What better way to spend a few moments every day than by busting a few blocks? I challenge you to Bust A Block A Day. That means when you’re in a conversation or situation that suddenly makes you feel uncomfortable, as anger or fear or any one of 400 other often repressed emotions starts trying to get out of your system – STOP.
1) Pause and don’t say anything. Check out what you are feeling and what you are about to say and ask, “Is this how I really feel and what I really think or is this a block. Blocks are thoughts and emotions that you can’t control, most likely because you absorbed them from someone else.
2) Throw out the first reactive comments or feelings that come to mind – that would be the block.
3) Make a conscious choice about how you think and feel today and let that be your response.

You’ve done it! You’ve said good-bye to a block you have successfully busted.

Many times when we run into a block we go into auto-anger-pilot. We see auto-anger-pilot at work all around us every single day, which is why I call our wonderful, but stressed-out nation, THE UNITED STATES OF ANGER.

BLOCKBUSTER ANGER VILLAINS QUIZ

Please take a moment to answer the 7 questions below to learn which villain may be causing anger to complicate your life.

The seven questions correspond numerically to the Villains numbered and listed right below the questions. After each question please circle on a scale of 1 to 5 how much you experience the feelings described. (1 denotes seldom feeling that way, all the way to 5 representing feeling that way a lot.) When finished add up your score and see where you fall on the Anger Villain Scale.

1) Do you find yourself stuck in a chain of complaints – never totally happy with anything at work or in life, as if you’ve been tricked or misled?
0 1 2 3 4 5 ____________
Your Rating

2) Do you feel like you’re never quite enough – pretty enough, rich enough, talented enough, smart enough, lucky enough…to get the job done?
0 1 2 3 4 5 _____________
Your Rating

3) Has some event or person killed your self-confidence or joy at work?
0 1 2 3 4 5 _____________
Your Rating
4) Do you find it necessary to hide behind excuses or role-playing instead of just being yourself?
0 1 2 3 4 5 _____________
Your Rating

5) Do you feel like something or someone is always more powerful than you, leaving you helpless, hopeless – even victimized?
0 1 2 3 4 5 _____________
Your Rating
6) Has the ability to love what you do been largely replaced by fear or anxiety in your life?
0 1 2 3 4 5 _____________
Your Rating
7) Do you find yourself waiting for the right circumstances to move forward, yet the circumstances are never quite right enough?

0 1 2 3 4 5 _____________
Your Rating

Total Points_____________

SCORE RESULTS:
1-3: Congratulations! You are a hero and a master of your emotions.

4 –10: You are conquering the anger villains, but you are still vulnerable.
11-15: Unfortunately, you are a “victim” of anger But, there is hope.
16 and above: One or more anger villains are running your life. Moving forward demands disarming them.

Villains: 1) Saboteur, 2) Pirate, 3) Killer, 4) Mugger, 5) Monster, 6) Lost Love, 7) Sorceress.

Thank you for taking time to answer all of these questions. If you’d like to know more about these villains, please go to the Villains page on my website, blockedtoblockbuster.com/villains.html
Also, try busting a block. When you do, there’s a place on my Blog to share your block, how you busted it, and to get a response from me.

Happy Block Busting!

The fourth BlockBuster Achievment Killer is “Poor Listening Skills.” In the baseball game of conversations, negotiations, and all forms of communications, we have a nation full of pitchers, but very few catchers. That means we have a lot of balls that were in the air, rolling aimlessly on the ground because no body bothered to pay attention. Listening is truly akin to catching. We must remain silent, focus on the person speaking and try to catch the meaning, the intent and the agenda, if there is one. Where is the speaker coming from? Literally, is there a cultural component to the message? What emotions are clouding the message or hidden within the content?

Our baseball game of communication is very lop-sided. We have lots of people winding up and throwing a message, but few people are bothering to catch it, because they’d rather throw instead. Why? Frankly, their attention is somewhere else, most often it’s on themselves and what they are going to say next. Then there are all of those perceptions that men and women are from different planets so they can’t possibly “get” each other. And, we know that kid-speak is a code, teenagers speak in gibberish, young adults are way ahead of us, middle-agers are totally out of it and seniors simply can’t hear. Middle management can’t get through to executives, Assistants have no voice, departments have their own languages. And what about “those people” from the new company you just merged with? “Why they are truly from another planet.” Managers, leaders, politicians, clients, worker-bees, suppliers, vendors, creatives, number crunchers, government workers, freelancers – each category, and there are hundreds of them, has its own language.

So, you think you want to listen better? Here’s the plan.
1) Before you say anything, take a deep breath and focus on the other person. Look into their eyes. Tap into their energy. What is their body language saying to you?
2) Take another deep breath and prepare to listen.
3) Listen so intently you could repeat what they are saying. In fact, do that. Repeat it to yourself and then talk for the first time by saying, “This is what I heard you say…is that right?
4) If something said triggers an emotion, take a few seconds of silence to ask yourself why, and when you have an answer make sure it is valid in the context of this situation. If there is anger, distrust, misperceptions, prejudice, jealousy or any of those conversation stoppers involved, they must be disarmed. Shouting is the antithesis of communication.
5) Weigh your responses and throw out the first 3 to 5 of them as they are probably old programming belonging to someone else.
6) Ask questions that show your interest and bring out more of the other person rather than being stuck in misunderstandings.
7) Keep judgment, criticism and blame out of the conversation. Focus on whomever you are talking to with the goal of understanding, not winning, pontificating or disagreeing and you will be a sought after conversationalist.

One more thing regarding meetings, lectures, workshops, presentations, and the many forums in which people come together to learn and grow. Devote the first 25% of the meeting to listening. Leave all of your perceptions outside the meeting room and see what your open mind, free of its constant chatter can wrap itself around. If after 25 to 30% of the meeting, the content is truly bad, then tune out and save your focus for something that matters. If you forget to check your watch, welcome to some new ideas that found enough open space in your brain to come in and stay for a while.

Watch for my next blog and number 5 on the Top 10 List of Achievement Killers – Status Quo – Following #1Risk Aversion, #2 Unclear Intention, #3 Lack of Time and #4, Poor Listening Skills.

A Friend and client of mine just sent me this email which caused me to think my way into this article for you. She wrote, “I was just on the subway and as it was approaching my stop a woman came on my car and announced to the train that she is struggling financially and is trying to raise her 12 year old son and that she has just recently been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She said she has been trying to get a job but as of yet no one has accepted her application. The train was pulling up to my stop as she finished her speech so I was able to hand her a $5 bill as I exited the train with tears in my eyes.”

The story is made even more poignant when you know that my friend also has Mulitple Sclerosis, as do I – and like all people with chronic or life-threatening illnesses, we wonder what will happen to us if our money or insurance runs out.

How many of us now look at others forced to beg, borrow, and hopefully not steal, and feel panic wondering if “There but for the grace of God go I?”

So many people who are used to and proud of always taking care of themselves and never needing a handout now find themselves in precarious, embarrassing, humiliating, demoralizing situations. One couple both seriously ill and relying on one partner’s paycheck have found themselves unemployed for almost 2 years. They are one month away from losing their apartment and their health insurance. They have not yet asked me for money.

Another friend who was the primary caregiver for 3 young children suddenly found himself kicked out of the relationship and fighting to have custody of his children with a terrible decision to make – work and not see the kids or see the kids and not be able to support them. He has asked me for money.

I could relate story after story, but I’m sure you all have stories of your own.

I wrote the following back to my friend: “You are not and will never be a VICTIM.
This woman, God bless her, is a victim. How could her speech have been different? What could she have said to possibly generate a job? How could she have left that subway with people wanting to give her a hand, not a handout?
Just some questions and food for thought.”

I’m all for gratitude and reminders and giving love, support and even loans — but just remember, it’s just a few steps from Victim to Hero. What we need to do as a country is make more paths available to take those forced to flounder in victimhood and put them on the pathway to their own heroic journeys.

I would love your thoughts and comments on how this can be done.

I have always wanted an eighth day to my week. This would be a day that no one else knows about. I would sit at my desk in complete silence. The phones would not ring, the computer wouldn’t ding, there would be no chaos outside my door. I would sit at my desk and I would write, create, ponder, think, breathe, review, strategize, research, in short, I WOULD ACHIEVE.

I never got the eighth day so I had to create it myself. I start my day at 4:30 AM or 5:00 AM when everyone I know is sleeping. I use that special time to achieve the connection with my brain, my creativity, my strategic plan.

If you’re not an early morning person, where can you create your “special time”? There’s late night, the middle of the night, a stolen lunch hour to walk in the park, weekend alone time that you declare and stake out for yourself, no questions asked.

You get the idea, “special time” is a time when everybody in your life is doing something else so they cannot intrude upon your time. It’s that time when you get the download from your own brain free from the noise the rest of the world is trying to download into your brain.

Time is a precious resource – perhaps one of the most precious. Only you can decide how much time you need for sleep, love, career, fun, community, spiritual, family, friendships, health, parenthood, and environment – most of the life areas in which we must apportion our time. Achieving balance in these areas takes conscious effort and a bit of magic. It can be done, however, even though I’m hearing a chorus of naysayers.

Time: We want to ration it, store it, protect it, steal it, hoard it, create it and hold on to it so time will never run out. We want to wrap our minds around using time well, around taking an early hour in the morning and focusing our intent so expertly that it seems like one hour morphs into our very own 8th day of the week.

To connect to your genius, which will align you with the achievements you desire, you simply must remember to make, steal and demand time for yourself. That is where you will find the “magic” to run your life according to your own plan. Time most certainly will run out for us all, but at the very least we can say, it was time well spent.

Watch for my next blog and #4 on the BlockBuster List of Achievement Killers – Not Listening.

Number 2 on the Top 10 List of Achievement Killers is having an Unclear Intention. How can you possibly get what you want when you can’t state it with conviction and clarity? Once you can do that, have you defined a SMART intention, meaning is it specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely?

Remember, an intention according to Webster’s Dictionary is “something that somebody plans to do or achieve, the quality or state of having a purpose in mind.” The element that fuels the plan or purpose is clarity. What do you want? Why do you want it? When do you want it? Who’s going to make it happen? Where do you want this to take place? Yes, you’ve got it, defining your intention is a bit like being a detective. You’ve got to get to the facts, all of them, and keep narrowing it down to what is achievable. Just keep asking Why? Until you drill down to the heart of your intention – the heart of the matter.

All of my clients must start their projects with me by having an intention in mind. They must also name what they think is blocking them from getting that intention. Recently, one client, by our fourth session had still not been able to define her intention. There were many factors at work: She was a multi-tasker and couldn’t imagine narrowing her projects down to one; She had difficulty prioritizing; She had a fear that if she named her intention, determined to go after it and failed that she wouldn’t be able to face the consequences. These are just three of the many excuses people find to keep them from going after their dreams. Let’s not forget, “I’m not good enough,” “I’m too busy.” “It’s too late.” I could list 50 excuses that block us at one time or another.

When the excuses are at work, we tend to be more general than anyone can grasp or even care about. My client kept saying, “My intention is to be happy.” I kept saying, “Yes, you and everybody else. And, what will make you happy? Choose a concrete intention and explore the happiness that accomplishing that intention brings, then go on to the next intention and the next intention…”

Bottom line is, know what you want. Think about it, feel what it would be like to achieve it, feel what it would be like to not have it, look at it from every angle, talk about it until you can express it in 7 words – a good headline. Have a picture so clear in your head, heart and soul that you can get anyone and everyone to see the vision of your intention — accomplished.

Define it, see it, speak it, feel it, strategize it, and you will achieve it.

Number 1 on the Top 10 Blockbuster List of Achievement Killers is Risk Aversion. Let me tell you, nothing in life gets done without a tiny bit of risk attached to it. There’s an old joke about a man stuck on the top of his house during a flood. He prays to God for help and waves away a raft, then a boat, then a helicopter, because he knows he doesn’t need them and that God will help him. Tragically the flood rises and takes him under as he cries to God, “Where were you?” Then he hears God’s voice, “I sent help three times. All you had to do was take it.”

All you have to do is take it. Take the first step, ask the first question, offer the first suggestion, jump in and go after what you want. Take the risk before the little voices come in with a chorus of fear and insecurity saying, “You might be wrong,” “What if you fail?” Who do you think you are?’ So-and-so does it better,” jump in and take the risk.

Long before I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I had a feeling something was wrong with my business or the way I was running the business. I needed to raise the fees in my advertising agency, I needed to replace some employees with more qualified ones, I needed to take the leap of growth in order to attract more and better clients. Instead, I kept working harder at the old, comfortable ways of doing things. I worked round the clock and ignored every warning my body sent me. I ignored exhaustion, I ignored floaters in my eyes, I ignored an occasional loss of balance, because I couldn’t “risk” listening to my body and changing my ways. So, my body finally screamed at me with partial paralysis from the waist down and loss of my central vision. I had to stop and listen. I had to take a risk, change my habits, learn to be healthy and find balance in my life before I succumbed to the disease.

So, I took action after action after action – all with a bit of risk attached and all different than I would have taken before. One by one over three years my symptoms disappeared. I’ve been healthy since 1990. Nothing about my life is the same today as the year of my diagnosis in 1985, and everything is BETTER.

What are you ignoring? What risk do you need to take that can change your life, relationship, health, financial situation, career? Don’t be a whiner and mourn what’s missing in your life. Explore the possibilities and take ACTION. Fill up with love for your life and what you are going to do to achieve your intentions and push out the fear of risk that blocks achievement.

Watch for my next blog and number 2 on the Top 10 List of Achievement Killers – Lack of a Strategy.

Seventeen years ago while working on my book, HEAD OVER HEALING IN LOVE, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Learner about the role of thought in healing disease. Mark had just turned 30 when he was diagnosed with progressive MS. Eighty percent blind and numb over most of his body, Mark says MS put him on the most intense spiritual journey he could imagine. At the time of the interview, Mark was 12 years into living with MS. In that time Mark had started two corporations, written three books and spent as much time as possible counseling people with serious illnesses and handicaps, many of them veterans. It was the lessons he shared with me from the veterans that remain with me today, especially in my own teaching.

Mark explained that when healing (or dealing with blocks) it’s important to go to a point far beyond perceptions and conceptions. He said, “Combat veterans have the most intense experience of death I’ve ever known. I feel that most people resist that, because to enter depth, which I call the zero point, is to go beyond thinking. It’s the same as death to the ego. I feel the majority of religions are based on a level of belief systems. To find what I was looking for, I had to go beyond my belief system.”

Combat vets are often not spiritual people, but they’ve had the deepest spiritual experience I’ve ever seen, because during intense combat, they were forced beyond thoughts. Nobody thought, “What am I having for dinner tonight?” They were just alert — with clear awareness, fighting for their lives.

Mark then shared a positive/negative self exercise with me that he learned from combat vets who had to create habits in order not to think. He asked me to think of the worst thing that ever happened to me and to capture the experience in a word. I thought PANIC. Mark had me imagine the physical sensations of panic and give the self that felt that way a name — I chose “Ditzel.” Next, Mark led me to do the opposite. I concentrated on the best thing that had happened to me and feelings related to that. I thought of EUPHORIA, imagined feeling a blissful peace, and named the self with those feelings “Darling.” Mark taught me how to automatically connect to Darling, my positive self, by feeling the pulse on the side of my neck and repeating, “I am darling…” According to Mark, by doing that nightly before going to sleep, while concentrating on images of myself when I felt “darling,” my positive responses would become automatic.

The reality is, Darling is connected to the silence and the inner resources much better than Ditzel who is connected to the doubting voices in your head. It’s the zero point. If you return importance to your zero point, you can trust yourself and connect to your resources. You can’t give that zero point a concept, like God, however, because then you put importance in the concept representing the zero point. Mark calls it the wisdom of the body without the film of the mind.

“Value life,” exclaims Mark. “Nothing you think is as important as your life. Even the thoughts of your family and the people you love dearly, are not as important as your life. For instance, if you have a close relationship with your husband, it goes far beyond the mental agreement; there’s a bond that’s closer to life than what’s in your mind.”

With Mark’s blessing, I have shared the technique with hundreds of people who have used it to quit smoking, survive loss, heal relationships, gain confidence to communicate better, survive financial reverses, turn businesses around, and so much more.

The reality is that when you’re faced with death, your ego (your thoughts) becomes insignificant. To consciously deal with that, is an incredibly evolving reality. In our society, people don’t consciously face that. The worst part of a terminal illness is the ego’s death, not physical death.

On Memorial Day as we honor those who have faced death and given their lives so that our beloved nation could survive and so that others could taste the freedom we hold dear, I ask you to pause in a moment of silence and meet our veterans in a place beyond thought – the zero point where all is possible as we connect to a field of wisdom and love that is never-ending.

Don’t you just hate it when you are told, “The answers you seek are already deep inside of you. All you have to do is access your own wisdom.” Well, I’m an expert on that one, in fact I’m quoting myself. My body had to go numb, become partially blind and lose its balance before I stopped in my tracks and said, “Hey, what are you trying to tell me?” My body manifested a disease to keep workaholism from killing me.

I didn’t see doors of opportunity, I saw dead ends. When I read this quote from Helen Keller, however, a little light went on. She said, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; But often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”

Was that true? Was I focusing on closed doors? I sure was. I held on to relationships that needed to end. I failed to replace employees who were not doing the job because I thought I could change them. My carefully designed “look” (hair, clothing style and make-up) hadn’t changed in 20 years. I had chronic bronchitis, constant exhaustion, two automobile accidents, but still I wasn’t listening — I was STUCK.

Listen for what, you may ask? Listen for the open doors. Here’s a little experiment you’ll find enlightening. Using the list of prompters below, list five signals your body (or life) sent you over the last month indicating that you needed to stop staring at a closed door and open a new one:
Accident, Traffic Ticket, Anger,
Depression, Lethargy, Fights,
Drowsiness, Mistakes, Cravings,
Urges, Longings, Memories,
Family Trouble, Social ups & downs, Community,
Stress, Discomfort, Illness,
Sloppiness, Disrespect, No control

Now that you have the five signals or messengers it’s time to connect the dots. Let’s say your signals are anger, a fender bender, mistakes at work, lack of control and fights. List them all on a piece of paper then play the detective game. What are the who, what, where, when and why of your signals.
Why are you angry? With whom are you really angry? Why were you not paying attention when driving? Why so many careless mistakes? What makes you feel out of control? Why the fights? What’s the point of them?

As you answer the questions, take a highlighter and underline what your answers have in common. See if the answers will lead you to a new intention – something you want to accomplish right now in your life. When you define your intention, write down what you think is blocking you. That will be your closed door! Once you’ve found the closed door, you can say good-bye forever, and walk through your open door – your intention.

Feel better? It’s called being conscious of why you do what you do when you do it. Look at your decisions, realize you have a choice, then make it. Conscious decisions will lead you through a lot of wonderful open doors.

Florida Scott-Maxwell writes, “No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.” For all of you who think it’s too late, I urge you to access your inner mother. I know that my mother looked at me and saw the unrealized possibilities of her life. But, she also saw me, flesh and blood, and she was proud as only a Mom can be.

As I became a change agent, helping people through difficult transitions in their lives, my mother did an amazing thing, she continued to change up to 6 weeks before her death, when a stroke took her away from the final stages of painful cancer. She died 8 years ago.

I write this for my Mom, Ellie Parker. I miss her every day. I struggle to hear her laugh. When good things happen to me, I miss seeing them through her eyes. I know she is near, I can smell her perfume and feel her breath when I least expect it.

Yes, my Mom was born scared, timid and a world class worrier. The main people in her life let her down terribly – her mother who was caught up in survival mode and serial marriages when Ellie was young, and her husband, whose alcoholism turned him into a monster through half of their marriage. Yet, she prevailed. Seldom was a hair out of place. Her clothes, while inexpensive, were stylish and she wore them like a suit of armor. Her home, while modest, was neat and lovely. She raised two accomplished kids, held a marriage together for over 50 years until Dad died, and then at 70 she became a career woman and built up her bank account to the highest level in her life. She was proud, this time of herself. She forgave, she embraced life, and she made countless friends.

I can also feel her support whenever I think I’m alone, I can feel her watching for signs of improvement and feel her smile with pride when I succeed for us both. I can feel her joy in reminding me that “It’s never too late to change” as I bust a block a day for myself and others. I wrote the following poem for Mom 5 years before she died.

There’s No Place Like Home
and No One Like Mom

There once was a woman named Ellie
Born frightened, a real Nervous Nelly
She timidly stepped out to become a wife
With style, she’d make the best of her life!

They struggled, they learned
For all answers she yearned
Instead, she got children, ten years apart
A boy, then a girl to fill her big heart!

Oh, how she worried!
Would she raise them just right?
They didn’t eat
She couldn’t sleep
They were so thin
She felt so grim.

They grew up and left home.
She was sad and so alone
They gained weight and ups and downs
She gained more worry, frets and frowns.

Now the kids are 40 and 50-something.
Businesses not babies they’re busy running.
They still access mom’s will to advise.
She’s sage and witty, reasonable and wise!

She’s a self-supporter, an independent lady.
All at the impossible-to-tell age of eighty.
She’s our mom, our friend and a career gal
A homemaker, stylist and favorite worry-pal!

Mom, we couldn’t love you more if we tried.
You’ve earned our greatest devotion and pride!
May you continue to grow younger each year.
You are our treasure, we always want you near.

A speaker colleague and friend of mine, Ed Rigsbee, recently had this to say about communication road blocks:
“Be clear on what you say, how you say it, and in a way that your partner will completely understand your intended meaning. Hinting is not communicating! Expecting the other “to understand” is not communicating. Expecting your partner to read your mind is also NOT communicating. Communicating is, eyeball to eyeball, using simple and clearly understood language—expressing what’s on your mind with understanding as your intent—not cryptically stinging under your breath.”

These words have special meaning for me as I struggle to communicate with my almost-deaf husband. His hearing has been diminishing for almost three years. Gone are the days of innuendo, funny voices, subtlety, and lots of other conversation makers. Now, we fight for every word. I know he truly wants to understand what I have to say, and I pray for the patience to somehow get my words across.

When I read Ed’s article,
www.rigsbee.com/relationshiproi.htm it occurred to me that most people are conversationally deaf these days. We are more concerned with being heard than hearing and with making a point than understanding. There is so much attitude in our platitudes that the words and meaning are lost.

When I lose my patience and yell at Jack after repeating the same sentence five times for him to hear, he painfully repeats, “I can hear you! Loud doesn’t help. I just don’t understand you.” His hearing loss scrambles words and leaves sentences completely meaningless.

I contend that we have a worldwide hearing problem. Our anger, impatience, distrust, egocentrism, protectiveness and sense of entitlement and danger scrambles our words and leaves our sentences completely meaningless. It might just as well be blahbidy, blahbidy, blah that’s coming out of our mouths.

So, how do we unscramble our communication?
First, we have to get the other party’s attention. Not by screaming. I find a gentle hand on the forearm works, or a kind, “Honey, can you understand me,” to give Jack time to focus. In front of a huge audience with a microphone in hand – stand, breathe, make eye contact, take in their energy and give them some of yours – then quietly, powerfully say what you have to say. Whatever you do, don’t scream. That gives your audience permission not to listen.

2nd: You have to think about what you really want to say. What is your intent? What will most concisely and clearly get your point across.

3rd. Make eye contact and see if your words are even being absorbed by the receiving party. Maintain eye contact until you sense the block and proceed to bust through it by restating, rewording, or rethinking what you have to say.

4th: Listen and look. What body language are you perceiving? Check for non-verbal cues. Wait until you are sure your intention has been absorbed before proceeding, because only then will you know whether to repeat, reframe or rethink.

5th: Remember, as Ed said, “Communicating is, eyeball to eyeball, using simple and clearly understood language—expressing what’s on your mind with understanding as to your intent…”
There is a universal language – the language of caring and that comes with questions: Are you OK? Do you understand what I’m saying? Tell me what you are thinking and feeling about what you heard? If there’s a difference please let me know. Is there a way we can come together on this?

Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!