Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

I’ve had ten days of continual company - first was a big family party for my Father for his 80th birthday then some good friends stopped by for two nights on their way from Denver to Portland.   In the first round of company - I got the pleasure of perpetually cleaning the kitchen as it seems the males in my family have developed an allergy to picking up after themselves.   I discovered the more I resisted cleaning the kitchen, the harder the job was.   But when I donned these “sexy” hot green rubber gloves, I became a white tornado and had the kitchen cleaned in no time.   Realizing that like a colicky baby, this too shall pass and my family would be back to their own homes, I decided to change my attitude and stop resisting cleaning the kitchen as it was not helping me at all - and it was hurting my ability to enjoy my family.   And wasn’t that the reason we all got together anyhow?

I started thinking, where else in life is resistance to whatever also hurting my enjoyment of life.   My friend visiting on her road trip with her family shared with me this book she was reading - called “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.” It is all about how resistance to anything sabotages creativity.

I recently completed reading The Untethered Soul - and in that book the author teaches you how to become more conscious of how you are resisting pain and how this hurts your ability to achieve long lasting happiness and fulfillment in life.   Whatever you resist in life persists.

I notice this resistance element is what stymies my creative efforts, ability to grow, and ultimately my happiness.   When I just get down to just doing it, everything flows.  A sense of all is right with the world prevails.    And I experience this in every element of my life.  I used to resist exercising - then I got this device called the Fitbit.   Once I saw how sedentary I actually was, it increased my awareness and stopped my resistance to exercising.  Now instead of resisting exercising, I look for opportunities to move more.

My perpetual question has become - what am I resisting and why?  Sales have doubled over the past ten days in comparison to the previous ten days.  Is this related to my letting go of the need to “resist” and just allowing things to flow?   Whatever the reason, the desire and the choice to resist anything is no longer serving me and I’m letting it go as it appears.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

A few years back on a road trip through Alaska I listened to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the main character works through his serious neurosis by completely focusing on his motorcycle and how and where it takes him through life. As I figure out my way from the dark existence I find myself in with this sisyphean task of taking care of my Mom with brain cancer, I was reflecting on how my journey is similar to what the main character experiences in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Talking with my friend Zienna yesterday about the quagmire I’m in, she said, “You are only in a quagmire because you are living in your ego. “ She went on to explain a three phased egoic model based on either being a rescuer, a prosecutor or a victim. And I could tell which one I was being based on how I was feeling. If I was feeling over burdened, I was playing the role of rescuer. If I was feeling angry, I was playing the role of prosecutor and if I was feeling self-pity, I was playing the role of victim. WOW – I am living all three roles in this situation I find myself in. No wonder if feels so dark and yucky here for me.

Last year based on David Hawkin’s book, Power vs. Force, I assembled an energy of emotions matrix. In Hawkin’s book, he shows how our emotions carry energy. And the more positive your emotion, the more energy and positive influence you have in your life. I created a summary that showed a return on investment based on emotional energy. The more positive emotion, the more of a return you got back living in that emotion. According to Hawkin’s this impact is logarithmic. The lowest level positive emotion is courage (which is the absence of fear) and Hawkins placed that at a 200 level. Anything below that level, and whatever emotion you are experiencing is giving you a fractional return on the energy you are investing. In my company we coined this “living above the line or living below the line.” The line being the demarcation of positive vs. negative emotional energy. I naturally live at a fairly high level of emotions – the your success is my success level. So for every moment I spend living at this emotional level, I get a 10,000 times return on investment. I am learning more how to live at higher levels, and I get glimpses of how to do that here and there – especially in meditation.

So creating a mind map of Zienna’s egoic model, I thought, hmmmm this feels a lot like a below the line existence. No wonder if feels so dark to me here. I decided to create an above the line mirror of the egoic model. I call this the love triangle (ooooh – that doesn’t sound so good). In the love triangle, you have partner, advocate and victor. In the partner role, you feel energized, in the advocate role you feel hopeful and in the victor role you feel you are winning. In this model, you feel that you are one with others that you are all in this together and that we will prevail.

In the Buddha Brain book, the authors talk about one of the causes of suffering is hatred. Hatred breeds in an environment where you feel it is us vs. them – a divisive situation. This is what exists in the below the line existence of the egoic model. In the love triangle, it is an inclusive existence that increases individual capacity to love others. The way I can tell the difference – when I’m living below the line in my eldercare responsibilities I feel burned out. When I’m living above the line, I feel inspired. (Inspired enough to share my experiences with others).  The main way I am going to stay above the line in this situation is to make taking care of myself the priority over taking care of others.   The only way I can be there for others is to be there for myself, first.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

In August, I attended a cancer support group to better be there for my Mom as she works on recovering from brain cancer.  The group was led by Bernie Siegel (author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles) .   At that meeting, Bernie read a passage from the book “Patience - A Little Book of Inner Strength” by Eknath Easwaran.   The story he read was about the Joy of St. Francis.   In the story, St. Francis shares that when you can be happy no matter what other people are doing or what is going on in your life, then you have found deep joy.   I downloaded that book that night and learned the joy in patience.   I also learned that any goal was attainable if one was patient enough.   I was sharing this book with a friend a few weeks later who told me about the book “Buddha’s Brain - The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.”   This is a book written by Rick Hanson, PhD - a neuropsychologist and Richard Mendius, MD - a neurologist.   The book is an amazing treasure at how to use your mind to develop your brain to create enduring happiness.   I mind mapped the book for my own later review.   I wanted to share it with others through this blog.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

It’s the start of a new year, and like every new year, I set goals for the year. These are different than “resolutions” as I fully intend on meeting them. Some of these goals are the same from year to year: get in better shape, spend more time with my family, work smarter (not necessarily harder), decrease expenses, increase revenue, be the change I want to see in the world, end world hunger, get a super power… This year I set a new goal. I will walk 1,000 miles before the end of the year. Instead of approaching this goal rationally, like I’m prone to do for any project, I wanted to apply the ideas in the book “Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior”, by Ori and Rom Brafum. If I behave irrationally naturally as the authors point out, I may as well behave irrationally in a way that helps achieve my objectives.

Several years ago, when I first read the Brafum’s book, I created a summary mind map to better harness my own irrational behavior.

Here is how I will use Sway to help me walk 1,000 miles this year:

1. Commitment - The Brafum’s state that people will stick with a course of action even if it is clearly not the way to go. Doing the math, walking 1,000 miles in a year will require me to walk at least 85 miles every month. If I am only able to walk 80% of the time (setback by the thousands of excuses I can generate) that means I have to walk 3.2 miles every day I manage to get off my computer. If I publicize these figures, I am likely to be more committed to it (what I’m doing here). I am less committed to updating progress, but will be doing so from time to time on my blog – www.michellelabrosseblogs.com. It will be filed under the category “Thousand Mile Walk”.

2. Value Attribution – High tech shoes, pedometer apps on my iPhone, Nordic walking sticks, that posh walking clinic to learn how to do Chi walking (see blog post) – these all make me want to walk MORE. Admittedly, I am a gadget, gizmo, techno head. I am inspired by this personality characteristic.

3. Diagnostic Bias – People live up to how others label them. Proactively, I label myself as a Chi Walker. Chi Walking is a fascinating technique. You focus on your posture with all types of ways to align your body to get a great workout while reducing the chance of overuse injuries. I am a chi walker who is on a 1,000 mile journey.

4. Perception of Fairness –When I was a new, young bride, my husband, who was almost a foot taller than me, would walk at a leisurely pace and I had to jog just to keep up with him. It felt so unfair and demoralizing. What I learned in Chi walking is you walk based on the pace and gait that is right for you. It doesn’t matter if the pace is right for anyone else. I am short, and therefore my gait is shorter than other people. Chi walking uses a core rotational technique that helps me move faster while maintaining my shorter gait. I can keep pace comfortably when walking with my taller (actually, average height) friends. It now feels “fair”.

5. Motivation – Different pleasure centers are activated in your brain based on your source of motivation. Materialistic rewards of achieving a goal don’t cut it for me as much as the intrinsic feeling of accomplishment I get for reaching that goal. According to Barfum’s book, this is pretty much the same for all people. Pushing myself past my 3.2 mile per walk goal gets me excited. Having somewhere fun to walk to with my family or friends gets me motivated to go out and walk.

6. Value of Dissenting Opinions – My parents raised me to challenge current authority, a trait I have passed down to my children. They all feel free to openly challenge the way I walk, where I’m walking, when I’m walking, how fast I’m walking, who else is walking with us, why we’re walking, the current weather conditions, our shoes, the brand of moleskin for blisters, pedometers, how much water to bring, and who will be our support vehicle if something goes awry. This creates a tremendous amount of focus and energy around the very act of going for these daily walks.

7. Aversion to Losses - A couple years ago, my mom and I were taking a water aerobics class from this character we nicknamed “Boot Camp Bob”. In his flag baseball cap over his shaved head, he barked exercise instructions at us while John Phillip Sousa music blared from pool’s sound system. He used to shout – “Get moving you pansies so you don’t end up in the nursing home.” This inspired my walking mantra - get moving, stay young. According to Newton’s first law of motion, a body in motion stays in motion

I’m now inspired to act irrationally and achieve my 1,000 mile walking goal. How can you harness the power of irrational forces to achieve your goals?

A. What commitments drive your current behavior? How can you change your commitments?
B. What value do you place on achieving your goals? How can you increase the value for you?
C. What labels can you use on yourself that will help you achieve your goal?
D. How can you make it a “fair” game to achieve your goal?
E. What intrinsic motivators get you fired up to go for your goal?
F. Who challenges you? How can you get them to do it more so you get a fire in your belly to go for it?
G. What will you lose if you fail to reach your goal? How can you avoid experiencing that loss?

Be irrational. It might just help you go for it!

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

It now appears that using some suncreens, instead of helping to reduce your chances of getting skin cancer actually increase it. ARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH. Visit the Cosmetic Safety Database site to see what toxins are in your skin care products.

I created a summary mind map for sunscreens.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

For the past three months, I have been leading a Mastermind group of small business owners near the Cheetah Learning corporate retreat center in Connecticut. The latest series of activities have been to teach them how to use the principles of accelerated learning and project management to increase their sales. It’s with a system we at Cheetah call the Sales and Marketing Accelerator System - SMAS.

The whole activity of teaching the group the SMAS was started because one of the mastermind group members publishes a magazine called Natural Awakenings. The magazine is distributed throughout the greater Hartford region to stores such as Whole Foods. It has compelling content on more natural ways of living in our modern world. It attracts numerous alternative healers and green oriented organizations as advertisers. Some of who are fairly new to the world of business and think that one ad will get your phone ringing off the hook.

I tweaked a copy of a little guide I wrote ten years ago called the Sales and Marketing Accelerator System so that she could educate her advertisers on how to run an integrated media promotional campaign and get better results from their advertising efforts. She agreed to run an advetorial for me in her magazine that teaches people how to increase their revenue. Here is the mind map created for the advetorial.

Michelle LaBrosse, PMP

As every project manager knows, communication is 99.995% of the job of a project manager.  Good conversational skills can also build better relationships - in both the personal and the professional parts of life.   I have been facilitating a mastermind group for the past two months.  One of the participants wanted me to teach the group active listening skills as she was not feeling “heard.”   I “heard” something a bit different though - LOL.

Over the past six months I have been studying how your emotions play themselves out in your body.   Your emotions start in your body - originating from the limbic part of your brain.   And THEN your higher level brain labels them.   HOWEVER, even if you try to hide your emotions, your body is still playing out their scripts.   And we all can read this whether the person is articulating it or not.   Say for example I am annoyed at you - but I don’t articulate it and instead try to smooth things out.   Your body will sense and intuit that I am in fact annoyed with you and will act accordingly.  Depending on how you see yourself with respect to me, your body will respond differently.   You might respond in your body by being annoyed back if you feel I have no right to be annoyed at you.  Or you might respond by being amused if you feel more powerful than me.  Or you might feel scared if you feel I am somehow more powerful than you.  Or you could be curious why I feel that way if you are living confident and comfortable in your own power.

I find the best way to build rapport is by the last feeling - one of openness and curiosity.   No matter what someone else is feeling, I have found that relaxing into my power enables me to interact with them from a place of compassion and caring.   I call this compassionate engagement.  The majority of people have positive intentions (as do I).   And it is in recognizing my own positive intentions, and operating from that perspective that I can create more positive interactions.   It also helps me to practice some of the skills that we teach in the Cheetah Communicating through Conflict and Negotiations courses as well.   The two skills that I use from these two course for Conversational Aikido are to state observable facts - this releases you from having to make judgements about people’s behaviors.  And to ask permission based questions - which stimulates buy in to a dialog.

Four years ago I read the book called Chi Walking - www.chiwalking.com. I have tried the technique without really grasping the concepts.   In April of this year, I suffered a painful shin splint from walking.   I had a series of keynotes and needed to fix the problem pronto so I wouldn’t be limping on stage.   It took three weeks to heal it and multiple trips to a masseuse, chiropractor and acupuncturist.

For long term risk management on my mobility, I wanted to learn a more effective way of walking.   I remembered the Chi Walking book and found a class on their website in July that would fit into my schedule.

Katherine Dreyer has put together a phenomenal training program.   I’m not that athletically inclined so learning new skills that involve my body doesn’t come naturally to me.   In ten hours, Katherine managed to teach 12 of us the skills to start on a path to a safer, healthier way of walking.   Katherine and her husband Danny have made their life focus to understand the bio-mechanics of walking and running and to effectively teach it to others.   The Chi Living team has also assembled a fantastic train the trainer program and have licensed teachers all over the world.

The Chi Walking technique focuses on engaging your core muscles to move you forward.  This way you don’t suffer over use injuries in your feet, calves, knees, quads, or hips.  So you can stick with a walking program for more miles and many years.  The additional benefit you also trim down your middle - something that just seems to keep spreading as you age.   You learn to use gravity to help you instead of hurt you.   And the technique in and of itself is a meditative practice as you have to focus on your core - a focus point in most martial arts practices - including Tai Chi.   You turn the simple act of walking into a calming, anti-aging exercise.

What I really liked about the Dreyer’s Chi moving techniques is they allow for you to be a beginner and move into this gradually.  I have worked with a variety of personal trainers in my life.   Most left me feeling like I was just not cut out for their level of physical endurance performance requirements.   With Katherine’s style and philosophy - you gradually work your way into this in a focused, gentle, and consistent way.  You start where you are, no judgment.  Even if you perceive you have physical limitations - the techniques can be adopted gradually over time and actually have you get past those.

Considering I walk several hours a day to move myself from points a to b to c, I am very thankful the Dreyers created a technique that would enable me to maintain life long mobility.   Here is the my summary mind map of the class.

Cooking school boot camp ended yesterday.   And I’m still in Italy.   I head home on Sunday.   I figured it might be nice to have some unscheduled time after the culinary immersion to just hang out in Italy.   I didn’t leave the room until 1.   Went to a little Tratorria a block from the hotel.   And had a lovely 84 year old gent sing us an Italian love song.   Boy do I like a country where I am treated like one of the treasures from God instead of in the US where I’m treated as if I have some type of self-discipline disorder for not being a perfect size 8. In Ominvore’s Dilemma, Michael Polen says the US has a nationwide eating disorder.  After being here - where these folks eat and eat and eat - all natural, locally raised foods, prepared with no additives,  I completely agree with Mr. Polen.   We aren’t getting fatter and fatter in the US because we don’t have any self-discipline.   We are getting fatter and fatter because we are purchasing crap products with too many preservatives and additives that help the food manufacturers increase the shelf life and shelf stability of their products, but that are literally killing us.   Spending five hours a day in the company of great people, enjoying great food and great conversation is the way to live - not running from one meeting to another gulping down whatever food you can quickly get.   The US doesn’t just have a national eating disorder, they have a national living disorder.

What is odd is in the US I am pretty much invisible - a standard middle age, rotund short woman of average looks.  It’s very strange - I am very well known in my field.   Pictures of me appear in all our publications.  Many people claim they know me.  Yet when they see me in person at meetings, they ignore me - like I don’t exist - until I go up and introduce myself.   Then it’s as if - oh my god, this PM “big wig” is standing here in front of me.   When five minutes earlier, they just blew me off.   Yes we have a problem in the US of what we think “successful” people should look like.

But because of way I look, people actually treat me nicer here.   I am reading the book Heat by Bill Buford.   In his book, he mentions a restaurant in a town just south of here called Zibello and a restaurant there called La Buca.  We had our tour guide Melanie make us a reservation there for tonight.  We were warned the woman who runs the place Mariane was a force of nature sometimes prone to storms, but the food was GREAT.  

Carey practiced her Italian all afternoon making sure she had the basics down so we would do nothing to cause bad weather with Mariane.   However, when we got there, we
were welcomed with open arms.   Mariane, just loved us.   She showed us her “cantina” - with all her salami’s, cheeses, proscuitto’s, and wine barrels.   She had her son-in-law wait on us since he spoke very good English.   We were treated like royalty.   Maybe she doesn’t like the skinny US reporters who visit her?   She was very nice to us.

The big adventure with going to La Buca was just getting there.   We had not ventured out in the car since we got here.  And getting here was a very disorienting experience.   We left for La Buca right as it was getting dark, and it was raining.   We made it there without getting lost - and had an hour to drive around.   So for another adventure we decided to gas up the car.   At the station, we couldn’t figure out if the car took diesel or regular.   After much discussion with the gas station attendant Fabio and his friend Stefano, I decided to google the make and model of the car on my Iphone - both guys looked at each other and said Google - SI, Google and were nodding their heads up and down.   Very funny - yes the answer was on google - it took diesel.

One last day in Italy before we head back to the States.   I think I might find some type of cooking school in residence back here where I can come live for a couple of months.   Who would not want to be where you are just totally loved for who you are - instead of being dismissed by the general population since you don’t live up to some ideal of what others think you should be?    I love the Italians.

I didn’t realize just how much I didn’t like truffles until I came to Culinary boot camp in Italy.   Which I guess is a good thing - god knows I don’t need anymore expensive habits.  However, I did have a very good time discovering just how much I did not like truffles.   We started out the second day of cooking school with an adventure to go hunting for truffles with Francesco and his truffle sniffing dog Leah.   This required an hour drive to the countryside.   And a half mile walk to their fenced in tree farm.  Truffles grow around the base of the trees and they can harvest them from September to February.   Only people who have passed a truffle exam can go get truffles and this was Francesco’s family’s private truffle tree farm.

After truffle hunting, was luuuunnnnnccccchhhhh at a local restaurant.  EVERYTHING we were served had truffles in it.  Lunch is no small event here - it lasted over two hours.   I think I learned more how to socialize over long meals in this class than how to cook italian food.

We got back to Academia Barilla in time to start cooking lesson number two - this was at 5 PM.  We proceeded to start preparations for a five course meal - which included, what else - TRUFFLES.   It appeared that some of my classmates were not faring so well from the rich lunch of cream laden truffle trifels.   So, I deviated from their menu and pulled out my ginger root.  YES, I traveled to Italy with my own ginger root.   (See post several down on my recovery kit for the swine flu).    It was a round of ginger root and chamomille tea for all.   Our teacher chef, Nicola, didn’t seem too excited that I had hijacked one of the burners and a pan for my concoction, but when he learned that it would help him get over the latest bug his two year old brought home from nursery school, he appreciated my efforts.   I turned my classmates onto the ultimate cureall of the ancient world - ginger.   Oddly enough, I could not find ginger root at the local grocery store.

Dinner was a very cool pasta ravioli like thing (I can’t for the life of me remember the name) that had an egg dropped in the middle, guinea hen in truffle sauce (we got to use a blow torch on that fowl),  polenta with a truffle cream sauce (yuck), and some almond biscotti for dessert.   I’m sure there were a couple of other courses in there - but they obviously weren’t that memorable or I would’ve remembered them.   I might have remembered if we ate before ten PM.  This dinner was another two hour affair.  By the second day of cooking school, I was getting to know my classmates VERY WELL.   Luckily - I really like these folks.    It was starting to feel like Culinary boot camp - second day - Truffle Hazing.