Are you the same businessperson on the outside as you are on the inside?

When you think about yourself in your work, do you see yourself as successful, competent, professional, just the way you want others to see you? If your answer is “yes,” then this tip is not for you. But if you see yourself in any other way—e.g., as a little kid in the corporate grown-up’s world, or as an arty type who’s floundering as a businessperson, or as a small-time player only pretending to do what you’re claiming to do and hoping no one sees through you—then read on.

I’ve found with many of my clients that one of the biggest internal blocks they have is that they don’t believe they are the person they are trying to be. They focus on what they are doing, thinking that if they just do what they are supposed to in their role, they will grow into it and finally be, and feel, successful. While there is no denying that you have to do what your boss, clients or customers need, how you see yourself—whether that is as a respected VP or successful business owner or, conversely, as the complete opposite—will also have a big impact on how well you succeed.

Take for example the solopreneur who knows she has a great service that other people need. She’s knows the marketing steps she needs to take to get the word out so customers who need her can find her. But she sees herself as someone who just isn’t a “real” businessperson, just someone who’s dabbling in her business. When she considers going to networking events, or giving presentations, or fielding calls from prospective customers, that internal view of herself is not only going to block her from doing things she needs to do (“oh well, maybe I’ll skip this networking event since I’m not likely to impress any potential customers”), it’s going to leak out when she does get out there and talk with people (like mumbling her words when she asks if they would like to buy her service).

When you feel like you’re faking it, it’s almost impossible to keep all of the discomfort you’re feeling from showing up in the subtle ways you hold yourself and act. Even those who are able to “stop up all the leaks” still aren’t presenting themselves as powerfully as they could if they weren’t using so much energy to combat the negative image they have of themselves.

Of course, there is some power in the idea of “fake it ‘til you make it.” You will get more confident the more you do something, but it takes time and that can lead to lost opportunities. So I recommend taking a shortcut to get that confidence more quickly: start doing things to see yourself as the successful person you want to become.

Dress for the part you’re playing.

First, be sure you look the part. There is a truism in career coaching that, instead of dressing for the job you have, you should dress for the job at least one step above you on the corporate ladder. The reason given is usually that you are more likely to get noticed and thought of as being capable of handling that role. This is true and not to be sneezed at, but there is an even more powerful reason in my book. When you dress a certain way, you start to act that way.

I once heard that when judges put on their black robes, something changes inside of them. They feel like a judge and start to act more authoritatively than before. Similarly, military people keep their uniforms carefully tended. Think of the sergeant yelling “Tuck in that shirt. Shine those shoes. You’re a Soldier now!” or words like it to the new recruits at bootcamp. Dressing that way helps the recruits start to act with the conviction that they are soldiers.

So consider how the person you want to be dresses. This is especially important for small business owners. Maybe you think you can get away with wearing old T-shirts and jeans, or even a robe and fuzzy slippers, since most days you don’t see customers. Don’t do it! You need to change the way you see yourself. Dress every day as if you were going to meet a potential customer. The more you dress the part, the more you’ll believe in the “new you.” (Plus, you never know when you’ll meet a potential client at the local cafe.)

For the same reason, keep your grooming up. Successful business professionals typically don’t let their hair get shaggy, or pour on the goth eyeliner of their rebellious youth. You want to catch sight of your reflection in store windows and wonder who that successful person is, not reinforce the idea that you’re somehow not good enough.

Gather photographic proof that you are the person you want to be.

You can get a regular boost from seeing pictures of yourself looking the way you want to look. Perhaps you have a photo of you with an expression of complete determination as you are going down the rapids on your last vacation. Or one from your sister’s wedding where you are holding your head up with great confidence. Maybe you have an easy smile in a candid shot from your last training. Gather up as many photos like this as you can find. Put together a collage of them and hang it on the back of your door. Use them as rotating wallpaper on your laptop. Or put them around your home where you’ll notice them every day.

If you have trouble coming up with photos that speak to you of the success you want, get a good headshot. A lot of people try to save money by hunting around for a decent candid shot from the last company retreat, or use a photo from ten years ago that is “good enough” on their websites, business cards or announcements. That won’t accomplish what you want. You need a headshot that shows the parts of you that are capable, confident, professional—whatever it is you are trying to grow into. Just know that you have those abilities already, even if you haven’t exercised them as much as you’d like. A good photographer can capture the moments when those expressions shine through. You’ll probably have to wade through a lot of mediocre shots, but that’s normal. Don’t get discouraged. There will be a few that make you say “Wow” when you see them.

Don’t skimp on this. Ask around for referrals to a photographer who has a good reputation for getting great shots of businesspeople and go with them. You’re looking for someone who can capture the sparkle in the eye of people who don’t spend their lives in front of a camera. (Not everyone offers this service. I know of a small business owner who went to a photographer who worked with models and actors. She was shocked when she found out he hadn’t been practicing his smile for their shoot. And neither of them liked any of the pics she took.) A good headshot can really remind you of who you are becoming.

Stand up straight and smile. (Really.)

How you hold your body and your expression are additional ways you can start to change how you think of yourself. Remember that soldier? He is taught to stand at attention with “chin up, chest out, shoulders back, stomach in.” Try it now. You actually feel more confident when you stand or sit that way. And there is a famous study in which people making certain expressions (e.g., anger, fear) for a time started to feel the emotion they were mimicking, even though they hadn’t felt that way when they began. So channel your mother. Remind yourself to stand up straight and smile at times during the day. (Don’t smile constantly though. That’s just creepy.)

If you take these simple steps to change the external you, you’ll be on your way to changing the internal view you have of yourself. Next week I’ll teach you a way to change the actual words you think about yourself from negative to positive, another important step in changing how you see yourself so that your internal view doesn’t hold you back.

I’m going to teach you a simple version of tapping to use when you are feeling stressed. Stress can lower your ability to think and be creative, so it’s important to limit stress when you can. Before we start, though, go drink some water. No really, go. This won’t work if you are at all dehydrated. I’ll wait.

Welcome back. Okay, the first step is to write down the feeling you are working on. I’ll be using the word “stress,” but if “overwhelmed,” “underwater,” “scared” or some other word captures what you’re feeling better, please use that. Next, on a scale of 0 through 10 (0 is not at all, 10 is as bad as you can imagine), write down how stressed you are feeling right now.

It’s time to do the actual tapping.

1. Karate Chop. Take two fingers of one hand and tap on the karate chop point on your other hand. That’s the fleshy part on the side of your hand under your little finger. You’re tapping about as hard as if you had a push-button phone with a sticky button. So, you’re not whiffing it and you’re not leaving a bruise, but it’s solid. Now, while tapping on that point, we’re going to say something three times. Repeat after me: “Even though I’m feeling really stressed, I deeply and completely accept myself . . . Even though I’m feeling really stressed, I deeply and completely accept myself . . .  Even though I’m feeling really stressed, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

2. Eyebrow. Now tap right where one of your eyebrows starts and say “This stress.”

3. Side of Eye. Tap on the ridge of bone on the side of your eye. “I am stressed.”

 
 
4. Under the Eye. Tap about and inch below your pupil under your eye. “I’ve got too much going on.”

5. Under Nose. Tap under your nose. “And it’s real.”

 
 
 
6. Chin. Tap on the line on your chin. “I’ve got good reasons to feel stressed.”

We could use two fingers for the next spots, but it will take too long to find them, so let’s do this the easy way.

7. Collarbone. Make a fist and, with the flat part of your knuckles, tap on your collarbone where a man would knot his tie. “I’m really stressed.”

8. Under Arm. Take all four fingers and tap under your arm, about four inches down from your armpit. “All this stress.”

 
9. Top of the Head. Finally, tap with all five fingers on the top of your head and say: “I’m so stressed.”

Okay, stop tapping and take a deep breath. Great. That was a single round of tapping. (By the way, all you really need to say as you are tapping around the points is “this stress,” but I like to keep it interesting.) Check in with your stress level. Is it still the same number you started with, did it go up, or down? Write down the new number. Usually the numbers go down, but sometimes they go up. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just means you are accessing something you’ve been pushing away and now you’ll be able to tap it down.

Time for a second round of tapping:

Karate Chop: “Even though I have this remaining stress, I deeply and completely accept myself.” (Say that two more times.)

Eyebrow: “This remaining stress.”

Side of Eye: “There’s a lot on my plate.”

Under Eye: “I’m not sure how I’ll get it all done.”

Under Nose: “So of course I’m stressed.”

Chin: “Anyone would be.”

Collarbone: “Still, the stress isn’t helping. It’s actually making it worse.”

Under Arm: “Maybe I can let go of some of it.”

Top of Head: “I’m letting go of some of that stress now.”

Stop. Breathe deeply. Check your stress number now. You can keep doing rounds of tapping until you get that number down to zero or until you have to do something else. Usually just a few rounds is enough to get the stress way down from where you started so you can think better and get more done.

There’s lots more you can do with tapping, but sometimes all you need is a quick boost. I hope that was helpful.

I was talking with “Mark” a couple of weeks ago about his blocks to growing his business. Mark recognizes that he procrastinates and misses deadlines. As we delved further, he identified a pattern of starting out on a project for a client with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. He would analyze the client’s problem, identify what they needed to be doing, create a new process, and then implement it. Those first few months were glorious as Mark delivered just what his client needed.

Then the tedium would set in. Maintaining his great process was boring. Newer, more exciting projects would take precedence and he would start to put off doing the first client’s work. Now the client wasn’t so happy with him anymore. And, truth be told, he wasn’t happy with himself, but he couldn’t seem to knuckle down and just do the work.

So, what’s the answer for Mark? Well, there are actually two possibilities. First, we could look for an internal block that is keeping him from simply getting the work done on time. Is there a downside to succeeding — loss of friends, fear of becoming too busy to play with his kids, worry that he will outshine siblings? Does he have “old programming” that kicks in whenever he is doing too well, telling him that only greedy people make a lot of money or that he is too artistic to succeed in business? Once we identify the internal block, we can get rid of it, leaving him free to carry on with the mundane (but still lucrative) part of his business.

Hand-off certain responsibilities so that they don’t become blocks to accomplishment (Photo credit: Patrick Bell / Flickr user druidicparadise)

Before we did that, though, I wanted to check out the second approach. What if his reluctance to do the more mundane work was simply an acknowledgement by some part of him that such work was not his strength. Perhaps he is “a fixer” through and through and the daily work should be turned over to a “doer.” If that were the case, he could turn that block into a strength by building his business around his strength of “fixing.” He could be the one who goes into a client from the outside, puts his new processes in place, then hands the new system back to the client for continued maintenance by one of its employees. Alternatively, if he really wanted to keep the maintenance part of the business, Mark could hire someone himself to do that work while he monitored his employee and personally kept in touch with his client on a regular, but less onerous, basis.

Either approach would allow him to keep doing the analyzing and fixing he truly enjoyed and skip the dull work he hated. His clients would be happier. And he would be seen as the hero instead of the one with a follow-through problem.

Now think of your own business or job. What are your strengths? What do you love to do? What do clients (or bosses) rave about? Now think about ways for you to focus on those strengths while delegating the work you dislike — your “blocks” — to someone else.

In our culture, we usually get hung up at this “handoff” stage on three different things. One, we grew up believing that we have to improve those parts of our work that are weaker. Remember that comment on elementary school report cards, “Needs Work”? We are not taught to think, “I’m not very good at spelling so I’ll give it to Johnny across the table and he’ll give me his multiplication tables.” No, we are told to focus on our weaknesses to improve them. So, first up, remember that you are not in school anymore. You do not have to do everything and do it well. You just need to make sure that someone is doing what needs to be done.

Second, many of us are worried that if we delegate something, it won’t get done right. We want to control everything, and we can’t control what someone else does. This is true. It is also entirely beside the point. You want to make the most of your strengths, so give away something you are weaker at. By definition you aren’t the best person for that job. There are plenty of other people who are better at it. In addition, you can get better results by delegating even when you delegate something you are good at. The art of effective delegation is a topic for another time, but for now just remember the old adage: two heads are better than one. Someone else will have different experiences, viewpoints and ideas to bring to a problem. Their plan and execution could be better than yours. Alternatively, together you can create something better than either of you alone.

Finally, entrepreneurs often get trapped into thinking they have to do everything in their business from answering the phones to changing the light bulbs. Yes, that may save you money when you are starting out, but if you don’t get away from it quickly it will stunt your growth. How can you add a new product or client if you are already working flat out? How can you impress your existing and potential clients if you are completely exhausted from wordprocessing, bookkeeping and filing every night and cleaning the office and filling orders on weekends? The short answer is you can’t. Don’t try. Figure out what your clients come to you for and do that. Everything else is fair game to be delegated.

There are a lot of ways to delegate. For business owners who simply have too much to do, you can contract out tasks (think bookkeeping, virtual office assistance, cleaning services). You could also hire part-time or full-time employees for specific areas of work. If you feel like you are missing something key to making your business grow — say, you love to learn everything you can and stay on the cutting edge of your field but aren’t good at networking and bringing in new clients — you can join with a partner who has that skill.

If you are not a business owner, this approach may be harder to implement but you may still be able to make it work. If you are in a position to hire direct reports to “fill in the gaps” for you, do it. You will probably need to understand what they do, but it will still be better to have someone do the detailed work. If you can’t delegate to a direct report, see if you can develop your strengths to the extent that you become a “star” at what you do and can expect your employer to find others to do what you are not good at. I once worked in a law firm with a partner who excelled at writing appellate briefs. She was one of the few attorneys who was not expected to go out on golf courses and bring in new clients.

What about Mark? He is intrigued by the idea of turning his blocks into strengths, but nevertheless wants to root them out. I’m happy to help him do that since I know, once they are gone, he can still choose to focus on his strengths in his business.

So think about how you might be able to turn your blocks into strengths. It could be a much simpler solution to your problems!

Socrates was perhaps the earliest akrasia theorist (photo credit: Eric Gaba/Wikimedia Commons User “Sting”)

There is even a philosophical term for this kind of behavior that goes back to Socrates: akrasia, or acting against what you know to be your own best interests. It seems so illogical that Socrates apparently claimed that it didn’t happen, since “No one goes willingly toward the bad.” According to Socrates, anyone who does this must simply be ignorant of facts or knowledge. Later philosophers, who recognized that people do in fact act against their better judgment, equated it with a weakness of will. Edmund Spenser even included a temptress in The Faerie Queene, Acrasia, who was the embodiment of “intemperance.” So all these great thinkers have deemed anyone who doesn’t do what he knows would be best for them either stupid or morally wrong.

That kind of thinking shows up all the time to this day. It seems like we in the US blame people especially harshly for not following through on their better judgment. Just call to mind what you’ve heard, or thought, about someone with lung cancer who still smokes. “Weak-willed” is probably the least harsh of the descriptions we use. We find it very difficult to understand such a problem as anything other than some sort of moral failing.

The harshest critic of such a “failing” in us is usually ourselves. I’ve heard clients call themselves “stupid,” “lazy,” “weak,” “hopeless” and a few choice phrases I can’t put into print. These are the only reasons my clients can come up with to make sense of their actions. And they’re wrong.

When we work together on such a block, what almost always comes up is what I call “old programming.” This is a message or lesson they internalized, often when they were young. Here are a few examples I’ve heard:

• I’m not good enough.
• I don’t deserve to succeed.
• People won’t like me if I’m too smart.
• People won’t like me if I’m too successful.
• If I make a lot of money, something bad will happen.
• If I make a lot of money, it means I’m bad.

Maybe the old programming comes from a painful lesson they gleaned from their own experiences (I didn’t get a bike from Santa, so I must be a bad person who doesn’t deserve to get what I want). Maybe their first boss told them they would never amount to anything. Maybe it’s something they heard their mother say (“Rich people are greedy”). Maybe their father called them a loser. Wherever it came from, it was learned so well that it is working in the background and tripping my clients up even when they know what they are supposed to do.

These messages usually aren’t rational, so my client will tell me they don’t really believe them. I agree with them. Their conscious mind would never agree with something that just isn’t true. So I ask them to say the statement out loud and rate it on a 0 – 100% scale for how true it feels. They are often surprised to notice that the feeling can be 70, 90 or even 100% true! This is an emotional belief. You can argue with it rationally all you want; you won’t be able to change it with logic. So I use techniques that eliminate the emotional belief first.

I had one client whose pattern was to flail about, trying to get as much done as possible whenever things got tense at work. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t work on the important projects. Instead he would start a bunch of side projects, jumping around from one to the other, having trouble focusing on anything. Then he wouldn’t finish any of the project he needed to complete. It cost him more than one job.

He used a number of tried and true ways to change this pattern. He kept a to do list with the most important projects at the top. Every day before he started his computer he would think about what he really needed to work on. He set alarms throughout the day to make him stop and think about what he really needed to be working on. He would take a break to clear his head so he could get his focus back. Nothing kept him on track. So he guilt-tripped himself by calling himself names—stupid, crazy, weak. That didn’t work either.

As I worked with him to break his pattern, what came up were a number of memories of his parents. Whenever they got upset, they would take it out on my client, yelling at him to “get to work” and punishing him quite severely if he didn’t look extremely busy. It didn’t matter what he was actually doing—homework, trying to figure out how to fix the car’s starter, or working up enough courage to ask a girl to prom. He had to drop that and start doing something that made it look like he was frantically busy.

After we defused a few of the worst of those memories, his need to flail about at work faded away. He was able to focus and stay on a task until it was finished. He started getting recognized at work with awards, bonuses, and promotions. It was a complete change from his previous pattern. And he didn’t accomplish it by telling himself he was a bad person.

So if you find yourself repeating an old, counter-productive pattern, the first thing you need to do is stop beating yourself up over it. That kind of guilt takes a lot of energy and will simply demotivate you. Instead, remind yourself that you are following old programming. The fact that you have managed to accomplish as much as you have is cause for celebration. When you start thinking that way, you can use the energy you would have wasted guilting yourself and put it toward getting back on track. If your repeating patterns are destructive enough, you probably need to get in touch with someone who can help you root out the underlying emotional belief so it doesn’t keep tripping you up.

Good luck to you!

I started with the obvious: when were they going to hire someone and what could she delegate to that person? Surely someone else could fill orders, I suggested. Oh yes, that was the plan, but they couldn’t hire anyone until she fixed the order forms that only made sense to her and her partner. And she couldn’t fix the forms because she was too busy with everything else. What about farming the forms out to a contractor to fix? Oh, but that would cause her a lot of extra work in the short term to supervise it. Besides, the warehouse was too disorganized for anyone other than Marie and her partner to find anything.

Marie was caught in a Catch-22. She couldn’t take time to hire someone to take over some of her work because she was spending all her time doing that work. There was nothing she could do. At least that was what she was thinking when we started the session. In actuality, there was a lot she could do. However, she couldn’t think of anything at that point. When someone else (like me) pointed out other possibilities, all she could do was think of the reasons why they wouldn’t work.

This is not surprising. When we’re anxious, part of our brain shuts down. At one extreme of anxiety we can go into an actual fight, flight or freeze response in which our entire body prepares to deal with extreme danger and all we can think of is how to protect ourselves. Feeling overwhelmed gets us part way on the road to that extreme response. So the first thing we had to do was bring down Marie’s feeling of being overwhelmed.

Marie and I tapped until her stress and overwhelmed feeling had calmed down to the point where she could access the higher thinking, more creative parts of her brain. Only then were we able to do some brainstorming of ways she could get tasks off her plate. She came back last week and told me that she and her partner had taken part of their half day off to organize the warehouse and that she’d hired a tech-guy who fixed the order form the way they want it. She is planning to start accepting resumes in a couple of weeks.

So what can you do if you are feeling overwhelmed and unable to think of any way to change your situation? The first step, like Marie, is to bring your emotional reaction to all you have to do down to a manageable level. One way to do that is to take a quick break. Do something physical or change your location. Alternatively, you could take some deep, slow breaths all the way down to your navel, leaving your shoulders and chest still — a time-honored relaxation technique. Or do something you already know works for you, like playing catch with the dog or taking a bath or dancing to The Ramones. Don’t rush this step. Until you are more relaxed you won’t be able to even consider new possibilities.

Once you are in a calmer state, go on to the second step: ask someone else what they would do. Make sure this is someone who is not involved in what is making you feel overwhelmed. If Marie had gone to her partner, they would have gone round and round repeating the same discussions they had in the past, getting nowhere. You need a fresh perspective with new ideas.

A colleague, friend, or sibling you respect can fill the bill here. Just be sure that they are someone who can stay calm and not get caught up in your stress and whose opinion you respect. You might also want to tell them that you are looking for ideas, not just a sympathetic ear. Then, when they are giving you their ideas of what they might try in your situation, really listen. Don’t start thinking of all the reasons their suggestions won’t work. Maybe you’ve already considered their first three options and know they won’t, but their fourth one is perfect. Or maybe they have a different way to implement a suggestion that you haven’t thought of. Or maybe what they say will trigger an idea in you that hadn’t occurred to you before. For this to work you need to keep your mind and your ears open.

If you feel like you can’t discuss what is going on with someone else now, you could try imagining what someone you respect would do in your situation. Pick someone you think would really know how to handle it. Maybe it’s your first boss who never got flustered. Maybe it’s your Cousin Emily who has traveled around the world on twelve dollars. Maybe it’s Warren Buffett. It doesn’t have to be someone you know personally. It could even be a fictional character. What would MacGyver do? Then give yourself permission to really explore ways they might handle your overwhelming situation. A little daydreaming might just give you the new perspective you need.

Step Three is to make a plan and follow through with it. You may not be able to fix the problem immediately, but you can make changes that will add up eventually. So even if you can only spare fifteen minutes every week to make a change that will take several months, do it. My guess, though, is if you really allowed yourself to do Steps 1 and 2, you will have an option that will transform your situation much more quickly.

So remember, just because you feel overwhelmed doesn’t mean that you are stuck with the situation you have. Maybe all you need is a little calm and a different perspective.

The Three-Legged Stool is a little speech I give every one of my therapy clients (yes, I’m a psychotherapist in my other life) who suffers from some kind of depression or anxiety. There has been a fair amount of research showing the connection between the three steps I recommend and getting rid of, or at least easing, depression and anxiety. Although I have not done any research on the connection between the three legs and true happiness, my clients’ experiences gives me a strong suspicion that a good grounding in any or all three legs of the stool is also a good springboard to happiness, even in those who are not clinically depressed or anxious. So I offer it to you now.

There are three things you can do to feel better quickly. I think of them as the three-legged stool because having a decent amount of each in your life is like having a stool with three sturdy legs supporting you. While you can actually come out of anxiety and depression (and presumably feel happier) without working on any of the legs of the stool, feeling better seems to take longer and be more difficult for those who do not improve at least one of the legs.

The first, and possibly the most powerful, of the three legs is physical exercise. (This is, in fact, one of the exercises used at companies trying to get “The Happiness Advantage”.) The kind of exercise that works is the kind that gets your heart rate up. You can call it aerobic exercise, cardio work, or just plain breathing harder. The point is not that you are trying to attain the perfect body but that you are making your heart beat a little bit faster for a little while on a regular basis. The recommended dose I have read about is one-half hour per day, four to five days a week, but I find that almost any amount of exercise has some beneficial effect for my clients. So, as long as your doctor says it is all right, go ahead and walk fast, do step aerobics, or go for a bike ride in the great outdoors or the comfort of your local gym. Heck, you could even draw the shades, turn on the radio and do the Twist to the Golden Oldies station. It doesn’t matter how you get your heart pumping. It only matters that you do.

The second leg is decent nutrition. This is a sore spot for most of us as we try to balance eating right with having enough time to do all the things we are committed to doing. The idea of having to spend hours cooking every meal can be daunting, especially for those of us who never got comfortable in the kitchen. And fast food is just so very fast!

Don’t worry that I am going to get all radical on you here. I am not suggesting that you throw out everything in your fridge and only eat macrobiotic, locally grown, organic, freely given fruits and vegetables. Instead, try making small changes as you go along, like adding a piece of fruit to your daily lunch, trading in one cheeseburger for a salad per week, or actually cooking at home on Sundays. Those kinds of small changes over time are much more likely to stick and bring lasting benefits for you than jumping into a complete, extreme overhaul.

One more thing. If you find yourself actually getting anxious fairly frequently, you should cut back on certain things: (i) caffeine; (ii) chocolate; (iii) sugary treats; (iv) starchy foods; and (v) nicotine. All right, don’t shoot the messenger. And maybe you don’t have to cut them all out. However, you should know that people with actual anxiety disorders are more likely to react to those things by getting more anxious. So monitor yourself. If you’re feeling stressed, look back on what you had in the past hour or so. If it’s on the list, it may be contributing to your stress. Sadly, what we tend to reach for when the pressure is on (that bag of chips, cigarette, or chocolate bar) is probably something our body reacts to negatively.

The third leg of the stool is your social network. There is something about each of us that needs social contact, which is face-to-face interaction with people. Phone calls are nice. Email, instant messaging and Skype can be fun. But none of these count as social networking. What you need is regular face time with others. Some people need more than others, but some amount of contact is a basic human need for everyone. People who spend all their time on the computer, even if they are communicating with others online, simply are not getting their necessary dose of social networking. (Okay, video Skype calls are probably better than just voice calls for this, but nothing beats being in the same room with a friend.)

Strangely enough, people who are depressed often withdraw from other people, which is exactly the opposite of what they need. They think, “I feel crummy. I don’t want to go out, and I certainly don’t want anybody to see me looking like this. I’ll wait until I feel better to be with my friends.” However, because of the way we are hardwired, this lack of human interaction actually makes them feel worse. At this point they say, “Look at me. I’m a mess. I’m really not going out now.” And then they feel worse than ever. It is a vicious downward spiral. If you find yourself on it, force yourself to get out and see someone in your social network. Now. No excuses.

Who is part of your social network? They don’t need to be your closest friends to whom you tell your deepest, darkest secrets, although those friends can obviously be part of your network. Your social network is broader than that and is made up of the people in your life who make you feel good about yourself when you are with them. They can be friends or family, but just because a person has such a label does not mean he or she is necessarily good for you. I have heard of plenty of partners, parents, adult children, siblings, and so called “friends” who left my clients feeling worse after each contact. Anyone who brings you down, or has you questioning your worth when you are with them, is not who we are talking about here. (I highly recommend working on changing those relationships immediately, including limiting or ending them if change is not forthcoming.) Additionally, spending time with your young children does not count as social networking. While children can be great and very rewarding, they don’t give you the same kind of social connection you need. You get that from other adults.

So, if you have people in your life now who make you feel good about yourself, seek them out and spend time with them as one of your first steps toward happiness. If you don’t have such people in your life now, or they are all too far away for regular face-to-face interactions, it is time to build a new network. Take a class where you will meet others with similar interests. Go to a friendly church, mosque, or temple. Volunteer for some good cause where you will be working with others. I have even been known to send clients who have just moved to the area and know nary a soul to sit in a cafe or local mall, just to see real people. It’s a start.

That’s the speech. If you want to feel happier, a good place to start is to work on at least one of the three legs of your own stool—preferably the shortest, or least strong. You don’t have to do so to become happier, but if you do I suspect you will find it improves your mood quite quickly.

Photo credit: Besceh31, via Wikipedia—http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TabouretAFDB.jpg

A month or so ago someone sent me a link to a video of a TEDTalk by Shawn Achor, a former professor at Harvard who went on to found a corporate strategy firm that researches and applies the principles of positive psychology within organizations. The video is a lot of fun and worth watching if only for the laughs. But there’s more to it than just the jokes.

Near the end, Achor says something that should make everyone from the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to an independent professional sit up and take notice:

“If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a “Happiness Advantage,” which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than a brain at negative or neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral, or stressed.“

According to Achor, then, our usual way of thinking that “If I only work harder, I’ll be more successful and then I’ll be happier” is completely backwards. Instead, if we put the focus on being happier, we are more likely to be successful because of that “Happiness Advantage.”

I find this fascinating and not a bit surprising. Think about it. When you’re in a good mood, don’t you get more done almost effortlessly? And when do those great ideas come to you: when you are under deadline pressure or worrying about whether you have enough clients or when you’re relaxing in the shower?

Of course, the trick is figuring out how to get happier. A good place to start is the exercises Achor’s firm puts employees of its clients through for twenty-one days in a row to get those big productivity gains, which he rattles off at the end of the video:

• Every evening write down three new things from the day that you are grateful for.
• Journal about one positive thing you’ve experienced in the past day.
• Exercise. (The most effective kind of exercise here is the kind that gets your heart rate up. People who study this kind of thing recommend exercising four to five days a week, half an hour at a time. That is ideal, but I usually recommend just doing what you can even if it is only ten minutes here or there. It’s a start and it can raise your mood.)
• Meditate.
• Once a day write a letter or email praising or thanking someone in your social support network for something they’ve done.

Now, some of you will watch this video and come away unconvinced. The idea that success, particularly monetary success, is the road to happiness is so ingrained in our culture that it can be hard to wrap our minds around the idea that we will be more successful if we teach ourselves to be happier first. So for you doubters out there, I’ve got some more research.

Some of those positive psychology researchers looked at people who get raises or win big prizes. What they have found is that the initial boost to the person’s mood lasts only as long as it takes him to get used to his newfound status—from a few months to, at most, a couple of years. Most people go back to their pre-winning mood, reverting to what has been normal for them, within about six months. (The only time that having more money improves someone’s mood over the long term is when it moves them out of poverty and up into a middle-class lifestyle. That kind of change can make a huge difference.)

So it turns out that having a shorter commute actually leads to higher levels of happiness than getting a raise. Yet most people take the raise over the commute. Go figure.

Please note that happiness is not the same as the absence of unhappiness. A neutral state does not get you Achor’s “Happiness Advantage.”

However, if you find yourself generally down or stressed out you will probably have more difficulty getting to that happier state. If it’s bad enough, of course, get yourself to a therapist. Now you know there is a good business reason for taking care of that problem.

If you don’t need a therapist but could raise your mood or lower your stress a bit, you could try my 3-Legged Stool: (i) exercise (yep, this one does double duty in getting you past unhappiness and into the happiness realm); (ii) eat right; and (iii) get more face time with your social network. There is a lot more I can say about this. Since it is so important, I’ll devote next week’s tip to giving more details about the 3-Legged Stool.

When you are stressed, your focus narrows. This is great if you have a deadline and need to get that presentation ready. It narrows even more if you are in danger—say a tiger is chasing you. This is also great, since you don’t need to do calculus then, you need to focus everything you’ve got on running like crazy to get away from the danger. The trouble with stress is that sometimes it turns off the areas of your brain that handle higher thinking in order to escape danger when the “danger” is something like an irate customer. Just when you need to be able to think rationally, even creatively, to fix what is happening, all you can do is go over and over the problem, getting more and more stressed and tense.

So what do you do when you’re on that hamster wheel? The counter intuitive answer is to first get rid of the stress so that you can then deal effectively with the situation causing the stress. The good news is that this can be easier to do than you would think.

To get my clients to let go of their stress, I did EFT (a technique involving tapping on acupressure points) with them. If you are curious, you can read more about how to use EFT to reduce stress here. [ However, if you don’t want to take the time to learn to use the technique, you still may be able to get similar results. What you need to do is take a break.

There are a lot of ways to do it. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Go for a bike ride.
• Listen to upbeat music.
• Take a nap.
• Dance to party music.
• Call a friend.
• Call your mother.

The main thing is to change what you are doing so you stop thinking about what is stressing you out. The most effective ways to do this that I’ve found are taking physical action (so run up and down the stairs a few times), change your scenery (get out of your office and walk around the block), and listen to happy music (but stay away from heartbreak ballads or frenetic electric stuff). By all means, combine them if you wish. Pop in your headset, get out the tennies and walk to the next neighborhood.

Even if you can’t leave your desk you can still let go of some stress. Just do deep breathing, which forces your body to relax. When your body relaxes, your mind follows. Here’s how: close your eyes, take a breath that goes all the way down to your navel, leaving your shoulders and chest still. Let it out easily. Now take another. And another. That’s all there is to it. Simple and effective.

Taking a break is a short-term fix. Sometimes that’s all you need. It’s the equivalent of “sleeping on it.” You stop thinking about something and the answer comes to you.

But I know that sometimes the stressor, or what is stressing you out, is unavoidably in your life for the long term. There is no “answer” that will make it go away. Still, unless your stress is helping you (and it almost never does) you will do better if you can let go of your stressful reaction to the stressor. For long-term stressors I suggest three main approaches: (i) half an hour of exercise, the kind that raises your heart rate, four to five days a week; (ii) face time with people who, when you’re with them, you feel good about yourself; and, (iii) EFT. I’ve noticed that both exercise and socializing with your peeps tends to take longer to have an effect than EFT — and you have to keep doing them, unlike EFT — but they have the great advantages that you can start right away and do them on your own.

So now you know what you need to do if your stress is blocking you. Good luck, and please let me know if you have any other ways you have found to let go of your stress.

Next time I’ll tell you about something that can increase your productivity thirty-one percent. And it won’t hurt a bit!

Go somewhere you won’t be distracted. Bring a notebook and pen because you will want to take notes. Get comfortable and close your eyes. Now imagine that you have achieved everything you have been striving for in your work. Maybe you are now the CFO of a large company. Maybe your business has topped five million in sales and you are hiring your tenth employee. Whatever it is, be as specific as you can.

Picture yourself with as much detail as you can: how do you look? What are you wearing? What’s your expression — relaxed, grim, excited? What are you doing — meeting with a lot of potential clients, hunched in front of your computer, shaking hands with the board members? How are those around you treating you? How much time do you see yourself having for family, relaxation and vacations?

Open your eyes and write down what you saw. Don’t gloss over any negatives — they are the most important indicators of internal blocks. Now write down how you felt. Were you happy, relaxed, excited? Were you relieved? Did you feel blah, bored, or disconnected?

Now close your eyes again and imagine how others are reacting to your success. Include employees, partners, and clients or direct reports, co-workers, and bosses of course. But also think about other important people in your life, like your significant other, your kids, your parents, your siblings, your friends. It doesn’t matter if they are estranged or even dead for this exercise. If they were important to you, for good or bad, include them. And don’t lump them together, but think about each one individually. Imagine what they are saying to you when you tell them how well you are doing. Now imagine what they are really thinking.

Open your eyes and write down the highlights and lowlights of what you heard. Did your sister sneer that now you’re too important to come to family get-togethers? Did your golf foursome complain that you have nothing to talk about since you can’t join in the weekly bitch-session? Did your father secretly think that he’s not good enough now that you’re so successful? Write it all down, even the responses that came up that you know they would never have in real life. Next write down the feelings you had while telling them of your success: Generous? Excited? Grateful? Resentful? Angry? Enervated?

One more time: close your eyes and picture yourself with all your goals achieved. What are you going to do next? Enjoy your new position? Sell the business and start another one? Take more vacations and finally start to enjoy yourself? Retire early and go into teaching? Go on a permanent vacation?

Now, look back over your notes. First, notice the negative reactions of others, real or imagined. Make a note of them. These are likely some internal blocks for you that you will want to work on. Sometimes just recognizing that you imagined a response that would never actually happen is enough to let go of the block. It can also be enough to look at a belief that someone might be angry or envious of your success and realize that it is just not that important to you. Sometimes it takes more effort to get beyond such a block. Either way, identifying the block is the first step to getting rid of it.

Your negative emotions when visualizing your success also point to probable internal blocks. They can be anything from feeling like you don’t deserve such success or being afraid that success means you’ll have to pay in other ways, like working too hard, missing out on family life, or having something bad happen to balance the good (a la The Monkey’s Paw). These feelings don’t have to be rational to block you. Again, make a note of them. Some will go away once you’ve recognized them; some will need more work.

What I want to focus on here, however, is the really negative reactions to success. Did you feel terrible, or completely unemotional? Did you want to make a huge change, like starting a completely new career or escaping from work forever? If not, great. You are on the right track. Keep taking steps towards your goals. (FYI, a desire to sell one company and start another is the typical reaction of a serial entrepreneur, not usually the sign of being in the wrong profession.)

But if you did have one or more of those highly negative reactions to success, that can be a big sign that you are chasing the wrong goals entirely. This can happen if you’ve internalized someone else’s goals for you, often a parent’s or a spouse’s. Or if you’ve decided to go after a job just because you think it will bring you the most money, even though the work numbs your soul. It sometimes happens when the job (including running a company) turns out to be different from what you expected in a way that feels wrong, either morally or simply by not matching who you are.

If your visualized reaction to achieving all your goals is this strong, I have a difficult message for you: no amount of trying to get past your blocks will lead to success with your goal. This is for two reasons. First, you will sabotage yourself over and over if you are going after the wrong goal. A big part of you doesn’t want that goal, and it will keep getting in the way of doing what you need to do to achieve it. Second, even if you manage to push yourself past these internal blocks and reach that goal, you won’t feel any real satisfaction in achieving it. Remember how you felt when you visualized that success—the anger, or dejection, or numb feelings? That’s what you will get if and when you actually put in all the effort and “win.” That is not my definition of success, and I suspect it is not yours, either.

My message that you really need to change the track you are on is not just difficult, though. It is also liberating. You can change. In fact, you really need to. And when you do, these huge blocks, like procrastination or patterns of self-sabotage, will change too. Then you can achieve real, meaningful success.

So if this is you, get started. If you know what you really should be doing with your life, start taking steps to make it happen, even if that first step is just saving more money to give yourself more flexibility to change. If you don’t know what you should, or even could, be doing, now is the time to let yourself daydream. What did you want to do before you chose the path you are on currently? What do you like to do now? If you knew you would be successful, what would you do? If you feel stuck and the daydreaming isn’t bringing up any thoughts, get your hands on a book by Barbara Sher called I Could Do Anything: If I only knew what it was. It’s an oldy but a goody, and it is full of things to do that will get your brain moving again.

Good luck to you!

There is a seventh technique I use, however, that readers can “try at home.” It can also be powerful, but it takes a bit longer to explain so I decided to describe it here where I can do the technique justice. It’s called “visualization.”

Here’s how you do it. Take something that you have been putting off, like networking at a monthly gathering in your industry or making those cold calls. Turn off all the distractions (yes, I mean close your laptop and turn off the phone), get comfortable and close your eyes. Stay sitting up, though, since falling asleep would be counterproductive here.

Now picture a movie screen with you sitting in the auditorium in front of it. On that screen play a scene of yourself doing the activity you have been avoiding. As you watch the scene, make sure that you are doing the activity just the way you want to in real life. But there might be outtakes. So if you see yourself trip on your way to shaking someone’s hand at the networking event, stop the scene, hit the “rewind” button until you get back to a place in the scene where you were doing fine, then push play again. This time watch yourself walking easily over to the other person, smiling and shaking their hand while introducing yourself. You only want to watch yourself doing the activity the right way.

Heck, you might as well see yourself being the best networker on the planet, full of poise and confidence, putting the other person at ease. Put in lots of detail—visual, verbal and kinesthetic, or how it feels physically. The more detail you have, the more powerfully it will work to get you moving.

Also, be sure to change the scene. Once you are comfortable watching an easier version (say, seeing yourself going up to someone standing alone), make it more challenging (approaching a group of two or three people talking together). With each new version of the scene, make sure you are acting just the way you want to no matter what the other people are doing. In fact, make sure some of the versions you watch have people acting in ways you don’t like so you can practice reacting in the professional manner you want to convey at all times.

In addition to making what you do in the scene just right, you also want to make sure that your emotions are on track. So if you are watching yourself walk up to that group of people with a smile and an open expression but inside you feel pure dread, stop, rewind, get yourself comfortable again, then play the rest of the scene over with that comfortable feeling. You may need to do a lot of rewinding to get this part right, but it is very important that you not ignore any negative feelings that come up. You’re programming yourself to take this action in the real world just the way you visualize it, so don’t program in negative emotions. You’ll want to be calm, cool and collected in real life so visualize yourself that way. You may even want to play around with getting yourself to feel enthusiastic, or excited, or some other more positive emotion that would suit your action.

As you can guess, you will probably need to have more than one ten-minute visualization session to really work through any action you have been avoiding. But, hey, if you are already not doing this very important thing, you have that time just lying around, right? Plus, if it is that important to your business, it’s worth not just getting yourself to do it but also to do it right.

And visualization will help with both of those things. First of all, the more you see yourself taking an action, the more a part of your brain accepts that you have already done it. So when it comes time to walk in the door of the networking event, you will do a lot less sweating about doing something new or different from what you usually do if you have been visualizing it beforehand. It will feel like it’s normal, just something you do. Second, you will be much more likely to ace the networking right from the beginning rather than having a long ramp-up period where you practice networking by going to events and awkwardly sticking your hand out at people while trying to remember your own name.

There was a study done that shows the efficacy of visualization. In the study, a bunch of non-basketball players were tested on how many free throws they could make out of ten tosses. Then they were divided into three groups. The first group actually practiced free throws. The second group visualized making free throws. And the third group went for a walk or something. Then they were tested again. Not surprisingly, the first group made more free throws than they had before they practiced. Also not surprising, the third group made about the same number of free throws as they had the first time around. What was really surprising was that the second group — the ones who only thought about making free throws — improved almost as much as the first group.

So now that you know this visualization thing actually works, why not try it on something you’ve been avoiding. Do it now. At least schedule it on your calendar for ten minutes every day for the next week. Because if you don’t take action now you will let it slide and never get around to doing it. But that’s a topic for another article.

Happy visualizing!