by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 21, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Someone recently sent me an email asking about what he needs to sacrifice to succeed.
\”Success,\” he wrote, \”is said to come with great sacrifice. I\’m personally trying to figure out what I can sacrifice, while identifying and pursuing specific goals. Are there identifiable sacrifices that you attribute to your success? Or, more broadly, is there a generic schema for personal sacrifice that is consistent among leaders?\”
Though it is true that life is always balanced and if you attain one thing it often comes at the sacrifice of another, the trick is not to focus on the thing you have to give up, but rather the thing you gain.
In my case, money was a sacrifice for a while – but I was happy to give up the money to be my own boss. These days it\’s social life – I\’m not in New York much because I\’m on the road a lot. Though some may perceive that I am sacrificing a lot by being away, the balance is, I get to meet so many amazing people that I otherwise would never have met. Not to mention, the work I do is so rewarding.
In both cases, I focused on where I was going without concern to what I would have to give up.
Success comes not by trying to find something you\’re willing to sacrifice, but by being inspired by the thing you\’re pursuing. When you are in pursuit, sacrifice doesn\’t feel like sacrifice…it feels like balance.
This is different from working long hours and sacrificing seeing your family or friends, for example, in hope of what will come as a result of the sacrifice. In this case, the hard work is in pursuit of a goal not yet realized. The work itself is not rewarding and the stress is high, but the rationalization is that it is all worth it for the promise (real or false) of what it will bring. What if the promise is never realized? Was it all worth it, then? This really is sacrifice. When you give up something for something that does not bring immediate joy.
There is no sacrifice when the pursuit, the journey, is as rewarding if not more rewarding than the end result. And when you can wake up in the morning and feel successful whether some end goal is realized or not…THAT is true success.
reblogged from Simon Sinek\’s inspiring website www.startwithwhy.com (more…)
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 19, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Everything in life starts and ends with relationships. Imagine trying to build wealth without others. Imagine trying to be happy without others. Imagine trying to learn without others.
Our very existence starting from the womb has relied on our relationships to others. But there are no rule books for relationship building. We grow up learning to read and write hoping our connection skills learned on the playground are good enough to get by.
If your wealth, education, love, and even happiness is contingent on others, imagine what would happen if you upgraded the way built and engaged your relationships? Your life would change right in front of your eyes.
I believe there are 7 principles for building meaningful relationships. I’ve noticed these principles show up no matter what. I believe they are universal rules. They apply no matter what culture you’re in, where in the world you may be, or what time in history it is. They’re fundamental for life, love, and business.
The 7 principles are:
- 1. Our external relationships are a reflection of our internal relationship
- 2. Focus your mindset on giving unconditionally
- 3. Serve others how they want to be served
- 4. A relationship must be give and receive (sometimes you say no)
- 5. Get on peoples maps…empathize
- 6. Always make others feel safe
- 7. Honor every behavior because it has an intended positive outcome, no exceptions
#1: Our external relationships are a reflection of our internal relationship
Our experience of life on the outside is a reflection of the internal relationship we have with ourself.
If you operate from scarcity, believe people are out to screw you, and you’re not worthy of receiving, how will your relationships look?
But if you’re abundant, believe people want to help you, and you’re deserving, what will your relationships look like? Meaningful relationships are a reflection of the way we build relationships with ourselves.
This is also why I believe in bringing interpersonal work into business strategy. While the givegive methodology is a business methodology for growing sales through relationships with our clients and partners, the success of these relationships are based on our ability to develop a relationship with ourselves. The interpersonal work is as important, if not much more important than the strategy.
#2: Focus your mindset on giving unconditionally
Have you ever met someone that you felt an instant connection to? And have you ever met someone you disliked right away? What lets you know to like someone and what lets you know to dislike someone?
Every relationship happens in three layers. The first layer is what can be observed on the outside. The second is what is happening in the conscious minds of both people. And third is what is happening in the subconscious minds of both people. It’s in this mind where the subconscious is scanning 2 millions items of information every second for anything that lets them know its unsafe.
When we focus on giving unconditionally, we unconsciously align our body movements, posture, tone of voice, and the words we use with the best interests of the other person.
#3: Serve others how they want to be served
This is an upgrade from the golden rule- “do unto others as you want done unto you”. Instead, it should read, “do unto others as they want done unto them.” While serving others the way we want to be served in theory makes sense, it assumes that others experience what we want in the same way we do. This is in fact not true.
In order to build the life meaningful relationships, you have to commit to identifying what others want, and serve them how they want to be served.
#4: A relationship must be give and receive
Sometimes its really easy to focus on giving unconditionally and serving others the way they want to be served. But it can be really hard to receive.
A relationship is a two way street. With only one person giving and not receiving, it’s not a relationship. When we deny the ability for the other person to give, we deny them principle 2 and 3. Therefore, we have an obligation to receive just as much as we have an obligation to give.
#5: Get on peoples maps (empathize)
It’s easy to assume we understand what others mean when the use the same words that we do. But what their words mean might be completely different that what those same words mean to you.
For example, if someone said, “I’m going to make $150,000 this year.” You might interpret that as being a lot of money, but they may be worrying about how they’re going to pay their bills.
Each person has their own map for how they experience the world and until you can empathize with others from their viewpoint, you are not truly building a relationship (the root word “relate” being a key point).
We don’t know until we focus on learning how the other person experiences the world. This is their map. When you can learn how the other person sees the world through their beliefs about it, you can start to connect in a whole new way.
Everything in life starts and ends with relationships.
#6: Always make others feel safe
So many interactions are unsafe for others. Without safety, the other person can never truly open up and be vulnerable. Imagine trying to hang out with someone that’s afraid they’re in danger. Will they be focused on connecting? Will they present? Will they talk about things that are meaningful? Of course not, they’ll be focused on not dying.
As silly as this might sound, when we feel unsafe, we remain it fight or flight until it the perceived danger is gone. Just like keeping the engine of the car running permanently incase you need to drive away in a hot second. It’s our jobs to focus on ensuring others feel safe, so we can bring them into a place where they will open up and share the most meaningful parts of them. This is where real bonds are formed.
#7: Honor all behavior because it always has an intended positive outcome, no exceptions
This is perhaps the hardest principle to accept but is also the most important. Every single behavior, from the most joyful to the most horrendous, has an intended positive outcome.
There are two main drivers of behavior- pain and pleasure. We humans always make the best available choice at any given time between these two choices. Often, the choices are both painful so we will always take the less painful choice.
For example, why did so many men run out into walls of machine gun fire during D-day in WWII? Because while that was an extremely painful option, not running out and letting down their country or potentially being shot by their commander in the boat was far more painful. While this principle doesn’t excuse hurtful behavior, it allows for you to empathize with others. If they had a better more pleasurable option, they would be making it. But when people do things that are not seen favorably, just remember it’s the best available option to them. If they had a better one, they would have taken it.
This is by far the hardest principle to accept but it’s one that is also the most empowering one of them all. If you can own this and allow it to guide your interactions, you can free yourself from outcomes due to the behavior of others.
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Keep these principles top of mind as you interact with others. Your success relies on relationships with your clients, partners, associates, and community. The more you can build and strengthen these relationships, the more abundance you will create both in dollars to your business but also in your experience of life.
reblogged from thegivegive.com
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 17, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Sounds pretty harsh, right? It would be nice to believe that everyone out there is interested in us like an ideal parent but they really just want to know –in this information laden world—whether they should pay attention.
However, lets turn the tables around and think about how we are to others. Are we only interested in others for what they can give us? Do we show them care and attention just because they are human or do we think of them as tools to fulfill our needs?
I am not just taking about strangers, I am talking about friends and family. If you are like most people you think more about how they can fulfill your needs or give up on your own needs to fulfill theirs. Neither of these is a good option.
Believe it or not teaching this is a foundational element of therapy. Learning to be in real relationship rather than an egocentric one is paramount to our fulfillment. Why? Because we are destined to be disappointed if we really think that the people in our lives are there to meet our needs.
Now you might be saying: This is not me. I don’t do that. But, I bet you do. All of us do sometimes. So what does this behavior look like? Here are some examples:
- Do you get angry if people do not share your opinions?
- Do you expect people to understand you without you needing to explain?
- Are you unaware of your own needs? Or, tell yourself you can’t meet them because you need to meet someone else’s?
- Do you expect those close to you to share your feelings on events in your life?
- Do you make plans without considering the other persons needs or only considering the other persons needs?
You can probably see where I am headed. The problem with this way of being is that because our expectations are unreasonable, we end up unhappy. Always being focused on getting our needs met from outside and not figuring out how to be more stable on the inside results in a loss of fulfillment as well as broken relationships.
What can you do about it? This one is not as easily solved as some problems. You really need to commit to doing some deep inner work. The kind of work I do in my LifeWork Retreats where you have the opportunity to dig deep and get guidance on how you can grow.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 14, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Challenging ourselves is one of the most important things we can do to increase our quality of life. By doing so, we not only improve as individuals but also enhance the lives of those around us and our communities, as well. You can challenge yourself to:
#1 Grow as an Individual
It all starts with you. The below challenges will all help you grow as a person but there\’s even more than that. Engage in self-searching, learn who you are by writing, work on being more genuine, kind, honest, considerate, spontaneous, spiritual, etc. Much of growing as an individual will be related to the Behavior Needs categories.
#2 Attain Awareness, Knowledge and Education
Not expanding your mind is a waste of life. A complacent, inactive mind is a sad thing. Make your mantra \”I must seek awareness\” and your universe will grow and grow. The more we know the more we realize how little we actually understand. It\’s inherently challenging and exciting! With the Internet, the all-time greatest library of knowledge is at your fingertips. Be curious and seek the truth about whatever interests you.
#3 Challenge Yourself to Become Healthier Physically and Mentally
Without health we have nothing. We can challenge ourselves to lose weight, eat better, exercise, get health care and educate ourselves on how to do so. A healthy body yields a healthy spirit.
#4 Build Wealth
Money, money, money. We all want more but without challenging ourselves we are likely to not earn it. Money can\’t buy happiness but it can help us rest easier and enjoy life more! Set goals and challenge yourself to make more, save more and have more money, money, money.
#5 Become self sufficient
With the world economy struggling, more and more people depend on others to get by. Let\’s face it, it sucks to not be in control of your life. Challenge yourself to take the needed steps to put yourself in a position in which you can be the master of your own domain.
#6 Advance in Your Career
Are you satisfied with your career position? If you answered yes, then good for you! Unfortunately, most of us are not completely happy with our career and would like to make advancements within it. A conscious, well thought out set of goals can challenge us and help us improve our station in life.
#7 Become a Better Friend or Partner
Conventional wisdom says friends, family and health are the most important things in life (I would add \’awareness\’). Having good, real friends is mandatory for being happy, but are we being the best friend we can be? Do we listen enough? Do we reach out to our friends to show them we care? Being a good friend is real work and requires conscious, consistent effort. Challenging ourselves to become a better friend will unquestionably make your life (and your friends lives) more fulfilling.
#8 Seek Inspiration and Be More Creative
All great artists eventually learn one golden rule: you must SEEK inspiration. If Vincent van Gogh waited around for inspiration to strike, we wouldn\’t have his incredible body of work to appreciate and he would have been even more unfulfilled. No matter what you do in life, you\’re in need of being creative and seeking inspiration is a never ending quest that requires real diligence. Challenging yourself to find ways to become inspired is a must.
#9 Gain New Experiences and Have More Fun
The alarm clock goes off, we get up and go through our daily routines, then return home to finish off our day. Routines are effective but can bog us down into a mundane lifestyle. BORING! The truth is, it\’s easy to do the same old thing ~ it can even make us feel safe (a good thing). Why not challenge ourselves to try new things? By dong so we\’ll meet new people, learn new things, have more fun and grow as an individual. Heck, we may even be rewarded with new opportunities that may lead to a more fruitful career.
#10 Achieve Happiness and Peace
Happiness and peace are usually the end results of successful challenges, but they can be challenges all on their own. Why not challenge yourself to be more happy and find more peace? This will help you better understand exactly what it is you need to attain these two prized life goals.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 12, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Many of us spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy — not to mention money — taking care of our bodies, and trying to keep ourselves looking and feeling our best. But when it comes to the mind, less attention (literally) is paid. Taking care of the mind can come as an afterthought, and often we think of the mind as something outside of our own control.
\”Our life is the creation of our mind,\” according to Buddhist scripture. Buddhist philosophy developed an entire science of training the unruly mind to help anyone overcome its constant fluctuations to achieve stillness, and eventually, enlightenment.
But even if it\’s not enlightenment you\’re after, developing a good relationship with your mind is critical to building a life that is successful on your own terms. Here are eight habits of mind to start cultivating right now for less stress, more creativity, less distraction and more enjoyment in life.
Make time for stillness.
Meditation has been around for thousands of years, and it\’s perhaps the single most powerful tool out there for gaining mastery over your mind. The mental health benefits of meditation are virtually endless, from addiction recovery to reduced anxiety and depression to enhanced creativity and improved cognitive function. Meditation can actually increase neuroplasticity, making it possible to literally rewire the brain.
\”Meditation research, particularly in the last 10 years or so, has shown to be very promising because it points to an ability of the brain to change and optimize in a way we didn\’t know previously was possible,\” neuroscience researcher Zoran Josipovic, who has conducted brain-imaging studies on Buddhist monks, told the BBC in 2011.
Pursue meaning over pleasure.
Not all happiness is created equal, and in your own pursuit of joy and bliss, keep in mind that the type of happiness you\’re after can make all the difference. A recent UCLA study found that eudaimonic happiness — that which was linked to having a larger purpose or sense of meaning in life — was linked with healthy gene activity, whereas hedonic, or pleasure-seeking, happiness was not. Those who were happy because they had a sense of purpose in life had lower inflammatory gene expression and higher antiviral and antibody gene expression than others.
\”Eudaimonic happiness is something you build up over a lifetime,\” Shimon Edelman, cognitive psychologist and author of \”The Happiness Of Pursuit,\” told The Huffington Post. \”In a sense, it\’s a great consolation for older people — it\’s nice to know that on that component, people can get more and more happy as they age if they led good lives.\”
Read, read, read.
Consider reading your mind\’s daily greens. Simply reading a book can lower stress levels, help you sleep better, keep your brain sharp, and also stave off Alzheimer\’s.
But before you turn to your Kindle, take note: Reading on screens may drain more mental resources and make it harder to remember what we\’ve read after we\’re done, as compared to reading on paper, according to Scientific American.
\”Whether they realize it or not, people often approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper,\” according to the article.
Let it be.
Sweating the small stuff is one of the most toxic things you can do to your mind — not only can it take over your thoughts, but dwelling on what\’s beyond your control has been shown to be a contributing factor in the development of depression.
You know that unfinished project that\’s been nagging at you? Try just letting it go. According to Arianna Huffington, a great way to complete a project is by dropping it. Huffington recently explained at a Women in Business event in Toronto: \”One of my favorite sayings is \’100 per cent is a breeze, 99 per cent is a bitch\’… That doesn’t mean ignoring my other needs, but it means when I’m in it, I’m really in it. And that means often saying no to good things, to things that you might want to do, but get in the way of sleep, or get in the way of being with your children, or whatever it is that’s also very important to you. Just have a conversation with yourself and say these projects are done, over, and then you have energy for the things you’re really going to commit yourself to.\”
Flex your memory muscle.
Thanks to technology, we\’re taking in more information than ever before, but we\’re also losing our ability to retain that information. A recent poll found that millennials are even more forgetful than seniors, due, at least in part, to their reliance on technology.
Keeping your memory sharp requires some time and attention — but your brain will thank you for it. Certain cognitive tricks and exercises can significantly boost your powers of memory, and make sure that you hold on to those things you never want to forget.
Unplug and recharge.
Constant digital distractions can take a toll on the mind — over-reliance on technology has been linked with increased stress levels, reduced focus and productivity, stunted creativity and poor sleep quality. And Internet addiction is increasingly being recognized as a very real psychological problem.
Many of us never take a break from our devices, even when we\’re supposed to be relaxing (nearly 60 percent of Americans stay plugged in to work while they\’re on vacation). But allotting yourself some tech-free time could make you more focused, less stressed, and happier. “[A digital detox] is almost like a reboot for your brain and your soul,” Cisco executive Padmasree Warrior told the New York Times. “It makes me so much calmer when I’m responding to e-mails later.”
Let your mind wander.
In addition to boosting creativity (and being a generally enjoyable activity), daydreaming can actually make you smarter. According to NYU psychologist Scott Kaufman\’s theory of personal intelligence, mind-wandering is an adaptive trait that helps us to achieve personally meaningful goals, and it helps us to access spontaneous forms of cognition like insight, intuition and the triggering of memories and stored information.
Kaufman recently wrote in Scientific American that mind-wandering can offer significant personal rewards: These rewards include self- awareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion… From this personal perspective, it is much easier to understand why people are drawn to mind wandering and willing to invest nearly 50 percent of their waking hours engaged in it.
Linger on the positive.
Want to wire your brain for happiness? You can start by savoring those tiny moments of joy in your day, whether it\’s the smell of fresh coffee or a smile from a loved one. Lingering on these positive moments can help to overcome the brain\’s \”negativity bias,\” which causes us to store negative memories in our brains more easily (and strongly) than positive memories.
“[Lingering on the positive] improves the encoding of passing mental states into lasting neural traits,\” \”Hardwiring Happiness\” author Rick Hanson recently told the Huffington Post. \”That’s the key here: we’re trying to get the good stuff into us. And that means turning our passing positive experiences into lasting emotional memories.\”
Build daily rituals.
Habit is one of the most effective ways to make any positive change in your life. By developing habits, good behaviors that may have once required a feat of willpower to put into action become automatic — which is why they can also be so difficult to break.
\”For the things that you decide matter… the only way to ensure that things that aren’t urgent but are important happen is to build rituals,\” The Energy Project CEO Tony Schwartz told the Huffington Post. \”Build highly specific behaviors that you do at precise times over and over again until you don’t have to use energy to get yourself to do it anymore — until it becomes as automatic as brushing your teeth at night.\”
reblogged from the Huffington Post
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 10, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Caring requires the willingness to feel pain. I am not being morose or dramatic. It is a plain fact that we do not like to talk about and a big reason why we try to care less. The more we care the more we risk our comfort –that is if we call denial comfortable.
The willingness to persist in the face of the this healthy pain that will occur inevitably in the course of our caring and continually figure out how to care more is a signpost of true adulthood. And really becoming less apathetic is about becoming a healthy whole adult.
Unfortunately, most of us have not been clued in to this important truth. We learn to withdraw when we feel the pain rather than open and move forward.
Our lives get smaller.
Our fulfillment wanes.
Before we know it we are sleep walking through our life. Then what happens? Maybe nothing, just the tragedy of wasted life. Or maybe something something big shakes us awake. Like the death of someone close to us or a serious illness and all of a sudden we realize what\’s truly important. We start really caring because of the recognition that we don\’t have very much time or might not have very much time. And now, it\’s in our face that if we don\’t start leaning into life we might never have a chance to do it.
There is only one solution to this predicament. We need to stop numbly staying our comfort zone and figure out what is important to us. We need to be willing to care about what is important to us and let nothing get in the way of our caring.
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