I recently talked about the quality of information you allow yourself to digest each day as being a key ingredient of success and avoiding burnout. One fabulous and entirely free way you can add more soul-full high quality information to your daily diet is by listening to some of the shows on Hay House Radio.

Some of the world’s best spiritual leaders, medical intuitives, coaches, holistic healers, and others are available to you each week free of charge streaming over the internet or downloadble to your MP3 player. And, if you listen live, many shows allow you to call in and speak personally with the show host to have your questions answered.

I personally am a huge fan of Debbie Ford, Cheryl Richardson, and Caroline Myss and have been listening to their shows faithfully since Day 1.

I highly recommend taking a peek and a listen to Hay House Radio. Listen for a while and just notice if your spirit feels a little more uplifted. All these shows are great introductions to becoming more self-aware and making positive changes in your life.

Post a comment and let me know what you think …

Is being constantly connected hurting your chances of success as much as smoking dope? You wouldn’t think of smoking pot throughout your workday, would you? However, if you’re wired to the max and married to your e-mail you may as well be.

Back in 2005, CNN ran an article about a British study that concluded Emails Hurt IQ More than Pot. Besides being an outstanding and eye grabbing headline, the study made some useful insights such as:

In 80 clinical trials, Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King’s College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day.

He found the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points — the equivalent to missing a whole night’s sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana.

So all this multi-tasking not only makes you less productive, it also makes you dumber. This might explain why we’re all working so much harder, getting less accomplished, and liking each other a little less in the process (at least in the corporate office it seems less friendly than it did 10-15 years ago).

Not to mention the little fact that we are all so wired to the max that it is downright exhausting. We are plain old over stimulated and that leads to a lot of unnecessary stress and ultimately burnout. You can’t plug a 100 watt light bulb into a 60 watt socket for very long until you start to see signs of a major problem brewing. The same holds true for our ability to handle the demands of being constantly at someone else’s “beck and call”.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being connected. I have my internet access and my cell phone and use both liberally. In fact I couldn’t imagine building my business without it. However, I also know the importance of being disconnected and focused for a period of time each day. As luck would have it, my coach has the perfect quote in her blog today on this very topic.

“I’m a busy guy but I set aside quiet time every morning and every evening to keep my equilibrium centered on my own path. I don’t like being swayed by anything that might be negative or damaging.”
::: Donald Trump

While I’m no fan of Donald Trump, you can’t deny the fact that the man is successful on his own terms (even if his style is radically different from my view of the world). And, for those among you who might be a bit skeptical or feel that some of what I say sounds too “simplistic” or “woo-woo”, it’s nice to have some diverse examples to share that demonstrate the application of the very concepts I am writing about.

Another great example of focus is Suze Orman. In a recent Time magazine article Help, I’ve Lost my Focus it goes on to explain how Suze refuses to multi-task. Not only won’t she do two things at once, but she prohibits anyone working for her to do so.

Personal-finance guru Suze Orman, despite an exhausting array of media and entrepreneurial commitments, utterly refuses to check messages, answer her phone or allow anything else to come between her and whatever she’s working on. “I do one thing at a time,” she says. “I do it well, and then I move on.”

Disconnect to Recharge, Refocus, and Get Smarter

If you’re someone who is connected via e-mail, cell phone, pager, blackberry, regular phone, etc., etc. this exercise could be perfect for you. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What would it take for me to find some quiet time each day to simply disconnect from the world and listen to my own thoughts and feelings?
• What am I most afraid will happen if I simply disconnect for a while?

So, take some time to live the old fashioned way — disconnected from the wall outlet and wi-fi. What have you got to lose?

It seems to me that so many people I work with seem stuck in a rut. They are doing what they are doing today simply because it is what they did yesterday. Days turn into months which turn into years and then they wake up one day and wonder where the time went and why life doesn’t quite seem to be working for them.

Not only are they asleep at the wheel of their own life they aren’t heeding the concept that life itself is a wheel. Let me explain.

Each of our lives are made up of a combination of components that make up a healthy whole. In the work that I do I call it the life wheel. Think of your life as a circle (the wheel) and then divide it up into 8 major categories like a wheel with a hub and spokes (or a big pizza pie if that works for you). The 8 categories I typically work with (and feel free to tweak the wording to make it work for you) are:

• Health and Well-Being (Body, Mind, Spirit)
• Money and Finances
• Fun and Relaxation
• Spirituality and Personal Growth
• Relationships
• Primary Relationship/Romance
• Career
• Environments (home and surroundings)

These represent the different areas that create a complete picture of a rich, varied, and fulfilling life. And, to keep with the wheel metaphor and driving down the road of life, these represent the foundation of and quality of your life. Have you ever driven in a car with a flat? Not fun, huh?

The key to creating a balanced wheel that flows is to spend the right amount of time and effort honoring each of these areas in your own life. How much time and what that looks like is up to you and unique to each individual. The bottom line is to be able to go through the different categories in your wheel, rate your satisfaction regarding that area of your life and feel good about how it tallies up.

When you neglect one or more areas of your life, it is like trying to limp through life. It would look a little like riding through life on this bike:

How far are you going to get? More importantly, how enjoyable and fulfilling will the ride be?

Conversely when you consciously and intentionally choose to honor all the different areas of your life you will naturally feel better and be more productive. That bike ride through life would look a lot more like this:

Now, that looks infinitely more appealing, doesn’t it?

Wonder what your life wheel looks like?

Take a few minutes to write each of the categories above on a sheet of paper. Go somewhere you can be quiet, relaxed and uninterrupted. Then, rate on a scale of 1 to 10 your degree of satisfaction with this area of your life (10 being WOW- couldn’t be better). Then, draw a circle on a piece of paper and divide it into 8 slices corresponding with the categories. Starting from the hub (middle of the wheel), shade the portion of that section based on your rating. For example, if you rated Career a 5, shade in approximately half that piece of the wheel. When you’re done, the shadings will give you some insight into whether your wheel looks more like the first or second picture.

Need support exploring this exercise? Feel free to e-mail me and I’ll be happy to help you out!

This weekend when I went to the Cingular store to deal with my dead cell phone, I realized we have totally slipped over the edge as a society. As I picked out a new phone, the salesperson pointed out that this new lovely gazingus model allows you to receive a continual news and information scroll in addition to taking calls, pictures, playing games, playing music, acting as an organizer, and accessing the internet and e-mail. Now, don’t get me wrong, a cell phone can be a handy thing IF you know how to set boundaries around using it. But, a news crawl? Have we lost our minds?

That brings me to the topic of stress, burnout, and information overload. While I relish the amount of information at our fingertips there comes a time when it is just TOO MUCH. Our minds are not build to be a supercomputer performing multi-task processing 24/7.

Consider this. How many different ways do we receive information? Well, there are books, magazines, television, radio, memos, flyers, email, newspapers, bulletin boards, the internet, instant messenger, telephones, cell phones, pagers, handhelds, computers, in person conversations, unspoken body language, and advertisements on the sides of taxis, grocery bags, and buses just to name the ones that come to mind immediately.

Now, say that ten times fast! If we allow information to continually bombard us without putting some boundaries around what we choose to let in our mental and physical space it is likely that we will be stressed out to the max, incapable of functioning at any productive level mentally and creatively, and perhaps simply go insane.

More is not better. There is a limit to the amount of information we can take in yet alone utilize.

And, it is not only the quantity of information we try to digest but also the quality of that information that affects our well-being.

Have you ever watched a scary movie late at night and then tried to go to bed for a peaceful night sleep? How did that work for you? If you’re anything like me, you couldn’t fall asleep, woke up spooked with bad dreams, or simply slept fitfully. That is an example of the impact the quality of information you feed your mind can have on you.

Since you’re probably not watching scary movies every night, the impact for you could be more subtle. Simply watching the news before bed can impact your ability to have a quality night’s sleep. Even watching mind-numbing television shows (can you say reality TV?) throughout the day has an impact because it exacerbates the problem of burnout making your mind numb and your spirit passionless.

• What degree of information overload do you have in your life?
• How many hours a day do you spend sifting through information (e-mails, paper, mail, newspapers, the internet, etc.)?
• How much of this information is really relevant to your life?
• Do you set strong boundaries around how much information you’ll let into your space and when?

If you’re not totally convinced that you are on information overload, try this game. For 1 week, at the end of each day, summarize all the key points of all the information you digested as if you had to teach it to a three year old. Do you even remember or has it blurred into an unrecognizable blob in your head? If it is not crystal clear to you, you need to do some information spring cleaning in your daily routine.

Yesterday I participated in my first Integrity Day. It is a day where two or more people commit to spending the day handling projects and tasks that we want or need to get done but never seem to get to. For instance, that burned out light bulb that never gets changed yet drives us nuts every time we walk into the room or the business proposal writing that you’ve been avoiding or the closet cleaning and organizing that never seems to happen. These are just examples of the types of things that could get handled, once and for all, during an integrity day.

While I have certainly spent the better part of a day handling projects and chores before, I never did it in this context where there is structure, group accountability, and support. It was amazing to me just how much I could accomplish in 8 hours and also just how fast 2 hours (our time interval between check-in calls with the group) could fly by.

How the process worked was that prior to integrity day, each of us made a list of everything we were tolerating. We then grouped those items (let’s face it, for most of us it is a LONG list) into similar categories and made note of anything we needed to purchase or get our hands on prior to integrity day so we wouldn’t get sidetracked by trips to the store or have our momentum and focus broken by not having the resources we needed to handle the task at hand.

The day started with a call in to the group and introductions. We then declared our commitment for the next 2 hours and were off and running. The subsequent call-ins gave us a chance to celebrate our successes and discuss any obstacles we faced as well as share any insights we gained about ourselves in the process. We then declared our new commitment for the next 2 hours.

I found this structure incredibly powerful not just in terms of accountability and support but even more so because it forced me to focus intently and clearly decide what I was committing to doing in the next 2 hours. Without this, I would be tempted to get off track, distracted, and scattered — sort of fixing a little of this, passing a cluttered table and doing a little of that and never really having a the feeling of accomplishment that comes with setting your mind to something and accomplishing it.

One of the biggest a-ha moments I had was when our integrity day tour guide shared that 17 people had signed up for the day yet only 5 of us actually showed up. I was like WOW…that’s less than 30% of the people who committed to the day actually showed up and honored their commitment to themselves. That is really huge considering the foundation of integrity is doing what you say you’re going to do. So, I really felt proud of myself for honoring myself in this way and clearing space in my busy life to have 100% focus and 8 hours of uninterrupted time to handle these projects.

At the final check-in besides a big celebration of all we accomplished we each shared something we learned about ourselves during the day. For instance I was reminded that I set overly ambitious expectations of myself and then initially focus on what I didn’t accomplish versus celebrating what I did achieve.

I would definitely do this exercise again in the future. In fact, I could only imagine what I will accomplish if I make it a regular exercise.

What is some thing you would tackle if you had an integrity day? If you made the commitment, would you show up or find a seemingly harmless excuse to let yourself down?

Share your thoughts in the comments, and if you would like to be part of a future integrity day, let me know!