You have storylines that your brain tells about who you are, what you are, and why you do what you do that run through your mind constantly. Have you ever wondered why you tell the stories you do? Have you ever considered there might be other ways to tell the same stories? 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I just completed a three-day meditation retreat. I’ve meditated for years, but in this weekend-long experience, I was able to really notice the stories my brain tells me. I quickly realized during this experience, that there are some stories I tell myself that I wanted to shift. I bet you have some, too. 

The challenge is we can’t just tell ourselves not to think about something. Research clearly shows that if we try this, we’ll think about whatever we don’t want to think about ALL THE TIME. 

As the evil robotic aliens in Star Trek: The Next Generation would say, resistance is futile.

Distraction, on the other hand, is a beautiful technique to help entice the brain away from unhealthy or old storylines it’s addicted to. 

Here’s an example: If you have a tough relationship with a colleague and your brain won’t stop telling stories about all the things that person has said to you to make you angry, don’t just tell yourself to stop thinking those thoughts. It doesn’t work, and as I mentioned, if you try to stop the thoughts, you’ll only think about the negative thing more. 

Instead, every time this person comes up in your mind, distract your brain. Here are a few strategies to try: 

• Make a sound. When my brain goes haywire on an old story, I say, “nuh-uh” in my mind or even out loud. It’s the same sound I make when I train puppies and want their attention focused away from the shoe their chewing. 
• Lighten up. I think it’s really hilarious to train my brain like I’m training puppies, so every time I interrupt my thoughts with the “nuh-uh” I start laughing. When you laugh, you change the energy immediately and the brain easily lets go of a story as you focus on how good it feels to laugh.
• Switch it up. Instead of following the train of the story, “That person always…” switch it up with another thought about that person. For instance, you might say in your mind, “Thank you, for being a teacher for me.” Eventually, you’ll be able to let go of the negative thoughts more often and invite in positive ones.

(This is Luna,  the inspiration for this post. Photo by the genius photographer, Margie O’Loughlin. How can we stay mad with this little lady looking at us like that?)

What’s really interesting is what happens in your body when you start thinking those negative thoughts and what happens in your body when you learn to distract yourself and let them go. 

Just give it a try to see what I mean. Close your eyes and think about someone you have conflict with. Notice what happens in your body. Shortened breath? Tight shoulders, neck, or chest? This is what it feels like when you turn on the stress response in the body. You are doing that to yourself! 

Now that you’ve got this person in your mind, practice with one of the three strategies and notice what happens in your body when you practice drawing your mind away from the negative story. Does your body relax? Can you breathe more deeply? Can you bring a smile to your face? 

You get to control whether or not you’ll allow your brain to continue to focus on things that harm your body with stress, or not. It’s up to you. So what will you choose? 

I choose the puppy.

With love,

Jacque

In a recent study by burnout researchers and the Harvard Business Review, the team surveyed 1,500 people across 46 countries in a wide variety of industries and roles. The results were astounding: 

• 89% of respondents said their work life was getting worse 
• 85% said their well-being had declined 
• 62% of people who were struggling to manage workloads experienced burnout “often” or “extremely often” in the previous three months 

Bottom line? Burnout was bad before the pandemic. It’s even worse now. 

I wasn’t surprised to see these numbers. I’ve been working with physicians, nurses, social workers and other medical workers who are on the front lines of everything that’s happening in our world right now. They are treating those afflicted with COVID-19. They are caring for people injured in protests and mass shootings. They are being shot at themselves in clinics and parking ramps. 

With everything we’re going through, it’s easy to begin telling stories to ourselves and other people that rob us of our power, humanity, and connection to others. 

We don’t have to tell those stories. In fact, these times are calling us to decide what stories we will choose to tell and to live. 

We can tell a story that swamps us with fear, anger, and anxiety. Or we can decide to tell empowering stories, those that help us return to our feet so we can do what must be done. 

These stories we tell ourselves can be so embedded in the way we usually do things that it can be hard to uncover them, but it begins with three very simple steps that can help you make a comeback from disempowering stories. 

1. Observe
2. Question 
3. Express

Artists have long been the emotional stewards of our societies because they do these three things. They closely observe the world and people around them or their own inner worlds. They get curious about them. They ask questions about what they observed to try to understand: Why? What? Where? When? How? And then they express what they saw and learned. 

If you are one of the legions of people who are feeling stress and burnout right now, I invite you to try this simple game: 

1. Get back in your body. Breathe consciously for one to three minutes. Try breathing in for 5 seconds and out for 5 seconds, pushing the air out of your lungs with your stomach muscles in a slow flow. This tells your nervous system to send a message to your body and brain that you’re safe, all is well, and it’s okay to relax. 
2. Notice what you notice. As you breathe, open your eyes and look around you. What do you see? What textures or colors do you notice? What do you hear? What aromas do you smell? 
3. Write down what you notice. Write a paragraph and describe what you noticed using sensory details. Don’t forget to include how the object you’re observing made you feel.

If you are one of the many people who are struggling right now, you can reframe the challenging situation you’re in. You can find the opportunity to grow from it. You can direct your energy in more life-enhancing ways. So why not try it?

With love,

Jacque

A lot of the high-achieving people I work with are adept at taking care of themselves in certain ways. They might work out regularly. They might eat nutritious foods. Some are great at setting boundaries with colleagues.

But when I ask people how they take care of themselves emotionally…crickets.

And I get it. I really do. It can be extremely challenging to even know how to take care of yourself emotionally. Very few of us were trained in emotional mastery. Let me give you an example.

I once worked with someone who was pretty out of touch with her emotions, except for one: anger. She would often scream at people in the office if she wasn’t happy about something. She would throw things in her office. And direct her rage at people who made mistakes in epic verbal attacks.

One day, I caught her in one of these moments. She was standing in the middle of the office screaming at her employees—all early twenty-somethings who were frozen in fear. Her face was red, her body rigid.

I walked to her, keeping my body very calm and started talking to her in what psychologists call the compassionate parent voice.

“Hey, hey there. I can see you’re super upset, but you know what? Everything’s just fine. It can be fixed. It’s all right. Why don’t we go into your office and talk about it.”

Her entire body relaxed. She turned to look at me and nodded. “Come on, everything’s going to be fine.” I ushered her back to her office where she poured out the emotions the anger was masking.

In order to put the joy back into your job, understanding your emotional world is crucial. This is a foundational pillar of self-mastery.

In my example above, if this woman could coach herself through the anger with self-compassion, she could develop greater emotional regulation and an expanded ability to express her needs. By expressing her needs, she could invite more of what nourishes her into her work and her life and the anger she felt would dissolve. 

A few weeks ago, I shared one of the top three most powerful ways to put the joy back in your job. Here is the second powerful practice I’d like to share with you:

Use self-compassion to develop emotional mastery.

I bet you didn’t think I was going to say that, did you? But it’s true. Self-compassion is one of the best ways to help discover why you feel what you feel. It can help prevent what’s called, “flooding,” which is when your body is flooded with stress hormones that take your executive functioning offline.

When we’re flooded with stress hormones, we unplug our ability to think rationally and we go into habitual and instinctive reactions. When we’re flooded with anger, fear, stress, overwhelm or burnout—it’s almost impossible to access our joy. 

Try this: This week pay attention to any emotions that come up.

1. Identify what you’re feeling. Name the emotion and write it down in a journal.
2. Notice its results. See if you can tell how that emotion makes your body feel or notice what behaviors the emotion causes.
3. Engage self-compassion. Put your hands on your heart, one over the other (or put your hands anywhere on your body that feels comforting and supportive), and talk to yourself in a compassionate voice in the second person. 

You might feel like an idiot at first or that I’m an idiot for suggesting this ridiculous exercise, but trust me. It works. Researchers at Stanford, The University of Texas at Austin and other institutions have joined the party on the power of self-coaching, self-compassion and touch. 

Note: Sometimes we can access our emotions in the reverse—meaning, we can notice our behaviors (binge watching TV, mindlessly using our devices, eating or drinking without awareness) and then see what thoughts we were thinking before we engaged in the behavior. Those thoughts are bread crumbs that can lead us to the emotions themselves.

All right friends: I’ll leave you with this. The more aware of your emotions you are, the more control you have over what you feel. And this is a powerful pathway to creating more joy in your job (and life).

Much love,

Jacque

The world values productivity. And in response, we power through. We check our phones every three minutes. We tune out our kids, our friends, our partners because thoughts of work won’t leave our brains. We run from one meeting to another to another. We don’t take lunch. We work nights and weekends. We wake up in the middle of the night thinking about work and lose hours of valuable sleep. And this is all made even worse now that so many of us work from home and don’t have natural boundaries around our work lives. Sound familiar?

Upside: Big jobs, big promotions, big paychecks.

Downside: This single-minded focus on achievement is sometimes at odds with what our bodies and hearts need and want. And when we’re out of integrity and alignment with ourselves, it comes at a cost. A steep one.

This drive for high-achievement and perfection can cost us our joy. Our awareness of the present moment. Our mental health and wellbeing. And our physical health.

Let me give you an example. I started my company 20 years ago. After years of successful work and striving, I found myself in my doctor’s office. I didn’t consciously realize I was approaching burnout. I just knew I was getting absolutely no joy out of the work that once felt very fulfilling.

I made a doctor’s appointment because I was experiencing regular insomnia and heart palpitations that scared me. On top of that I was irritable and emotionally exhausted. When I saw my doctor, she diagnosed me within moments. “You’re stressed out,” she said.

“Stressed?” I scoffed. What did she know? I wasn’t stressed. I was an extremely capable woman. I had grit. And stamina. And smarts. I wasn’t stressed!

“Look where you’re breathing.” She pointed to my collarbones. “You’re breathing way up at the top of your chest. You’re basically panting and not getting the oxygen you need. That’s what happens when people are under chronic stress.”

I wish I could say her observation reached me, but it didn’t. I decided she didn’t know what she was talking about. Several years went by and I continued my high-intensity, high-achieving approach until a moment on a treadmill scared me awake.

My heart felt like it flipped and twisted in my chest and pain shot across the front of my ribs. A cold sweat broke out over my entire body and I thought I might faint. I managed to get myself off the treadmill to a spot where I could sit down for a while. This time, when the cardiologist said, “You’re stressed,” I listened. And I embarked on a journey of recovery that helped me bring joy back into my job.

In the coming weeks I want to share with you the most powerful practices I found. Let’s start here:

Get back in your body.

Our bodies are wise and sensitive instruments. But so few of us are taught embodied techniques that can help us listen to their wisdom. And when we’re running 10,000 miles an hour in a high-pressure environment, we’re sprinting from one thing to the next with our consciousness firmly centered in our heads. We don’t pay attention to our bodies at all.

When I slowed down long enough to start listening, I realized my body talked to me in all sorts of ways. I started to see the body language I expressed when I said something I thought would please someone else. I started to notice how my body felt when I did something in order to achieve some kind of external reward or validation that was out of alignment with my own gut instincts. I felt the tension in my body that came from overworking. This discovery was life-changing.

Listening to our bodies only takes seconds.

The number one thing I hear from my coaching clients and from the people who experience the Heartwood Self-Mastery programs is this: I don’t have time to slow down. Friends: Listening to our bodies only takes seconds.

Try this: The next time you have a decision to make, slow the train down for just 60 seconds by taking 5 deep breaths.

1. Breathe consciously. Breathe in with a count of 3 and out with count of 6. This tells your nervous system to send a message to your body and brain that you’re safe, all is well, and it’s okay to relax.
2. Consider the decision you need to make. Bring the options you see into your mind one at a time. Notice how your body feels with each option. Do you hold your breath or is your breathing up high in your chest? Do your shoulders tighten up? Does your back start to hurt? Do you feel light and excited?

This kind of inner attention is called interoceptive awareness and the more you practice using your senses to listen inside your body, the more adept you will get at discerning your body’s messages.

And the more connected you are to your body at work, the more it will open the pathway to creating more joy in your job (and life).

Love,

Jacque

Reading the list of names that makes up the new White House COVID-19 Task Force under the Biden administration is like reading the names of the brave humans who agreed to travel to the moon for the first time. These people will make history as they help shape the pandemic response in 2021.

These courageous souls on the task force will be called to lead during very dark times. They’re not the only ones. Leaders of organizations around the globe are being called to lead in new ways. And we’re all being asked to lead ourselves, our families, and friends through painful and challenging territory.

In order to lead through this era of discord and disruption, we must have tools we can use to help us return to our feet and a state of creativity, forward-motion, and hope.

Pause. Breathe. 

The coronavirus has impacted nearly every aspect of our lives. We’ve lost precious in-person social interaction with each other. We’ve lost access to in-person education. We’ve lost jobs and businesses. And we’ve lost loved ones in a wave of death that has swept the globe.

“This magnitude of death over a short period of time is an international tragedy on a historic scale,” says Dr. Naomi Simon, a psychiatrist and head of the Anxiety and Complicated Grief Program at NYU School of Medicine, in the October 20, 2020 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

At the time of this writing on January 22, 2021, the United States has seen 402,803 deaths. The worldwide death toll is 2,075,870. Grief experts estimate that each death leaves 9 people bereaved for a mind-bending total of 3,625,227 people in the U.S. and 18,682,830 across the globe who are suffering.

Pause. Breathe. 

You might decide to put your hands on your heart, or your stomach, or somewhere else on your body that would feel soothing. 

All of this anguish is on top of everything else that happened over the past this year—the heartbreak of social injustice, the divisive election, the terrifying attack on the Capitol. And all of that distress is on top of all the other challenges we face as humans in a regular sort of year. The American Psychological Association recently sounded an alarm and announced: “We are facing a national mental health crisis that could yield serious health and social consequences for years to come.”

This reminds me of a scene in the 1977 movie Star Wars Episode IV—A New Hope, in which Luke, Princess Leia, and Han Solo are trying to escape a fight with the Stormtroopers. They end up in a trash compactor filled with garbage and a creepy monster swirling around their legs in the knee-high water.

After a few minutes spent freaking out about their location and battling the invisible creature, the walls begin to move in, relentlessly squishing everything in their path. This is what challenging times feel like. This was 2020. This is now.

Pause. Breathe all the way down into the belly. Slowing the breath down. You might push the breath out with your stomach muscles and exhale until all the air is out, so the exhale is longer than the inhale. You might breathe in this way for three breaths. 

So how we do we return from chronic stress and burnout?

How do we return from fear, grief, and loss?

How do we get back on our feet and re-ignite our passion and purpose?

We learn the skills of returning. The Art of the Return is our ability to be resilient. It’s our ability to connect to our core of inner strength. It’s our ability to be persistent when we’re going after hard goals.

And because humans have practiced The Art of the Return since our brains could comprehend loss and hardship, there’s a roadmap we can follow.

Here’s an exercise to help you get started.

Pause. Pick up a pen and piece of paper. 

Ask yourself: What nourishes me? What makes me feel really good? Self-care is usually seen as a soft skill and a “nice-to-have” by most high-achievers, but when you see that self-care is tied to being able to perform at peak performance—it becomes a must have. If you’re up for a challenge, put the items you list on your calendar and make them non-negotiable.

My friend, it’s not enough to read this. I hope you’ll test out a regular diet of activities that make you feel good and cared for, because it will help give you the stamina to return again and again to your mission.

White House COVID-19 Task Force, I’m looking at you.

With love,

Jacque

When I go into organizations to work with people on mindfulness and resilience work, I very often meet lots of resistance in the first session. People assume that mindfulness means meditating while sitting on a cushion and breathing. And yes, for some people, that’s exactly what it means and it works great for them. However, that type of mindfulness practice is not for everyone. The good news is mindfulness is so much more than that.

Mindfulness is simply the art of paying attention. Right now. To this moment. And we can do that through our senses and consciousness in multiple ways. Most mindfulness teachers will also add that the art of developing present-moment awareness includes being aware of yourself and the world around you without judgement.

The ability to observe yourself and the world around you is a foundational resilience skill. It can help you increase your self-awareness so you can prevent burnout and dramatically boost your energy and vitality. 

When people discover they don’t necessarily have to sit and breathe on a cushion for an hour a day, things get really interesting. While working with a room full of executives in a recent training, one of them spoke up right away. “I hope this isn’t a waste of my time! I have never been able to meditate.”

I explained we would be trying all sorts of different techniques. “I’d like to ask you to become a curious explorer,” I said. “I’m betting we’ll find something that will work for you.”

She was a good sport and played along. The first exercise we did was a traditional breathing practice that helps calm the vagus nerve, which can turn off or reduce the chronic stress response so many of us live with each day. After we finished, she raised her hand to share. “Nope! That didn’t work for me.”

The next mindfulness exercise I asked them to try is one that comes out of art school. Deep, artistic observation is another entry point to the art of paying close attention to the present moment. In this exercise I asked them to peel and eat an orange for 10 minutes, closely observing all the details they noticed using all their senses. Then the participants wrote about what they observed about the orange and what they noticed within themselves for another 10 minutes.

At the end of this experiment, the executive who struggled with meditation was the first to have her hand in the air. “That worked for me! I’m a visual person!” She decided on the spot to use mealtimes to help her practice mindfulness techniques to help calm her active brain.

Let’s Play! 

Game #1

Now, I invite you to play a little game. We’re going to start with the breath, this wave of oxygen that bathes the inner workings of your body with life-giving air. You carry this beautiful consciousness-building tool around with you all the time.

As you breathe, notice the breath. Use your senses to listen, to feel what happens in your body. I invite you to put your hands on your lower ribs or stomach as they move in and out. Try breathing in through your nose and out through your nose. Ready?

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Now, let’s be curious explorers. Do you notice any sensations as you breathe? Do you get light-headed? Energized? Are your thoughts getting in the way? What else are you aware of? You might write these observations down. 

Game #2

Now, let’s try a visual exercise. You can do the orange peeling exercise I describe above, or you can simply spend the day following the light. Observe how the natural light comes into your space or notice how the lamplight falls on nearby objects. Pretend you are an artist. How would you describe the light as it moves throughout the day or sparkles on a body of water? What do you notice? 

After playing the games, what observations can you make about yourself? What do you love to do? What makes you feel peaceful or relaxed? If you come upon a practice that feels good, I invite you to do more of that this week. 

Have fun, my friends!