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Villella Williams Life Coaching

Belief in One’s Self

March 1, 2017 By Villella Williams Life Coaching

A child rock climbing indoors

We are all familiar with the research concept of the placebo effect. According to The Harvard Health Letter,  the placebo effect is a favorable reaction to care and attention from people who patients believe can help ease their suffering and distress. The key word here is belief. The patients believe that it can help. This belief is important and powerful. In fact, the newsletter from Harvard goes further to encourage the medical community and patients to utilize the placebo effect as part of medical care. The patient's belief is based upon an expectation that there will be an improvement in their condition and in fact appears to have a lot to do with the effect. “There is also evidence that some of the placebo effect is a favorable reaction to care and attention from people who patients believe can help ease their suffering and distress.”

What an amazing and important fact! If we believe that the care or attention from people we believe in can ease our suffering, it helps achieve that outcome! Then by all means we should have more of the placebo effect acting in our lives. Who are these people in our lives? Only you can answer that type of question, but they should be positive, caring forces, people who hold our best interests at heart and only want the best for us. These people are people who know us and are honest with us.

We suggest that there is a single person who ought to be at the top of that list: ourselves. Belief in ourselves need not be based on some false bravado or conceit, but simply from the fact that we exist. René Descartes is often quoted as stating “cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am.” The quote attributed to Antoine Léonard Thomas, and which seems to better capture Decartes real intent is “Dubito ergo, cogito ergo sum – I doubt, therefore I think, I think therefore I am.” The difference is important, because it begins with doubt over his own existence. Since he doubts he exists, the doubt is the evidence of his thought and because he thinks, his existence is proven. Moreover, his very existence makes him the equal of every other person in existence, has existed or will exist. There can be no false bravado because he has doubted his own existence in the beginning and then has come to know his existence. He also has learned that he has power over this existence, his doubt is evidence of thinking and drawing a conclusion. He has exercised free will and transcended. Descartes has re-invented himself in a sentence!

Belief in ourselves must be grounded in self-knowledge of who we are and our value-set. We must come to know ourselves well and according to the Oxford dictionary, have trust, faith and confidence in ourselves. This self-knowledge is essential and not always so difficult to obtain. However, we must be honest with ourselves. In order to know ourselves, we must know our values. What are our values and how are those values revealed in our behavior? We must at first get comfortable with who we are and respect that person, value that person, care for that person.

How do we develop belief, this trust, faith and confidence in ourselves? We have free will. With free will, we can exercise choice in our decision making. We can make choices to benefit ourselves and choices in line with our values. This free will gives us power, power over our lives and power over ourselves. Recognizing that we have power over choices, power over our decisions, power over our lives, shows belief in ourselves. This belief in ourselves through the exercise of free will helps ease our suffering and helps achieve a desired outcome! Belief in ourselves is a powerful agent in changing our lives.

​Your life is too valuable to not take the next step.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

To change ourselves takes the courage of a Superhero

February 7, 2017 By Villella Williams Life Coaching

Child superhero

“Courage reveals itself most often in the ordinary.”
- Me

Many have written about courage and ordinary people, and about courage under ordinary circumstances.  If I have failed to cite them properly, it is simply because as my good friend Dan reminds me, 'you haven't had an original thought, you just forget where you heard it.' In this case, I think the wording is mine. Let's consider that courage in ordinary things is still courage, that it sometimes takes great courage to live an ordinary life, and that living an ordinary life with courage is both meaningful and extraordinary.

To be courageous does not usually involve major heroic things. Courage reveals itself most often in the ordinary. Consider first our public heroes, often athletes. If you follow football or basketball , these athletes are literally larger than life. These are massive human beings with super human strength, speed, and endurance. We are in awe of their accomplishments, as well we should be. It is even more impressive when we put such accomplishments into perspective and realize that on our very best day, we would not equal their very worst day. They are that much better than us at what they do.

As children we imagine that we are these great athletes and often wonder what it must be like to really be like them. Everyone wants to be like Mike, Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player ever for our young readers. Honestly, it must be wonderful to be like them. We cannot imagine being as good at something as they are at what they do. Certainly, they have worked hard and continue to work hard to develop their gifts and God given talents. That couldn't have been easy. Yet,let's pause for a minute. Was it courageous? Was it heroic?

These athletes operate at a different level. They are the best at what they do. It must be incredibly easy to wake up everyday and know that you are that good at something. You are at a level that most people could never imagine exists. If you are Lebron James, 'it's good to be the king.'

Then there are the rest of us. We are ordinary in that regard. We could practice for the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers reminds us is the price to be paid to become an expert. Yet even if we paid such a price, most of us for many reasons, could never attain that level of expertise. We would be better of course, but most would never be that good. So think of our courage. We have the courage to wake up everyday and try again. Mary Anne Rademacher wrote “Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.” What courage that takes! If we keep trying again for tomorrows after tomorrow, we must ask why? What is the reason for trying?  The reasons are often simple.

We get up and go to work everyday, sometimes at a job we don't like, to provide for our families. We sometimes play at a sport or recreational activity knowing that we will never be good enough to be professional but we have a reason to come back. Golfers play at that enormously frustrating game hoping that their next shot is the one that they hit just like Tiger Woods. Those reasons are within ourselves, to simply provide enjoyment, to get better albeit marginally, to participate, to engage in life and living, to accept responsibility for who we are.

The courage we speak of and even celebrate is the courage to try. Life does not promise us success, it does not promise us really much of anything except life. So let us engage life head on, embrace it,embrace that notion that we have power within ourselves to craft that life if we but participate in it. That active participation and engagement in life can begin to create meaning in line with our values.

 What then can we do to change our lives, to begin to create a more meaningful life? Frankl suggests three ways to discover and create meaning in our lives:

  1. Create a work or do some deed. Frankl is not urging us to do something that makes front page news so to speak. Rather he urges us to get up and do something, something for ourselves perhaps or do something for others. If we have a core belief in something fundamental like an environmental cause, serving the homeless, or giving ourselves in some way to others, we begin to create meaning in our lives, our days have a purpose. Yet there are of course other deeds to perform, some other work to do. We can do something for ourselves as well. Most of us have had a desire to become more healthy, to get more exercise. So this small deed of doing something to start small, do something healthy for yourself begins to change your life and to create meaning for you. It begins to proclaim to the world, 'This is me! This is my life defined by me!'
  2. Experiencing something, encountering someone. We can at least today, at least one time, stop to say hello and converse with our neighbor, to do something for someone in our family, even to the point of just calling them to say “hello, how are you?”. These are deeds and works of caring, and caring for someone expressed through a deed creates meaning. We can experience something as well. These experiences do not have to be dramatic events, but can you experience beauty, truth, goodness? Emerson wrote that 'if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty has its own excuse for being.' We can discover meaning by experiencing goodness,truth, and beauty.
  3. In our attitude toward suffering. Frankl does not suggest that suffering is necessary for meaning, but that in spite of suffering, it is possible to discover meaning. Dostoevsky said “There is only one thing I dread, not to be worthy of my sufferings.” While this might seem a strange thing to say, Frankl reminds us that the way one bears suffering is a genuine achievement. That is to say that the spiritual freedom of exercising one's will in these circumstances is what makes life meaningful and purposeful. We have a choice to have courage, to have dignity, or to forget the dignity that makes us human and become more concerned with self-preservation at the expense of that dignity. Few people have such courage and dignity, however, we can point to examples of such moral courage as something to emulate. Our failings do not mean that we lack courage or moral fiber, it demonstrates that we have the courage to try to succeed. That courage demonstrates our free will to transcend suffering and to find meaning in the worst circumstances.

So let us begin to create more meaning in our lives. Let us, in the ordinary things we do, have the courage we imagine our Superheroes to have. Try once again. Let us take the next step.

​Your life is too valuable to not take the next step.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A body at rest tends to stay at rest…

January 26, 2017 By Villella Williams Life Coaching

Waterdrops dripping into water

Let me first of all apologize to all high school physics teachers for my paraphrasing of Sir Isaac Newton's first law of motion, that a body at rest tends to remain at rest and a body in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by another force. Sir Isaac's pronouncement set the mechanical world in motion and it hasn't looked back since, thereby helping to make his point.

​Newton's law applies not only to inanimate objects but to ourselves as well. Consider that a person at rest tends to stay at rest, and a person in motion tends to stay in motion. These behaviors, rest and motion, are learned behaviors. If we teach ourselves or are taught to lead an active motion filled lifestyle, we will tend to continue to be in motion much of our lives. If we learn to be sedentary and restful as a way of being, then we will tend to continue to remain at rest for much of our lives. That is unless we are acted on by another force. Rest and motion are not limited to physical states, resting and staying in motion, but perhaps even more relevant, mental and emotional states. If we rest mentally, there is no motion, no growth. The same can be said for emotional growth.

​Much of our emotional and intellectual 'resting' state is learned behavior. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archipelago tells of the zek, the prisoner, who observes an ant in a tea cup. The ant tries to make his way up the side of the tea cup only to be pushed gently down to the bottom by the zek. After repeated failures, 182 failures to be exact, the ant quits and remains at the bottom of the tea cup. He has tended to remain at rest and will never find his way out of the tea cup. The ant has learned not to try. Oddly enough, the next try might have been the one where the zek fails to act and lets the ant out of the tea cup. Similarly, our 'active' state can be a learned behavior and the action of the zek can be like a force acting upon us. We can try again or give up, both are learned behaviors. If we give up, we know the outcome.

The forces that act upon us might be a job loss, relationship loss, or something as simple as trying on a pair of jeans. As my cousin reminds me, 'my genes are why I can't fit into my jeans.' So if we let it, that simple statement can be the force that acts on us to begin and to tend to remain in motion. It is our choice. Growth is a natural state of humans. We are born quite small and helpless. However, it seems that we are born smart, programmed to grow and learn in every way. We learn what we have been given an opportunity to learn as young children. We learn to crawl, to walk, to run. We fall down, laugh, sometimes cry, and get up and run again. We learn to speak, to communicate and so on. Our learning curve is steep, we learn a lot and quickly. As children we are sponges absorbing everything around us, growing and learning as we go.​

So what happens next? Well, we tend to believe what others tell us about ourselves, that we have limitations, that we can't do that, we can't sing or dance, or we will fail if we try what ever we might want to try. Compare that to a child who in a single day is a Superhero, their favorite animal, a character from a movie, or some other creature of their own making, sometimes all at the same time. They sing, they laugh, they dance, they imagine, they play, they help, they learn and they grow. The notion of us as a Superhero would be laughable to our peers, because as an adult, we have learned not to think that way. And why not?​

Why can't you be a Superhero? We may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound like Superman but we can have super powers also. We can be perceptive, we can learn, we can grow, we can be better today than we were yesterday. We can improve. In that way, we are better than any Superhero could ever hope to be. They are already as good as they will ever be. Their best days are not ahead. They will never improve, and, as even they know, they are not perfect or invincible. We can continue to get better everyday in whatever way we apply ourselves. Our best days are ahead of us, if we want them to be. Everyday can be better than the last.​

However, we must take heed from our friend Sir Isaac. A body at rest tends to stay at rest, a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by another force. Unlike inanimate objects that have to be acted on by an outside force in order to change, we can provide that force by ourselves because we have the power of choice. We can choose to be the force that causes us to begin and remain in motion if we take the next step.​

​Your life is too valuable to not take the next step.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Popeye Point

January 18, 2017 By Villella Williams Life Coaching

JK Rowling Quote

J. K. Rowling, the famous author of the Harry Potter series of children's books reached rock bottom, what Karl Albrecht, Ph.D. called The Popeye Point. This point is a reference to the cartoon character Popeye, who finally reached the point where, as Popeye so artfully declares 'that's all I can stands 'cuz I can't stands no more.' Popeye then reaches for his can of spinach, downs it and then avenges himself on those who treated him poorly.  Albrecht mentions the Popeye point where Tina Turner turned around her life and her career when she finally left her husband and successfully pursued her own career. A Popeye point is 'a primal, visceral, life-changing decision', like Tina Turner's Popeye point.

Similarly Rowling, who according to Wikipedia:

"Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as a failure. Her marriage had failed, and she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as liberating and allowing her to focus on writing. During this period, Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression and contemplated suicide.  Rowling signed up for welfare benefits, describing her economic status as being "poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless."

Yet Rowling persevered. She wrote. Writing gave her meaning and purpose in her life. Her first manuscript was rejected twelve times. Her editor advised her to get a job since she likely would fail as an author of children's books. He apparently was wrong. In 2004, Forbes magazine noted that she was the first person to become a billionaire by writing books.  Her billionaire status is disputed, but it would be safe to say that Rowling is no longer as 'poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.' She appears to be doing fine financially and, as they say, 'she has beer money.' So what does that mean to me, to us? Most of us are not possessed of the talent of a J. K. Rowling, most of us are not blessed with the talent of Tina Turner. What about us?

It is likely true that we are not those people, but neither are they us. They have their own skills, their own gifts, as we all do. Each of us has our own gifts. Our life is the party to which our very birth invites us and everyone brings something to the party. What do we bring to the party? J. K. Rowling and Tina Turner made their life changing decision and then went on to share their particular gifts with us. What gifts do we have that we are willing to share with the rest of the people at the party, to bring our gifts into their lives?​

Comparisons between ourselves and others are not particularly useful comparisons if we compare our current state with their current state. However, comparisons with people like Rowling or Turner can be helpful to us if we use them as role models. Each of them reached a Popeye point before they turned their life around. Do we have to wait until we reach a rock bottom Popeye point before we begin to turn our lives around?​

Popeye waited until he reached the point where 'that's all I can stands 'cuz I can't stands no more.' Of course we don't have to wait until where we have reached rock bottom as our Popeye point. We only have to reach the point where we decide that this is all we can stand and we then decide to change things. That point can indeed be liberating because it frees us to pursue our meaning and purpose in life, to create and fulfill our own destiny. Leaving the past behind, to learn from and to be grounded in our experience but to avoid being bound by our experience is when we can grow. We can use the experiences of Rowling and Turner to begin building our lives before things get too extreme, before reaching rock bottom. The first step on the path to building our lives is to recognize that we are empowered to make choices that give our lives meaning and align with our values.​

​Each of us has something that we can do. Even if that something that we can do right now we think is pretty ordinary, we can choose to do the ordinary extraordinarily well. What is our gift? What meaning and purpose do we have in life? When will we each decide that 'that's all I can stand 'cuz I can't stands no more' and begin to take that first step to change our lives? Your life is too valuable to not take the next step.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Crisis of Meaning

January 9, 2017 By Villella Williams Life Coaching

The Chinese symbol for crisis

The Chinese symbol for crisis

"In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength.
Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.
"
-Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Frankl talks about a mid-life crisis as a crisis of meaning. We normally associate a mid-life crisis in disparaging terms regarding an older person attempting to return to the thrilling days of their youth. Often the results are embarrassing. I strongly encourage you to google "Danny DeVito skinny jeans" to see what I mean. On the other hand, and at other times the results can just be enjoyable.  For example, a return to a more healthful lifestyle with more activity and wide eyed wonder at the miracles of everyday life can provide a lot of enjoyment. The struggles of living can cause us to forget that we once enjoyed photography or music, and now that we have the time, we can pick up that camera or instrument and begin again. That endeavor can be enjoyable.

Rather than focus on the mid-life part of the crisis of meaning, I reflected on the crisis of meaning itself. According to the Oxford dictionary, a crisis is a time of intense difficulty or danger. We can react differently to a crisis, one person might be deeply affected, another not at all. So crisis appears to be not the situation, but our reaction to it. Crisis in Chinese is represented by both the characters for danger, and opportunity. A crisis can be a danger or an opportunity, a turning point, a fork in the road.

In the workplace, were we spend much of our day and much of our life, we encounter experiences that could result in crisis. A symptom of that crisis can be a lack of motivation. We have often been told that the purpose of business is to maximize the return on investment for shareholders, a none too inspirational or motivational purpose for many. Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto spoke about this lack of motivation with Millenials, but it certainly has applied to baby boomers in their careers as well. He said, “Okay, so let me get this straight. I’m supposed to come to work for you and work every day with the singular goal of maximizing the value of faceless, nameless people who can blow us off in a nanosecond if they had a bad hair day? Am I right thus far?” The truthful answer is, yes. And the Millenials are just saying, “Like,you got to be kidding me. Seriously?“.

When I read that statement, I was rather stunned, but Roger has a point. That purpose is not very motivational, so people become disenchanted and seek some meaning elsewhere in their lives. They seek out new careers, other employers, any attempt to better their situation. Often they just leave one non-motivational environment for another. Of course, it doesn't have to be that way.

We cannot change the desire on the part of the shareholders and their representatives to maximize profits, but we have the free will to determine who we will follow and which organizations are more closely aligned with our value set.  We can even choose another career more aligned with our values.

How can we find meaning when confronted with these crises, these difficulties, these dangers? Where is there danger? Where is there opportunity? In order to react properly in a reasoned, deliberate manner, we must first of all understand our life purpose and our authentic values. These values are the traits and beliefs that underlie our behaviors, particularly our behaviors when reacting to a crisis. If we understand our values, our beliefs, we can construct behaviors that react to a crisis more in keeping with our goals in life.

We can help. Your life is too valuable to not take the next step.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

There is but one job

January 5, 2017 By Villella Williams Life Coaching

An anvil and mallet, symbolizing work

This year marks an interesting anniversary, the Beloit College mindset list, “which this year is as old as the entering students themselves” according to their website.

What makes this list most interesting to me is that it offers a chance to reflect on what it means to be someone born in 1997. Some interesting entries include, since the year these students were born:

  • there have always been hybrid cars
  • they have never licked a postage stamp
  • the idea of someone being the first woman to hold a position only impresses people old enough to be their parents or grandparents
  • CNN has always been available en Español

This year's list also includes a personal translator to translate Millennial jargon so the website provides an opportunity to understand a bit more of what it means to grow up as a Millennial. In the working environment for these Millennials, security and longevity no longer exist. However, there are always opportunities to work at exciting and meaningful jobs and in professions that perhaps don't even exist yet. These students have the benefit of time and we hope, optimism about the future.

I read an article recently about 34 white collar Japanese workers at an insurance firm who will be laid off and replaced by artificial intelligence. This event is startling and certainly disruptive to the lives of the 34 people affected, their families, friends, and co-workers.

For those of us who have read this news, we are unsettled. No one wants to see anyone lose their job, and no one wants to be replaced by anything, let alone an object like a robot or software. Yet, this dilemma is nothing new. It is a more modern version of an old situation, people replaced by technology. This news is uncomfortable for many of us because we wonder, 'when is it my turn to be replaced?'

So what 'jobs' should we prepare for?  The answer is there is no answer. However, we should adopt a mindset of continuous learning, intellectual curiosity, continuous improvement of ourselves and the world around us. No matter how old we are, our best days are always ahead of us. We have the choice to make it so. We also have the means and even the resources available to most of us to prepare ourselves through education, both formal and especially informal.

I once belonged to a gym that had a number of elderly members. I got a great piece of advice from one of them when he said, 'show up, do something.' So that is our job: 'show up, do something' with our lives. Show up, learn something. There is but one job and that job is continuous education, continuous learning, continuous improvement. That's an exciting job, one that is always different, new, and always in demand.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Power of Choice

January 3, 2017 By Villella Williams Life Coaching

power of choice illustrated as multiple paths

Those who know me well know that I have an affinity for reading, especially the Russian novelists. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are without many equals, and their works are magnificent. Besides, I am always in the mood for a good story. Recently I happened across Oblomov by Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov. For those unfamiliar with the novel, the main character Oblomov is a member of Russia's upper middle class. He, like all protagonists, has a fatal flaw. Oblomov has a slothful attitude toward life. In the first third of the novel, he barely rises from his bed. As might be expected, he lives his life this way.

​While Oblomov has elevated sloth to an art form and few people in my experience are like him, at times we all can be like Oblomov. Life becomes a bit much and we fail to live it. As I read Oblomov, I was reminded of a quote from Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, “Say yes to life in spite of everything.” Oblomov failed to say yes to life, even denying love. Let us not make the same mistake.

​As we begin a new year, we begin to see and hear all sorts of calls for New Year's Resolutions. And we all know what happens to them. Resolutions wither and go away. However, each day gives us another opportunity to reflect on life, especially our life. Why wait until a New Year?

​Frankl encourages us, and Oblomov reminds us, that we have free will. We cannot control some of our circumstances, Frankl's experience in concentration camps, or Oblomov's childhood where everything was done for him and he was left with nothing to do, were not their choices. Each responded in their own way, Frankl found meaning in his suffering and went on to become a renowned scholar and inspiration to others. Oblomov submitted to life. We do have control over how we respond to what life sends us and how we react to life. That response is an exercise of our free will, our choice to transcend circumstances. It is our responsibility to take each day and turn our energies toward responsible action, to make our lives what we want them to be. It is our challenge, or our gift from God to state it more emphatically, to use our free will to make choices that give our lives meaning and purpose.

​Lest I be accused of 'happy talk', I must admit that such a simple solution is merely simple. It isn't necessarily easy. However, it is also not impossible. It is a matter of aligning our values with our goals and actions. And of course, as my good friend Dan says, 'don't trip over things that are behind you.' So I must ask myself, what am I going to do about it? It is my choice.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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