When I got to my “Flow” class last night I saw my regular teacher dashing out the door. She had to rush and get one of her children. She must have noticed my dismay (It’s hard to hide anything on my face) and said to me. “It’s okay, Lisa’s teaching.”

Great, I’m thinking, who’s Lisa and what is she teaching? Subs usually teach a different class – yoga, pilates or some combo thereof. “She’s teaching Flow – you’ll like it,” she said as she read my mind (or face) and dashed.

Several “regulars” were leaving, not wanting to stay for a second class without their favorite teacher. I only take one class and so was committed to my workout, no matter who was teaching.

I walked into the studio and was immediately disturbed when asked to turn my mat in the “other” direction. “Uh-oh” my system thought, “This isn’t the same.”

Lisa turned the music on. The volume was much too low, we’re used to LOUD music. She began the first routine. Nice, mellow, but wait! That’s not the next step, it’s different.

It’s at that moment that I jumped out of myself and began to be the “observer” of my behavior. (It’s a really good skill to have.) Look at me, a woman who teaches about change and goes to a class on “flow” unable to flow with the changes, small ones, happening in that class. Hmmm.

An object lesson in resistance! And look at who is resisting. Now that’s a laugh.

So I took the class (once I worked through my resistance I liked it quite a bit) and then took the lessons and talked to a friend about them.

Here’s what I learned: Resistance is natural and even when you know that, it still takes you off guard and impacts you. While focused on the thing that was not happening the way you wanted it to, you’re not focused on finding the joy in the experience.It’s important to surface resistance early and deal with it head on.Being grateful for what is, rather than resentful for what isn’t is the ticket out the uncomfortable place.   Even a grown, aware, intelligent woman still acts like a kid when things don’t go the way she expects them to. (Some things never change.)

Don’t we all just want it the way we want it?

Happy Holidays http://www.customercarecoach.com/public/holidaywishes2008.asp

I stayed in a beautiful Hyatt hotel last week in VA. The lobby was filled with pointsettias and the air was festive with holiday cheer. The front desk clerks were welcoming and the experience, for the most part, was very pleasant. Even a little neglect in the restaurant didn’t seem to bother me (in fact, the delay in the delivery of a dessert menu was probably a good thing for the waistline).

But there was one thing that really irked me - and always does when I am paying $299 a night to sleep - it’s the $9.95 I have to pay to get access to the wireless network so I can check my email. What is it that reporter John Stossel says on TV “Give me a break!”

Why is it that when I’m staying at a Hilton Garden Inn or a Marriot Courtyard or one of the other less expensive hotels I get internet access and even some bottled water for free? Why is it that in the high end expensive hotels internet access (not to mention $5 bottles of water) needs to be an extra charge. It’s really an insult! We know the bottled water distributor doesn’t charge the hotel more for the water - why is the charge being passed along to the consumer?

The last time I saw Fred Reichheld speak (he’s the granddaddy of the whole loyalty business) he talked about what he called “bad profits.” These are profits the company is making at the expense of the customer relationship - he includes high airline change fees, rental car companies that charge for gas at three times the going rate at the station, return check fees at the bank, and cell phone companies that give the best rates to the new customers while the loyal ones get charged penalties if they try to break out of old expensive contracts. The last time I tried to get home a day early after a long multi-state trip Delta wanted more money for the change than the ticket had cost - what is up with that? I got the impression while on the phone with the rep that even she thought it was ridiculous - there were open seats on the plane, but if I booked one of them I would be spending several times the cost of the original ticket. So I spent an extra night in a hotel - at least this one had free internet access.

Fred goes so far to say that bad profits are inconsistent with the golden rule. They alienate customers and they de-motivate employees (who usually think the charges are stupid too.)

When will companies stop being so short term stupid? If every coffee shop in town can offer wi-fi for free tell me again why YOU have to charge?

Read two great articles on “Sweating the Small Stuff” (the first one is mine.)
Sweat the Small Stuff
In Small Biz, There’s No Small Stuff

I meandered into Panera’s on Sunday morning for a cup of coffee and a bagel. Real coffee and some form of breakfast goodie is part of my Sunday ritual (breakfast on the beach with the NY Times) and I usually stop at any one of three local places depending on what I’m in the mood for.

Before I could order my scooped out toasted whole grain bagel I overheard another customer ask the counter person where her bagel was, apparently she’d been waiting for it a while. He pointed to a small white two slice toaster that was behind the counter and said, “It’s in there, it didn’t toast enough so I had to put it back in, that toaster really only warms them.”

The customer asked why a big bread store would be using a single toaster to toast bagels (on the weekend, ina tourist town, in season) and the young gentleman replied, “The regular one is broken.”

Now he turns to me for my order and I tell him what I want and casually say, “That broken toaster must be real pain, you probably sell a lot of bagels here, how long has it been broken?” “A few days,” came the reply.

“A few days??? You’ve been keeping customers waiting for breakfast, lunch and dinner while their bread toasts in that single toaster for days?” “Yes ma’am”

I suggested that they drive down the street and purchase several inexpensive toasters at Target so the lines would move quicker and then give the toasters away to the employees when they were no longer needed. The young man looked at me with tired eyes. “You are not the first customer to suggest that. And, we could also give the toasters to charity when we are done with them” I agreed that that idea was great and then asked why it hadn’t been done.

“Look ma’am ( I hate when they call me that) I’m not the manager here.” The look on his face and tone of his voice said it all. I smiled and said, “I understand” because I did.

I waited patiently while my bagel got toasted and took it up to the beach where I ran into some friends, who noticed how yummy my whole grain bagel looked and seem shocked to find out where I had bought it. It seems they don’t like to stop at the store - they don’t like the service. Of course I had to tell them what was going on there today, and as we were talking another friend came by and added his two cents to the conversation. And you guessed it - negative word of mouth took a life of its own as everyone agreed that if they were the manager of that store they would have, when they realized the commercial toaster was not going to be fixed by the weekend, gone straight to Target and get some toasters. And then expense it afterwards (ask for forgiveness, not permission.)

So as far as moments of truth go, I left the interaction with a negative feeling. I felt bad for the employee who knew the decision that had been made to survive with a single two slice toaster was a stupid one because it made the customers wait too long, and I felt bad for all the customers who had to wait longer than they expected to, and I felt for the company who lost mindshare if not marketshare because someone (who could have been afraid of the ire of the person above him or her) didn’t make a choice that would make the customer’s experience better.

Next Sunday, I’ll go a quarter a mile in the other direction and get my breakfast, and I’m likely to do that for many more Sundays to come. At some level, where the customer (me) calibrates the caring of an organization, Panera’s lost points for their shortsightedness. It impacted the employees (imagine being asked the same question over and over about the toaster) and the customer. Okay. Toasted.

Can’t say I’ll never buy a nother cup of coffee there, since it’s on a convenient corner. I can say I’ll spend less there than I used to, and find other alternatives all within a half mile radius. Lots of choices. No reason to spend my money there. Snooze, you lose.

Lest you forget the maxim click here for your mini poster - post it, send it, share it. Remember it. http://customercarecoach.com/media/pdf/snoozeposter.pdf

I am truly blessed. After I graduated from Marty Seligman’s Authentic Happiness Coaching course a few years ago, I was invited to join a group of coaches that wanted to meet twice a month to study and mastermind the applications of Positive Psychology in the workplace. Since then we (the Founder’s Group) have been meeting regularly. After four years we’ve become friends and worked together as colleagues.

Today our topic was “Savoring” and we talked about the book by the same name written by Fred Bryant. Savoring is a proceess where me mindfully engage in thoughts and behaviors that heighten enjoyment.  We had great fun discussing how we can do more of it in the workplace - we can start a meeting by asking people to talk briefly about something good that happened in their lives since the last meeting, we can slow down in the middle of meeting when things are going well and say something like ” I really love when everybody participates like this, it’s a great feeling”, we can end a meeting with a word of gratitude or appreciation.

We can make a list of the “10 best things about working here.” We can listen carefully and mindfully when someone is speaking and acknowledge the strengths we hear. We can take a breath together. We can talk about a recent success and how good it feels.

The benefits of savoring - many. Puts us in the state of positive emotion and so reduces stress, builds psychological capital, increases our resilience, broadens our capacity for thinking and gives us a more favorable biochemistry.

The challenges of savoring activities in the workplace - you have to slow down, be mindful, inhabit the moment. And you have to buck the busy-ness culture and take that moment, even if you look foolish doing it.

Would love to know what you do to practice “savoring” in the workplace.

At the moment I am going to leave this computer and go savor my exercise class.

Learn more from Fred http://www.alternativemedicine.com/common/news/store_news.asp?task=store_news&SID_store_news=712&storeID=02AD61F001A74B5887D3BD11F6C28169

I’m a person that believes  in “signs.” Maybe it’s my Italian Catholic background and my mystical tendencies or maybe it’s just fun to think that there’s a world of wonder and magic out there that speaks to us all the time.

 Like many people, I get frustrated when things don’t go my way (or happen when I want them to). And, despite all my skills in stress reduction and shifting my emotions, sometimes I feel that frustration strongly before I’m able to shift it. But I have a helper. Several times over the past year, usually when I am in that, shall we call it, impatient state, a bright green iguana appears - in the street crossing in front of me, crawling up the screen on my porch, perched in the tree outside my door, and yesterday peeking at me from the roof of the condo next store.

I know what it means - since one afternoon after days of iguana appearances I started searching for the symbolism and found it - it’s patience! Patience, the glorious quality of patience that reminds us to slow down, breathe deeply and wait for the natural unfolding of things. That’s often tough for us (former) type “A” personalities. The iguana has come to be a natural reminder for me that sometimes things move slower than I’d like them to and all my huffing and puffing about them won’t change a thing. I almost always smile at the sight of an iguana, and I’d like to think he smiles back at me.

Have a peaceful and patient day.

 An interesting question came up in my family last week and it’s one that has come up frequently over the past few months. “Do we have to be happy all the time?”

I’m sure that in the case of my family that question came up because I spend a lot of time sharing what I am learning and teaching others to practice in my work world - deliberately making the effort to be happier on a daily basis. I’m talking about  being mindful and careful to pay attention to one’s thoughts and one’s emotions so as to more adeptly create more positive emotions than negative ones.

Now we all know that family members aren’t always interested in persuing the same passions we have, and often tire of hearing us talk about it. It’s just so hard to contain myself. I’ve come to really enjoy the biochemistry of positive emotion, and knowing optimists live longer than pessimists (9-10 years longer) seek to find optimistic ways to look at situations in life as they present themselves.

Does one have to be happy all the time. No, of course not. Life is full of a full range of emotion and we are build to experience them all (Just like our taste buds are built to experience different tastes - hot, salty, sweet, bitter.) Personally I’m choosing to feel my feelings - all of them. However, I’m spending less time in the negative ones than ever before because I know that the long term effective of negative emotions on my body take too big a toll. So I am discovering a variety of techniques that work for me and others to make the shift.

I’ll be addressing this question again in my “Tip” next week.

Have a happy day.  JoAnna

Okay, okay, I guess it’s time I started a blog. If one more person asks me if I have one, I’ll just scream!

For someone who went head long into web (my first website in 1994) I’ve sure been slow on the uptake when it comes to blogging. My reluctance? It’s another thing on the list to do, and it’s so, well, public. If I forget to show up, you’ll know. If I don’t have much to say, you’ll know. If I’m on a rant, you’ll know. What if I’m not in the mood?

Like most things, I’m way overthinking it. So when I woke up this morning and found that Amy (our webmaster plus++) had already signed me up with wordpress I just surrendered and said “YES.” Apparently the time has come.

So here I am - so what do I have to say for myself today?  How about just simply “Thank you.”  To Amy for getting this started, and to all the people (Adrian, Mark, Jeff and… ) who have been nudging me in this direction for a long time. I’m here!

And I know that I will find a way to enjoy this and make it a place where lots of people can share their comments on creating great places to work, caring for customers and employees, enjoying more personal and organizational happiness and doing good in the world.

It’s a great day in the neighborhood!

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