Believing "I just want to be happy" is a lie Part 2

Last week I talked about how we don’t actually want to be happy all the time so telling yourself you “just want to be happy” is not helpful. 

Life is a 50/50 thing. 50% of the time we are going to be happy. 50% of the time we are going to be sad. There’s a full spectrum of emotions in between happy and sad, but 50% of the time we are going to have negative emotions and that’s actually a good thing. 

Most of us logically understand that to know what joy is, we have to have felt sorrow, but when life happens and we start feeling those negative emotions our brain freaks out and tries to tell us we should “just be happy.” 

People try to argue against the 50/50 and say they want it to be more like 80/20, but as Brene Brown says, you can argue with reality but you are going to lose every time. 

People get sick. Babies die. Accidents happy. People get fired. Bad things happen to good people. 

It seems like accepting this means we are giving up and not going to try to fight for what we feel is right, but the opposite is true. 

When you push against the reality of these things happening, you spend all of your time trying change the past which is impossible. 

When you accept them as facts now you can move forward and ask yourself, now what? What do you want to do now that your friend has cancer, or you lost your job, or your manger sucks, or that terrible accident happened?  Now what?  

By answering now what, it sets you up for moving forward in a way that actually helps you feel so much better. Now maybe you are going to help fundraise for cancer research, or start applying to jobs to find work, or tell your manager what you need to grow your career, or volunteer to help people in need.  

Moving forward and trying to help feels so much better than being angry because it should not have happened. 

Life, it’s a 50/50 game and accepting that is so much more empowering than just wanting to be happy. 

If you want help figuring out what this looks like for you, let’s jump on the phone and figure it out together. Sign up for free coaching at www.lindsaybuchancoaching.com

Believing "I just want to be happy" is a lie

Almost every one of my clients comes to me so frustrated with their life because they “just want to be happy.” They constantly worry about work. They can’t seem to unplug. They don’t feel connected in their relationships. They don’t have time to do the things they are passionate about. And the list goes on. 

I’m all for happy, but when it comes down to it, I encourage them to really look at the belief of always just wanting to be happy. When they think about this belief, how does it feel? 

Never once has anyone said that it feels good. They never say things like,” It so motivating. I get so excited about my life when I think about wanting to be happy.”  

Believing that you “just want to be happy” feels horrible. It’s depressing and makes you think about all the ways you aren’t happy. It feels hopeless and like you are stuck and a total victim to your life. 

Logically, if you went around being happy all the time you would never actually know you were happy. In order to know what happy is, you have to know what sad is. If you’ve never felt alone and anxious, you won’t know what connected and peace feel like. If you never feel negative emotions, you never realize when you are feeling positive emotions. 

Not only this, but there are things we want to feel bad about. Most people want to be sad when people get cancer and babies die. Most of us don’t want to be happy when someone loses their job or is physically abused. 

We don’t really want to be happy all the time. 

I’m not saying let people harm you or to don’t take care of yourself. But I want you to think about how your day would go if you gave up the belief of “just wanting to be happy.” 

What if you wanted to be mad that your manager is not putting you up for a promotion? 

What if you wanted to be frustrated that you work crazy hours?

What if you wanted to feel bad about not spending more time with your friends and family?

If you never felt bad you would be considered a psychopath. So good news; You’re human! These are totally normal feelings. 

Next week I’ll tell you what to do now and how to actually start  feeling better, but the first and most important step is just realizing and owning that sometimes, you do actually want to feel bad and that’s okay. 

Just feeling bad is so much better then feeling bad AND annoyed because you are feeling bad. Let’s start with removing a layer of those negative emotions and just feel bad. 

If you want help applying this to your specific situation, let’s jump on the phone and figure it out together. Sign up for a free call at www.lindsaybuchancoaching.com

What is life coaching?

I use to think life coaching was a bunch of vision boards, manifesting things you want, and far out there woo-woo rituals.

I’m a pretty straight up, tell it like it is, logically minded person so when my friends would tell me they hired a life coaching I would smile and silently judged them for being one of those crazy people.

I’ve never been so glad to be wrong in my life! 

Life coaching is a way to take people from living a good life to an amazing life. It’s not a substitute for a therapist who will treat acute mental disorders or diseases, but it’s tools to help you manage your emotional life.

You probably know the tools of effect communication, time management, and project planning, but do you know the tools of how to be confident, how to stop feeling overwhelmed, and what to do when most days are bad days?

Life coaching does not focus on treating the symptoms of the pain or shortcomings, but on finding the root cause of each symptom and helping people find ways to create change.

For example, have you ever been miserable in your job because of a bad manager or crappy projects?   Did you then search for a new job, feel really good about it but eventually start to feel miserable about your job again?  Life can sometimes feel like a cycle of the same problem over and over again and most people just assume that’s how it goes.   

There is an option to get out of the cycle and life coaching teaches you how to do just that. Treating the “symptom” of the bad job by finding a new job is not going to get you long term enjoyment at work. You have to find the “root cause” of what makes you miserable and work on that.

Our school systems all focus on IQ so it’s not your fault you don’t know how to manage your emotions. No one ever taught you. Life coaching focuses on EQ by teaching how to deal with all the crap life throws at you.

If you want to find out more and try it for free, let’s jump on the phone. Sign up for free life coaching at www.lindsaybuchancoaching.com

4 things to never do when on-boarding with a new team

You’ve accepted the offer and are excited to figure out what your new job is really going to be like because let’s be honest - the job description and the actual work very rarely lineup how you imaged.

Navigating a new team can seem overwhelming and create so much imposter syndrome anxiety. I’ve rotated four times at Amazon and learned a lot along the way. Below are four things to never do when on-boarding with a new team.

1.     DON’T wait for your manager to create your launch plan. We all know the general things that are going to be on the plan so just start doing them, even before you officially rotate. Start scheduling 1:1’s with team members, join all the email lists, get added to key team meetings, write your bio, start identifying the projects you will be working on and prioritizing them.

Be the leader they hired you to be. It doesn’t matter if you are wrong. What matters is that you are taking massive action and already adding value by not wasting team member’s time to onboard you.

Think about it. If you were the manager, would you rather have an employee that takes their time, but does everything “right” and starts delivery results in a few months or would you rather they jump in, make a few mistakes and start delivering results in a few weeks?

2.     DON’T try to do all the things for all the people. A common mistake I’ve seen over and over is new people trying to impress and be a good team player but agreeing to do everything people ask for in the on-boarding 1:1’s. It’s fair to ask team members how you can help, but don’t become the free resource dumping ground.

Meet with all the people, get a list of all the requests, and then get hyper focused on what key projects you are going to prioritize and why. Stay focused on what work will impact the business and help the team reach their goals. There is always more work that can be done, but using restrain and staying focused on delivering results versus delivering work will make all the difference in the end.

3.     DON’T assume people know how awesome you are. You were probably the go to person on your last team for many topics, but no one on the new teams knows or cares.

It doesn’t matter if you stepped in and drove a key project to completion when no one else would. It doesn’t matter how many docs and PR/FAQ’s you’ve written. It doesn’t matter how you did this all without the support of a steady manager.

Your past work got you the job. Your current work is what will get them to know how awesome you are. So, stay focused on delivering results and adding value. You are not entitled to their respect.

4.     DON’T feel out the team environment before being you. This one is my pet peeve. I’ve heard so many people complain about the team politics, or low morale, or toxic environment. But the team culture is determined by the people on the team. DON’T LET THE EXISTING TEAM CULTURE DICTATE HOW YOU ACT. BE the type of person you want to work with. You are a team member now so do your part to create the culture you want.

You can’t control how other people on the team act, but you are in total control of how you act. I personally make it a point to genuinely show up as ME from day one. I’m kind of a spaz and like to have fun so I joke around with people starting on day one. I get to know them as humans and share who I am. I show my vulnerable side and don’t hide from my mistakes because this is the type of culture I want to create.

Don’t let the environment dictate how you act. Act exactly how you want the environment to be.  They hired YOU for a reason so show up as YOU from day one.

If you are trying to navigate your next rotation and are feeling overwhelmed about it, let’s jump on the phone and come up with a game plan for you. Sign up for a call at www.lindsaybuchancoaching.com