by Dr. Heléna Kate | Dec 16, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
If you\’re like most people, you\’ve been in this situation: you\’ve done something and only seconds later asked yourself, “Why the heck did I do that? I know better.” You\’re then launched into the position of needing to figure out what you can do to rectify the situation.
There are many different ways we can assess what motivates our actions. For example, we can look at our behavior through a developmental lens or through a situational one.
This week, I\’m going to look at how our behavior is rooted in our biology. And I\’m going to take a specific look at three unique behaviors: shutting down, procrastinating, and tuning out.
Shutting Down
Do you have a hard time staying present when people yell at you? Or do you freeze when you hear certain noises?
In these moments, your Autonomic Nervous System (AWS) – the part of you that is responsible for the automatic process of your body – is taking over your show and acting on your behalf. A response like this is often the result of extreme or preverbal trauma.
We commonly refer to this experience as “shutting down.” People \”shut down\” in this way because they\’re over-loaded with stress, or they\’ve gotten in an argument or they simply feel powerless.
What you can do about it: The first thing to know about \”shutting down\” is that you really can\’t verbally or rationally explain why this behavior shows up. When this behavior presents itself in your life, you might not even have access to the traumatic memories that instilled this reflex. The easiest way to look at \”shutting down\” is to see it as a response initiated by the nervous system and not a response to a memory.
Procrastinating
Can you find anything and everything to do besides what you most need to do? Do you wait until the last minute to begin important tasks?
Evidence shows that procrastination is partly due to a maladaptation in your prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex is responsible for your executive functioning and governs tasks such as planning.
While procrastination has a behavioral component to it – which is the habitual reinforcement of last-minute behavior – telling a procrastinator to just DO what needs to be done is like telling a depressed person just to cheer up. This approach never truly works because procrastination – like depression – has as much to do with one\’s physiology as it does with their psychology.
What you can do about it: One of the easiest things you can do to help counter-act your tendency to procrastinate is to break your task down into small, easily accomplished steps. To support your progress, you can remove all distractions from your work environment, set and keep a consistent schedule, and monitor your mood.
Tuning out
Do you zone out when your spouse is telling you something? Do you have trouble paying attention in meetings?
This is often about more than a simple avoidance of things in your life that bother or bore you. It\’s often about an adaptive process by which you tune out unchanging data. This means that if repetitive information keeps coming your way, you\’re going to stop being aware of it. This can also happen if you steadily assume that the information you\’re presented with is going to be repetitive, regardless of whether or not it actually is.
What you can do about it: Sometimes your lack of ability to see the newness around you is more about you than about the unchanging nature of your relationships. My advice here is for you to challenge yourself to approach your life – and all the people in it – with a sense of curiosity. Look for what you have not seen before.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Dec 7, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
It\’s easy to feel disempowered when reading the news, driving down the street, or simply moving through life. We read about the recent terrorist attack in Paris. We get stuck in traffic next to a driver who yells profanely at the person who cut him off. We find out that a family member became sick. And we slowly emotionally withdraw from the world around us.
Throughout our lives, we experience so many negative things that it can seem impossible that our actions could make a positive difference or have a lasting impact on this ever-changing world. We ask ourselves: how can one person change the world – how can I stop hatred, face adversity, and create social equity? When we don\’t come up with an answer, we resign ourselves to the \”fact\” of negativity. We stop ourselves from seeking solution.
The hard truth is, though, that apathy is noxious. Giving up in the face of adversity leaves us feeling like a half a person.
Yet – as many brilliant leaders have shown us – you can’t fight your way to a better world. When we use anger and angst to resolve a problem we only create a new problem or compound the old one.
We need different tools to create the change we desire. These tools are love, truth and compassion. They make up a set of holistic and healing approaches to adversity that transforms the world around us. The best part is that these tools have always been with us.
I believe that the entire world benefits when you choose to build your life with these tools. Bringing love, compassion and truth to each situation you face takes practice, though. And this is why I developed my LifeWork Virtual Program – which offers weekly practices that help you cultivate awareness and develop skills that make your life easier and more rewarding.
These practices are instrumental in creating positive change in the world around us. For this week\’s article, I\’m going to talk about three of these practices today.
Love
\”Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.\” Buddha
Love is the most powerful, world-changing tool we have. I\’m fully aware of how Pollyanna this sounds. My challenge to you, though, is: try it! Get your heart-broken, feel disrespected, lose something you really cherish and see how quickly you can move on from the negativity you feel into LOVE. It takes a high degree of awareness and sophistication to experience our negativity and move beyond it into a place of love. Anyone who has walked this path knows that this is the way of a REAL bad-ass.
The first thing we need to do is cultivate love inside ourselves. To do this we need to hunt down the barriers to love that live within us more ferociously than we hunt down barriers to love in the world outside us.
This does not mean that we turn hatred toward these parts of ourselves. It means we see them, accept them and let them go.
Truth
\”If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.\” Jesus Christ
Truthfulness is a time-honored and respected trait. To be truthful is to be honest and trustworthy. It requires a commitment to speaking and acknowledging the truth, and to acting with integrity. When we have our truth we also have our respect and love.
While philosophically there are many types of truth, the truth I\’m talking about here has a dynamic holism that is much more easily experienced than written about.
There is a paradox around truth, though, and it\’s this: truth does not make anything untrue. Whenever you negate something, there is a lie present. Truthfulness allows for multiple perspectives in a way that honors each of those perspectives.
One very common example of this is that if you make yourself wrong you\’re not living your truth – nor are you allowing others to live theirs.
Compassion
\”No man is a true believer unless he desireth for his brother that which he desireth for himself.\” Muhammad
To be compassionate is to open your heart to the suffering of others. Compassion, to me, is a healing action. When we offer compassion to ourselves or others we are, in fact, healing ourselves or others. One of the best ways to practice compassion is to tend to our own pain and suffering. Without a doubt, one thing we gain from our own hardship is an ability to give love to others while they experience hardship of their own.
Still, sometimes we might find ourselves feeling closed off or judgmental about others who are in a difficult spot. We can feel wronged and because of this feel justified in wanting understanding from the other person. When we do this, we withhold our compassion and do not give our understanding to the person we feel wronged us.
If you want to have an impact on the world, each time you feel wronged stop and take a moment to understand the other person\’s perspective.
While none of these skills are easy, they are all quite simple and in the reach of every single one of us all the time. We don\’t need to start a movement or become a politician to have an impact. We only need to focus on being a better person and sharing this with the world.
I will leave you with this quote from Rumi. \”Listen with the ears of tolerance. See through the eyes of compassion. Speak with the Language of love.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 29, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
When life\’s choices and challenges come our way, we easily get distracted and stop pursuing our goals. When we do this, we lose our mojo and feel purposeless or disenchanted with life.
I\’ve talked about how clarity around your vision, mission, and values helps you identify what you want to do and why you want to do it. And I\’ve talked about how setting goals and reframing obstacles are essential practices for creating a meaningful life. Yet, today, I\’d like to look at this another way.
While personal development tools are vital to transforming life challenges into meaning-making experiences, when you think of yourself as your \”personal brand\” you\’re able to make better decisions and make your challenges more fruitful.
Establishing a Personal Brand
There\’s a lot of talk about \”personal brand\” in business. \”Personal brand\” refers to the practice of marketing yourself, your career, and your history as a brand. It\’s often used as a method to increase your hire-ability or to grow your business. However, it\’s as important to consider our \”personal brand\” for our private lives as well. In truth – if I had it my way, there would be a lot more similarity and synergy between people’s work life and their personal life.
You\’re able to make choices, transform obstacles and create a sense of purpose when you have a clear sense of who you are and what you can and can’t do. This is not to pidgeon-hole you into a fixed personality or role. Rather, when you know who you are and what you can do, you\’re able to use that information to guide you towards the achievement of your goals.
I would like you to ask yourself the following questions. These are taken from Tom Collinger’s presentation on branding for leaders. I highly suggest spending some time with each one and write down your answers. Consider these questions from as many angles as you can think of: personal, emotional, relational, work, and more.
What are you good at?
What are you not good at?
What do you like?
What do you not like?
These very simple questions begin to show you dimensions of who you are. They also give you crucial input on what you contribute to the world around you and what you need to feel fulfilled. So, for example, if ¾ of your life is taken up by things that you don\’t like – even if you\’re good at doing them – you will not be very happy.
Things that you\’re not good at can be things you avoid doing or things you know you need to get help with. They can also be things that you need to practice and get better at.
The most important thing these questions point to is your skill-set. When you have a strong sense about what you\’re able to do, you can begin to build out your value. If you\’ve ever suffered from not liking yourself, critical thinking, or worrying about the future, then chances are you\’d benefit from knowing your value.
When we know our value we\’re able to adeptly work with whatever life throws our way. We feel more confident and more prepared. We make decisions that work for us and therefore feel better about our lives. We know where we “fit” in the scheme of things and can enjoy a sense of significance.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 24, 2015 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
A quick scan of books on the ins-and-outs of \”relationships\” reveals four primary problem areas: money, time, communication and sex. While your romantic relationships may not suffer at all of these points, they most certainly will be challenged by one of them.
Even great relationships have their share of challenges. Often times these challenges are not an indicator of something unresolvable. Rather, they\’re a sign that we need to do something to change our perspective on the challenge.
I\’m going to cover 4 common relationship challenges and offer ways to reframe them. When we take the time to shift our perspective on what has seemed so difficult in our relationships, we can grow with our significant other and create a stronger partnership.
Challenge #1: Disagreements That Linger
Some of the things we fight about in our relationships don’t ever get resolved. Sometimes this is due to a lack of compatibility, which ultimately leads to the end of the relationship. Sometimes this is the result of poor communication. Yet, other times it\’s the outcome of our perspective on the disagreement.
Imagine if you always agreed with your partner. This would yield the most boring relationship ever. While some people are harmoniously syncopated at all times, for the rest of us, a little conflict goes a long way in keeping the spark in our relationships.
Without friction there\’s no progress. Disagreements help us grow. They also help us understand our partner more completely. Often, it\’s only when we disagree that we ask questions about our partner\’s perspective and pay close attention to what they say.
What if you saw your disagreements with your partner as an opportunity to get closer to them? Or at the very least, saw them as an occasion for you to get closer to your own truth? What if it was more important that you learn something about yourself through your disagreements and less important that you and your partner come to resolution?
Challenge #2: Different Sex Drives
People in relationship shy away from admitting that their sex drives or sexual preferences differ from their partners. They just don’t enjoy the same things or share the same level of desire. This undisclosed discrepancy leads people to have sex when they\’re not really into it or to meet their needs through an affair. It can also lead to resentment that acerbates the problem.
All too often couples look to their partner to fulfill their sexual needs. But, what if each person considered how they could express themselves as sexually whole person. In truth, a discrepancy in sexual interest is an opportunity to explore sexuality rather than a block to it.
So, ask yourself: How does my partner express his or her sexuality? Who am I as a sexual person outside of my partnership? And, do I feel like I\’m able to feel my sexuality as essential to my life? Questions like these help us reframe the circumstance of different sex drives.
Challenge #3: Getting the Chores Done
In a couple, one person is cleaner than the other. One person thinks that organized cupboards make a tidy home, while the other feels it\’s clean counters. One person feels they “always” have to do a particular chore. This same person tends to think that no one appreciates their effort to tend to their shared space.
Chances are if you\’ve cohabited with your partner, that you\’ve probably been rubbed the wrong way by some aspect of how your sweetheart lives in your shared space. Constructive feedback in these situations can be hard to give. No adult wants to hear that the way they\’ve been doing something for years is somehow wrong.
Too often we focus our attention on the negative. We see what the other person is not doing. Or we notice how they “did it again.\” But, what if we looked at our partner\’s frustrating habit as reminder of all the other things they do right? What if we chose to remember all that our partner does to contribute to your standard of living?
You could also re-frame it this way: would you rather have your partner in your life or be free from the problem of how they do – or do not do – a specific chore? The truth is that the dirty laundry on the floor, the dishes scattered around the house, or the foot prints on the floor are a sign that you have a special someone in your life.
Challenge #4: Lack of Time Together
Busy lives and work schedules take us away from the people we love. And while a little time away is supportive of a healthy relationship, a lot of time away can create problems.
In these instances, it\’s important to check in with yourself and ask yourself if this lack of time together is an outright avoidance of intimacy or indication of some other problem. If this is not the case, and instead life has conspired to give you a bit of distance from your mate, then take the opportunity to make the distance work for your relationship. Plan special things to do together when your busy schedules allow you two to connect.
Whether you\’re separated due to work or other reasons, it\’s wonderful to have some time to focus on your own needs and not your partner\’s needs. The time apart from your mate could be time that you dedicate to friends, family or studying something that interests you. Regardless of how you use it, take the time and give it to yourself!
Every challenge we face in a relationship is a portal of opportunity. Sometimes it just takes looking at it from another perspective to see how we can make it work for us rather than against us.
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 13, 2015 | Uncategorized
At the heart of it, motivation is the WHY that defines your desire to do something. And this WHY is crucial to your ability to follow through on the goals you\’ve set for yourself. When you connect your task at hand with the deeper reason that motivates your actions, you give yourself the energy necessary to persist, especially when things get tough.
Once we know what we want and why we want it, a strange thing tends to occur. Our increased awareness about our goals shines a light on our internal blocks. What this tells us is that we\’re not able to move forward by simple understanding of our motivation. Rather, we need to dig deep and resolve what holds us back.
This week\’s blog post explores the emotional, informational and logistical reasons for which we sometimes lose our motivation and offers tips on how to find it again.
How to Find + Keep Your Motivation
More often than not, our connection to our motivation brings us into direct relationship with our resistances and self-imposed obstacles. We cannot start or stay motivated until we understand what gets in our way and what we can do to attend to it.
In most cases, the culprit is one of the following:
Emotional Blocks:
We often experience negative and limited thinking hand-in-hand with emotional disturbance.For example, we might think \”I don’t have what it takes to do this.\” This brand of thinking conjures up feelings of hopelessness and despair.
Emotional blocks hold us back from taking action. They siphon off our momentum, drain our motivation, and leave us to stew in doubt
Informational Blocks:
Sometimes we don’t know what we need to move forward. This can dovetail emotional blocks as well. For example, when we don’t know what we need to take the next right step, we tend to experience a fear-based emotional response that hypnotizes us into thinking we\’re doomed to make a mistake. We often freeze around this fear in a state of analysis-paralysis.
Logistical Blocks:
Sometimes we don’t know how to take our next step. For example, we deliberate with ourselves about whether we should start a therapeutic practice by calling a therapist or by reading a book. Or, if we\’re starting a business, we wonder \”do I start by building a website\” or \”get business cards?\” These simple examples illuminate the everyday decisions we face that can challenge and overwhelm us.
Many times, we think that we\’re experiencing a logistical challenge, when in fact we\’re up against an emotional block. Either way, what\’s required here is that you both face logistical challenges and emotional blocks head-on.
Whatever our blocks are, we need to find ways to move past them so that we can stay on track with our goals.
Here are some tips that will help you overcome the most common blocks that people face as they work to keep stride with their dreams, ambitions and personal hopes.
Emotional Blocks:
Sadly, there is absolutely no way to provide information that will help you easily trouble-shoot emotional blockages. This is because emotional blocks are so unique to our personal history that no panacea is readily available. However, in this instance, knowledge is power. If you\’re aware that an emotional block is keeping you from realizing your success, you\’re on track to resolve it.
The next step requires that you to find techniques that help you clear your emotional blocks. I\’ve found that certain techniques work best for certain situations and certain levels of development. For example, talk-therapy might be instrumental at one point in your healing process, whereas energy-work might be the best mode of treatment at another point. If you\’re experiencing emotional blocks, start a personal development practice with a professional or start some research into personal development techniques.
Once you\’ve developed your emotional toolbox, you\’ll be better able to assess your blocks and remedy them with increased efficiency.
Informational Blocks:
We can either take the fast route or the slow route towards information. The fast route requires that we find someone to teach us what we need to know. The slow route allows us to collect the necessary information on our own and at our pace. The primary thing required to resolve an informational block is a complete sense of what you need to solve the problem at hand.
Logistical Blocks:
If you\’re challenged by how to move through a project, it\’s best to either follow an established pattern or to get outside help. There are step-by-step guides for just about everything you can think of. And there are many experts available to walk you through the process.
When it comes right down to it, it\’s easier to maintain our motivation when we have the right support. As obvious as this might be, many people try to face new and challenging situations on their own. This approach can quickly drain your motivation, especially with projects you\’ve struggled to succeed at before.
Support can come in many forms. You can find a friend to partner with. You can join a group. You can hire a professional. Or you can simply let some of your friends or family know of your intentions and ask them to help you stay on target. As long as you\’re getting the right support, it doesn\’t really matter who\’s providing it.
I\’ll leave you with a final tip on keeping up your motivation.
And it\’s this: give yourself rewards! The most important part of a reward system (or a punishment system) is that it\’s adhered to. So, when you hit a milestone, make sure to properly celebrate yourself. You earned it.
As much I\’d like for everyone to sign up for a reward system, the reality is that some people are best motivated by a system of punishment. When something big enough is on the line, these people find the energy and umph necessary to move forward. If this describes you, then I recommend getting creative with your punishment system.
For example, I\’ve had several clients who would make a sizable donation to charity if they did not keep their projects moving forward as planned.
It\’s essential that we return to the WHY that compels our motivation as much as possible. When we do this often, our WHY comes to define our intrinsic sense of our motivation and helps us build the skills necessary to trouble-shoot when the going gets tough.
