Shifts Work

An exercise to guide you in coaching yourself from a problem focus to a results focus

This week's episode is 6 1/2 minutes of clear, useful steps that will allow you to coach yourself out of a focus on a problem that has you stuck or frustrated. When all you can see is something you don't want (something you'd like to lose or stop), take a walk or sit down with a journal and work through these five steps. The result will be a new perspective on the problem and fresh energy for getting where you want to go instead.

"If I were you" what would change in me?

When we hear someone begin a sentence with "if I were you," our first response is often to think (or say!) "Well, you're not me."  The problem is that people often don't try to understand what it is like to be us: they just imagine themselves in our situation with all of their history, their connections, their skills and their biases.

Here are three ways to check whether you are making a useful attempt to imagine the world as another person is experiencing it:

1. has your physiology shifted to match their posture, gestures and expressions?
2. has your language shifted to take on their choice of words, phrasing, rhythms and sounds?
3. are you seeing yourself in the picture (in the way that they can see you?)