Recession Sparks Business Coaching Upsurge

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Professional athletes have coaches.  In fact, the stars usually have a lot of them:  head coach, position coach, strength coach, flexibility coach, sports psychologist, and nutrition coach…not to mention, financial and spiritual coaches.   OK, given recent history, most of the stars could also use one more… a life coach…someone who would help them get and keep their personal lives in order.  In the sports world, owners, athletes, fans and managers know well the importance of having a coach, no matter how advanced you are in your game.  It would be inconceivable for a serious athlete to go without the support of a coach. They know that regardless of their expertise in their craft, the ultimate value of having a coach by their side; someone skilled in helping them stay focused and providing feedback, support, perspective, and accountability to take their game to the next level.

So here is the million-dollar question for you and your business or career…how come you don’t have a coach?  In today’s economy, more and more business owners and executives believe having a business coach is imperative.  Some reports suggest that coaching is the 2nd fastest-growing industry in the world, after the IT industry, and it is a substantial part of the $100 billion dollar training & development field.  Coaching franchises, like Mars Venus Coaching, are contributing to that meteoric growth.

According to a study in 2008 by the American Management Association, “Coaching continues to gain in popularity.  Among respondents who say their organizations don’t yet have coaching programs, a sizable proportion (37% in the North American sample and 56% in the international sample) said such programs will be implemented in the future.”

How does coaching differ from consulting? A consultant is a functional expert in a particular field or business process. This person is hired to share his/her “expertise” as it specifically pertains to your business (such as IT, marketing, compensation, or accounting).   A consultant has little vested interest in the outcome.  You pay them for their expertise.  You either follow their recommendations, and they either work or they don’t.  Either way, the consultant gets paid.  A business coach, on the other hand, is an expert in business development; specifically trained to help you:

  • Get and maintain a laser focus on what really matters to the business.  A business coach refuses to get caught up in the weeds of the business.
  • Recognize the barriers getting in the way of achieving your goals.  A business coach refuses to “buy in” to the limiting thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that have stood in the way of reaching your highest level of success.
  • Formulate a plan around achieving your priorities and overcoming the key barriers.  A business coach helps you develop a plan, your own roadmap, to success.
  • Be accountable for acting upon the plan, following the roadmap, and doing the things necessary to achieve outstanding results.  A business coach will NOT accept inaction, procrastination, or, for that matter, poor productivity from you…and will help you to not accept any of these from yourself.
  • Create a motivating vision of the future.  A business coach reminds you why you are focused on doing certain things…the rewards for keeping to the plan.
  • Maintain perspective.  A business coach looks at organizations, executive teams, employees and initiatives from the outside, with no attachment to the specifics of the situation.  Personal attachments, office politics, egos, and company policies are all up for examination to the coach that is dedicated to helping you achieve your objectives.

The key things to remember are that:

A coach does not do the work for you. A coach empowers you to draw upon your own thinking, ideas and resources to achieve the desired results.

A coach does not tell you what to do. A coach conducts an inquiry made up of powerful, thought-provoking questions that assist clients in finding their own most creative and effective solutions.

A coach does not force you to change. A coach points out and gets you to recognize the limiting thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and patterns that stand in the way of your greatest success, and then helps you chart a new course.

So who hires a business coach?  The business owner, executive or company that is committed to success and recognizes the need to go beyond the status quo and reach out for various resources to achieve it; that understands that he or she is responsible for their own success and is unwilling to settle for mediocrity; that has a desire to move to the next level of success and who sees the value of coaching to empower that commitment; and that believes their employees are an integral part of their overall success, and therefore wants to improve  employee performance and internal relationships.

What to look for in a business coach:

  • Someone who is trained specifically as a business/executive coach and as an expert in the field of business development, communications and human behavior.
  • Someone who is good listener and great at asking pointed, thought-provoking questions.
  • Someone with whom you have a good rapport.
  • Someone you can trust.
  • Someone who comes with a good recommendation or referral.
  • Someone who is willing to provide you a complimentary coaching session in order to gauge whether he/she can help you improve your business’s results, management skills and leadership abilities.

A business/executive coach becomes your strongest ally, a partner in achievement, who can be the difference between success and failure; especially in today’s economy.  Take the time to investigate whether hiring a business/executive coach is right for you.

Visit www.marsvenuscoaching.com to learn more about your coahcing opportunities.

Single Ladies Give Yourself a Gift This Year

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Oxytocin is a stress-reducing hormone released in women. When a woman does something that produces Oxytocin, her Cortisol (stress hormone) levels begin to drop, and she starts to feel less stressed and more relaxed. Below is a list of 10 sure-fire ways a woman can produce Oxytocin for herself this coming Mother’s Day. Some of them might just surprise you.

  1. Get a massage
  2. Get your hair done
  3. Get a manicure or pedicure
  4. Take yourself on a shopping spree
  5. Volunteer or give to a charity
  6. Go to the theatre, a concert, or a dance performance
  7. Host an intimate gathering of your closest friends
  8. Spend time at the beach, a river, or a lake
  9. Go to an art museum or a cultural event
  10. Handwrite your future self (and a few close friends if you like) a love note

A Happier You

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The greatest goal you can set this year is to make peace with your life, no matter your circumstances. These 10 powerful insights from Eckhart Tolle will get you started.

eckhart tolle

  1. Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up stories about it.
  2. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or the fact, and here are my thoughts about it. Instead of making up stories, stay with the facts. For example, “I am ruined” is a story. It limits you and prevents you from taking effective action. “I have 50 cents left in my bank account” is a fact. Facing facts is always empowering.
  3. See if you can catch the voice in your head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is the awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind.
  4. Wherever you look, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for the reality of time—a rotting apple, your face in the bathroom mirror compared with your face in a photo taken 30 years ago—yet you never find any direct evidence, you never experience time itself. You only ever experience the present moment.
  5. Why do anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.
  6. People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness. They don’t realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn’t have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have. And so they miss the deeper perfection that is inherent in life itself, a perfection that lies beyond what is happening or not happening. Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is untouched by time.
  7. The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be; otherwise, you will be forced to relive the past again and again.
  8. Equating the physical body with “I,” the body that is destined to grow old, wither, and die, always leads to suffering. To refrain from identifying with the body doesn’t mean that you no longer care for it. If it is strong, beautiful, or vigorous, you can appreciate those attributes—while they last. You can also improve the body’s condition through nutrition and exercise. If you don’t equate the body with who you are, when beauty fades, vigor diminishes, or the body becomes incapacitated, this will not affect your sense of worth or identity in any way. In fact, as the body begins to weaken, the light of consciousness can shine more easily.
  9. You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you and allowing that goodness to emerge.
  10. If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace.

Eckhart Tolle
Oprah.com   |   From the January 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

Exerpted from Oneness with All Life by Eckhart Tolle. Published by arrangement with Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copywright © 2008 by Eckhart Tolle

Shaky Ground, Clear Heart

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The epicenter in Mineral, Virginia, where the 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck on August 23, 2011, was less than 30 miles from me. With telephone lines down, it looked like the 4th of July, with people over 300 miles away immediately posting updates on their Facebook pages to let friends and family know what happened and that they were okay. Life is always full of uncertainties. Sometimes it takes a natural occurrence like an earthquake not near a fault line or a tornado in an uncommon location to make us stop for a second and check in with our priorities.

I grew up in Alaska with daily earthquakes throughout the state. Earthquake drills are common practice at school, and watching blinds shake or being rolled out of bed was the norm. When things began creaking and shaking, I instinctively scooped up dog and kid and found myself waiting out the groaning, rattling, rumblings in our nearest, sturdiest doorframe. I was calmly explaining to my soon-to-be preschooler that the earth was shaking like big dinosaurs stomping around outside.

I figured, why not relate this to one of his beloved books, so it was a fun adventure, rather than a potential disaster? He asked if we should put our shoes on, and I said, “Sure, honey, when the chandelier stops swinging and the trees outside stop their staccato swaying.” Using a large vocabulary made me stay in the logical part of my brain, so I would stay calm rather than let my monkey brain create panic for us. Like all kids, he easily picks up the emotional nuances in our voices and faces to tell him how he should react—the shaking stopped, and he was excited to put on his shoes and explore outside as we checked for cracks. With my military background, my mind was also assessing the situation and hoping it was only an earthquake, and not another attack like 9-11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon inflicted by human beings angry at other human beings.

As I checked in with family and friends, I also found clients checking in with me. This brings me to my point: relationships. I created my business so I could spread and share unconditional love with as many people as possible. I believe we can all learn more life resiliency skills so that our relationships are healthier, and we’re able to stay more focused on the present and attaining our goals, which often correlate to cultivating and sharing our talents with others.

Mars Venus Coaching based on John Gray’s, Ph.D., wide body of male/female relationship dynamics, is different from other coaching systems, because it focuses on helping people to understand how to communicate with different types of people so they are valued, respected, and heard. Coaching is also different from traditional forms of therapy, because the focus is on the present and creating 90-day action plans that daily step clients closer to their life purpose and goals.

I believe we’re only here on Earth for a blink of an eye, and if we have our priorities straight, then we’re engaging with other people and making their lives a little easier to live and bear. There is a lot of potential to be self-involved, greedy, evil, judgmental, and close-minded. When we focus our attention in this direction, then we take our energy away from what I believe is our main purpose: relationships. Having successful relationships professionally and personally is a life well-lived. Your daily interactions with others, and how many close, quality relationships you have are indicators of whether or not you’re making a difference in the world.

Where were you and what were you thinking about when the 2.8, 2.2, 4.2, and 3.4 aftershocks in Central Virginia occurred in the ensuing hours? Did you even feel them? If you were nearby and felt any of the shaking—did you check in with family and friends? If you were further away and new of loved ones somewhere along the affected eastern coast of America did you check on them?

At the end of each day, regardless if there has been a life event that makes you wonder if you have your priorities straight—are you doing ALL you can do to express your gratitude and love for the people that make a difference in your life? Boot anger and low self-confidence out, and focus on what makes your relationships richer and more fulfilling—engage in the now, every day.

Are you committed to continuous relational growth? Are you ready to enhance your emotional intimacy and keep your love life strong with ongoing insights and tweaks? Discover the onlines couses at Mars Venus Coach Academy and bridge the communication gap and live the life you’ve dreamed.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

To Launch Your Business – Embrace Risk-Taking

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By learning what makes veteran entrepreneurs adept risk-takers, aspiring starters-up can get closer to taking the leap

To evaluate the merits of their startup dream and strategize about its future, aspiring entrepreneurs can sweat out business plans and huddle with experts. To prepare for the emotional roller coaster of venturing out on their own, though, there’s little to do in advance. They must launch and learn on the fly. For those struggling to decide when to launch, insight from seasoned risk-takers and researchers who study them could speed the decision-making process.

For Andrew Ullman and Hayward Majors, co-founders of New York’s CollegeSolved.com, an online expert network for college admissions, leaping did not come easily. After hatching their idea in 2008, they kept their day jobs in corporate law and finance, conducting research and seeking industry input in their spare time. By February 2009, they had a well-researched business plan but lacked the confidence to pursue the venture full-time. “Despite having an opportunity in hand and some financial stability, it took the validation of creating a beta version of the website and raising capital from outsiders to get us comfortable with the [lifestyle] change,” says Ullman.

Like countless others before them, Ullman and Majors were adept at identifying risks but hadn’t learned to take them. “When it comes to taking risks, knowledge is a highly overrated motivator. Otherwise, we’d all buy low and sell high, and our kids would eat their vegetables,” says Dr. Frank Murtha, a behavioral psychologist in New York City who works with traders and specializes in financial risk-taking. He suggests that seizing opportunities when they arise and rolling with the punches requires a skill set few have mastered.

Chemicals in the Brain

In 2008 researchers at the University of Cambridge studied the risky decision-making abilities of entrepreneurs and corporate managers with similar IQs and experience levels using a battery of neurocognitive tests. They found (paywall alert) that the entrepreneurs consistently took riskier bets. The results show that risk-taking is both behavioral and physiological. The entrepreneurs not only scored higher on personality tests that measure impulsivity and flexibility; they also experienced a chemical response in the reward center of the brain that the managers did not.

While we have little control over our natural programming, it is possible to change behavior over time, as most therapists advocate. To offer aspiring entrepreneurs steps to take immediately, I compiled these tips:

Socialize with other entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship rubs off. A study from Babson suggests that children of entrepreneurs are more likely to start businesses, as are those who know other small business owners. The inverse also holds. Risk aversion can be contagious, as Ullman and Majors experienced. “We always wanted to be entrepreneurs, but we were locked into lucrative jobs that were deemed acceptable by family and friends,” says Majors. Most large cities offer business meet-ups and other networking events where like minds gather.

Set yourself up for small successes. “Our brains are motivated by success to greater success,” says Dr. Richard Peterson, a psychiatrist and PhD of neuroeconomics who has written two books on financial risk-taking. Immediately after experiencing a victory, our neurons process information more effectively, we become sharper and learn faster. Set small goals, no more than three months in length. Even incorporating a hobby that sets you up for small successes can make a difference in your professional life. A personal aside: I’ve just given hubby the license to play World of Warcraft to sharpen his risk-taking prowess.

Have a whiskey sour. Who hasn’t attended a cocktail hour feeling intimidated by a room of unfamiliar faces? A drink can stimulate the impulsive side of your brain’s reward center and give you the courage to strike up a conversation. More isn’t always better when it comes to playing with brain chemistry, of course. For purposes of productive impulsivity, stick to just one.

Or skip the drink and try channeling your inner Richard Branson on your own. We are groomed to seek information when making decisions. Break the habit by practicing by yourself in an environment where your decisions will have few meaningful consequences. Order what instantly comes to mind in a restaurant, for example, then graduate to other arenas.

Have faith. “As much as knowledge is overrated, religion is underrated,” says Murtha. Taking a leap of faith is something every entrepreneur must do at some point or another. Having faith that everything will be O.K., whether it is derived from a spiritual belief or elsewhere, contributes to the willingness to be adaptable.

Choose a partner who possesses skills you don’t. If impulsivity and adaptability aren’t your strong suits, find a partner who already has what you don’t. Of course, don’t bring on a partner unless he or she adds value to the project beyond being able to roll with the punches.

Ullman and Majors quit their day jobs in September 2010 when it became clear investors were willing to commit. They closed the round in December, raising enough from friends and family to sustain the business for about two years, and finally launched CollegeSolved.com in early April. “After more than two years of planning, we thought we’d experience a huge relief post-launch,” says Majors. “But the party is only getting started.”

Monica Mehta
Monica Mehta is managing principal of investment firm Seventh Capital in New York City. She has advised hundreds of small businesses over the past 15 years.

3 Tips to Achieving Your Goals

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Liza Tsapenko
Mars Venus Coach

Hitting Rock Bottom at Work and Surviving

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It’s rare today that your first job is also your last job. In the course of many people’s careers, as they gain time and experience, their positions change. Increased responsibility, in most cases, should mean increased pay. It can be tricky identifying a good time to move to a new position. If we’re fearful of the change, sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom, sometimes repeatedly, before we wake up and choose to be survivors and not a victim. How do we go from hitting rock bottom to surviving?

A lot of it lies in our perspective, how we internalize change, and how we incorporate our growing pains into the fabric of our lives. We can always increase our resiliency, or our ability to bounce back despite setbacks.

Our lives are such a kaleidoscope of colorful events if we choose to see it this way. It’s easy to focus on the pain, on what’s not going right. The real test of our character is our ability to face setbacks, discomfort, and failure and see it for what it is—find the lesson learned in the experience, and move on to better things as a more humble and compassionate person.

When we are at the bottom looking up, we often feel alone and unappreciated as we wonder if anyone cares about us or sees the pain through our tight smiles. Sometimes we ask ourselves what the point of going on is if we feel like our work isn’t valued. If we’ve royally screwed our personal relationships up (or lack thereof) by putting our job ahead of what’s really important to us, then it really can make us question the worth of our lives. Sometimes we hit rock bottom, because we are no longer interested in our job. We could be worn out or stressed to the max. What may really be going on is that we’re ready for a change. We’re having trouble finding purpose in what we do for our job. And we think that holding on to the way things are will keep things the same. However, when we resist change and hold on so tightly to the past or the future, we lose sight of what we’re doing in the here and now.

I have found throughout the years that a storm always precedes a fresh new beginning. Always.

When I find myself blocked or resisting a change in my job, it’s usually because I’ve outgrown the job. I’m ready for a new challenge—whether it’s more responsibility or a new career field. If I find myself anxious or dreading going into work, a storm is definitely brewing. Are you there right now?

Why not try identifying the why behind the pain, discomfort, boredom…the sooner we’re able to move past these negative feelings and beliefs, the sooner our next job will surface.

Hitting rock bottom means the only way to go is up. That we’ve outgrown the current experience and our soul is yearning for something more, something bigger, and something beyond our current situation. So ask yourself what you truly long for and how you can do something right now, today that will get you one step closer to that longing.

Step a little outside of your comfort zone.

Enlist the aid of someone with the experience and willingness to be a safe place that you can be vulnerable and explore what it is you really want.
You are definitely worth it—and the people whose lives you touch in your job will be profoundly affected by your interactions when your job is your passion. Who knows, your relationships may just fall into place as well. When you value your worth, and recognize the tenuous web that intricately spins us all together it will begin to make sense the sooner you work past the pain, longings, and yearnings, you will find happiness, compassion, and success in pursuing your passions.

If you are looking for fresh appraoch for relations, check out, Secrets of Successful Relationships. This online course is based on the groundbreaking work of John Gray, the world-renowned author of the phenomenal bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. In this course, Dr. Gray’s wisdom is presented by Rich Bernstein, the President and CEO of Mars Venus Coaching, who has been happily married for 33 years using these very principles. This course isn’t just about learning secrets; it’s about putting them into action to create new habits.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need To Succeed

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Albert Einstein’s was estimated at 160, Madonna’s is 140, and John F. Kennedy’s was only 119, but as it turns out, your IQ score pales in comparison with your EQ, MQ, and BQ scores when it comes to predicting your success and professional achievement.

IQ tests are used as an indicator of logical reasoning ability and technical intelligence. A high IQ is often a prerequisite for rising to the top ranks of business today. It is necessary, but it is not adequate to predict executive competence and corporate success. By itself, a high IQ does not guarantee that you will stand out and rise above everyone else.

Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality, and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. Additionally, Nobel Prize-winning Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don’t, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price.

With this in mind, instead of exclusively focusing on your conventional intelligence quotient, you should invest in strengthening your EQ (Emotional Intelligence), MQ (Moral Intelligence), and BQ (Body Intelligence). These concepts may be elusive and difficult to measure, but their significance is far greater than IQ.

Emotional Intelligence

EQ is the most well-known of the three, and in brief, it is about: being aware of your own feelings and those of others, regulating these feelings in yourself and others, using emotions that are appropriate to the situation, self-motivation, and building relationships.

Top Tip for Improvement: First, become aware of your inner dialogue. It helps to keep a journal of what thoughts fill your mind during the day. Stress can be a huge killer of emotional intelligence, so you also need to develop healthy coping techniques that can effectively and quickly reduce stress in a volatile situation.

Moral Intelligence

MQ directly follows EQ as it deals with your integrity, responsibility, sympathy, and forgiveness. The way you treat yourself is the way other people will treat you. Keeping commitments, maintaining your integrity, and being honest are crucial to moral intelligence.

Top Tip for Improvement: Make fewer excuses and take responsibility for your actions. Avoid little white lies. Show sympathy and communicate respect to others. Practice acceptance and show tolerance of other people’s shortcomings. Forgiveness is not just about how we relate to others; it’s also how you relate to and feel about yourself.

Body Intelligence

Lastly, there is your BQ, or body intelligence, which reflects what you know about your body, how you feel about it, and take care of it. Your body is constantly telling you things; are you listening to the signals or ignoring them? Are you eating energy-giving or energy-draining foods on a daily basis? Are you getting enough rest? Do you exercise and take care of your body? It may seem like these matters are unrelated to business performance, but your body intelligence absolutely affects your work because it largely determines your feelings, thoughts, self-confidence, state of mind, and energy level.

Top Tip For Improvement: At least once a day, listen to the messages your body is sending you about your health. Actively monitor these signals instead of going on autopilot. Good nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate rest are all key aspects of having a high BQ. Monitoring your weight, practicing moderation with alcohol, and making sure you have down time can dramatically benefit the functioning of your brain and the way you perform at work.

What You Really Need To Succeed

It doesn’t matter if you did not receive the best academic training from a top university. A person with less education who has fully developed their EQ, MQ, and BQ can be far more successful than a person with an impressive education who falls short in these other categories.

Yes, it is certainly good to be an intelligent, rational thinker and have a high IQ; this is an important asset. But you must realize that it is not enough. Your IQ will help you personally, but EQ, MQ, and BQ will benefit everyone around you as well. If you can master the complexities of these unique and often under-rated forms of intelligence, research tells us you will achieve greater success and be regarded as more professionally competent and capable.

Keld Jensen
Forbes Magazine

Why Cooperation and Collaboration is Essential in Today’s Workforce

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There are many career fields now where men and women are integrated together. And, when you stop to think about it—even if there’s a career field where it’s predominantly one gender or the other, there is gender overlap either when buying products or services from vendors or serving customers. The way to reduce gender conflict is by focusing on strengths. By intentionally becoming aware of how to use both masculine and feminine communication skills you can give not only yourself, but your company as well, the advantage over your competition when it comes to productivity and creativity.  Rapport building is a great way to foster cooperation and collaboration within your company and to obtain repeat customers.

As an individual reading this article, you are becoming more cognizant of how masculine and feminine communication skills can be used interchangeably, by both sexes, for greater cooperation and collaboration. Becoming aware of the social skills involved, and then mindfully choosing to use both styles of communication, will help you be a better communicator at work (and at home!).

Today, we’re focusing on how to build rapport, a skill set women often acquire more naturally due to social conditioning and because they tend to communicate, commiserate, show compassion, and connect with others when under duress based on their physiology. In fact, physiologically, women produce their stress-reducing hormone, oxytocin, when they do just that—connect and nurture relationships with others.

When both men and women focus on beefing up their rapport with others, then the entire group (both employees and customers) benefits. Value is placed on what often makes or breaks a company—turning a product or service into profit. This is because the focus is on people enjoying the experience of working to sell or buy the product or service.

Building rapport is a skill that both men and women can benefit from in the workplace. By taking a moment every day to check in with one another, the workplace climate can change from friction and one-upmanship to one that’s more team-oriented. This is critical in a workforce that employs both men and women. Put it into context with a young child picking up a toy strewn room. If you’ve picked a room up with a child, you know it is more about picking the toys up together, rather than putting the toys away, that makes them feel accepted and like they did something well. When anyone feels like they matter, then typically their performance increases because peer pressure revolves around connection and positive reinforcement.

Women tend to ask others for their input when making decisions, because to them it is important to hear and value what others think and feel about the situation. Even in a quick-paced working environment where seconds count, eye contact, nods of the head can mean the difference between if someone has your back and whether everyone’s on the same page or not.

You build rapport by actively listening to others. Be genuinely interested in someone—whether it’s how potty training is going with their daughter, how they’re coping with a sick parent, or how the work deadline caused them to miss their anniversary—listen with interest. This does not mean a fifteen minute or even a five minute chat every day—it’s a quick check-in as easy as asking, “hey, how is your day?” Stop. Listen to the answer. Respond by rephrasing or repeating back what they said and using empathy. Then, get down to business.

You can also build rapport by observing and responding to nonverbal body cues. Quick check-ins with my Marines as a Marine Corps Officer was invaluable when time was critical. I knew my Marines body language, their moods, and how to motivate each one as individuals. Instead of forcing my will or decisions, I relied on my strength of listening with my ears and reading emotional moods to make decisions that were good not just for the end result, but the people involved as well.

As my yoga teacher challenges us each week with mindfulness homework, let me do the same with you. Your homework is a two-fold challenge. In the next week notice how building rapport benefits the quality of your productivity and creativity. Then challenge your company to do the same. Hire a Mars Venus Coach to go over gender strengths and do DISC profiling with your company for your professional development training, or if there isn’t a Mars Venus Coach in your local area have employees take the online course: Gender Intelligence Course. It’s not enough just to read about gender intelligence, you have to put the knowledge into actions by interacting in better ways with others.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

5 Signs It’s Time to Reprioritize

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During Lent, many people often give up or do without as they contemplate their spiritual beliefs and how Jesus Christ’s life and death personally affect how they live their lives on a daily basis. Regardless of whether you’re Christian or not, the Lenten season typically provides an opportunity for quiet self-reflection during observation of the Holy days. If it feels like you’re one step away from spending an entire day in bed or just vegetating, then read on to see if you’re in need of reprioritizing.

1. You consistently add more to your To-Do List than you cross off

Sometimes it helps to pause and see the long-term (a couple of months or more) and short-term (every week or daily) reasoning behind why you’re driving yourself so hard. If you’re able to sense that the upcoming week will be packed, then it behooves you to slow down the following week.

Solution: If one day is super busy, then plan to have more downtime the next day to recover or attend to what wasn’t finished the previous day. This only works if you have set busy/recovery times.

2. Forgetting important details

If you find that you cannot remember what you did an hour earlier, or are trying to remember if you had made an appointment for your personal health earlier in the year, then you may be overworked.

Solution: In this case, a planner comes in extremely handy. Use it to look things up and to keep track going forward. If you’re so busy, you’re unable to recall with your memory, then you may be doing too many things at once and will need to slow down and do less.

3. Work through breaks and lunch

Stop. Our bodies need nourishment and time off several times during the day. Being on “go” all day, with no moments to savor a cup of tea or chew our food thoroughly, enjoying the bursts of flavor, not only affects our waistlines and digestion, it also affects our resiliency to stress.

Solution: Put down your pen, back away from the computer, and turn off your phone. Spend the 15-, 30-, or hour-long break being in the present moment, being aware of what your senses are telling you, and enjoying the respite from work.

4. You commit to meetings and helping others, and your work performance suffers

If you find yourself saying yes when your plate is already too full, or you are being given too many tasks by your boss (or pressure from yourself) to be able to complete in a regular work day, and you’re unable to tie up your loose ends each week, then you may need to re-evaluate what’s important.

Solution: Sit down over the weekend with your planner. Pencil everything that must get done next week. Schedule the day and time when you’ll get these high priority items done. If you don’t know until the morning of each day, then estimate how long you can devote to the last minute high priority items, and block this amount of time out. Then, as you’re given more things to do, as you create your daily agenda, and there’s no time to add the new tasks, write them into your schedule for the next day. If you have to negotiate what to leave on and take off the agenda with someone, your written schedule provides a visual aid with which to make your point.

5. You feel resistance, lethargy, exhaustion, and anxiety whenever you think of what needs to be done

If you find yourself getting overwhelmed or anxious that your slate is never wiped clean, then you may need to take a break so you can gain a fresh perspective to improve your mood.

Solution: Take a half a day or an entire day off so you can get away to refresh your batteries. Do not think about what needs to be done, just give yourself permission to relax and spend time doing the things you love by yourself and with the people you love.

If you regularly experience three or more of these signs, then it may be time to take a hard look at your schedule so you don’t burn out. And, if you’re burnt out, then it will take longer than just a day to regain your equilibrium. Be gentle with yourself, and give yourself permission to slow down. If it’s a question of how to enforce your boundaries better with others so you don’t take on too much, then learn how to set boundaries and manage your time. It’s never too late to learn.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MeD
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations