Ask Ms. Mindfulness

It’s amazing how some things are just a universal truth, no matter if I’m working with an executive coaching client, a leadership coaching client or a career coaching client – everyone is inundated with email.  The irony is that very little of the email we get is very important.  And yet, many of us treat it as if it has upmost importance. Why do we let email manage us? Some of the answer is biological.  We get a little dopamine hit from responding to it.  “Look, see!  Another thing off my to do list!” You wouldn’t be the first human to confuse activity with output.  We all fall into this trap from time to time. Sometimes our system settings are set up to conspire against us.  We forget to deactivate notifications, and that little ping and flash of the next message in our inbox is just too alluring to resist.  Remember, just because a notification is built into your computer system, doesn’t mean you have to use it.  These things are a form of digital crack that have been designed intentionally to hook us, don’t be fooled! How to manage email – Turn off notifications! When I teach effective planning, one of the first things I tell people to do is turn those darn things off.  The constant distraction has a huge impact on our ability to focus.  And according to mindfulness research, it can take 5-10 minutes to refocus on what you were doing before, after your attention gets hijacked.  That’s precious time that you don’t need stolen as you constantly are attempting to regroup after you’ve taken your focus off that important project or deliverable. How to manage email – Set boundaries! Easier said than done, right?  But this is critical to managing your inbox and managing expectations with your stakeholders.  Get into the habit of checking email once or twice a day and COMMUNICATE this to your key stakeholders.  If there is a real emergency – real meaning RARE – ask them to call, text or IM you. It’s important to remember that most of the email you get is neither important to you and your priorities, it’s most likely important to someone else’s.  If you find that most of your day is caught up responding to email, chances are you’re unconsciously stealing time away from the things that really matter to you.  Remember this fantastic phrase that I have creatively edited of Stephen Covey – “If you know what is important to you, when you say no, you’re saying yes to something bigger!”   Shelley Pernot is a leadership and career coach who is passionate about helping her clients discover their strengths and talents and find a career that utilizes them.  Reach out to me here for a free consultation to learn more about the coaching process and how it may benefit you!  

A month after I packed in my job and started my own company, I decided to reward myself with a two-week meditation retreat. A few weeks of blissful self-reflection in the wilds of the Colorado mountains. A fitting start for a trail-blazing woman who has just left the madness of the corporate grind to embark on a new journey and start a business focused on personal development. It reminds me of that saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Perhaps you’ve heard of it? The setting was indeed idyllic. I spent the two weeks in a tent in a very remote part of the Colorado mountains with 120 other brave souls. So idyllic, in fact, that often a chipmunk or deer would wander in during meditation sessions and stare at the strange humans sitting on mats, staring off into space for hours on end. I often spent hours longing to be one of those deer. At least I could have escaped. The night before the retreat started, we gathered together for an orientation. During that session, it became clear to me that the meditation retreat really was just that – meditating. All day long. No rest for the weary. Sitting was to start at 7 am and end each evening around 9 pm. And it was at that point, the panic started to set in. Two weeks? Two weeks of sitting on a mat? My legs will go numb. My back will give out. I’ll die of boredom. And it was just at that precise moment, in my infinite wisdom, I realized I had inadvertently signed up for two weeks of my worst fear. For some people it’s snakes. For some it’s death. I, however, fear boredom and will do just about anything to avoid it. You may be thinking to yourself, “How could she have been so stupid?” (Which would be judgment, by the way, but we’ll get into that later.) And it’s true. It was indeed billed as a meditation retreat – make no mistake. But often the mind sees and interprets what it wants to see and interpret. After the first day, I was convinced I was going to claw my eyes out. Between sitting sessions, I sought out other like-minded meditators for much needed conversation where I blurted out my fears and concerns like a bulimic needing a good purge. And then the unthinkable happened. The head meditation instructor announced that the retreat was to become completely silent. No talking, even between the sitting sessions during breaks. Not one single word. If there was an emergency, we were to write a note. Resigned to my new silent fate, the next morning I was sitting on my mat, under the guise of meditation: “Uuuugh, I hope Eric doesn’t sit next to me again. He smells. It’s so disgusting, I don’t think he’s taken a bath since he’s been here. Why do I always get stuck next to the smelly person? Doesn’t he have any […]

Life is full of annoying administrative tasks you have to do.  You may be thinking, why should I add another one to the mix?  Besides, isn’t my boss responsible for guiding my career and sharing developmental opportunities with me?  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  One of my favorite sayings in life comes from the immortal mouth of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland – “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” What is a Personal Development Plan? A personal development plan is a succinct document that summarizes three important things: 1) Your key skills and experiences to date 2) How you’re looking to develop your skills for the future 3) What roles you’re looking to aspire to as you progress your career When I help career coaching and leadership coaching clients put one of these together, we often start backwards and answer question three:  Where do you want to go with your career?  That then informs what skills/experiences you will need to get there – which is question two.  What skills may you be lacking?  What experiences will help you grow and make you the right candidate for that coveted role? The value of a Personal Development Plan To the extent you’re focused and actively managing your career, opportunities won’t literally pass you by.  That pet project that will give you added visibility?  You’ll know to ask for it, particularly if you’re looking for the all-important promotion.  And the added benefit of asking your line manager to complete the personal development plan exercise with you, means it’s also on their radar screen as well. Who needs a Personal Development Plan? You do, no matter how early or late you are in your career, no matter what track your career is on.  It’s important you start thinking about this right away when you’re in a new job.  And if it’s not on your manager’s radar screen, initiate the conversation yourself.  Prepare a draft, ask for their input.  Ultimately, it’s up to you to be in the driving seat of your career!   Shelley Pernot is a leadership and career coach who is passionate about helping her clients discover their strengths and talents and find a career that utilizes them.  Reach out to me here for a free consultation to learn more about the coaching process and how it may benefit you!

To everything There is a season And a time to every purpose, under heaven   A time to be born, a time to die A time to plant, a time to reap A time to kill, a time to heal A time to laugh, a time to weep   To everything There is a season And a time to every purpose, under heaven   A time to build up, a time to break down A time to dance, a time to mourn A time to cast away stone, a time to gather stones together   To everything There is a season And a time to every purpose, under heaven   A time to gain, a time to lose A time to rend, a time to sew A time for love, a time for hate A time for peace.   Nice, isn’t it? I was reminded of this song, or bible verse, however you prefer to look at it, most recently. I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but it happens to me quite frequently: I start seeing a quote, a phrase, a poem everywhere. It’s kind of annoying. I keep hoping that I’ll see the winning Texas Powerball numbers instead. So far no dice, the powers seem to just be limited to prose. But then my intuition reminds me that this is probably something I need to pay attention to and maybe if I’d didn’t stick my head in the sand like an oversized ostrich, I’d probably learn something useful.   So I tuned into the message and found myself thinking, 2021 has been a hell of a ride in ways I never could have anticipated. I have found myself fluttering between two states – hyperactivity and lethargy. Okay fine, if I’m more honest than not, it’s the later state. This is quite hard for me to say, the recovering perfection junkie that I am. There have been several mornings that I’ve woken up, and frankly, I haven’t felt like doing much. So I didn’t. Don’t take this to mean I sat around in my highly alluring bathrobe all day with my husband and cats watching reruns of Judge Judy and eating Velveeta and rotel (don’t knock the golden cheese food goodness until you’ve tried it). I don’t need an intervention just yet. I did all the usual things, coached clients, paid bills, went to the grocery store, redecorated my office, planted a garden which I even actually managed to get a couple of eggplants from, until it got infested by these weird snails and flies that destroyed it. You know, normal life stuff.   But all the while there was this nagging voice in my head. You haven’t made progress on your childfree group. At one point I had this vision of building it to about a million ladies and using it as a platform to achieve Oprah like stardom. You haven’t written another book, the voice kept nagging. I will admit I’ve started at least two […]

The Pernot household is no stranger to the importance of safety.  My husband, having worked in construction for years, lives and breathes it, as he is acutely aware that every day he is responsible for the lives and well-being of his crew.  And moi, having worked in large, manufacturing companies for a great portion of my career, safety has always been a common mantra.  And in my not so humble opinion that’s a very good thing. Having led leadership development workshops for years, most mornings we start out with a safety moment – a great way to remind others to be vigilant and mindful when we silly humans have a dangerous tendency to switch onto autopilot.  Over the years I’ve learned a lot about process safety in a high-risk environment, as well as the terrifying danger of escalators in suburban shopping malls (stay away from those things if you’re wearing sandals people – just saying…) But I’ve started noticing something interesting that’s been popping up in just about every interaction I’ve been having lately, even before COVID-19 appeared so unapologetically and intrusively onto the scene.  Instead of signing off an email or conversation with “sincerely,” or “thanks” or “see you soon,” I’m increasingly being met with the closing phrase of “be safe” or “stay safe.” Turn on the TV, and dangers are everywhere.  We’re reminded daily of the fact that the world we live in is very much less than perfect.  Behind every shrubbery lurks a child molester, or a would-be burglar, intent on stealing our precious worldly possessions.  We install sophisticated security systems, cameras, doorbells like Ring with the capability to monitor and survey 24/7.  Instead of using the electronic neighborhood bulletin boards to foster community and fellowship, we post blurry pictures of ominous shadowed would be assassins and the offending dog owner that always allows Fluffy to do his business in our perfectly manicured lawn (Jerk!  I’m watching you…). Ironically, we’ve never been safer.  In a recent New York Times Best-Seller, The Coddling of the American Mind:  How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Lukinahoff and Haidt lay out a compelling and research based case for how we have embraced a culture of “safetyism,” a dangerous trend that impedes an adult’s capacity to navigate the bumpy road of life, despite the fact that we live in a safer than ever before world.  The result is a generation (and overwhelming larger and larger part of the population) who are increasingly “triggered” by every little thing, aided by the very well-intentioned helicopter mom, lawnmower parent, or whatever they are called these days. (You know you’re guilty…) I have often wondered if our environment has evolved much more quickly than our brains have.  A hundred or so years ago (which really isn’t long in the grand scheme of the planet) things were very different.  My husband’s grandmother’s obituary read like a lifetime movie.  Born in France in the early 1900’s, her father died in WW1, […]

If you’re like most folks, you’re caught up in a perpetual tailspin.  A crammed diary filled with meeting after meeting with barely enough time to shove in a lukewarm sandwich in-between, or after school activities for the kids, school run, volunteer activities, endless lists of chores that only seem to get longer and longer.  The first response to the question “How are you?” is typically something in the order of, “I’ve just been so busy!  There’s just never enough time to get everything done!” or my personal favorite “Frazzled!”  Or maybe this is just the strange universe I hang out in.  Never having been one to jump on the bandwagon, folks often look confused when I don’t respond back in agreement.  I’ve often wondered if there is something wrong with me. When I lived in the UK, making it into someone’s personal diary was a point of distinction, a barrier to be overcome, as spots in it were tightly guarded and highly coveted.  Brits in general, not being as spontaneous as their American cousins across the pond, tend to respond to the question of “when should we get together again,” with things like – “let me check my diary and get back to you.  The next three months are mad, just mad!” (Mind you, this could also be their subtle and polite way of blowing annoying Americans off, but typically we’re too stupid to notice this.) But while we might, on the surface, spend a lot of time complaining about this busy thing, I’ve often wondered if deep down we secretly like it.  Perhaps being busy has become the new badge of honor, a justification for our existence.  If we are busy, we are doing something with our lives.  Our life must have some meaning, some deep purpose, something greater than taking out the trash and watching the next season of Ozarks on Netflix, thrilling though it may be. I myself have even reveled in this practice from time to time, secretly gloating to myself that I have so many client engagements on my schedule that it would be impossible for me to meet with such and such person for the next couple of months. Well, not anymore, thanks to Corona virus. So here’s the question, in a life that’s filled with activity after activity, what do you do with yourself when the tailspin finally ends and sound of silence finally comes? I mean, you can only rearrange your closet and shop on amazon so much.  I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, who lives in Orange County, CA.  The eternal optimist, she mused that perhaps this might be a good opportunity for society to finally slow down, and smell the proverbial roses, so to speak.  The eternal realist that I am reminded her that many of us (present company included) will most likely lose work, maybe even their jobs, and these days will be filled with worry and anxiety of what to do after the […]