By Michael Kline
I recommend to all my private clients that the last thing you feed your mind before sleep, should be something positive. The last thing I read is a daily inspiration by Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening. One night recently, he referenced the environmentalist Kevin Scribner, who teaches about salmon swimming upstream. The gist of the teaching is that salmon bump into blocked pathways until they find where the current is the strongest. The strongest current would indicate that the pathway in that location is unimpeded.  That’s great, but that also means the current is the strongest – is it true for us, too, that the best path is also the hardest path? Great, I thought this was supposed to be positive!
In contrast to this almost discouraging concept, Jack Canfield taught me to use joy as feedback that I am on the right course. This is not to say that we should live in a state of constant self-indulgence. Hedonism might bring a temporary sense of satisfaction, but few would define the results as joy. Generally, we find joy in more meaningful pursuits. At first glance, I like the sound of that better than swimming upstream through the toughest current, don’t you? I now think both concepts are true and can live in harmony.
Whether business or personal, think of someone or a decision or situation you have been avoiding. The path straight into facing what is most difficult is the clear, best path forward and you know this in your heart. Out of fear, we continue choosing to bump into the thing we need to face the most. The salmon teaches us that the best path is straight through the tough current and we will be thankful once we choose this path.
Now think about a time in your past, when you dealt head-on with a situation that was bothering you. Regardless of the outcome, I bet there was at least a sense of peace that you got through it. The outcome may not bring instant happiness, but it will put you on the other side of bumping into constant obstacles, staying stuck downstream.
Once the difficult situation has been dealt with, the concept of using joy as feedback begins to make sense again. We cannot move toward love, joy, accomplishment, meaning, or our most important values, if we are stuck in the muck with the frogs.
Go for the joy. Face the fears, obstacles and blocks head on – the best path may be harder, but it is also clear. Consult your heart, gut and mind, then make the clear choice and soldier on.
Michael Kline is a Master RIM Facilitator and Certified Canfield Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

By Michael Kline
The news is full of headlines about the so-called bathroom law in North Carolina. We remember when this topic arose in NH several years back, so we know it is really about discrimination and ignorance, and has precious little to do with bathrooms or the workplace. There is, however a real challenge in the workplace that has to do with bathrooms and it ties directly into job satisfaction, turnover, engagement, accountability and productivity. The bathroom problem employers have is that their employees have been over-potty-trained. That’s right, I said over-potty-trained. Allow me to explain.
I have many nephews, each of whom, I call my favorite. One in particular though, is special not only because he carries my name, but he carries the attitude I had through my childhood and youth. Michael the 2nd, (whom we call Version 2.0), has always declared that “school is stupid” until he left school and entered the work force. Now he declares that “work is stupid”. He is in pretty good company, including most of his generation and many of his uncles. More importantly, he may have a point. Could his point be made more eloquently? Of course. Let us not miss his point, however, lest we tick off the generation that will be taking care of us when we are in the nursing home. Version 2.0 woke me up to the reality of just how “stupid” school is and how ill-prepared students can be when they enter the work force, or adulthood in general.
At age 19, Version 2.0 explained it this way. ”I just finished school, how do you expect me to make big decisions that affect the rest of my life, when yesterday I had to raise my hand if I had to pee?!”  I take his point to mean quite literally, we control every little behavior of children and expect them to take responsibility seriously. They are over-potty-trained to the point of having to ask for permission to go to the bathroom! We do the same at work. Even if you don’t literally tell your employees when they can pee, do you tell them when they can think, what they can think and with whom they can share their thinking? The more we micromanage, the less we can expect accountability. Thanks to extensive research on the subject, we now know that employees value autonomy. Our antiquated education system, designed for the industrial revolution, prepares students to go to work in factories where thinking is discouraged. Our more modern workplaces require critical thinking skills, mastery, independence and commitment. This should be a match made in heaven, since the top three motivators that employees value most are mastery, autonomy and purpose. The problem might be that we older policy makers are still thinking old-school. We need to maintain control. Version 2.0 has a point about that, too. “Work is stupid” he would say, and he’s right because work is about control. Control kills creativity and violates the motivators of autonomy, mastery and purpose. We were taught that control is everything, without control we would have chaos, right? Well sort of, yes. Chaos invites creative problem solving. To keep the chaos focused on the goals and to have it converge in agreement and forward movement, we have structure. Structure means people can have freedom to think, violate previously sacred cows, question everything and go to the bathroom whenever they want. They also live with a self-regulating system of agreements on how they work together that encourages full participation and engagement that has a sense of purpose.
Talk to your younger workers. The younger generations are not so different from us. What they are demanding is what we would have demanded if we thought we could get away with it. Thank them for making it ok to demand respect and engagement. We talk about the youth not having respect, but what they really lack is blind, fake respect. They have respect for people who recognize their value and voice. We older generations really were only faking respect for anyone in authority even if they did not deserve it. Those days are gone. Let us see what we can do, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said “to earn the respect of intelligent people and the affection of Children”.  In my travels everywhere, amongst progressive leaders, I see a hunger for structures that allow for creative and cohesive chaos and risk taking. There is a yearning for leadership methodologies that create engaging, meaningful and respectful, safe spaces where amazing work gets done. It is the future of successful organizations. I think we need to decide if we would rather lead through the movement, or let our new 24 year old boss lead us through it.
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Canfield Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

By Michael Kline
Looking for more happiness in your life? Me too. Even though I have everything I was longing for a year ago, I’m still looking for more… I’m not even sure happiness is the word. There is an elusive quality that likes to stay a step ahead of us, no matter what we accomplish. I am happy with my spouse, my home, my family, my friends, my work, my community and even the weather, now that I’m in the sun most of the time. Still, I long for more of the feeling that dangles itself in front of me like a carrot in front of a mule. I am going out on a limb here, not searching google to find out if, in fact, mules are actually motivated by carrots, because it is distractions such as this that move me off point. What is the point of our lives? What is it that we should do, how is it that we should be, what is it that we should have in our lives if we are ever to satisfy the hunger we can barely even articulate?
The best explanation of the feeling I have heard is from the great Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the fathers of Positive Psychology, the head of that department at U Penn, and author of a book entitled Flourish. He calls it “flourishing”. His research demonstrates that while happiness is a confluence of positive emotional experiences, positive relationships, and accomplishment, happiness leaves out two key elements that lead to flourishing beyond happiness. To flourish, Seligman says we also need engagement and meaning. Engagement and meaning do not necessarily add happiness, but add value. Examples he gives include sitting through a child’s music recital or taking care of an aging parent. Neither of these things being immediate happiness to your day, but they add meaning that you likely do not want to live without. We at Intus, have adopted the word flourish as our company mission “to help people flourish”, to create our vision of a more flourishing world.
Just last month, I was leading a workshop in California. Did I mention I love my life? We did what we could call a “flourishing life” exercise I will share with you here, so you can choose to play along at home. Now, we had about 200 people in the room, who had been doing personal growth work all day, so the mood was set, attitudes were positive and hearts were open. I invite you to share this exercise with someone you trust, and to start by settling in to a quiet space, and taking a few deep breaths. Feel your shoulders drop, relax your forehead and jaw. Begin with letting go of expectations and judgments. Open you mind and heart to new possibilities.
Review these directions with your partner first. You will need some paper and pen. You are going to ask your partner three questions. Take one question at a time, asking it repeatedly, at least ten times. It might help to have your partner close their eyes as they sense their answers. Promise that any answer, silly, serious, or otherwise is perfect. The only way to not get it right is to not play. Promise not to respond to any of the answers, either positively or negatively, or with any comments. Simply follow each answer by repeating the question. If they are stuck, simply repeat the question. Write down their answers for them so they will have a record of what they said. When finished with the first question with at least ten answers, take a breath and move on to the next questions. Once you have completed all three questions, simply trade roles and repeat for the other partner.
Question 1. What do you hunger for? Question 2. What excites you? Question 3. What difference do you want to make in the world?
At first glance, these questions may or may not strike you as life-changing. When presented in the proper context and asked of the heart and not only the mind, I promise they can be life-changing. Some people breakdown in tears through their discovery of missing passion in their lives. Others get stuck in the head, convinced this is an intellectual exercise. It is not. Whatever shows up for you is perfect for where you are right now.
Know that your heart is a brain in and of itself.  Research has shown that the heart is a processing center that learns, remembers, and acts independently of the brain and sends signals to brain areas that regulate our perceptions and emotions. This is why I suggest closing your eyes and breathing deeply to bring your awareness into your body when answering the questions. How your heart and gut assist in responding may surprise you. Also, by answering each question repeatedly, you have “permission” to give any answer without worry of it not being important enough, of selfless enough, or serious enough. It is like having a magic genie with endless wishes, thereby removing the pressure of choosing too carefully. So go ahead and hunger for a convertible Bentley (I did), a slice of pizza (I did), and world peace (I did). It’s all ok.
When you’re done, reflect, journal or discuss what you are becoming aware of that’s new. I hope you will email me and share your experiences.  Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Jack Canfield Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

By Howard Stanten

Within the circles I travel lately, I see a wanting repeatedly raising its head.  Sometimes it looks like a gopher nervously popping up out of its hole, looking around quickly, and just as quickly disappearing into its hole.  Sometimes it looks like a parched and disheveled traveler lost in the desert searching for a long ago promised oasis.  And, sometimes, it looks like a young child at an amusement park.  One moment jumping up and down for joy, her blonde bobbed hair just eeking over the line telling her she is big enough to go on the ride!  The next moment, looking wide-eyed, panicky, and wishing she was anywhere else.
The wanting is to have more impact.  The wanting is to make a bigger difference.  The wanting is to live a life that matters in a big way.
It makes me optimistic about our future.  I’d be even more optimistic if I saw more of us choosing to live the impact we are wanting.  Some of us continue to choose the comfort of the gopher hole, safe and warm.   Some of us choose the comfort of solitude where our egos can’t be bruised by the idea that someone else may have a better way forward.  And, some of us get wildly excited once we find external validation, by its nature unsustainable in giving us what we need to move forward.
So, what is it that we need to help us move from wanting to living the impact that remains outside our grasp?  The Native American Lakota people teach us about the Ten Sticks of Happiness.  We’ll take a look at the First Stick here:
 “I am learning that I am the most unique and special manifestation of creation.”
Our journey begins with each of us walking a path paved with the unique gifts that make up who we are.
As we come to understand, be with, and love ourselves as “the most unique and special manifestation of creation,” we liberate ourselves from the shackles of comfort zones that don’t serve us, discover that big impact is more important to us than being right, and learn that external validation is like an addiction enslaving us to our own insecurities.
Rick Tamlyn, creator of The Bigger Game, teaches that traditional thinking is often wrong when it comes to creating the impact we want to have.  Believing that who we are is enough, finding the courage to leave certain comfort zones behind, and leaving our egos at the door, are not qualities we must first muster before we can act.
“As soon as I find the courage I will….”   “As soon I get one more certification I will be able to….”   “I’ve got to figure out how to be a better team player before I….”   Sound familiar??   Tamlyn argues that the process actually works in reverse. It is by taking “Bold Action” that our courage, our willingness to work with others, our believing that we are enough, our whatever it is we think we need to become first begins to show up.  We become the person we need to be by taking action.
The key that gets us through the door is giving ourselves permission to get clear on what exactly is the impact we want to have, right here, right now.  What does it look like?  How does it feel?
Try this.   Flash forward…. You’ve had the impact you’ve wanted…. You are being honored by a certain group, organization, or community at a special dinner or gathering….  What is the speaker saying about you and the difference you have made in the lives of others?...  How are you feeling?...  What are the looks on the faces of the people in attendance telling you?  Bask for a while…. Take it all in….  Breathe deeply.
Returning to now…. take the key in your hand and open the door to the impact you just saw on those faces…. Don’t just think about it….  Stand up….  Walk over to the door, unlock it, and open it….   What do you see?...  What does it feel like to be looking into what’s there?
Now take one step forward… away from the wanting… into the doing…. What are doing?...  Who are you becoming? 

Howard Stanten is a CTI trained Leadership and Small Business Coach
Contact him at howard@intus.life
(c) 603-986-0153

By Michael Kline
I am blessed. I am a middle aged, middle class, white male and yet a minority in my own country. I knew in the 2nd grade, I was not equal and since then, there have been constant reminders. I tried to be invisible whenever anyone would tell a joke. In the 1970’s, most jokes I remember were about blacks, blondes and gays. All were funny, even hysterical, unless you were black, blonde or gay. The TV news would cover gay-rights activists or a pride parade. They showed characters that I could not identify with, and with whom I feared being identified. As friends and family would curse and laugh at the queers on TV, I would simply pretend I was invisible. In 1980, I was as normal as anyone - a Junior Air Force Cadet in high school, a band geek, an honor student, campaigning for Ronald Regan, crazy patriotic, Catholic, working part time and deciding between the military, priesthood, or suicide. There simply were no other options – being gay was not an option. Being celibate was the only acceptable solution that would keep me out of hell. Suicide would mean hell too; hmm, life was hell anyway, but at least life is temporary and they say hell is permanent. All other matters took a back seat to the constant stress of denying this life I was given.
I got into college on an Air Force scholarship – excited to serve my country, a country that preferred I didn’t. I traveled to 19 countries and 23 states during my twenties, but was too fearful to live in or visit certain parts of my own country. The church I literally worshiped, denied my right to exist. I was reminded just how low I was, by parents who disowned me, friends who abandoned me and strangers who hated me.
In 1994, I was Regional President in a multi-national allegedly progressive company. I sat at the big boys table as the good ol’ boys club passed gay jokes about my friend and lesbian co-worker. They didn’t mean anything by it. I sat there, pretending to be invisible, but really just being cowardly silent. That same year, we celebrated the marriage of a fellow Regional President to a female manager in the company – it was called a “first” and garnered much back-slapping. My partner Sal held the same position in the company as the woman who married my peer. Sal and I had done a commitment ceremony six months prior but we were invisible, as we wanted it to be; as we needed it to be. This pattern of behavior was so normal, that I never thought it was a problem. In my mind, I was never oppressed, I never knew prejudice, I was never disadvantaged in any way. Ignorance really is bliss. I just played invisible, played small, avoided further corporate advancement, gave up on family bonds and long-term friendships. All this was “normal”. All this was ok, until it wasn’t. I somehow developed my own strength, and I was lucky that so many braver men and women fought a hard fight so that we can be free. I am grateful to our military veterans who make our freedom as a nation possible. To build on that foundation, the solders that allow me to be free, strong and confident today were the ones waving rainbow flags on TV when I was too scared to speak up. The fighters that make our wedding day possible on the 4th of July, 2015, were the brave LGBT men and women who paid with isolation, humiliation, imprisonment, and sometimes their lives. Death is not the ultimate price. Isolation is a punishment worse than death. We were created to be one. We come from one and we will return to one. Separation is as painful as it gets.
I forgive everyone who hates us and actively fights against us even today. They are not homophobes – they do not fear gays directly, per se. They fear isolation. They are isolophobes. They understandably fear being an outcast with their church, their family, their friends and there self-concept. Perhaps I understand better than they do, what it is like to be an outsider, so I do not blame them. I understand why they would not want to suffer that indignity, and the pain of isolation and disdain. I know many have deeply held religious beliefs and this is not about that. This issue of legality is about – well, legality, not religion. The only evidence that this is a religious matter is the Old Testament, which would mean that our law should be that a rapist must marry his victim, a widow must marry her brother in law and polygamy is God’s will. This is no more about religion than race or gender discrimination, which was also defended by religion – until it wasn’t. 
A few remaining “leaders” are still afraid – perhaps they fear they will lose their base, their donors and their frightened flock. Perhaps they have stories and sins of their own that, in their mind, require some deflection.
When we learned of the Supreme Court decision in June of 2015, we were happy, but it wasn’t any really big deal. It was good news and we were thankful. Then it hit me. I cried. It is a big deal. It was officially declared by the highest court in the land, that I was okay all along. I am in fact, good enough, not less-than, I am equal in the eyes of the law. The real law, the law everywhere. I was born in Ohio, lived in FL, MA and NH. We live and work in multiple states and our families are in multiple states. We are not just Floridians or New Hampshirites, but Americans. We are just as American as any other American. I am proud of who I am, and I am grateful for all my experiences good and bad along the way, for they gave me the gift of understanding, empathy and love for anyone who feels less-than. I am grateful to be strong, capable and blessed enough to help others find similar strength and blessings.
This is a great time in American history. I am so grateful for all my gay brothers and sisters who went before me and paved the way that I can live in relative peace and now with the dignity of legal status and protection of a fully recognized American
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

By Howard Stanten
Like all saboteurs (those voices in our head that resist our connection to our own greatness), “The Procrastinator” tries to protect us and keep us safe and comfortable.  Those of you blessed with “The Procrastinator” know that the more important the task, the more you will hear from this invasive species.  You see “The Procrastinator” looks for things you want to accomplish and then covers them with a green ooze that smells like rotting fish.  The question I hear over and over again is “Why are the things I most want to accomplish so often covered in green ooze that smells like rotting fish?”
The answer just might be found in the belly of a large human eating beast tens of thousands of years ago.  If we were to do an autopsy on this beast, we would find a human who became too curious about the world beyond the cave, took a risk, wandered out into the dark, and…. became supper for a hungry monster.  In those days, life threatening danger lurked under every rock and behind every tree.  And, when the sun went down, it’s a good thing most of our early ancestors stayed in the cave.  We wouldn’t be here today if they had done tonight what could be done tomorrow.
Psychologists have studied procrastination extensively.  There is research that indicates that avoiding what is really important to us (read also: “scary”) is a relatively modern coping mechanism that has evolved to help us avoid the short term stress of facing our fears.  I suggest that this voice may have been lurking in our heads much earlier.
You see, back then, “The Procrastinator” was a life saver.  “Wait until the morning” was a necessary and lifesaving motto to literally live by.  The thing is, today many of us are living our lives in response to a voice whose life saving purpose has largely become irrelevant.   There are very few occasions when we find ourselves actually staring into the mouth of death.  “The Procrastinator,” however, doesn’t know this.  In fact, it can’t.  It’s hard-wired to be that way and lives in a part of our brain meant to protect us.  “Don’t do it Now-You might die!” 
An unfortunate modern-day consequence of listening to “The Procrastinator” is stress.  “The Procrastinator” disconnects us from doing what we want to do.  It gives that task the appearance, and more importantly the emotional feeling, of something we don’t want to do.  Who would energetically do a swan dive into a pool of smelly green ooze?? 
A vicious cycle is produced when we don’t do what is really important to us. We stress over the not doing, delay further, stress more, and on and on.  This stress is associated with feelings like anxiety, boredom, regret, sadness, emptiness, and regret.  Yes, many of us do eventually “get it done,” but we often do so by stuffing these emotions deep inside.  Usually, it’s another saboteur like “The Fear of Failure” that comes to our rescue at the last minute, saving the day.  Relying on fear to push “The Procrastinator” aside releases all kinds of stress hormones that negatively impact our long term mental and physical health.  We may indeed reach a good deal of “success” in life repeating this process, but the cost is high and the payoff in terms of any sense of personal fulfillment is low.
The volume of “The Procrastinator’s” voice for any of us depends on what we’ve been exposed to in our upbringing, and what we’ve inherited in our genes.   The good news is that, through conscious choice, we can access the volume control and turn it down.  When we turn down the volume, the green ooze washes away. Without that mess covering up what’s really important to us, we rush for the diving board, take a strong bounce up, spread our wings, and dive into the crystal clear water.
So, how do we make this conscious choice?  Well, the irony here is we don’t need to do anything more than simply notice our breath.  “The Procrastinator” usually has us running around doing anything but what we really want to do.  To get to what we really want to do, we need to stop everything and do nothing but breathe.  No “to do” list, no organizing the office supply draw, no email, no watching TV, no sleeping. Just breathe.  Here’s the simple formula for what comes next:

• Focus on your breath
• Deepen your in -breath
• Deepen your out- breath
• Repeat 10 times
• Simply notice and experience without judgement how you feel right now

I invite you to give it a try…. now…. Breathe…. Deepen…. Repeat…. Simply Notice
Chances are you feel less stressed, more present, calmer, and more engaged than you did a minute ago.
For those of us that need scientific proof before we change any of our habits, there’s good news that’s been around for a long time.  Deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for relaxation.  When we simply notice our emotions without judgement, we make the conscious choice to “be with” rather than “fight” ourselves.  This “being with” frees us to move forward.
When we de-stress, we break the vicious cycle that “The Procrastinator” sets in motion.  Emotions that were previously keeping us stuck become “(E)nergy in (motion.)”  Our capacity to wrap both arms around our higher self comes alive!
Like most things worthwhile in life, practice is the key. So, practice again……………
Now, turn towards the one thing you’ve been avoiding that’s really important for you to do right now and go for it!
 

Overcome fear, doubt and procrastination
By Michael Kline
As we enter mid-January, many of us have recovered from our resolutions and are back in our comfort zone, feeling bad about ourselves for breaking our promise to be thin, tan and rich by the end of 2016.  No worries, New Year’s resolutions typically don’t work for several reasons. 1. We choose weak goals. The middle of the holidays is not when we are likely to spend quality time reflecting on our core values and life purpose. As a result, our resolutions can lack significant meaning to be sustainable. 2. We choose other people’s goals. Without the deep personal work, we often choose familiar goals – they might be the goals our spouse, friends, parents or boss wants, but they don’t really resonate with us personally. 3. We don’t choose goals at all, we choose strategies to get what we’re afraid to say out loud. For instance, losing 20 lbs. sounds like a goal. However, if we ask why we have a particular goal, we might discover it is really a strategy to achieve something we are less comfortable talking about. Say I want to lose weight so other people find me more attractive – so the goal is to be more attractive and the chosen strategy is to lose weight. When the voices in our head start telling us that either the strategy or the goal won’t be achieved, it’s too easy to quit. By the way, research has proven that a smile is the most attractive feature you can offer! If the weight-loss goal is a life or death health issue, and your true goal is to be alive and well to attend your daughter’s wedding this summer, that may be more compelling than being jealous of your BFF’s skinny jeans.
Choose your own date to begin a resolution and your own compelling purpose do make a change. Ask yourself three simple but deep questions, or better yet, have someone else ask you: 1. What do you hunger for in your life? 2. What really excites you? 3. What difference do you want to make in the world? The answers to these types of questions and many other options a professional coach might use, will lead you to your compelling purpose. The compelling purpose is key.  
It’s time to live like you mean it, play a bigger game, live your larger life… so what’s holding you back? Once you really know what you want, fear, doubt and/or procrastination shows up. The little voices in our head convince us we aren’t good enough. The voices get louder, armed with plenty of evidence that suggests we should stay safe; stay small. We don’t know how, and courage is scarce.
If you wait until you build the courage to do something, you will never do it. We never have enough courage to take action, because courage does not drive action. Courage only shows up as you take the action that required the courage. When you connect an action to your compelling purpose, the fear, doubt, and self-limiting beliefs fade while courage, intelligence, skills… all the resources you need start to show up. I have been experimenting with facing fears – first it was the zip-line, then a free-jump from the height of a three story building, then I jumped out of an airplane. All were easier than quitting a job, moving to the country and starting a business. Still, I thought I was mustering courage to overcome my fears. In each case, I had some compelling purpose to the task – in one case, I was teaching the concept of facing fears to my niece and nephew, whom I love very much. How could I not be honest and vulnerable and push through it for them?!  I hated jumping out of the airplane, but I am passionate about teaching success principles, so I had hired a videographer to film my jump, and committed to use it for my teaching. If I didn’t have a reason bigger than myself, I probably would have bailed on that one!
Would you not run into a burning building to save your child? That’s a compelling purpose that has no regard for fear, skills or courage. A Compelling purpose drives us. The courage shows up as we step into action.
Being afraid or unsure and lost is a sign that you’re doing something worth doing. You will still sense fear and doubt. The voices will be there. Remind yourself of the hunger, the excitement and the difference you want to make and let your purpose drive your action. The universe always rewards action and you will always get feedback – success or failure are one in the same; just feedback to use for taking the next step.
You may have heard the expression “God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle”. Jack Canfield has a similar expression that went viral recently after being on Oprah:” The Universe does not give you a dream that you don’t have the capacity to fulfil”.  Your ideas come to you from some greater source, validating that the world needs your idea. You have the idea. It came to you, not someone else. This means you have the capacity to do something about it. What do you hunger for? What excites you? What difference do you want to make in the world? What are you going to do about it?
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

By Michael Kline
I recently attended an end-of-year workshop on updating employee handbooks. I know, not exactly the most exciting year-end party for sure, but it was far more interesting than I expected. The presenter was Thomas Royall Smith, a shareholder with Jackson Lewis, one of the country’s preeminent workplace law firms. With over 40 years of labor law and labor litigation experience, and being named one of America’s best Lawyers, I thought I would pay attention to his explanation of the key issues. Up until now, my expertise was limited to tales an HR friend told me ten years ago.
The presentation went through dozens of sample issues that appear in typical employee handbooks. The class guessed which policies were lawful and which were not. We were wrong at least as often as we were correct. It is absolutely astonishing to me to learn the technical issues that can get an employer in trouble. This doesn’t just apply to large employers or union workplaces, but nearly all employers, including small shops. Even if you only have two employees, if you do more than $500,000 per year in interstate commerce, you qualify – so even many small retailers or service business can fall into this category. Even in states with employed at will laws, the Federal law prohibits you a wide array of policies that most employers in our workshop thought would be lawful. You don’t have to have unions to have a work slowdown, shutdown or walkout, and you still cannot terminate the employee. Even if you only have two employees, if they are educated more than you are about the law, they could walkout under circumstances that do not allow you to terminate them. In today’s legal environment, you cannot afford unhappy employees. All that said, let us not worry about the details of what applies and doesn’t technically apply to you, since I am sure you want to do the right thing by your employees anyway. With that in mind, what was most fascinating to me though was a comment the presenter made toward the end of the workshop that applies to absolutely anyone who has even one part time employee. “Employees unionize because of how they are treated and because of poor communication” ~ Thomas Royall Smith. That simple quote tells me that we might be better off if we skip the whole workshop, throw out the employee handbook and just treat people right, and learn to listen.  If it were only that easy.
The complexity of defining “treating people right” and “listening” can get us into trouble as well. How we treat employees sometimes has little to do with their perceptions of how they are treated. The perception will drive their actions of course. Their perception is often held in secret until it’s too late to correct it. This means communication may be the most critical element of employee relations. Do your employees feel they have a voice? Do they feel seen, heard, valued and appreciated? If you easily answered yes to all the above, how do you know? We are talking about how you perceive their perception! This is almost impossible for you to be absolutely certain of, and if you have more than just a few close employees, it is impossible to be sure. When outside consultants interview employees, or 3rd party anonymous surveys are completed, the results are usually shocking and disappointing to management.
According to Gallup research, less than one-third (31.5%) of U.S. workers were engaged in their jobs in 2014. This is up from 29.6% in 2013 and is the highest ranking since 2000, when Gallup began tracking engagement levels of the U.S. working population. However, a majority of employees, 51%, were still "not engaged" and 17.5% were "actively disengaged" in 2014. Can you afford to have almost a one out of every 2 employees not engaged and less than 1/3 actually engaged in their job? Apparently, some companies can, because that has become the norm, but I am guessing that if you have limited resources or higher ambitions that mere survival, you will want to do better.
As a leader, in any leadership position from shift supervisor to store manager to CEO or owner, every thriving, successful person I know, reflects and proactively works on their leadership and communication skills. Humility is at least as important as confidence to the successful leader. Being willing to solicit and value the wisdom and expertise of others, being willing to solicit and value honest feedback from subordinates as well as customers, clients and superiors, being coachable themselves and genuinely caring about their staff are all hallmarks of a leader who doesn’t need to worry so much about the technical legalities of handbooks. It seems to me, we would be better off by getting ourselves and our management team in good working order as leaders and coaches. This is far more proactive and productive than hiring lawyers to protect us from the damage we cause by not doing our own personal development work. Be kind, be fair and help your employees be successful. You’ll be fine. 
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

Staying on Course
By Michael Kline

Driving close to home, especially when I was living full time in rural New Hampshire, I can navigate my way around town blindfolded.  However, I am writing this from sunny Sarasota, Florida, where I have come to rely on my phone’s GPS to tell me where I am, where I’m going, how to get there, how long it will take me to get there and where to watch for traffic congestion. In a strange city, I would literally be lost without it. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an app to keep us on course with life in general? Imagine, a kind voice, in the gender and accent of your choice, coming on your phone and telling you when there is someone you should meet, or when you’ve done enough work, or the right work, or if you should make that purchase or not. I changed Siri’s voice in my iPhone to be a male with an Australian accent, so now he calls me Mickey and mispronounces most street names; it keeps me on my toes and makes the game a little more challenging. If I had an inner GPS system to answer all of life’s directions, I wonder what voice it should have.
It turns out, we do have an inner GPS and it does tell us if we are on-course or off-course in life. Its voice is joy. When you feel joy, you are on course and when you do not feel joy, you are off course. Now if you have other voices in your head, such as the little judge who just declared this concept selfish, hedonistic and unrealistic, fear not. Selfish work may bring temporary satisfaction, but it does not bring joy. Materialistic purchases made for reasons that do not serve you, will bring a moment of retail therapy, but that happiness fades faster than a New Hampshire winter sunset. When you feel joy, you are on-course, in direct pursuit of serving your highest purpose. Serving your purpose always leads to success and joy. This would mean that when you are experiencing success and joy, you must be on course with your purpose. When you are living your purpose, you have more abundance in your life to share with the world. You have more love, more joy, more peace, more health, and if it serves you and others well, then yes, you will have more money and opportunity.
The trouble is, that if I do not know the address of the destination, my phone cannot tell me how to get there. In life, if I do not know my purpose, my calling, my destination, then my inner GPS/Joy monitoring system is of no use either. A professional coach is someone who is trained to help you identify your true purpose and passions while dealing with the voices in your head that tell you to stay small, stay safe, and stay quiet. If you are ready to learn how to choose your life destination, program your inner GPS and recognize the wise helpful voices from the chorus of chatter in your head, know that you can do it. Everyone has those voices and everyone has dreams of something more. We are all seeking the same thing. Pay attention to others who have been where you want to go in life and open yourself up to receiving help from your fellow travelers. The Internet if chock full of resources, included some free downloads and offers from my own website. Just try something, anything. The universe always rewards action.
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.  

As seen in The Conway Daily Sun
Taking advice from children
By Michael Kline
To whom do you turn when you need advice?  Usually, it depends on the subject matter. We rely on friends, family, financial advisors, doctors, nurse, accountants, attorneys, hairdressers, clergy, therapists, teachers, business consultants, parents, Google, tealeaves, horoscopes and fortune tellers. In making a point with new clients, I sometimes ask if they would turn to an 8 year old child for financial, career or relationship advice. They always say “no, of course not”. Ask yourself the same question now just to make sure we agree.
Once in a while, someone will point out that there is wisdom to be gained from children, and they are correct. Most of us would benefit from approaching many issues in our life more child-like; we often benefit from being curious, playful, honest and fearless; all traits a child or even a pet can teach us. We probably agree that most children are ill-equipped to contribute very deeply on life’s bigger issues,  when specific knowledge or wisdom is required.
Yet, I would suggest, as seemingly silly as it sounds, we adults tend to do just the opposite of what makes any sense.  We tend not to go to children as we should, to be reminded of the value of being curious, playful, honest and fearless. We do tend to go to a child for serious advice on finances, career decisions and relationships. How we do that, is by making decisions based on our pattern of behavior we established when we were children ourselves. We turn to our inner 8 year old, by relying on our beliefs about how the world works, what is emotionally or even physically safe to do, what our capabilities are, what our limits are, all based on decisions we made when we were children!  When we were between 5 and 10 years old, a vast amount of learning took place in our brains and bodies.  At certain experience points, we made decisions about things like power, money, men, women, speaking, being quiet, hiding, being in control, taking chances or not, being attractive or not, expressing ourselves or not, defending ourselves or not, sharing our big dreams or not, trying new things, risking success or failure, comparing ourselves to others and more. I think you get the picture.  Chances are, one or more of these issues struck a chord with you. If, in the 5th grade you remember the day at the chalkboard, trembling and embarrassed at not being able to finish the problem on the chalk board, as your friends laughed from their seats.  You may have made the decision or even the declaration that you are terrible at math. You would have repeated the declaration as your mantra through school and into adulthood – I stink at math! You still say it at work, frequently. Is it possible that your brain continued developing, as they do, well beyond age 10 and that at any point along the way you could have become comfortable with math? Has this belief limited you in any way? Has it kept you from making friends with other students you saw as “the smart kids”? Did it keep you from attempting job promotions or projects that require math skills? Has it lowered your self-esteem over the years?  I know students who carried this belief, and I certainly have had employees who use the anti-math mantra to this day, and may people I have not hired because of this belief. Now apply a similar situation to the belief that makes you most uncomfortable – I can’t speak in public, I’m too shy, I don’t like crowds, I can’t sit still, I have to always be moving, talking, or doing something, I just have bad luck, I never win anything, nobody cares what I think, why don’t people have common sense (which really means why don’t people agree with me), I prefer computers over people, or I’m no good with technology, everything I eat goes straight to my hips, men/women just don’t find me attractive, I’m too short, tall, fat, or skinny, I don’t have enough education, I’m not smart enough, experienced enough, or credentialed enough, etc. At what point did you make the decision that your chosen statement is true? You might say it is not just my belief, it’s actually true! Understand that all our beliefs are true to us, or they wouldn’t be our belief, but that does not make it true outside of our own perception. And it does not make it true for the future, even if it appeared to be true in the past.
Today, we have the ability to go back to the time and place where we made these decisions and create a different experience. Like going back in time and redoing the past event, or getting a child-like do-over on how we felt about it and what decisions we made about it. If we can change the “trigger” that causes our undesirable responses and beliefs, everything changes. If you have anything in your life or your business that you would like to be different, you owe it to yourself to see how you could be different.  Ask yourself what is stopping you from making the changes.
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

The Conway Daily Sun
What should you do with your life?
By Michael Kline
This has been a week about life. It was about the life of a nephew, which ended shockingly, at his own hand. Such details do not make it into the obituaries, perhaps because it isn’t relevant or perhaps because we, as a society don’t talk about it enough. Hours after learning this, I learned of my sister’s engagement to be married, as we struggled for ways to support my brother in his loss of a son. The conflicting emotions of grief, empathy and joy were too strong to hold inside. Before leaving town to be with family, I stopped by the hospital to visit a friend who is, herself, learning about life by facing death. It seems that while dying of cancer (yes, the C word following the S word in the same story about life). My friend is dying of cancer. We are supposed to say she is fighting, she is a survivor, she is strong. We encourage resistance to anything we do not welcome. Many people are stronger than cancer. No one is stronger than death and in the end, it is the eventual outcome for all of us. Let us be okay with that. My dying friend and I believe that we do not exactly know what happens, and that death might be the next great adventure awaiting us. I certainly do not know with any certainty and that is okay. When I arrived in Ohio, only a few hours after leaving my home in New Hampshire, I got a call about our 16 year old lab, Zach, suffering from an apparent stroke. It does not look good. Good is an interesting term. What would look good for a lab who has outlived his life expectancy? Who spent 16 years being loved, fed, played with and cared for? What would good look like for a creature who spent his entire life loving, swimming, hiking, camping, sleeping, eating, chasing tennis balls and assuring humans that they are unconditionally loved? My week has been about how we spend our life; the importance of who we are and what we do. It is about time, being and being there.
My nephew’s death was about life; his, mine, yours. My sister’s engagement is about life; how we celebrate it and connect it with others. My friend’s dying is about life; how we spend it, what is important and how we share it. Zach’s stage of life is about life; loving, living (and tennis balls).
Sitting with my friend, having exchanged many words in recent months about life, death, adventures, learning, growing and positivity, I asked her: What do you know now, that you did not know a year ago? She admitted she knew it then, but knows it better now. First, people do not appreciate time; time to just be; no thinking about anything, not working on anything, not living in the past or the future, but just being. Second, we do not appreciate being there with other people enough. Just to be there, without the need to have anything specific to offer, no need to be smart or funny, just be there. So, as we contemplate what we should do about our work, careers, retirement, house, kids, parents, friends, cars, hobbies, pets, cell phones, or the stress inducer of the day, relax. None of it is as important as we think. All we really need, we have. All we really need to be, we are.  Just be, and be there.
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Certified Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

The Conway Daily Sun
By Michael Kline
Should you start your own business? Probably not! Since my column is usually a little longer than two words, I am willing to expand upon the short answer and consider other possibilities. To say probably not, is an answer based on the probabilities and you are not limited by probabilities. Most people in the throes of making such an important decision are told the odds are against them. It is commonplace to hear that ninety percent of all businesses fail. This is mostly nonsense.
Think for a minute about where statistics come from. If you rely on government statistics, you could compare the number of Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) issued, vs. the number of businesses that file tax returns, and you would have meaningless data. There is no cost and very little effort to get your EIN, after which, you may decide against opening your business. This is not a failure, but would factor into the statistics described above. You could consider the number of businesses who setup a LLC or Corporation, and again, incorrectly assume that each one no longer in existence was a failure. Perhaps the business decided not to start, or perhaps, the owner was using the business as self-employment, like a job that they owned. Like any job, a self-employed person might decide to make a change and go to work for someone else – does that define their period of self-employment a failure? I think not.  I invite you to treat statistics like a weather forecast – pay it some respect, but do not let it control your decisions. There are times when I can accurately see a deadly storm approaching that is a client’s business plan, and more often, I see some potential for a storm, for which you would want to be prepared. Forecasts aside, it is always a good time to create your own future.
Creating your own future does not require being your own boss, but it does require knowing who you are, what your values are, how you want to be, what you want to be, do and have in your life. These are huge questions, often ignored by first-time entrepreneurs, while every mature, successful businessperson I know, upon reflection would suggest that time spent on these topics would be time well spent, indeed. So when do we get to the good part about making a living?
The degree, to which you make a living, is proportionate to three factors.  Be of service to others, have a clear mission and vision and a passion for the work.

1. Be of service to others. Do not take it personally, but the world does not really care what you like to do – at least not enough to pay you for it. What you do also must be of service to others. Service is a loosely defined term; if you are an artist, you might provide the service of enjoyment. How much enjoyment, to how many people are just two of many elements of the equation that will determine your business success in that endeavor. Look at your business idea from your future customer’s perspective of what they want or perceive as a need that you can serve. Stop presenting your idea in terms of what you like to do and why you think the customers need it. Your perspective takes a back seat to the customers’ perspective.  I have bad news for your ego. Being self-employed, you will have many bosses in many forms. While you get a voice and a lot of freedom, eventually, all your new bosses come before your ego.
2. Have a Clear Mission and Vision. When your retirement day comes, how will the world be different from how it is today?  My partners and I recently spent three days in retreat, mostly to answer this question. Any other work required clarity of our vision before we could make progress with any sincerity. Our vision, by the way, is that of a “more flourishing world”. This is easy to value, remember and share with others. Your vision is simply a statement of what the world will look like once you have accomplished your mission. The simpler it is stated, the simpler it is to focus on and to share it. Our mission statement was the result of having clarity of our vision – our mission is to help people flourish. Very simple and supportive of our vision of a more flourishing world. Once you have a mission and a vision, it creates unusual clarity and focus; tenants of every successful business.  (Suggested reading: The Power of Focus, Canfield, Hansen & Hewitt).
3. Passion. There will be tough times. No, really. There will be tough times you cannot imagine. I’m talking about voices in your head, monsters in your stomach and apparitions of the devil before your very eyes.  Without passion, few people possess the level of discipline necessary to do the hard work when everyone around them is losing their minds, the money is rushing out the door and the only light at the end of the tunnel is an on-coming train. If you’re going to own your own job, have a very strong commitment to the “why”.

Tonight, Wed. Sept 23rd, I will be leading a business startup workshop for S.C.O.R.E. focused more on the tangible aspects of a successful start-up. Cost is a $35 donation to S.C.O.R.E. Register online at www.intus.life.  We’ve covered the intangibles in this column. My next column will discuss the top five tangible elements for a successful business.
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Success Principles Trainer. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

The Conway Daily Sun
By Michael Kline
 
My life is nearly perfect. I do what I want, when I want, with whom I want. I enjoy good health, positive people, good food, good wine and a nice home.  I work when I want and enjoy more creature comforts than I ever thought I deserved. In fact, my biggest worry in life is that I don’t mess it up after coming so far. This is the story I was telling myself. You must admit, it is a pretty good story for a college drop-out, born to a drunk in a junkyard.
 
Cancer took our mother when I was 7. As the 11th of 12 children, 4 of us were adopted by an Aunt and Uncle who, in their better than their own past, middle-class way, tried their best to fix us. They never let me forget their disappointing discovering that in spite of their well-educated efforts, you can “take the boy out of the junkyard, but you can’t take the junkyard out of the boy”. Big Lie #1 - You’re no good.
 
“You have to have a 4 year degree to be worth anything”  Big Lie #2 – Credentials define you, and you are not enough without credentials.
 
“Your sister is going to become a nurse. (She did). She will take care of us when we are old. (She didn’t). Girls become teachers, secretaries or nurses. Since you are a boy, you need to grow up to be a lawyer or something (I didn’t) because you have to support a family one day”. (I didn’t do that either). Big Lie #3 – You cannot just do what you want.
 
I could argue that I got my perfect life because I believed these lies. I set small goals that I could achieve and achieved every one of them. I dropped out of college, bucked the system, fired the boss and went out on my own. I believed I was not good enough to subject myself to the judgment of others; a problem I solved by becoming my own boss. I believed that I would never make it as a professional, so I decided to create a little success doing anything that was easy to learn without an authority figure to judge me. Without a boss or teacher, my partner and I went into flipping houses, then the food business and then retail, each creating a little success. Life was perfect and easy, until one day someone asked me if I had a purpose.
 
Purpose? I have to make a living, that’s all I was ever taught. Purpose is a grandiose concept for spiritual leaders, philosophers and politicians. My purpose is to raise a family, make a living, pay off the mortgage and die. Looking at it that way, I was not following the plan at all. As a gay man, I chose not to raise a family, which admittedly, renders making a living much easier. We already owned three homes with no mortgages, and at fifty years old, in good health and bored, having a purpose for the second half of my life intrigued me. Maybe my life was not really perfect.
 
It turns out my core strengths are my capacity to love, my optimism and my creativity. The work I do when I am most lost in time, in “the flow” as they say, is teaching in a way that truly opens eyes and inspires my students. The concept of a more ideal world that excites me is that anyone and everyone should have the chance to flourish. The junkyard that could not be taken out of this boy turned out to be a blessing. Three lessons from the junkyard: Resourcefulness is more important than resources. We all have the ability to create something out of nothing. What we choose to be, do and have is entirely our own responsibility. Cross off lie #1. You are good.
 
None of my skills are taught in college, while a degree in chemical engineering, for which I had a full scholarship, would not build my credibility in transformational work. My intuition and wisdom at an early age however, to abandon such a wasteful pursuit, is a reflection of my natural skills to discern what is helpful and what is not. Cross off Lie #2. You define you, not credentials.
 
Music was my passion as a teenager; specifically the French Horn. I was good. Very good, if I do say so myself. And I do. As I lost myself in my room, practicing hours at a time, I would close my eyes and be playing first chair in the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall. On parental advice, I abandoned music to join the Air Force Junior ROTC in high school, which would almost guarantee me a scholarship, as would be required to pay for all-important college education. I have since collected a lifetime of evidence that every appealing venture I chose was successful and every unappealing thing I was pushed into was a failure. Cross of Lie #3. You can do and you deserve to do anything you like.
 
Today, my life is no longer perfect. Today I have a purpose and I pursue my passions. I am extra-blessed because my purpose and passion helps other people pursue theirs. All my successes, even created on my own terms, were still defined by the expectations of others. I was successful, as long as all I had to do was make a living. To live a life engaged, on purpose, with meaning and joy is perfect – perfectly messy, unpredictable, scary seemingly irresponsible to some parental models. Perfect indeed.  

By Michael Kline
In our last article, we talked about the great American Dream – Whether that is to create your own empire, open a neighborhood shop, or build a consultancy from a spare bedroom, most of us have had some desire to be our own boss.  We discussed the popular reasons for starting out on your own such are creating income, personal freedom, self-expression, autonomy and creating wealth.
If you missed part in, you can catch up at www.intus.life/articles. If you read the last article, you should have decided by now if your goal is to own a business or to own a job – you understand the difference between being self-employed, and working for your own company. You understand something about creating equity in the business. You understand how that might influence your growth and exit strategies.  Having an intellectual understanding of your business purpose, however, does not mean that it makes sense to you in your gut or your heart. It may be time to listen to your gut and/or your heart, so how do you have a conversation with your gut and heart without getting yourself locked up? I thought you would never ask!
Emotions first occur in our body. It makes sense that when you think of something that really bothers you, you feel it in your stomach first – maybe it’s public speaking, or heights, or conflict with a boss who scheduled you for an unexpected meeting, or spiders. Whatever it is, most of us have something that we feel in our body, an instant before our mind has a chance to give it any meaning.  Feelings are the meaning we attach to the emotions that hit our bodies. This suffering is optional. We choose to give these meaning, based on our paradigm – which I define as our point of view with baggage. We all have our own perception of how things are and how things “should” be. We each have a long personal history with a lot of evidence that supports our position that public speaking is deadly – worse than spiders, which are scary, but not as bad as bosses. I tell you all this, because now that you recognize that emotions occur in the body, I invite you to listen to your gut – it is not just a figure of speech, but a common sense, practical thing to do, given that your gut knows the truth about what you should do with major decisions in your life. Sometimes our heart and mind is at odds with our gut, but most of us when talking about business decisions, let our heads do most of the thinking and ignore the heart and gut.  It is time to call a whole-body meeting.
I have been lucky enough to assist on Jack Canfield’s team at his International success retreats. This month we had over 300 students, representing 32 counties and every imaginable profession, economic, political and religious persuasion.  One of my jobs is to host private sessions with participants who get blocked with emotional or physical issues. It was a very busy and productive week for all involved. Working one on one with successful people from all walks of life, we discovered and rediscovered the power of finding resources such as strength, wisdom and answers from within ourselves. With the right methods, including some Canfield methodology as well as techniques I learned from the RIM Institute, we can strip away years of frustration, financial blocks, strongly held beliefs and assumptions to heal emotional and physical pain and reveal clarity and freedom to move forward on life’s most important goals. Even people with years of therapy under their belt, often find new paths to releasing ideas they thought were a permanent part of their identity. In truth, it does not matter whether we are talking about money, business, personal relationships or health, the blocks and beliefs that keep us back in one, often limits us in many areas of our life.      
Like most decisions, business decisions should involve the mind along with the heart and gut.  To learn more about how we actually facilitate a literal conversation with the mind, heart and gut, visit www.intus.life/rim. 
Michael Kline is a Certified RIM Facilitator and Canfield Success Trainer for personal and group transformation. You can reach him through his website www.intus.life, or e-mail, mike@intus.life.

Would You? Could You? Should You?

By Michael Kline
as Published in Conway Daily Sun

The great American Dream – Whether that is to create your own empire, open a neighborhood shop, or build a consultancy from a spare bedroom, most of us have had some desire to be our own boss.  I have interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs and want-repreneurs about the topic.  Reasons for starting out on your own are as varied as the business ideas available. Top reasons include creating income, personal freedom, self-expression, autonomy and creating wealth.

I listed creating income and wealth as two separate categories. A livable wage/income can be created with relative ease, without necessarily creating a business entity that has equity or wealth attached to it. The simple question is do you want to own a job or own a business?  Most startups come to me with an idea that would allow then to make a living. They wanted to earn at least as much as they currently earned at their job, but to be their own boss.  If your business does not earn more than the owner is paid to run it, you own a job. If you could hire a manager to run the business and still pay yourself to oversee it and not be part of the productivity, then you have business value beyond owning a job. Too many people get excited about building a business they can sell one day for a multiple of 3-5 times what it earns. This is never the case when it only earns enough to pay the owner.  Before you start, decide on your vision for the long term. There is not a right or wrong answer, but your answer will direct your strategy and decisions about nearly everything during the start-up phase.  For instance, borrowing money against your house to create a job never works. If there is not enough profit beyond your salary, there is not enough cash to pay both the owner and the mortgage. Even if you have the cash, this may not a good investment, but there may be an emotional and psychological value worth every penny. If your job is making you sick, the money very quickly becomes secondary. You will want to spend some time discussing with a qualified advisor, not just of the financial analysis, but the emotional and physical well-being aspect of such big decisions.

Self-expression and autonomy are listed separately because some types of work (and workers) are very creative in nature, while others simply have the personality that does not appreciate a boss.  Experience has shown that many entrepreneurs, who start a business simply to rid themselves of a boss, fail at being their own boss. The reality is that these folks are not entrepreneurs at all, but rather workers who want to rid themselves of their boss and go back to doing their work. If you do the work anyway, then you could do better to go out on your own. The problem is that just because you understand the work, does not mean you understand the business. Whether it is being a hairdresser, retailer, chef or software engineer, your own expertise is not likely to include site selection, lease negotiations, employment law, supplier negotiations, sales, marketing, bookkeeping, etc. Every hour that you spend doing your craft, working in your business, is an hour that you are not working on your business. Outsourcing can help in the skill areas you lack, but is not as easy as it sounds. It is relatively easy to outsource bookkeeping, for instance. It is very difficult to outsource sales and client negotiations in a service industry. It is equally difficult to outsource supplier negotiations and new growth strategies in any industry.

To be successful, the would-be entrepreneur would benefit from some deep soul-searching. Do you have all the skill sets required for your business? Is it reasonable to outsource the areas where you lack expertise? Do you have the money? Can you and should you borrow the money? Are you truly passionate enough about the work to see you through the (all-too-plentiful) tough times? I know you may not like having to explain yourself, but you should be able to explain your specific goal and why you want to own a business, at least to yourself and your family.

Like most decisions, this one will be emotional and that is okay. We tend to use our intellect only to rationalize our emotional decisions. I have lost count of the number of friends and clients who should not have started a business, but acted on the emotional drive to do so. Their stories generally do not end happily ever after. Most of us crave autonomy, mastery, achievement and financial freedom. This requires taking 100% responsibility for our lives, which may or may not require starting our own business. If you truly are an entrepreneurial thinker, you may be able to do well enough working for others that you do not need to take the risk and endless tasks of business ownership. My partners and I will be leading a 3 hour workshop on this subject, Thursday evening July 30 at the Met Coffeehouse in N. Conway. Cost is $20 including food and drink, visit our website to reserve a seat.

By Michael Kline
as published in Conway Daily Sun

As I conduct training programs for local employees, I find a few common threads. I discuss many of them in this column and often I take aim at employers, because that is most of my audience, and I urge them/you to take full responsibility for creating an environment and culture for success. That said, I see in the classroom, as well as in the local businesses where I shop, that we have a shortage of well-qualified, well-trained ready to work employees.

In spite of state, local and school district efforts, the challenge of finding work-ready employees seems to be on the minds of employers I meet. I am told that coming out of high school, many teens seem to lack any work ethic. I disagree; I think they lack a sense of responsibility, goals and training. The results are the same, so let us stop blaming and consider what we can do about it. If you own or manage a business in the valley, your livelihood may depend on finding or cultivating your own better workforce.

Imagine a workforce in which employees are clear about their goals and are self-motivated to reach them. The goals are broken down into manageable "how much, by when" segments that allow them to get their jobs done with ease because the big picture is clear and concise.

Even if they do not want to have a lifelong career in hospitality, retail or customer service, they should see the value in learning new skills, expanding their knowledge, and saving money to support the pursuit of their personal vision for the future.

Imagine improved customer service because employees are motivated to create a better experience for both themselves and the customer because they understand that the way they respond to events directly impact positive outcomes or a workplace where interpersonal relationships between coworkers improve because they connect with each other authentically and appreciate all each of them brings to the team.

As my regular readers know, I have been involved in Jack Canfield training for a while now. My friend Trish Jacobson introduced me to Jack’s programs. While I have been incorporating many of these principles into my work with individuals and business clients, Trish has been busy working with our youth. This past winter, she applied the Jack Canfield’s Success Principles to a local ski school. By approaching each day with a sense of passion, purpose and clear vision of the outcomes she wanted to create, she was able to develop a cohesive team of dedicated people who took pride in their involvement in the bigger picture. Their sense of personal responsibility, willingness to learn, and their communication skills all greatly improved throughout the season. The staff bonded through their shared mission of impeccable customer service, which showed up in resort surveys directly measuring aspects of customer service and satisfaction. I should mention that about half of her seasonal staff was under the age of 25.

When she is not on a mountain, Trish works with young people through the White Mountain Community Health Center Teen Clinic and Community Outreach programs. She and her team make a significant contribution to Carroll County having one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the entire US. In 2010 she began incorporating some of the same principles into her health curriculum. In 2014, she founded the Pathways to Success for Youth Project. Her vision is to develop a classroom and online curriculum, which includes solid principles of success, elements of passion and purpose, tools to build self-confidence. At the same time, the program will help clear self-limiting behaviors and beliefs and instill a foundation of personal responsibility, goal orientation, taking action and entrepreneurial skills.

Clearly, the Pathways to Success for Youth is onto something - something big. This has the potential to transform education, our workforce, and create endless positive ripple effects. Trish, youth leadership colleague Mikayla Cerney and I will all be on Jack Canfield’s assisting team in Scottsdale AZ in August for a weeklong Breakthrough to Success training program. This program retails for $3500 per person, and Canfield global community has donated eight student scholarships as well as lodging to Trish’s program. I hope as the local community whose youth directly benefit, we can raise the airfare and other costs to invest in eight of our local high school students to experience this truly transformational program first hand. How different my own life would have been if I knew as a teenager, what I learned in this program at in middle age. For more information about helping our youth prepare for a more responsible adulthood, visit www.pathwaystosuccessforyouth.com.

By Michael Kline
as published in Conway Daly Sun

What is it you want to improve at work?  Customer service? Patient care? Quality control? Error rates? Sales? Communications? Employee Engagement? Check out this bit from Inc. Magazine: “Forty-seven percent of employees say that problems in their personal lives sometimes affect their work performance, according to new research by Bensinger, DuPont & Associates. The firm asked 24,000 employees using its employee assistance program how personal issues were affecting their work. More than 16 percent reported that their personal challenges caused absenteeism, and nearly half said it was hard for them to concentrate. Take note: If you think problems in your team's personal lives have nothing to do with you, you're wrong”.

At the far side of every training program there is a goal for work-related improvement. You already possess the technical skills to run the day to day operational aspects of your workplace, so what skills are needed to make the improvements we are talking about?  They are personal by definition. They involve the person and the personality and the unpredictable nature of the person, doing the work. If we do not make the training personal, the complaint would be that we are trying to script/program everyone into robots. At the same time, many people have the notion that personal matters are off-limits in the workplace. It as if there was some sort of law that personal matters are never to be discussed, with every individual deciding where to draw their own line defining what is personal.

Somewhere in the middle of every training program, there is a collage of personal issues that drive the problems and the solutions to our problems. My job is to inspire, motivate and train people in patterns and practices that bring about success, however they define it. If your people have low self-esteem, low self- confidence, their goals are too small, they carry a scarcity mindset, they fear rejection, fear failure, fear success, or do not have a clear vision, are these people going to help build success in your organization?  If you have these qualities, are you going to enjoy success in your career or your life? Imagine having a high level of confidence and the strength to ask for help when needed. Imagine having such an abundance mentality, that credit could be shared, and responsibility could be taken without a need to assign blame for mistakes. Imagine the productivity levels if everyone, including yourself had goals that made sense and correlated with a personal passion to drive results. This is personal. This is uncomfortable.

Indeed, if I do my job correctly, many participants will feel uncomfortable. All the good stuff happens just outside your comfort zone, is a popular phrase on Facebook memes, but that doesn’t make it any easier to be uncomfortable. I often start a workshop with the invitation to get comfortable, being uncomfortable. We can easily get used to being comfortable with a little discomfort and start to experience the richness of personal growth. Mind you, we do not do really deep, super-personal work with groups in a work setting; and we are talking about creating just a little discomfort, balanced with an atmosphere of emotional safety.

If employees (or employers for that matter), feel unsafe sharing what they consider to be personal matters at work, it could be a reflection of their insecurities or a reflection of the culture in the workplace. If trust with co-workers or the boss is low, we would need to work on that first. This summer, we have been running short public workshops dealing with some very popular topics that dramatically affect how people perform at work. These short workshops are very small groups of people who generally do not know one-another and don’t work together. Somehow, this makes it emotionally safer to get voluntarily more personal. It is almost universally true that people are more comfortable sharing personal insights and challenges with total strangers than they are with coworkers. What does that say about our work relationships? What level of trust is there at work if strangers are safer than co-workers? Strangers are not gunning for your job. Strangers will not fire you, gossip about you, or punish you with lousy schedules as a result of knowing your secret weakness. It is easier to hold in the stress and make ourselves literally, physical ill than it is to risk being vulnerable at work. It pains me to know this. It pains me to know so many workers (and bosses) who are actually living this way. It is unnecessary. It is personal. It is also a work issue. The workplace is making us sick with toxic environments that do not support the emotional needs of the workers. It is my observation that not only do most workplaces not proactively support these needs, many are actively contributing to the problem. We teach what you allow. Shouting at employees, verbally abusing one another, storming around like angry, drunken, violent parents with no coping skills, is acceptable behavior in too many workplaces. On the other end of the spectrum, some employees (and some employers) simply shut down at the first sign of conflict. They may even feel that any question of their work, no matter how kindly presented, is a personal attack. These people simply shut down and walk away from conversations as if their passivity would protect them from the impending storm that does not even exist outside their imagination. We wonder why we must “walk on eggshells” with some people, who are not strong enough to handle any feedback or input at all. How are these situations going to get better without being personal?

We need to be willing to get to know ourselves and care for ourselves first. We then need to know and care for one another. We connect with others through stories, awareness and empathy. We build trust by extending trust, by making and keeping promises, and by being transparent. These things require personal strength and self-confidence. It is time to get uncomfortable and stop hiding behind our “right” to not deal with personal matters. It is time to live healthy, happy, vibrant lives and surround ourselves with other happy, healthy vibrant people.

By Michael Kline
as published in Conway Daily Sun

Don’t you just love it when someone recommends a book you don’t want to read? I did not need a book called The Success Principles. What could one more book teach me that I hadn't read a thousand times already?! This was the dismissive thought running through my mind as a friend was espousing the wisdom of Jack Canfield.  I have already been outside of my comfort zone, I was already thinking outside the box, I was already living the dream. I reviewed the official checklist of success items in our culture.  My partner and I had already started a business. We had done that 6 times already. We have the house we want, the fancy car, the black lab and a winter home in Florida. I had traveled, tried new things, risked failure, risked success, learned to de-stress, lost weight, embraced nature and enjoy many positive relationships. Leave me alone, my life is perfect!  

I had heard it all before.  Responsibility, goals, accountability, blah blah blah. To be honest, I went well beyond blah blah blah, I threw in a yada, yada, yada, which is a considerably more refined denunciation of the particulars being discussed.  

You don't know what you don’t know... I should have bought the book. I could have had a quick read and put it on the shelf with a thousand other books, each with its promise to be the one that would change my life. That would have been too easy. Instead, I signed up for a year-long train the trainer program with Jack Canfield, author of The Success Principles. I thought did not need the principles, but I did want to expand my training business and learn from the master.  

I did not know how to admit I was stuck. I did not know how to set a goal that was (up until then) unrealistic. I did not know how to quiet the critical voices in my head. I did not know that everything I knew for sure was subject to change. If I had read the book, it would have confirmed that I already knew it all and nothing would have changed. The experiential version of the same principles landed me on another planet where there is no gravity, energy is visible and emotions ooze out of your pores.   

How Jack Canfield ruined my life… My life was perfect, until I knew it wasn't. I went into Jack's classroom, ready to become a world-class trainer and grow my seminar business accordingly. Day one - I am in over my head - this room is full of successful entrepreneurs, authors, speakers and gurus of all types, from all over the world. I have done nothing compared to most of these people. What's that? I shouldn't compare myself? I know, but have you seen these people?! What's that? You want me to state my life purpose? Out loud? What's next, you want me to admit my father didn't love me and my mother didn't breast feed me and my biggest fear is that people will find out that I don't really know what I'm doing? Oh. Okay, I admit it. I have baggage. Lots of baggage packed with fears, beliefs I know to be absolute truth, and a couple of jackets called confidence, that I sometimes wear to cover up everything else. Yes, I also packed a swimsuit, just in case I decided to dive in, and running shoes in case I decided to make a break for it. Yes, I'm still speaking in metaphors while wondering if I had adequate writing skills, should it feel necessary to point them out. My ego was a melted puddle on the floor and my self-esteem was rocking in a fetal position in the corner. What a mess Jack Canfield made of my life!  

I was happy, healthy, financially secure, capable and confident. Now, my life is about becoming more authentic, vulnerable, loving, open, and pursuing frightening things. I am risking exposure, failure, success, my identity, my self-concept and my future on something as trite as finding my life purpose and living it completely.  I was raised by a man who would say there is no reason to complicate your life with this nonsense. When you have nothing to complain about, just keep your head down and stay out of trouble until you qualify for Social Security and sail off to your funeral. What drives us to yearn for more than simple “Success”, whatever that is? When you have the life everyone else wants, you should be grateful.  What if, beyond being grateful, it still doesn’t feel like enough? What is enough? What could be different to make it better instead of just more? How do we get beyond success, to find real meaning and fulfillment in our lives? Is it simply a matter of redefining the word success to include more meaningful concepts? Why are these concepts so universally sought and yet so universally elusive? This is my new quest. To live my life purpose and help others find and live theirs. It will be hard. It will be scary. I am doing it anyway.