Alexia's Views

Alexia's Mid-year Review 2012 - Part I

2012 is shaping up to be a banner year! I would never have imagined such a thing on January first of this year. When the year started, I was facing uncertainties in my work life. I was not at the top of my game health wise, and I was emotionally recovering from a few bad personal decisions. Things felt pretty much in shambles except for the family in my life and the roof over my head. 

While facing daily stress and uncertainty all around, I kept on praying. Little did I know my life would completely turn around in a matter of months. At the beginning of April, I went to Los Angeles on a business trip. On that trip, I was exposed to The Secret. At this point, enough people had mentioned what a great book it was, so, I broke down and read it. Being the self-help junkie that I am, I'm surprised I didn't jump on it when it came out. I guess the timing wasn't right. However, the book entered my life at just the right time.

The Secret revealed to me how a shift in energy, frequency, and attitude can change the world around you. One of the teachings in the book is to put your wish out there and release it, and then it will come to you. Sounds far fetched, huh? Well, wait and see.

More to come next time on the wonderful things I've learned experienced this year.

Olympians Face the Fear Factor

As I watch these 2012 Olympic Games in London, I'm always amazed by the professionalism, poise and athleticism of the athletes from around the world. Sometimes I wonder how these sports were invented

Photo by john Cheng

in the first place. I am most amazed when I look at the gymnasts. The U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team is full of teenagers facing more pressure and competition than most of us ever sees our adult lives. How can a sixteen year old keep it together and perform? More than that, how do these athletes come back after making an error like stumbling or falling all together?

 

I always think of the Chumbawamba song that says, "I get knocked down, but I get up again.  You're never going to keep me down." Unfortunately, the rest of the song isn't about facing a fear factor, but the chorus gets the point across. When an athlete falls in the Olympic games, she gets back up and keeps going.

I'm a trained opera singer, and sometimes I don't hit every note perfectly. What happens when a musician makes an error or a singer cracks a high note? You keep on going.

What is harder than continuing on is suppressing the voices of fear that enter your mind once you screw up. It's the ones that tell you how humiliated you'll be if you do it again. They tell you that you aren't good enough and a myriad of other negative things.

So how do you face the fear factor of overcoming a big mistake?

The first thing you have to do is acknowledge it. Separate yourself from the incident. Then you must trust your training and past history of performance. With time and practice, you can develop the mental prowess to suppress the negative voices and concentrate on only positive ones. You can envision yourself succeeding, and mostly, you press on. 

I won't lie that time can erase some of the hurt, but we don't always have the luxury of time. So as I face any voices of fear or doubt that enter my brain each day, I like to think of the Olympic athletes and follow the encouragement of watching them perform time after time.

Face your fears today because you can!

Do they like me? Does it matter? | Alignment, Inc. - A Fine Line

 

I'm sharing another post from the amazing, Kristin Kaufman. 

Do they like me? Does it matter? | Alignment, Inc. - A Fine Line.

 

Be Happy Now!

What's the secret to living your best life? It is choosing to be happy now. I know that's easier said than done, but with persistence and practice you can learn to be

progressively happier and more positive with each passing day. I know because I'm making the effort myself each day and am constantly amazed by how much more I love life and being alive now that I'm making conscious decisions to be happy, see the bright side, and have an overall positive outlook.

I'm still a work in progress, but I have progressed. It's amazing how we can really redefine our thought patterns and eliminate negative habits and unproductive cultural codes. Some days are more challenging than others. I've woken up on the wrong side of the bed and had a cranky day or two. I'm human. On other days, I feel too tired to be perky, and I want to fall back into old ways of thinking. In those times I choose to surround myself with positive things, thoughts, and messages. I listen to The Secret, think of things that make me happy like the ocean or good food, then I engage in some of the Five Love Languages that bring me joy, like performing acts of service.

Personality Profile: The Connector

We all know them. Connectors are those social butterflies that don't know a stranger. Not only do Connectors make friends easily, they are also good at doing just what their name implies. They connect people who can mutually benefit from knowing each other. Maybe the commonality is nationality, maybe it's life stage, and sometimes it's people doing the same job in two different companies. The breadth of things that align us are vast, and it can take the help of a Connector to put two and two together.

The whole idea of the Connector was presented in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. In the book he brings up a few key roles that people play as trends develop; Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.

Connectors cross-pollinate the world. Mavens help people make informed decisions, and 

Salesmen use their charisma and charm to persuade others.

Gladwell makes a point that people choose to socialize with others who share similar activities. He says that Connectors have a special gift for bringing people together, and they know lots of people from all walks of life. Gladwell also tells the story of an experiment done that developed the concept of Six Degrees of Separation, that none of us is more that six hops from knowing any other person.

Connectors are not only people now, but they come now come in the form of websites. We are connecting through all the social media channels and finding friends and common friends we didn't know we had before. Just last week, I got a message from a facebook friends asking me how I knew someone that appeared in the "Friends In Common" section. The common friend and I used to work together, and the friend that sent the email practices yoga with me regularly. Without the help of facebook, we might have never known we shared a mutual friend. Now take that story and multiply it by the number of facebook or LinkedIn or other social network friends you have, if you participate. That can give you an idea of the powerful medium before us.

“The closer someone is to a Connector, the more powerful or the wealthier or the more opportunities he or she gets.”  ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Have an Attitude of Gratitude. 4 Keys to Maintaining a Good Attitude

Attitude. It determines so much of how we approach life and other people. What is your attitude? I'm sure it changes based on your circumstances and environment. Some people bring out a particular attitude in you of generosity or even frustration.

When I think about attitude, I try to take an approach of being others-centered, operative word being TRY. It's not always easy, particularly if you're with a person who really challenges you. Most of the times it's pretty easy to have a good attitude. You may have a rough day from time to time, but overall things flow routinely.

I'm thinking about those times when things don't go as expected and people's reactions and responses don't happen as you anticipated. Why did that person get angry or offended? Why did I get angry or offended? How do I maintain an attitude of gratitude when things are challenging?

When those things happen. I find it best to follow a short process to evaluate your attitude and determine if you need to adjust it. Generally I find I do.

Step 1. Understand your emotions. This often times means stepping away from a situation. If you have someone you trust around, talk to him or her about what happened. Journal or find another way to get what you're thinking and feeling out.

Step 2. Be grateful. Be thankful for a situation that's challenging because it will only help you to know yourself and other personalities better in the end. Most conflicts come through dealing with other people and the relationships in your life, so the better you understand others, the better you can cope with and manage the mixture of personalities around you.

Step 3. Put yourself in the other person's shoes. I know you don't want to see things from their perspective, but force yourself to put yourself in their mind for a couple of minutes. Imagine dealing with you from the other person's point of view. What expectations do they have? What are their goals?

Step 4. Adjust your attitude accordingly. This may mean reevaluating and adjusting your approach and communication style. It may mean you need to apologize. It may mean you step away from that relationship for a while. Whatever it is for you, be sure you think things through in every way.

If you make the effort to adjust your attitude and approach, you should find better success. It takes making a decision and some humility to go through this process, but it won't hurt you for trying. Practice choosing to love. You can!

A Word about Mentoring | Alignment, Inc. - A Fine Line

Enjoy this post by my friend and other mentor, Kristin Kaufman of Alignment, Inc.

A Word about Mentoring | Alignment, Inc. - A Fine Line.

Are You Tired of Rushing the Day Away?

For the last ten years or so, I've been on a mission to get the most out of life. I still am on that mission. In an effort to reach that goal each day, it often meant cramming absolutely everything into one day, never saying no to an experience even if I wasn't interested, and running myself ragged each and every day. This was the norm for me, and it was so much, that it actually deferred me from getting the most out of life.

I'm a classic producer, and feel most fulfilled in life when I have something to show for my work at the end of a day. That's why I like to cook and exercise. I gain a great sense of accomplishment from churning out results. This is fantastic, unless it gets to the point that you are doing one hundred things a little bit instead of doing one thing at a time in depth.

In the past, I would get bored easily if I wasn't constantly stimulated at  pace I desired. Maybe I'm growing up, or maybe I'm just getting older, or maybe I'm simply evolving. Recently, I realized I was just exhausted from all the rushing around and not feeling the value in each moment. I wasn't, as the saying goes, stopping to smell the roses of my day. This rushing practice extended from not fully tasting the food I was eating because I was too busy inhaling it  to enjoying each moment of my workout and loving how my body felt while being challenged. Every activity was about finishing to get to the next thing. The 2006 Adam Sandler movie, Click, demonstrates this rushing frenzy beautifully.

What's the Difference Between Strength and Force?

Do you approach life and it's challenges with strength or force? This isn't a physics or engineering lesson since I'm talking about the strength and force from within you. This is one of those ongoing paradoxical life balances kind of like the difference between acting out of confidence or arrogance. They are somehow related, but the root of each is entirely different. Both try to achieve the same outcome with a different core.

When I think of strength, I think of my yoga practice. I've been a regular practicing Ashtanga yogi for the last seven years. Over the course of my practice at the Dallas Yoga Center,  my strength and flexibility have increased. For example, I have been ale to learn to lift into headstand and scorpion poses that were not natural to me when I started practicing yoga. I could jump around or go against a wall but not hold a balance on my own without support for a long time. Then, I developed the core strength needed to be able to hold the poses on my own.

Lifting into the pose exhibits strength, while kicking up into the poses and flopping around imposes force on something that is very natural. Kicking into a yoga posture may have it's place while you learn, but ultimately you have to distinguish the difference between the core strength of the pose and the forceful kicking that will inhibit the posture over the long-term.