Overwhelm: A Career Signifier

Being efficient relies on noting times when you step into and remain overwhelmed and what you do to get out of it. The overall aspect of taking on too much and not having an exit strategy can create a cycle of feeling tracked and overwhelmed.

As you become more skilled and busier in your work the likelihood of becoming overwhelmed and distracted becomes more prevalent. Being overwhelmed is when you have more to do or process than what you perceive you have time for. The challenge with overwhelm is that it costs businesses millions of dollars each year with employees not being productive, efficient and on top of things.

It impacts the work place because employees are not given the specific tools and strategizes to change their attitude and perspective. In this blog I will go into detail about specific techniques I coach clients on that you may find helpful.

There are specific tips I am going to share with you. In additional I have a unique model I have developed that you can apply to any situation to get out of overwhelm. Please email me to get your copy.

Here are some suggestions I recommend. The first is to say no to certain activities and conversations that don’t support your goals. It’s honorable to say no in your life so you can make space for what is most important. In partnership with saying no is always opening to understanding and knowing your limits. As we live longer our body changes and our life energy reserves shifts, which impacts our limits and our capacities. By knowing this you save yourself time and energy. I recommend you take brakes every 1.5 hours or so and take notice of your natural rhythms. Are you more likely to be an early morning person or a late night person? Track your most productive and energetic times and use that time to do the most demanding and meaningful work. I also encourage you to play with how you do tasks by experimenting with your use of time and task management.

Specifically after you know your natural rhythms you can relax into the moment and let your past and future melt away. To reduce and begin to eliminate overwhelm it’s important to look at what is essential in your life and career and do what gives you the most reward and out put. As you choose to release relationships, activities, volunteer projects, clients, career directions, to dos in general that have drained you then you create more energy to dedicate to what is important for you. In previous blogs I have mentioned the 80/20 rule where we receive most of our enjoyment and success from 20% of what we do. By reducing what you choose to take on, remain involved with and focus on you can reduce the amount of work and projects down to a manageable amount that you can work with. From there I suggest you systemize and automate as much as you can of what you have taken on into daily rituals and systems that allow you to create a way to focus on completing things verses remaining on a treadmill of busyness.

And finally the most practical and sometimes the most profound are the items that relate to increasing your health and vitality such as mediating, exercise, eating food that works for you well, getting enough sleep, and spending time alone without stimulus such as TV, computers, conversations and work.

Overwhelm is a state of mind that you can change with your attitude and the actions you take.

Creating a Positive Professional Image Part II

Being specific about how you present yourself contributes to your success. Being a polished professional allows you to focus on others and be confident that your verbal and non-verbal messages are in alignment.


Being the best professional requires being relaxed. When you are at ease and present you are aware of your surroundings, interested in others and taking care of you. As you interact with people by creating and working from a simple congruent professional image whether by email, phone or in person allows a more lasting result. People want to hire and do business with someone they trust and like. One of the fastest ways to develop trust is to create and maintain a confident and consistent image that others understand and can relate with.

In this two-part blog this being the second, we will focus on two key areas of your professional image. One of which is the physical mannerism and the second is in your speaking. Both of these teamed up together will produce the most comprehensive and effect professional results. You have up to 7 seconds to make an impression. As people connect with you and form correct opinions of you the less work and effort it takes to enhance your career focus.

I recommend you slow down your movements and be more deliberate with how you choose to walk, speak, process information, respond, and otherwise put movement into your life. As you slow things down you are able to make a more focused point and get your message across more clearly. When we are deliberate focusing on our message, and our desired outcome while engaging with the other person we are more likely to be successful. We tend to operate at such an accelerated rate that we loose our focus and effectiveness. To make an impression you want to slow things down for your audience so they can receive and follow you.

In partnership with slowing things down I encourage you to simplify your gestures. If you have a tendency to move around shifting your weight, using your hands and doing large gestures I recommend you make them more simple and less of them. Use the space in front of you from your neck to your belly and from your left to your right side, about the size of a large poster board as your template and don't expand too far from that. You want people to see you. Since most peopleÕs reference point is about the size of a computer or a TV screen their scope of visual input is limited. When using gestures and your body in a space larger than what people are accustomed to you may loose a good deal of your communication and message.

When speaking or moving beyond that natural frame your audience will not be able to see or absorb what you are saying. Establishing and projecting a business image requires understanding your audience and their learning style of receiving information.

In partnership with our visual movements and presentation how we say things is equally important. The percentage of impact we have with how we say something is nearly 37% of our total communication. Much more than the actual words which only accounts for 7%. The remaining amounts come from our non-verbal gestures. So with this in mind, it's important to own and speak with power. One very effective way to do that is to drop your pitch at the end of a sentence or thought. That way the listener hears what you are saying much more clearly and with more convention and confidence. Our natural inclination is to believe and give credence to someone who speaks with power, conviction, slowly and with a firm low pitch. People who do this naturally in professions are clergy, police officers, news anchors, and politicians. All of these professions in particular are ones with perceived authority and power. By lowering your voice you gain creditability and increase your presence.

As you lower your tone and use less gestures it is also important to say each word at the end of your sentence as a way to bridge with your listener and to slow down our speaking in such as way as to bring your message across. By imaging the end of your sentence and the end of a word you are more likely to pronounce your words and be heard.

The goal in your professional image enhancement is to be seen as an expert, to be received fully and to leverage this towards greater career success.

Creating a Positive Professional Image Part I

Knowing the specifics about presenting yourself in a positive way contributes to your success. Being a polished professional allows you to focus on others and be confident that your verbal and non-verbal messages are in alignment.


Your professional image is something that will contribute to your career path and success. People form opinions about us in the first 5-7 seconds of meeting. Sometimes those impressions are permanent and may be difficult to erase and change. By coordinating your professional image with your goals you will generate a positive image that will facilitate your career path and bring you many opportunities. Sometimes you do not know what people are thinking about you but will react to you and provide something to you simply on how you present yourself.

The more you practice these techniques the easier they become. I find it helpful to choose one of the items below per week and focus in on it until it feels comfortable and brings you results. If you take on too many changes at one time it makes it challenging to track your progress and see results.

Your head is a key feature in your body and in maintaining professional presence. It comprises all of your senses and has the main feature your eyes! By being present and direct with people through eye contact and focus you develop relationships that bring results. To make contact itÕs important to maintain a neural head position. This means that your head rests easily on your neck and shoulders and doesnÕt move too much or bobbles. You want people to focus with you and not be distracted.

As your head falls into place then you begin to stop moving around and shifting your weight and being hard to engage with. It is important to stand tall, with both feet planted on the ground. This gives you strength, confidence and allows you to engage with people in ways that bring results and rapport. Your body carriage and your visual presence makes a huge difference in how you are received and taken seriously. Check your posture to see that your shoulders aren't slumping in front of you and that your spine is aligned with your hips.

When you stand tall and are present you command confidence and attention. When these aspects are present you naturally listen and hear people. By taking time to hear people and be present with them allows you to find areas of commonality and engagement. A successful professional has incredible control over their presence and focus contributing to how they think. Be a person who generates a thoughtful presence by creating the time to really get to know and understanding people.

Here is an exercise for today to work with. The first step is to focus your attention on how you walk into a room. Specifically place your awareness on how your feet hit the floor, whether its heel or toes first, are you confident, hesitant, etc? How erect is your posture is, is your head in line with your shoulders, do you have your hands at your side naturally? and what are you choosing to look at? The more you keep your gaze at eye level and looking into peopleÕs eyes or their third eye (space between the eyebrows) or slightly above the heads of people you are more likely to be energized and confident.

In our Part II blog I will speak about slowing down, simplify your movements, and speaking.

Time is All Around, And Intentional

Factoring in time as both a linear and circular concept will facilitate more rapid results for your career path. Looking with new eyes and a new focus will accelerate your time line.

Time isn’t a neat path moving with one thing directly in front of another. Time instead is more circular moving both forwards, backwards, and on top of itself. As you begin to layer and multi leverage you begin to see the inter connectness and relational perspective between what you do and who you meet. The point is that you become clearer about your direction and are able to save time.

Many cultures think of time as a snap shot or picture frame one still after another. With this type of linear belief you imagine doing only one thing at a time. This is valid and useful, as most people believe and understand this. What can occur with this perspective however is that you may wait for one thing to happen before you can do another, or you may only focus on one thing at a time.

What I recommend is that you introduce the concept of Intentional Time™ , a concept I have coined and am creating an entire series of TeleSeminars and reports about. It’s the process of allowing more things to occupy a specific space of time by setting your mind and your intention to allow for it. This perspective views time as a layering affect not a snap shot.

When you set an intention you accomplish what you are doing plus have a question answered, be introduced to someone or a resource, or be inspired. You are able to multi task and leverage time.

Intentional Time ™ is a tool to use in your career search. In expecting your time to be layered and in service to more than one objective or goal at a time creates synergy and sustainable results. It also provides a simple way to integrate cause and effect. When you are looking for responsible work there are many tools and resources you employ. I’ve spoken about many of them in my blogs: communication, introducing yourself, networking, values, leveraging, interviewing and writing an excellent resume. This process of partnering with time is a contextual tool that brings greater success and richness to the other tools I have introduced.

In my next blog Intentional Time ™ II, I’ll speak to specific exercises in how to use this. Let me know a specific goal you are working with and I’ll coach you.

Negotiate Your Salary

Negotiating is a skill that completes your professional package. Being able to convey your thoughts to another and generate a successful outcome demonstrates many benefits to an employer. Learn more about the specifics required to be a success.

Once you have your job offer then it’s important to move forward into the phase of negotiating and claiming your compensation packet. I want to remind us that there are many ways how to define your value and build a win/win expectation. In negotiating the first step is to gain career advise from others about the industry standard for your position. You need a realistic and present time value statement for the position you are aiming for. Once this is established you can move forward with exploring your bottom line negotiating points and your career needs.

Negotiating is a conversation of asking for what is needed, listening to what the other person has to offer, and seeing how things can fit for each party. Both people want to feel like they got a good deal and the long end of the stick. In allowing for this it is important to initiate a discussion on behalf of your career goals by taking into account your compensation packet as one venue for establishing value. In this global age there are many aspects to being competitive and beneficial to an employer. One important key is in the value that you bring to them not only in your cost savings in relation to salary but also based on return on investment. As you establish the dollar value of what you bring to the table and the benefit you provide they can more easily pay you what you request. This is accomplished by speaking and demonstrating your past successes and by mentioning your ideas for their business goals. To be engaged in an effective negotiating conversation requires establishing up front the value of what you offer and what they need and confirming that there is a strong match.

Negotiating is a process of dialoguing with another person by selling in what you have to offer and placing a financial dollar amount attached to it. In negotiating it’s important to begin with what your key points are and what you are willing to move on and change and what are your basic bottom line non-negotiable items. By having both in mind you know where you begin and where to end. As you engage with the person you are drawing them into a conversation with you that is rich with needs, requests, and bottom lines. How you negotiate will also demonstrate the type of professional you are and set the tone and foundation for your work. Do it with respect, intention, and partnership. This provides getting your needs met and developing a foundation of colleague to colleague offering.

Negotiation is both a mind-set and a skill. Both of which are career requirements to move you and your goals forward. It is a way to contextualize what you are doing and to interact with another person to produce a successful result. It also takes skill and tact to bring various requests together and to keep the conversation moving forward. At the end of the day, negotiating is about building rapport and generating a working relationship that brings lasting results.