll be all set and probably don’t have need for a long list of resolutions.  If you want something better in your life, change something – even something small. Often, the mere fact that you take one baby step causes a momentum that will surprise you.

In my opinion, another really important piece about this process is the ability to see that there is possibility. I’d like to share a quote that closes one of my favorite novels – Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. The characters have both been on an incredible adventure that altered the course of their lives significantly. They overcame huge obstacles and found that they were completely in love and felt incredible hope for their future together. The author closes the book with this one very simple and yet powerful thought expressed by the narrator of their story.

“And the world was all around us, new with possibility.”

May the possibilities of 2012 be more than you could ever have imagined for yourself.