Posts Tagged ‘workshops’

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Productivity for Martians

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

One of the most often cited reasons why people seek out coaching is to become more efficient with their time management.  Outcomes from the 2010 ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study, show more than two-fifths (42.6 percent) of coaching clients choose “optimize individual and/or team performance” as their motivation for being coached,  followed by “expand professional career opportunities” at 38.8 percent and “improve business management strategies” at 36.1 percent.  As a male do you find yourself worn out at the end of the day? Even though you are now working longer hours, do you think you are as productive? There are two ways to combat unproductiveness: (1) replenish testosterone stores daily and (2) clearly defined SMART goals.

Do you remember when you were more productive? Do you think it has to do with having more energy and focus? You may recall being more productive when you were younger or when you were well-rested—like after a holiday weekend or after doing something with your male friends. This is because you topped off your stores of testosterone. In a relaxed state you are more productive, because your focus is better.

There are physiological reasons for why you are more productive when you spend time resting and relaxing. For males your stress-reducing hormone is testosterone. For women it is oxytocin. This is partly why asking your girlfriend, mom, wife, sister, or female co-worker to relax, sit down and rest, forget about it, or do something different may be met by resistance on their part. These kinds of activities are not stress-reducing for women if they have many things to do. However, for men when you shift gears to easier tasks such as:

  • reading an article,
  • checking sports scores,
  • watching a TV show,
  • surfing the internet, or
  • just sitting and doing nothing,
  • forgetting the problem for awhile, or
  • taking a nap

What you are doing when you are doing these activities is replenishing your testosterone stores. If you ask a woman to do the same thing it can have the opposite effect and increase her stress. You can learn more about this by attending one of our Mars Venus Coaches seminars or taking an eWorkshop if you’re really crunched for time. Your relationships will improve at work and at home. And, when males anticipate coming home to a successful relationship…it’s a testosterone producer! So what does replenishing testosterone daily have to do with productivity?

For men it takes longer to replenish testosterone stores on a daily basis, and if you’re productivity is suffering, it may be due in part to not taking enough time EVERY day replenishing your testosterone. If you felt more productive when you were younger, it’s because you produce less testosterone as you age. I’m sure someone is reading this and thinking, “great, but the bottom line is I have more responsibilities, and the pressures on me to perform. I don’t have time to take time to sit and do nothing.” When we experience chronic stress in our lives, then there is excess cortisol (this as well as adrenaline are the stress-producing hormones) in your body which inhibits testosterone production.

The way you attack being more productive then gets into creating SMART goals. Your goals professionally and personally need to be:

S—Specific

M—Measurable

A—Achievable

R—Results-Oriented

T—Time Bound

Once you sit down, write out, and create your SMART goals, complete them when you say you will, and work on them every day. If you are doing things that are not a part of your goals, then you must choose to keep doing them or not. By writing and following through on your goals you learn how to prioritize and manage your time. If you don’t know where to start or what’s important, then this is when coaching may help you gain clarity and accountability to follow through on your intentions.

The way you make sure that you stay productive is to incorporate down time as part of your SMART goals every day so you ensure time to replenish testosterone throughout the day, especially on the busy jam-packed days. Make sure you have an objective person hold you accountable to your goals so you don’t slack off on what’s really important to you. Not only will you be more productive, you will be more successful and satisfied with the quality of your life.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd

Mars Venus Coaching

Corporate Media Relations

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Mars Venus Parenting and Hot Steamy Sex

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Erotic and exciting sex is not only for the unattached or young. I’d even argue it gets better with age and knowing your partner. The biggest culprit to your sex life falling flat on its face while you’re raising kids starts with a T, although it’s not necessarily lack of toys. It’s more likely that the offender we blame is: T…I…M…E, when really it’s our lack of prioritizing a hot sex life into our busy schedules.

When we don’t nurture and grow our sex life, then we often find that sex left the premises. Not connecting often enough with your partner in this way can leave the door wide open to one or both of you straying—either in emotional or physical affairs. So how do you broach this sticky subject if one or both parents are stressed out and tired? Regardless if you’re a new mom figuring out your new body, or if you’re pre-menopausal, you can implement these techniques immediately into your life with your partner.

I cannot say from experience how things go once the kids become cognizant of the mewling sounds coming from the bedroom, because our toddler is still a toddler. From our experience we’ve followed the following tips and they work. These ideas are also drawn from the expertise of John Gray, Ph.D., relationship expert and author of the Mars Venus series that the Mars Venus Coaches use to strengthen relationships with their clients and workshop customers.

Humor

Keeping the atmosphere light and pressure free is an art. However, it is doable if humor is done without sarcasm or the intent to hurt or make you feel better at the expense of another. Maintaining a good sense of humor when things change on your body allows both partners to be uninhibited. And for both sexes it can lead to more intimacy. Accepting and making light of the weird things our bodies do as they age, as they bounce back from childbirth, and begin drooping and sagging is quite fun, especially if you’ve been together for awhile, because you’ll be able to remember and still see your hot cutie when they were XX years young. When we do accept these changes with grace, then we are able to be freer in the bedroom with our partners.

Play

Remaining playful, joyful, and young at heart—especially with your partner or spouse—is critical to keeping all the pressures of a fast-paced society out of your sex life. Leaving sexy notes and playing your fantasies out with your partner keeps ennui at bay, and keeps your sex life new and exciting. Telling your partner when someone else finds you attractive reaffirms being desired, while also keeping the sexual energy within your relationship, instead of giving it away.

Non-Sexual Touch

For women, it takes time to become sexually aroused. Women need to feel relaxed and that they’ve had sufficient time to take off their hats as mom, sister, daughter, housekeeper, and professional, before they feel like the sexy, hot playmate their partner may always see them as despite the messy pony-tail and spit up on their shirt. Taking time to sit beside a woman, or to give one another a foot or back rub, with no intention of this leading to sex can do wonders to turn women on as they anticipate sex later in the day.

Connecting not Necessarily Talking it Out

If you’ve gotten this far, and you are questioning how best to take action—wonderful! You do not need to talk about what you’re doing, just take action. If things are so tense or you’re so exhausted, humor, play, and non-sexual touch are three ways you can re-balance your relationship without adding more stress. The point is to re-connect. Quickie sex. Home-Cooked sex. Romantic sex. It can all be steamy. If you are counting on spontaneity, but then find one of you always bags out, then schedule a day and time each week so you both know that you’ll have time with one another.

Agree to Always Say Yes

Never say no.  This agreement ensures no one is ever turned down. Simple as that, and it works. This is when using a nonverbal signal such as three candles, like John Gray, Ph.D., suggests  lets the other person know you’re interested, and gives them time to get in the mood, or choose to have just a quickie instead.

Long Term Perspective

Our sex life in a long-term, committed relationship will ebb and flow. The key is being able to voice any dissatisfaction in a way that is nurturing not damaging. Complaining or putting your lack of a sex life down will not encourage more intimacy. Introducing eroticism and fantasy into your relationship can ensure that it remains monogamous, while also allowing both partners to freely explore their entire sexual depth.  Keeping things playful, humorous, and focused on connecting at deeper levels ensures a steamy sex life for years to come. Our bodies will change, we will go through life events, but if we embrace these events and are gentle with ourselves and our partners, then we’re able to continue growing together despite the odds.

For more information on Mars and Venus in the Bedroom go to John Gray’s, Ph.D., book of the same name. And, if you’re pressed for time you can also pick up more tips on healthy relationships with our eWorkshop: Secrets of Successful Relationships.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd

Mars Venus Coaching

Corporate Media Relations

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Gender Intelligent Communication to Increase Women’s Status, Part 1

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Article for Forbes 2.7.11:

After reading and witnessing last week’s recent outpouring of opinion on what did and did not happen at Davos, why women are still not ascending and staying at the top of corporations, and why previous solutions have been lip service rather than a long term fix, I ask that you open your mind to the possibility of a quick, yet long-term fix to increase the status of women in the corporate world. I sense there is an undercurrent of paranoia and hysteria being felt by the references to Groundhogs day, and the frustration about why the numbers aren’t equalizing at the top of the leadership pyramid. These feelings of uneasiness are in response to many of us run ragged by constant low-grade stress. When we address the underlying issue of helping ourselves and each other to incorporate stress reduction into our daily life, especially while at work (where we spend most of our waking time), the actual fix pretty much comes down to common sense. However, the common sense is uncommon knowledge at this point in time. The solution I refer to is introducing gender intelligent communication into professional development training.

Whenever I ask people if they are familiar with the term men are from Mars, women are from Venus, there tends to be an instant lighting up of the eyes, and intake of breath. This term coined by John Gray , Ph.D. when he wrote his best-selling book of that title back in 1992 is now considered to be part our society’s vernacular. However, when is the last time you’ve picked up any of John Gray’s, Ph.D. books? There are now too many books (16 and counting) for a high-level executive, or really anyone for that matter who has both a career and family to tend to sit down and devote good chunks of time to read and assimilate the information. Instead of reading all of the literature, the following is a quick synopsis of why implementing this quick fix is imperative, not only for women to remain and ascend in the corporate world, but also why it needs to be done in order to re-balance and give quality of life back to everyone in this fast-paced, high-tech world.

Back in 1992 John Gray, Ph.D. provided an easy way to understand the fact that men and women communicate differently, and if we want better relationships, we have to learn the other’s dialect so we can speak the same language. Now, in 2011, we understand the research behind why we communicate differently, and the message is now more urgent than ever, because not only are women not climbing in corporate, but we’re doing irreversible damage to our bodies, and the families we are currently growing. It is imperative that the culture in corporate shift for good now that we understand the revolution of men and women are created equal to be an unexamined assumption and unrealistic expectation. Men and women are uniquely different genders, and the latest research is showing how our unique natures and physiology are meant to complement the other gender.

So to get back to the point we must saturate the “market” by doing just this: while at work teach how men and women communicate differently in workshops. It is imperative, because right now women are up against a brick wall when it comes to fitting into a culture that disregards their unique gender-based contributions of working and relating to others. Stand by for part two about why teaching workshops on gender intelligent communication is the common sense approach and quick fix for a long term solution.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd

Corporate Media Relations

Mars Venus Coaching

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Soul Mate Tips for Women

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Is there a lack of quality men in the dating pool? Women laugh and joke with their friends about this, but sometimes the more books and articles women read while sitting by the pool, the more true this sounds and feels. Why are only 48% of people between 25-55 years old married? Perhaps it’s due to our fast paced lifestyles, on top of technological advances, and our ignorance of the differences in men and women’s physiology in response to stress, communication, diet, and nutrition. The good news is that both emotional intelligence and gender intelligence can be assessed, but more importantly skills can be learned to increase your ability to have successful relationships—both personally and professionally.

Four Areas of Compatibility

We reduce our chances of finding our soul mate, by becoming physical too soon, too often. A soul mate is a person that challenges us in all four areas:

  • Intellectual,
  • Emotional,
  • Spiritual, and
  • Physical

It is impossible to know if someone challenges you intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually if you become physical too soon.

Research shows love chemicals are released when you first make love with someone, stimulating the same areas of the brain as a cocaine high. The chemicals responsible for this feeling of falling in love remains in your body for up to 6-12 months after becoming intimate. It is not until 18-24 months into an exclusive dating relationship (when many people get married, and then divorce thinking their relationship has fallen apart, because they got married…) that these chemicals leave your body.

There is no way around time. You need it to assess and see if your partner is compatible with you—your character, values, beliefs, and ability to grow with you throughout life’s events. It feels amazing to have sex, but it’s not always the best way to test if you are meant for someone. Casually dating many people at once gives you time to see who is the most compatible with you.

Get to know men in a variety of situations and with different people for 18-24 months before becoming physical. Historically, people courted with chaperones and spent time getting to know their date to see if they intellectually or emotionally challenged each other before they moved on to petting, holding hands, and being intimate.

Intellectual

Soul mates intellectually fulfill and challenge you. Not only will you need to rely on their skills for things like financial planning for your future, but as you age the physical aspects of a relationship may diminish as you age. What keeps people together is a mutual respect and appreciation of being encouraged to engage and pursue individual passions.

If you have children, much of your time during your child rearing years will be devoted to raising and developing children. This wears you down in a good way, but if there is no intellectual stimulation in your relationship, then you may begin looking elsewhere so you feel more than a milk machine and kisser of boo-boos.

Emotional

Same goes for emotional compatibility. Today we often place unrealistic expectations and unexamined assumptions on men to fill the space of girlfriends, because we have less time to spend connecting in community with other women. We expect our boyfriends or husbands to listen to us as we can hash out our days, because it makes us feel close and connected.

However, men typically communicate with others when they have thought through and have a solution or are solving a problem. This does not mean stop sharing your day with your boyfriend, but what it does come down to is when you are assessing your emotional compatibility you have to look at whether or not you are both emotionally open at the same level.

Ninety-three percent of communication is non-verbal, so when you’re testing compatibility look at how healthy you are together. Yelling, fighting, jealousy, name-calling, or being evasive are destructive behaviors. If you find this in your relationships, then before pursuing a long-term relationship it is best first to learn conflict resolution skills and ways to manage anger so that you are able to speak openly, honestly, and tactfully. All interactions should be ones where you are uplifting each other, not tearing down.

Spiritual

Over the years people’s spirituality grows and changes. In a long-term relationship the question to be asked is whether or not you are growing:

  1. in a similar direction,
  2. at a similar intensity/rate, and
  3. whether or not you’ll be able to allow each other to develop spiritually on both
    1. an individual level, as well as
    2. an entire family too.

If you never explore or ask the questions, or just assume you’re on the same page, then you could find yourself years down the road with a great schism running through your marriage. You’ve grown in different directions at different rates. This can lead to mid-life crises, and emptiness.

Physical

Once you’ve spent time growing as individuals while casually dating a few people at once, and you find yourself compatible on an intellectual, emotional, and then spiritual level—then decide to become exclusive and date only one person. If you’ve already become physical, you can always call a moratorium until you find out if you’re good together in the other areas. There’s a risk of bringing children into the equation, which complicates everyone’s growth and maturity. While you are parenting children you may end up parenting each other too. Men tend to jump right back into physical relationships after being hurt from previous ones. Women tend to take time to heal and trust again—and therein lays the dilemma of the current dating scene, and the pressure to perform first before dating around.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd

Mars Venus Coaching

Corporate Media Relations

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Busy Moms Embrace Common Cents

Monday, September 26th, 2011

It is that time of year again when moms begin prepping their children to go to school. In my case, it’s for preschool. As we go from virtually non-existent laissez faire schedules to the regimen of “You’ll miss the bus if you…!” We also have to ask ourselves what we’re doing to conserve our sanity.

It’s a known fact that in a 1 dollar U.S. bill, 100 pennies make up a dollar. So the question begs to be asked, if we have 24 hours in a day, and at least 8 of those hours should have the entire household snoozing, up to 11 if you’re under 4 feet tall…WHY are we cramming in more activities than is possible to get done in a 24 hour day? The math does not add up! Neither do the health bills further down the road.

Clients, and most have the title “Mom” or “Dad” on their resume, often come to me for help in time-management. Of all the seminars and workshops I do—when I have people shout out their greatest challenge—prioritizing their time tops the list.

Our bodies run on a circadian clock that resets itself around every 24 hours. We are not wired to be on the go all-the-time, and our bodies are wearing out with excess cortisol, a stress-producing hormone, chronically in our system.  Any mom knows that if you do not give your children enough down time, then they become over-tired, their “poop” schedule gets thrown off, and you have a child prone to melt-downs or temper-tantrums on your hands.

Guess what? Same goes for you Momma! Do you wonder why you’re short with everyone, or why it’s hard to convince yourself to be sexy or romantic? The only answer is: you’re not giving enough time to one very important area in your life. You.

And, you can bring your household back into a pleasant place to relax, unwind, and connect with those you love most. The way you achieve any goal is first to define the goal, create a strategy, and identify the actions you need to take on a daily basis to achieve the goal.

Goal: Everyone’s sanity, health, and a functional well-adjusted family.

Strategy: Build in at least 4-6 hours per day where the pace is easy-going. Make sure at least 1 of these hours is 1-on-1 time with just your “self.”

NOTE: No other distractions allowed. TV, texting, phone calls, internet—Banned.

Actions: Every day during the school week my family will:

  • Use this time to cook meals and chat with family about the day.
  • Pack lunches together.
  • Do the dishes, unload dishes, or fold laundry while catching up.
  • Spend time in the same bed or on the same couch cuddling and hugging.
  • Sit down to breakfast and dinner all together.
  • Demand quiet play time for everyone in the household.

During quiet time…Light some candles, diffuse essential oils, run the bath. This may be a good time for you to check email or make a quick phone call as the bath fills. But, guess what? Once the tub is full—it’s time for alone time for you.  Read a chapter of a good novel & then wash your hair. The point for you during quiet time is to relax. (You’ve been connecting and nurturing during some of the chores & meals.)

As a woman you’ll replenish your stress-reducing hormone, oxytocin.  You do this by nurturing and caring for others or yourself. The key is no expectations can be attached. If someone is expecting you to do something, oxytocin isn’t produced as readily.

The point for a guy during quiet time is to do an activity that is less mentally challenging or doing nothing…, however, his stress-reducing hormone is testosterone. There really is a biologically proven reason why guys drop to the couch at the end of the day.

Same goes for your kids. They need to produce stress-reducing hormones too. It keeps everyone’s digestion moving, makes for more restful nights, strengthens your immune system, and improves your relationships.

The more we’re able to disengage ourselves from distractions, the more time we will have both for ourselves, and for our families. In a society where the divorce rate has tipped to over 50%, don’t you owe yourself this break, this chance, to keep your body healthy, your sanity in-tact, and to continue to model balance to your children?

We all need down-time in our schedules. If 4-6 hours seems too much at first, set another target number, and work backwards from there. Just remember it’s non-negotiable. We can’t change our circadian rhythm, and we cannot change how many hours are in a day. We start early teaching kids’ routines and schedules (including nap time) for a reason. Be a do as I say, just like I do mom. You and your kids will thank you for it.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd

Mars Venus Coaching

Corporate Media Relations

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Father’s Day After Loss

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

How are you going to get through your first, or yet another Father’s Day without feeling raw, abandoned, or left behind? After my father died while I was a child, it took years before I could pass through a Father’s Day and not feel sad and confused as I was left with all of the questions I never had a chance to ask as I grew up. As we grieve the loss of a father, sometimes it is easier to go through the process if we know what to expect as our heart heals. Understanding the grief process helps us to feel in control over something we have very little control over.

When we first lose our father, we often find ourselves making decisions and choices that sound reasonable but are quite counterproductive to our overall healing. Even though it may temporarily give us relief, in the long run it does not nurture us or complete our healing. For some people after their father dies they thrive again by themselves, but most of us are not that lucky or successful at dealing with the loss of love from a father. Sometimes we spiral down to the depths of despair (which is somewhere we all go to some extent or another), but then have trouble climbing back out. And to various degrees, you may re-experience the loss over and over again or continue to suffer your loss until you learn new ways to cope.

Some people who appear to have let go of their loss really haven’t, because what they’ve done is closed the door to their hearts. To avoid feeling any more pain they move on too quickly, and in doing so they’ve numbed their ability to fully feel. Without realizing they are doing this they carry on in their lives unable to feel the love in their hearts, and consequently their ability to grow in love and happiness is stunted.

The good news is that building resiliency is an on-going process. How long it takes to move through your father’s loss depends wholly upon you. While we’ll talk about the three stages of grief here, the length of time it takes for you to go through each of the stages depends on you and your resiliency or ability to bounce back. I like explaining the grief process using Dr. John Gray’s three stages found in his book, Mars and Venus Starting Over.

The first stage of healing is going to someone who can help. If family dynamics do not permit you to grieve openly or talk amongst yourselves, then you may need outside help. The advice of friends while well-intentioned may leave you feeling worse off if you’re not able to complete the second stage in a way that is best for you.

The second stage of healing is grieving the loss. We do this by grieving our father’s loss, and then finding forgiveness. Our survival tendency is to avoid our pain. A man can get in touch with his feeling when he is in the presence of others who are also in pain. Numbing ourselves does not heal pain. The tragedy of doing this is you close shop and decide to never love again. Whether you are a child still growing up, a young adult that has not found their significant other, or an adult in a current relationship-if you numb yourself, then you stop growing in the area of love and relationships. Human beings are not meant to live their lives alone by themselves.

The third stage of healing is becoming whole. In this stage we work on becoming whole, because this will protect us from getting hurt again. If you are in a romantic relationship while you are processing your father’s death you have to be aware that you may transfer feelings to this partner, but you are really dealing with moving through your feelings you had for your father. If you find yourself doing this-this is where outside help can help you look objectively at how you are thinking, feeling, and behaving to the loved ones still in your life. By focusing on feeling the four healing emotions of:

· Anger

· Sadness

· Fear

· Sorrow

Then you will know that you really love somebody and have moved on when you do not hold them accountable or responsible for your pain anymore. A victim’s belief is, “I can’t feel better unless you change.” If you did not have a chance to work through any issues you had with your father while he was still alive, you can still process the feelings and obtain the love you need so you can move on.

Sometimes just getting in touch with our feelings doesn’t complete the healing process-so while we feel our pain, we aren’t able to find relief. If this is the case, then an important part of the process may have been overlooked, and it is either limiting or blocking our natural ability to heal. A solution-focused way to work through this last stage of grief is to write Feeling Letter’s each time these emotions come up. My next article will go over how to write a feeling letter to your father. And in doing so you can move yourself quickly through these feelings of loss so you become at peace with your loss and can remember your father with love.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd

Mars Venus Coaching

Corporate Media Relations

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6 Ways Our Heaters Stop Loving & Our A/C Gets Stuck

Friday, May 20th, 2011

At Mars Venus Coaching we use words like: love tank and love heater. Regardless of the terminology we use, when it comes to relationships we are all looking for the same thing: love. We want our partner to love us for who we are with our limitations, after all we’re not perfect. But can we really love our partner for who they are after we’ve experienced their daily limitations and imperfections? If we feel any blame toward our partner, it makes it even more difficult to accept, understand, and forgive our partners limitations. Learning to love them when times are difficult is when our love actually grows. Having an open heart, rather than a closed one is how to make unconditional love automatic.

Our hearts close up when we don’t work to address past feelings that threaten our current relationships. If we weren’t told as children it was okay to have some of these feelings, and that we would still be loved; then it is something we need to do for ourselves as adults so we can grow, mature, and have healthy adult relationships. We tend to repeat patterns, until we learn a new way to break them, and move on. Beneath each of the ways we stop loving our partners there is a solution for how to overcome these tendencies. Generally speaking women relate more to some of the tendencies and men to others, but we experience all of them to some degree. The six ways in which we stop loving our partners when we cave in to re-experiencing past feelings are:

1. Loss of Trust. Suddenly you may find yourself wondering and trusting if your partner is doing his or her best or that they care. You question and doubt their best intentions.

Even though he or she would risk their life to save yours, you begin judging them as if they do not care about you.

For Women: Re-parent by slowly opening up and care for yourself. Temporarily stop depending on your partner, and nurture your female side.

2. Loss of Caring. You stop caring about your partner’s needs and feelings. You justify this by the mistreatment you’ve suffered at their hands. We said we would risk our lives to save them, and suddenly we don’t care about them.

For Men: Trust yourself to be successful in the future. Stop depending on your partner’s trust in you to feel successful. Nurture your male side.

3. Loss of Appreciation. Sometimes overnight you begin to feel as if this relationship gives you nothing, whereas other times you had been so grateful and happy. It feels like you are doing everything, while they do nothing. Having this sudden memory lapse, you are now feeling deprived and totally no appreciation for your partner.

For Women: Re-parent yourself by respecting and supporting yourself and nurture your female side.

4. Loss of Respect. Suddenly you feel like withholding love and punishing your partner when just a while ago you wanted only to love and support your partner. Even though you genuinely feel like making your partner happy, now your main focus is caring about yourself.

For Men: Re-parent yourself by appreciating yourself for all you do, suspend needing your partner’s acknowledgement and appreciation temporarily. Nurture your male side. Do not feel like you have to surrender your sense of self in order to please your partner.

5. Loss of Acceptance. All at once you begin noticing everything your partner does wrong or needs to change. This is the same person you felt was perfect and perfect for you, and now out of nowhere you have a compulsion to change, improve, or rehabilitate them.

For Women: To re-parent, slowly open up and take time to understand and experience your feelings and validate your own needs. Release the need to change him.

6. Loss of Understanding. Suddenly while our partners are saying something, we become critical or judgmental of their feelings and reactions. We do this by minimizing their pain as if it doesn’t really matter. However, if they were physically wounded, we would still risk our lives to save them. Even though this is the most important person in our life—we quickly become disinterested and impatient with them. When they are sharing their feelings, we become defensive and feel as if we’re being attacked.

For Men: To re-parent slowly open up and appreciate yourself for all that you do, even if your partner is not doing this. Graciously excuse yourself, go into your cave, and do something that nurtures your male side. Take the time to consider what her feelings are without feeling pressure to immediately respond and say something.

If we find our hearts closed or closing down, it is our responsibility to open them back up. We are no longer children, and as an adult in an adult relationship, we have to take responsibility for our actions. By taking responsibility even if you still feel defensive, you’ll release yourself from negativity, and be able think logically about what was being said. By nurturing your female side if you’re a woman and your male side if you’re a man, you bring value back to yourself, while working through the feelings.

Childhood feelings threaten our responsibility if we find ourselves feeling it is the other person’s fault for not doing x, y, or z or doing a, b, c, to us. It is by acknowledging you feel blame, and then deciding for ourselves that we are committed to forgiveness, that we’re able to come back to our adult selves and release our immature feelings. Next time we’ll talk about how to nurture your male/female sides.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

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Mars Venus Children are From Heaven – Even in the Summer?

Friday, May 13th, 2011

The Mars Venus Coaching Workshop: Children are From Heaven, tells us that children are a gift. But with school letting out for summer in just a matter of weeks, some parents might beg to differ. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the time you are responsible for filling with fun, structure, and learning opportunities for your kids? Even though summer is a fun time for the beach, pool, and family vacations—as parents we also have to make sure our stress levels stay low so we can keep our cool with our kids. In order to raise healthy and cooperative children and teens sometimes it’s helpful to revisit our parenting skills. The following ideas are adapted from Dr. John Gray’s book, Children Are from Heaven: Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children.

If we want our children to be able to survive, thrive, and compete in today’s world, we need to prepare our children by using the most effective and modern approaches to parenting. Positive parenting may or may not be something your parents did when they were raising you. As a parent you do this by doing the following five skills in the left-hand column entitled, “do” on a daily basis. The more you are able to interact with your children using these skills, the more your kids will be thoughtful, respectful, conscientious people.

DO:

1. Ask

2. Listen and nurture

3. Offer rewards

4. Command or assert leadership

5. Give time-outs to maintain control when

DON’T:

1. Order

2. Fix it

3. Punish or shame

4. Demand, yell, become emotional

5. Spank or hit emotions overwhelm

This article focuses on how you can improve communication and minimize resistance by concentrating on the first two skills: asking and nurturing so you can inspire your kids to cooperate. When summer begins, and the kids are at home—a whole host of chores crop up just due to extra traffic in your home. Accidents, spills, and breaks happen when little feet are under foot (even if they’re your teenage son’s size 10 feet!). Negotiation skills start during the toddler years, and they continue into adulthood.

Asking
For the first skill, asking, phrase your requests in a way that will minimize resistance. When you make requests use “will you” and “would you” rather than “can you” and “could you” (particularly with boys) (and men!) . Why? Well, when you use the phrase “Would you please clean up this mess?” you are making a direct request that requires a thought process of “hmm, will I or won’t I”. However, when you say “Can you clean up this mess?” you are actually, technically asking a question about someone’s competence to do the task.

Nurturing
For the second skill, nurturing, remember different children need to be nurtured in different ways depending on their temperament. Sensitive children need to be listened to and understood. Active children need preparation and structure to do well. Responsive children need distraction and direction to be cooperative. And receptive children need ritual and rhythm to bring out their best selves.

Improve Communication & Minimize Resistance
Children typically resist for one of two reasons. Either:
1. Children don’t feel heard or seen, or
2. They are not getting what they need or want.

Minimizing Resistance
You minimize a child’s resistance by doing two things:
1. Consistently setting boundaries.

Expect there to be challenges—this is not undermining your authority, they are just learning and testing the parameters you are setting. Life is dynamic, so while rules may change based on the circumstances, your boundaries change in regards to their developmental level.

2. Listening and asking questions to draw out feelings.

If we have trouble controlling our own emotions, just think how much harder it is for your children to even identify what emotions they are feeling. Childhood is a time for exploration, and part of this is helping your children find words and explanations for their feelings so they can learn to use them constructively.

Parents can minimize resistance by validating their child’s emotions of anger, sadness, or fear in a calm, warm way. You can also reaffirm boundaries and redirect attention when you find your child resisting your requests. Teaching delayed gratification also helps children understand that their needs are heard, but you also teach patience and consequences as you help them reason through why now you aren’t able to fulfill their need, but you can if they do such and such first.

Inspiring Cooperation
The easiest way to inspire cooperation is to ask instead of order or demand. Remember you do this by using: would/will you, instead of could/can you. The more direct you are in asking for help, the easier it is for a child to make a yes or no decision. When you eliminate rhetorical questions, and give up explanations and lectures you are able to meet them at their reasoning level according to their age. Getting down and talking to kids at their eye level, also let’s kids know that what they have to say is important too. And, remember don’t use feelings to manipulate, because this is not a behavior you’d like your kids to use on others when not in your presence. The magic word is “let’s.”

If you’re interested in learning more about positive parenting, you can find Mars Venus coaches in your local area, and inquire when they’re next Children Are From Heaven will be presented so you can ask questions and take part in group exercises. Or, if time’s a constraint, you can do the eWorkshop version, which let’s you learn the material from the comfort of your own home and on your own time! Remember consistency is key.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

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Asserting Your Boundaries at Work

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

Mars Venus Coaching provides many tools for working successfully in the workplace and managing your relationships at work. It is hard to see the good in others if they have been taking advantage of your hard work ethic. It’s difficult to change the “rules” of who does what, when you’ve been accepting the work of others, because everyone “assumes” that you’re just better at it. Why rock the boat, right? Except you’ve just about had it. Going to work is not joyful, and you may feel a palpable cloud descend when you go to work. So, what can you do to change the dynamics? Re-examine your job description to make sure you’re being paid for what you do in a typical day. Did you know based on your gender, there may also be miscommunication going on between you, your co-workers and your boss?

Re-Set Your Boundaries

Write Out Who Does What

  1. Make a list of the tasks you are required to do based on your job description, and any recent performance evaluations you’ve received.
  2. Make a second list of the tasks that have been added since you accepted your job, that are not a part of your job description.
  3. Make a third list of the tasks you’ve taken on that are other’s responsibility.

Set Your Intention

  1. Make a fourth list of what tasks fit your job description that also incorporates what you’ve agreed to do in writing or verbally with your boss.
  2. Look at your fourth list and put an asterisk (*) by the tasks you verbally agreed to do—and decide if these tasks are up for negotiation.

Why? In your contract you work X number of hours a day, the tasks you perform should match your position, and should be able to be fit within the hours you work each day. If you are over-tasked, then it’s time to renegotiate your terms.

  1. Decide what the best approach is for your workplace to renegotiate your terms.

This is where you are going to discuss face-to-face the discrepancies between what you do, and what you are paid to do. This is where you say, “I haven’t minded helping you do (your) work in the past, but I have to re-focus on my responsibilities and priorities.” This is where you offer to train them on what you have been doing for them, but then you return the responsibility to them. You may request a meeting via email, but it is best to re-negotiate in person. Take your lists and a written agenda with you to clarify the boundaries you are redefining. Choose what’s best for you, a:

  1. Formal meeting with you and your boss.
  2. Informal meeting with you and your boss.
  3. Formal meeting with you and your co-worker.
  4. Informal meeting with you and your co-worker.

When you’re figuring out the best approach, remember to be tactful not accusatory. You either prefer to communicate in a passive-aggressive style or passive style. The best form of communication is assertive—when you are able to be open, honest, forth-right, tactful, and the other person is able to stay on the same page as you while you’re communicating.

Non-Verbals Count Too!

Pay attention to if you are slouching, avoiding eye contact (your culture and race also affect what’s appropriate or the norm), mumbling, fidgeting, using too much hand movement—it all affects how the other person interprets what you’re verbally saying to them.

When I help my clients identify how to get what they want at work using Dr. John Gray’s Mars Venus Coaching system based on goal setting, 90 day plans, and understanding relationship dynamics they are often surprised and amazed at how being cognizant of gender communication dynamics at play helps them set and keep their boundaries when they interact with others at work.

Gender Differences in Communicating

Typically…Men prefer to communicate to solve problems.

…Women prefer to communicate to connect with others.

If a man feels attacked or threatened, based on the wiring in his brain he will do 1 of 2 things, because an increase in stress causes him to be more single-task oriented:

  1. He will either fight back if he thinks he knows the answer or can solve the problem.
  2. He will remove himself from the situation, disengage, and ignore the problem until he has unwound and then figures out how to solve the problem (or continues to ignore the situation, because it is not a big enough “problem” yet for him).

If a woman feels attacked or threatened, based on the wiring in her brain she will do 1 of 2 things, because an increase in stress causes more cross-talk between the left and right hemispheres of her brain:

  1. She will want to talk it out, ask questions, connect to others to make sure everyone is okay. She may not necessarily resolve the issue, she’s just talking to better understand the situation and all the dynamics at play.
  2. She will become more emotional, because blood flow in her brain is making her respond to how the issue will affect everyone else good or bad.

Knowing these tendencies, women can approach men by presenting a problem with a solution already present, i.e. the list of tasks you agree to be responsible for, offering to re-train co-worker, and justification for redefining job description. In turn men can approach women, i.e. with a list of tasks open for negotiating knowing they may need to discuss all the dynamics, with an answer not necessarily a part of this discussion, but forthcoming if she’s given a chance to connect first with you as a person. These are generalities, but they help identify how a request for redefining boundaries may be taken by other’s in your workplace as you set about assertively renegotiating your job.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd

Mars Venus Coaching

Corporate Media Relations

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Valentine’s Day For Empty-Nesters… “Hello Stranger!”

Monday, April 25th, 2011

Valentine’s day is here. Sometimes we assume that if you’ve celebrated one or twenty Valentine’s days with your honey, the preparation will be the same, and you’ll know exactly what your spouse expects. The reality is we may find ourselves year to year still wondering if what we’re doing for our spouse is actually fulfilling or satisfying their needs. You may do and get things for your spouse based on what advertisers say you should do, or what you think you would like if you were in the other’s shoes. But do we really know? Have you asked for clarification? Do you tell your spouse what makes you fulfilled?

If we are feeling the symptoms of an empty nest AND one or more empty love tanks (we have ten) at Valentine’s, then it may take all of our energy just to summon up the effort to recognize the value our spouse brings to our marriage. Forget a card or flowers or even the thought of a romantic evening. This may have all stopped long ago. Some of us may merely be throwing money or words at our relationship, and think it is still working, but our heart hardened a few years back. And now in addition to the kids leaving home, we are faced with the dilemma of staying in the same car with our spouse or looking elsewhere for a new car to make us feel young or in control.

However, if you think back on all of the Valentine’s you’ve celebrated with your partner, you may discover it is like looking at a scrapbook of snap shots depicting the state of your marriage as you celebrated this day each year that screams “be romantic or else!” Trying to remember where and what you and your spouse did for each of the past Valentine’s may be a fun way of re-connecting, laughing, and returning value to the time you’ve spent together raising yourselves.

If you have been like every other busy family in past years slogging through work and a myriad of after-school activities, sports practice, work related social functions, chores, fitting in workouts, running errands, and paying bills—when your kids get ready to or have just left home to pursue their interests and make their way in the world, the house can feel empty all of a sudden. You wake up looking at your partner, and you don’t know who you are let alone who the other person is anymore. Sometimes this wake-up call even occurs before your kids graduate from high school! Realization dawns that all of the time you spent lavishing unconditional love and support on your kids as you grew them into the young adults they are today—all that time is about to become available again.

This free time can be unsettling, exhilarating, terrifying or all three, because now you have a chance to re-focus on yourself and your needs. This also means getting re-acquainted with your spouse if in year’s past you were busy raising your child(ren). An easy way to re-focus on how you and your spouse will continue to grow together on Valentine’s is a romantic candle-lit dinner. Sometimes a special dinner at home—get take out if possible so no one has to cook—with the lights down low is cheaper, but more intimate than driving, making it on time to the reservation, and conversing in a crowded restaurant. Now is the perfect time over a candlelit dinner to ramble on about those unfulfilled dreams and wishes, and re-evaluate how you and your partner can make action plans by chunking your dream into bite-sized goals to help make each other’s dreams a reality.

How we decide to cope with this new-found freedom can either make our marriages stronger or break them apart. Using Valentine’s day to your advantage, by rekindling romance and talking about how to make both of your dreams a reality is the initial solution to becoming comfortable with the kids being away from home. The second part is checking-in with ages and stages, to see if you’ve been hitting the milestones. If you have an empty love tank, then chances are you’ll need to figure out what the needs are that were not met in previous stages of development, so you can start filling those love tanks and get back on track. Attending a Mars Venus workshop or reading one of Dr. John Gray’s books (author of Men are From Mars, Women Are From Venus) that explains ages and stages in an easy to understand format with The Ten Time periods are efficient ways to begin work on the long-term solution of living a fulfilled life.

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