Chapter 4
KEEP YOUR HOPES HUMMING
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope or confidence.
When your hopes are alive and flourishing, you naturally move forward with confidence. As the hero of your own story, you’ll need to stay focused to sustain yourself on the journey into the territory of new possibilities. Learning how to live in a cycle of hope will not only energize you and keep you committed but also support your best creative thinking, which is imperative to your success.
You’ve opened the door for your talent. Let’s nourish it to thrive.
CHOOSE YOUR HOPES OVER FEARS
Have you noticed that some days you feel creative and open to new ideas and opportunities and other days you don’t? We see it all the time. People who are no smarter or more experienced successfully launch themselves forward, while others just see insurmountable obstacles in every direction. The way we respond to our environment is all related to how our brains are wired and which pathways we choose to follow on our journeys.
Do you remember Fran? All the jobs she wanted seemed to have a big “No Entrance!” sign. Fran wanted to become a manager. She didn’t have the prerequisites. “I don’t think I’m going to make progress anytime soon,” she said before her Talent Catalyst Conversation. During the Conversation, she realized that she had resources all around her that she had never noticed. With this new awareness, she created an action plan to move toward her hope. It was a turning point for her.
At first, Fran enjoyed a rush of excitement in knowing that her story could change. When she returned to her daily work, however, old thought patterns cropped up. “I don’t know if I can pull this off. I’d be really putting myself out there to enlist the CEO and others to help me. What if my efforts crash and burn?” Feeling uneasy, she left the summary of her Conversation turned upside down under a potted plant on her desk. Just as Superman lost his power when he got too close to kryptonite, Fran lost her power when she got too close to her fears of failure and inadequacy.
Different parts of the brain serve different purposes. Human brains function for both self-protection and creation. Given the same challenging situation, two people may respond very differently: one person may see the possibilities and forge ahead, while another holds tight to what feels safe. Science shows that your frame of mind plays a major role in the opportunities you see and the possibilities you pursue. Fear-based thinking shuts down the creative centers of your brain, but hope-based thinking ignites them. Just when Fran felt inspired to move forward, her worst fears arose. We’ll explore what she did, and what you can do, to break the cycle of fear.
Fears Block Your Best Thinking
While fears stimulate a protective response that serves a valuable purpose when encountering physical threats, that response can wreak havoc with your creativity. Think about the last time you felt threatened. How did your body react? If a cobra hovers around your ankle and you’re overcome with heart palpitations, you most likely won’t be working out the last lines of your best-selling novel. Your brain is in full-throttle protection mode. Although it may not seem as dramatic, the very same thing can happen when you feel threatened by a problem at work. Your brain may go into the same reactive mode, diverting energy from the regions that handle complex creative issues and undercutting your access to original solutions just when you need them most.
David Rock, in Your Brain at Work, explains: “When the limbic system gets overly aroused, it reduces the resources available for prefrontal cortex functions [including understanding, deciding, memorizing, and inhibiting]. … With less glucose and oxygen to get work done, the complex maps in your prefrontal cortex required for conscious processes don’t function as they should.”1
Let’s get back to Fran. Just when she needed access to new and creative ways to overcome the challenges in her career, her limbic brain took over. The problem was that she wasn’t deciding whether to fight a tiger or run for her life. She really didn’t need that primal fear response to kick into action. Instead, she needed the creative parts of her brain engaged, but they were losing power. Fear and frustration hijacked her better thinking.
Fear blinds us to possibilities and paralyzes us all at once. Even worse, we may take self-protective measures when we’re afraid, which in turn bring to life the very thing we feared would occur in the first place. Maybe you’ve been in this rut and felt yourself dragged down as you went deeper and deeper.
Fran was in a vicious cycle of fear (see figure 2). She felt a deadening sense of discouragement and didn’t feel the momentum to get into the game. Her withdrawal further distanced her from the flow of opportunities that could change her story. Like Fran, most of us have fallen prey to this vicious cycle of fear. We have felt our minds looping around and around, telling us a repetitive story of doom, making us want to run for our lives or fight to protect our stand. When we’re in a fearful or self-protective mode, we’re not usually much fun. We may blame others, find it hard to listen, and become reactive. Our bodies may tense up, stomachs grind, or heads start to throb from the stress. Fear can make us sick, crabby, tired, and depressed.
Figure 2. Vicious cycle of fear.
The good news is that when we become aware of our reactions and realize that we are stuck in a fear cycle, we can choose a different response. The first step back into a healthier frame of mind is becoming aware.
Your Hopes Encourage Creative, Constructive Thinking
While a cycle of fear can sometimes give you a burst of energy to get things done, the wear and tear on your body and mind is rarely worth it. Making a conscious choice to keep connected to your hopes allows you to walk a self-sustaining path of talent expression. When you are hopeful, your creative brain is lit up and supporting all your decisions.
Shawn Achor, founder of Good Think, Inc., and author of The Happiness Advantage, writes: “Our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative or even neutral, but when they are positive. Yet in today’s world, we ironically sacrifice happiness in order to excel in the workforce only to lower our brains’ success rates.”2 By staying hopeful, we shift our brains’ activity to support the thinking we need for sustained, creative action. It’s that simple. This virtuous cycle of hope gives us a sense of possibility that opens our minds to the resources all around us. It becomes easier to identify emerging opportunities and take the actions to move toward what we desire. Figure 3 illustrates this positive cycle.
Figure 3. Virtuous cycle of hope.
This cycle is also self-reinforcing, but in a positive way. When we are hopeful, we see more opportunities and take actions that are more constructive. As we see our hopes come to fruition, we naturally choose to continue to reach out to others and pursue more resources and actions.
Have you ever experienced the feeling of being full of hope? When we are overflowing with hope, one good thing leads to another. We look for opportunities, and our actions become self-fulfilling. When hope is on the loose, we interact with others more thoughtfully and feel less edgy overall. Our bodies function more smoothly, and we get sick less often. If we hit a bump, we keep going and stay focused. The world looks friendlier, and our eyes are open to the resources around us.
Since a hopeful frame of mind has such clear advantages, how can you train yourself to consistently choose it? You took the first step in your Talent Catalyst Conversation when you answered the questions “What are your hopes?” and “Why are they important to you?” By answering these simple, open-ended questions, you triggered the creative and problem-solving centers of your brain. You can do this over and over again wherever you are and whatever you confront. Stop and ask yourself: “What do I really want here? Which frame of mind will help me?” Knowing that you have a choice in deciding your frame of mind puts you in charge.
NURTURE YOUR HOPES — THREE EASY WAYS
Since our brains have a default setting for a fearful or protective response, we need conscious action to override it. The following practices will support your hopeful frame of mind and productive results.
Take 5
“Take 5” is the practice of spending five minutes a day giving focused attention to your hopes for your talent. Without consistent attention, your hopes can become lost in the hubbub of daily life, other people’s agendas, and fearful thoughts that emanate from the media and other sources. You can use these five minutes to recognize a daily victory, contemplate the significant value of your hope, or visualize something to realize it.
Consider Take 5 to be an exercise in developing a good habit. You might want to put it on your calendar or include it as part of your morning routine. Some people enjoy doing it as a writing or drawing exercise; others prefer it as a meditation. Take 5 can involve both your conscious and unconscious mind, which may be holding on to some important details related to your hopes that you can uncover only when disengaged from your day-today activities.
We invite you to schedule Take 5 sessions for a week and see how they work for you. For example, you could take a few minutes in the morning to outline some steps you intend to take in the day to help realize your hopes. Later in the day, you might review how your actions during the past few hours fulfilled those intentions. Keep notes on the progress you see toward your hopes. As you give yourself positive feedback on what’s working, you will reinforce and accelerate your success.
Of course, not everything will occur in an unendingly positive direction. Concerns will crop up as you reflect on your hopes. When they do, simply acknowledge them and return to considering your hopes. On some days, you may fulfill more than you had targeted on the items you jotted down. On other days, circumstances may intervene, and you may fulfill fewer of your intentions than you had planned. Observe what’s happening for you with compassionate self-interest. The practice of thoughtful attention will engage your mind in the direction you seek.
Make Your Hopes Visible
One of the challenges you may face is staying fully—even physically—connected to your hopes over the long haul. In a world with so many responsibilities, messages, and priorities, you need to give your brain some prompts to stay engaged.
Imagine that your hope is to learn how to play the banjo. Do you think you would be more likely to play and practice regularly if you kept the banjo in the closet or out in the open where you saw it daily?
One of the best ways to get your hopes out of the closet is to give them physical form. Create a symbolic representation that will, metaphorically, wave its arms to remind you of why your hopes are important to you or poke you whenever you start getting off track.
Here are just a few of the solutions we’ve found people using that worked for them and might also work for you:
A collage of all the rewards you’ll get when your hope is realized
A collage of all the resources you plan to use to realize your hopes
A nametag or business card with your desired new job title
A totem or memory-rich object given to you by someone special
A screen saver with phrases or pictures that inspire you
A subscription to a blog or newsletter that regularly sends you articles that motivate you to stay on track
Group meetings or classes that keep you engaged in putting your specific hopes into action
A “gold star” system in which you collect small rewards as you take steps forward, like making a date to see a great movie with a friend once you have accomplished a goal
What kind of real-world reminder would work best for you? How about getting started by putting one in place today?
Have Your Very Own Hope Holders
Think of your hopes for your talent as a flame. You want to keep the flame glowing brightly, yet it’s easy for any of us to have ups and downs that dim our fire. A Hope Holder is a person whose main job is to champion your hope: to remind you of how it sprang forth, how good it makes you feel, and why it remains valuable today. You may want to include a Hope Holder on your Talent Fulfillment Team. Hope Holders are like the crowds that line the streets of a marathon, cheering on the runners when they need it most.
We found mutual hope holding invaluable as we wrote this book. When one of us would be discouraged or distracted, the other would hold the hope and keep things moving forward.
You want Hope Holders who are dedicated to being there for you through thick and thin: as if your hope were a sacred trust. Of course you’re not limited to having just one Hope Holder. The secret is to choose wisely. Sometimes our friends have their own agendas that don’t fit with the role, or they want to tend to us rather than tend the flame. Out of all your friends and family, maybe someone is coming to mind as a good Hope Holder. Remember, before he or she can hold your vision for you, you have to be clear about what your hope is. Maybe now would be a good time to share your hope with another and ask him or her to hold your hope in mind.
Fran put all three practices to work as she moved away from her fears and kept her talent story powered up. She remembered her Talent Catalyst Conversation and the image she had of her Talent Fulfillment Team cheering for her as she led a team to successful results. She got pictures of each of them and kept that image on her desk. It reminded her of what she really wanted and encouraged her as she took the many actions needed to realize her aspirations. This became the focal point for her Take 5 daily reflections.
TURN CONCERNS INTO ENERGIZERS
You’ll recall the discussion in the Talent Catalyst Conversation Guide about concerns:
When we focus on our deepest hopes, our brains often attempt to protect us from harm by generating stories of concern. Ignoring them could be dangerous; yet assuming they can’t be overcome will also limit what is possible. For now, we suggest that you simply acknowledge their presence.
It’s time now to do more than consider the presence of your concerns. We’ll look more deeply to see if it’s possible to use them to stimulate your talent—not suppress it.
Get Your But Out of the Way
It’s not unusual to discover that people who are not using all their talents have a big BUT. OK—bad joke, but it’s true. That big but can block the path to achieving hopes. Do you remember Ben, the teacher we talked about in chapter 2? Let’s take a look at Ben’s story from another angle. In chapter 2, we talked about how he used his talent to help disadvantaged kids through after-school programming and how this got his energy flowing again. Now, we’ll look at how he managed to get his buts out of the way right in his own classroom.
Ben told us: “As a high school teacher, my hope has always been to get kids to love learning, but I still feel I’m at the mercy of the bureaucracy. I want to teach and show the kids that learning is great, but how can I do that with all of the regulations and tests?”
In this case, the big but concerned regulations and standardized tests—pretty common concerns for teachers. His concerns—what he felt blocked him—interfered with his hope to show the kids that learning is great. When concerns occur as interference, they can slow you down, bring you to a halt, or even throw you off-track completely. Concerns gone wild not only smother your ability to bring a single hope to fulfillment but also destroy your overall belief in your talent.
Let’s take a look at Ben’s original desire: “My hope has always been to get kids to love learning.” As Ben explained, “The regulations and policies are hard to work around and seriously frustrating. I don’t want to teach to a test; the learning loses its meaning. I want the kids to feel that what they are learning will help them now and enrich the rest of their lives, not just get them into the next grade or through high school. I don’t want to teach them to be trained monkeys, always doing something to get a payoff. I think the real payoff for education is that your life is richer, and I want my students to inherit that from me.”
After looking at his concerns, Ben realized he still had so much resistance to the system that he had created a larger-than-life mental block that drove him to consider giving up on classroom teaching altogether. How could he break through the logjam?
Ben began thinking about what action he could take that would make even one of his classes feel livelier and fun. He went back through some books from grad school and looked up interactive teaching ideas on the Internet. He also spoke with his wife, an outstanding English teacher.
The next week, Ben started fresh. He talked with the students about his hopes and asked them for their ideas. They had a brainstorming session in each class and came up with some great suggestions. He commented, “My classes flew by, just like the old days when I first started teaching. We were learning the same material, but I was able to present it in a way that the kids got really engaged. Now I just have to figure out how to keep it going for the long run—and I can tell you honestly, that won’t be easy, but I’m seeing some light.” Ben was beginning to overcome what had interfered with his hopes.
Timothy Gallwey, author of the Inner Game series, uses an interesting approach to help athletes and businesspeople get the most from their talent. Rather than having people try harder or try to do things correctly, he suggests that they identify what is interfering with their performance and simply remove it.3 For example, a writing coach might help a client to “kill the editor” in order to free the writer’s productivity. The editor is that nagging voice in a writer’s head that whispers, “You aren’t smart enough to write anything worth reading.” Many internal editors have been the demise of otherwise talented writers. By outsmarting their own brains with the use of exercises, writers can learn to write without editing themselves simultaneously. They “put the editor to bed” for a while, and this often brings energy and inspiration to their words.
Interference can be subtle and hard to identify. Many of our concerns may seem logical on the surface. However, they often signify subterranean limiting assumptions and beliefs we hold that we may not know we possess.
It’s good to remember that concerns are the brain’s way of protecting us. Therefore, it can be important to attend to those thoughts—for example:
“I really want to suggest a new idea for improving communications around the office, but I might get fired if I do.”
“I would love to take a class in website design, but I couldn’t possibly leave the office at 4 p.m. on Thursdays.”
“My dream is to make partner, but I’ll never be able to put in the hours needed, due to the demands of my family life.”
Do you have a big but? If so, take a moment to examine it and see if you can unchain yourself. Will you really get fired? Are you sure you can’t get buy-in for professional development? Is it certain that your family life has to come at the expense of your job promotion? If your concerns are blocking the full expression of your talent, it could be useful to inquire into the limiting assumption or belief upon which those concerns are based.
Eliminating the interference that is preventing you from accessing and expressing your full talent can create an everyone-wins situation for you, your organization, and the people in your workplace, family, and community.
Flip Your Concerns into Hopes
Here is another perspective to give you a boost when your concerns are slowing you down. Did you ever accidentally put a CD in your stereo upside down? Nothing happens, right? But when you turn it to the flip side, music starts to play. What if your concerns are just the flip side of your hopes?
Instead of accepting concerns at face value—as obstacles—consider examining them more closely so that they become guide-posts to what you really want. If you have a concern, after all, it means you care about something. In that caring you can find your hopes!
For instance, consider Nadia’s situation in a large health care organization struggling to adapt to major changes in its industry. She commented: “My goal has been, and still is, to accelerate change in the entire organization. That’s the job they asked me to do. I received a promotion and an assignment, and I took it seriously.”
Nadia certainly set out to drive toward her objective. But she did so at some cost to herself. Anyone who wasn’t “with the program” became an obstacle. She started to judge many coworkers as insubordinate or incompetent. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that she developed severe digestive problems. She felt that she was failing. “My chief concerns are that I’ve alienated some important people, and now they do their best to undermine my efforts.”
So what happened when she looked at the flip side of her concerns?
The flip side of “I’ve alienated important people” was “I want to have healthy, productive relationships.”
The flip side of “Now they do their best to undermine my efforts” was “I want to be supported in my efforts to accelerate change.”
It wasn’t hard for Nadia to see that this flip side was actually her deeper hope. This turned out to be quite an emotional moment for her. It even moved her to tears. She realized that although she thought of herself as a truly caring person, she had stopped caring about the people working with her. She had tried so hard to push the change initiative forward—thinking only of pleasing her superiors—that she submerged one of her greatest talents: her compassion. Unwittingly she had become the villain in her story instead of the hero.
How did Nadia articulate her hope now? “My hope is to help people see how embracing change can make their lives richer, while making the entire organization more competitive in the marketplace.”
Almost immediately, things began to shift. She felt a great reduction in her stress level, and her health began to improve. Three months after her internal decision to shift toward acting from the realm of her hope instead of coercing her coworkers out of her fear of failure, she received a call from a vice president. He had originally been the most resistant and undermining out of all the staff. He called to apologize for his behavior and asked to start a dialogue that would get them on the same page.
Nadia used the flip-side approach to get in touch with a genuine hope. This hope helped her to recast herself as the hero of her story and to tap a dormant talent.
Like Nadia, if you are willing to see the hope in your concern, you can begin to move from fear and worry to a healthy vision you can act upon. Take a minute or two to jot down your answers to these questions:
What are the flip sides of your concerns?
What are your hopes now that you have flipped your concerns around?
Through this process of recasting your concerns into hopes, you can return to the realm of possibility: a place where you can use your talent to create the reality that you want to live.
Craft an Inspirational Story with Yourself in the Lead
You can use your hopes to write new chapters in your talent story. Think back to the question in the Talent Catalyst Conversation that asked, “How have you successfully dealt with concerns like these before?” (step 3). This question gets at the stories we tell about ourselves and helps us to recall how we have managed to deal with fears and problems in the past. Can you find a story from your past that gives you a vision for pursuing your hopes now? To engage your talent fully, you must have a way to step outside of limiting stories and explore what else may be possible. Let’s look at a couple of ways you can gain fresh perspectives and author the stories you want to live by—stories that engage your talent.
Robert Hargrove, in his book Masterful Coaching, makes the distinction between “rut stories” and “river stories.”4 Rut stories keep us stuck in a paradigm of limitation; river stories are filled with possibility because they have somewhere to flow. Nadia just showed us one way to move from rut to river by discovering the hopes on the flip side of her concerns. But rut stories are not just about being stuck. Nadia’s story also demonstrated how much pain a rut story can inflict on the storyteller and those around her.
Let’s look at an illustration of how you can change your story. Miguel, a senior manager in a large IT firm, saw opportunities but worried about the human cost of going to the top.
I have much more that I could contribute to the organization, but rising higher in the leadership would compromise time with my family and require me to be too political. I’ll keep my head down and continue plugging away at my current role. I guess it’s better to be a little bored.
Now, think of what he honestly shared as not the truth but a story. Here are the “facts” as he presents them:
1. I have much more that I could contribute to the organization. (hope story)
2. Rising higher in the leadership would compromise time with my family and require me to be too political. (story of concern)
3. I guess it’s better to be a little bored. (rut story)
4. I’ll keep my head down and continue plugging away at my current role. (limited action plan)
Clearly none of the thoughts Miguel shared are facts in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4 is a fact. They are all interpretations. His limited action plan (“keep my head down and continue plugging away”) is perfectly logical, given the story he has told. Yet his action plan does not move him toward the realization of his hopes. His story does not support him realizing his hopes because it is a rut story. His talents are not engaged; they are submerged.
What could Miguel do with his rut story about how a promotion would mean compromising his family values and require him to be too political? Miguel, as it happens with many people, had trouble coming up with any previous successes to allay his particular concerns. Notice how his concern is the more powerful driver in his story—not his hope. What about inventing an altogether new, more powerful story?
What would it be like for Miguel to retell his story about a possible promotion? Here’s one possibility (that actually happened):
1. I have much more that I could contribute to the organization. In fact, this organization really needs what I have to offer. (story of hope)
2. Rising higher in the leadership could compromise time with my family and require me to be too political. (story of concern)
3. I’m not willing to let that happen. I will find a way to make sure that doesn’t happen. (river story)
4. I’ll identify some people who have been promoted and who have succeeded at staying real and honest while balancing their work and business lives. I’ll ask one of them to guide me. (new action plan)
Are your concerns driving your story as they were originally for Miguel, or are your hopes leading the way? You get to author your own inspirational story. What will it take for you to change your story for the better?
One way would be to examine your story from different perspectives. Seeing through other people’s eyes can help you to see hope where before there was concern. Go back to Miguel’s story, this time checking on the different perspectives from people in his life. If Miguel were to ask his boss, wife, kids, and most supportive friends for their perspectives on his story, what might he hear?
BOSS: We’re glad to have you on board and moving up in management. A mentor sounds like a solid idea, although you’ll have to seek that relationship on your own time.
WIFE: Honey, you know I want you to be happy. Just remember to keep us in mind.
KIDS: I don’t care, Dad—as long as you can make it to some of my games.
FRIEND: What kind of example are you being for your kids when you settle for something less than you can be?
Of course, these are just some possibilities. If Miguel were to take the time to look from those different perspectives, he might just see things in a different light. How does your story look from a different perspective?
TALENT TAKEAWAY
Our thought patterns drive our results. While ingrained fearful patterns protect us, they also hold us back from taking charge. You can stop the fear cycle and override it by shifting your attention to your hopeful, hero story. This allows you to calm your protective instincts long enough to explore new frontiers. Consciously choosing a hopeful frame of mind and acting to keep your hopes alive provides the necessary motivation to sustain your talent and accelerate results.
TAKE CHARGE
Keep your hopes alive with one or more of these exercises.
Nurture Your Hopes
1. Take 5. Spend five minutes a day giving focused attention to your hopes for your talent. Think about what you want to have happen, and note opportunities and progress toward your hopes.
2. Make your hopes visible. Create images and reminders in your environment to keep your deepest hopes in mind.
3. Have your very own Hope Holders. Ask the right people to tend the flame of your inspiration and never let you give up on yourself.
Turn Concerns into Energizers
1. Get your but out of the way. Examine how you think about things that get in your way. Remove whatever is interfering with moving toward your hopes, or shift your attention so that you can let your hopes burn more brightly.
2. Flip your concerns into hopes. Explore your concerns to see what hope underlies them. They will help you turn to positive outcomes.
3. Craft an inspirational story with yourself in the lead. Write a story that describes how you want your hopes to come to fruition. Describe how you will get out of the ruts and make the story flow.