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I have always loved little boxes, they’re all around our house and I have a collection near my desk.

I’ve decided to make one a Dream Box in an attempt to stay hopeful.

I’d like to say I’m not afraid to talk about this, but the truth is I am.  I’m afraid that you will judge me because while I’m “supposed” to be tough, to be a “real man” and have that “executive presence,” in fact I’m uncertain and lonely.  I often doubt myself and question the value of my work.  I suspect this is true for a lot of people — I suspect it’s especially true for people who are attempting to lead and venture into new lands.

When work is relatively easy, the voice of doubt is quiet — or at least shouted down by all the excitement.  But in times like these when economic pressures mount and work and life become more challenging, the doubts get louder and more pervasive.  Apparently it’s not just an economic depression.  I go from doubting my direction, into doubting my vision, and then the doubt spreads to my very identity and I feel depressed.

Sadly, I know just what to say to myself to cut myself down, and on “bad days” I overwhelm myself –  I tell myself I’m not making a difference, that I’m wasting the best years of my life, that I’m sacrificing for nothing.  I tell myself it would be so much easier to just work for someone else and let them worry, to go to some well worn conventional path rather than tilting at endless windmills – and that while it’s sad that I’d make more money doing meaningless work, the evidence is that’s more valuable.  In our society the messages are pervasive money equates to value and success… and with so much economic uncertainty and fear abounding, that message becomes more potent.

Another part of me tries to stand up and challenge the doubter, but it’s all too easy to find evidence that the doubts are right.  Especially when the phone isn’t ringing.

Yet somehow that other optimistic voice just won’t give up — and there are a lot of “good days” — and that’s why I want the dream box.

A few months ago someone emailed thanking me for an article and said, “never doubt that you are making a difference.”  As I’ve thought about this post, those words keep running through my head.  I don’t want to doubt — yet I do.  So I’m going to go find that email and put those words in the dream box.  Just yesterday someone name Kaye emailed about the EQ Certification training and wrote, “it is still the single most powerful professional development that I have done” — Kaye’s words are going in the Dream Box.  Often after workshops people give me notes — they’re going in too.

Because even in the worst of these moments when almost all of me wants to give up, I try to imagine what I’d do instead, and I keep coming back to the foundation of our vision at Six Seconds.  Yes, maybe it’s irrational and maybe even hopeless, but somehow we – humans – have to find a way out off the self-destructive treadmill we’ve created.  We need to find value in ourselves and each other more than in money and things.  We need new visions and new skills to learn to love more deeply, to genuinely care for ourselves, each others, and our world — and no, my contribution won’t make this change, but what if I could make just a small inroad?  And if not me, then who?  And then I see messages like Kaye’s and I think maybe we are — not fixing it, but leaning the right direction.  Though the road is long and the path is steep, just a few steps might make a vast difference in a few people’s lives.

So I’ll take the reminders and put them in my dream box.  Then when the doubts start shouting, that other voice will have some backup.

Out of curiosity I started a poll on LinkedIn, the business networking platform.

What do you most want for your kids?
* Their financial success
* Their happiness
* That they contribute
* That they are kind

Click here to take the poll before you look below….

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(that space was the “pause” while you went to take the poll… and if you did you saw more current results, but here you go)

Of course as a parent I want ALL of these and more – but in the poll you only get one!  I offered 4 responses, two which are more “selfish” and two which are more “altruistic” — you can see the results.

Of course this is a SMALL and nonscientific poll, but what is the implication for our future?

In the car yesterday when Patty, my wife, accidentally pressed the little red button on her keys.  Lots of loud noise ensued, with Patty jumping out of her skin and jabbing at every button she could find to turn off the caterwauling.

When she finally managed to silence the alarm: “Good name for this button,” she said, “I press it and it makes me panic!”

Patty’s cortical thinking (analysis, sequencing) was shut down due to the flood of emotions pushing her to protect herself in this “dangerous” situation.  This reaction, which Goleman called “Hijacking the Amygdala” after Joesph LeDoux’s scientific research on the process, is often described as a “primitive” or even “bad” emotional response.  Yet it beautifully illustrates the primacy of emotion and the way feelings drive us.  The trick, as Patty found, is to learn — in advance — how to push the “un panic” button.

Dear Josh,
I’m a little confused with this issue, someone at my workshop asked me this question so need more explanation on this!  She said that: usually we use a hearts as an icon to express love and feelings and now you said feelings come from brain (amygdala) not heart?
So please help me to understand this, I have another workshop in Riyadh this week.
Look forward hearing from you, Regards,
– Manal

Hi Manal!
It is true that our emotions seem to be primarily produced and regulated in the brain – the limbic region.  Emotion chemicals are assembled in the hypothalamus and then released through the pituitary gland, they then flow through the blood and then into EVERY cell in the body.  The picture (to the right) illustrates an important point — when we’re talking about chemicals that are released from the brain in the blood, notice how important the heart is!  The Amygdala responds to certain “distress” or “danger” feeling chemicals and amplifies the flight/fright/freeze reaction – it is the regulator of our defensive patterns — again leading to a cascade of chemicals (one leading to another leading to another) that floods through brain & into body… and back and forth.

Neurotransmitters (brain cells) function through chemicals + electricity – so there are also electrical currents flowing around the brain tied to emotion.

However, the SAME kinds of brain cells and chemicals which exist in the limbic brain surround our hearts – and around our stomachs and in our spines — so people often talk about our “four brains”: head, heart, gut, and spine.

Important to note:  The neuropeptides that we experience as emotion (“the molecules of emotion” as Candace Pert says) are also produced throughout our bodies!  So sometimes a feeling could start in our toes!  These chemicals form a feedback loop between brain and body — constantly cycling around and regulating the function of our systems.  One major function is to direct attention — our emotions tell us what’s important in our environment (and in our internal landscape).

And finally:  There is emerging research on the link between the heart and emotions.  The heart beat becomes more regular when we’re in a calm, focused state.  The heart itself produces electromagnetic energy which seems also to become more even and smooth when we’re in an optimal state of emotional-mental-physical function.

Thanks for asking – I’ll post this on the blog as well!
=:-)
– Josh

We’ve been hearing so much about “Swine Flu” — is this a medical issue or an emotional one?

Was talking to a doctor friend today who mentioned how much press we’re giving Swine Flu when “regular” influenza is so much more destructive every single year.  I was totally surprised, assuming that all this media coverage must signify a serious threat. So I looked that up — turns out that about 200,000 people are hospitalized every year in the US per year for influenza — less than .1% of that number have been diagnosed with Swine Flu in the US (see this story on WebMD: Putting Swine Flu in Perspective).

So what’s the fear?  Is it the uncertainty of a new type of influenza? (Apparently there are new influenza strains every year).  Is it just media hype?   Is it a “lighting rod” of a tangible threat that’s just happening to surface while millions of people are seeing their quality of life eroding in the face of global recession?

This is an absolutely lovely video showing a fabulous surprise – an “ordinary” extraordinary woman turning cynicism to appreciation. Reminds me how powerful we can be:

How do we change out of a destructive pattern?

Emma (my daughter, now 9) frequently makes a big fuss when it’s time to do work that’s not appealing, especially “dumb writing homework” (despite usually liking writing and being an outstanding student).  This has gone on for years, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed myself becoming very reactive.  I was getting more and more irritated with her — and the irritation about homework seemed to be bleeding into our relationship-in-general.

I’d say hello in the morning and she’d grouch at me… say hello in the afternoon and she’d ignore me.  Then the homework fuss would come up, and I found myself thinking in such a judgmental way, labeling her as “drama queen,” “irrational,” and a few I won’t put in print.  As my frustration grew, I found myself thinking things like, “she can bloody well sit in her room ’till the work is done” (and thinking it with a kind of violent savagery ala “that will show her!”).

There are two aspects of this reaction that I’d like to explore with you:

First, when I felt disrespected and excluded, my patience for the “homework drama” plummeted.  My hurt feelings translated to wanting to hurt back.

Second, as I was feeling impatient, I fell into a pattern of force (power and control) and dealing with superficial “facts” — despite my certain knowledge that this DOES NOT WORK.

In Six Seconds’ work on change, we teach that people behave the way they do for emotionally valid reasons, and that unless you change the underlying emotional dynamic, you don’t create change.  This concept is explained well in Alan Deutschman’s book, Change or Die, which I constantly talk about (here’s an interview I did with him about this).  Deutschman says the dominant, but failing, paradigm when trying to drive change is to use facts, force and fear.

As I get more and more frustrated, I begin to rely on power and control.  I start using facts to back up how right I am, and force to reinforce my sense of power, and fear to accentuate my own power over her.  In that FFF paradigm, we try to make people change.  This doesn’t work, because people don’t want to be forced.  When people feel pushed, they resist.  The resistance causes them to protect, and they become less open to risk.  Meanwhile as we push, we become more irritated and less open to understand what they’re feeling and what’s really blocking the change.

Nice mess — and I KNOW this, but knowledge is not enough.  So here I am, getting frustrated with my daughter, and the more frustrated I get, the more I find myself shooting down this track, a track that I intellectually know leads only to more frustration.  But nonetheless, I’m sucked in.  It’s like I’m in a terrible daytime TV show where these messages are beamed into my brain.  And the more irritated I get, the more I’m in this reactive, superficial, destructive mindset.

Once I started to reflect I could see this pattern — this track I was on.  Which was great to recognize, but then what?  Getting off requires a shift in thinking+feelings — a way to step out of the dynamic.

Fortunately, it came a day later at bedtime.

I was just kissing my daughter goodnight and she had a rare evening of not having a book in hand… so welcomed a sleepy snuggle.  She’s so big now, and so fierce in her opinions.  But laying next to her I had this vivid memory of 9 years ago when we were on our first long plane ride and told her about it.

So long as one of us was walking around holding her, Emma was content.  But as soon as we sat down she fussed.  I remember walking up and down the long 747 aisles in the dark, with glimpses of night as we walked past the rows of windows, pacing endlessly at 500 miles per hour with this sleepy warm angel.

I remember quietly singing the same little song over and over and over (”la mar estaba serena, serena estaba la mar…”).  Probably as much for me as her; I can still feel the soothing rhythm of it.

I remember looking out the small galley window, watching the endless stretches of Nordic ice in the moonlight, and wondering at the infinite variety of that unknown alien landscape, so cold and distant.

At the time, I had no sense that this would become a precious memory… but now it’s so vivid… and tinged with the sepia tones of nostalgia.  Amazing what become printed in our hearts.

And from that place of appreciation, the whole “homework drama frustration” simply evaporated.  I remembered the precious (and willful) innocence inside this person.  I “made her good” in my mind and heart and this let me step off the reactive track.  This emotional connection is empathy, and it’s a doorway to a whole new way of seeing — and the antidote to the FFF paradigm.

In the week since that evening, we’ve had no conversation about changing the “homework drama,” but it just hasn’t come up.  It’s like the circuit is (at least for the moment) diffused.  While it’s likely to resurface, I’m now more keenly aware of the trap — and at least one way out.

I just arrived in Curacao – my first time here – lovely!  Tomorrow I start our “Breakthrough Leadership” program with a group of senior managers from a variety of companies (assisting them to apply emotional intelligence to their own leadership).

One of my favorite aspects of traveling is learning about the different challenges and opportunities people face in different places, and the myriad richness of the human experience even in our “globalized mush.”  Here’s this incredible place where the local language is a blend of some 5-6 different languages – a complex, vibrant culture.

Yet underneath, I’ll bet 20 Netherlands Antillean Guilders that the fundamental EQ challenges these leaders face is the same as everywhere – for example: staying focused on what matters while navigating complexity, balancing, being proactive, truly hearing, connecting across gulfs of culture, age, experience… and maintaining a vibrant, optimistic vision that enrolls people to be and do more.

I’ll let you know what I find!

Can a machine do a better job teaching emotional intelligence than a human?

We’re in the midst of collecting responses on the 2009 Workplace Issues Survey

Here’s a “teaser” of some results. Interestingly despite current economic pressure, thus far this year the vast majority of responses still focus on the “people side” — for example, based on rough calculations from responses to date….

• 89% say employee’s feelings are “important” or “essential” to solving the issues the organization faces
• 91% report that “emotional intelligence” skills are “important” or “essential” to solving the issues the organization faces
• The “people issues” are perceived to be about 63% more significant than “technical issues”
• Only 9% report that they’ve received training to effectively deal with the issues they’re facing
• And by about a 20% margin, “mentoring” is perceived as the most effective way for people to develop the needed capacity to deal with all these issues!

Here are the top scoring words from comments so far (bigger is more frequent)…

What are the top issues you’re facing at work?  Are they “technical,” “people,” or something else?
Do feelings matter?  Please share your views on the survey — and invite colleagues to do the same!

http://www.sixseconds.com/wi.php

And FYI: here’s our 2007 Workplace Issues report