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The world we're living in begs us to have resilience. Consider the sculptor who chipped away at a rough block of stone, intentionally revealing the majestic elephant within. He claimed the elephant was there all along. And his job was just to remove anything that was not elephant.

Just like a rough sculptor's stone, you have strengths within that are already part of you. Some have appeared throughout your life. The uniqueness and beauty of your strengths can emerge.

Your strengths become clearer in adversity and challenging times.

To make room for your strengths to shine, you might need to further develop resilience.

Resilience is a skill set. Not everyone is naturally resilient. Resilience is being able to "bounce back." To recover from difficulty.

There are five key areas of resilience:

* Locus of control. This is the belief that you can cope. That you can handle it.

* Connection. This is your support network and positive relationships.

* Self-awareness. This is what you think and feel. Your experience. Your impact.

* Creation. This is your intentional use of strategies, positive emotions, and purpose.

* Letting go. This is your choice to lose other parts of rough stone so that the beauty beneath can emerge.

As you think about your strengths and resilience this week, focus on core strategies to sleep, exercise, and rejuvinate.

Best wishes to you this coming week!

Let's look at what I learned about navigating uncertainty from marching band. You might not know this, but I was a music educator for 20 years, and I directed marching bands during 13 of those years. Marching band is a complex activity that serves as an excellent metaphor for navigating uncertainty.

Times we're living in now are more uncertain than ever. Yet the future is always uncertain, no matter how predictable it might seem.

Challenges we face can either help us grow or become our stumbling blocks.

When marching bands perform, each individual must play a musical instrument. The music is memorized. It must be expressive, dynamic, and artistic. And each performer must move around while playing. While adjusting the music and physical position to everyone else.

Imagine that.

Then, add rain and a slippery football field as the "stage."

How might you navigate this complex, uncertain circumstance?

Whatever your situation, I hope you will consider these tips from this podcast episode:

* Focus on what you can control.

* Keep learning.

* Know & apply your strengths.

While we cannot know the future, navigating uncertainty is possible when we know ourselves and focus on what is within our power to control. Whether the field is what we expect or a slick one covered with rain.

Just like performing in a marching band on a wet football field during the final competition of the season, we can gain strength every step of the way during uncertain times.

In today's podcast, we'll consider how you can use your strengths to cope with uncertainty. There are many kinds of strengths you might explore as you consider your own traits and capabilities.

The VIA Character Strengths Survey is a science-backed tool. It focuses on positive psychology through character strengths and virtues. When you visit the link provided here, you gain access to this free tool. You will learn about your top 5 strengths and a list of other relative strengths you also possess.

When you learn about your strengths and find ways to emphasize them in your life, you may begin to see possibilities and opportunities.

Focusing on strengths can reduce your tendency to seek out what is wrong. Strengths can help you realize what you value most.

Using your strengths to cope with uncertainty might reduce anxiety by emphasizing what you can control.

The CliftonStrengths tool is another assessment used commonly in business and educational institutions. This tool is not free, but the results are well worth the investment. By taking this assessment, you will gain insight about your talents. You will also be able to access tips to use your strengths to the fullest.

Regardless of your method, identifying your own strengths is a rewarding process. Through awareness, you can focus on what is strong and how you can help.

Enjoy today's podcast, focusing on strengths.

Welcome to the Podcast! This week, I'll discuss being an exceptional manager. These ideas are inspired by Conscious Business by Fred Kaufman, and The Outward Mindset, by the Arbinger Institute.

Here are a few tips I'll address in the podcast:

* Give recognition or praise for doing good work, at least weekly. Be specific.

* Let your team know their opinions count. For example, ask what's going well, and what might be challenging them.

* Help your team feel valued. That their jobs are important and tied to the company's mission and purpose, specifically.

* Remember that we are all on the journey of growth, including ourselves as managers. Being authentic and vulnerable can help keep this in focus.

* Focus intensely on professional growth and preparation, yet lead in ways that naturally fit your style and values.

* Consider your role in any situation by looking within for ways in which you might be part of the problem. This keeps you alert and agile, looking for potential blind sports. Here are some questions to consider:

* Might I be part of the problem?

* How can I become part of what's going right?

* Keep in mind that we must do all that we can to be in integrity with our values related to the goal, but we cannot entirely guarantee an outcome.

* Reflect upon what you can do to more fully live your values as manager, contributor, coach, and human being. This includes self-care, self-compassion, continued growth, and remaining hopeful about the future.

For more on Conscious Business, by Kaufman, visit http://cbcinternational.org.

Personal growth and development can take time. In many ways, it's like planting seeds and waiting for the grass to grow. Patience leads to this growth.

In today's podcast. I'll share the story of our recent backyard project: moving out the fence, and planting grass seeds. Just like growing a new lawn takes time and patience, personal growth and development take time and patience also. Both are well worth the effort.

When we are feeling "stuck," but not sure how to change that, we just want answers. Maybe we are feeling stalled. The sense of being stuck can be both challenging and ambiguous.

In today's podcast, I'll talk about being stuck but not sure how to change that. I'll give two strategies to stop feeling stalled. In addition to previous episodes in which I shared ideas about ways to de-stress, and one way to feel better now, today's podcast introduces two exercises to open ideas and take that first step toward possibilities.

To explore a free live values inventory, visit https://www.lifevaluesinventory.org/. 

Saying goodbye, memorializing endings, and finding possibilities in unusual circumstances is challenging. It might involve grief, disappointment, and loneliness.

Feeling stressed out? You might be experiencing  higher level of stress than you realize. This podcast will give you solid ideas to manage stress and, if possible, relax.

Take a look at the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory, for a sense of your stress level over the past year. Although this is not a diagnosis or medical advice, you might be surprised at the result. As you realize your stress-level, you might be able to feel self-compassion to begin.

To take this a step further, consider the various areas of your life, and how balanced they are. You can try the "Wheel of Life" and have a copy automatically e-mailed to you, right here on DrBCoach.Com. Seeing your life visually depicted in this type of wheel is informative as you think about possibilities.

Why is Being Stressed Out a Problem?With high stress, you might be less focused or on-edge. You may find it difficult to manage your work and home life. As stress takes its toll, you might feel detached, unsure of your thoughts and feelings about things.

Here are three strategies that can help you relax and manage your stress a little bit more every day.

Three Tips to De-stress

* Self Care: emotional, physical, spiritual, social, mental, and creative areas to reorient you.

* "Out-of-the-box" space: when you are feeling stressed, visiting or imagining a place outdoors that helps you connect to your authentic self can help.

* Optimism: this is the belief that every situation will eventually have a positive outcome.

It is not always possible to relax in tough times, but we can manage stress in ways that keep us open, approachable, and hopeful.  By acting in self-care areas, we can reduce stress, worry, and anxiety. Managing stress also gives us the energy to become emotionally agile, by acting rather than letting life "happen" to us.

These strategies build resilience and help us adapt to quickly changing, challenging situations.

Have you ever struggled to react well to a difficult, offensive person  at work? Want to respond with intention?

I received a message from someone at work who wanted me to understand their viewpoint. It seemed pushy, accusing, and completely wrong. How many times have we heard someone else's story and initially felt to respond in a way that "sets the record straight?"

Based on the message, at first I saw this as a difficult person. Someone misinformed, manipulative, or just plain wrong.

With this in mind, I saw three options:

* Ignore it.

* Respond with the "facts."

* Retaliate.

It seemed that I might be justified with any of these responses, based on the message this difficult person sent.

How does this happen?The amygdala hijacks our brain, pushing us to fight, flight, or freeze. In that state, we might present ourselves as flat, one-dimensional beings to the other person. Regardless of our approach, we might be responding to assumptions we have already made.

Slowing down, responding intentionally is more possible.

In today's podcast, I'll share the way the brain competes "loops" when we have insufficient information. And, how to slow down to see others more fully so that we might respond with intention, instead of reacting."Seeing" others can help us respond differently, based on our insights, making it easier to stop reacting to a difficult person at work.

How can we be more creative?

* Accept your creativity. Everyone is Creative. We all have the natural ability to be creative. While we are creative in different ways or different degrees than other people, yes, we are all creative.

* Practice creative thinking to develop it. Creativity can be increased. There are other kinds of natural abilities people have that can be increased also, such as interpersonal abilities, athletics and physical agility, and musical ability. Creativity can be taught like a skill and increased through practice. If we don’t use our creativity, it also makes sense that we might think we’re just not creative. Instead, it would be better to say that we need to tap into our creativity and develop it. As we practice, we are going to experience both fear and failure, because we’re practicing. Understanding that fear and failure will come along while we’re being creative can help us keep going rather than stopping when we feel afraid or make mistakes and fail.

* Be willing and open to new possibilities. If we are stick on routines, traditions, or the way things have always been done, it is very challenging to use a creative approach. According to Nancy Napier, executive director of Boise State University’s Center for Creativity and Innovation, organizations might have different missions, but in order to be creative or innovative, they typically have wiliness and desire to be creative. A question that can help the process is: “What can we do that is better or different?”

* A mindset of abundance helps creative ideas flow. If we are focused on lack, or what we don’t have, it can be challenging to create. But when we focus on possibilities, opportunities, connections between unrelated things, and solutions, creativity can flourish.

* Continue to learn. Creativity taps into our existing knowledge, imagination, and attitude, and it connects with our resources, habitats, and culture to build solutions, according to Tina Seelig, a best-selling author and Stanford University Professor who focuses on innovation and creativity. When we think about this, lifelong learning helps us grow our creativity by adding to our existing knowledge.

* Practice “Yes, and…” rather than “Yes, but…” The “and” idea can connect new possibilities and lead to further ideas without creating barriers to ideation. Ideation is where we are making new ideas come to light and accessing creativity. When all ideas are initially accepted and considered, ideas continue to emerge. During this kind of process, rejections, limits, and criticism can immediately stifle any creativity that develops, stopping the process altogether. After brainstorming is finished, ideas can be evaluated and whittled down, but during that early process of connecting and creating, encouragement is critical.

* Use a process and structure to create, because structure and creativity go together. This might seem unusual, because structure is a rigid and limiting thing. Yet when we think about a violin string, it is only free to create beautiful music because it is pulled tight on both ends, focusing the vibration of the string. Because of the structure and limits, the violin can produce.