“I can.” “I can’t.” “I’m not good enough.” “Good stuff just happens to me.” “I always get sick every winter.”

Explanatory styles. We all have them—the filters through which we run all of life’s events.

And scientists now know that every thought creates a physical response in your body. Just reading the ideas above triggered subtle emotions, which in turn triggered your pancreas and your adrenal glands to get busy secreting hormones. Different areas of your brain surged with increased electrical currents, causing neurochemicals to be released.

As a result of this connection, your mind has a tremendous capacity to change your body and your life. And you can change your mind by changing your chosen understanding of things.

Every person has the ability to reprogram the filters through which they hear things—but first they need to have a clue that what they’re hearing is never exactly what is said. Every thought and image and experience that comes to you is instantly filtered.

A supervisor challenges one of his employees to be more thorough on a project. The employee’s brain, based upon his explanatory style, might hear: “He never likes what I do.” Or “He’s just picky. I’ll ignore this.” Or “He really wants me to win on this project. I think he sees that I’m management material.”

Each individual has a certain “filter twist” through which they run all things. And it’s largely dependent on how they feel about themselves based on the key messages they have received over a lifetime— especially messages about how lovable or unlovable they are.

If an individual grew up with someone telling them they were not OK, then when you give them input, they will most likely hear it as an attack.

NOBODY escapes this little life mess. Our brains, addicted to drama as they are, can hear the most innocent remarks as accusing, complaining, or blaming. We distort it to the point that it feeds the unhappiness we’re addicted to. But YOU, and only you, can kick that addiction by choosing your own explanatory style. There is no longer the need to hear the worst, imagine the worst, and therefore, fulfill the promise of making the worst come to be.

Explore your own programming

For every substantial conversation you have in the course of a given day, write down the exact words the person said. Go back to the person and ask, “What I think you said was xyz. Is that right?”

Then tell them what you thought they meant. Ask if you interpreted correctly or if there was anything that you added that wasn’t there. When they make adjustments, repeat those and ask if you heard them correctly.

Make a log of the findings. You will undoubtedly find a pattern.

For example:

• You wrongly assumed they didn’t like you.
• You wrongly assumed they were saying you were doing something wrong.
• You wrongly assumed that they were trying to say something to hurt you.

Reset your programming so that whenever you hear a request or a thought from another person, you will run it through the best possible filter, the one that says they are on your side and want the best for you.

Life just became infinitely better. You’ll have more success in life and in relationships because your NEW filter said so.

Quick tip

The next time you find your temperature rising after someone makes a statement, take a quick minute to find two other ways to interpret it.

Ask Roxanne!

Dear Roxanne,

I’m seriously losing it. Our staff has been reduced again, and I’m taking on more and more. I feel like the boss is counting on me, but I have never had so many plates spinning at once, and a crash is inevitable. What can I do?—Kristina W.

Dear Kristina,

Stop treating yourself like a machine, that’s what. Working hard is a terrific thing, but the human mind and body have limits. If you push yourself beyond those limits for too long, it becomes counterproductive. You’ve got to learn how to say no, both for your sake and for the sake of the work. I’ve written this week’s article for you. Please let me know if it’s helpful!—Roxanne

NO is not a four-letter word!

How are you responding to these stressful times? Feeling frazzled? Going to bed a little later and getting up a little earlier? Eating lunch at your desk?

If your intention is to strengthen your job security as layoffs happen all around you—you just might want to reconsider that six-cylinder, 24/7 strategy. It’s counterproductive. And the best skill you can develop is the ability to say NO.

Overstressed employees are less engaged, less focused, and less vision-driven. This hurts customer service, which in turn hurts everything. Stressed employees are also more likely to get sick, lose sleep, and develop dysfunctional behaviors, all of which further hurts productivity.

Martin Luther once said, “I generally pray for two hours every day, except on very busy and demanding days. On those days, I pray three.”

Productivity WINS and the bottom line WINS and quality goes UP when employees are happy, rested, and well cared for. We need to say, “In normal times, I get seven hours’ sleep each night. But during busy and demanding weeks, I get eight.” It makes sense, and it works.

Want to improve the quality of your work, boost your productivity, impress the boss? Become a well-oiled machine, not an overheated engine. Here’s how:

• First and foremost, take responsibility for your physical and emotional health. Get rest, eat right, and exercise. If you see a frazzled, sleep-deprived face in the mirror, consider it not as a badge of honor but as a failure to maximize your abilities by taking proper care of yourself.

• Fully show up wherever you are. When you’re at work, be at work, 100 percent. When you’re at home, be at home. Both work and home will benefit from your full attention.

• Set limits on work done at home. Sometimes bringing work home is unavoidable, and that’s fine. But when it becomes a norm to work through the evening, you are sapping your energy and reducing your productivity.

• Share your planned limits with those around you. If you’ve decided not to work after 7 pm, tell your wife or husband and the kids. They’ll hold you to it.

• Build non-negotiable breaks into your workday. I’m talking about real breaks. Eating lunch at your desk does NOT count. Reading spreadsheets in the break room does NOT count. Get away and recharge your battery.

• Learn when to say no. Overcommitment destroys productivity. Stop seeing it as a virtue. It’s a failure of personal quality control.

One of the keys to all this is silencing the nagging voice in our heads—the one that says “no pain, no gain,” that tells you working more and harder and longer with fewer breaks and less sleep will make you better and more productive. It’s NONSENSE.

Run a car’s engine in high gear for hours and you’ll end up with a pile of junk. Why would running a human being be any different?

Getting serious about gearing down

1. Every Monday morning, write down every obligation for the week.
2. Put an X by those that can wait until next week.
3. Circle those that can be delegated (and delegate them).
4. Cross out those that don’t really need to be done.
5. Set aside genuine down time twice a day.
6. Watch your productivity skyrocket!

Quick tip

Overcommitment is NOT a badge of honor. Make a pledge to go one entire day without saying how busy you are.

Ask Roxanne!

Dear Roxanne,

My manager is a very decent guy, but not much of a leader. As a result, the place is falling apart. Everyone is reverting back to high school behaviors. I want to stay the course, so I’ve been asking the boss for some position targets so I can know what I’m aiming for. He keeps saying, “You’re doing just fine,” which doesn’t help a bit. What can I do to get some clarity?—Denise E.

Dear Denise,

Good for you for rising about the ruckus, and targets will help you do that. It’s ideal if management sets targets for you, but if they won’t, you need to do it yourself. I wrote today’s column with you in mind. Tell me how it goes!—Roxanne

Do you have a question about how to handle a situation or a relationship in the workplace? Ask Roxanne!

Set Your Own Targets

Sometimes bosses just don’t get it. And when they don’t, many employees find that a ready-made excuse to disengage.

But organizations only thrive when EVERY person takes 100 percent responsibility for the result. And if you’re going to play a role in the breakthrough, “The Victim” isn’t the role that will get you an Oscar.

Saw my buddy, an attorney, at a ball game recently. Slightly under the influence, he asked, “Roxanne, you still working with companies to help them get their employees to act like grown-ups?”

“Well, that’s not exactly what I do,” I said. “I help businesses double growth, profits, and service scores in a few months. I get the needles moving quickly for them. The employee stuff is just a part of how we do it. Why do you ask?”

He smiled. “After 35 years of practicing law, I have only heard business owners say one thing on the day we close the sale of their business: ‘I didn’t sell for the money.’ I used to be shocked by that. They also didn’t sell because they stopped loving the business. You know what every one of them says on the day of closing? They sold because they couldn’t wait to get away from the employees.”

Well then, that’s interesting. There probably IS some fault on the employee side. Let’s put THAT under the microscope. Every person is an employee…even if you’re the CEO. If you’re the top dog, you simply have more bosses with higher expectations.

It is the responsibility of every team member is to put on their grown-up pants and bring that higher self to work every single day. It’s a choice. We only act like children in the workplace because we don’t stop to reflect on how unattractive it is when adults fail to hold their behaviors to higher standards than children.

So employees have a role. First, they have to understand that they choose their attitude moment by moment.

Just because life isn’t perfect—and it never is—that doesn’t give them the right to pout, sabotage, hold back, or otherwise give free rein to their destructive behaviors.

Next, employees must take responsibility for getting a crystal-clear understanding of their critical drivers and report on those on a weekly basis. It’s not okay to play the victim card and complain incessantly about the long hours you’re working while you’re missing the targets—even if your boss didn’t give you those targets.

Take the initiative yourself. Lay out what you think the targets are, get agreement from your boss, then take aim and fire. You won’t hit every target every time. Demonstrate integrity and transparency by letting your boss know what you hit, what you missed, and what your corrective action plan is to improve your aim.

Most important: as an employee, you have the right and even the moral obligation to understand that leadership is not a position—it’s a way of being. And YOU can be the one who brings enlightenment to your workplace by showing others the way.

Taking accountability for your attitude and your focused results that tie into the objectives of your company and department is the fastest way to a promotion, a raise, and a life of sanity and abundance. The great news is this…it’s simple. There’s only two parts—choosing a more productive attitude and creating clarity and focusing all your activities toward those critical drivers.

Ask Roxanne!

Dear Roxanne,
I am a dad and a department manager at a national freight company. I also coach my son’s soccer team. It’s a bit of a juggling act sometimes, but I get everything done by multi-tasking. Now my immediate supervisor has started ragging on me about phone calls home and checking my Blackberry during meetings AND my wife is complaining about the work I bring home! I need somebody on my side here. Please help me show them that the outcome is the thing, and I’m doing all of my jobs well.—Philip W.

Dear Philip,
Hate to disappoint you, my friend, but I’m gonna have to side with the other team here. Even if you are getting your jobs “done,” it’s highly unlikely you’re doing the best you can at any of them. It’s so important to fully show up in everything you do. Read on to see what I mean.—Roxanne

Do you have a question about how to handle a situation or a relationship in the workplace? Ask Roxanne!

Showing Up

Ellen Galinsky, author of Ask the Children— What America’s Children Really Think About Working Parents, asked children what they would change about how their parents’ work affects their lives.

She also asked the parents what they thought their kids would say. Fifty percent of parents predicted that the child’s top choice would be to have more time together.

Guess again.

In fact, only 10-15 percent of kids said they would like more time with their parents. Contrast this with the 34 percent of kids who said what they want most is for their parents to be less stressed. Only 2 percent of parents guessed that this would be their child’s highest priority.

It’s not more of our time that our kids want but rather our vivaciousness—to be fully alive and enthusiastic wherever we are at any moment.

So do you fully show up wherever you are—or are you quasi-committed? Sometimes we have good intentions but just never get there.

Are you the kind of parent who talks about balance and blames your employer for pulling you away from your kids, yet has the television on while you’re with them?

Splitting your attention two or three or five ways all the time is the surest way to cheat each and every one of those parts of your life. Balance means living fully wherever you are—being fully present to your friends when with your friends, with your kids when with your kids, with your spouse when with your spouse, and at work when you’re at work.

If you’re thinking about your bowling league during the budget meeting, your numbers might be off. If you’re trying to figure out your fantasy league draft picks while you’re playing catch with your son, you might take one on the kisser—AND draft a third-rate running back. And that would be called justice.

Some of the best parents work fifty hours a week or more and are amazingly connected with their children in extremely functional ways. Some of the worst parents are stay-at-home mothers or fathers who watch television all day—know every soap opera, sleep through most of the day, and yell when their kids interrupt by asking a question.

Resolve today to make a commitment to be where you’re at, one hundred percent. When you’re at work, be productive in knowing exactly what the company objectives are.

Balance is about fully showing up wherever you are and deciding to enjoy being there. And that, like everything else in life, starts with a decision and continues with practice.

There’s an old country music song my cousin played every year at the holidays that goes, “ya done stomped on my heart…and you mashed that sucker flat.”

Well, that’s how it feels to be in the workplace some days. Our souls are stomped on.

People’s behaviors seem childish, unkind and self-consumed—feels a bit like adult day care.

So the responsibility of every team member is to put on her big girl pants or big boy pants and bring that “higher-self” good character to work every day. It’s a choice. WE only act like children in the workplace because we don’t stop to reflect how unattractive it is as adults to not hold our behaviors to higher standards.

Most managers spend 37 percent of their workday dealing with poor performers and bad behaviors. Imagine how much would be available for raises and bonuses if that hole in the bottom of the bucket wasn’t causing the need for layoffs.

So employees have a role. First, they have to understand that they choose their attitude moment by moment and just because life isn’t perfect, because it never is, that doesn’t give them the right to pout, sabotage, hold back or otherwise play out destructive behaviors.

Next, employees have the responsibility to get clear about what their critical drivers are and report into those weekly. It’s not okay to play the victim card and complain incessantly about the long hours you’re working to get attention while you’re missing the targets—even if your boss didn’t give you those targets. Lay out what you think they are, get agreement from your boss and then hit them and be transparent by letting your boss know what you hit and what your massive corrective action plan is on any you missed.

And most important, as an employee, you have the right and even the moral obligation to understand that leadership is not a position—it’s a way of being and YOU can be the one who brings enlightenment to your workplace by showing others the way.

Three short steps to leadership

• Recognize your own power and talents.
• Identify individual and organizational needs.
• Find ways to leverage your power to address them.

Quick tip

Write down three things that are keeping your organization from soaring. Select ONE that you can impact and start today!

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life. I didn’t love them all the same, and I didn’t love them all completely. But I loved them all.

Loving your job is a DECISION. Some jobs were a better fit with my skills and values, but regardless of where I was, I always found things to celebrate and be joyful about. It starts with feeling gratitude for having a job at all—something we tend to forget more and more as the time increases since we didn’t have one. Then you go from there.

Now a big part of my job is recommending that others do the same.

It’s like a marriage. Anyone who has been married more than a day knows that there are delightful, wonderful things about your spouse—as well as a few areas for improvement. (Look in the mirror and realize that your spouse can say the same.) So where do you put your focus? When we focus on the positives, the delightfuls and the wonderfuls, our marriage works much, much better.

If on the other hand we focus on all of those things that aren’t so hot, we’ll start accumulating baggage, bit by bit, until the marriage is crushed under the weight of it. Happens all the time.

The same is true for the marriage of employee and employer. No employer ever hires the perfect human being—but how would you like it if your employer chose to focus relentlessly on your imperfections? Likewise, an employee marinating in grievances about the employer will make him or herself miserable—a misery that spreads quickly to everyone around.

Roxanne Emmerich

Woody Allen has a great line about relationships in the movie Annie Hall. “A relationship is like a shark,” he says to Annie. “It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we’ve got on our hands is a dead shark.”

It’s the same with your career. Sit still, stop growing, and your career will end up on life support.

You don’t have to go back to school—heck, maybe you just got OUT of school. But you DO have to master your job, and that’s an ongoing task. So it’s time to hit the books again.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell describes the 10,000-Hour Rule. To truly master any significant, complex skill requires 10,000 hours of dedicated practice and study. Writing, drawing, playing the cello, dancing, chess, golf—whatever it is, true mastery seems to kick in around the time you finish your 10,000th hour at the forge.

“But Mozart was writing symphonies at age six!” you say. That’s true—and his mommy probably loved them. But as neat a trick as that was, nobody plays his kindergarten symphonies today, because they didn’t represent the real mastery he eventually achieved. They were part of the 10,000 hours that led him later, much later, to write some of the most sublime musical works of all time.

Think of your career as a set of complex skills that you intend to master. You’ll reach 10,000 hours after five years on the job. But these can’t just be 10,000 hours marking time, watching the clock, getting the job done. You have to fill those hours with thinking, learning, stretching your abilities—and getting better all the time.

Mastery includes accumulating wisdom. If you’re in sales or management or have technical expertise, you need to hit the books in a big way, reading at LEAST a book a month to remain relevant. No, I’m not talking about Twilight. The British poet Matthew Arnold said to read “the best that has been thought and said” in order to become a fully cultured person. The same goes for business. Seek out the best that has been thought and said in your field—and in other fields, while you’re at it—and soak in it.

Become THE expert in your field. And, while you’re at it, start studying for the job you want next. By knowing how to do many of your boss’s functions, you can start freeing him to do his boss’s job. See where this is going?

Even if your boss’s job doesn’t open for you, you’ve proven you can self-teach and self manage. That’s the kind of reputation that can get you ANYWHERE.

So drop and give me 10,000!

There’s a song I love to play over the loudspeakers at my Marketing and Sales Management Boot Camp™ events. The song is “Let’s Get it Started” by the Black-Eyed Peas, and we use it to call everybody back from break, to pump them up and get them ready to GET IT STARTED again!

We could use just about any high-energy song to get people’s attention, but this one has something special, and it’s right there in the title––Let’s get it started. It doesn’t say, “Let’s hope somebody else gets it started.” It’s about US, you and me, getting started and making things happen.

Maybe you’re playing a waiting game in your company, waiting for management to get the memo and start making a positive culture change happen. You’ve filled out enough suggestion cards to fill the old card catalog at the New York Public Library. Maybe you’ve even dropped a few heavy hints in person. Nothing. Ever. Happens.

Time to stop waiting. It’s time to get it started!

Culture change is first and foremost about a change in attitudes. It’s about making people feel appreciated, giving them a common goal, and helping them to have fun in the process. NONE of these requires a lot of money or time, and best of all, NONE requires the involvement of the head honchos.

Still, you don’t have to do this all alone. Certainly there are two or three other people who would like to see your workplace transformed. Put together an informal group––a “coalition of the willing”––and brainstorm ways to turn the place around. There is nothing more fun than taking the bull by the horns and watching as you turn around not just a workplace, but the lives of the people who spend half of their waking hours IN that workplace.

At the end of the first month, pull the team together to take a reading. Odds are very good that you’ll see evidence everywhere that things will never be the same.

Three easy, inexpensive ways to GET IT STARTED!

1. Create your own contest. If you know your company has an objective to sell 750 widgets a month, create a contest. Split your sales staff into teams. Have them report daily and put points for sales up on a white board. Hoot and holler, give out bags of M&Ms (don’t hand them out, TOSS them across the room!)
2. Start a low-key campaign against dysfunctional behaviors. Quietly enlist as many co-workers as possible in a pact to not engage in gossip, backstabbing, whining, or nay-saying, and to gently call others on it when they hear it in action.
3. Connect. It’s easy to crawl into our shells, keep our eyes on the floor, and forget that we’re surrounded by actual no-kidding people all day. Make an effort to meet the eyes of your co-workers. Smile and say hello. Ask about the family. This isn’t rocket science––but these simple connections can do more for transforming a workplace culture than the most elaborate system of incentives.

Quick tip

Identify one person in the office most in need of a lift out of dysfunction and cynicism. See what you can do in a single week to start turning that person’s world around.

Useful is as Useful Does

By just about any measure, you’re doing well—happy in your work, your colleagues, your compensation. But you’re ready for a new challenge. After years in the same position, it’s getting harder to find motivation and interest on a daily basis. You don’t want out—you want UP. But how to get there?

You’ve tried hinting. You’ve tried flattery. You’ve even tried waving your hand in the air every time one of the bosses asks for a volunteer, and still you’re marking time in the same position.

The key is to start creating and seizing your OWN opportunities.

Here’s some very good news: Most of us are surrounded by people with an ENORMOUS amount on their plates. They have what you want (things to do) and you have what they want (someone ready and willing to do them). It’s time to make beautiful music together.

You’ll certainly want to keep waving that hand in the air. Eventually your willingness will pop to mind at the same moment they desperately need to get something done. But you can be even more proactive. Find out what projects the management team is working on right now. Do a little independent legwork—a little research that needs doing, maybe, or a proposal draft—then go back and say, “I’ve taken the liberty of drafting this work so that you wouldn’t have to do that. Let me know what changes you’d like to see made. I’d just like to take some of these things off your shoulders.”

Until you’ve been up to your eyeballs in too much to do, only to have someone waltz in the door with one of your projects half done—believe me, it makes one heck of an impression.

Do this often enough and it will be apparent that you are someone of great integrity with a heart of service. Before long, your name will start ringing in their ears, and your future will open up before you.

If you approach this with visions of sugarplums dancing in your head—a snazzy title, a corner office, a big raise—you will fail. These motivations are as transparent as the wind. Instead, bask in the glory of being of greater service in the work that you do, and you just might get your sugarplums in the end.

The dos and don’ts of making yourself useful

• DO watch for opportunities to be of service.
• DON’T snoop into private communications in search of opportunities.
• DO offer to solve workload problems.
• DON’T create new problems by taking on work for which you are not qualified or for which you don’t have time.
• DO keep your eye on the goal of being of service.
• DON’T think in terms of direct benefits to you.

Quick tip

Never take on additional work unless you can do it on time and well. Adding to the problem won’t win you any points!

You’ve been there—we all have. Everything is going incredibly well, you’ve got the world by the tail, then suddenly… you’re tumbling through the sky.

Sometimes you feel like you just won’t ALLOW yourself to succeed. You get sick, you miss a deadline, then another. Just days after everything was going right, it seems that nothing ever will again.

If this has ever happened to you, welcome to the human race. But even if it’s common, it ain’t good. This plight is as disastrous to the success of a salesperson as the lack of skills. For experienced salespeople, it is usually the biggest part of the problem.

Striving for success feels natural, familiar. But once you reach it, even in a small way, there’s a feeling of vulnerability. You look down and your head begins spinning. That hateful little voice inside your head says, “Who do you think you are, climbing so high?”

If your top monthly income in a month has been $15,000, then whenever you get near that, your unconscious starts to pull the reins and say, “Don’t you know you’re about to hit your income ceiling? Time to slow you down with a little mess.”

So how do you overcome the demon who has your number?

By taking out your “head trash” on a regular basis.

There are many skills to master if you want to get your unconscious mind working for you instead of against you. From affirmations to sourcing the problem, you want to be on top of ALL of them.

One powerhouse transformer of the head trash is the process of taking YOU out of the equation. That’s right. It’s not all about you. In fact, when you get that and operate from that place, results become easy.

Change the game. Stop thinking about YOUR numbers as the primary focus and start focusing on the impact you will make on others. Suddenly the self-esteem issues we ALL battle can’t get in the way because it’s not about self-sabotaging any more.

When, on the other hand, you decide that it’s not about your income goal at all but about how many people you serve and how fully you serve them, your unconscious programming is no longer running the show. It gets confused. You seem to know no limits about how many people you can help.

With the focus on how many you served and how well you served them, your brain is clear to keep going and going and going. You have no limits.

Four steps to silencing your negative self-talk

1. Become aware of it. You can’t solve a problem you don’t know you have.
2. Find out where it started. Messages in childhood, a public humiliation—whatever it is, locate it so you can show it the door.
3. Recognize the benefits. You won’t get off the dime if you don’t acknowledge the HUGE benefits of taking out your head trash.
4. Take conscious steps to end it. You talked yourself into the trash heap—you can talk yourself out of it!

Quick tip

Catch yourself one time thinking, “I’m not good enough,” and replace that message with a positive, powerful affirmation. Then make a habit of it!