5 Ways to Create a Positive Attitude

5 Ways To Creat a Positive AttitudeWithout a positive attitude, it’s nearly impossible to grow and be able to do all of the things that you enjoy most.

When you’re feeling stuck in a less-than-helpful attitude, it can be hard to figure out what you’re really good at doing and stop you from really going after it.

Seeing how a positive attitude works in my life and with my clients, has shown me that it’s truly worth it to find ways to create a positive attitude. By making a good attitude a habit, you can keep reaching and achieving the big things you want out of life instead of stagnating and feeling stuck with what you have even though you know you could be and do more in this world.

When, just like with horses, 60% to 90% of your communication is nonverbal, the way you hold yourself not only shows others your attitude but yourself, too.

If you find yourself sitting with your shoulders up to your ears, squinting at the computer screen with what some might call a scowl on your face, you’ve just observed that you might not be in the best mindset.

Here are 5 things you can do to help get your attitude headed in a positive direction.

1. Own It – You Can Change Your Mind

Remind yourself that own your attitude which means you can change it. There is always a choice that you make when your respond to something. By this I mean that you get to pick which perspective you want to take on a topic.

It’s easy to forget that there are options. Next time you find yourself reacting in a way that makes you unhappy, pretend you’re that super optimistic friend of yours. What would they say in that situation? How would they respond?

2. Know It’s Temporary

Realize that a bad mood will pass. A bad project will pass. A bad conversation will pass.

Sometimes just knowing that your attitude will improve soon as things change over a short period of time allows you to hang on and keep a sliver of positivity when otherwise you might jump into despair. Much like having a bad head cold, a negative attitude sometimes needs to be waited-out.

If you can remember while you’re in the middle of it that it’ll eventually subside, grab ideas 3, 4 and 5 below to help pull you out of it faster.

3. Smile

Because it’s proven to make you happier. Yep, all of the things you physically do change the chemicals in your body and how you feel about yourself.

So smile, put your hands behind your head and feet up on your desk, or strike a “Wonder Woman” hands-on-hips power-pose to get your can-do attitude on the rise.

Hold that position for 2 minutes and you’ll have released chemicals in your body that get you feeling better about yourself and ready to take on your next thing. Professor Amy Cuddy’s Harvard research proves that these kinds of actions literally change the way you’re perceived by others and the way you feel about yourself.

4. Have 3 “Go-To Things”

What are three things that you’ve observed in the past that help get you to a more positive mood?

Does turning music on (and news off) help? Do you have a comedian that you love to watch? Go find some clips of them and get laughing.

I have a video of my daughter that cracks me up everytime I watch it. If you have a video like that, make sure you know where to find it the next time you need a little lift for a more positive attitude.

If you don’t have a child, here’s a video compilation of someone else’s who is pretty darn funny.

5. Complaint Department is Closed

Tell your family, friends and co-workers that the complaint department is closed for the day. If someone comes to you with a complaint, have a neutral response prepared. What can you think of now to say when this happens that will table the conversation until you feel ready to deal with it?

Maybe you ask them to find one or two ways to resolve whatever the problem is before they do a deep-dive venting session with you. Then tell them that you’ll be happy to talk about the issue after lunch, or tomorrow, whenever it’s more convenient for you to speak about it.

The goal here is to buy you time so you can get in a better frame of mind before you deal with an issue that might really pull you away from a positive attitude and the energy that you need to finish your project at hand.

What’s one thing that you do that helps to get you into a positive mood? Share it in the comments box so I can give it a try.

With much love and gratitude,

Gretchen

 

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5 Ways to Structure Your Day to Stay Motivated

5WaysStuctureDayToStayMotivatedDo you feel like you lose steam every day?

Do you notice an unproductive lull that happens in the mornings or afternoon?

Does it drive you nuts when you realize that you’ve just lost another hour to Facebook when you went on there to find something work-related?

It can be SO frustrating when this happens, again and again. How does Facebook suck you in like that? How’d you lose track of your client’s big project?

You used to feel so motivated but it’s waning now and you don’t know why you just can’t push through the dull moments to reach the other *productive* side.

If this sounds a little (or a lot) like you, here five techniques you can use to structure your day to stay motivated:

Stake Out Your Day

First thing in the morning (or even the day before, if you can) decide on the one thing you MUST do and keep that at the forefront of your actions. Put that one thing first, wait, let me capitalize that for emphasis: FIRST.  You may get off track but you come back to that ONE thing (yep, capital letters again). This small dose of planning goes a long way and ensures your ship is sailing in the right direction.

Micro Celebrate

You take turtle steps like the ones I mentioned earlier to stay out of overwhelm. Every time you finish a step, you cross it off your list and then you do a micro celebration. This might look like a power fist bump raised high in the air, like a little happy dance, or like a verbalized “woot!” with a hand clap. You decide!

Any minor acknowledgment to you completing your task will work. You just have to give yourself that little boost of happiness when you finish a task so your brain starts to associate it with motivation.

Micro celebrations can really make a difference and help keep your motivation-mojo going all day long.

Ask for Accountability

You ask someone to check in on your project status. It could be a friend, colleague, family member or even someone far away. You can tell them exactly what to ask you about and on what day so they don’t need to spin their wheels on it at all.

Knowing that someone will help hold you accountable on that follow-up email that needs to be sent or ask if you got your about page updated is a big motivator to actually getting those things done because you don’t want to have to give a negative reply.

Pony-up for Childcare

If you’ve got kids, pony-up and get childcare in place! Do not feel badly about putting your sweet child in camps over the summer or lining up after school activities.

They’ll have a ton of fun and you will actually be able to get your work done without someone asking you to feed them, fix their bumps, take them somewhere or to watch that YouTube video you don’t really like them watching for the millionth time.

For example, if I’m doing an Equus coaching session, it only makes senses that my daughter will want to be there, fully in the mix. She loves the horses! Unfortunately, this would not only be distracting to me but also for my client so I don’t do it. I make sure she’s got another activity planned during my work time.

It’s not worth the stress and while you may feel like you’re saving on childcare, you’re not making room to earn more in your business.

Get Back Up On That Horse

When you get off track, notice it. Say, “Hello Off Track Mind, we’re heading back to the task at hand”. And then come back to that ONE thing that’s your task.

Be kind to yourself when this happens and gently re-direct yourself, knowing that it’s a part of the process. Expect it, see it and have a plan to move back to where you were.

Building habits like these will help you to tap into your motivation mojo and be able to structure your day to keep taking action to get ahead to support your bigger goals.

If you don’t do these things to stay motivated, you may lose focus, mess-up jobs which can lead to lost clients, and feeling pretty awful about yourself (never a good place to be).

Notice when you skip one of these practices.

How does it make you feel? How good is your end work product? Did you lose your mind because your day lost structure? Do you find yourself a bit more edgy or snappy towards the ones you love the most?

Observe how you feel when your day is planned, you know what you need to do, when you’re crossing things off your to-do list. Do you feel like you’re getting ahead and you’re more motivated?

Let me know in the comments what you notice when you get it right or when your day didn’t go as planned. Seeing and noticing what you learn is a huge part of keeping your motivation mojo going strong throughout your day.

Cheers to saddling up and motivating that motivation mojo!

With love and gratitude,

Gretchen

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You’ve Always Had the Power My Dear

You've always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself. -Wizard of OzI’ll admit, I wasn’t sure if I was qualified to do the Equus training program because I wasn’t sure if I could be a coach. However, I decided to take the plunge and as I went through the training, I realized I did have the courage to actually do it.

I’ve always had the willingness to say yes and do big things but I lacked the confidence. I went through the Equus Coach Training and I realized I had the confidence and power to do it all along.

Where have you felt this in your life?

With much love and gratitude,

Gretchen

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Stuck in Overwhelm? 3 Ways You Can Get Out of It

Stuck in Overwhelm? 3 Ways You Can Get Out of It When do you begin to notice you’re swamped with too much to do and that stress is starting to creep in?? Is it when you’ve nearly bitten the head off of a co-worker or family member (oops!)?

Or when you’re so dog-tired that you’re starting to make careless mistakes because you’ve been staring at the computer screen for what feels like a thousand hours? Around here we like to call that a case of having “mush brain”.

If this is the case, it may be too late to prevent the overwhelm feeling from setting in because you’ve just found yourself in the thick of feeling stressed out with too much on your plate, and too many deadlines to meet.

It can sneak up on you just like that. Fine one minute and then boom!, hello overwhelm-ville.

Last week we talked about taking turtle steps so you can see your progress as a way to get out of feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list.

This week we’re taking it a step further by giving you three totally different ways to cope with the stress of feeling like there’s too much on your plate.

Here are three techniques in different sizes that allow you to get a little separation from the project at hand that’s causing you pain.

SMALL:

You’re stuck at your desk and you’re about to lose it because you just realized that you forgot you needed to do that other part of the project, the one that essentially eats up any float time you might have had.

When this happens, take several deep breaths and feel your feet on the ground. Take note of your five senses. What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you taste? What do you see? What do you feel?

This will allow for you to come back to the present moment, feel grounded + centered and allow for you to think more clearly when deciding that next step.

MEDIUM:

Get up and take a break away from your project. This could be that you go get a glass of water, take a restroom break, go into a conference room and call a friend for a few minutes, surf social media, walk to the mailbox, or get out of the office by going to pick up lunch.

The key here is to physically get away from the project. And to spend a little more time doing something else than in the breathing exercise. This will give you a longer break from the overwhelm zone.

LARGE:

Go exercise. This could be as simple as walking around the block. Or it could be that at some point during the day, you go for a run, bike ride, horseback ride, head to the gym to workout, or take an exercise class.

This will really get you out of your head (and worries) and into your body and, in the present moment. It’s hard to stress out about all the stuff you’ve got to get done, let alone think about anything else but your body’s movements, when your boot camp coach is encouraging you to ride that stationary bike faster or do yet another squat.

The next time you find yourself all of a sudden feeling the pressure to get it all done pronto, pick just one of these techniques and notice how it helps you. The more you do it, the more you can train your mind to accept the break which will make it easier to get back to work, feeling like you can get it all done, no problem.

With much love and gratitude,

Gretchen

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Feeling Overwhelmed and Under Pressure?

FeelingOverwhelmedUnderPressureDo you ever feel like you’re putting so much pressure on yourself?

With many of the things I want to do in life and in helping my clients, I’ve noticed that I tend to put a lot of  pressure on myself. Only after looking at my calendar and my mile long to-do list (of my own making) do I realize that the pressure I put on myself turns into overwhelm.

The overwhelm then creates procrastination. Why is that? Because I expect too much for myself so I delay doing what I reeeealllly need to do. And, if I’m honest, it means that I’m not always using that precious resource called time in the best manner (you know, the one we can never get more of).

This gets to be tough to keep at bay but over time I’ve developed an approach to manage the overwhelm and not let it stop me from achieving my big goals.

It may surprise you what I recommend doing when that feeling of overwhelm starts creeping in on you.

One time when I was speaking with a colleague, I shared this cycle with her and she helped me to speak the process out loud and observe what I do to keep the stress of that long to-do list in check.

When there are a lot of things that I need to do, or one big thing, and I start to get that sensation of feeling overwhelmed, I know I need to stop and look at the situation.

This is the moment when I accept the reality that I’m asking too much of myself. No, I don’t cut my to-do list in half and call it day. Instead, I look for ways that I can make the to-do items smaller.

This is called  breaking things down into “turtle steps”. It takes me out of overwhelm because I can still get that sense of completion by 100% finishing individual items or steps in a project. And, it allows me to actually make progress toward my bigger goals whether they’re throwing a party for 50 people, developing a new opt-in for my clients or building a new office for my coaching practice. When you start to feel overwhelmed, just think…

Turtle steps. Slow, steady and doable.

Sound like a contradiction?

By using this process it may seem like more is being added to your to-do list but it actually allows you to see a path of what needs to be done instead of a giant goal where seeing the path to completion is foggy, unclear and has a lot of unknown pitfalls.

Still feeling overwhelmed?

Tell me, what is one thing on your to-do list that you haven’t been able to complete? How can you break that one task into three smaller “turtle steps” or tasks instead of one?

Now, go to your calendar and find three open times to add those steps that seems realistic.

How did that feel? If it didn’t feel doable, tweak the steps and the time it in your calendar until it does. You may need to break it down into even smaller steps.

Once you do that, do you feel more open? Are you breathing easier about it?  I’d love to know how this process works for you or if you have a method that works well for handling your overwhelm. Let me know in the comments!

With much love and gratitude,

Gretchen

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