Key Concepts

Some key concepts if you are looking to adopt, modify or stop a habit:

• Willpower does not seem sustainable as a way of embedding a habit. It takes too much brain power.
• Conscious decisions are OK for one off activities (e.g. getting a flu shot) but repetitive actions are important to embed habits (where the activity becomes a motor skill – most easily seen in how most of us drive a car).
• Creating or removing friction is a critical way of enabling adoption of a new habit – removing foods from your pantry that don’t help when you are trying to change your diet, or adding steps that limit choices (wearing gym clothes on those Zoom calls to be ready to head to the gym). 
  • You can make bad habits harder, and newer habits easier to adopt.
  • Restructuring our environment seems really helpful – hide the temptations, e.g. easier to study in a library than in your family room when the TV is right there.
• And from the work of David DeSteno, one more thing – gratitude. His research points to the importance of gratitude in many areas of our lives, but specifically as the positive emotion that (if linked to a new habit) creates a likelihood that the behavior will stick.

Applying the concepts

There’s no doubt that Covid has allowed us to create new habits, and there are certainly some of them, we’d rather ditch. This month I started my own habit changing experiment with a dry January, trying to document the factors that are preventing it from becoming a struggle (and a willpower challenge). After almost 20 days, here are my learnings:

• I’ve framed it as a lockdown reset, to establish new habits for this year and beyond – there’s a big idea in here about establishing how I want to love post-pandemic.
• I’ve shared my plan with friends and colleagues which helps create an interested support network – this is on its own would not be enough.
• From a practical perspective, I’ve moved the beer and wine out of our main fridge to increase ‘friction’.
• I’ve created evening routines around reading, writing, listening to music, and podcast listening, which create a different flow.
• And I’m trying to feel the gratitude from having more time to read and work on interesting stuff (like this article and the one to come on the best of 2020 music).

For lots of reasons, I’m not a fan of new year’s resolutions, but I see this less as a one month challenge, rather to set a new pattern after the year of Covid when happy hour any hour seemed to feel perfectly normal. Feel free to ask me about how it’s going, and please share any new habits that you are seeking to build.

Sources

• A shorter summary of the key points on habits and willpower – https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/can-brain-science-help-us-break-bad-habits
• The Hidden Brain podcast about habits – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creatures-of-habit/id1028908750?i=1000461145219
• The Hidden brain podcast about gratitude https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?i=1000499996014

The post More on building habits – the importance of friction and gratitude appeared first on OnNUp Coaching.

• The Covid19 pandemic has created high levels of significant uncertainty and many of us will be finding it hard to thrive. 
• And, I want to share some practical advice to navigate through the disorientation of uncertain times.

Transitions

To understand what we are experiencing right now, it’s helpful to look to William Bridges – author of ‘Individual Transitions’. When change happens our brains don’t adjust immediately, we need time to process what’s happened – going through at least 3 stages:

1. We try to adjust to what’s ended – sometimes the things that end, don’t end all at the same time. As we learn more about the virus and the impact on our country, our area, and our neighborhood, more things can get lost.
2. Bridges identified the Neutral Zone as a time where something is over and the future hasn’t yet been established. This seem to describe much of what we are experiencing now.
3. And finally, we (hopefully) find a new normal that will take time to adjust to this new state. A point in the future where we will go out and socialize again – albeit with some behavior changes.

We don’t always move through these phases sequentially, we can move back and forth between them. We can be at different phases for different aspects of our lives. At one time, we have some things ending (with new restrictions), we experience the uncertainty of how all this will turn out, and at the same time, we could be adjusting to new patterns of behavior – e.g. Zoom Happy Hours.

SCARF

One way of explaining why an immediate adjustment to change is really difficult comes in David Rock’s ‘You’re Brain at Work’. Our brains are wired to see threats and to respond, and unwated change is easily viewed as a threat. Rock has identified 5 factors that guide our behavior, and we will feel a sense of threat when one or more is compromised – you can read more on SCARF here, written by the smart people at Cleverism:

• STATUS – refers to our sense of our own worth. A reduction in status tends to generate a strong threat reaction. If your work is the most important thing in your life and you are now limited as to what you can do, you will be feeling this loss of status.
• CERTAINTY – Operating in familiar and certain circumstances frees more resources in the brain. With the requirement to stay at home, we are potentially operating with greater uncertainty.
• AUTONOMY – The extent to which you feel control over your own domain. The less autonomy a person experiences, the more the situation feels threatening. Constraints about where we can go has the potential to reduce our autonomy.
• RELATEDNESS – as social beings we are wired to build trust and connection with other people. If the opportunity to build trust and collaboration are diminished, we can feel exposed.
• FAIRNESS – The brain automatically reacts with an avoid-response to unfairness and lands in a defensive stance.

Depending on your personality, some of these factors will be more important than others. Think about which threats you feel right now, and maybe which threats you have felt in the past

CUSP

Here are 4 ways to navigate the uncertainty of the Neutral Zone (CUSP) – the threats that you feel should guide your selected strategy:

• CONTROL – Take actions to regain some control
  • Create your own plan/structure for yourself, your family, your daily routines. Claim control of some other area of your life (get to the one thing you’ve been meaning to do).
• UNDERSTANDING – Gain the knowledge you need
  • Assess the impact on you – financially, emotionally, physically. Look for the plan to get through the crisis – understand about the risks for you and your family.
• SUPPORT – Connect with others and with yourself
  • Meet up with those who can help you navigate through (directly or indirectly)
  • Practice mindfulness and look at establishing a sleep pattern that supports you.
• PURPOSE – Connect with the things that fill your life with meaning
  • Use the PERMA model to catalogue the things that define your life – Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishments (read more here – again a more detailed piece from Cleverism)

Here’s one exercise to help:

• Identify one threat you feel in the current crisis – something from the SCARF list 
• Look at the CUSP strategies and identify one thing you could do to manage that threat – be as specific as you can, so that you can put it into practice.

The times are unprecedented – I hope this has been a some help both to understand what you are experiencing right now, and to identify ways for navigating uncertain times.  If you need help with this process – please reach out to me.

The post Navigating Uncertain Times appeared first on OnNUp Coaching.

You can find my playlists, including this year’s, on my YouTube channel:

And if you are still wondering how it relates to coaching, the simple answer is that music can rewire our brain, it can relax us, it can uplift us, and it can make us receptive to new ideas (there’s a longer explanation in my best of 2017 blog).

With the release of the 50^th anniversary edition of Abbey Road, I expected 2019 to be a year where reissues dominated my thinking. While there were some great reissues, there were many exciting new records (and I’ve not finished exploring!)

Few topics covered in this piece:

• Recommendations from 2019, with some detail
• Recommendations from Liverpool
• Mindfulness playlist
• Reissues worth seeking out
• And some sources for further exploration

Recommendations from 2019

Here are 16 records I think you should check out – I gave up on a Top 10 last year and I am going with that trend:

• Wilco – Ode to Joy
• iLe – Almadura
• Caroline Shaw/Attacca Quartet – Orange
• Michael Kiwanuka – Kiwanuka
• The Highwomen – The Highwomen
• Mdor Mocta – Ilana (The Creator)
• Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest
• The National – I am Easy to Find
• Sharon van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow
• Billie Eilish – When we all fall asleep, where do we go?
• Lumineers – III
• Cate Le Bon – Reward
• L’Epee – Diabolique
• Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains
• Aldous Harding – Designer
• Of Monsters and Men – Fever Dream

A little more detail on the essential stuff

• Wilco – Ode to Joy – I realized when listening to this that I’ve not really gone back to Wilco’s recent albums as much as I have ‘The Whole Love’ or ‘Wilco (the album)’ which are now 9+ years old.  This album seems to be more Wilco-like than their last few albums, and I am enjoying it competing for needle time on our record deck.
• iLe – Almadura – I read that the artist is modernizing the traditional Puerto Rico sound with the lyrics offering strong social commentary. My own take is that this record has so much great energy that it’s worth a listen even if you don’t understand the underlying messages.
• Caroline Shaw/Attacca Quartet – Orange – there are pieces of classical music that I love, and when I saw this recommended in various forums I had to check it out. See later on in choices for mindfulness…
• Michael Kiwanuka – Kiwanuka – I have no idea how successful he is, but in my world he should be selling out big stadiums. It’s soulful and it’s energizing. I have loved everything he has done.  To me this album has a more joyful sound than its predecessor, ‘Love and Hate’, although the topics seem no less serious.
• The Highwomen – The Highwomen – this all-female collaboration has produced a really good album – perhaps not as good as Brandi Carlile’s solo work, but plenty to admire. I really love the reworked eponymous title track with the re-written lyrics (updated from the 1985 Highwayman version.
• Mdor Mocta – Ilana (The Creator) – classified as ‘international’ music in some of the lists I saw. If that means someone who draws on multiple cultural influences to make a great guitar record then I agree. 
• Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest. It’s his first work in 5 years since the wonderful Dream River. The instrumentation is sparse, the voice is warm and the humor and humanity are never far away.  Check out ‘Ballad of the Hulk’ as an example. Fortunate to see him at the World Café in Philadelphia late last year.
• The National – I am Easy to Find – this album has really grown on me. I love this band very much, but this is not just another The National album, it sees them partnering with some great female vocalists to create a different sound, albeit one that becomes The National’s own through the intensity it displays.
• Sharon van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow – another artist who hadn’t released an album in 5 years. Look for the version of ‘Seventeen’ with Norah Jones on the YouTube playlist, and there’s plenty more to enjoy.
• Billie Eilish – When we all fall asleep, where do we go? – introduced to me by my dear friend Stewart early in the year. I realized she may have wider appeal when I was playing her new album and my son asked how I knew who Billie Eilish was? After Kacey Musgraves last year, apparently I am picking out Grammy winners now.
• Lumineers – III – maybe not be as immediately appealing as their first 2 albums, but songs like Gloria, Donna and Life in the City wouldn’t be out of place on either of those 2 albums. 
• Cate Le Bon – Reward – I’ve been ignoring her for a while, assuming she may have something to do with Duran Duran. Apparently, far from the truth, she’s been making great music, talked up by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and now making this album that sounds so mature. As an example, ‘Miami’ displays so many interesting influences – from German rock to the Welsh valleys.
• L’Epee – Diabolique – the cover tells me that this is a ‘super group’, although I hadn’t heard of any of the artists involved. It has a very warm sound with shades of early 90’s shoegazing bands like Slowdive.
• Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains – this was a project of David Berman, formerly of the Silver Jews. He made this music shortly before his premature death last year. ‘The Nights that won’t happen’ is a haunting song given its subject matter and the subsequent events. 
• Aldous Harding – Designer – apart from knowing she’s from New Zealand, I know little more than she has a really distinctive voice and her music has this really calming feel. ‘The Barrel’ is a great illustration of these 2 features.
• Of Monsters and Men – Fever Dream – the ‘difficult’ 3^rd album reviews weren’t terrific. For me, having seen them play this music live in 2019, the new songs sounded as strong as the music went before. Love their energy.

I didn’t get to some of previous favorites yet – e.g. Sturgill Simpson, Solange, Nick Cave, Brittany Howard (of Alabama Shakes), Tinariwen and Coldplay.  I hope to discover their music as this year moves on.

And from Liverpool (my hometown) 

New artists to recommend

• Red Rum Club released their first album Matador.  It’s one of my daughter’s favorites and I think it has such great energy. 
• The Shipbuilders – described as gypsy surf rock – whatever that is!  So far they’ve only released singles, but they are worth a listen in my mind.

Choices for mindfulness:

The list for 2019 comprises a single work:

Attacca Quartet/Caroline Shaw – Orange

Amazing Reissues

Some wonderful music was reissued in 2019:

• Abbey Road turned 50 last year.  For all the outtakes on the previous Beatles reissues, these are my favorites – especially the ‘The Long One’. Nerdily, I played my copy of the 2012 reissue and then played this version and the difference was really noticeable – the sound was warmer and fuller, which is an amazing thing to say about one of the best albums ever recorded.
• Bob Dylan – Rolling Thunder Revue.  More reissues with 70s Dylan.  This is a really vibrant record – suggests that the live shows would have been amazing to see. One reviewer described the version of ‘Isis’ sounding like the Clash 2 years before they emerged.
• Ronnie Lane – Just for a Moment – if you don’t know the work of the former member of the Small Faces and the Faces, I think it’s worth checking out. He was critically acclaimed in his lifetime, but not that commercially successful. His music has a warmth and spirit that I am drawn to. Check out Barcelona.
• Marvin Gaye – You’re the Man – new Marvin Gaye music after all this time – of course we want to hear it.  It’s hard to understand how the title track didn’t get released in his lifetime – it’s a logical companion to What’s Going On and a thing of beauty.
• Gene Clark – No Other – another artist not necessarily appreciated in his lifetime. Former Byrds band member – ahead of his time in being outstanding alt-country before that was a serious thing. Although one review I read said it was a lost classic of philosophical soft rock – not sure I like that, but does help you get a sense of how hard this is to categorize..

If you need more

One of my sources is NPR’s All Songs Considered – if you have an hour, take a listen to their listeners’ picks end of year show or to the NPR best of 2019 show

More lists to explore:

• UK’s Mojo magazine Top 75
• Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 50
• NPR Top 25

The post 2019 – music as a source of happiness, healing and creativity appeared first on OnNUp Coaching.

If music gives you goosebumps, your brain might be special https://t.co/ET7MzIewcV. This is for my music circle🎼

— paul gaskell (@pgaskell3) January 10, 2018

2017 – my best music list

And for those of you with special brains….  here is some of my favorite music from 2017 to encourage more goosebumps:

Especially loved these albums:

• Robert Plant – Carry this Fire
• War on Drugs – A Deeper Understanding
• Arcade Fire – Sleep Well Beast

Saw some great concerts, from old favorites like The Decemberists, Conor Oberst and First Aid Kit, and some newer artists – the Suffers, Foxygen and the dove and the wolf.

Enjoyed the British folk revival music from Offa Rex (Decemberists side project) and the Lal and Mike Waterson

Some newer artists with catchy singalong tunes:

• Mondo Cozmo – Shine
• Lo Moon – Loveless

And some artists with many years and many albums, also with catchy songs:

• Hurray for the Riff Raff – Hungry Ghost
• Portugal the Man – Feel it Still

Music from some terrific female artists

And finally in the year of #metoo, it is great to see some of the best music coming from female artists – not names that I see everywhere, but each creating excellent music in their own style – from country to ethereal via rockabilly:

• Phoebe Bridgers – Stranger in the Alps
• Julie Byrne – Not even Happiness
• Sallie Ford – Soul Sick
• Margo Price – All American Made

Final thoughts, for fans of African music, Songhoy Blues and Amadou & Mariam each returned with more great music (both have now recorded a song called Bamako, which is as I am sure you do not need reminding, is the largest City in Mali).

If you have a colleague/friend that enjoys music – please share with them.

The post Music – best of 2017 and why it matters to some of us appeared first on OnNUp Coaching.

Three characteristics of a limiting belief:

1. I hold a belief – it may be conscious or not, but it’s going to hold me back from doing something well.  Examples I see include interviewing, writing, presenting, or networking.
2. I use language that supports the belief – maybe I say it out loud, or maybe it’s my inner voice that feeds doubt.  
3. When I am in a situation requiring action, it’s hard to be successful because I am certain I don’t look that good.

Beliefs

There were some beliefs that held me back from being my best when I started coaching.  The most obvious change has been in networking – moving on from a belief that every networking situation has potential for high stress, amending the belief by finding safer, smaller groups where I could be more comfortable.

Language

It’s the words we use that sometimes hobble our progress – highlighting our perceived shortcomings. At a recent networking event, I heard one of the participants say ‘I hate presenting, I’m just not very good at it’.  What are the chances that he is going to stand up and be a convincing presenter?  Truthfully, he wasn’t terrible but he could have been so much better if he allowed himself to believe he could improve.

When it’s out loud, it can be subtle – e.g. when a client tells me they were fired from their last role, I often find a sense of failure lurking beneath the surface.  

Our self-talk/ inner voice can be constantly questioning our fitness to do a certain task. Especially true in a new situation:

• I was never really that good at what I did, was I?
• It’s been so long since I felt good about what I did
• What if I get found out?  It’s not uncommon to experience imposter syndrome.

I am trying to practice some language with my daughter that changes ‘I can’t do this’ into ‘ ‘I haven’t learned how to do this, yet’.

Actions

Once I understand the limiting beliefs and the reinforcing language when I say that I hate interviewing, I still need to take action.  I can’t become a good interviewee without strategy and practice. This isn’t about pretending you are something that you are not – it’s applying your strengths to skills like interviewing, presenting and networking.    

A recent experience may help illustrate.  I just started using MailChimp to send my newsletters, the first was my November newsletter.  There were many things I’d like to have done better, and I could easily have said I’m not good at this, and given up on the value it could offer.  Instead I recognized that I needed practice.  I probably should have practiced more before using it for the first newsletter!  Hopefully, my audience has already seen the improvement in recent versions of my newsletter.

Specific Strategies:

• Make a list of the things that make you unique:
  • How your attitude sets you apart – your optimism, your resourcefulness
  • What key skill do you have – do you improve how people work, do you organize things well, do you inspire people?
  • What knowledge you possess?  How many things do you know that are somewhat unique?
• Check yourself when you use language (explicitly or inner voice) that limits you.  
  • Consciously reflect over a few days where you are working on something that is important to you, how many times you doubt yourself.
  • Write down what you could do in this situation at your most accomplished.
• And create experiments that show you how good you can be:
  • Find a small scale opportunity to prove to myself that I can do succeed e.g. go to a networking event with a colleague
  • If I have a negative perspective on my presentation skills – find safe and supportive spaces to do my next presentation.  Talk about the thing I really know about

In short, reflect on what beliefs about your skills, strengths and knowledge could be holding you back,  Ask for help in identifying how your language and actions are supporting this misplaced belief.  Choose small steps forward to defeat that unhelpful belief.

If you identify with this phenomenon and need some help putting these ideas into action, I’d love to speak with you.  

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CHOICE is good

Why? The absence of Choice triggers a threat response. Teenagers feel this acutely – they are so much more positive in their outlook if they believe they are making a choice.  This includes such trivial items as the trim on the family’s new car (real example, talk to me about the details).

As the psychologist at my son’s school told an audience of parents this week, feeling cornered and emotional is where our executive functioning goes offline. And generally we are not at our best, most thoughtful and mature when that happens. For my friends who are followers of the Chimp Paradox, here is where the Chimp brain overtakes your human.

Feeling like we have choice, allows us to be our best

CHOICE doesn’t have to be Binary

It’s certainly better to see ‘I’m all in’ and ‘I need to blow it up’ as options, rather than no options at all. It’s usually more helpful to have other choices – maybe there’s an option to sample alternatives? Design thinking helps us to think about experiments to test our options.

An early client was convinced that she wanted to work in a non-profit after leaving corporate America.  The role did not matter. After exploring the options, her choices evolved to a small list of non-profits with meaning to her, where she could apply her corporate skills. The cause was important, but she would have been easily bored doing work that was repetitive and didn’t engage her skills.

But you do need to choose

We know from the world of Neuroscience, you are less effective if you leave decisions open – the unmade decisions crowd your executive function. The more you’ve left undecided the harder it is to be clear in your thinking.

Deciding on a path can free up your rational brain to address the other cognitive tasks you have to perform. Valuable brain resource and time is returned. If you’ve had the experience of multiple competing priorities crowding your time, you’ll know that picking 1 thing to work on can have a transformative effect on your productivity. This blog is product of that experience – it took 60 minutes to complete in 2 separate blocks of time, largely by sidelining the competing priorities.

KEY MESSAGE – When faced with limited options, try to establish all of your choices, but then choose your path, before your productivity is affected.

It’s often hard to see choices when you looking for a new role, moving your business forward or in leading your team to the next level. As a coach, I see it as my job to help my client see their choices.

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