One of the topics I cover in my “Got Resilience?” webinar course, and often coach clients around, is perspectives and perspective shifting. Imagine placing an object in the middle of a room – a sculpture of some kind, for instance. Now imagine walking around that object, looking at it from a variety of angles. Each perspective would give you a different view point & little more information about the object. So too with the perspectives or lenses through which we view our personal worlds.

For example, consider this perspective: “A walk in the woods is enlivening, a wonderful encounter with the natural world.” There is a tone in my language. I can practically smell the fragrance and hear the sounds of that perspective. When I say that sentence and feel that perspective, my body posture shifts to embody the perspective, its inherent attitude and beliefs: standing tall, energy flowing, ready to get out there!

Now suppose I viewed a walk in the woods as dangerous, messy, bug-ridden, and a waste of time. My tone changes. My body posture changes to reflect the different inherent attitude and beliefs of this perspective. Please note that these are simply two different perspectives on a walk in the woods. Neither is right or wrong. Yet each clearly creates a different experience for me.

So what? you may say. What I hope to illustrate is the fact that we each have the power to dramatically shift our life experience by shifting our perspective. Just like that sculpture in the middle of the room, the events of our life — a specific situation, a decision to be made, a certain relationship, an opportunity– can each be considered from different viewpoints, angles, positions, perspectives. And as we look through these new lenses we have access to more and different information. New possibilities are created.

So often, I find myself, a client, a friend, etc. living from a disempowering perspective. We get stuck, feel powerless, and make up rules or beliefs that define our experience, such as:

“I really should be doing more, but there’s no way I can …”

“I knew it would be like this at the beginning; all new managers experience situations like this.”

“This always happens when I tell her what I really think.”

“I need more clients, but nobody is buying in this economy.”

I want to share with you a 5-step Perspective Shifting Formula for getting unstuck. For opening up new possibilities. For expanding outside of the box. The 5-Step formula will help you move from stuck to possibility, from possibility to empowered choice(s), and from empowered choice to action. The link below will take you to a pdf document of the formula and step-by-step instruction for working through it.

Perspective Formula by SherpaDe Coaching, 2011

Playing with new perspectives on old situations is a powerful way to reclaim control and power over your life experience. If you’d like guidance in using the formula and creating powerful shifts in your life, please contact me. I am offering free sample coaching sessions (one per person) through the end of December, 2011.

Denise@SherpaDeCoaching.com

610.287.2989

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Recently, my mom and I traveled to NY for a family wedding. The bride was the daughter of my mom’s cousin Vinnie (we’re Sicilian; there are a lot of Vinnie’s in the family). I have not seen many of these relatives since I was a very young girl, and there were many others whom I had never met. What a wonderful time! So much conversation, laughing, reminiscing, hugging, and, of course, eating!

As I reflect on the weekend, a couple of thoughts come up that I want to share.

1. Community. I realized how important it is to me to spend time with my larger family community. Knowing that I belong to a tribe is comforting. We share values, beliefs, traditions; and that creates a sense of being understood and valued at a pretty core level.
2. Aliveness. Sicilians are often stereotyped as having a zest for life; a great sense of aliveness. I received a compliment once that really touched me: “You are the most alive person I know.”  When I am living in an ALIVE way, I am grateful, authentic, accepting, practicing good self-care, spending time in nature and with the people who nourish my soul.
3. Roots. Connecting with my family’s roots or origin continues to become more important to me as I age. Recently I’ve learned that there is an Italian village that bears my family name. And where some of our customs and traditions originated, along with their significance. Seeing myself as one brush stroke on a huge painting that also includes generation after generation of my ancestors, is a helpful perspective for me to consider when I become bogged down with or frustrated by realities of my daily life.
4. People matter. When mom and I were leaving to head back home, I thanked my mom’s cousin, the mother of the bride. I thanked her for a wonderful visit, for her generous hospitality, and for the great food(!). Her reply was, “You’re welcome. This is what we do. You know that, you’re Italian. We gather, we feed, we embrace people.”

My new mantra to live into: I gather, I feed (nourish), I embrace people.

My April 11, 2011 article was titled “The Road to Resiliency.” In that article, I wrote, “Most of our stress comes from within, not from without. Even in the face of the most challenging external circumstances, we GET TO CHOOSE our response, our perspective, our approach. Our response, perspective, approach, in turn, either increases our resilience, our calm, our groundedness, OR leads us to experience more stress.”

Since that writing, I have had the privilege of being introduced to a man who personifies RESILIENCE. His name is Jason Fowler. Jason was a child and teen Motorcycle Champion, racing motorcycles around the country from the age of 7. When he was 17, a tragic motorbike accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. In the years that followed, Jason chose an attitude of resilience and empowerment, rather than one of self-pity, negativity, or despair. His resiliency and his self-supportive attitude have led him to become a top competitor in worldclass races, including winning the handcycle division of the Ironman World Championship in 2009. For those that aren’t familiar, that’s a 2.4 mile swim, a 112-mile bike race, and a full marathon (26.2 miles); all using only his arms!

I am very excited that this incredible man is coming to tell us his story live on June 13, 2011. My Juice Plus+ team is hosting his visit at the Great America Pub in Conshohocken, PA (6-9pm). Jason will be with us to share his story and his inspirational message of self-empowerment and dreaming big.

Seating is very limited for this event.  As my guest, there is no admission fee to you. Please reply to me as soon as possible, today even, if you’d like to join me for this cool opportunity to hear Jason speak in such an intimate gathering.

Watch a short video clip of Jason here.  Learn more about him at his personal website.

I hope you’ll join me on June 13th!

Denise@SherpaDeCoaching.com
610.287.2989

Big thanks to Shirley Anderson, a coach colleague of mine. She introduced me to a wonderful idea put together by an organization called StoryCorps. StoryCorps created the National Day of Listening, a designated opportunity to sit with a loved one, neighbor, friend, teacher, etc and learn about their life. Through conversational interviews, people will share their memories, their hopes, dreams, joys and sorrows in a recorded conversation with the intent of creating an audio (or written) keepsake.

Here’s what Shirley had to say in her email to me:

“I’m a fan because I neglected to capture these stories from my parents and grandparents and those stories are lost forever … my great-nieces and nephews … and even their parents will never know what it was like for their blood ancestors to come to America as an immigrant.  How precious are those stories of my grandparents and their heroic journeys.

I have lunch weekdays with a group of people who are anywhere from 5 to 20 years older than I am.  Nearly every day there are stories about their lives growing up on farms in this area.  It seems impossible that they and their families survived conditions I’ve only read about.  None of them had the advantages my parents were able to provide for me and my siblings by moving to the city.   They don’t feel like they missed anything, though.  There’s no anger or regret.  If anything, it’s a quiet pride.  Yes, I’m going to start recording them.  The only challenge is to keep everyone from talking at once. It’s a true privilege to know them.”

I often think about the legacy I am leaving to my children and how they will remember me and talk about me to others. Part of what I’d like to leave them with are stories about their ancestors, family members and close friends. It is important to me that my children and the generations to come will feel connected with their heritage and know the background from which they’ve come. Thanks to StoryCorps, this will be the year for me to start capturing these stories!

StoryCorps has lots of tools and information to help anyone plan for their keepsake conversation. I found their Great Questions list particularly helpful to design my interview guides. Here are a few of my favorite questions, meant to be asked to a parent or grandparent (other relatives may be relevant also):

• What was your childhood like?
• Who were your favorite relatives?
• Do you remember any of the stories they used to tell you?
• How did you meet mom/dad?
• What was my mom/dad like growing up?
• What are your dreams for me?
• Is there anything that you’ve always wanted to tell me but haven’t?
• What lessons has your work life taught you?
• If you could do anything now, what would you do? Why?

And, if you happen to be in one of the major cities hosting National Day of Listening events, there will be Mobile Storybooths where you can make a reservation and go with your loved one to record their stories.  The full details can be found on here.

Let me know if you participate in any way. I’d truly love to hear about your experience. I’ll share mine in a future blog. Peace to you and yours as you celebrate this Thanksgiving. I am grateful for my many blessings, of which I include you, my reader, colleague, client, friend.

Better Because of you; a positive movement to share the many things, ways, and people that are making our lives a little better.

Need some inspiration? I recently stumbled upon a cool new “movement” called Better Because. Founded by Ginny Hutchinson and Cathy Haffner, Better Because is about making a positive difference and bettering the lives of people throughout the world. One way they do this is through educational grants. Another way is by providing weekly inspiration and stories via their “Better Because e-Message”. Check it all out at their website: http://www.betterbecause.com/

I love receiving their weekly messages among my “daily grind” emails (except the ones from you, of course!). I can always use a reminder that joy and happiness are found wherever I choose to look for them; in the little things and the everyday moments. Better Because’s ideas are right in alignment with the philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry (Ai), which is the paradigm behind much of my coaching and organizational development consulting. Ai focuses on possibilities, on what’s working or what’s good about a situation, and on what those involved want to create together to move them towards their desired future.

I wrote about Ai in two previous blog posts, which you can read here:

Appreciative Inquiry, part 1

Appreciative Inquiry, part 2

So what and who make your life better? Tell them today. And tell me too; you can post a comment here on my blog.

This resonated for me the first time I read it years ago and still does today. Enjoy an oldie-but-goodie from Robert Fulghum:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.

Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Sherpa in Nepal

In 1997, I named my new company, Sherpa Higher Performance. It came about as the result of a really fun, multi-day brainstorming session with a few trusted colleagues, who graciously gave me their time. Our brainstorming process took us through discussions about our values, what impact I wanted to make on the world (or at least my little corner of it), and a listing of about 100 adjectives describing the people I anticipated would become my clients. We threw all those words, concepts, beliefs, and meanings into the air and somehow, “Sherpa” landed right in front of us. When it happened, it was clear as day.  And I have referred to myself as a sherpa, personally and professionally, for over a decade now.

What is a Sherpa? The Sherpa, according to Wikipedia, are an ethnic group from the most mountainous region of Nepal, high in the Himalaya. In Tibetan shar means East; pa is a suffix meaning ‘people’: hence the word sharpa or Sherpa. Sherpas are world renowned for their hardiness, guidance, and expertise on mountaineering expeditions up the high peaks of the Himalaya Mountains. When capitalized, Sherpa means the ethnic group. When written uncapitalized, sherpa generally means “guide.”

The metaphor of myself as sherpa has become my “true north,” the standard I use to make decisions regarding direction, purpose, new services, new clients, etc. The metaphor continues for me as I share some personal beliefs and values with the Sherpa people: humility, perseverance, importance of belonging to and contributing to one’s community, to name a few.

As a sherpa, I serve my clients by guiding them to a higher level and helping them reach heights they would otherwise not have reached on their own.

Who is a sherpa (or possibly, Sherpa) in your life? How does this person come alongside of you and encourage you to reach higher, to keep going?