Patti Cotton

What are you waiting for?  There’s a big life out there waiting to happen!  You are a successful leader or other chief decision-maker, and many wish they could be you – yet you are feeling a bit of longing and restlessness.  You thought you had it all figured out – but it doesn’t feel quite right, anymore.

Is your life purpose nudging you?

A popular thought about life purpose is that it is a particular career, or a role that we are destined to play.    This is not the case, and many find themselves at career mid-point feeling lost and a sense of frustration.  They experience higher stress, sometimes burnout, and feeling a life unlived…  Sounds serious, I know – and it is!  I am sometimes called to coach professionals who find they suffer from an identity crisis because they are not grounded in who they are and are misaligned with their sense of purpose.

Your life purpose is bigger than a role – it is the larger reason you are here.  It is a theme, a continuous thread throughout your life, the great challenge you keep returning to address, no matter what role you play at the moment.  When you are aligned with your life purpose, you feel alive, aligned, and energized.  You feel you contribute meaningfully with your unique gifts and strengths as you make a significant change-making ripple in life’s pond.  Words like full, overflowing, joy, meaning all come to mind as you go throughout your days.

What is your life purpose?

Life Purpose Exercise:

Sit in a quiet place and take a few relaxing breaths.  Let all the tension go out of your body and take a few more relaxing breaths.

Now, imagine you are looking at your tombstone (a bit serious, I know!).  Here lies ____:  a person who _____.  Fill in the blanks.  This is a single sentence that should capture the essence of your life, that sums up the core of what you were here to do.  Don’t worry if it isn’t true of you, yet – this should reflect the ideal for you. 

What next step do you need to take in order to live that life of purpose?

Patti Cotton

Patti Cotton reenergizes talented leaders and their teams to achieve fulfillment and extraordinary results. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.

How high is your influence quotient?  And what do I mean by that?

Your influence quotient is not your capacity to manipulate and to take advantage of others in order to get what you want…  Rather, it is your ability to know how to work with and through others to achieve a stated objective while staying true to your core values and maintaining your integrity.

Without the ability to influence, we can’t make impact.  From the kitchen to the boardroom, we are powerless to make things happen, unless we have certain key factors in place.

Here are the first three steps to building your influence quotient.  Rate yourself on a scale from 1-5 (5 being highest):

1. Live by integrity.  How steady, how consistent are you in the way you work and play with others?  Do people say they can count on you?
   
   
2. Build trust through experience.  How well do you build rapport with people so that they come to know you and can trust how you will handle relationships and challenges?  Do people say they trust you?
   
   
3. Listening for win-win outcomes.  Are you able to fully listen to the needs and concerns of others so that when it comes to tough decisions, you keep the “win-win” solution in mind?  Do people say they know you have their best interests in mind?
   
   What do you need to change?  And if you aren’t sure, how can you find out?
   
   
   One professional’s bold move?  He asked!  One of my clients polled his mentor and two corporate colleagues.  The results?  “I was actually pleasantly surprised,” he shared.  “I rated high in integrity and building trust.  A growth area for me appears to showing others I am listening for win-win outcomes through my choice of words and messaging.  This exercise was invaluable!”
   
   The result?  We identified areas where he could better match and pace his tenor and the way in which he presented certain ideas.  Within a few weeks, he started to get some great feedback – and he was on the right track!
   
   What about you?  Where do you see opportunities to bolster your influence quotient?
   
   To Your Success!
   
   *I look forward to reading your comments.

Patti Cotton

Patti Cotton reenergizes talented leaders and their teams to achieve fulfillment and extraordinary results. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.

Why are people afraid to ask for what they want?  A hesitation to ask can stem from one of the following three causes:

1. They don’t know what they want – and don’t want.
2. They don’t have the necessary skillset to ask effectively.
3. They have a fear of asking.

In my work with professionals who are ready to play a bigger game, it is not unusual to discover that even the most talented and successful people fear asking. This can be for a variety of reasons – a fear of failure, rejection, or that we don’t deserve it.

One of my clients, Katherine,* was working 70 hours weekly, and had consistently produced more than the rest of her department over the past three years. Yet, she felt that she hadn’t laid down enough of a “success track” to ask for the raise she knew some her colleagues had received.

“I haven’t been here that long, and I feel like I need to produce more to show I deserve the hike in pay,” she said.

However, as we talked further, Katherine admitted the real reason she feared her boss would say no. “If he says ‘no,’ this means he thinks I’m not good enough,” she said. “And I would don’t want to feel that rejection. After all – won’t I get a raise when he notices my work and thinks I deserve it?”

Katherine’s fear of asking came from the old, negative automatic thought (NAT), “I’m not good enough,” that often keeps us from many opportunities. In Katherine’s case, she felt she had to prove she was worthy and “enough” by working harder than everyone else, producing more, and waiting for her boss to finally say that she had achieved enough to deserve a raise. As it turns out, Katherine discovered some time later that her boss was under the impression that she was happy at that rate of pay – because she didn’t ask!

Fortunately, we now know that can know that NATs can be eliminated through simple mental exercises designed to reshape our core beliefs and limited thinking. It is possible at any age to intervene, and to step into more of the potential we deserve.

After working with Katherine to overcome her NATs, I was pleased that she went on to ask for a healthy raise – and got it!

What old NATs are holding you back?



* all names and identifying information of Patti’s clients are altered for the purpose of confidentiality.

Patti Cotton

Patti Cotton reenergizes talented leaders and their teams to achieve fulfillment and extraordinary results. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.

I’ve missed writing. And so, when I heard about a 30-day blog challenge, I asked a friend to participate with me as a way to have fun and hold each other accountable for doing the work. I was excited about getting back to writing, and enjoyed the prospect of doing just a little bit each day to keep current. But on Day 1, there were so many things to do. It occurred to me several times during the afternoon that I needed to get to the blog challenge. However, when the clock said 10:00 p.m., I had still not turned to do the work. And so here I sit on Day 2, catching up.

Why didn’t I make good on my commitment yesterday? Didn’t I want to craft a message to share? Hadn’t I pledged to deliver my part of the partnership bargain to my friend? Then, why had I not made good on my promise? Why do we not take action on the things that are most important to us?

I call this “playing it small.” We sit there, knowing that there is opportunity in front of us, but we procrastinate. After all, we are busy – and things are fine the way they are. It is so comfortable in the zone of the familiar. And because more often than not, we do not take action when opportunity arises, nothing changes. In time, this opportunity “inertia” makes us become flabby and stagnant, compromising our potential.

More often than not, our failure to take action is because we are afraid of failing. We equate what we do with who we are. This dupe has been the downfall of countless individuals of great promise, and has cheated the world of the impact these people could have made for good.

Michael Jordan, the famed basketball player once said, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” His motto was to fail fast, and fail often. In other words, take action when the opportunity arises and, if you miss the shot, keep going, and be alert to take the next one that comes. Remember that successful people failed at many things along the way, took these failures as learning experiences, and used the knowledge to reach success.

Where are you hesitating to take action?

Patti Cotton

Patti Cotton reenergizes talented leaders and their teams to achieve fulfillment and extraordinary results. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.

“Today you are You, that is truer than true.  There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

What does it take to be authentic?  And why seek this genuine state of being?  To be yourself means to align your emotions and thoughts with your actions.  And the reward for this is tremendous.  It signifies that you have the courage to celebrate your uniqueness with integrity. It gives you the freedom to express your spontaneity, your creativity, and to follow your dreams.   No masks, no pretenses, no compromises.  Yes, embracing your authenticity means being able to fully receive and celebrate the gifts God has given you.

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

If being yourself is such a wonderful thing, why do people shy from it?   What makes us feel as though we need to pretend to be something we are not, or to compromise our thoughts or actions?  The fact is that it takes courage to be vulnerable and honest.  It also requires that we accept others for their unique qualities and gifts.  You see, people want to be loved and accepted.  We were created to be a part of community.   We seek it and we cling to it.  We receive rewards from it – a feeling of belonging, and of being valued.  Yet, if this belonging is predicated on false pretenses to try and please others, then the toll over time is the erosion of self.  We begin to feel misaligned or detached.  We feel fake.  Stressed.  And in keeping this up, we lose sense of who we are and how wonderfully God has made us.

“You are you.  Now isn’t that pleasant?”

If you have not done so lately, it might be energizing for you to do a “spot check” on your authenticity.  A couple of steps are needed to do this, and the first one is to assess your personal values.  For this exercise, you will need a computer, and a pen or pencil.   First, do an Internet search for “list of personal values.”  Select one that looks attractive to you, and print it for use.  Next, circle 20 of the values that you personally hold dearest.  If one of your key values is missing from the original list, just add it to the page and circle it.  Now that you have circled 20, cross off half of these for a remaining “top ten.”  And now comes the hard part:  whittle this list down to your top five values.  It may be harder than you think.  But this is where the introspection and the learning come in.

Now that you have completed the first step of your spot check, take the next step by enjoying a few moments of contemplation.  Ask yourself if there are any areas of your life that are currently not reflective of these values.  Review your actions and behaviors for the past couple of days and weigh them against your list.  What stands out for you?  Tuck that list in your pocket and refer to it two to three times daily over the following week.  What comes through for you, now?  Are your actions consistent with your values?  If there is a gap, what do you feel is preventing you from alignment?  What will you do with this information?

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.”

Be the kind of company you seek.  Embrace your authenticity by creating a community that values God’s children as unique individuals.  As you read this article, there are people all around you who are also feeling a vulnerability to being real.  They would love to throw away their masks and be accepted and appreciated for their true selves.  How do we make this happen?  It begins with me.  It begins with you.  We set the example, first, through tendering the respect for diversity and uniqueness that we desire for ourselves.

The next time you are interacting with a friend or colleague, look for a moment where you can ask him more about himself.  As he responds, share with him a genuine desire to learn, with a simple, “Tell me more…”   And be prepared to listen with a caring heart.  Your sincerity will speak volumes about your acceptance and respect for him as an individual.  And it will plant the seed with him to do the same with you.

Note:  My gratitude to Dr. Theodor Seuss Geisel, who decided to be himself and use his gifts to the fullest, inspiring millions.

Patti Cotton

Patti Cotton reenergizes talented leaders and their teams to achieve fulfillment and extraordinary results. For more information on how Patti Cotton can help you and your organization, click here.