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This coming week is the week people can really get stressed out if they work on it. We’re rapidly approaching the heart of the holiday season. Hanukkah begins on December 21st and runs through the 28th, Christmas is coming up next Sunday the 25th, and then Kwanzaa begins on the 26th. It can be a busy and stressful time, with all of the celebrations, traveling and gift-giving attached to the holidays. We all need to keep a sense of humor and laugh and enjoy this time of year. Don’t knock somebody down trying to get into a parking space. Remember, this is the time to feel the spirit of love and appreciation and thankfulness. Keep things in perspective as you go along—even if you don’t get all of the shopping done that you expected to. It’s a special and meaningful time. Reach out and give somebody a hug and tell them that you love them—that’s probably the most important gift.
I came across a wonderful quote by Henri Nouwen. He was a Catholic Priest from Canada who spent much of his life ministering to the less fortunate and he has written some great things over the years. Just listen to this as a way to think of this holiday season:
“More and more the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, sit up on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have time to practice the simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, and to be a part of some impressive project is so strong, that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans; not to organize people around an urgent cause; not to feel that you are working directly with social progress—but I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and to tell your own. To let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them but you really love them.”
Isn’t that wonderful? I think that we get busy with work, busy with shopping, and aren’t practicing the whole wonderful ministry of presence—simply being present with people we care about. So today and throughout the holidays, consider the idea of just being present with each other. Maybe what you ought to be doing first is to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own. Let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, you truly love them. I think that’s what the holiday season is all about. Take care.
In last week’s blog, I started telling you about an effective model you can use to achieve balance so you can enjoy your life more and resist stress. The acronym for the PACT model stands for Perspective, Autonomy, Connectedness, and Tone. Adopting this model and putting it into practice on a daily basis is a fabulous way to keep your stress level in check and keep your work and life in balance—the ultimate goal being a happier and more peaceful day-to-day existence. Who wouldn’t want that?
We started last week with P: Perspective. Keeping good and bad experiences in perspective can contribute greatly to a feeling of well-being and help your stress level remain low.
A: Autonomy
The next element that contributes to peak periods of happiness and high stress resistance is autonomy. Autonomy is a feeling of having control over your own life. People with a high sense of autonomy usually have a clear sense of their own identity, feel the freedom to make choices in their lives, have career or job options and sufficient skills, and see their daily activities as moving them toward their long- and short-range goals. If we ask individuals a single question—Are you in control of your life?—and they answer “no,” we know that those individuals are at a much higher risk for illness.
The lack of power and control felt by those who are underprivileged, really struggling to make ends meet, in a situation where there is racial or sexual discrimination occurring, or simply stretched to their limits in terms of workload, is the very opposite of autonomy and control. People who feel powerless are under the most stress and are often the most angry. These people often have the most severe health problems of any group in our society.
On the other hand, people who are good time managers, who feel that they are managing their daily lives well and have the skills to do it, are the ones who are likely to feel the most control and the most autonomy. In their stories of peak periods of happiness, these people often referred to two or three weeks or a month when they were in a special place and they could decide what it was that they were going to do each day. Others referred to a job they had or a project they were working on where they could choose the direction in which they were going and felt in control of the situation.
Clearly, most people can’t go through life on a vacation or in complete control of everything—but certainly a young mother with two toddlers running around and no money for a babysitter has a different degree of autonomy than a young mother whose youngest child has just entered the first grade. The latter may have six open hours for deciding how to spend her time. Is she going to play tennis or sleep until 10:00 a.m., take a class to further a career goal, or start a part-time job? What is her choice for today?
One of the most powerful ways to build control and choice in your life is through the development of key skills—skills like knowing how to manage others effectively, being a good parent, managing your time well, or helping people feel like they are doing their jobs well. Again, people often have different degrees of autonomy at home and at work. Some people do very well at the office—they set goals, hold committee meetings, participate in performance reviews, and they progress well. At home, however, they never have time to exercise, break appointments with themselves and other family members for scheduled “quality time,” or they might have half-finished projects around the house they have been putting off for years.
C: Connectedness
The third ingredient in stress resistance and high life satisfaction is connectedness. Connectedness relates to the quality of relationships in peoples’ lives. People who report high connectedness often feel they have positive relationships with friends, family, self, coworkers and supervisors. Connectedness also relates to a feeling of contentment and resonance with one’s physical environment. You can have a highly connected experience watching a beautiful sunset or walking into a home that you’ve decorated because it feels good to you. In fact, there are good reasons for people, when they first move into a home or a new community, to spend time decorating that new environment so that they feel more connected to it. You can have a highly connected experience having a cup of coffee with a friend or sitting in bed at night cuddled up to a loved one.
My definition of low connectedness is when you do not feel you are an integral part of your environment. For example, if you move to a new community and go away for the weekend, then return and find that nobody knows that you were gone and came back, it can be an indicator that you are not very connected to your neighborhood. In fact, after a move most people feel totally disconnected and many people report a great deal of illness during the year following a major relocation.
In their stories of peak periods of happiness, people often referred back to a time when they were first married and didn’t have much money and so did more things at home, such as played a lot of bridge because that was all they could afford to do. Often, however, their friendships were solid and meaningful. Men often referred back to fraternity days in college or to a high school group of friends when connections were strong and non-competitive.
All types of relationships you have affect your connectedness, but the most important relationships are those with your spouse and your boss. In fact, the number one predictor of health at the worksite is your relationship with your boss. A bad relationship with a supervisor can make people sick. A good relationship can enhance a feeling of overall well-being and productivity. On the home front, are you spending quality time with your spouse? Do you make special efforts to plan “memory-building” times together? In general, have you spent the time that you need to nourish the most important relationships in your life?
T: Tone
The fourth element in the PACT model is tone. This important concept includes how you feel about yourself physically. This includes the way you look, your health and energy level, your sense of fitness, even the way you are dressed and the colors you are wearing. People with high tone generally have high energy levels, maintain a proper weight, have sound nutrition and feel really good about their physical appearance. In their stories of peak periods of happiness men very often thought back to high school or college when they were in the best shape they had ever been in—easily able to bench press 300 pounds or run several miles. Women often talked about the time when they were 10 pounds lighter and could fit into all the clothes in their closet. Generally both men and women talked about a time when they were active, looked good, had an abundance of energy, and paid attention to their physical health.
Over the years I’ve found that when everything else seems to be floundering and I feel my balance is slipping away, often the quickest and easiest ingredient to impact is tone. Tone is often easiest because it lends itself better to measurement and you can see concrete results more quickly.
Balancing the Elements
What has been helpful to me about this model is that the elements of perspective, autonomy, connectedness, and tone can be a dynamic balance for one another. As an example, what do we do in our society when someone becomes ill or injured and is hospitalized? By definition, their physical health (tone) is low now. So what do we do? Customarily we send this person a card. What might the card say? We care about you (connectedness). This won’t last forever (perspective). Soon you’ll be up and about (tone) doing what you want to do (autonomy). We may even send flowers to help him or her connect better to a sterile hospital room.
Why I like the PACT is it helps. It’s like a good diet. It will work even better for you as you personalize it and make it yours. I have used this model for many years now to keep my own life in balance and monitor the times when balance isn’t present. If I notice I’m not looking forward to a given day or time, or I feel my energy is lagging, I try to step back and ask myself: What’s feeling out of balance? Am I so over-committed or over-stressed that I’m doing what everyone else wants me to do today without any time for myself? Or am I upset about a relationship with someone close to me? Or does my house feel untidy with lots of undone tasks and thus doesn’t provide a nourishing harbor from the stormy world? Or have I lost track of what all my efforts are for? Or am I confused about why I’m working 12 hours today and worked 12 hours yesterday and don’t have time to see the people I love?
The PACT model has helped me, and it can help you, identify what’s wrong when you’re feeling out of balance and pay more attention to life when you are feeling great. When your life is in balance, stress naturally loses its grip and you are able to enjoy life on a higher level.
Even though most of us know about the need to have balance in our lives, the journey from knowing it to actually doing it isn’t easy. Looking at our lives with the help of a model we can use and reuse can be a great way to keep stress at bay and help us achieve the work/life balance we need.
The model I’m referring to was drawn from a study about peak periods of happiness in people’s lives, as well as various studies of the effect of stress upon health. Researchers were looking for common elements that explained the phenomena of stress survival or optimal well being. They hoped that such identification could lead to prevention of strain caused by excess stress and a model for improving well being.
Peak Periods of Happiness
In this study, people were asked to describe a three-week or longer “peak period of happiness” in their lives—a time when they felt that life was truly worth living. Ask yourself: When was the happiest period of time in my life? When did I feel that life was the most fun, the most meaningful, the most alive? Where was I? What was I doing? Who was I with? A researcher named Herbert Shepard asked people these questions. As he collected several hundred interviews, he began to notice that there were common elements in the lives of people as they remembered and described these wonderful periods of time.
The Impact of Stress
The other studies are about the impact of stress in a person’s life. After studying people who had experienced a number of stressful events over the course of a 12-month period of time, researchers found that 80 percent of such highly stressed individuals developed a physical illness within the next 12 months. The conclusion was that illnesses such as diabetes, ulcers, cancer, and heart disease quite often follow a very stressful period of time in a person’s life.
The other side of this research is interesting as well. Researchers asked: Why did the other 20 percent of those highly stressed individuals not get sick? What is happening in their lives that is enabling them to remain stress-resistant, or “psychologically hardy”? Interviews with these stress-resistant people revealed that they had some important common ingredients in their lives. Such “stress survivors” survived 12 months of frequent and/or intense stress-inducing life events without becoming seriously ill during, or one year following, the onslaught of high stress.
As luck would have it, not only were the researchers able to identify the elements related to both peak periods of happiness and stress survival, but the two sets of elements were also found to be fundamentally similar to one another. When I studied this research , the similarity of the results of the two investigations confirmed the my feeling that a simple model for life balance and satisfaction would enable many of us to better manage the day-to-day options and demands of a busy life.
The PACT Model
For convenience, I’ll be referring to four elements—Perspective, Autonomy, Connectedness, and Tone—as the PACT model of life balance and satisfaction. The remainder of this article will explain these four key concepts and suggest how to achieve a balance among these elements.
P: Perspective
The first element that can create both happiness and stress resistance in your life is perspective. Perspective can be defined as the “big picture” of life. People with good perspective know their purpose and direction in life and value their past experiences while still having a keen sense of the present moment. Perspective is that broad picture of where you’ve been and where you’re going that sets the context for this moment and for today.
An example of perspective for me has always been Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a World War II concentration camp survivor who wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning. When Frankl was first imprisoned, his captors burned the only copy of a prized manuscript he had written, right in front of him. As a result, his main purpose in life became to live through that horrible experience and rewrite his manuscript. It turned into an obsession. While in this camp, he observed that, in this most degrading of all human situations, some people managed to keep going and survive, but others seemed to lose their will to continue—one day they would refuse to get out of bed in the morning and two weeks later they would be dead. Frankl’s observation was that the people who were able to keep going month after month and year after year were the ones who had a purpose in their lives they could hang on to—a great love they wanted to return to, work they felt compelled to finish, a strong spiritual direction, or even a strong desire to get through each day and help others through the dreadful experience.
For each of us, perspective can translate into goals we want to achieve, values we want our lives to reflect, or a sense of living each day as if it might be our last. It’s helpful to think about perspective at home and perspective at work. Some of us have a very good idea of our work goals—our professional direction in life—but our personal life needs some thinking about. For others it’s just the opposite—we do well at home, but our career goals are uncertain. For many people, the challenge is keeping a balance between work and home that is comfortable and at the same time allows them to obtain goals in both worlds.
Any time there’s a big change in our lives, our perspective is liable to drop. Certainly a person going through a divorce, a person who has just been fired, or someone who has to make a major change in his or her life for any reason may be going through a period of low perspective. Most people, however, ultimately find that this period of low perspective becomes an opportunity for growth in their lives, even if it doesn’t feel comfortable or familiar.
Next week: Part 2 – Autonomy, Connectedness, and Tone
This is the time of year when a lot of people get stressed. You know—running around, making sure they have every present bought and everything done for holiday and new years parties and all that. The holidays can turn into a burden rather than a blessing. This is supposed to be the season of joy and love, not of trouble and hassle. Stress is a major problem this time of year because people have so many “to do” lists. They forget why they’re doing it and get too much into the doing. Too often this time of year we’re human doings rather than human beings. I just want you to check yourself, as I need to check myself as I run around and try to get things done at the end of the year, that I’m a human being, not a human doing. It doesn’t mean that you can’t get things done and crossed off your list—just don’t make “list accomplishment” the goal of this holiday season.
Make LOVE the goal of the season. Reach out to everyone you talk to and wish them the greatest holiday—the greatest Christmas—the greatest New Year. Just tell them you care about them. Maybe you couldn’t find right present for someone. Perhaps you should sit down and write that person a note about how much you care about them and let them know you’ll send them something after the holidays. Sometimes during this time of year, I like to go through my phone directory and call people I haven’t talked to in a while, and just tell them I care about them. That, to me, is a joyful thing to do this time of year. So what can you do to make this a joyous time, rather than a hassled time?
Have a wonderful Christmas day. Life is a very special occasion if you keep your “to do” list in perspective.
The holiday season presents some different challenges for leaders. Here is some advice I’ve found can help you to get the most out of this special time.
Get in the holiday spirit. It’s important for leaders to get into the holiday spirit. It’s a wonderful time of the year when people want to feel good and connected to each other. It is a time to capitalize on team building and allow workers to get to know each other better. Yet often managers end up acting like Scrooge by being too busy or demanding of themselves and of their people. Bosses can really ruin the holidays by being grumpy, under stress and too demanding. Try to be a little more lenient, supportive and willing to “go with the flow” in appreciating the time you have and the people you have to work with.
Focus on what has to be done. It’s important during the holidays to be clear with everybody on their key goals. What are the significant things that really have to get done during the holiday season to keep business running as usual? It’s good to write down these goals so that people are better able to work harder earlier in the season if they are going to be less focused later on. This is especially true if, for your business, the holiday season is one of the busiest time of the year.
Be flexible with employees. Be more flexible in terms of the hours your people work, depending on their needs. Is there a way they can have a couple of hours off so they can get some of their shopping done and make the time up later? A lot of people have family and friends fly in and would love to have flexible work hours to accommodate them. How could the company help employees save time? For example, at our company, we have people fill out a form that allows them to mail their packages from our company.
Avoid negative news. Don’t use the holiday season to give employees negative news. It is not a time of the year to catch people doing things wrong, nor it is a time to accent the negative. Instead, do your best to redirect employees without being punitive. Save more substantive performance issues for after the new year. And don’t turn what should be good news into bad news by poor timing. For example, if you are planning to give employees extra days off between Christmas and New Year’s Day, tell them far enough in advance so that they can make plans for that time. Otherwise, they might end up at home watching television and griping about you.
Be sensitive to different religions. Be sensitive to those who don’t celebrate Christmas. You might set aside some time when people could share information about their religious or cultural celebrations. For example, one of our Jewish employees had people who wanted to find out more about the meaning of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights celebration, meet him for lunch.
Be creative about celebrating the season. Your celebration doesn’t have to be lavish for it to be effective. You might want to do an activity rather than hosting a party where everyone just sits around and drinks. It might even allow for more bonding to do something like caroling that allows for a shared experience away from the office. Another fun group activity that we’ve done is to take the time for our work group to read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol together, giving each employee a role to read. Activities such as these can help you avoid getting into the position where you have to worry about serving alcohol to people and having them drive home.
Whenever possible, include families in holiday activities. We had an artist come to our company one year during the holidays to teach everybody how to paint landscapes. There were four sessions and everyone could bring their spouses, kids, and parents. The artist dressed everybody up in French berets and artist aprons. At the end of the activity she touched up the pictures and then we had them framed. It was really a lot of fun.
Have fun with celebrations. Think of fun ways to celebrate the season. I love those parties where everyone buys a three-to-five dollar gift, numbers the gift, and then people pick numbers and open the gifts one at a time. The person opening the gift has the option of keeping what they open or trading it for one of the already opened gifts. That can turn into a pretty lively time! You can also have people exchange funny cards that they have either bought or made. You could even set somebody up to be a “Secret Santa,” leaving anonymous gifts for random employees.
Make the spirit last all year long. A few years ago, after the holiday season had ended, several of our employees at The Ken Blanchard Companies asked, “Why does the spirit have to end at the end of the year?” From that question sprang an employee-run program called “Blanchard for Others” which sponsors local charities and hosts all kinds of fundraising events through the year. Each year they raise tens of thousands of dollars for charity. We now have the holiday spirit year round.
So get in the holiday spirit this year! Go with the flow, lighten up, and enjoy this special time with your employees and with your families.
I have a long-time friend named Walter Green who just wrote a book called This Is the Moment! Walter, in his 70th year, decided he would make a list of the people who really impacted his life at different stages. He had to locate some he had lost contact with, but over the year he traveled the country and met with 44 people to thank them and tell them how important they were to his life. I think the book’s real message is the enormous power of gratitude. Walter wrote this book to motivate all of us.
Are there people in your life who have really made a difference? Have you reached out to thank them? Have you thanked your parents, friends, mentors—perhaps a teacher, professor, or colleague who had an impact on your life? Don’t wait to reach out. This is the moment.
Yesterday, just one day after being inspired by Walter’s book, I had the perfect opportunity to put his idea into action. Every morning, our newspaper delivery person drives through our oval driveway and drops off the paper right at our front door so we don’t have to go to the end of the driveway to retrieve it. I’ve always wanted to thank her for this courtesy, and yesterday morning I saw her through the window just as she was getting out of the car to deliver the paper. I met her at the front door and said, “I just want to tell you how fabulous and caring you are, and what a difference you make, and how much we appreciate what you do,” and I gave her a little money. Her face just lit up and she almost had tears in her eyes as she gave me a hug. She said, “You’re really special,” and I said, “I’m not special. You are.”
This morning, tucked into the newspaper, I found a note from her. On the outside of the envelope was written: “To a great and loyal customer.” This is so consistent with what Blanchard research has found: If you hire passionate people, they want to go out and take care of your customers. Then the customers become loyal and get excited about the company and tell others, and it keeps going back and forth—and that’s what makes a great organization.
On the card inside it said: “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You made my day yesterday. I was flying high on a cloud of appreciation. Your recognition of my service to you has revived me. Thank you for taking the time to think about me.” Then she signed her name and phone number and wrote: “Please call if you ever have a bad or poor quality paper delivered.” Isn’t that amazing? It made me feel good to read her note.
I hope this motivates you to reach out and thank people who have done special things for you—people who have made a difference in your life, whether big or small. If we all took the time to do this, think of the difference we could make in the lives of others. So reach out and say “thank you.” It’s such an easy way to make another person feel special, and it is guaranteed to boost your spirits, too. Have a great week.
I had a wonderful time recently, playing in a charity golf tournament with coworkers Steve Murphy, Randy Conley, and Brent Bystedt. It was really a lot of fun; we played a scramble.
One of the things it reminded me of—and this is so important to Colleen Barrett and Herb Kelleher at Southwest—is you really have fun in life and do well when you take what you do seriously, but yourself lightly. That was really evident as we were playing golf. We were trying to do the best we can, but we were laughing and enjoying ourselves. I don’t think there’s anybody who is more fun to be around than Steve Murphy. He’s one of our great consulting partners and he is absolutely fun. He takes what he does seriously but himself lightly, and I think that’s what endears him to clients. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently saw a wonderful piece about “If I Had My Life to Live Over.” I thought it was worth sharing with you. It’s from the late Nadine Stair of Louisville, Kentucky, who wrote it when she was 85 years old:
If I had my life to live over again,
I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.
I’d relax.
I’d limber up. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently I spent some time with Tom Crum and his daughter, Alia. Tom’s a good buddy of ours and is an Aikido expert. He wrote a wonderful book called Three Deep Breaths. I think I probably have shared these at some point but they are worth repeating… You know, as you head off any day in the car – I think the car is a wonderful place to quiet yourself if you don’t listen to the radio.
The first breath is the Centering Breath – you just breathe in, into your center right below your belly button. Just center yourself and feel your breath. Read the rest of this entry »
