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Ignore The Hidden Wisdom Of Your Body At Your Own Risk!

The mind-body connection is a powerful one, but whether we’re thinking about Career Success, Loving Relationships or a Happy Life, we tend to neglect the inner wisdom of the body, which is in fact profound. This has been brought home to me powerfully in the last month or so thanks to my coaching Professional Development activities.

Typically, if you go to a coach or a counsellor because you need help with an issue, you’ll focus on your thoughts. There might be the odd question like ‘where do you feel that in your body’ but this is not the commonest approach. Coaching and counselling are generally mental approaches, focussing on thought patterns and emotions. There’s a lot of value in this, and it’s an approach which helps millions of people every year. But it does tend to ignore another of our personal wisdom sources: the body.

But this may be changing.

In the last month I’ve ‘accidentally’ attended two different sessions on the wisdom of the body. (Jung would call this synchronicity, I suppose). Through my work as a hypnotherapist, I’ve known for a long time about body-language – how thoughts like ‘my boss is a pain in the neck’ can literally transform into neck pain without the sufferer ever connecting the two. It really is worth paying attention to your own body language: the people and things which you say give you a bad feeling in some part of your body. Things that ‘stick in your throat’, give you a ‘pain in the butt’ (or anywhere else in your body). If you don’t believe that our thoughts have a direct impact on our body, have a read of Nobel-nominee Candace Pert’s book ‘The Molecules of Emotion‘ (with a foreword by Deepak Chopra) or Bruce Lipton’s ‘Biology of Belief‘.

What’s even more interesting is what happens when you start moving your body consciously and noticing where you feel discomfort. For example, let’s say you have problems being taking seriously at work. It’s a common problem for younger women in particular. How can you tap into the energy of gravitas and confidence? Think of a character from a film, book, novel, myth, fairy story or card pack like the Tarot, who embodies gravitas and confidence. Let’s say a Queen. Imagine you are that Queen. Start walking around the room like her. (Mercifully you can do this in the privacy of your own home!)

Start with the stance. How does your Queen stand and hold her head? Stand like that. How does she breathe – where in the body, how quickly? Breathe like that. How does she move (walk, move arms, head and so forth). Move like that. You may well have done an exercise like this before.

Now notice what aspects of this Queenly behaviour you find uncomfortable. Why are they uncomfortable? Is it because they are unfamiliar? Or because they somehow go against your beliefs of how a woman of gravitas and confidence would behave? How is your daily behaviour in line with, or at odds with, this Queenly behaviour? Write down any insights this exercise gives you.

Doing this exercise at a recent coaching conference really took me out of my comfort zone and gave me some fascinating insights – and I always thought I knew about mind-body wisdom and consciousness. Highly recommended!

And finally, here is a link to the article on emotions stored in the body as pain that promoted this blog piece. It’s actually aimed at men, but it has real relevance for us women too.

Ill be posting a video in the next week or so to showing you the exercise I just described, so watch this space.

What Does Your Personal Brand Have To Do With Career Success?

Written by The Career Success Doctor

The term ‘Personal Brand‘ doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means, but it is certainly important for career success. I used to think ‘Personal Brand’ was all about visual image, but in fact there’s a lot more too it than that. I also used to think that having a PB meant I had to use exactly the same photo of myself everywhere. Some personal branding experts do claim this is true, but I’ve found a little variation actually works fine. After all, we are all of us complex people with more than one face. If I want people to get a sense of the real me, then different photos will give them a much better of idea of what I am like.

First, a little story…

Late last week a friend texted me with a special last minute offer: to go for a photo pamper. £30 for a manicure, makeup done, hair done and a photo done by a professional photographer. Ah yes, and wine and nibbles thrown it. Seemed a cracking idea for a Friday afternoon, so I signed up with alacrity.

We had to take several outfits to be photographed in, and it’s extraordinary how different each one felt in front of the camera. Once we had been made over, we trouped in and out of the studio, into the changing room, quick slurp of wine, back in for more poses, different backgrounds and different seating arrangement. Then a wine-fortified wait while the photos were uploaded for our viewing and selection.

We knew we would be sold additional photos, and we were, but it was so nicely done, and the photos were so good, it was worth it. And they gave us more wine to facilitate the selection process.

It was fun, it was social, and the results were very pleasing. (I’ve included a few here so you can judge for yourself)

And I decided to count it as my weekly Creative Date (which I am doing as I follow Julia Cameron’s ideas for opening up the creative juices – see my post last week on Creative Dates and Creativity).

Anyway, back to personal branding.

I now have some cracking, recent photos I can use. Working for myself, I don’t need to look formal and staid. They are not qualities which people normally use to describe me anyway, and many of the photos I have had done in the past didn’t feel true for me because they didn’t show my fun side. They felt inauthentic, or as one friend said ‘creepy’.

Authenticity is a key part of your Personal Brand

If your Personal Brand isn’t authentic, if it doesn’t ring true for you, it won’t last. Business Week recently published an article on the Personal Brand which made this very point. Being inauthentic drains your energy, because it’s hard work. The Business Week article also talked about ‘sharing yourself’ – making your gifts and expertise available to other people. I think this is a particularly important point for women. We do tend to hide our lights under the proverbial bushel, and one way of shining without seeming to boast is to show your talents in the service of others, so they can boast on your behalf. This then becomes part of your Personal Brand.

At the same time, you have to balance the need for authenticity against the culture and style of the organisation. In the long term, if there is a real mis-match between the two, you probably won’t enjoy working there. We get the greatest enjoyment at work when the organisation’s values are aligned with our own – something I wrote about in an article published recently in Changing Careers. If the organisational dress code (implicit or explicit) is a dark suit and shirt, and these either don’t suit you, or don’t feel right, then you will need to be in a very powerful position to get away with anything less than a dark suit and shirt. If the organisation says its values are honesty and customer service, but they lie to customers and outsourced the customer service to a very cheap, rather poor call centre in the Far East years ago, you have to question whether this is the right working environment for you.

When you make living by your personal values a part of your Personal Brand, things start to flow. When you give up your own values for the sake of someone or something else, things become more of a struggle. Work feels like effort. The career feels like a weight upon your shoulders.

How To Find The Personal Brand That Supports Career Success

In my opinion there are two aspects to your Personal Brand: visual and behavioural. One way of dealing with the visual side is to go see an image consultant – someone like Sam Bell at Pixie Bell http://pixie-belle.co.uk A lot of image consultants focus on what they know from the book, without considering the inner you which wants to shine through, so if you do see an image consultant, which is well worth the money, then make sure they think about who you are, not just what the books say you should be.

The behavioural side is rather different. You need to go internal – spend some time thinking about who you are and what you stand for. Consider your talents and expertise, your dreams, and what it is that you love in life. How would you describe yourself? How do others describe you? Who are your role models, and why? What do you like to read, to do with your spare time, if you have any – and if you don’t have any how two you feel about that? The best way to do this is ask yourself the questions and write down the answers. Although my ebook, How To Have A Career That Really Works For You wasn’t written with personal branding in mind, it actually gives you the questions you need to answer, with worksheets and exercises for you to follow.

December is a great time to do this thinking. The days are growing shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly if you live in Northern Europe or Canada, and we naturally turn in towards hearth and home, as we prepare for the year to turn. Why not take the time now to decide how you want people to see you, feel about you and experience you, so that you start 2014 knowing exactly what it is you want to tell the world about yourself?

And if you need help with identifying your personal brand, feel free to get in touch.

Do We Women Sabotage Our Own Career Success?

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Mindset is so critical for career success, and it’s one of the ways that we successfully sabotage ourselves! I came across this article, Career Talk For Women, on a site called Post-Journal, which discusses this in some depth. As the author, ELIZABETH P. CIPOLLA, says:

‘It’s no secret that the world needs more women who are shamelessly confident in their ability to serve as role models and change agents. Our region (New York) is no exception. This month will focus upon the self-imposed handcuffs that can hold us back from making our mark as a competent leader if we aren’t quick to intervene.’

I love that phrase, ‘self-imposed handcuffs’. It describes the way we sabotage ourselves so well! You can read the rest of the article here.

The Power Of Vulnerability And Authenticity In Connecting With Others

Written by The Career Success Doctor

This TEDX video on The Power Of Vulnerability from Brené Brown is superb. She’s a scientist who studies human connection. “I want to make messy topics not messy”. She set out to understand and outsmart vulnerability, and came to realise its importance in making human connections. And she talks about it in a very funny, yet very authentic way. She also makes some key points about how we numb ourselves from our fear.

SO relevant to finding success in life and in your career.

For years my shame was my depression. My family didn’t do mental health problems, and there was I with clinical depression. Only after I started out to talk about it did I discover that depression is rampant in my family, on both sides. My paternal grandfather had ECT for it in the ’50s. But nobody EVER talked about it.

After watching this video I have a new insight: the depression it wasn’t a breakdown, it was the start of my spiritual awakening!

I numbed myself with alcohol and over-eating in my depression.

How have you numbed yourself from the fear?

Lean In Makes You Think!

Written by The Career Success Doctor

I’m reading Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, just now, and I’m finding it a fascinating, thought-provoking read.

Sandberg is on a mission to encourage women to step up, and to step in to leadership roles. She’s clear that one of the main obstacles to women achieving this is self-doubt. We are bombarded by messages concerning all the things it’s wrong for us to be, like: more powerful than men, assertive, or high earners. As women we are extremely good at taking these messages on board and feeling ‘not good enough’. [Read more…]

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