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8/11/2020

How to Create Deadline Urgency without the Deadline

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When I was in my early 30s, my dad gave me a copy of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
 
I was utterly fascinated at the idea of a crucial difference between urgent and important.  
And then it blew my mind to learn that they were not opposites either.  

Instead, they formed this cool quadrant.

Quadrant 1. Urgent and Important
a crisis, a deadline, a high-pressure event
 
Quadrant 2. Non-urgent and Important
planning, maintaining, self-care
 
Quadrant 3. Urgent and Not Important interruptions, notifications popping up on our on your devices,  bright shiny objects to chase
 
Quadrant 4.  Non-urgent and Not Important
spam, mindless web surfing/device-clicking, non-focused, repetitive activities
 ​
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​Brilliant!  It made total sense in my head.
 
But in the following years, I discovered that just because something makes total sense in my head doesn't mean that I actually know how to make it a real thing in my actual life.
 
So, I spent some number of decades getting that information out of my head and into my life.  Here's how I did it!

Yes—the grid is cool!
These four quadrants are really fun brain-candy.  The idea is to pay attention to which quadrant you are spending your time in.  If you spend most of your time in Quadrant 2—yay!  You win!  You are a Highly Effective Person.  

But urgency is compelling . . . 
and women tend to be the ones who deal with the urgent, pressing problems of life and other people (bosses, colleagues, kids).  Most women I know have days and even weeks fueled by adrenaline.

And truth be told--it actually feels amazing at first.  When we are faced with a crisis or a deadline, that surge of adrenaline clears out the sludge and gives us a sense of focus, purpose and direction. 

But our bodies are simply not made to run on adrenaline.  Years ago, one of my friends shocked me when she said, in an airy yet tired voice:  Oh yes!  My adrenal glands are shot. My doctor says that's true for most women.
 
So it is an actual life challenge is to learn to fuel ourselves with plentiful sleep, nutritious food, and deep-focus (Quadrant 2) instead of the adrenal-gland-killing state of Quadrant 1.

Sound overwhelming?
Wait--breathe with me here.
Start small. 
 
Here are 3 tips to gently shift out of your addiction to emergency
 
TIP 1:  Notice your body.  Next time there’s a crash in the next room or you see your ex’s number on your caller ID, notice the tingly surge of adrenaline run through your body.   After it is gone, do you wish you could feel energized like that again? Pay attention to your body's desire to create more of that juice.
 
TIP 2:  Become curious:  Hmm—am I chasing someone else’s urgency or emergency?  If we are used to running on adrenaline, it may feel good to keep it going.  Someone is always having an urgent moment, and if you are used to spending more time in Quadrant 1 than Quadrant 2, handling other people’s urgencies just becomes a way of life. 

(But not the way of your life--so stay in that energy of curiosity and . . .)
 
TIP 3: Invite Discernment.  Is something feels urgent, ask yourself:  is this something I need to deal with now or not? If the answer is yes—deal with it.  You are in Quadrant 1.  But if the answer is no, you are in Quadrant 3—and you get to discern: Do I put this on a list to deal with in my Quadrant 2 focused time?  Or can I just let it go?
 
And one final bonus tip!  The traditional advice for Quadrant 4 is to eliminate or reduce.  But it is more realistic to make a plan for those mindless clicks.  You may decide to set a timer and spend 5-10 minutes on non-urgent, non-important tasks as a way to relax in a waiting room or as a wind-down into something more mindful:  meditation or a relaxing bedtime routine.
 
If you want a deeper dive into Urgent vs. Important, join my private Facebook Group:  The Bottom Line is You!  I have a video on this very topic, plus a growing library of COVID-responsive videos on emotional hygiene and productivity at home.
 
CLICK to join my private FaceBook group:  The Bottom Line is YOU!


REview

1. Some tasks are urgent and important. 
​2. Some are not urgent, though they are important. 
3. Some flip that order. 
4. And some are neither. 

Bottom line: The best way to be highly effective?  Spend most of your time doing things that are 
important (like planning out a project) but not urgent (like starting a report the night before it is due).
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7/7/2020

Afraid of Not Getting Stuff Done This Fall?

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In a normal summer, we worry about mosquitos and dehydration.
 
This July is not normal. 
 
Am I an essential worker?  What does that even mean? Is school starting early or late?  Do I turn the video on or off for this Zoom meeting? Am I going to have to homeschool my kids AND work from home?  What is the safest way for me to cast my vote and feel like it will get counted?  What is my part in racial reckoning? Is the virus going to get worse as flu season hits?   

How am I supposed to get stuff done when I really, really can’t concentrate?


Every one of my friends, every one of my clients, everyone in my family is humbled right now:  How are we supposed to plan anything when so much is uncertain?

​
 
There is a LOT of fear right now.
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​She is able to stay productive, engage in creative conflict, and use healthy communication practices with her daughter, as they shelter-in-place together.  ​
And fear about the future is the strange gift of being human.  Our astonishing ability to think and plan and imagine and anticipate problems in the future makes us very good at doing things to prepare for what is likely to come next. 
 
Download my guide: 3 Invisible Time Leaks

But it comes with a price:  fear and anxiety. 
 
The body has a complex system of fear responses, but we can understand the two basic responses as follows:  
  • a freeze-faint response
  • a fight-flight response. 

Identifying which state you are in can help you shift into a more relaxed and open state, like flow  (being deeply  and pleasurably immersed in a focused activity) or social engagement. (feeling safe enough to be genuine with others and open to new ideas).

So here are two quick tips to help shift your biological fear response into focus, flow, safety, and openness.

1) The Freeze-Faint Shift
One of my clients recently had a deep energetic emotional release.  I encouraged her to move around to help the emotion fully exit her body, and I was thrilled to see that she was allowing herself literally to shake—her hands, her shoulders, her head.  She got her whole body engaged!  She was really shaking it out.  I joined her, shaking my body as well, to encourage her to stay with her process until it came to a natural conclusion.
 
She beamed.  She had begun the session unfocused and sleepy, and had left the session enthusiastic and energized.

What was happening?
My client had gone into a habitual freeze-faint response.

The freeze-faint response happens when, for example, a rabbit or a deer is startled into motionlessness.  The instinctive goal is not to be seen or noticed—and the freeze-faint response shuts down the nervous system.
 
How do I shift out of freeze-faint?
To shift out of freeze-faint, you need to wake up your nervous system.

How? 
By shaking!

The  most recent studies on trauma affirm that trembling and shaking after trauma causes the nervous system to reset itself.  

So if you feel that your energy is drained (faint) or that your body is rigid (freeze)--allow yourself to shake/tremble/dance/move/look weird. 
Your body is the boss of this, so let yourself look as weird as you need to! 

2). The Fight-Flight Shift
Another client some years ago was going through a divorce.  She was conflict-avoidant and simply left the room whenever her teenager began to get in her face.  One day, her daughter bluntly told her bluntly that when she left the room like that, it felt like she didn’t love her.

What was happening?
My client had developed a flight response to conflict in order to keep herself from exploding in anger.  This worked well when she was a child, but as a divorcing mom, she had learn to meet her daughter’s anger without fleeing and without exploding. That meant she had to shift out of fight-flight.
 
How do I shift out of fight-flight?
To shift out of fight-flight, you need to ground yourself and calm the nervous system.  

How?
By taking a sumo stance and consciously exhaling a few seconds longer than inhaling.  The longer exhalation resets the nervous system to get out of fight mode, and the sumo stance keeps you feeling grounded, counteracting the impulse to flee.

 —and within a week or so, she noticed a real difference in her relationship with her daughter.
 
My client's sumo-stance practice continues to serve her well during COVID. 

​She is able to stay productive, engage in creative conflict, and use healthy communication practices with her daughter, as they shelter-in-place together.  

 
Getting stuff done is hard in normal times. It is especially hard now, when there is so much fear, and so much is outside of our control.  

That is why I encourage you to download my free guide to identify and fix the 3 Invisible Time Leaks that almost everyone overlooks when they try to "be more productive."

Download my guide:  3 Invisible Time Leaks 

Warmly,
Lynnea
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6/12/2020

3 Keys to not wasting this crisis

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During her divorce, a woman woke in the night with one clear thought. 
This is an unprecedented opportunity for spiritual growth. 

Ten years later, this same thought is helping her stay grounded, productive, and stable during the myriad crises facing her (and the rest of the planet!) right now.
​
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The almost unbearable pain of watching her family torn apart transformed this woman in every way.  She no longer had the luxury of doing things the way that made her feel comforted.  She now had to do things in ways that worked.  Period.  Otherwise, she would lose her house, her job, her children.

She knew that this is exactly what she wanted, exactly what she had been searching and praying for--even if it hurt very much.

And it did hurt.  Very much.
I know because this woman is me, 10 years ago.


As the Pandemic hit, I ran across this business maxim:  
Never waste a crisis. 

Ah, I thought.
 

This is the business version of my personal maxim:
Feel everything you can.  This is an unprecedented opportunity for spiritual growth. 

 The terror and suffering we experience when our support systems collapse are an urgent invitation to evolve into a new reality that is already here as an uninvited guest.

​In crisis, we are compelled to create new ways of staying grounded and acting with consciousness, compassion, and intentionality.


Here are 3 Keys to Not Wasting This Crisis.

1. Match The ENergy, and then HArness it!

Seriously?  Match the energy of feeling freaked-out? 

Yes.  Seriously.
  • Say "hello" to your freak-out.  Look in a mirror and literally allow your freak-out to be seen--and then greet it as if it were a small, scared child.
  • With curiosity and compassion, ask "What do you need?"  Take any answer you get seriously.

The energy may not be freak-out.  It may be anger or grieving or heartbreak.  Whatever it is--match it first, and then harness it through emotional hygiene.

2. Harness the Energy Through emotional hygiene

What is emotional hygiene? 
It's actually a lot like physical hygiene. 
Emotional hygiene is a practice of clearing out trapped, stuck, or stagnant old emotions. 

Why do we need emotional hygiene?
Because emotions are a powerful energy that you can use to make your life better!

​Emotions get trapped inside us every day, and we need to clear them out, or they cause distress and disease.  And here's the thing:  it is a lot easier to feel our daily accumulation of uncomfortable feelings now than it is to feel them tomorrow or next month or next decade.

Unfelt feelings are like credit card debt.  It hurts to pay that money when it's due, but it hurts a lot more to pay it after it has accumulated interest!  

So what is a good emotional hygiene practice? 
There are so many! 

We live in an age where our knowledge about the biology of trauma and the energetic practices of emotional release are attracting an unprecedented combination of both cultural respect and scientific precision.

But breathing and moving the body are the foundation of all of them.  So begin here:
  • Match:  Take 20-40 seconds 4-5 times a day to notice your breath, to stretch, yawn, and wiggle your toes, or to dance like nobody's watching!  You are likely to notice some emotion arise.  Your job is to greet and welcome it!
  • Harness:  Say to your feelings the actual truth. "I am scared of feeling this, but I welcome you and thank you for things you are teaching me."

I would love to support you as you experiment with these practices.  Click to join my private facebook group, where I keep loading lots of emotional hygiene videos.

3. Make Inertia your ally

You have got to be kidding me. 
Inertia is my enemy!


It seems to most of us that this is true.  Inertia seems like it is keeping us from action. 
But inertia is really just a truth about physics. 


  • Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. 
  • Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.  

How does this truth about bodies affect us?

Let’s go back to March.   When I switched to online teaching after the pandemic hit, I set up many zoom chats to check in with my students. Over and over I heard them say almost exactly the same thing:

It’s hard to work from my bedroom.  I’m used to working at the library.  I’m used to running into friends between classes.


My students had been using inertia to their benefit. 
 

Most of us have taught our bodies to stay in motion once we leave the house, and to stay at rest once we are home.

But while we shelter in place, the flow of inertia for many of us has changed. 
We easily feel trapped by the “body at rest” part of inertia.


So how do we work with inertia, not against it, to balance and energize our lives?

  1. In the evening, use the “body in motion” force to set up your morning flow.  Get your bed all comfy.  Set your alarm and prepare your bath for transition into “body at rest.”  Prioritize tasks for the next day.  Prepare the space coffee and breakfast and self-care and children routines to be finished at a certain time, as if you had to leave the house at a certain time.  Turn off your screens and turn on relaxing music.
  2. Transition into “body at rest.”  Use the warm water, toothbrushing, exfoliating, and moisturizing time to clean your body and soften your emotional defenses.  It’s effective and efficient to do emotional hygiene as you do physical hygiene. 
  3. In the morning, meet “body at rest” energy with kindness.  Massage your feet for a moment before getting out of bed. Stretch luxuriously.  Set a timer for 5 sweet more minutes of body-at-rest.  Do emotional hygiene again as you brush your teeth.  Move and wiggle and dance a bit without any directed objective--just put your body in motion!  (Bonus:  you can include the kids in all of this, if that is what is happening.  They will benefit from your healthy intentions to work with the flow of inertia rather than against it.) Then use the body-in-motion inertia to flow into your coffee and breakfast and priorities!


Click here to join my private facebook group, The Bottom Line Is You. 

You'll get lots of videos about emotional hygiene and productivity at home.
You can even post a request, and I’ll address it in an upcoming video!


Click to join The Bottom Line is You.
See you soon!


Warmly,
Lynnea




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    Author

    Lynnea Annette is an executive life coach who supports professional women who feel the stress of working hard and being under-appreciated.
    With Lynnea’s proprietary methods, her clients crea
    te more time for themselves, make more money, and magnify their deeper life purpose.  Lynnea created dramatic changes in her own life through years of training in cutting-edge personality work and efficient emotional-release methods.  She has now systematized these methods and finds great joy in sharing them with others. 

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