How To Make Those Important Changes

If you were to ask a caterpillar if she wanted to become a butterfly, I suspect the answer would be something along the lines of, “Absolutely yes! I would love to float, fly and flit between all the pretty flowers. This crawling around is driving me crazy."

However, if you were to re-interview that caterpillar, after she had laboriously secured herself in a protective place, shed her entire skin, and began to dissolve her existing body into a stem-cell-like, undifferentiated soup - within the darkness of the chrysalis – you might get a different answer. Perhaps, “I had no idea change would be so difficult.” or “Help, get me out of here, I am scared of losing everything.” “Maybe this becoming a butterfly is not such a good idea.”

The point is, we may all desire to make some big changes in our lives and careers, but these types of changes are rarely easy.

What to do?

Actually, let’s start with what not to do. If you have a strong or persistent calling to make some important changes in your life - and if you have examined the calling long enough to know it is not coming from fear or ego - DO NOT IGNORE IT!! History and the teachings of myth are pretty clear on this. Shakespeare sums up the consequences of ignoring a big calling to change succinctly in the play Julius Caesar where Brutus states, "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries.” You don’t want to spend your one precious life wallowing around in the shallows or miseries.

So, if ignoring, or medicating away, the calling to change does not work, what does? Here are some key factors to consider, drawn from the best of positive psychology, neuroscience, myth and the spiritual traditions:

- First, you really benefit from creating the time and space to explore the possibility of a major change. (Big changes require a lot of time and energy. If you are running too busy, you might end up leaping before you have looked, or never leaping at all.)

- Secondly, you will definitely benefit from knowing enough about yourself to understand what does bring you more joy, meaning, success, etc, whatever you want more of. (If you don’t know what you are looking for, how are you going to find it?)

- You will definitely benefit from a vision of a best possible outcome of the change that inspires or moves you. (Inspiration is a big force in helping us move past our current beliefs and limitations.)

- You will definitely benefit from having a plan, even if it is really basic. (Failure to plan is too often planning to fail.)

- You will definitely benefit from having the support of allies. (Changes can be hard, with many moments when you feel like giving up. Being able to plug into the emotional support of your friends, colleagues, partners, coach, etc. – can make a critical difference, and remind you why you set off on this change in the first place.)

- You will definitely, benefit from proactively managing your stress. (Too much stress can make a coward out of anyone.)

- You will definitely benefit from building on your strengths. (Building on your weaknesses leads to mediocrity.)

- You will definitely benefit from learning to do your best, but remain unattached to the outcome. (This is a very important teaching. Attachment to a specific outcome creates a bit of tunnel vision which can prevent you from adjusting and adapting to all the unforeseen circumstances that will come your way. And there will be many.)

If you have some big changes to make, or some have been thrust upon you, have faith. The single most common thing I see, in working with hundreds and hundreds of people making big changes, is – even if at first glance the change looked like an uninvited disaster - that in some unexplained way the change always led them to a better place.

The Perils of Too Much Multitasking.

It would make a pretty good plot for a Sci-Fi thriller. Aliens flood the world with cheap new technology that allows everyone to access unlimited information, stimulation and pleasant distraction. The information opium overloads people's ability to think, act and engage each other in conversation yet alone reproduce - civilization grinds to a halt.

Well maybe it's not a great movie plot, but there is a growing body of evidence that our skyrocketing predilection for multitasking is taking its toll. And I am not simply talking about the folks that drive their cars into ditches while texting or watching a dvd . I am talking about the typical multitasking most of us do trying to cram more and more activities into a limited amount of time each and every day.

The impact this everyday type of multitasking is having on our performance is getting better understood by science. One 2005 study conducted at the University of London found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”

Other studies looking at brain activity have found that the concept of successfully multitasking is a bit of a myth. When we think we are multitasking we are actually shifting scarce mental resources from one part of the brain to another. While we might get away with this in menial tasks such as walking and chewing gum, for more complicated tasks it definitely has its price. A study of brain activity from the University of California in Irvine found that if someone is distracted while engaged in one complicated task, it can take a full 25 minutes to get back to the same level of attention.

Work from the University of Michigan has also shown that multitasking releases significant amounts of stress hormones that negatively impact our health and memory. Higher levels of stress have been shown to greatly reduce our social skills, intuition, creativity and overall sense of well being. The long-term impact this has on our relationships, our careers and our quality of life is just beginning to be understood.

The bottom line is that while it might be impossible to live and work in the 21st century without multitasking, taken to extremes it can lead to a shallow, anxious, unproductive, unhealthy, impatient, lonely existence. You may think you are getting so much done, but there is pretty good evidence to indicate you are actually less productive, less effective, less healthy and certainly much less fun to be around.

So as this new year begins, I invite you to get very clear on what is most important to you, and allocate your time accordingly. And as relates to those key activities and key relationships that contribute the most to your success and happiness, establish a zero tolerance for distractions. It is very useful to create structures that limit your likelihood of being distracted. (For example some business owners and executives I know work from their home office several mornings a week to get some focused time on key productive activities. Others draw lines around when they turn off their Blackberrys and simply enjoy their private life.)

Also, the better job you do managing your overall stress level, the easier you will find it to keep present and resist the mind's temptation to fly out of the moment to battle some future challenge. It all comes down to better mind management. And if you take yours to the next level this year, it will pay big dividends.