Month: March 2021

You Need a Professional Re-Frame

You Need a Professional Re-Frame

Posted on by kbodtmann

“People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care” Theodore Roosevelt

If you are sick and tired of going to work then you need a professional re-frame. You have lost your way and need to inject a sense of meaning back into your daily grind. There are certain thought habits that can lead you there. Try some of the following ways to find purpose in your day to lead to a rich and fulfilling work life.

Find a way to truly care for others and connect to what they are going through in their life. Take interest in their hobbies and passions. I have never had a more fulfilling day than when I slowed down and had a meaningful conversation with someone. Every person has such an interesting view of the world and every person is a hero in their own story. If you don’t challenge yourself to see life from another person’s point of view and learn their origin story, you will never be able to grow as a person. The smartest people I know are open to other’s ideas and truly listen and extract value from every moment and interaction. Have you tried re-centering your day away from the hustle and bustle of accomplishment long enough to savor a precious conversation with another human being? The only way to let others know you truly care is by taking the time to listen to their story. I have learned more about myself this way than I ever imagined. Practice sending love to all your customers, coworkers, patients, families before you start each workday. I always wish all of my patients and their families moments of peace and comfort, free of suffering before I start work each and every day. Even if I can contribute in a small way to making this happen, I know I have won the day.

Connect the company mission statement with YOUR purpose or make your own. Think of it this way – YOU are your own boss, your own personal brand, working autonomously to hone your craft within a company framework. I don’t identify with a corporate label. I cultivate inner strength every day to be the best version of myself. I sketch out ideas on how I can sharpen my own skills to bring me closer to my own personal goals and dreams. You can use all the resources around you to move you closer to who and where you want to be in life. Do you want to be a speaker one day or do you want to help conquer your feelings of social anxiety? – then volunteer to present at work, make that phone call, or sit with the upset client or customer to hone your skills of dialogue with others. Do you want to cultivate your writing skills to finally write that novel? – then practice writing those reports or charts with flair and creativity. As Cal Newport says; “Be so good they can’t ignore you” and in the process, you have now developed skills that no one can take away from you. It doesn’t matter where you work or who you work for, you have done the inner work. Challenge yourself every day to improve your mindset to be one geared toward learning, practicing, and self-development and the benefits are limitless. View yourself as the CEO of your own work-life and meet each workday with integrity and discipline.

Finally, challenge yourself to get 1% better today AND utilize the phrase I often say “your future self will thank you”. Every day challenge yourself to improve a small amount on one thing. Perhaps it is single-tasking to more efficiently write that code or chart or report instead of trying to hold a conversation on slack while having 20 other browsers open. Try new things and experiment to see how that helps your productivity. Perhaps it’s timing yourself on mini-projects or tasks and trying to improve on your previous times. You might try the Pomodoro method of 25 minutes of intense focus with a 5-minute break. During any bits of downtime ask yourself – is there something I can be doing right now to make the next thing I have to do easier? That might be drawing up vaccines before the appointment, tidying your desk, making a quick list of phone calls you still have to make, or even taking a deep breath to reset. When I don’t feel like doing work, I become extremely motivated by the knowledge that my work won’t just disappear and I will eventually have to do it. If not today, then when? Will I have to do it on the weekend when I want to enjoy a nice dinner with my parents who are visiting, or when I want to take my children to the park, or when I want to take that nice walk for myself in the woods? My future self will thank me when I know at the end of my workday I have ticked all the boxes, accomplished all my goals, and wrapped everything up.

Work is important but YOU are more important. You should wake up each day and be thankful for your job for that is where you have the ability to develop yourself in any way you can conceive. Re-frame your thoughts and find a way to connect to your true purpose. You will love your job if you can just find a way to value and connect with those around you, hone your own skills in connection to your life and professional goals, and utilize your job to become 1% better every day. Embrace those difficult tasks you normally put off in service to your future self and finally lift the burden of knowing your works tasks will encroach on your personal time. You are not beholden to your title or your work environment. Be a thoughtful and industrious person to accomplish your own work goals with great mastery and I promise that you will cultivate a great fulfillment in yourself that will overflow into other aspects of your life. Try out a professional re-frame.

Cultivate Your Life Vision and Grow Yourself

Cultivate Your Life Vision and Grow Yourself

Posted on by kbodtmann

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”
― Henry Ford

Why do we continue to live our day to day reacting to every new task or problem that arises? I believe many people find it easier to blame their daily tasks for failing to set clear goals and prioritizing them. I am not discounting the difficulty of a family, a profession, maintaining and organizing a home but spending your every day focused on tasks that get added back to your same to-do list next week does not cultivate your dream life. Commit today to breaking out of this cycle.

First, seek clarity. Very simply, what does your life look like in 10 years, 20 years, and 30 years? Do you want your life to be exactly the same as it is now or would you want to be traveling, spending time with your family, buying that new vacation home? How about feeling that sense of personal accomplishment when you have achieved that passion project or are thriving in a new career? 10 years from now, will you be stuck in the same place with a limit to your salary and freedom? I guarantee that if you do not take the time to outline what you want RIGHT NOW, then you will never find a way to accomplish it. Your inability to act today is robbing you of the possibility for the life you want in the future.

Secondly, break your dream down into tiny actionable goals. Say you want to own a vacation home in 10 years – perhaps a beautiful cabin in the woods where you can go hiking and enjoy nature and bonfires with friends and family. Or even a house in a beautiful tropical coastal community where you hear parrots in the morning and the sun is always shining. Why can’t you have that? You are just as deserving and worthy as anyone else who has these dreams. The difference is they found a way to do it and you can too. How much will these things cost? Truly calculate how much extra would you need to make every day over the next 10 years to be able to afford that. You may have a knack for crafts and can sell them on Etsy or it may mean picking up extra shifts a couple of days a week at work. Trust me, if your why is strong enough then your mind will find a way. What if it is a professional goal? Perhaps, you want to learn a new programming language, become a manager, or learn a new surgical skill. TODAY IS THE DAY to START and commit to one tiny action or habit that moves you forward. There is a wealth of information waiting out there for you – queue up a youtube video teaching you to learn a new coding language, sign up for an online professional development course or listen to a management podcast, scrub in for that extra surgery and gain those new skills as a surgeon. It is on you to take agency and take these steps toward your dreams. Day by day, little by little, if you have a plan and put forth extraordinary effort, I promise you can cultivate the life you want. You just need to believe you can. Today is your day to start.

The Power of Acceptance and Finding Meaning in Struggle

The Power of Acceptance and Finding Meaning in Struggle

Posted on by kbodtmann

“The only way out is through” – Robert Frost’s Poem “A Servant to Servants”

How different would your life be if you could first accept what is difficult and then find meaning in your struggle?

Recently, I have been thinking about the dualistic forces that make life whole. Of course, we all know that we can not appreciate the beautiful and uplifting moments of our lives without feeling some unpleasant times as well. I am challenging you today to have a mindset shift and a different view of your life. Not only are these opposing forces necessary but those feelings and moments traditionally thought of as negative can grow you as well if you allow it.

What if you could embrace the struggle, the obstacle – acknowledge your pain whether it be physical, mental, or emotional, and just sit with it. From acceptance, could you then extend yourself and find a greater sense of purpose and worth in your difficult moments. Consider that with great loss comes deeper empathy for others experiencing grief. Physical pain may be a way for your body to alert you that a lifestyle change is necessary. Feeling excluded or lonely may be a message that your connection and purpose are undoubtedly out there, you just need to keep looking.

I have heard other people say that “what we resist, persists” and I have found this to be true. When we have ugly and difficult feelings they are mostly born out of our resistance to the current moment or situation. However, pushing these feelings aside or even down offers us no hope on how to cope with them when they inevitably show up again in the future. Frustration over the kids screaming when you are trying to get your work done. An emergency showing up in the middle of your already packed schedule. The chatty customer in line or slow driver in front of you when you are already late. What if these were all equally worthy moments and we embraced them like we would any other fleeting but happy moment in life. What if we face our challenges and lean into them instead of allowing them to incite even uglier emotions in response to them?

Life is difficult but would you truly appreciate your accomplishments without the struggle? Could you learn to be grateful for your growing task list because you can see that life would be empty, meaningless, and boring without the hope of working toward a brighter future? What is that impulse you feel right before you have that drink at night, you open that social media app? Can you forever numb away what you are running from or will it come back to haunt you as soon as your buzz wears off? WIll your pain return as soon as the medicine is out of your system? Perhaps the only way out is through.

Toxic Positivity as it Pertains to Work Culture

Posted on by kbodtmann

The general definition of toxic positivity is to suppress the full array of human emotion that is normal or natural in favor of positive feelings only. It is OK to feel sad, overwhelmed, tired, and angry. You do not always have to have a sunny and upbeat attitude to be a good person or a stellar employee.

Lately, I have been thinking about this personal concept and how it may apply to work culture. I would like to broaden the definition of toxic positivity to include what I see happening day to day within people’s professions. First, complaining about an issue or a problem within your working life is not always negative – in fact it can lead to dramatic improvements for everyone in the corporation if the problem is acknowledged appropriately and steps are taken to improve the issue. Unfortunately, many leaders have a hard time taking criticism and tend to surround themselves with “yes” people. Often the employee bringing up an issue ( in hopes to make things better) is viewed as a problem starter, an annoyance. This is really unfortunate as a lot of growth can be had when you embrace change. Change can only occur when you are willing to accept and find value in other people’s viewpoints.

Secondly, I would like to expand the definition of toxic positivity to include pressure for a positive attitude and directives for self care when there has been purposeful decision making from management that makes it difficult to do so. I am going to call this – Professional Toxitivity. To be constantly reminded by leaders and managers to take time for yourself when your work culture is telling you to continually add more to your plate – this is Professional Toxitivity. Leaders should lead by example but ALSO enforce policy changes that enable those around them to pursue self-care as they see fit. It is easy to espouse truisms about taking time for yourself while sitting at your desk with lessened or different obligations than you once had. Employees are hustling day to day to manage the overflowing responsibilities that they have to their clients, patients, audience, students etc. which leaves them with little time to work on personal growth and development.

My suggestion for leaders everywhere including Principals, CEO’s, Direct Managers is to truly ask and listen. What does your employee need? For teachers, it may be 30 minutes less with their students at end of day to make their lesson plans for the next day. It may be an assistant that takes some of their admin tasks away so they can focus on deep work ( truly teaching your children) and not shallow work ( answering the barrage of parent emails throughout the work day with resulting documentation). For health care workers, it may be an ENFORCED lunch time where they can take a breath without writing charts or answering calls. It may be strategically helping implement ways to delegate or automate chart writing, phone calls and documentation, etc. It looks like building a culture that empowers and allows their staff to say “no” when they know adding that extra project or appointment will overwhelm them and cause their quality of work or care to diminish or their work-life balance to suffer. I know this is possible because I have worked places that do this.

There is a trend for progressive businesses to implement strategies like this and it may look like unlimited PTO and shorter work days for their staff with resulting paradoxical increases in revenue and goal achievement. Enable employees to have pride in their craft and help them accomplish their work goals with autonomy and efficiency. If you do this, they will finally have the TIME they need outside of work for self care – which will look differently for each person. No more Professional Toxitivity. It is good to challenge the status quo and give honest feedback so everyone can benefit.

The bottom line: Instead of instituting another work wellness program, enable employees to achieve their work goals in a time productive way so they then have the agency to choose wellness in their own time and in their own way.

You Are Not Your To-Do List – Break Free Baby!

Posted on by kbodtmann

Are you drowning in a never ending to-do list of tasks and responsibilities? If you are, I am about to say something very controversial. You are causing your own misery. You are stuck in first generation productivity thinking. You are reducing relationships and strategic thinking to tasks you can tick off for your own personal gratification. WAKE UP – you are not your to-do list and if you find yourself being a slave to tasks on paper, you are playing small.

There is no way to complete all of the tasks life will throw at you. There will never be an end to your list. Adopt these following strategies to realize your value lies outside of lists and there is a better way to accomplish your goals. One that requires less hurry and more heart

  • When you say YES to your list, what are you saying NO to?
  • Game Changers
  • Time Multipliers

I don’t believe in working hard and then playing hard. I believe in trying to find joy and fulfillment in everything we CHOOSE to do. Some tasks are necessary — but are they? How much time do you waste adding trivial things to a list? Have you ever asked yourself if this absolutely needs to be done? If it does need to be done then does it need to be done by YOU and RIGHT NOW? There are 100’s of tasks we can clutter a list with. In the end we never finish, get overwhelmed and feel defeated. People with lists tend to choose the easiest task with the least amount of energy expenditure to complete first. Is that really moving you forward? Checking off tasks may give you a fleeting moment of satisfaction but leaves you with a lifetime of missing what is important. Are you prioritizing making your lists and completing those tasks over a moment with your child, a walk in the sun, a blanket and a book on the couch, or a phone call with your Mom? In the end, no one is going to care about a check mark on a dry erase board. What matters are the memories we hold close to our hearts and the love we have given to others. When you say YES to your list, what exactly are you saying NO to?

Does every task have equal importance in your life? OF COURSE NOT! Making to-do lists is easy and anyone can do it. It is the rare individual who makes the difficult choice to sit with all of life’s demands and CHOOSE those tasks that are the real needle movers. No one has the time to accomplish everything – this is just a fact that everyone needs to sit with. Sit down and ask yourself – What tasks are adding value to my life, to my family, to my work and craft, to my profession? Is it more important for your patients to write charts on your day off or hone your rare and valuable skills as a doctor? To dust the bookshelf or read a book to your child? To write protocols for employees or use that time to sit with them and learn their goals and dreams? You get the point. Invest your time in YOURSELF and OTHERS. Sit down and find out what you want your life to be all about. We can’t do EVERYTHING but we can make the choice to do the RIGHT THINGS. Throw your task lists out and start your day by doing the things that will make a real difference.

Time, time, time. No one has enough time. We are all so BUSY. Busy doing what? Busy figuring out how to get through your to do list faster? Can you sense the irony in my voice. Have you stopped to think about what things you can do today that will make your life easier in the future? Sometimes, we need to take that initial time investment to organize our desk to make back hours every week in increased efficiency. How about investing time today to make that work template that automates some rote task that you keep having to do over and over? Really, be creative. Can you organize a drawer in your home in the ORDER in which you use the utensils to make the same breakfast you eat every day? How about putting your vitamins/supplements in the time order in which you take them inside your cabinet? Set up a pet food station right next to where you feed them. Work on your typing speed, meditate to fall asleep faster, go for that run to increase your energy and function for the day. Is it faster to take a deep breath or spend the next 10 minutes in an argument? So many possibilities. Thinking about the things you can do today that will buy you time in the long run. This is definitely third generation productivity thinking and this is where truly great people spend their time.

Ditch your to-do list. Value presence and relationships over tasks. Determine what is important, not urgent and do that FIRST. Invest your time in productivity multipliers. YOU are not your to-do list, you are so much more than that.