Mary Flanagan Gleason's Blog, page 16

July 18, 2022

Slow Your Roll

Driving a familiar route can give a sense of knowing an area. After all, you see it all the time.

Strange, though, how you notice new things when you walk the same route. People and places you���ve only driven by take on more details and distinguishing features.

That���s what good coaching can do for you.

You know the route your stories have traveled. You have told them dozens of times to others and yourself. They are sealed in our consciousness as facts. Yet, when you allow yourself to slow down and revisit the familiar, more details reveal what you may have forgotten or remembered in an incomplete context.

Why is that important?

Because your subconscious continues to respond to those details even if your conscious mind isn���t aware. Like when someone said something harsh to you as a child, and you still carry it with you. 

Without the broader context, the details remain frozen as a one-sided truth. The benefit to intuition coaching, is the opportunity to revisit the details, notice more, and give greater perspective.

My clients tell me:

���I realize how defensive I���ve been when I needed to simply allow a conversation to happen. Not everything is about me!���

���I thought it was all my fault, but it wasn���t. Maybe I���m not the screw-up I think I am.���

If you need help slowing your drive or learning to walk at a pace that allows you to observe and reconsider events in your life, let���s chat soon.

Mary

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Published on July 18, 2022 11:04

July 8, 2022

Efficient or Effective?

How often is the success of our work judged by being efficient? It is scheduled, measurable, and productive. Perpetual momentum.

Effective, however, is challenging to schedule. It requires time for relationships, collaborations, and thoughtful consideration of the potential ramifications. It involves communication and developing an understanding of others, some of whom may not even be in the room.

Take a look at what is holding you back from creating forward momentum for yourself or your team. Are you sticking to a deadline that isn���t going to work? Are you trying to insert culture change on a schedule?

Are you waiting for something like diversity, equity, and inclusion goals to be ���done?��� If so, you are sacrificing effectiveness for efficiency.

Simply getting things done may get in the way of building a team, creating a new way of showing up in the world, and feeling more confident in your decisions.

Where could you build in a little more time for greater effectiveness?

Mary

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Published on July 08, 2022 16:43

July 5, 2022

What does it mean to celebrate independence?

The American spirit of independence is deeply ingrained in our society. We take it to mean that as adults, we can pay our way in life.

We call all the shots.

Lately, I���ve heard independence and freedom used interchangeably, but there is a difference. None of us are off the hook for participating as contributing members of something greater than ourselves which implies a lack of pure freedom.

In second grade, I had the realization that everything we do impacts others. My incredibly woke 7-year-old-self related that to flushing the toilet, realizing that it led to the sewers, into the river, and into Lake Ontario, where the fish were floating dead on the surface.

Thousands of dead fish made what looked like a solid coating on the water���s surface. It turned out that a lot more than flushed toilets were to blame. The very active manufacturing concerns in my hometown were much heavier contributors.

Still, though, today, that thought has stuck with me. How is what I am about to do going to impact others?

It does not keep me from making decisions that are in my greatest interest, but it can often inform the approach I take or nudge me to find a better solution.

More purposeful, less selfish. Independent but not totally free.

Having just celebrated Independence Day, we must remember that we are not free from our obligations to each other.

As a child, we cannot wait to ���be the boss��� of us. As an adult, we realize it is not all that glamorous. We are still accountable to others.

I hope you enjoyed your Independence Day celebrations, and I hope you will remember that independence comes with a level of accountability and responsibility that sets us all free.

Forgive me if I get a little preachy here. It���s just been on my mind a lot the past few weeks.

What���s on your mind during these times of dramatic change?

Mary

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Published on July 05, 2022 15:33

June 23, 2022

Childhood trauma can affect your success today.

My heart breaks every time I work with a client who experienced childhood trauma. Forever, they wonder how they could have prevented some of the most upsetting and violent things from happening.

You couldn���t.

That sense of powerlessness follows you and makes you believe that somehow you deserve to be treated with no dignity or respect.

You don���t.

The best way to get out of adult situations with negative patterns is to explore your childhood and resume control as an adult.

You can.

This is not new information or even a new approach. Yet, it is often where my work as a hypnotherapist comes in to help clients achieve greater success in their jobs, relationships, and feelings of competence.

We can do it together.

Find your power in my gentle and confidential setting.

Let���s get started.

Mary

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Published on June 23, 2022 14:48

June 16, 2022

Want Optimal Performance? Try Cleaning the Air Filter.

We had a fun getaway last week. Mark and I stayed at a resort in Palm Desert. It wasn’t a high-end place but good enough for getting away from Seattle’s unceasing rain. It was such a relief that we didn’t even mind too much that temperatures were 15 degrees above normal. One day temps reached 117!
 
Everything was fine except for the room air conditioner which made horrendous noises when starting up, like a cry of great pain from a machine pleading for mercy. It lasted all night, waking us each time it started.
 
Finally, Mark couldn’t take it anymore and began investigating. It did not take long to discover that the air filter was completely clogged. He spent five minutes cleaning it out, and voila! The cause of the pain and loud moans was gone. The cool air flowed with great relief for humans and machine alike.

That’s what executive intuition coaching does.

It cleans out the filter that clogs the flow and brings ease in your life, removing the particles unwittingly collected, causing you to cry out with great discomfort. Those little particles that add up can make you feel like life is too hard and unable to work with optimal performance.

Life is often more challenging than it needs to be.

Sometimes the fix is as easy as removing what is trapped in your air filter. I’m here to help.

Mary

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Published on June 16, 2022 15:27

June 1, 2022

Need More Signs?

I was entering the expressway the other day and the first thing I saw was a sign that warned, ���rough road.���

I chuckled, wondering how helpful it would be if life would more boldly label what���s ahead from time to time.

���Smooth Sailing Ahead������Next Exit for Happiness������This is the Right Candidate to Hire������Keep Going���

You may laugh, but signs like that actually do exist.

They are in your gut, your heart, your ability to perceive. Too often, these signs are ignored or dismissed or explained away.

Helping you learn how to see, interpret, and honor the signs in your life is what I do.

I teach you how to use your body as a barometer of the unknown to keep you moving forward in a positive direction.

If this feels like a sign that we should work together, please schedule a time to discuss the possibilities.

Mary

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Published on June 01, 2022 12:55

May 31, 2022

Excitement for the New. Gratitude for What���s Not.

The house painters arrived.

Their job is to return our home to neutral colors allowing prospective buyers to envision themselves living there.

Their job is to erase us.

Our bedroom is/was red with gold and black accents. We loved it. We don���t count anymore.

As the painters finished taping and covering all the non-wall surfaces, I took a moment to give gratitude for this house that held us through thick and thin, rain and (some) sunshine, through cold, snowy days, and absurdly hot ones.

Specifically, I thanked the colors for bringing me joy and a sense of belonging. They reflected me, us. I explained to my walls and cabinets that a new family would come and fill them with new colors and welcome them into their family. This new family will benefit from their reflective powers and steady vigilance.

You can say a house is a thing and does not care about gratitude, but I know that this is a place that absorbed our energies and history. These rooms will show up in my dreams for years to come, just like other places I have lived do from time to time.

Moving on is a part of life. Allowing the things you cherish to have new meaning for someone else is a form of grace. Gratitude is a form of recognition. Each new situation in life can benefit from such an intentional recognition of what is before us, living in the present moment, honoring our history,

I have already begun to assign meaning to our new home, our new colors, our new sanctuary. Still, it is to move on too quickly is a missed opportunity.

I have performed this gratitude practice with old favorite purses that carried my necessities and secrets, clunker cars that got me from A to B for a while, and old boyfriends who helped me find my boundaries.

When you have something new come up for you, it often requires letting go of something familiar. You will feel it in your very soul.

Take a moment to absorb what is really changing in your life with grace and gratitude. I promise it is worth it.

Mary

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Published on May 31, 2022 17:13

May 30, 2022

The Married Widow

The married widow. It���s not a typo nor an oxymoron.

My friend and I have an ironic take on her situation. She is married to someone with Alzheimer���s disease. She is both married and alone all at the same time. Her husband now resides in memory care much to her relief and worry and so many other emotions. He is still alive, still in need of her attention, and still unable to remember her name on most days. He is alive but no longer hers.

These opposing truths happen in so many areas of life. Maybe they are happening to you.

Competing truths can co-exist. Maybe you have a great job and feel unfulfilled. Maybe you have a loving partner, yet you feel distant. Perhaps you thought you knew what you wanted, only to feel more like the dog that caught the bus.

Now what?

There���s always a way to get more out of life. It helps to build awareness of your barriers and develop a plan to work gradually toward your preferred future. 

I would love to help you explore your next level of a good life while honestly confronting all the things that make you feel stuck.

Let���s get you unstuck and moving in the right direction!

Mary

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Published on May 30, 2022 14:25

May 6, 2022

I was a mean girl

I didn���t know it at the time. I thought I was funny. But I wasn���t. I was mean.

I want to take a moment to apologize to my teenage friends, Cindy, Amy, Sue, et al., for the times I was an absolute ass.

I had a wicked smart tongue.

The thing I���ve learned about being mean is that it was an extension of how I was feeling about myself. The unconscious strategy to feeling like I was better than another was to make another look smaller. 

I didn���t know how to make myself bigger.

It has been a lifelong journey to understanding my own insecurities and overcoming unrealistic expectations for myself that always left me feeling like I had failed. What I found inside of me was a mean girl who trashed talked about herself who then projected outward.

Funny, the more I learned to be kind to myself, the easier and more important it became to be kind to others.

Some nights, when sleep eludes me, I find myself sending out prayers of atonement in the hopes that they will reach the intended souls. I have long since lost contact with all of them and I am sure they do not miss me. 

Part of being a good leader is wrestling with your inner self worth, to do more than to tell yourself you���re good but to truly feel good. If you are not doing the inner work, you are likely projecting on to your team members. 

Inner work can be hard. You have to overcome a lot of situations that may not have been your fault but are still your responsibility. It is the only way forward.

You can and must learn the best ways to be kind to and responsible for your own actions so you can develop that same empathy as a manager, supervisor, leader.

The secret to outer peace is inner peace.

Need some? Let���s find it together.

Mary

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Published on May 06, 2022 11:35

���Are you distracted by the future?

As my husband and I prepare our house for market, I keep receiving these wake-up calls that I still need to pay attention to this place as if we still lived here ��� because we do!

Damn, I still need to clean the bathroom, pay the bills and participate in daily living. I even have work I need to attend to but it���s just not as exciting as my vision for the future.

In my early years of married life, preparing for Thanksgiving dinner was a week-long project. Menu planning, shopping, cleaning, invitations, etc. Every year I was surprised by the very vocal reminders from my little ones that I need to feed them the all other days of the week. My thought was, ���Why can���t you wait until Thursday?���

The furthest thing from my mind was the day we were living.

Having a grander vision for one���s life can be like that.

In my head, I am focused on the new house, the new area, and the new opportunities heading my way. I am so far out into the future that today can sometimes feel like a distraction when, in fact, today is on my path to that vision. I must prepare, stay present, one step in front of the other. Pack another box.

How do you, as a dreamer, learn to make the present count?

As I discussed in an earlier blog, in the book ���The Slight Edge,��� Jeff Olson makes the case that we are either working toward our goal or moving away from our goal. But if we are not consciously aware of what is happening before us, it is hit or miss.

Be consciously aware that today is a part of the bigger picture. You want to include it in your plans and make it count toward your vision.

I can help keep you focused and moving forward. Let���s get started.

Mary

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Published on May 06, 2022 11:29