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I saw a recent post from Nancy Marmalejo sharing how energizing and renewing her recent vacation had been. “Yes!” I said to myself, because her musings captured what I felt as a result of my summer drive to Alaska and the vacation week Beth and I took in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
On my driving trip, I really wanted two experiences: be in nature and reconnect with old friends. I fully experienced both intents. Driving along the coast of the western US is one of the world’s most scenic opportunities: Northern California offers ocean vistas with mountains full of majestic pines and giant, stately redwood trees. Just inland is one of the best wine producing areas in the world, with miles of well-tended grape vines and small, friendly towns featuring wine tastings, breweries and creative chefs combining local ingredients in fresh, innovative masterpieces.
I grew up in Peru, high in the Andes Mountains, and everywhere I looked there were mountains but no trees, because we were above the tree line. Those mountains were my playground. My friends and I spent hours exploring them. We found old buildings, parts of the old Inca road, even burial caves. When I turned 12, I got my own horse, which made exploring even more comprehensive. Getting away and setting an intent to be in the moment opens possibilities.
When I was 18 I rode a motorcycle from Tucson to Panama, even though our intent had been to drive all the way to Chile. Though unable to get on a ship through the canal, we were able to put our Volkswagen bus on a ship heading to Miami. So we flew. That trip had been one of my goals. I had been a traveler from a young age and had already been around most of Peru and parts of Bolivia. Given that my dad worked in Peru in an Andean mining town, I guess you could say travel and adventure were in my DNA.
I left Arizona on June 20 at 4:00 in the morning in an effort to avoid the extreme heat (over 110 degrees). I took my kayak with me, which worked well except for reducing my mileage and sometimes causing some noise. I was able to get from Phoenix to Los Angeles by that afternoon. There I connected with Anita Avalos, a client. She had just come from Italy, where she had been creating an experience for those who love the idea of experiencing the sensual treat of creating an Italian experience with food. Hers was a full dive into living, shopping, cooking and feasting the local way—a deep dive into that life. My road trip offered a similar “dive.” In a way we were both talking about living our dreams.
Are you living your dream? If not, are you actively working to make one of your dreams a reality?
Set an intent today, and start working on it right away!
Note: This is the first installment of a series about my road trip. Watch my Facebook page and this blog for additional posts.
My recent drive from Tucson to Alaska and back again followed by a vacation in Mexico was truly the “trip of a lifetime.” Some of the reunions along the way allowed me to recognize the extent to which friends and I have affected each other’s lives. I also had a chance to spend time with clients who have become friends. All of this led me to see what a difference you can make in people’s lives through the relationships you form.
My trip really began when I reunited with several Peruvians in New Mexico, and it culminated in Mexico, where Beth and I spent time with Steve Stryker and his daughters, Alexa and Chloe. Steve and I met during my freshman year, and his family effectively adopted me.
So, what did I learn about myself on the trip?
First of all, I recognized that I had kept an agreement with myself to travel and to reconnect. As a result of this trip, I now have the experience of having driven as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska and as far south as Santiago, Chile!
I also learned how important travel and adventuring has always been to me. It’s part of my identity. I believe I will always meet amazing people who may well have an impact on my life. I had a number of such meetings, including one with a man on a bike traveling from Los Angeles to Juneau, Alaska; when he saw my University of Arizona lacrosse jacket, he introduced himself as a U of A graduate. Later, after ziplining in Mexico, we met someone who had just graduated from the U of A school of law. What a small world!
As planned, I saw many of the people I grew up with, and I realized why the decision I made to see them was so important. I learned how much my experiences in Peru shaped my worldview and affected the rest of my life. The way I—actually, the way we—grew up was unique. In some ways our Peruvian community was like a small town because we knew most, if not all, of our neighbors. However, it was different from a typical small town because its residents were from all over the world. I was exposed to multiple worldviews and attitudes, which developed my ability to be comfortable with lots of different worldviews. That’s part of what made me the coach I am today.
I also learned that time is valuable. The way you choose to spend your time speaks to what you think is valuable at the moment. If you experience yourself squandering your time or not using it in a way that serves you, change what you’re doing. This is particularly important if your future timeline is shorter. Of course, you never really know what your future timeline is!
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Posted 7/5/17; written in early June
This is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and reflect on “what now”? I’ve been involved in helping with the health care of my father-in-law, Harry. Navigating all the systems involved has been an education. Like many painful educations, it was not freely chosen.
About six weeks ago Harry suffered a fall. He told us the next morning, and because of his age and fragility Beth thought it best to take him to the hospital. He is a vet, so he primarily uses that system, and they decided to admit him into the hospital to run tests to evaluate for injuries and to determine the cause of the fall.
Unfortunately, Harry got worse because of the hospitalization. He was kept in bed and hooked up to a fall warning device that emitted a shrill sound if he tried to get out of bed. Since the VA staff was managing a full unit, he did not get walked or exercised and lost weight as well as strength. Therefore, the discharge plan was to send him to a skilled nursing facility.
It was awful. Understaffed and overworked personnel were slow to respond, and he was put in a room with another patient who was agitated, loud and suffering from many issues, which affected Harry’s ability to rest. When Beth and I got home around midnight after his first day there, both of us knew we couldn’t keep him in that place.
In all fairness to this and similar facilities, they do the best they can with the limited resources they have. Many of these facilities cannot accomplish what they are or were designed to do. Most of their residents are in the last stages of life, and many of them no longer have family available to manage or help direct their care. They have become warehouses for the elderly, poor, and disabled. They are staffed by overworked, underpaid people who feel and experience the despair that permeates the milieu like a creeping gas attack designed to suck out joy and life from all who are in the environment.
Then there is the effect of all of this on family members and caretakers. How can you leave a loved one in such an environment? Often families have no other choice.
So how did we get here? The health debate has intruded into this event because even though we spend more money per capita on health care than any other country in the world, we are left with a system that seems to satisfy no one.
The good news is Harry is doing well now. He is in a facility that is smaller and more personalized, one where we are able to work with the staff. The bad news is that many people don’t fare as well, in part because they simply don’t have the options he does. If you’ve had to deal with a similar scenario in your family, you have my heartfelt empathy.
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Two recent events have been holding my attention and shaping my thinking. For starters, I just had an uncomfortable but important conversation with a client. This client was not happy and was willing to share their perspective of our coaching experience.
Three areas of concern emerged from our conversation. The first was a question about value, reframed this way: “I am not getting value from our work together. I don’t think you were very focused in our last [two] sessions.”
Next were questions about policies and delivery of services. I asked, “How would you know that you were getting value?” The reply was “I would have had specific actions to take.”
The final issue concerned the client’s responsibility for speaking up about what they wanted. This is often hard for clients to do, so you need to model this or encourage it from the beginning. As one of my former coaches said, “You need to be responsible to your clients, not for them.”
So how do you do this? To help the client speak up, I focused on questions such as “How can we move forward?” and “How could I give value?” What I realized was that I shared in the failure of this relationship.
Why?
It started from the beginning. I was implementing a new, improved system for responding to my clients. I am trying to automate as many functions as I can. I use Infusionsoft, so I should be able to do this, since this software program has all of those capabilities. Yes, but one still must make sure that they are using the functions well and as designed. Did I? No. Where I failed was in making sure not only that all of the information that needed to go out went out but also that it was returned.
Here’s the new plan: Make sure information goes out and comes back signed. Go over the signed information together so there is clarity about how I work. (I’d like to review how I work so we are both clear about how coaching with me works.) Answer any questions that arise, and make sure that I am clear about how I hold myself to agreements. I’m going over this with my VA to make sure all of these steps are put into place.
As for the comment about me not being “present,” guilty as charged. That’s because I was dealing with the other event that’s been on my mind lately—helping my wife with my father-in-law, Harry. He was in the middle of a medical crisis that took over a month to improve. I’m sure that those of you who are dealing with or have dealt with similar caretaking challenges can identify with this.
So what to do: If you are struggling, acknowledge it, and reschedule if necessary. Your clients deserve your attention. By the same token, if your clients are not able to focus or are not “present,” they deserve the truth from you about how they are (not) showing up.
The client and I talked about all of this, and I can’t say the outcome was ideal, but I think the ultimate decision we came up with serves us both. I feel bad because I think I could have been helpful, but once someone has gotten to the point that they no longer believe in or trust you, I think it’s rare that they will come back from that point.
Are you committed to following your heart’s desire? Are you regularly taking action to realize your dreams? If you really want to accomplish your goals, at some point you have to move from planning to action. You must act.
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I have dreamed of taking a long road trip to visit with friends from my childhood in Peru, high school, college and people I have met and become friends with as a coach. In planning the specifics of this dream, I also decided I would visit several national parks and kayak on a number of rivers and lakes. Recognizing that my old Ford Escape had too many miles on it and was facing some expensive repairs, I decided to buy a replacement SUV. After some research I settled on a Subaru Forester and found a used 2015 model.
Beth and I looked at how to make all of this possible, and as part of the process I decided to sell my Escape rather than trade it in. The selling experience itself was an exercise in faith and setting intent. Why?
Well I was intentional and focused. I did research for suggestions and tips and followed a plan. I invested in having the vehicle detailed, gathered all my old maintenance records, took pictures of my clean, detailed car and posted on Craigslist.
Within an hour I had inquiries about the car. Two stood out, so I made appointments to meet at a local restaurant. First I saw a brother and sister who liked the car because it was clean and well-maintained. The second person was a graduate student from Germany. What a nice young man. He was interested and wanted to pay to have a mechanic go over the car, exercising due diligence.
While the Escape was being inspected, I invited the student back to my house for coffee. We had a wide-ranging conversation. He brought a unique German perspective to current events in the US. When we returned to the car, we learned that the mechanic had found an age-related problem that would need to be attended to, so I agreed to reduce the asking price. I hadn’t known about the problem, but it didn’t surprise me. We went to the buyer’s bank, and he paid cash.
When he drove me home, I suggested that we stop for a snack and a beer. While we were eating, I asked why he decided to buy the car—what was his buying decision? He told me that the car looked good, literally. Most of the cars he had been looking at were in poor repair, had ripped seats, faded paint, etc. Then he said, “I got a good feeling about you, and then you asked me to your house for coffee. I knew then that I would buy your car. Even when the mechanic’s report came, I knew we could work it out.” So even though his original buying strategy was visual, getting a good feeling was kinesthetic and was ultimately what mattered.
In thinking about this experience, I realized it was consistent with a book I recently read, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini. Without conscious thought I had employed one of the strategies Cialdini describes. Inviting the prospective buyer to my house for coffee created trust.
Whom do we open our homes to? People we like and/or trust. Rather than being logical, many buying decisions are made based on “good feelings.” How often have you invested in someone or something because it felt right?
What are you doing to help potential clients trust you? How do you encourage good feelings for your business?
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As I plan my long-awaited trip, I’m looking at what I want and dream about through the prism of older age. I don’t have unlimited time; therefore I am applying criteria to my choices. Many years ago I set a goal of being on as many major rivers as I could because river travel seemed like a way to connect with early explorers and adventurers, and I have thought of myself as an adventurer for most of my life.
Dreaming is the first step toward getting what you want. You must take action, ideally inspired action, to realize your dreams, and at times you must employ faith, acting in the absence of truth or certainty.
If you live in the east or southeast and have been thinking of working with me, especially in person, this trip could be your opportunity. Part of what I have to share is a congruent message about following your dreams. One of the major outcomes of many who work with me is that they step into and live their dreams. This may be an act of faith on your part.
Over the past two years I have recommitted to acting in that way myself—acting on faith. I do this by committing to follow my heart’s desire. I don’t want to be at the end of my life regretting what I have not done. I’ve always ascribed to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s idea, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Are you committed to following your heart’s desire? Are you regularly taking action to realize your dreams? If you really want to accomplish your goals, at some point you have to move from planning to action. You must act.
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Think of someone you know who is good at understanding another person’s worldview. That means they can let go of their understanding of how the world works and really delve deeply into someone else’s deep understanding of how something works. To really do this well requires a willingness to suspend one’s own beliefs. How? By understanding how beliefs work and how we process information at different levels of understanding.
Once we are down at the belief level, a specific set of rules is activated. Beliefs are not necessarily logical, but we will act as though they are. This means that using facts or logic will not shift a person’s beliefs. Why not? Well it’s because of two other processes that keep beliefs in place, distortion and deletion.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes distortion as the act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural, or original state: the act of distorting.
Deletion is the process of leaving out information or facts that do not fit our beliefs. It can be more conscious, by actively avoiding sources of information that do not support our beliefs, or unconscious, by ignoring what does not fit. These are not necessarily conscious processes.
Does that mean that beliefs do not change? No, they can erode over time, slowly chipped away, or they can be changed by an event so powerful that it shakes one’s very core.
Another way that beliefs can change is when someone has a change of identity. Why? Well identity, who we are or think we are, is a higher-level process than beliefs—it occurs at a higher logical level. So, let’s say someone who had been an avowed atheist has an experience that causes them to become a Christian; their beliefs will undergo a cataclysmic shift. The opposite would also be true.
Beliefs also can change when you want to achieve something important. Such a major shift will often require a new set of beliefs to make it possible. Think of Roger Banister breaking the four-minute mile. He believed it was possible and trained to do what others considered impossible. Once he did it, others followed suit.
Here in America we can see how this phenomenon of beliefs is playing out in our politics. Think then about how important the ability to understand someone else’s worldview is. I chuckle because the process of creating this deep level of understanding does not make for exciting news coverage and might require that some of our interviewers develop the ability to let go of or suspend their own cherished beliefs.
Want to try this for yourself? You can shift perceptual positions using one of my favorite tools, a process called the Perceptual Positions Exercise. It describes how to create different perceptual positions. In addition to three primary perceptual positions, self, observer and we, I often add a fourth, other. Here’s how they work:
Self: used when considering a situation from your point of view; looking at it from your own eyes, values and personal history; feeling it fully.
Other: used when considering a situation as if you are the other person; looking at it through his or her eyes and adopting that person’s physiology, values and history as far as you are informed.
Observer: used when considering a situation from a neutral, objective point of view; seeing yourself and the others involved.
We: used for drawing the whole picture with the new information you now have.
This process can be adapted for many uses and is included in some way in many NLP processes.
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I’m currently reading Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger, and I’m finding it to be fascinating. Here are some of the questions and assertions I’ve encountered in the book:
What’s the structure of a tribe? What makes a tribe a tribe? The survival of the tribe is always in the field of its members’ awareness, so they’ve developed sophisticated ways of sharing work and resources. As part of the tribe, you have to be willing to contribute.
One of the biggest crimes in a tribe would be one person using more resources than anyone else to such an extent that it could put the rest of the tribe at risk. Worldwide, tribes have developed formal and informal ways of making sure that doesn’t happen. Even in Stone Age paintings, you can see tribe members who have been communally executed for putting the tribe at risk.
Consider Wall Street. How would a tribe respond to executives making so much? What about the health care system? What about political leaders? Within a tribe there’s usually an expectation that you don’t speak negatively about your leaders in order to protect the tribe.
Platoons function as individual tribes. You can’t get away with not pulling your own weight. There’s an informal pressure, or unwritten code, to keep everyone in alignment for the sake of everyone in the group.
These are just a few examples. I like the way this book has given me another way to understand the use of the word tribes and the implication of what it means to identify with being a member of a tribe. According to Junger, some of our current problems with feeling alone or isolated result from the lack of tribal affiliation.
Do you agree?
P.S. Do you want to share this post? Please do. Just be sure that it remains intact and includes the following bio.
About Terry: Terry Hickey, M.S., is a Certified NLP Professional Coach, Business Trainer and Consultant, a Certified Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the co-owner of NLP Advantage Group. Originator of the Belief Breakthrough Method™, Terry specializes in teaching coaches and entrepreneurs how to rapidly resolve limiting beliefs about wealth and success. His tips and strategies can help you launch yourself into the future you want… NOW. http://terryhickey.com/
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What are the traits of a leader?
I often work with people who think of themselves as leaders or influencers of their company or tribe. If you talk about being a good or not-so-great leader, you’re usually making a comparison to someone else. People almost always have an image of someone who represents their idea of a good leader.
If you think of yourself as a leader, here’s what I’d like you to do:
Take a moment to consider what—and who—you think about when you say that you want to be a leader. Who do you think of that represents that?
Then go a step further and ask yourself this: If I were to be a leader, who would I be modeling myself after?
In times of war, people often think of a leader as a general or military figure, but more often today we think about business or political leaders. In a recent Facebook post I shared that I was curious about how people thought of leaders based upon perceived characteristics of good leaders. Most of those who responded to my post mentioned many of the traits often linked to leadership.
There’s been a lot of research on leadership traits. Below are the commonly recognized skills you need to have or develop in order to lead and encourage those who follow you.
Good leaders are able to…
Listen to others and absorb their message.
Recognize and develop skills and abilities in others, bringing out their best.
Inspire trust in others.
Do the right thing.
Walk their talk.
Accurately assess themselves and their own capabilities.
Challenge the status quo.
Seek out and utilize feedback.
Give feedback in a direct but caring way.
Tolerate differing viewpoints.
Demonstrate behavioral flexibility.
Think systemically.
Think for the long term.
Taking it a step further, a visionary leader is one who can do all of this and articulate a vision that inspires their followers. (According to Burt Nanus in Visionary Leadership, a vision is a realistic, credible, attractive future for your organization.)
Do you possess all of these skills?
If not, are you committed to developing the ones you lack?
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I like to collect stories about belief change experiences. If you have any interesting ones, let me know or post them below so I can comment on them in subsequent articles or posts.
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P.S. Do you want to share this post? Please do. Just be sure that it remains intact and includes the following bio.
About Terry: Terry Hickey, M.S., is a Certified NLP Professional Coach, Business Trainer and Consultant, a Certified Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the co-owner of NLP Advantage Group. Originator of the Belief Breakthrough Method™, Terry specializes in teaching coaches and entrepreneurs how to rapidly resolve limiting beliefs about wealth and success. His tips and strategies can help you launch yourself into the future you want… NOW. http://terryhickey.com/
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When thinking about how your language aligns with your values, consider a health care company choosing to use non-violent language rather than language that might be construed as violent. That company might focus on achieving goals instead of achieving targets, and it might use information points instead of bullet points.
Begin thinking about what kind of language and alignment you want to present this year. Joseph Campbell wrote that if you want to change your world, change your metaphor. To that I would add this: once you have your metaphor, select your language.
The metaphor “war on drugs” made it easy to think about jailing people as prisoners of war. It seemed acceptable to use increasingly harsh tactics because, after all, you were in a war. Now we’re looking at drugs as a health problem. In a way we were captured by our metaphor without even realizing the implication of it.
As you consider beginning to consciously change your metaphor, you may want to consciously change your focus. Focus is the attention you place on something. So linguistically, if you want to be more resourceful, create a focus that allows you to see a bigger picture. If you’re planning some sort of campaign, speak to the larger purpose. Say things about who will be positively impacted by what you want to do this year. This opens up the picture to lots of possible options.
If you want to adjust your focus later, after establishing the bigger picture, you will just need to “chunk down” to a narrower focus. Who will be affected? What’s most important to them? Focusing on these answers will move things down to a narrower focus.
If I decide that one of the things I want to do this year is to be more optimistic, I can preplan optimism by choosing ahead of time what I’m going to focus on. Eliminate the negative by refusing to dwell on problems or unhealthy comparisons with others. Often when you feel bad it’s because you’ve been making a comparison with someone else instead of a focusing on how you are doing now compared to how you were doing before.
This year you want to create the right state of mind for whatever task you’re going to engage in. In the same way that an athlete cultivates the right mindset to win, you can consciously cultivate the mindset you need to support your activities this year.
My challenge to you is to set a frame for the coming year—consciously set the frame for the year you want to have. Go beyond goals to mindset and purpose.
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I like to collect stories about belief change experiences. If you have any interesting ones, let me know or post them below so I can comment on them in subsequent articles or posts.
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P.S. Do you want to share this post? Please do. Just be sure that it remains intact and includes the following bio.
About Terry: Terry Hickey, M.S., is a Certified NLP Professional Coach, Business Trainer and Consultant, a Certified Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the co-owner of NLP Advantage Group. Originator of the Belief Breakthrough Method™, Terry specializes in teaching coaches and entrepreneurs how to rapidly resolve limiting beliefs about wealth and success. His tips and strategies can help you launch yourself into the future you want… NOW. http://terryhickey.com/
“I have worked with Terry in two different contexts that address powerful tools of change and excellence: NLP Practitioner Training and Hypnosis. I learned skills that helped me to work with my coaching clients on a whole new level, increasing my ability to communicate and connect in very powerful ways. His use of language of persuasion has changed my life.”
– Larry LaPrade, Mind Fitness Advantage, www.MindFitnessAdvantage.com
Terry Hickey co-authored Jump-Start Your Success with Brian Tracey, James Malinchak and several others. The cover price is $14.95, but you can buy it here for only
$9.95.
Does that mean that beliefs do not change? No, they can erode over time, slowly chipped away, or they can be changed by an event so powerful that it shakes one’s very core.
