219: Making the Most out of Your Workplace Anger with Marlene Chism

Pete Mockaitis
Marlene, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Marlene Chism
Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was learning a little bit about you and I got a real kick out of the fact that you were at one point in your life a competitive bodybuilder.  What’s the story here?

Marlene Chism
Absolutely.  And people get that mixed up sometimes with like a power lifter, but it’s truly a competition where you’re on stage posing and showing your muscles, and you go through the diet and the workout.  And so I competed in that for several years in my 20s, and I always say that was then and this is now, so I don’t have the same body, but it was a lot of fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s hilarious.  I think that’s really cool, first of all, just the discipline.  You see, I had a buddy who just recently competed in an amateur contest and it was amazing what he was doing with salmon and spinach day after day to get in good shape.  But that’s fantastic.  And then on the other side of the spectrum, I had a friend who on her wedding day – I guess there was a fitness show happening at the theater next door – and so here is the bride all decked out in her bridal apparel, and she’s about to start walking up the stairs to get in toward the church, and there’s a bodybuilder wearing almost nothing and getting his photos taken.  And he says to the photographer, after catching sight of the bride, “Should I ask her to leave?” [laugh] So, I hope you didn’t have this attitude as a bodybuilder.

Marlene Chism
Bodybuilders have that weird kind of attitude – it’s very self-focused, and you have to be, but you judge everybody.  I would remember going to restaurants, it’s really a culture.  And we’d be sitting there and there might be an attractive woman walk by up on the salad bar or something, and someone would say, “She’s really gorgeous”, and someone else would say, “Yes, but her rear delts are really not very developed.”  Or, “I noticed her calves needed some work too.”  And so the only way you think about human beings is by how their body is shaped and how lean they are, and it’s kind of a warped way to look at human beings, but when you’re in that culture it just becomes your daily life.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, maybe that became a bit of a backdrop for some of your expertise when it comes to drama.  You’ve written numerous books. [laugh] That attitude might give rise to some drama, perhaps.

Marlene Chism
Sure, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
“What did you say about my calves?”

Marlene Chism
“Yeah, let’s fight about that.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, I want to talk a bit about drama and anger and composure and emotions stuff at work.  So, I know you have just a deep well spring of wisdom when it comes to drama, so if I could put you on the spot and ask you to maybe boil down some of your most hard-hitting wisdom and tried and tested tips on approaching drama at work, what would you put forth first?

Marlene Chism
Well, I would say that when someone says to me, “I don’t do drama”, I can almost guarantee that person has the most drama of anybody, because drama’s a part of life.  And the way that I define drama in the book is that drama is any obstacle to your peace or your prosperity.  So from that perspective I tell people I can have drama by myself without having another person in my life.  We all get into mind games, we all get into that back and forth, that confusion, that “Should I do it, shouldn’t I do it?  Yes, no, maybe?”, the self-esteem stuff – that’s all drama because it’s an obstacle to your peace, it’s an obstacle to you being prosperous because it interferes with your productivity.

So, from the perspective that drama is any obstacle to your peace and prosperity, we all have it, it’s a part of life.  So the work that I do with individuals and with companies is not necessarily about eliminating drama, but recognizing it sooner so that you can get back to peace and prosperity.  So that’s one thing that I would say.  And another component of the philosophy is that in all drama there’s always a lack of clarity.  And so if you can take that one piece of advice, that one philosophy, and if you can start to look at where you are unclear, where someone else is unclear, you can get to one of the roots of drama just from that.

Pete Mockaitis
So when you say “unclear”, it’s sort of like, you don’t really know what you’re after or what the priorities are.  Or what are some sort of examples of, I guess, drivers of unclarity?

Marlene Chism
That’s a great question, and it’s “Yes” to all those questions, but let me give some specific examples.  It can be as specific as, as an employee something has changed and that employee is not completely clear on their job description or what’s expected of the boss.  The lack of clarity can be your own indecisiveness about what direction you want to go, and therefore I would say the woo-woo way of saying it is you’re giving the universe mixed messages.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Marlene Chism
This happens in dating – think about dating.  “Well, it’s not you, it’s me”, “Look, I do love you; I don’t know what’s going on.”  This mixed message that we give other people sometimes because we have a dual motive – we maybe want to do something, but we don’t want to hurt their feelings, so therefore we’re conflicted on the inside and we give mixed messages.  So, in all drama there’s a lack of clarity.

Here’s another example of how it happens with some of the coaching clients that I’ve had.  So I’ll get a director or maybe an executive that will be talking about an employee and they’ll say, “Well, this employees is a high performer; they’re a queen bee though, they don’t get along with other people and they kind of navigate the boat here.”  And I’ll say, “Why does that employee do what they do?”  And they’ll say, “Oh, they’ve got a personality disorder or they like to show off”, or whatever.  But I’ll say, “They do what they do because it works, because there’s some lack of clarity about what’s expected, because it’s been allowed.”

So that’s some examples of how the lack of clarity seeps in, just by our mixed messages that we give ourselves and others, by not adhering to the rules and not course-correcting sooner.  If you really dig deep, if you get quiet with this, any area where you’re struggling, I always say that clarity can change any situation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that sounds awesome.  And how do you recommend going about getting that clarity?

Marlene Chism
Well, I do think that sometimes you have to get quiet.  Sometimes you need to hire a coach, because you just can’t get out of your own way.  But for me I’ve started to really go into a whole other layer of it with myself, and I believe a lot of it is about self-awareness.  It starts with the values that you say that you hold dear and embodying those and being aligned with those values.  And for me, if I’m in conflict, I notice how it shows up in what I call my “inner landscape”.  I notice how it shows up in my body, in my physicality, in my mindset, in my mood state, because when we’re fully aligned and fully clear, we are usually at peace and very clear about our next step or our next decision.

When we’re in indecision and we are going back and forth, it really hampers our effectiveness, and it sort of shows up as an inner disturbance.  So the more self-aware you become about something gnawing at you, eating at you – if you’re feeling resentment, if you’re feeling frustration – that’s a signal that there’s a lack of clarity somewhere, because when you’re feeling those emotions, it’s telling you something.  It’s telling you that you need to set a boundary, it’s telling you that you need to speak up, it’s telling you that you need to ask for what you want.

The problem is – since we don’t have the skills, the knowledge, the understanding and the awareness – the problem is that since we don’t have those components, we avoid or we pretend that everything’s okay when it’s not; therefore we add to our own lack of clarity because we’re not even honest with ourselves.  So for me it’s about getting quiet, it’s about noticing the inner landscape, it’s about noticing how I’m feeling on the inside, because if there’s those toxic emotions there’s some lack of clarity somewhere.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, intriguing.  It’s intriguing in that drama is very, I guess visible, dramatic – I guess that’s sort of obvious, ‘cause the word “drama” is in it.  So it’s very visible and striking and clearly apparent externally observable thing.  And you’re saying that generally its roots boil down to internally, people’s understandings and agreements.

Marlene Chism
Yes, in fact we think of drama as this external piece.  And so one thing that people say – I’ll ask this in a workshop: “How many of you would agree that we need to nip drama in the bud?”  And everybody raises their hand, and I’ll say, “Well, that’s the problem.  Because when you nip it in the bud, that’s like having a field of dandelions and taking some scissors and cutting off every single bloom and saying, ‘Okay, done.’  The next year you have a field double the dandelions because there’s a root system going on.”  And so what we’re seeing on the outside, the reason it’s so dramatic is because we didn’t deal with it early on.

And so if drama is any obstacle to peace or prosperity, a visual that I use for people to make it really sink – because the way that we all learn is through visuals, through analogies and so on – if we are looking at a PowerPoint screen, I would say, “At the bottom left there’s a little rowboat with a guy rowing to an island, and the island is on the upper right.  And so we’re always trying to get to peace and prosperity in our everyday life, in our quarterly reports for our business, for the next week of what we’ve got planned for our life.  We’re always trying to get to some island.”

But what happens is there’s an obstacle, and that obstacle shows up on the PowerPoint as a shark.  And so we talk about drama as being the shark, and you can tell what someone’s drama is by how they talk.  If you start to be an observant listener, you’ll hear people constantly talking about what they believe their obstacles are, and it sounds like this: ”My shark, my shark, but you don’t understand my shark.”  Now you can trade that word “shark” with “my boss”, “my financial situation”, “the argument I had with my sister”, “my weight”, “my age”.  We all have things that we think are obstacles to our getting to the next place, but generally they’re very rooted in something different and we don’t pay attention until they become so big that we notice them.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this is juicy.  Thank you, Marlene.  And it’s funny, I just wanted to touch upon drama as a little bit of an appetizer to the main course, which is how I bumped into you, is I was on the prowl searching for something for a listener who said that he just gets so angry with his coworkers all of the time, and it’s tricky for him.  And so, whether folks express it out loud or in facial expressions or actions… I know someone who threw a phone at somebody – not a great career choice.

Marlene Chism
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Not an ideal choice.  Or internally, and boiling.  I found you in search of answers to this listener’s challenge when it comes to anger.  And so, help orient us a little bit to that, first and foremost – how should we think about the emotion of anger when it shows up in the work context?

Marlene Chism
Well, this is so interesting, the way that you found me.  That must’ve been on the Lynda or the LinkedIn.com.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

Marlene Chism
The Lynda Learning – the video series that I did.  So here’s the one thing I want people to understand about anger – there’s a lot of shame around anger, and I believe we’re going to start seeing a lot more anger in our world.  In fact, we started seeing it really surface in a big way.  We’ve been seeing it for a while with killings and things that are so dramatic that it’s beyond human understanding, but we started seeing a lot of this really manifest during the political elections.  And I definitely don’t want to get into that – it may make somebody angry.  However, there were so many strong opinions on the two main candidates, and lifelong friends started fighting with each other, breaking up.  I’m sure marriages probably broke up.  My husband and I had a few heated arguments.

But because we’re living in a world now where we have speed and choice, the speed is so rapid that our thoughts, our ideas, our connections can get out with the speed of light, due to the Internet, Facebook, the social media.  We have speed, we have choice.  We’re overwhelmed, we’re drowning in a sea of choice.  And due to all of these choices, the speed and choice, it’s like we’re driving race cars, but we’re three-year-olds.  We don’t have the ability to manage all the choices coming at us, and therefore we’re on reactive mode.  The cortisol that’s coming into the body due to the emotions that come up – we don’t even know how to build that space between the stimulus and response anymore; we’re all just reacting.  We’re getting distracted by drama instead of managing it.

So, what I want people to understand about anger is that it is energy, and if we’ll start to look at it saying “I’m a bad person” or “They’re evil, they’re a bully”, we start judging ourselves and others who struggle with anger and struggle how to manage that energy.  What I have decided to share is that anger is an energy, it’s an emotion, and it’s an energy that wants to go somewhere.  And when we are not very aware of our trigger points and the things that contribute to anger that we can no longer control, then we’ve got to back up a moment, because it’s sort of like…

There’s this poem – I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it – but the poem goes something like this: “I’m in a hole and it’s someone else’s fault, and I’ve got to figure this out.  Then I get out of the hole and I walk around and I see a hole.  And I fall in the hole, and it’s still someone else’s fault and I can’t believe this happened to me.  I finally get out, I recognize a hole.  This time I fall in the hole, I recognize it was my fault.  Now I get out of the hole and I walk and I see another hole, and I walk around the hole.”

That’s how it works in recognizing anger, is that you can have all the regrets in the world, but you have to bring yourself to a point of awareness to say, “What is anger telling me?”  And here’s one thing that anger may be telling you: When you’re tired, when you’re hungry, when you haven’t had any kind of space, cortisol and all these chemicals have taken over and now you’re operating off of survival mode, not growth mode.  In fact, you’re not even able to use your prefrontal cortex.  Your limbic system is in charge now, your emotional brain has taken over and you’ve lost control.

So, you’ve got to understand, “Is it telling me that I need to slow down and get my needs met?”  Those needs being some rejuvenation, some laughter, some downtime, some good nutrition, because if you can’t do that, there’s no course that you can take, there’s no exercise that you do.  If you’re not getting your basic needs met, you’re not going to be able to solve the problem.  So that’s number one.

Number two is that anger is telling you, “Okay, a boundary has been crossed”, or, “I need to ask for what I want.”  And when we don’t recognize that we’re allowing others to cross boundaries or we’re not asking for help, before long the build-up happens and we explode.  So those are two reasons that anger happens.  Another reason that anger happens is because we’re all meaning-making machines.  So if you think about your husband or your wife, your spouse, your partner, if you continue to have the same argument over and over and over, you’re now living a record of the past and you’re not building a map to the future, to paraphrase one of my favorite people, Dr. Joe Dispenza, who talks about recreating a new person, a new way of being.

So what happens is, from these past experiences we get triggered and then we tell a story about who we think that person is, and we tell a story about our lives.  We say that’s the way it’s always been, it’s the way it’s always going to be, it’s never going to change.  And in the repeating of “My shark, my shark, my drama, my drama”, we reinforce the pattern and we keep it the same because we’re committed to being right more than we’re committed to changing the pattern.  And so, to manage anger you first have to become self-aware, get your needs met and start to notice your patterns.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  Well, there’s so much I would like to expand upon there.  Thank you for that comprehensive little survey of the anger topic.  So let’s see where to dig in.  So I guess first I want to hear – you said anger is an emotion, it’s an energy that wants to go somewhere.  And so, that really resonated with me because sometimes I felt angry, and I don’t know what it was – something in the news or just maybe things weren’t going the way I wanted them to go, or my will was being thwarted and frustrated in some goals associated with business or whatever – and so I feel angry.

And so sometimes I think when I’m at my best, I am excited to put that energy somewhere and I actually think, “I am going to brutalize this treadmill.  I am going to do some sprint intervals, it is going to be shaking left and right, and that is going to be supremely cathartic for me.”  And so, that does happen and it is quite lovely.  So I’d like to hear your take there, in terms of some of the best places to place that anger energy.  It sounds like a poor place is throwing the phone at a coworker, but a better choice would be exercise.  And what are some other outlets you’d recommend?

Marlene Chism
Yeah, that’s a great question, Pete.  And so I want to say something before that, and it’s this: Where we get hung up, the trip wire is that if we don’t know how to handle or manage our energy and our anger, we falsely believe that the anger we feel is the truth of our lives and the truth of the next step.  That’s why people kill other people – in the moment it feels like the thing to do.  In the moment it feels like the thing to do, to punch a wall or to throw something, because the anger is so overpowering that to avoid immediately dispersing that anger is so difficult.

So one thing that I say, and if a person can just remember this – anger is not the truth, but it is often the fuel that can get you there.  So, if I can know to myself just for a moment of clarity to say, “Okay, I feel like slapping someone.  I feel like throwing this.”  And that feels like it would be fully justified, but I have to know that it’s not the truth right now; it’s just a fuel that’s going to get me there, so let me go burn some of this fuel.  And like you said – a treadmill, a punching bag.  Find an outlet until you learn how to manage it, because the next step of it –  once you learn that – the next level in my opinion is learning to feel the feeling and let it process through your body without taking that step.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that sounds like a Jedi mind trick.  How does that go down?

Marlene Chism
It’s so hard, because it comes in waves.  And I’ve experimented with this.  There’s a great book. The Untethered Soul.  I got this from that book.  And the author was talking about when you feel a feeling that you don’t like – I don’t know if he said this or not, but this goes with it – we tend to either eat or drink, or some people surf the web, look at porn… I mean, there’s all kinds of addictive behaviors that people take when they don’t like a feeling that they have.

That takes away the bad feeling, and the trick to moving forward and transcending is to feel it and let it keep coming in waves.  And it’ll feel like it’s going away and then it’ll feel like again you’re needing to lash out or do whatever it is that you do that’s addictive, because these chemicals in and of themselves are addictive.  So if you have a habit of blowing up all the time, you’ve become addicted to the chemicals that are coursing through your body.  You may hate it, but that’s the very nature of addiction.  The person that’s on heroin – they hate heroin, but they’ve got to have it.  So it’s the same thing – that’s your cocaine, that’s your heroin, whenever you’re used to programming yourself like that – to throwing a fit, having an outburst – you become addicted to that.

So in order to break the addiction, what you have to do is, like you said, you can go run and get rid of some of that energy, and then later on when you get really better at this you can combine that with letting that feeling process through without going to talk to someone to have hear your side of it and being the victim and talking about how wrong you were done.  That’s fine, but that really just grows new connection for the purpose of venting.  Most of the time it doesn’t really help us; we’re just looking for someone to say that we’re right.

What I have found is that if you can let it process and do some meditation, do some walking, let it process… And it will feel horrible – you’ll feel like you’re going to panic.  Once you let it process through and you notice where it’s leaving your energy center, so to speak – you’ll notice energy kind of going off of your heart or through your solar plexus or in your stomach, and you’ll feel nauseated or whatever you feel – once you go through that, you’ll have some insights because you’ll return to normalcy after 30 minutes or two hours.  Sometimes it takes a while because those hormones that flood your system shut down your prefrontal cortex.

So when you allow that to circulate through, eventually those chemicals die down, and some days it may take even a day or two to kind of work through it if you need to forgive someone.  But I have been practicing this quite a bit in the last year or so, and I don’t get angry that often to that degree, but when it happens my first response is to want to lash out or to call someone and talk bad about the person or whatever, but if you can just avoid that at first, it’s amazing when you start to create that space how you’ll get these… It’s almost like a spiritual journey –  there’s these new insights that start to come to you and you start really looking at the one thing you can control, which is you.  You really aren’t going to control someone else.  You can set a boundary, you can ask for what you want.  When you can own the part of it that you play and figure out how to move forward, that’s when you’re starting to master your energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so in that world then, it sounds like the trick is to not flee to an instant pleasure, but rather to kind of pause, sit with it and just sort of engage or process, or allow it to…

Marlene Chism
Yeah, if you can do that.  And I like the treadmill.  I do stuff like that too – I go for hard walks or runs, and I do physical exercise.  And I think that’s a great thing.  I think it’s also great to try your ability to let it process for 30 minutes or an hour before you call anybody, before you do anything.

I think another technique that has worked really well for me, and I’ve coached some of my clients on this – I used to do some work around the process that I call “release resistance”.  And so the first part of the process was to get out a pen and paper and a journal, and just blame the other person or the situation to your heart’s content, until you’re drained of it.  And the next step is decide “But I’m willing to see it differently”, and in that willingness there’s a shift.

And once you’ve released and talked about the negativity and there’s no one to judge it – it’s not about your spelling, it’s not about your grammar, it’s not for someone to see it later, you’re not manipulating – this is just for you; you tear this up later and throw it away.  But once you’ve drained yourself of all the toxic energy and blame and everything that comes up with that kind of anger, then you release and you say, “But I’m willing to see it differently.”  And in that willingness, you become willing to be right, to be wrong, you’re willing for things to work out, to not work out.  And in that is where the real magic happens, when you’re really trying to shift something in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, so now let’s sort of zoom in.  Let’s imagine there’s a work scenario and something is unfolding that just got you very angry.  Someone said something, you felt betrayed by them, or that you were lied to, or that someone just sort of dressed you down or didn’t show appropriate respect, or something happened at work, you got angry.  And so in that moment, I’m wondering, what are some of your sort of emergency suggestions, in terms of right then and there your options are kind of limited, in terms of being able to go to hit a treadmill or being able to disappear from the world of communications and responsibilities to process for a couple hours.  So right then and there, what do you recommend that you do?

Marlene Chism
You know, on the video series that I did for Lynda, I gave some suggestions, which one was to breathe, acknowledge and then buy some time.  So, here’s something that I continue to try to learn and I don’t do it all the time.  To me the one thing that really makes me angry is to be caught off-guard – someone blaming me, someone overreacting without asking me a question, someone assuming bad intention on my part, will throw me into aggressive mode very fast.

And where I’m trying to work on my own… And it can be justified and they can be wrong all day long, but when we become leaders and we become people that want to live by our values, we have to choose to change some of our automatic responses.  And for me, what I want to do and what I want to share with your listeners to do is to always buy some time, to be able to say something like, “I want to fully consider what you’ve said to me.  It’s caught me off-guard, I want to talk about this tomorrow.  I can’t do it today, I’ve got a full plate.”  Because if you can give yourself time to process it, the next thing that you’re going to do is to say, “They’re assuming something that’s not true, or there’s some sort of maybe backstabbing, power struggle.”

You don’t really know what it is, but remain open, and then put together a plan for the next conversation.  And that plan could be to get curious: “I’m not sure I understood what you were talking about”, or “I want to fully understand.”  But get really clear on your end result, and be able to ask for that, because a lot of conversations that I’ve been in I’ve noticed this – it turns into something you did wrong and it’s already been done, and there’s nothing but complaining.  And I’ve learned to say, “What can I do to fix this?” or “I didn’t understand that that was a problem”, because the complaining doesn’t take it anywhere except for blame.

So the question that I use a lot is, for you as an individual, say, “What is it that I want?  What’s my outcome of this situation?”  If it’s the other person that’s hollering and blaming you or accusing you, the question –  it’s about listening and acknowledging, then saying, “What is it that you want?” or “What can I do?” or “How can we come to agreement?”  You need to focus their energy and your own on an end result.  That’s the bottom line – we need to look at the island, not at the shark.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, good deal.  So, I’d love to hear, maybe if you could bring this all together with a story or two, in terms of folks who had some anger situations that popped up frequently in their work environments, and then how they sort of navigated to the other side, to have an extra dose of composure and feeling good amidst those same stimuli?

Marlene Chism
I think one story I can think of is someone that I was working with, and he had just gotten a new position.  He had been a contractor for a company – it was an IT position – and now he was working with the company and there was a lot of political things going on, a lot of changes in the guards, so to speak; a lot of relationship dynamics which we wouldn’t have the time to even talk about all those here.

But the nutshell of it was, when he called me seeking help, he was saying things like, “Yeah, these two idiots that I work with, they said this.  And then at a meeting one of them said, ‘Well, I don’t even know why you were hired, we don’t really need you.’”  And I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is a tough situation”, because there’s many dynamics.  It’s not just personalities; there’s the political structures, there’s the relationships, there’s the change – all these things contribute to some of that drama.

And so, since I’m working with him, I asked him – this is the key component here – you’ve got to get clear on your intention with someone else.  If you’re having drama with someone, you’ve got to have an intention that works for both you and them, because if your intention is to get back at them or make them wrong, you’re only going to create more drama.  So I asked him, I said, “What is your end result with these folks that you’re talking about?”  I said, “Are you wanting me to help them to get fired, are you wanting me just to agree with you so you feel better?”  Because I said, “I can’t get them fired.  I’m working with you; I’m not working with the company’s CEO.”

And so that was really hard for him, because if truth was to be told, he just wanted to vent and he really kind of wanted them to be fired or to show up to the bosses the people that he thought they were.  And so I asked him, I said, “Would you be willing to have a conversation with them?”  And he says, “Why should I be willing?”  I could tell there was a lot of resistance.  “Why should I be willing?  It’s them that’s doing it, they’re speaking rudely to me.”

And I said, “Okay, so I’m going to give you an example.  Let’s say that you are a race horse at the races, and you’ve got different gates and you can choose whichever gate you want to go out of.  And what you’re going to win, instead of the roses, instead of a purse, you’re going to win relationship with these people and you’re going to reduce the drama.  So let’s say that that’s the prize.  And you can start out the gate called ‘They are idiots’, you can start out the gate called ‘I have to defend myself’, or you can start at the gate called ‘I want to understand’.  Which gate do you want to start out of?”  And he said, “I need to defend myself?”  And I said, “No, that’s what you’re doing already.”

In other words, until we start from the right intention, we’re not going to solve a drama problem between two people.  Someone’s got to be the bigger person, someone’s got to extend the olive branch, someone has to want for things to be better, because if both people are being little in the situation, it’s not going to resolve itself.  Is that making sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Understood, yes.  Alright, and so then what happened after that?

Marlene Chism
Well, he actually didn’t continue with the coaching.  He really, truly just wanted to be right, and perhaps that was because I needed to hear him a little bit more for him to feel supported, but I find this anger is such a strong emotion that people feel that their anger is the truth of who they are and who other people are.  And in order to overcome it, it takes an act of courage.  So with him, I didn’t continue the coaching, but it’s still a great story for me to use, because when we’re upset with someone else we always make them into the villain, instead of saying, “It’s just the way I see it from where I stand.”  And it’s really hard for us to see it that way.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Well, tell me, Marlene – is there anything else you’d like to share before we shift gears and hear a little bit about some of your favorite things?

Marlene Chism
No, I can’t think… There’s millions of things I could talk about, so you just lead the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, sure thing.  Well, tell us about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Marlene Chism
Well, I find one of my own quotes inspiring.  Is that a bad thing to say?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’ll see just how inspired we are.

Marlene Chism
Okay.  So there’s a couple.

Pete Mockaitis
Suspending the gap between stimulus and response.

Marlene Chism
Yeah, yeah.  One of them is, “By your choices you reveal your commitments.”  And so, that’s one that I say.  Another one is, “Knowing your feelings won’t the change the facts, but knowing the facts can change your feelings.  And when you change your feelings you change your results.”

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.

Marlene Chism
So that’s some of my quotes that I use.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.  And how about a favorite book?

Marlene Chism
I’ve got a library full of books, and oh my gosh, I don’t even know where to start.  I love The Power of Full Engagement – that one is really about how we use energy.  I love that book.  It’s not real new, but it’s full of good wisdom.  I love the one I brought up earlier – it’s more of a new age, more of a spiritual kind of book, but I think these things are very helpful for today’s time – The Untethered Soul – once again, it’s an older book.  Gosh, I’m looking around.  I’ve god Seat of the Soul, The 8th Habit by Stephen Covey, Focus by Daniel Goleman.  So many books; I’m an avid reader.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.  And how about a favorite tool?

Marlene Chism
A tool.  I like the tool of discerning fact from fiction.  That’s something I teach in my workshops, of being able to separate out the story from the facts.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Marlene Chism
Favorite habit.  You know, making your bed.  Get up and make your bed.  I didn’t make my bed for years, I really didn’t, and I just didn’t think it mattered and I thought, “Well, it’s just I’ve got the freedom to do what I want.”  But there’s something about that discipline and there’s something about just having a nice place that’s cleaned up and tidy before you retire – that makes you feel more complete.  So I love that habit, as far as just something you can do with your house.  Another habit that I have quite frequently is I do journaling and meditation.  I have time every morning just about to do that kind of work, and it really helps center me.  And I know that it changes your brain waves, so I love that for just personal growth.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.  And can you share, is there a particular nugget that you communicate in your workshops or your coaching or keynotes or books, that really seems to connect and resonate with people?

Marlene Chism
Yes.  “Everything is about relationship.”  And so the way you see yourself and the way you see others is going to affect the way that you communicate and the way that you behave.  And when I talk about relationship, it’s not only about other people.  We have a relationship with money and we have a relationship with time, we have a relationship with the idea of leadership.  Everything is connected, and in those connections we have relationships, and those relationships govern how we behave toward those ideas and concepts.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  And if folks want to learn more or get in touch with you, where would you point them?

Marlene Chism
They can go to www.MarleneChism.com, and they could email me at marlene@marlenechism.com.  They can connect with me on Facebook.  I put a thought of the day on Facebook, and so I have a lot of followers that love that.  I’m also on LinkedIn, and you can also look up Lynda.com and you can find that anger management piece.  And I think a few of them are free, so you can watch the first couple of videos for free.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect.  And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Marlene Chism
Get clear on who you are and what you value, and align to that.  As long as you’re living your values, you’re not going to go wrong, because that’s going to be your North Star.  And so, I would leave with this final thought.  This is my definition of leadership, and it’s universal: If leadership is about anything, it’s about alignment, and alignment is about focusing energy.  And so first you have to focus your own, and then you can guide and focus the energy of your team.  So if leadership is about anything, it’s about alignment, and alignment is about focusing energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, perfect.  Well, Marlene, thank you so much for sharing this perspective and wisdom.  It was really cool to get the rapid-fire pro tip goodness from you.  That’s what we love.  So thanks, and keep on doing the good work you’re doing.

Marlene Chism
Thanks for having me.