Moving past shame to bring our best selves

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Helane Fronek

Recently, I’ve become intrigued by the work of Brené Brown, a Professor of Social Work at the University of Houston, who studies shame. (Check her out! brenebrown.com) Growing up in the Midwest in the 1950’s, I recall a lot of parenting that included messages about shame: “ shame on you,” “you should be ashamed of yourself,” “how shameful!” Although the messages may be subtler these days, shame creeps into our culture in so many ways.

What exactly is shame? And how does it differ from its cousin, guilt?

Most people in the field agree that guilt is a feeling of having done something wrong, whereas shame is the feeling that we are wrong – that there is something defective about us. While they are frequently confused and used interchangeably, there is a crucial difference between the two emotions.

The biggest and most important difference is that when we feel guilty about something, we usually want to change. As Brené explains in her first book, I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t), we feel guilty when we hold up a mirror to our actions and see that they conflict with our values or with the person we want to be. We realize that, underneath it all, we can do better – we are better. And frequently, we take steps to be better. On the other hand, when we feel shame, our experience is that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. This belief actually deprives us of the motivation to make amends for the action that triggered this feeling. After all, if we are that _______________ (fill in the blank: lazy, self-centered, stupid, insensitive…) person, we probably will never change and most likely don’t have the ability to be any different.

So in speaking with our employees, colleagues, friends or family, it’s always best to focus on behavior – you did this, as opposed to you are this. We can also follow it up with the acknowledgement of who we believe they really are as a person, or what behavior we know they are capable of.

While it is easy to slip into judgment of others, most of us find it even easier to get stuck in self-judgment about any number of things we have or have not done. This makes it difficult for us to move forward in a healthy, authentic way. But we can begin to mitigate the negativity that results from these feelings of shame by evaluating our actions from what Brené calls a “strengths perspective.” We can take a mental inventory of our strengths and “examine our struggles in light of our capacities, talents, competencies, possibilities, visions, values and hopes.” We can then use these as resources for change. It seems a lot more possible to change our behavior or ourselves when we are aware that we are smart and capable than when we view ourselves as foolish and incompetent.

There is no denying that confronting our feelings of guilt and shame, and overcoming them, is hard work. If it were easy, we would all do it regularly. Really, who wants to be stuck feeling bad about themselves? When we approach life from the perspective of not only wanting to be better but knowing we can be better, we become more authentic and begin to use our gifts and strengths in more situations. Take a moment to consider how your life would be different if the worry, self-doubt, shrinking from speaking your mind, and lost opportunities due to fear were a thing of your past. That life could actually be yours! And when communicating our feelings about other peoples’ actions, by focusing on behavior and pointing out their strengths, we can illuminate their path and power their change. The payoffs to them, to us, and to our world would be huge, as we each bring our best selves to every situation.

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Step over your fear – the world needs you!

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Helane Fronek

Increasingly, our society is riddled by a sense of pervasive fear. We are afraid to fly, especially if the other passengers look different than we do. We are afraid of trusting our banks or financial advisors with our money, lest they put it into a vehicle that serves to increase their wealth and not ours. We worry about the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. Each decade seems to bring a new realization that what we once thought was healthy is actually carcinogenic or promotes heart disease. So I was taken by a little book, written by Gerald Livingston, MD, a former military psychiatrist who served in Viet Nam, entitled The Thing You Think You Cannot Do: thirty truths about fear and courage.
One of Livingstone’s “truths” is that “life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

As I considered whether I could accept that as one of my truths, I remembered a time in high school when I was devastated after losing an election that I really thought I would win. I was involved in an international organization and had served successfully as the vice president of my city’s chapter. In my mind, I was the most qualified person to become the next president of our chapter. I couldn’t believe when they announced the winner – and it wasn’t me! It felt as if my work from the past year had not been valued – that it meant nothing to the people who voted for my opponent. I felt rejected and completely humiliated and spent the entire night wanting to crawl into a hole and give up.

To this day, I’m not sure where it came from, but something in me wasn’t about to do that. There was more work to be done and other opportunities to consider – the world was definitely bigger than the city I lived in. Knowing this allowed me to look for other situations where I could continue to be involved and useful. One month later I ran and was elected to an even bigger office, in which I was able to coordinate the efforts of 4000 girls in 8 states and 4 Canadian provinces. Together, we volunteered thousands of hours at prenatal care centers and made a real difference in the lives of so many people who needed our help. For me, personally, this was one of the grandest years of my life – I stepped over my fear and was rewarded with a year of incredible friendships, the experience and excitement of planning and executing a program on a huge scale, and the satisfaction of knowing that we did something really good in the world.

So my question is…what are you afraid of? What would you do if that fear weren’t there? I urge you to use that dream to build your courage and watch your own world expand. Think big – the world is in tremendous need of so many acts of kindness and assistance.

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What’s your perspective? Maybe it’s time for a change!

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Helane Fronek

I squirmed in my seat, impatiently waiting for the Cohn brothers’ movie, Fargo, to end. I couldn’t believe how AWFUL it was. I stayed only because I thought it had to get better. As I walked out of the theater, I was greeted by friends who exclaimed, “Wasn’t that FUN?!” “Fun” was definitely not my perspective on this movie. But what if I could change my perspective? How would I experience Fargo if I looked at it through the lens of “fun?”

I could laugh at the absurdity of the situation, and appreciate that the directors put the gruesome scene of chopping up a body alongside what should have been a beautiful encounter, so we would be sure to see the characters’ lack of connection to their emotions. I could marvel at Frances McDormand’s brilliant performance (she did win an Oscar for it, after all) and wonder at the many ways in which life gets out of hand. There are so many aspects of the movie that I could have enjoyed.

In the same way, most of our experiences in life can be looked at from a number of perspectives. Just as a cut jewel will reflect the light differently as it passes through another facet, viewing a person, place, object, or event from another perspective will show us a different color, evoke a different feeling, and open a new – and perhaps more helpful – way of seeing things.

Do you groan each time a new journal arrives, knowing it will only add to the “unread” pile? Do you dread having to tell a dear patient about a new diagnosis? Concerned about confronting a receptionist about the way she interacts with patients?

In each of those situations, we are affected by our current perspective – one that shows us only a negative view. Maybe we feel buried by the journals, as if we are stuck in a hole and every time we try to dig ourselves out, more dirt falls on top of us. With our patient, we might be sad about what we believe will be the unhappy outcome, and lack confidence in our ability to provide answers or a cure. We might feel as if we are backed up to a cliff, with no escape route. With our receptionist, it might seem as if we are on a tightrope, worried about saying the wrong thing and being left with an even worse situation – so we’re afraid to even move.

But if we viewed our journals as if we were a mountain climber, we might realize that a mountain is scaled in individual steps, by placing each foot into individual crevices that appear as we look ahead. In the same way, we might see that we have 10 minutes here or there in our day during which we can read one article, thus managing to get through each journal within a week or two. A great perspective from which to view the discussion with our patient might be that of Mother Theresa, who felt that providing respect and love, even in the face of incurable illness, was the greatest gift she could offer the many people she cared for. And what about contemplating the conversation with our receptionist through the perspective of a door? Just as doors open to new opportunities and experiences, is it possible that our conversation might introduce her to new and more effective ways of interacting that will actually make her job more enjoyable for her?

Perspectives can be drawn from people we know (how would your grandparent view a troublesome situation in your life?), our heroes, members of other generations (a child’s perspective is frequently quite empowering) or can even be on the silly side. I have found terrific ideas from considering the pizza perspective on things! (Pizzas are a whole made up of small, unrelated delicious items. In the same way, my life might be more delicious if it contained a variety of short experiences, rather than insisting that I spend an inordinate amount of time on each activity.) As you play with new perspectives, you will find ideas that don’t fit for you. With others, you may suddenly realize a new, exciting, and satisfying way of living your life – and you’ll wonder why you didn’t see it before. After all, it was there all the time…you just needed to shift your perspective.

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Want greater skill? Try a moment of planning!

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Helane Fronek

Yesterday was our daughter’s last day at home before she flew across the country to return to college. My mind was buzzing with the growing list of things that I didn’t want to forget to remind her about. So I did what any overly-anxious mother would do – I walked into her bedroom and announced that we had a lot to do today and began to recite my list. As you might imagine, this was met with a less than warm and enthusiastic response.

Fortunately, our daughter is able to clearly articulate what she wants and what she doesn’t want. So she explained, “If you had come into my room and said, ‘Good morning! We have a lot to do today. How do you want to organize the day?’ things would have gone a lot better.”

She was absolutely right. It reminded me of a situation that occurred during my Internal Medicine residency. I was in charge of the ICU when a very sick man was admitted with a diagnosis of ARDS, a condition with a mortality rate of 70%. After assessing him and writing orders, I proceeded to bombard the terrified family with a list of statistics about the potential risks and survival rates of this virulent condition. They were as shell-shocked and shut down as our daughter was after I unloaded my to-do list on her yesterday.

As we rush through our day, trying to keep our head above water while managing so many aspects of so many facets of our lives, we can easily get stuck in our heads and think only of unloading the information we want to transfer – before we forget or get pulled into another interaction. Unfortunately, if the intent of our communication is that the other person receives and understands this information, we may as well be talking to ourselves.

A more skillful way for me to impart the to-do list that I found so important would have been to greet my daughter first, acknowledge what must have been HER feelings, state my intention, and then ask for permission to proceed. It might have sounded like this:
Good morning! I imagine that you have lots of feelings and ideas about this last day at home. There are some things that I think we need to accomplish today and I’m wondering if this is a good time to talk about them.

The family of my patient would have been better served if I had introduced myself and then said:
You must be quite worried about your husband/father. We’re going to do whatever we can to make sure that he recovers fully. I have some information to give you about his condition, but first, do you have any questions that you would like me to answer?

Communication involves a set of skills that we all can learn. For some of us, we must first unlearn some habits, such as our tendency to allow anxiety or other emotions to drive inefficient ways of imparting our message. One moment spent clarifying my intention and considering how I might best approach our daughter might have made the difference between a testy interaction and one that reflected the love and concern I was feeling. The importance of our communications, and the lasting feelings that they generate, are certainly worth a moment of planning to make sure they are as skillful as we can possibly make them.

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The gift of a “bad patient”

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Helane Fronek

Yesterday I received a call from a friend – a truly brilliant person who takes great responsibility for everything in her life. She researches nutrition and eats only healthy foods, exercises regularly, works hard and studies to increase her value to the clients she sees at work, and seriously considers her actions in nearly every circumstance. She had just seen a new physician, who had noted an elevated laboratory value and wanted her to start a new medication. After extensive research of the medical literature, she came to the conclusion that the benefits of taking the medication weren’t established in people like her and that there were considerable side effects. When she explained this to the physician, he countered with, “well, I won’t label you as a bad patient yet.”

My immediate reaction was that she should have stood up and left the room. After all, he was being arrogant, dismissive, insecure, and clearly didn’t want to engage in a collaborative relationship.

As healthcare providers, we know a lot. We attend school, training programs, ongoing CME, meetings, read continuously, and communicate with our colleagues in order to stay abreast of the newest developments and obtain other perspectives on our difficult cases. We work hard to know what we know. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we will admit that there’s probably more that we don’t know. Consider some of the things you were taught during your training that are now known to be false. How much of what we now believe is true will be proven wrong in the future? So why do we hold onto this illusion that we know – and are supposed to know – everything?

When a person’s life or health is at stake, it’s certainly comforting to have a sense of certainty that what we are doing is the best option – that it will work. But do we actually know that for any given patient? Patients often get better – or worse – in spite of what we do. We can perform the same procedure or give the same medication to two different patients and they each have a different response.

Patients generally are very understanding of healthcare providers who explain that they are unsure – that the precise answer is unknown. I often tell my patients that I want to cringe when I think of what we used to do in treating our patients’ vein disease. At the time, we thought it was a good idea, but we later found out it didn’t work as well as we had hoped. I follow by saying that I hope that in another 20 years we’ll look back on what we’re doing now in the same way, because that means that we’re continuing to make progress. Consistently, I watch them smile – they get the fact that medicine is an inexact science that is continually evolving. They are happy to reap the benefit of the advances that have been made thus far.

How different would the interaction between my friend and her new doctor have been if he had welcomed her interest in her own health? He might have learned something valuable from the literature she had reviewed. He might have gained an understanding of what she values in her life, allowing him to be a more effective physician. He might have questioned his own knowledge and belief in order to either strengthen his commitment to the plan or develop an even better one. He certainly would have earned her trust – and that is something that is absolutely crucial in the doctor-patient relationship.

How many gifts did he throw away by not countering with something along the lines of, “You seem to be very committed to your own health. What a great patient you are!”

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The importance of vision – and of communicating it over and over again

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Helane Fronek

As I watched the women’s gymnastics team perform last night in the Olympics, I noticed the focus and concentration on the faces of our young, determined athletes. They stood silently, about to begin, and I imagined that they were envisioning themselves and feeling their bodies flying through the air, twisting this way and that as they completed their routine. There is ample data and anecdotal evidence showing that the practice of imagining ourselves doing something allows us to actually do it more skillfully.

We can apply this same skill to almost anything we do. When we are building or adapting a medical practice, we can imagine just what we want to create. How do we want our patients to feel when they enter our suite? What type of communication style do we hope our employees will adopt when speaking with patients, other employees, or us? What message do we want our patients to get as they are cared for by us and our staff? Cutting edge excellence? Kindness? Diligence?

Once we have our vision, we need to communicate it in every way and at every opportunity. There is no such thing as “over messaging.” Whatever is important to us should be a part of our hiring interviews, written patient information pieces, advertising, and every interaction within our office. If we see other practices appearing, we can create an opportunity to restate our real intention – and then repeat it over and over again. As Gretchen Rosswurm writes, leaders need to “build a sense of shared purpose by painting a compelling vision of the future. They answer these questions: Where are we going, what does it look like, what are the benefits, what role do I play in the success? The differentiator is consistency. The best leaders know they need to paint this vision over and over. At every opportunity, they share the vision of what’s ahead. Eloquence isn’t a requirement. Have a clear picture of the end goal, be consistent in how you describe it and create opportunities to engage with the influencers who can make or break success.” (http://smartblogs.com/leadership/2012/07/27/leaders-communicate-and-communicators-lead/)

We can take this concept and also apply it to our families. Verbalizing a vision of what our family stands for provides a roadmap for children as they navigate difficult situations and creates a sense of cohesiveness and belonging. When children hear these guiding principles repeated, they frequently internalize them and take them on. Named after my grandfather, I was told many times that as my grandfather was dying, he commented, “I don’t leave you much, but what I leave you is a good name.” The importance of living honorably became a foundation of my own life and formed the basis for most of my interactions and life decisions since I was a child.

So, take some time – with your spouse, your colleagues, your employees – and formulate your own vision for your life and your practice. When you are living or practicing this way, what exactly will you be doing? What will the people around you be doing? What will it look like? What will it feel like? Once you have a clear picture in your mind, begin to communicate it – clearly and specifically. If you need help in doing any of these things, hire a consultant or coach who can help you bridge the gap between your desire and your ability to achieve it. Just like those skilled athletes have coaches, we each can benefit from the experience and advice of someone who has gone this way or helped others along this path before.

Creating our own vision is one of the most important things we can do. As the oddly-wise Yogi Berra once said, “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going because you might not get there.”

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How to revive the lost art of listening

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Helane Fronek

They say that the loss of the sense of hearing is the most isolating of all possible sensory losses. Having watched sight-impaired people happily chatting with the companion who is helping them to cross a street, and then noticed the withdrawal of hearing impaired people as others around them animatedly converse, I would agree. But for many of us, even though the mechanics of our hearing mechanism work, we still don’t use this precious sense to its fullest.

How many times are we engaged in a conversation and find that our thoughts are actually elsewhere? We watch the other person talking, maybe even nod at times we feel are appropriate, but our minds are somewhere in the past or future, usually in a completely different location and with different people. At other times, we’re really just waiting until we can say what WE want to say, which is, of course, something much more important or interesting than what the other person is telling us.

What most people really want in life is to be seen and heard – for who they really are and what they really think. When we truly listen to another person, we’re doing just that.

Listening is the first and most important step in human communication.

Coaches talk about three levels of listening. In level one, we are mostly aware of how the person’s comments affect us. If they are talking about their dog, we think about our own dog, or perhaps the neighbors’ dog that barks and keeps us up all night. In level two, we focus intently on the person’s words and their message. When we are engaged in a deep and meaningful conversation, hanging on every word of the person across from us, we are usually listening at level two. At level three, we feel what the person’s tone of voice is saying and we notice the changes in the mood, the spaces between the words and what’s not being said. We might comment, “you suddenly became quieter – what’s going on?”

In both his leadership and parent effectiveness training programs, Dr. Thomas Gordon teaches the art of “active listening.” This involves naming the underlying emotion expressed by a person’s words. For instance, if your spouse exclaims, “Why am I always the one cleaning up around here!” you might reply, “You’re irritated that no one else seems to care about having a clean house.”

While these sophisticated communication skills require training and practice, there is one thing that each of us can do to immediately take our communication to a higher level.

We can become curious.

I think that curiosity should be considered the eighth wonder of the world! It’s rare, has great significance and incredible impact. By becoming curious we often find out something important that allows us to modify our behavior in a beneficial way. Curiosity is also the antidote to judgment. If we find ourselves feeling critical of someone, we can get curious. Why did they do that? We frequently find a new perspective on the person or their actions that allows us to experience more acceptance, or at least a better understanding, thus strengthening our connection with the other person and relieving us of the discomfort of feeling judgmental.

In conversation, curiosity manifests in the simple act of posing a question.

Next time you’re in a conversation with someone, rather than focusing on constructing your next witty remark or wishing you were talking to the new person who walked into the room, get curious about what the person is saying. Then ask a question to clarify or develop a deeper understanding of what they’re telling you. As you do this regularly, you will feel greater interest in your conversations and the people you talk with will experience your listening presence. That’s really all it takes to revive the art of listening – just one question. The effect on your communication and relationships just might astonish you.

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Take Ownership in Your Communication

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Helane Fronek

President George W. Bush wanted us to become an “ownership society.” While the idea that all Americans should own their own home didn’t work out as well as President Bush had intended, there is one arena in which ownership is always a smart and fruitful concept: Communication.

Many years ago I chaperoned our daughter’s kindergarten class on a field trip. After a boy (who I didn’t know and thus had no relationship with to use as leverage) ignored several requests to stop walking up and down an elevated ledge, I decided to use the advice proposed by Faber and Mazlish in their superb parenting book, How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Your Kids Will Talk. Instead of demanding that he “come down from there right now!” I simply said, “Please come down – when you walk on that ledge it makes me really worried that you’ll fall.” Guess what? He came right down!

Honestly, I was shocked. But having extensively studied communication since then, I now understand why he changed his behavior. What I did was to own my feelings and use what Thomas Gordon calls an “I-message.” In his book, Leadership Effectiveness Training: Proven Skills for Leading Today’s Business into Tomorrow, Dr. Gordon explains that “I – Messages are appeals for help and…people respond better to honest appeals for help than to demands, threats, solutions, or lectures.”
Telling a child (or anyone for that matter) that if they continue a certain behavior, a particular unwanted occurrence will happen, is actually a dare. If they believe that their behavior is acceptable, they will keep doing what they’ve been doing just to prove you wrong. On the other hand, by sharing your feelings about what they’re doing, you are asking the other person to do something noble and helpful – to alleviate your worry or improve your situation. Most people enjoy the feeling of helping others, and this reward may override their desire to continue the behavior that is troubling you.

A well-constructed I-Message has three parts: identifying the behavior, stating your feeling about it, and describing the impact. They can be placed in any order, as you see fit. As Dr. Gordon cautions, it may feel awkward or stilted as we begin to use I-Messages. But isn’t this true of any new procedure we have instituted in our life?

For an employee who arrives at work late, an I-Message may sound like: It makes me concerned and upset when you arrive at work later than 8AM because patients begin calling at that time and there is no one to answer the phone. I worry that they will decide to go elsewhere if they can’t reach us, or that we’ll miss an important call.
For a patient who doesn’t follow through on the plan that you’ve agreed on: When you don’t take your medication as we discussed, I become concerned that your blood pressure will become too high again and that you will have serious complications such as a heart attack, a stroke, or kidney damage.
For a colleague who promised to call you about a mutual patient but didn’t: I felt let down when you didn’t call me back about our patient as you had promised and embarrassed because I didn’t have the information that I needed for her treatment planning.

Most people want to be helpful and regret causing another person distress. Until we own our feelings and communicate them clearly, the other person has no incentive to change those behaviors that create problems for us. Blaming, criticizing, and humiliating may cause the person to intensify his behavior or just dig her heels in. Taking ownership of our own feelings and allowing the person to understand the consequences of continuing their behavior, and of changing it, frequently results in significant and positive change in both the behavior and the relationship. That’s a great reason to become an owner in all of our communication.

Do you find these blog posts helpful? Interesting? I hope you will share them with your friends, family and colleagues. And if you have any difficult communication situations, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help. You can always reach me at helanefronekmd@gmail.com.

Posted in building relationship with patients, effective communication in healthcare, honesty in medical care, physician coaching, physician communication, physician fulfillment, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Resuscitate your difficult relationships

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Helane Fronek

After presenting a talk on communication at a local hospital, I was approached by a wonderful, experienced Internist who asked about a situation that I don’t often encounter. He wondered what to do with patients who enter into contracts with their physician, only to break them. The scenario he described involved substance-abusing patients who agree to a set of circumstances – decreased usage, participation in rehab programs, etc. These patients often break the contracts and then become angry when the physician refuses to provide prescriptions for additional narcotics. Definitely a frustrating situation! The physician then begins another round of discussions about the reasons to stop using narcotics, and the dance starts all over again. While most of us may not treat patients with substance abuse, it struck me that this situation occurs in all of our lives in different forms. How often do we find ourselves having the same, failed conversations, over and over again, with the people in our lives?

The solution to this issue is to determine which conversation we need to have.

In their excellent book, Crucial Confrontations, Patterson and colleagues propose the mnemonic CPR – which seems to be a propos as the structure of this approach can breathe new life into our frustrated relationships.

When a person does something that we find bothersome or troubling, the initial conversation is about the content. We discuss the problem behavior and the impact it’s having. Hopefully, we find some common ground, effect a change in the person’s perspective and actions, or we gain an understanding of why the behavior is, actually, appropriate.

If we agreed that the person would change their behavior but it continues, another discussion about the behavior is irrelevant and frequently useless at best. Many times, it worsens the situation as we become increasingly irritated and the other person finds us annoying and controlling. So at this point, the conversation should focus on the pattern. We have already agreed that the behavior will change – yet it persists. We may reiterate the effects that the behavior is having and try to discover what is motivating the pattern, what obstacles lie in the path of change, and what process will allow the change to occur. Mostly, we state that the fact that they agreed to change but haven’t is making you doubt their ability to keep a promise.

We all have many experiences, however, in which the behavior continues despite these conversations. At this point, we are angry, hurt, and our opinion of the other person has sunk to new lows. The conversation then should be about the relationship. The person has promised to make a change but has broken their promise. We are no longer able to trust or believe them. The relationship has been compromised and, if this continues, it will be irreparably damaged. Frequently, when the other person sees that their actions have such far-reaching consequences and realizes that it’s no longer about the behavior but now affects their credibility and your trust of them, change becomes more desirable and motivation increases.

I’m a big fan of structures, as they help us in so many ways. By applying this structure to your communication challenges, you might find that the seemingly impossible situations in your life begin to move forward in positive and more satisfying ways.
It’s as easy as C – P – R!

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Sidestep your saboteur

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Helane Fronek

The training for a medical career is demanding. We often work longer hours than we would like, striving to learn more and be better at what we do. As a result, the medical field selects out for people who know how to push themselves and who aren’t often satisfied with themselves. This critical, driving force becomes internalized and can take hold as a voice (or voices) that can keep us locked into situations that may no longer provide fulfillment for us. It can sabotage our attempts to break out of the box we’re in and won’t even allow us to consider other options.

These saboteurs are those voices in our heads that tell us we are unreasonable, irrational, expecting too much, or setting our sights too high. While these ideas may have come from our parents, authorities, the administrators where we work, our spouses or even our children, we are tricked into thinking that they are our thoughts. At one time, they may even have been adaptive. Now, they can get in our way and keep us from making changes in our lives so we are more aligned with our values. If we want to try something new, they tell us not to. They are worried that we will fail, or that we will lose the love, admiration, or support that we believe we need. Saboteurs always invoke a bit of truth, so they can be difficult to dismiss. Many times, their plea is that “this is just the way it is.” As if we have no choice.

The truth is that there is always a choice.

We can choose to continue doing what we are doing, and to feel the way we do about it. Or, we can choose to shift our behavior so we honor our values more. There will be consequences, but we are in control of the choice.

Do you want to participate in a research project? Volunteer in your community or abroad? Spend time each day reading or exercising? Your saboteurs, I’m sure, will come up with dozens of reasons why you can’t do that. The administration won’t like it. Your partners will resent you. You don’t have enough time/money/resources/support/experience/etc. But saboteurs are just that – voices that allow you to sabotage yourself. One way of neutralizing your saboteur is to personify it and give it the floor. Let it really tell you what it thinks. Sometimes that will allow you to see how out of touch it is.

Another powerful way is to tune into the values that you’ll be honoring by making the change. Imagine that it’s a year from now and you’ve made this change – how would that feel? How would your life be different? What is important to you about that difference?

Change is hard – no one disputes that. Yet, we each know people who have made dramatic changes. The group at Vital Smarts outlines a great approach to change in their book Change Anything and their website, changeanything.com. If you’re itching to do things differently in your life, try involving a family member or friend to support your efforts. Or consider hiring a coach who can help you define your values, decide what changes will honor those values, and keep you on track to successful implementation of those changes.

You know the old adage, “life is short – eat dessert first?” Well, life is short! It’s also too full of great opportunities and enriching experiences to allow those saboteurs to keep you from living it fully and on the terms that reflect your values and priorities.

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