-: Negative Energy is 11 Times More Powerful Than Positive Energy
December 23, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
It was Einstein who said that negative energy is 11 times more powerful than positive energy, so we must work very hard to overcome the negativity which would naturally take over. The law of entropy states that everything will break down over time without work or force applied to it (i.e. cars, relationships, communication, and mechanical items). Just look at what would happen in your garden if it were left unattended. The weeds just take over, while it takes careful cultivation to grow flowers or fresh produce.
Watch out for those weeds in your head and cultivate the positive forces that it takes to overcome the energy drain of negativity. Worrying and fear exhaust you and take their toll on your physical and emotional well being. Acknowledge that the negativity is alive, but don’t become a slave to its powers. Become aware of those whose outlook is negative and prepare statements to deflect their negative energy such as gossipers, nay-sayers, or worry warts.
Better yet, try to avoid these types of people if at all possible and surround yourself with positive, supportive people with a different perspective and upbeat outlook on life. The synergy is amazing when the positive forces of people collide.
Courage and confidence to deal with negativity get your juices flowing when you take on a risk and successfully navigate a positive outcome. Cultivating confidence to meet your challenges is very powerful and a successful bout brings on even more adrenaline. Start with what you’re good at, then keep expanding, learning, and practicing to increase both courage and confidence.
Positive self-talk instills courage, then take the leap . . .feel the fear and do it anyway. Sometimes others have more confidence in you and can give you courage and support. Enlist their honest assessment for energy interventions. These supporters can keep you going strong. Whether it’s an official mastermind group, a success team, a personal board of directors, or just an informal circle of friends who care about you. Asking for input and inspiration from your support network can help you gain the courage, confidence, and clarity to move you forward past the powerful stressful issues that may be blocking you.
+: Think Positive Thoughts
November 23, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
The research suggests that 70% of our self talk is negative. Practice turning these thoughts into positives to improve your outlook, your future, and your well being. A client gave me a file folder from Successories, www.successories.com which states the Essence of Your Destiny: “Watch your thoughts for they become words. Choose your words, for they become actions. Understand your actions, for they become habits. Study your habits, for they will become your character. Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
Your body doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined things. It only knows what your brain tells it, so make sure your brain is telling your body positive things. A positive state of mind has been known to cure diseases, prevent sickness, or prevent a worse condition as evidenced by the research by Norman Cousins in The Anatomy of an Illness.
You can wake up and decide to have a happy day or a deliriously happy day . . .or not. Choose your vocabulary and self-talk wisely. The use of certain words can trigger physiological responses that can cause high blood pressure, stress, and other negative reactions. The power of positive thinking guides your behavior, which in turn guides your future. When you change your mind, you change your energy, and when you change your energy, you change your life. We can also change the energy of the people around us as our energy is contagious and we are part of other people’s environments just as they are a part of ours.
Be aware of the company you keep and how their thoughts and behaviors are affecting your energy. These positive thoughts also refer to the music you listen to, the books you read, or the movies and TV programs you watch. Be aware of the negative or positive messages your body is receiving from internal or external sources and be thoughtful of what you choose.
Your attitude, whether positive or negative is everything. It’s how you view the world and how you react to the world. It also affects how the world reacts to you. Your choice of attitude can bring you up, up, up, or down, down, down. Attitude is what draws people towards you or repels them against you.
Do you think anybody wants to hang around a crabby person? Have you ever paid attention to the negative energy of a worrier or somebody who is always sick or thinks they are sick or about to be sick? You can feel the negative energy emanating from their very being.
No matter what the situation, we always have a choice about our attitude. Positive attitude and enthusiasm are the secret weapons of successful people. Make a conscious effort to choose happiness and a positive attitude, and watch the positive repercussions stem from a resourceful state of mind. Your attitude really is contagious and we have a choice as to whether we want to infect people with our bad attitude or affect people with our good attitude. It not only changes our energy, but the energy of those around us. Remember, when we change our mind, we change our energy, and when we change our energy, we change our life.
What are you doing to make the right choice of attitude? If you notice that your partner, your family, or all the front-line service people you encounter are being especially cranky to you on a particular day, take notice of how your attitude might be rubbing off on them. We generally mirror back the same energy that is projected towards us. Matching energy is one of those things we do subconsciously and once we are aware of it, we can make it work to our advantage.
All behaviors (except autonomic responses) begin as thoughts. Make yours positive.
How about sending positive messages around the world in the form of greeting cards and gifts. Your words of appreciation can provide you with a way to make a living through giving. Take the Gratitude Challenge by sending 30 cards in 30 days to those who need to hear kind words from you – try it out at www.SOCGratitude.com/9431 with the Send Out Cards system.
Enter: Enter Each Day on a Positive Note, Not Alarmingly
September 23, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Research has shown that those who wake up with a jolt to an auditory-assaulting alarm start out their day agitated. Add in the usual frantic rush to get out of the house and we get weary before we get to our destination. We often run on the temporary burst of energy from adrenaline or the stress hormones produced in the fight or flight response, instead of authentic, long-term energy.
Compare that frazzled episode to awaking on our own to our body’s natural rhythms after a good night’s rest, or to pleasant music with plenty of time for morning activities, most of which has already been prepared the night before. Ease into your day, start off on the right foot, and make the first hours as pleasant as possible. If you must use an alarm, try a Zen Alarm clock that starts out very quietly and grows to a slightly louder volume or an alarm that has other soothing sounds of soft music or nature.
Try listening to calming music instead of the morning news, taking a morning walk to clear your head, and plan the day sipping herbal tea on the deck, or practicing yoga to start off in the right frame of mind. Gulping coffee, slamming down a donut and dashing out the door combing your hair is no way to feel good about yourself. Ingesting caffeine causes our body to run like an engine revving to 70mph in second gear. It will move, but it’s not natural and it can’t keep up that pace without negative repercussions.
To get a jump on stress, ditch the coffee and the caffeine that has been found to elevate your blood pressure throughout the day and into the night. Caffeine exaggerates the stress response and the affects last for 8-10 hours. Stress hormone levels were double that of those who were not ingesting caffeine in one study done at DukeUniversityMedicalCenter. If you must sip a hot beverage, try herbal tea, green tea with its anti-oxidant factors, or rooibos tea which has even more anti-oxidant power than green tea and both have much less caffeine than coffee to avoid the highs and lows that coffee can bring on. Decaffeinated teas are also available. Make sure to look for those brands that are naturally decaffeinated and not chemically decaffeinated for the most healthful choice.
There are numerous studies about the positive affects of these teas such as helping us fight against cancer and preventing heart disease by helping lower our cholesterol. Why not try sipping hot water with lemon instead of coffee to help cleanse your system. Another great starter is an energy shake made with fruit, yogurt, tofu, milk, wheat germ, and juice to get your protein, carbs, fruit, fiber, and dairy in your system in an easily digestible form.
Top Talent Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
September 3, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
People I meet who are contemplating jumping into the deep waters of independent income earnings always wonder if they can do it, do they have what it takes, and should they even be thinking about it. A recent survey of Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, by Deloitte found that a full 70% of them think they will be working independently some day and jumping off the corporate band wagon.
I first offer guidance to those inquiring minds that they need to have their personal and financial act together first and foremost, have their dream and their passion and purpose pulled together, a bank account with at least one year’s worth of living expenses, no debt, and be able to live with ambiguity, flexibility, and creativity.
Successful entrepreneurs have qualities to cultivate deep relationships with customers and employees, have great focus on business outcomes, are creative problem solvers, and are the best spokespeople for their businesses. They don’t shy away from self-promotion and exert a self-confidence even if they don’t yet have it.
The top talent traits of successful entrepreneurs:
- Business Focus: You make decisions based on observed or anticipated effect on profit.
- Self Confidence and Confidence in Others: You accurately know yourself and understand others can do some things better than you and you let them do it.
- Creative Thinker: You exhibit creativity in taking an existing idea or product and turning it into something better.
- Determined Independence: You last through difficult times and are prepared to do whatever needs to be done · Knowledge-Seeker: You constantly search for information that is relevant to growing your business.
- Promoter and Relationship-Builder: You have high emotional intelligence and easily build relationships
- Risk-Taker: You instinctively know how to manage high-risk situations.
Take stock of your own talents and skills to see if you have these top talent traits that most successful entrepreneurs embrace. Understanding and acknowledging your inherent talents gives you the best chance at success. All the best in your success and if you need a little help along the way, you know where to find me.
Insert: Insert Energy Into Your Day
August 16, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Fill your day with energy inserts, short breaks, breathing room, downtime, toys, and playful items that speak to you and that are appropriate or allowed in your workplace. Studies show that using colored pens, stickers, and getting creative will cause you to look forward to your daily planning sessions. When we plan our time better, we usually have more time to insert some energy into our schedule.
Turn your planner into an adult version of a coloring book and color-code your schedule to quickly see how balanced or unbalanced your life is. With a quick glance at your colorful calendar you can see immediately which color dominates or if they are in balance. Our eyes see color before they see words, so using different colors for personal, professional, meetings, deadlines, or other categories will save you time and eyestrain from reading all your activities. Plotting both personal and professional time slots in your palm pilot or day timer will help you schedule your day and keep you from becoming overscheduled, over-committed, and overwhelmed.
Recognize that you will need some downtime for your brain or your body after a taxing project and schedule the downtime into the project planning time. Insert pleasurable things into your day to help you practice safe stress and mark it on your calendar. Some clients have a family calendar on the refrigerator and use a different color for each family member on the master calendar for easier planning.
Professionalism can be playful – remember fun and effectiveness? Energy inserts could be candles, flowers, juggling, music, people, pets, art, free time, fresh air, or anything else which makes your smile or nourished your soul. Create your Fun Meter list and write down as many things as you can that make you smile and that you enjoy doing in your leisure time to practice safe stress.
Taking several joy breaks daily can liven up your life. Look at photos, stretch, call a friend, turn on music, have fresh flowers, walk outside, or move your body to release the tension and get your left and right brain integrating more effectively. Research shows that those who plan for daily joys can cope with stress much better than those who don’t. Become aware of what brings you joy and create moments in your routine to experience aspects of that positive feeling. Just thinking about joyful things brings positive physiological and psychological changes in your body.
Joy is a step beyond happiness; it is more active and animated than plain happiness. What joyful things are you putting into your life as an energy insert today? See Appendix A for more energy inserts to get you started on your own list. If you have trouble wondering what to do with an extra 15 minutes in your day, keep your list handy and start inserting some energy and joy into your day.
What Energizes a Workplace and a Workforce, Anyway? The Softer Side of Leadership
July 29, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I began studying what energizes individuals about 30 years ago and it morphed into researching what energizes organizations in the 1990’s. It was fascinating to me how some people had so much energy to burn and others seemed drained much of the time. The same with organizations. Some seemed to have an engaged and excited workforce powered on their own “esteem engines” and others needed the command control to keep them producing out of fear and threat of paycheck revocation.
When I read about the enormous undertaking of one of Gallup’s largest and longest undertakings studying employee engagement; it proved what I had been seeing first-hand in consulting with companies around the world. A mere 30 % of employees in America feel actively engaged at work. And now their 21013 version of the study found that around the world it falls to just 13%. Their study goes on to report that 55% are disengaged and 20% are actively disengaged and doing things to sabotage the effort. So instead of work being an enthusiastic expression of our gifts and talents; it would seem that it is anything but for most employees.
Last fall, interested in what makes employees satisfied, energized and productive; the Harvard Business Review conducted a survey of more than 12,000 mostly white-collar employees across a broad range of companies and industries and results were remarkably similar across all populations.
Employees are vastly more satisfied and productive, when 4of their core needs are met:
- Physical, through opportunities to regularly renew and recharge at work
- Emotional, by feeling valued and appreciated for their contributions
- Mental, when they have the opportunity to focus in an absorbed way on their most important tasks and define when and where they get their work done
- Spiritual, by doing more of what they do best and enjoy most, and by feeling connected to a higher purpose at work
The more effectively leaders and organizations support employees in meeting these 4 core needs, the more likely they experience engagement, loyalty, job satisfaction and positive energy at work, and the lower their perceived levels of stress. When employees have one need met, compared with none, all of their performance variables improve. The more needs that are met, the more positive the impact.
Employee engagement that includes involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm, focused effort and energy has been found to improve performance. Something we know in our gut and something Gallup once again proved to be true. Gallup found that companies in the top quartile for engaged employees, compared with the bottom quartile, had 22 % higher profitability and 10% higher customer ratings. The way we feel at work is critical to how we perform.
The following is an excerpt from a report of that study:
Renewal: Employees who take a break every 90 minutes report a 30 percent higher level of focus than those who take 0-1 during the day. They also report a nearly 50 percent greater capacity to think creatively and a 46% higher level of health and well-being. The more hours people work beyond 40 — and the more continuously they work — the worse they feel, and the less engaged they become. By contrast, feeling encouraged by one’s supervisor to take breaks increases by nearly 100 % people’s likelihood to stay with any given company, and also doubles their sense of health and well-being.
Value: Feeling cared for by one’s supervisor has a more significant impact on people’s sense of trust and safety than any other behavior by a leader. Employees who say they have more supportive supervisors are 1.3 times as likely to stay with the organization and are 67% more engaged.
Focus: Only 20% of respondents said they were able to focus on one task at a time at work, but those who could were 50% more engaged. Similarly, only one-third of respondents said they were able to effectively prioritize their tasks, but those who did were 1.6 times better able to focus on one thing at a time.
Purpose: Employees who derive meaning and significance from their work were more than three times as likely to stay with their organizations — the highest single impact of any variable in our survey. These employees also reported 1.7 times higher job satisfaction and they were 1.4 times more engaged at work.
Leaders must embrace the softer side of business and know that how employees feel is as important as what they know and what they can do. If they don’t feel like doing it, they won’t. If they don’t feel valued, they walk. If they don’t feel respected, they leave or call in sick. If they don’t feel inspired and energized and feel like they matter; they won’t produce. Leaders much pay attention to what was previously thought of as soft skills and ensure they ask employees what would make them feel more energized, more cared for and what would improve their quality of life at work.
Other things I’ve seen client companies do is to create fitness facilities and nap rooms, and to provide healthy, high-quality food for free, or at subsidized prices, offer dry cleaning pick-up or car detailing in the workplace. Others offer Fed-ex and UPS delivery and drop off for employees and promise not to make meetings more than 90 minutes tops. Still others have bowls of M&M’s next to the coffee pots in the break rooms. What can you do as a leader to embrace the softer side of the workplace and energize your employees? It starts with a simple question of asking them what they want out of the relationship with their job and what do they need to feel better about working there. Baked goods is always a good start.
The energy of leaders is contagious. When leaders explicitly encourage employees to work in more sustainable ways and model that behavior; their employees are substantially more engaged, more focused, and more likely to stay at the company, according to the Harvard Business Review. Start inquiring now before you lose more employees to someplace that cares more about them, shows them they are concerned with how they feel and shows how they value them on many levels.
CTRL – Control Your Life and Your Immediate Environment
July 12, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Take control of your immediate circle of influence. You don’t always have control over what comes your way, but you have the power to control your state of mind and reactions to whatever life hands you. When you change your mind, you change your energy, and when you change your energy, you change your life. Our thoughts turn into actions and our actions turn into habits and our habits turn into our character . . . so what are you thinking about?
You can also control your immediate physical environment. Give yourself an energy boost by hanging up cherished photos, or have a nice rug under your feet, play soft instrumental music to soothe your nerves, and have your space make a positive statement about who you are. What image do you want to portray with your space. Is it working for you or against you? Take control of your immediate environment whether it be your space, your thoughts, or your circle of friends. Our clutter is a symptom of our internal chaos – a visual of postponed decisions and procrastination. Is your environment telling others you have control or that you’re out of control? Take control over what you have the power over and let go of things that are out of your control to avoid undue energy drainage.
On Being Happy, How to Happify Your Life
July 1, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
It’s a funny thing this happiness trend. Like when you buy a new car and then you keep noticing all the cars on the road like yours because it’s on your radar. I keep having these happiness studies, books, websites and articles drop into my lap while I wait at the car wash, doctor’s office, watching TV or on a teleclass where a book is referenced by my coach. I’m getting bombarded with happiness messages and just have to share the good news.
The latest one is a website called http://www.happify.com all about the science of happiness and how you can live a happier life be design. This website is no slouch, it was featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Redbook and Shape magazines and it has years of scientifically-based research behind it. Finally corporations are getting it that happy workers make for better business. When work is made fun, it gets done and good times lead to good business. Us folk in the recreation field have known that all along. I’m glad the corporate suits are getting clued in to how the bottom line is affected by how happy employees are in the workplace and at home. I write about it many years ago in How to Create a Happy Herd: the Contented Cow Syndrome as one of the cover stories in one of Stephen Covey’s magazines. I’m thinking of dusting it off and re-printing it for your reading pleasure.
Anywho…. back to the Happify website. They claim that spending a few minutes daily on fun, science-based activities and games can improve your life on many levels including: gaining confidence, boosting optimism, decreasing stress, building resilience to stress, improve relationships and conquer negative thoughts. Everybody seems to be getting on the gamifying bandwagon these days….like the website Lumosity – to train your brain to be smarter. Why not give it whirl and see how you can happify your life. There are lots and lots of articles for lots of areas of your life that can be happified. Happy reading….