Breaking Through to Thought Leadership | Get hold of YOUR best thoughts…it’s worth the effort (PG-13)

What if you could reliably have access to the best thoughts you have inside you, that maybe you don’t even know you’re capable of yet?  You know, the most inventive and most valuable to your market, the ones that make everyone around you go ‘Ooooh, how did you come up with that??’

And then starts a rash of ripoffs?

What if, like a woman’s eggs, we are born with the number of unique thoughts we’ll have available over a lifetime, and if not birthed in some shape or form, these unique-to-us treasures of DNA are lost?

What is the sound of an intellectual clock ticking, I wonder?

In my spare time, I’ve been thinking a lot about thought leadership for business owners who want to be of service as information marketers. If information is our offering, doesn’t it pay to think about the quality of it, and kaizen the process once in a while?

Things like how to ‘do’ thought leadership and be a leader to whom people turn for inspiration, for example. To take the place in your tribe as the ‘one’ who nourishes the minds of others, the thought-mother-ship, from which others derive their work?

What if you had access to the antidote, homeopathic of course, to the fate of the mass-produced expert who, clinging to the conviction that if you only read 20 books on a topic, it gives you the right to teach it. Have you watched these dinosaurs slowly but surely become irrelevant if left alone without fresh input?

Considering this, does it become important then, to learn how to nourish your mind as the performance machine it is, setting up your environment so your best thoughts flourish, and care, tenderly, for the ‘unbirthed eggs of your mind?’

I think you’d agree – the vast majority of people don’t have much clear thought. They confuse their thoughts with themselves, with no separation in between. Their emotions permanently short-circuit the masterpieces that would be their thoughts, if they weren’t umbilical-cord plugged into the television, etc.

There’s a giant chemical soup bowl of toxic, inbred thought in the room, and we aren’t talking much about it.

So what are some of the ingredients in the recipe for getting hold of YOUR best thoughts? It’s not exactly a well trodden road, but I’ve found it fascinating and worth the effort.

Here’s some of the thought-stream to start:

(1) Your best thoughts are sexy.

AKA “Creativity is a fundamentally sexual act.” — Deepak Chopra

Wow! Have you ever thought of what you do, creatively, as sexy? It’s still not common to speak plainly about sex in business circles (though Marie Forleo certainly breaks that taboo) but there is a definite, concrete correlation between the energy and chemistry of sex, and creativity…a fun avenue to explore, with sometimes surprising, and quick, results.

(2) Your best thoughts dislike certainty.

“Learning is what happens when you really (really) don’t know what to do.”

Knowing, or being certain, in my experience, suffocates the best thinking. Think about it— being absolutely, positively, incredibly sure about something is the giant full stop at the end of the creative sentence.

Instead of knowing all the time, or seeking the comfort and security of knowing, what if you sought the opposite?

Into the space of not knowing, I wonder if some of those thought-eggs would see fit to hatch?

(3) Your best thoughts need you to forget.

In my imagination, there is an illness in which the patience can’t forget anything. Everything that happens, they remember, and store, all the data. Feelings, thoughts, sensations, actions. Every day, they are prevented from leaving the confines of their prescribed familiar space, because to do otherwise would require them to remember more things.

So many of us spend energy attempting to stuff our brain with more facts, as if our brain, that lovely, lobed, moist thing, were a storage unit in a continent full of mini-storage complexes.

What if you could get where you want to get not by remembering more, but forgetting? What if it were essential?

Which brings us to the adventure of  ‘remembering to forget.’

Stay with me here, as there is a short but highly telling exercise in Feldenkrais, the revolutionary learning system that uses the body, that dramatically highlights remembering to forget:

“Stand up and go to touch your toes. Don’t force it, it’s not a gym class. Just make a movement that takes you closer to your toes.” In the class, various stages of reaching ones toes can be seen.

“Now, without pushing forward, without straining, make an adjustment in your body to release the muscles of your back.” One by one, some, not all the participants, but many, find themselves dropping closer to their toes.

In the parlance of Feldenkrais, this is all about excitation and inhibition, the two things that make up every waking movement. To move toward something, in this case your toes, you need to stop your back muscles from holding you up. Otherwise, you are fighting your back muscles by pushing on the muscles of your front, in a tug of war of effort to get somewhere.

In other words, to achieve the goal, stopping doing something is just as important as doing something. Breaking through to your best thoughts requires you to stop doing things, so the right things can start.

This one thing alone has been one of the most valuable lessons of the year for me, in terms of productivity, creativity and freedom.

And that, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, is all I got to say about that. At least for now. Perhaps we might we hear from you, next, if you remember…!

What about this idea of breaking through to YOUR best thoughts strums you? If we explore further, will it help make your work easier, the quality of your offerings shine? What do you think? What sticks?

Yours in thinking about thinking, I remain…

The Dalai Lama Visits Taiwan Sunday | Will he stand in the same spot?

Pic taken on my August trip with Mom, for Grandma’s funeral. This was in front of Taipei 101. And yes, I am wearing one of my aforementioned gorgeous $10 shoes.

The 10-Second Flush | Making the Right Things Difficult

There is a lot that could be said about toilets in Taiwan, or Asia as a whole for that matter.

One thing was for sure, coming off an exercise high, I was rather rudely reminded that leg workouts and squat toilets don’t mix.

In memory of my grandma, toilet-wise, I should also mention the time I accidentally walked in while she was squatting on the seat of a western toilet. Those odd  dust marks on the seat all those times? All of a sudden made sense.

Hey, old habits die hard. I get it, and it makes me smile to remember. But sorry, no I don’t have a photo.

This was the sign above our very fancy toilet in the Rich Garden Hotel in Ximen, Taipei. Happily, it validated my trifecta of language skills – wow, a sign I could read all of in all 3 languages! A minor miracle, except it was inconsiderately posted behind the toilet, rather than in front, where I might cherish my talent and reread a few times.

Is there a serious point here? Well, I’ll give it a go. Don’t you think they’re onto something? It really did take standing there for a good 10-15 seconds to flush that toilet.  Making it difficult to flush saves water. You know, mellow yellow and all that. Making it challenging to throw away garbage – wouldn’t that correct human behavior accordingly as well? And making it so easy, SO easy, to reuse or otherwise do the right thing…you get the point.

Incentivizing the right behavior can apply in all circumstances, not just a hotel bathroom in Taipei!

What else could be made difficult, to a good purpose?

The Dilemma of the Alpha Female, Or, The Inadvertent Slow Cowing Of the Modern Male

Long-time readers may recall that about 2 years ago, I became very interested in this particular idea set. I retreated for 10 days. I wrote. I gathered evidence in color-coded folders; I even pitched it to editors and secured real interest. And spoke publicly – personally! vulnerably! – on a call focused on thought leadership, citing it as THE project in my life that was scaring the bejeezus out of me. (Is that how you spell bejeezus??)

At various times, the work was called ‘The Dilemma of the Alpha Female’ and ‘Your Husband Wants His Pants Back’ but probably my favorite non-contender was ‘Stop Stepping On His Balls.’ Oh, the look on the face of the book consultant as I threw around cover art concepts of stiletto heels and artfully placed diamonds the size of golf balls.

Of course, what happened next was a perfect illustration of the concepts themselves.

(1) I grew confident and excited.

(2) I talked with my husband Mike about it, and though he was very supportive, started feeling concern that this might not be the greatest thing for our relationship.

(3) I grew confused. Into this confusion, clarity about other more mundane projects shone like light in a dark, messy tunnel. My file folder on ‘the Pants book’  followed the laws of gravity to the bottom of the project pile.

The dilemma was, is - and armed with data from a career coaching strong, successful women, close observer to even more – the same, and stumping oh so many of us:

How do you play full out, riding that spiking arrow of testosterone high and to the right, glorying in all the alphaness of it, while balancing:

- Your own essential femaleness. Not everyone has an inner trembling flower, but you might be surprised how intricate it can be to switch from driver, visionary, producer to… receiver, observer, passenger.

- Testosterone, other than your own, that you want in your life. One look at the landscape tells much – how many women do you know who have difficulty finding a Man? Whether you have a friend in that category or someone you admire in that category, you know what I mean.

- The inevitable anger and self-hatred, likely largely unexpressed, at living this dilemma every day, every goddamned day, with not a clue what to do about it.

How does this dance between male and female energy – sometimes bubbling under the surface, sometimes spraying out, ugly and ferocious – play out? What does the music even sound like? How do we find a soundtrack we like, and play it, enchantingly, entrancingly, each day? This is the dilemma.

Here’s a segment of the little ‘blurbey’ that got the attention of editors at the Maui Writer’s Conference that year:

Have you ever wondered why your husband rarely initiates a romantic encounter anymore? Or when he’ll start earning some ‘real’ money so you can stop buying your own anniversary gifts, and taking yourself out to dinner? Are you exhausted all the time being the man AND the woman in your relationship?

Where is the hunka-hunka burnin’ love you fell for in the first place?

Enough. It’s time to sort out how to give those pants back to their rightful owner.

After years of helping successful career women coax their husbands out of their hiding places, professional coach Andrea Lee blows the whistle on the emasculated state of too many modern marriages. Without meaning to, modern women have ‘come a long way, baby’ and then gone way too far.

In trying to be our best selves, we have undermined our husbands. Inadvertently, alright, but that’s not the point. They in turn, are mighty tired of walking on eggshells for this superwoman who insists on changing her own lightbulbs, along with everything else in her wake. With no defined role for our men to play, is it any wonder our lives of quiet desperation have started screaming at us to stop?

Your Husband Wants His Pants Back reveals:

- Exactly how to leave ‘The Witch’ behind, without turning into June Cleaver. (No offense, June.)
- Startling facts about your man, including when he’d LIKE to talk about his feelings.
- How to reclaim your life as a loving woman without wilting into overcompliancy.
- What only you AND your man, together, can create, other than or in addition to children, that no other couple could.
- The simple daily exercises you can use to achieve the above!

Here’s the deal: You can be pro-man without betraying the sisterhood. In fact, join the sisterhood generation that claims a new definition of happiness for modern women – and their men.

Interestingly, after letting the project find its own way in the wilderness awhile, another theme emerged. To continue the music analogy, you could call this a harmonic strain, or counterpoint to the tune I’d been singing. Into the mix emerged the topic of a ‘Husband University’ where Mike could put forward his arsenal of wisdom on ‘how to live and love an alpha female.’ It was like a juicy and empowering supercarrot, reward for his investment into what is now a fairly evolved yet untraditional male-female dynamic, or so our friends tell us. Maybe there was a(nother) reason he stuck through ‘all that.’

Like melodies and harmonies do, the two topics faded in and out, curling after one another with pauses for summer, lake-swimming, blackberry-picking, and the general enjoyment of each other and life.

Cue the fall of 2009. Okay it’s not quite September yet, but my inner calendar tends to run about 7 days ahead (I couldn’t find the warranty so I haven’t had it fixed.) Now…now…this topic wants to sing.

Of course, the question becomes, does anyone want to hear it?!

If a blog post is written in a forest, and no one comments, does the project have legs?

Here are the questions I like to ask, myself and clients, at this juncture in project creation:

In a noisy world, would this project represent tangible value to the world, my market/tribe/peeps, and me? How tangible? How helpful to others? How much good could it generate?

In a noisy world of many experts, is this something that only I can do, quite this way, again, valuably? What makes this the project I must do?

In a noisy world of so much information, does this work represent enough of an evolution, innovation, or departure from the crowded masses of clotted thought, to bother?

As a recovering alpha female with yet another dilemma, I’d love your help deciding. I know what I’d do, without consulting you. But, why would I not consult you?! If there’s enough interest, I’ll up the ante and post the Table of Contents for the book in its raw, uncut glory, the better for you to pick apart.

This is me doing my best impersonation of a modern alpha female, eager to receive and follow, your wise and soulful guidance. From the heart of one creator to another, thank you.

—–

Want to share this article with a fellow Alpha Female, and contribute to ahas of recognition and sighs of relief being heard around the world? The message needs your help! Here’s a great short link to just this post on this blog:

http://bit.ly/48cadB

And if you have other requests for reprints, I’m all ears. Email me at andrea at andreajlee dot com. Thanks, guys.

8 Figures. There, I said it. And may the honor in the number not be diluted…

It’s a sentiment devoutly to be wished, by me.

Eight figures, you say? Yes… that’s $10 million and up. $10,000,000 to $99,999,999 as opposed to$9,999,999.

(At $10 million, that’d be $833,333 per month in income for the given project or business initiative.)

Not to be flip about the numbers and all, but I know it can take a moment to click. And, may the Universe forgive me, once said in this tweetin’, hootin’, hollerin’ viral world of ours, I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before the ‘Make 8-Figures’ meme hits mainstream marketingville and it’s all over except the hitting of the delete key. In fact, I may as well throw down the flag…let the domain-buying wars begin!

And/but, I still choose to say it, placing it with the care I can in this world of words. 

It’s been a while since I’ve said it so baldly, so boldly shall I do so here:

Money is like a language of its own and its favorite topic of conversation is v.a.l.u.e.

Money is like the scent of a rose – it is an indicator of where the beautiful value grows.

Certainly, some people value different things than you or I do – beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all. But, if enough people value that thing, be it food, shelter, drugs or alcohol, child care, a chauffeur, medicine, coaching, virtual assistance or, hey, insert YOU…

…there will be the scent of money, flagging that value, like a photograph gets tagged at Facebook.

One of the great honors conveyed upon this thing we call money - 5, 6, 7, 8 figures or any amount really - is in its signalling of value transacated. Or, of course, not transacted as the case may be.

As we work on opportunities to create what matters to us – money, meaning and value for those around us – I hope we remember this original honor of money – 8 figures or otherwise – no matter where marketingwhoville goes with the meme.

More conversation to come about 8 figures, what we’re doing that may call forth this much value, and how this might impact you, whether that’s a specific goal for you or not.  Call it good old-fashioned yoga for the mind.

For now, one of those thinkey things I like to do with quotes, turning them a bit from the inside out:

“‘People who look to religion for God, are like people who try to eat the menu when they’re hungry.” — Rumi

“People who look to money for money’s sake, are people who scream ’8-figures!!’ without looking for the value represented.”

By the way, these are the same people who come  insisting on the magical answers, bullish with their pointed questions ‘Andrea, how do I make this (insert thing) make a boatload of money?’  To which I must again answer, with respect… have something frigging amazing to say, or do, or provide.  Think what would make this ’thing’ of immense, undeniable value.  And hang the packaging, marketing, frantic joint venturing until then.

In a post-ponzi scheme world, where our understanding of ‘paper wealth,’ how the economy works, and our all-too-personal experience of stock market volatility, what does the word ‘value’ mean to you in the bigger picture?

On a micro level, what value are you creating in your business and your life? What is your sense of your personal inherent value?

Value is created in so many ways, from scratch, even. Where is your value?

Comment below.

For more thinkey stuff, be sure to sign up for updates at top right, choose one of the freebies at right (the small box banners) or, dive into some serious mind bends, stretching included, with our most popular no-fee recordings. They’re at the red button at top called, you got it, ‘Free Calls.’

A Course About People | 5 Little Things You Want To Know

Your 5 snippets of wisdom about people for this week are listed below, from the collection by Thomas Leonard and assembled by his R&D team. We hope you’ll find them thought-provoking and useful  throughout your week.

• People enjoy things that smell good to them.
• People feel hatred when the core is fear.
• People want to be proud of their children.
• People who stay in a “comfort zone” do so sometimes more because of fear than comfort.
• People are in awe of the unknown.

If you’d like to receive more snippets like these every week in your email, we invite you to visit www.ThoughtsByEmail.com and sign up.

We’d love to hear what you think.

copyright 2002-2010, CoachVille, LLC all rights reserved.

Struggling means your needs aren’t getting met | #ThomasLeonard quote

The Thomas Leonard Page-A-Day Quotations Calendar is getting thinner and thinner as we approach year-end.

I’ve saved a few quotes, and this one will get tucked into a card for a client.

Interested in a calendar for next year? Would you want new quotes or just mixed up differently? (It’s a time consuming one to produce.) Please let me know by commenting.

2009 calendars are still available, inexpensively, if only for the quotes, not the calendarness.

More Thomas Leonard quotes, readily tweetable, are gathered up here.

Cellular Abundance | Knowing There’s Enough, For Sure

For all the talk of abundance, principles of attraction and more, I know in my cells there’s only one real way of breaking the grip of scarcity thinking:

Experience overwhelming abundance in some small way, best if it occurs on a multi-sensory level.

Examples:

- Go blackberry picking in the height of the season.

- Paddle out into the middle of the ocean until all you can see is waves.

- Visit a large fishmarket, squat down so you’re as close to lying among the piles of fish as possible.

- Speaking of lying down, doing that in the middle of a field of daisies, an acre of corn, or even face down on a sandy beach, can also work really well.

Yes, all of these examples are in the natural world, easy to do if you’re in the middle of the Comox Valley at harvest time. Still, I’m sure you have a fresh market of some sort within reasonable reach of you, or something equivalent, to do the above exercise. If not, try getting friendly with the multitudes of blades in a patch of grass.

There’s nothing like coming eyeball to eyeball, nose to smell, feeling to feeling, for a cellular experience of abundance. Let your senses fully register the data – wow, that’s a lot of X! Once your brain cells grasp what it’s like to acknowledge far more than enough of SOMETHING, you can begin to transfer that feeling to other areas of your life.

‘Finite’ is just a concept, like all the others. So if the idea of knowing there’s enough, for sure, relaxes you, I invite you to try the above.

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