Inspiration

Wow! It's been almost a year since my last post. A lot has happened in a year. 2014 was a difficult and stressful year. I always try to start the new year inspired and encouraged, hoping it will be better than the year before. After last year, 2015 can only bring good things and it seems the year has started out pretty well professionally and personally.
Today, I attended the 3rd Annual SLV Cross Systems Symposium for work. This year's theme was Keep Calm Persistence Beats Resistance. I always enjoy going to conferences, workshops and seminars; especially when I walk away with not only information, inspiration and encouragement for working with my clients, but also information, inspiration and encouragement that I can apply to my life and relationships.
The keynote speaker for today waws Darrell Hammond of Boulder, CO. He is the owner of Higher Ground Consulting and is a performance coach and leadership trainer. I attended his keynote address, as well as his breakout seminars: Zombie Zone (preventing and recovering from burnout) and Time Will Tell (communicating/working with others from different generations). I'd like to share with you some of the things I took away from today's seminars that we can all apply to our daily lives. Hope you find this information useful, inspirational and encouraging.

"The health of a relationship, team or organization is a function of the average time lag between identifying and discussing problems."
From this comment, we discussed the importance of addressing issues or problems when they arise. If we don't talk about these issues or problems when they arise, we'll act it out. What this means is that if something someone does bothers us, upsets us, etc., and we don't talk to them about it, we will begin to act differently towards them and act out as a result of not having addressed the problem to begin with. When addressing/talking about issues or problems, deal with the issues within 24 hours, be open to feedback from the other person, and swallow your pride, sit back and listen to what the other person is saying.

The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team/Relationship
1. Absence of Trust
2. Fear of Conflict
3. Lack of Commitment
4. Avoidance of Accountability
5. Inattention to Results
These are the five things that can destroy a team or relationship.

"Fatigue makes us push back against conversations we need to have." When we are not taking care of ourselves and we are stressed or fatigued, we push back against those conversations that need to be had. We try to avoid conversations whether positive or negative due to a lack of energy and emotion.

We all have layers and we only show others the layers we want them to see based on our environment. While we may think we really know someone, we actually only know that person the way they want us to know them in the environment we know them in. We may not let our colleagues see the same layers that we let our families see at home or that we show our very close friends. Because we only see the layers others want us to see, we must try not to judge them based on the layers we see.

"Burnout" is a state of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. When we experience burnout, it can often take 6-12 months for us to recover.

"Hypervigilence" is an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats. Hypervigilance is also accompanied by a state of increased anxiety which can cause exhaustion. Hypervigilance is exhausting and never stops, no matter how hard you try.

Those of us who are adrenaline junkies, do things to adrnalize ourselves and eventually our bodies can't take anymore and we burnout.

"Although no one can make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."
It doesn't matter where we came from or what we've been through, we can choose to change the direction of our lives by changing our perspective, attitude and actions.

Hope you found some of these as informative, inspirational or encouraging as I did.

Happy 2015!!!!!!

P.S. Here is an interesting video Darrell showed us on social media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eUeL3n7fDs