Thanks for the advice Mom!

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This article isn’t about how to change your self-image, but rather a statement that it can be changed. Self-image is not limited to only weight. Our self-image can be related to many different aspects of our physical and mental self. It can drive whether you think you are pretty, ugly, or plain; whether you are too fat, too skinny, too different. Whether your are smart or dumb. Society plays a role too. What we see in catalogs, on TV commercials, in magazines, and on  college campuses work to drive expectations. Family life and upbringing may also contribute to our self-image as well.

All of these forces push against us to mold our self-image into something that in my case wasn’t healthy. Maybe you can relate, maybe not. In any case, it took me too many years to realize that my self-image was damaged in the first place. I only started working on it when I was into my 40’s. Let me save you those wasted years and share with you now that I feel strongly that you can evaluate your self image and that you can change it if you choose. If you only take one thing away from this article, let it be that you already have everything you need to re-shape your self-image.

Here are some steps that can be a great start

Step 1 - Identify your troubling situations or conditions

Take some time to consider the aspects of your life that might be contributing to a poor self-image. Relationships, work, what you see in the mirror, etc. Jot them down in a notebook as you collect them.

Step 2 – Become aware of your thoughts and beliefs

Anthony Robbins, a well known thought leader on positive thinking and a great life coach has a simple formula that I think may work well for you here. Here it is

I X F = PR

That means that Information(I) times Focus(F) equals Personal Reality(PR). Here is an example I have used to explain this. Imagine if all you watched on the television was your local nightly news. If that is the information that you choose to focus on, what do you think your personal reality would be? Could it be that you wouldn’t feel safe in your local community because the local nightly news tends to present the negative aspects of your local community?

What if you chose to focus on positive things? Things that could take your self-image in a different direction. Would the re-shaping of your personal reality have an affect on your self-image? I think it might.

Step 3 – Challenge negative thinking

One of my challenges is that I tend to be too judgmental. In my experience, this is a fairly common behavior. Being judgmental can drive some pretty dark emotions and dark emotions only bring bad weather. If you want to keep the sunshine out, and who shouldn’t, try to convert your judgments into curiosity. Try to understand what might be driving whatever condition you are being judgmental about. Especially if that judgmental thought is aimed at you! Thanks again to Anthony Robbins for this tip. If you want great Information(I) to Focus(F) on, I’d recommend picking up some or all of Anthony Robbins coaching products.

Step 4 – Adjust your thoughts and beliefs

If your thoughts and beliefs are in a dark place, it would not be surprising to find a poor self-image. The longer you allow yourself to reside in dark places, the more deeply rooted the self-image might be. The great news is that this is entirely changeable. Even neuroscientists have discovered that our brains actually physically re-wire themselves when we encourage change in our lives. Our individual synapses will disconnect from one connection point inside the brain and will float around until re-attaching in a different configuration inside our brain.

Surround yourself with positive people, the warmth of the sun, the wonderful smell of fresh flowers, or whatever else you find positive and uplifting. Stand guard at the gate to your mind and supervise what you allow in. If you put these steps into use and practice them, it won’t take long for you to find the beauty in everything, including yourself and a restful peace in your heart and mind. This is the fertile ground to plant and grow a new self-image.

I titled this article the way I did because I’m not certain if the twilight we are currently working in is the low light caused because the sun just set or because it’s about to rise. This isn’t a ‘glass half-full or glass half-empty’ type of statement, and I would argue that leadership styles must be flexible, agile, and responsive enough, to be effective in both of these scenarios.

As our economy continues to sputter along, making no measurable and positive progress toward strong recovery, now may be a great time for effective leaders to be the cornerstone of a new age. If we as leaders are to reach our TOPSTONE, we must be capable of mentoring, motivating, and inspiring our teams to reach their TOPSTONE as well. Reaching the TOPSTONE is a journey of personal or professional development resulting in transcendent achievement. Transcendent achievement is defined as ‘reaching an achievement in your personal and/or professional life which results in a transformation of other aspects of your life’.

An example of transcendent achievement would be someone who has gone from morbidly obese to fit and healthy. This journey requires the individual to not only change eating habits, but to form healthy exercise habits as well. One side effect of these new habits are the release of endorphins during physical exercise. This may be a very new and exciting experience for someone who is morbidly obese. The resulting feelings associated with endorphin release are feelings of elation, happiness, and satisfaction.

These positive side effects have a compound effect on the individual. Over time, the morbidly obese individual will continue to experience these heightened emotions as a result of regular physical exercise. In addition, they start to like the person in the mirror a little more each time they look. Confidence builds and at some point, all of these new positive emotions and habits jump to another aspect of the individual’s life. Relationships, work habits, confidence, etc, may be positively affected. The individual’s mind seems to function with more clarity and creativity is expanded, resulting in the free flow of ideas, positive feelings, healthy emotions, and stronger relationships which result in a better overall experience in all aspects of their lives.

If we are to reach the TOPSTONE, leaders must be able to navigate tumultuous times and must have the agility, passion, and tenacity to see their teams through. If we as a team are to reach our TOPSTONE, we must first place the cornerstone. That cornerstone starts with bold leadership.

In this time of economic twilight, our nation may be experiencing a sunset, which means dark times lie ahead until the sun rises once again over our great nation. This will be a time when leaders must exhibit super human leadership qualities. It will not be good enough to simply solve the day to day problems, establish goals, measure performance, and give praise. As leaders, we must be bold, passionate, and spirited as we embrace whatever challenges lie ahead. Challenges and problems are merely opportunities for the next team success. Our leadership needs to have an entrepreneurial spirit. Don’t just think outside the box, forget there is a box. The style and method by which you present your leadership capabilities to your team must fuel their passion to succeed, regardless of the situation.

Are you afraid to wear the big ‘S’ on your chest? Do you think it is silly to think of yourself as a super hero? Maybe you need a time-out to reevaluate your role and the effect you have on others as a leader. Now is not the time for timidity or self-doubt. Now is the time for leaders to go ‘all-in’. Be bold and don’t be afraid to become great.

There are many people who are counting on us to deliver, so go find a phone booth, get suited up, and get in the game (but no capes).

Not sure if you are leadership material? Contact me at Cale.Dansbee@TOPSTONE.com and I will help you locate some great learning resources. I’m convinced that you need only bring three key ingredients.

• Passion
• Tenacity
• Aptitude

Here are some foundational titles to start with – Think of these as the golden thread that double stitches that ‘S’ onto your chest.

The Heart of a Leader – Ken Blanchard
Great Leaders Grow – Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller
#POSITIVITY at WORK Tweet Book – Chris Edmonds and Lisa Zigarmi
The Compound Effect – Darren Hardy

My best advice if you want to shed the pounds is simple to say, but harder to follow – Without knowing more about your individual eating habits, it’s hard to really give solid advice about nutrition, but this one is pretty universal and will absolutely ‘start’ your weight loss and provide positive results which can further fuel your health and wellness success.

The plan is to go sugar-free for 30 calendar days – Doing this gives your pancreas time to process all the sugars sitting in its queue and allows it to get your overall body sugar levels down to where they should be. Sugar is the number one poison killing people all over the world, one pancreas at a time.

So what is a pancreas anyway and what does it do? That’s a great question and I had to do some pretty extensive research to find a concise and reliable answer. The pancreas is a small gland organ in the abdomen that is responsible for producing and secreting enzymes and hormones into your body to support certain body functions. For the sake of brevity, the pancreas does at least two things which are relevant to this article.

1. It releases digestive juices into the small intestine to aid on further breaking down food
2. It produces and secretes insulin into the bloodstream to regulate the body’s glucose or blood sugar level

I like to compare the sugar-free month to a financial investment – When you put money into an investment, its value increases over time. If you take your money out early, you won’t see as much financial gain as you would have, had you left the money in for the long-term. Going sugar-free for 30 days is similar in that you need to count each day you go sugar-free as one day invested. Each day compounds on the previous and the effect becomes more profound the longer you are able to sustain it. If you get 5 days into it and then consume sugar, even as little as 40-60 grams, you set back the compound effect and slow the progress. Don’t think 40-60 grams is much sugar, take a look at most any popular energy drink and you will see 60 grams of sugar in each drink. Soft drinks = liquid candy bar.

If 30 days sounds too long based on your current nutritional habits, start with 1 week or even one day. The key to forming new good habits is to start small so your body can learn the habit quickly and then you can build and expand the habit over time. The primary goal is to find success, not failure when forming effective new habits.

If you would rather work on reducing your sugar intake slowly, rather than go cold turkey for one day, week, or month, then try this.

Find a sugar in your particular nutrition habits and become a terminator. Target that sugar for termination and make it your plan to never ingest that particular sugar again. For me, that first step was coffee sweeteners. I exchanged sugar for stevia and swore to never put sugar in my coffee again.

A strong word of caution here regarding stevia – It’s not a sugar, but rather a plant extract. This means that those of you with any types of food allergies or allergies to plants or trees should seek medical counsel before switching to stevia.

Now here’s the rub – I’m not just talking about sugar specifically, I’m talking about any food product that your body consumes as sugar, as well as any food product your body converts to sugar during digestion.

In order to have a better nutrition plan, you will need to learn more about what your body does with food. I’m in my mid 40’s and I was raised to look at a pyramid of foods and told to eat 3 of these, 5 of those, etc. That line of thinking really doesn’t work well anymore with so many foods being processed, refined, and/or enriched. I want my quality of life enriched, not my food!

To keep this article from diving off into the deep end of understanding food, I’d prefer to send you to a website for more information. Please visit www.choosemyplate.gov to read and learn more about foods. This is the USDA’s new food pyramid website and you will immediately notice there is no pyramid so they are moving in the right direction.

They still need to learn a few things like not having a tip of the day that reads as follows – Frozen juice bars (100% juice) make healthy alternatives to high-fat snacks. Juice is sugar, fat is fat. Make sure you are comparing like foods when you are trying to make better food choices.

If you would like to know more about making better food substitutions, please visit our Team Beachbody website and use Michi’s Ladder. You don’t even need a club membership or an account to use the ladder. Michi’s ladder has five rungs. The lowest rung is the worst of the worst – make this your terminator grave yard. It’s filled with foods like Napoleon Dynamite’s favorite, the tater tot (vote for Pedro), and liquid candy bars, also known as soft drinks. As you move up the rungs, you find better choices. The goal is simple – Climb the ladder and eat more and more foods from the top rung. This rung includes foods like peppers, whole grain rice, blueberries, and Kale (no relation to me).

Want another great resource for learning about what foods to eat and which to avoid? Head over to www.beyonddiet.com and click on the link to view on the right hand side titled ‘5 foods to NEVER eat’. These folks have an amazing and completely free intro video that does a superb job of telling this story. Beyond Diet is a good resource for you to use.

To conclude on the sugar-free challenge, let me add these bullets –

• The more sugars you can terminate, the faster you will see results with weight loss
• To understand how your pancreas views things, close your eyes and use your taste buds
• If it tastes sweet, it’s going to affect how your pancreas functions
• This means that the sugar in an apple is not terribly different from the sugar in your coffee or the sugar that results from eating bread
• Even carbohydrates get turned into sugar if you eat too much or the wrong types of carbohydrates so choose foods carefully – knowledge is the high-octane fuel of your new body
• Am I saying that apples are bad for you? Heck no, just avoid them for this one month challenge – remember, the goal is to get your pancreas healthy so it can better manage and aid digestion and blood sugar levels
• Please don’t confuse this with an all protein diet – Don’t go nuts eating bacon and other bad foods
• As your sugar-queue empties, you will likely notice that foods are tastier – enjoy. Remember that ripple I mentioned earlier? When healthy foods start having a better flavor, you’ll want to eat more of them
• Try to avoid buying foods from the inner square of your supermarket. Shop around the perimeter, where you will find the fresher and more natural foods. The inner square of most supermarkets is the land of refinement, enrichment, and augmentation. These foods are boxed and designed to outlive us all. Try to avoid eating these at all costs.

Financial Disclaimer – I am not financially affiliated with this book in any way, nor do I gain any financial benefit from sharing it with you. I’m sharing this with you because it contains a powerful message and because it aligns well with my efforts to reach my TOPSTONE - Cale Dansbee

I posted a few days ago about this little unassuming book called #POSITIVITY AT WORK tweet, by Chris Edmonds and Lisa Zigarmi and I would like to follow-up on that post now that I’ve had a little more time to assess the feedback I’ve received.

First, who did I share this book with after I read it? Well — EVERYONE – You should too. How else will we fuel a POSITIVITY REVOLUTION?

• My entire company – As the Director of IT and Facilities, I felt well positioned to share this book with every employee in the company and I did just that. The result? Nothing shy of amazing. You will not need to wait days or weeks to see the results of sharing this book and its message. I’ve changed my email signature and started sharing this book with everyone I can. Everyone from executive leadership down has had nothing but positive things to say about the core concepts of this book.
• My entire Team Beachbody Team – With 70,000 coaches in the network, all looking to motivate, inspire, and lead their clients to health and wellness success, I figured this book could help shape their message. From the feedback I’ve gotten, it would appear that the messages of this little book are already being put to work. Yet another indication that you need not wait days or weeks to see the positive influence this book can have on those around you.
• Everyone in my social media circles – Ok, so I’m not the most popular guy on the planet, but I am able to reach some 8-10 thousand people with the reach of my social network. Are you picking up on the hint that I’m serious about fueling a POSITIVITY REVOLUTION yet?
• The only thing I would do differently is this – The authors targeted the message to ‘employees’ and to the ‘workplace’. I think this book, its message, and it concepts are applicable to ‘humans’ and to the ‘world’. As you keep reading this article, please feel free to substitute the word ‘human’ for ‘employee’ and ‘planet’ for ‘workplace’.

Consider this – I grabbed this from Positivity-Works.com

The benefits of high employee well-being are impressive. Positivity matters! Compared to colleagues with low well-being, employees with high well-being:

• Deliver 31% higher productivity
• Demonstrate 3 times higher creativity on the job
• Are ten times more engaged by their jobs
• Are 40% more likely to receive a promotion within a year
• Generate 37% greater sales figures
• Are three times more satisfied with their jobs

So why did I give this article a funny title? You’ll need to read the book to fully understand it, but I’ll give you a hint. There are 5 distinct areas where you can inject your positive influence. They are:

• Emotion
• Relationships
• Meaning and purpose
• Accomplishment, and
• Health

I hope I’ve piqued your interest in this book and that I can jolt you into action to actually purchase, read, and implement it. Now is the time to be bold, stand up, and be counted. This is your call to action to join the POSITIVITY REVOLUTION. You can get the book from Amazon here. The Kindle Edition is $9.99 and if you’ve read this far into my article, you will appreciate this. The first 10 people who email me at Cale.Dansbee@TOPSTONE.com to let me know they read this article will get two things from me.

1. I’ll purchase a Kindle Edition of the book for you and gift it to the email address of your choosing
2. I’ll mail you a TOPSTONE Accountability Band - those who know me know that I am working with others who are pursuing transcendent achievement through the acquisition of knowledge. This band will help remind you that you are never done reaching for your TOPSTONE.

Eat poorly and don’t exercise and your time on this earth will likely be limited. The quality of the time you spend here will certainly be impacted as well. However, this tiny little word, ‘act’, can completely alter the path of your life and everyone you come into contact with.

My own life is an example of this – My young adult life started in the military and progressed into a 20 career as an aircraft mechanic. As it turns out, I’m fairly good with computers and decided to alter my career and become an IT professional. I took decisive action to make that happen. I worked full-time, while attending college to get my degree, while raising my children. Now I’m the Director of IT for a multi-million dollar defense contracting company. I really enjoy computers, and I absolutely love my corner office, view, and overall career as an IT professional.

Moving into my 40’s and realizing that I had become morbidly obese, unhealthy, and at risk of not being here to see my 4 sons graduate college, meet a girl, or join the NFL as a professional football player, I realized it was again time to act.

It took attempting P90X and failing, and ultimately watching the DVD’s from my couch for a spark to cause me to actually act. Once I did, my life was transformed completely and now I am doing my best to have an effect on everyone I come into contact with.

When you finish reading this, ask yourself “Am I the kind of person that actually acts?” Whatever answers whispers inside you in response, please listen to it and do one of two things.

If your quiet, internal whispered answer was “no, not really” – Please find little exercises that you can practice trying to actually act. I don’t need to give you examples because you have already thought of a couple in the amount of time that it took you to read this sentence.

If your quiet, internal whispered answer was “Yes, I do act” – Please share this story, your advice, and coach someone you know that could benefit from learning how to actually act. We all know people who are slow to take action. You can use your special powers to help others!

Manage Your Own Well-Being, Intentionally

I’m excited to tell you about a new book on the market. Titled #POSITIVITY AT WORK tweet, by S. Chris Edmonds and Lisa Zigarmi, the book presents 140 short, actionable quotes on how to manage your workplace well-being.

Lisa and Chris are organizational psychologists with the Ken Blanchard Companies. Edmonds is Blanchard’s culture guru while Zigarmi is a positive psychology expert and coach. They both have seen how positive organizations foster well-being and – simultaneously – accelerate profitability.

The topic of well-being is hot right now. The Harvard Business Review’s January/February 2012 issue featured articles on “The Value of Happiness – How Employee Well-being Drives Profits.”

Few organizations see personal well-being as an important focus for their business, nor do many organizations understand the powerful connection between personal well-being and organizational success.

Study after study have shown that when individual employees experience well-being, they consistently apply their skills and hearts in service of company goals and customers, they are more flexible and react nimbly to changing requirements in the workplace, and they are more creative and proactive problem solvers.

In #POSITIVITY AT WORK tweet, Edmonds & Zigarmi present five “pillars” of well-being. These five essential elements are positive:

• Emotion
• Relationships
• Meaning and purpose
• Accomplishment, and
• Health

Zigarmi and Edmonds describe what positive workplaces look, act, and feel like. They then outline how the reader can demonstrate these positive elements in their own work lives.

For example, employees show up to work with their heads, hearts, and hands, yet most workplaces ask them only to utilize their hands (application of skills). Tom Peters, the author of In Search of Excellence, describes how his father worked at Baltimore Power and Light for over 30 years. Each day, Tom explains, his father was asked to check his brain at the door (!). He was told he was “not paid to think.” How demoralizing! Imagine the untapped potential.

Another example is positive physical health, which is more than the absence of illness. Our physical fitness enables our bodies to support our life purpose. It has a huge impact on our presence, skill application, and nimbleness at work. When we are physically fit, we have more energy, more inspiration, greater brainpower, and better endurance.

Leaders typically pay attention only to performance. And while profits are a good thing, Edmonds and Zigarmi know that the best companies create a positive workplace where employees bring their whole selves – heads, hearts, and hands – to their daily opportunities. These organizations consistently report higher employee satisfaction, better customer service rankings, and greater profits than their less-positive counterparts.

Zigarmi and Edmonds understand that every member of an organization – leaders and followers – impacts the well-being available in their corporate culture. #POSITIVITY AT WORK is written for every player. It provides actionable steps that will help the reader create a healthy, affirmative work environment where every individual contributes, connects, succeeds, and thrives.

Read #POSITIVITY AT WORK tweet; it can change your personal and professional outlook for the better.

Links from this article – feel free to embed these links to direct readers to these web resources:

• #POSITIVITY AT WORK tweet – http://positivity-works.com
• S. Chris Edmonds – http://twitter.com/scedmonds
• Lisa Zigarmi – http://twitter.com/lisazigarmi
• The Ken Blanchard Companies – http://kenblanchard.com
• Harvard Business Review – http://hbr.org
• HBR’s January/February 2012 Issue – http://hbr.org/archive-toc/BR1201

Great work guys! We are super proud of you!