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As we prepare to close off a year that has seen more anxiety, hate speech, anger, and divisive behavior than ever before, it is a good time now to review the WORDS we use as a way of bringing us back to calm and center. 1. Speak out loud and write words of gratitude. As dark as times might be in our life, that ability to appreciate what we do have is not only good for the spirit but also good for our bottom line. According to David DeSeno, a professor in psychology at Northeaster University, “Gratitude makes us value the future more… overcoming our bias toward immediate gratification.”  Gratitude also helps us become less materialistic as we realize that much we have to be grateful for are not things! 2. Ask people how you can help them. Assisting people in need is a profound way to realize that we are all in this together. Whether giving time, talent, or treasure, you open your mind to adaptive thinking, a key resiliency ingredient.  Just because I might not have the “treasure”, I might have the talent. For example, I want to support United World College designed to inspire students to create a more peaceful and sustainable future through education. The concept is that junior and senior high school students from around the globe live in a community on one of 17 campuses for two years. They graduate with an international baccalaureate degree and an understanding and appreciation of differences. While I don’t have–right now—the treasure to provide a scholarship, I have offered my writing talent to capture the story of amazing alums. 3. Say a gracious “no thanks” when your instinct tells you. “No thank you.” “Not at this time.” “It appears we have a difference of opinions.” These phrases can keep us from a negative spiral that is draining and sometimes even demeaning. For example, I have a colleague who blasted out an angry email, making gross generalizations boldly stating that the recipients of the email were “snowflakes”—a term I later learned belonged to the “alt-right” vocabulary. I have chosen not to respond. My gut said it would be a tit-for-tat email exchange that could only get worse. 4. Speak words of love. OK. This sounds rather suspicious and airy. However, Og Mandino, in his best selling book, The Greatest Secret in the World, introduces love as the first meditation theme. He writes: “I greet this day with love in my heart for only the unseen power of love will open hearts. I will praise my enemies and they will become friends. I will encourage my friends and they will become family. Always will I dig for reasons to applaud; never will I scratch for excuses to gossip.” So on that note, I do love you, my faithful readers.And indeed... I am most grateful for you.

On Dec 10, 1905, O’Henry’s famous short story, The Gift of the Magi, appeared in the New York Sunday World. The summary of this classic tale is of a young couple of limited means. Jim’s most prized possession is a pocket watch that belonged to his grandfather and father.  Della treasures her long hair that fell to her knees. On Christmas Eve, Della pays bills and realizes she has only $1.87 left to buy Jim a present. She really wants to buy him a chain for his pocket watch. But the cost is beyond her ability.  She suddenly remembers that she can sell her hair. She rushes out, has it cuts, earns $20 and is able to buy the $21 chain. That night, she pulls out her present and hands it to Jim who has been staring at her in a strange fashion. The reason: he sold his pocket watch to buy her beautiful hair combs that she can no longer use. In truth, they gave each other the best gift of all: gifts of love given through self-sacrifice. Fast forward to 2016. Jim owns the latest I-Phone 7, a device he depends upon for everything including time. He didn’t want his grandfather’s wristwatch because it wasn’t high-tech. Della’s prize possession is her MacAir laptop. She uses it for everything from email to watching Netflix in bed, a benefit of her Amazon Prime membership. But like our young couple of another century, they too are burdened by paying bills, paying off college loans, and coming up with monthly rent because house flippers have run up the price of homes. What will they give each other? Jim puts his cellphone in a closet. Della puts her laptop under the bed. From Christmas Eve until Dec 26, they give each other a most rare gift: undivided attention. Imagine! Something to think about.

Grace has been defined as a “gift of God, freely given”.  People with grace evoke a sense of calm with fluid movements and unpretentious presence.  And grace-filled moments rise when a convergence of unexpected events and people evoke a sense of wonder and joy. So how does this combine with gratitude to impact resiliency? Glad you asked. Expressions of appreciation and gratitude can never be demanded. Because of that, we are delighted and often surprised when someone notices our actions and says “thank you.” We are no longer taken for granted but instead, acknowledged for the contribution we made.We smile. We expand. We feel stronger. In fact, according to the latest research in the journal Personal Relationships, spousal gratitude is found to be the best predicator of marital quality and seems to have protective effects against marital conflict.The marriage itself becomes resilient. When we are in the presence of people whom we acquaint with grace, their calm demeanor has a spillover effect. Our anxiety can lessen. Our respiration slows. We become more attuned to the NOW and not a worrisome future. Years ago, I had the amazing opportunity to sit on the ground at a remote monastery in the village of Nako in the Indian Himalayas. Under a parachute silk tent, we joined villagers who had come from parts of this remote region to this once-in-a-lifetime event. In front of me was the His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. He spoke in Tibetan to the villagers and monks gathered before him. Although I understood not a word, his presence softly covered all in compassion, kindness, and serenity. That was an unexpected grace-filled moment that brought me to wonder, joy and deep gratitude for the experience. If the Dalai Lama who has lived through tremendous conflict, been driven from his country, and hunted with a price on his head could exude such resiliency and peace, could I not try and find similar calm and compassion in my life? However, we don’t have to trek to India for gratitude. It can become a practice we can cultivate immediately. It takes awareness. Resiliency requires optimism and when we take time to notice all that we have, it has an immediate impact on our health, personal and relational well-being and human development.  In fact, the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley has undertaken a $5.6 million project called “Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude” to deepen the scientific understand of the “gratitude effect”. Gratitude starts now. Spoken out loud or captured in a journal, begin. Some days, it might be gratitude for the laughter of a child or the lick of a beloved dog. And as we enter the Thanksgiving season, I am most grateful to you, my readers. I am thankful for my wonderful family, my great assistant, my superb web master and my wonderful friends.  I have treasured clients, amazing audiences, and a strong body to travel wherever they need me.  I am utterly, totally thankful for the gift of caring for and being with my mother in the last six years of her life. How thankful that my precious sister and brother joined me in that journey. As Meister Eckhart wrote centuries ago, “If the only prayer you ever said was thank you, that would be enough."

Spend 10 days canoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area (BWCWA) and you learn the root of vacation: to vacate. Away from all technology, newspapers, cell phones and automobiles, I found my mind slowly weaning itself from the everyday demands and dilemmas of running a business and a home. If the biggest challenge is how to paddle against 20 mph headwinds, there is no mental capacity left to engage in anything but total concentration for the moment. In the bow position of a lightweight canoe, I not only needed to pull my weight but also keep a sharp lookout for submerged rocks. In some cases, the sun's glare shadowed the boulders that could easily puncture a hull. What a test of reflexes! Calm water let my mind empty itself of everything except observation of the shoreline, the diving loons and the soaring eagles. From that state, I began to notice how nature offers a continual feast for the artistic soul in all of us. Surely the black and white spotted pattern on a loon's chest was a masterpiece. Or what stories could I create from the designs I imagined in a brilliant night sky. Surely the ancients had tales of Taurus and Virgo, or Ursa Major and the Gemini twins. When your mind is vacant, it opens to new knowledge and ideas. You're not stuck in the past or worried about the future. Ahhhh... no wonder a real vacant vacation can be termed holy leisure.

You see the proverbial “storm approaching”. It could be imagining a negative outcome with a client or colleague. The storm could be a pending doctor’s appointment to get test results. Perhaps it is looking at your bank account and wondering how you will ever afford to retire. The cold winds of reality might be swirling around in your brain, waiting for the thunder and lightening to appear. Surely disaster awaits on the horizon. And then—nothing. It was all bluff and puff. Imagine: all that energy and worry spent for nothing. As the playwright Inge wrote, “Worry is interest paid on a debt you might not owe.” Here’s the deal. When we craft stories of negative possibilities, we are weakening our resiliency muscle. Resilient people look at a situation from the viewpoint of positive expectancy. It could be that having an honest, careful conversation with a client or colleague could make the relationship deeper. Test results might eliminate many possibilities and point to a clear medical strategy. Evaluating financial resources now might open a window for making refined lifestyle decisions. This is not Pollyanna thinking either. The skills of resiliency look honestly at both the upside and the downside of a situation, but spend the most mental energy in focusing on opportunity and learning regardless of the outcome. Not always easy. But always far more powerful. PS: Closing off the 5th year of drought in California, I DO hope that big winds DO bring rain!

Ever been jinxed by technology? Have you had weeks in which some trickster named Terrible Technology is haunting your office, playing horrid games with every device and no amount of Hershey kisses will make it go away? For the fourth time in as many weeks, my online bank said it didn’t recognize my user name or password. I have changed it four times. This last time, within minutes of following their digital voice instructions, it said I was ready to go. Next log on—DEAD IN THE WATER.  And no human to talk to!!! Surely it must be a trick. Or I am jinxed? This foul-up came right after I upgraded my IMac to MacSierra only to have it begin acting like some gremlin had taken over the keyboard. I’d be typing but see no letters and then strange letters in another language would appear.  Lots of clunking noises arose from the computer too! Hours on the phone with tech support netted—ZERO.  AAARGH. Genius bar time. Or maybe that should be Genius Barf time. I feel like Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. I must be jinxed: My laptop just crashed its flash storage drive. The new drive came and was fried.I bought another laptop–I must have one for my travels and speeches. Alas, it is now acting strange. I KNOW I am jinxed by technology. My smart phone is becoming dumb and I am following suit. Heck, I am so non-technical, I flunk light switch. This too shall pass, I know. But I’ll get even. An hour at the bank finally got the online mess fixed. My new password: curses2You. Please tell me I am not alone!

I admit it: a pickle pledge sounds like something created on Sesame Street to get kids to eat pickles. Or perhaps it is a rhyme: eat a pickle and get a nickel. You can have as much fun with that phrase as you’d like but nothing is further from the truth: The Pickle Pledge, created by colleague Joe Tye, is serious stuff. So serious that Midland Memorial Hospital went from an all-time low to an all time high in patient satisfaction in less than a year! And—hundreds of Midland Health employees not only made dramatic improvements in their personal lives but created an internal Cultural Productivity Benefit of $7.2 million!! All about a pickle?! YES!! The Pickle Pledge is a personal commitment to refrain from complaining, whining, bullying, gossiping and other toxic emotional behaviors that wreck havoc on those caught within the noxious fumes of negativity. The cost of toxic emotional negativity continues to cost the average organization $12,000 per employee per year according to a research paper by Harvard Business Review . In their newly released book, Pickle Pledge co-authors Joe Tye, CEO of Values Coach, Inc and a member of The Resiliency Group, and Bob Dent (Senior Vice President of Midland Health and COO/CNO of Midland Memorial Hospital in Midland Texas), offer deeply troubling research about the cost of toxic emotions on employee engagement, productivity, retention, and yes - patient outcomes. But the good news: the Pickle Pledge and the Pickle Challenge for Charity have helped hundreds of health care organizations create a more positive culture of ownership and civility in a fun and lighthearted way. Don’t think this book is only about healthcare. You will find here a step-by-step guide for how Midland Memorial Hospital turned itself around with a commitment to ownership and a value of optimism ANY organization, of ANY size can profit by following the steps outlined here. A word of caution. As lighthearted as the thought of creating “Pickle Free Zones” may be... this is serious work. It takes courage for leaders to not only take the pledge but to hold others accountable for shifting behaviors. You can buy it at Amazon.com . I’d love to know what results you get!

We’re rapidly approaching the last leg of 2016. You might be jumping to reach quotas, spinning furiously to complete projects, and reading emails until the wee hours of the night. Question: what will you REALLY have accomplished if tomorrow never comes? Resiliency isn’t about gritting it out for the next round as much as it is about showing up for THIS round. This is not a question about dying. It’s a matter about living.  I wrote the following poem as a reminder for me. In fact, I made it into a bookmark and had a number of them printed. Like too many things, I promptly put it in a file drawer and forgot it. The Universe decided I needed to find it again.  Might also be true for you. IN THE NOW By Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE Today is now upon us. Today is all we’ve got. This minute holds eternity, but oh our minds are fraught With thoughts of what we should’ve done, mistakes of yesterday Recalling wrongs, reliving deeds and words that went astray. Or else we go through motions while our thoughts zoom far ahead Of things to do, of meetings hence, of possibilities we dread. We eat our food in hurry. We kiss our loves in haste. We blink at dawn. We glance at moon. There is NO time to waste. Our calendar is crammed with future things we HAVE to do. We make our list; we see its length. Our day is never through. And when each year is over, we dismay at all that’s passed. We shake our head and wonder, “How did time go by so fast?” We cannot slow the march of time and yet—there is this plan: If we would live in present NOW, we’d find a peace a hand. Be present, fully present in each action that we do. Stay mindful, fully mindful of the life around us too. Let the future be the visions but THIS MOMENT counts and how! Eternity is in it. May we learn to live in NOW. If you’d like a bookmark, let me know, ASAP.  NOW!  Email me at Eileen@eileenmcdargh.com.  I have exactly three left. If there is enough interest, we can reprint, laminate and sell!

Let me pose this riddle: What can curve at the corners, droop in lopsided fashion, stretch to great extremes, crunch noses into cherries, crinkle eyes into almonds and turn rain into sunshine? What responds when your heart is breaking, when Irish eyes are doing it, when you want the whole world to join you? Here are some further clues: On Mona Lisa, it's lacquered; for politicians it is often plastered. Howdy Doody puppeted it.Emmett Kelly sobbed it. Give up? The answer is “a smile”! Having traveled throughout the world, I find that a smile is part of universal language that breaks down barriers, gets people to help you, and can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. This facial expression is shared regardless of our culture. It is one of our common, human denominators.S. ome scientists take it quite seriously, claiming that the upward turn of lips is actually a primal, silent scream.  Personally, I think they're wrong. I don't think a smile is any ONE thing. Consider what a smile opens for inspection: There's the plastic smile, the sickly smile, the I'm-smiling-now-in-front-of-these-people-but-wait-until-we-get-home-smile. Or picture the teasing smile, the mocking smile, the knee-slapping grin. Recall the dentifrice ad smile, the snaggle-tooth smile, the gold inlaid smile, the electric warmth lover smile, the wistful grandmother smile, the dimpled baby smile.  Why there are enough smiles to mandate writing a lexicon for understanding! B ut for the moment, bask your thoughts in the last smile that you received - the one that you answered, that made you feel like you had been noticed and accepted just for being YOU, that maybe even made you straighten your shoulders or skip or whistle.  Pretty powerful reflex! I'd like to think we have real facial power that can become proactive rather than reactive.  We don't have to wait for that feel-good moment when a store clerk, a friend, a passer-by, or even the stranger in the elevator flips a smile in our direction.  WE can be the senders.  Can't figure out why we hoard such a precious thing as an I-care-for-you-fellow-human smile. Too often we're like misers, giving away the most meager coin in our rusty treasure chest. When you experience some days of gloom and doom, high rates and low expectations, moral majority and immoral minority, what a difference it could make if we unleashed the power of a genuine smile!  What a transformation might arise if we answered that instinctive (and probably primal) impulse which is often pushed to the bottom of our gut and just for one week—nay, even one day—turned a real megawatt smile on our world. I'll bet OPEC would pay richly to tap this energy source!

I have a confession to make: I never learned to type. Who would have known that in today’s keyboard literate world, I am functionally illiterate.  It’s pretty pathetic when a 6-year-old watches me peck away with three fingers and gasps, “You don’t know how to type!!” To make matters worse, my little guy goes to the keyboard, opens up a browser and takes me on a site with an animated Scottish goat as a professor who is teaching children how to type! Sadly, I lost the link and it’s possible someone got the goat. Spell check doesn’t help either as many of my words aren’t spelled wrong. But they are patently incorrect. Amazing what a difference one letter can make: Astray: ashtray Live:  love Now:  new Precious: previous House:  hose Not: nit You get the idea. It actually can create some very funny sentences but also some very, ummm, inappropriate lines. Now you know one of my many faults. Because I believe honesty is the best policy, please let me know if you receive a rather strange missive. Allow me to correct it. It would be best (nest, rest, test, etc.) if I did! Hope you enjoy this clog.

Study the best seller lists of the past few years and you'll notice titles that range from Peter Lynch's "Beating the Street" to Thomas Moore's "Care of the Soul: How to Find Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life." This juxtaposition captures the dilemma facing all of us in the business world.  How does one swim with the sharks, squeeze the margins of an angst-filled financial world, and still lead a life of wholeness in spirit, mind and body? Nor is this a new question. Marsilio Ficino's 15th Century treatise, "The Book of Life," sought to help the Medicis and their merchant counterparts create a renaissance of spirit amid the draining demands of commerce and a new creature called capitalism. Whether a Renaissance banker or the CEO of a high tech conglomerate, whether a guild master of stonework or a manager of information services, the issue is still one of balance. But balance is not an equal measure of work, love, prayer and play. Nor is it a state that can be achieved and frozen in form for all time. Rather, this amorphous thing called "balance" is an on-going, deliberate set of decisions that make the journey of life much like the metaphor of sailing. Consider the single person sailboat. When there is much wind, the little boat appears off balance, moving forward at an angle, sails filled to bursting and the sailor leaning back over the craft, with one hand on the sheet and toes hooked under the railing. What allows the sailor to stay in the boat is that he is connected to all the important parts of that craft. When the wind shifts, so too must the sailor. Life is also like that. We give ourselves tremendous mental stress when we think that life must balance. Having a different image allows us to see where we might be out of control. Briefly, there will always be competing and unequal demands upon our time... much like the tug of the tiller or the push of the wind. Depending upon the course we have chosen for ourselves, we respond to these demands. We might decide to change direction, seek harbor, or give full rein to the beating waves and blustery wind. The quality of these decisions depends upon the direction of our sailboat, the prevailing winds, the depth of the water, and the need for overhaul and repair. Direction refers to the goals, created by our values, which we have established. The wind and the depth of the water represent those people and events, outside our control, which make demands upon our time. Lastly, overhaul and repair stands for the need to cease and desist, to nurture and renew our physical and spiritual self, and to re-examine the course we are sailing. If we consider sailing as a metaphor for the "balance" we all seek along life's journey, then what is needed are navigational aids. What could help all of us on such a journey is a process, a formula, whereby we might take stock of our decisions, weighing them against our personal values, goals, and physical requirements. Since we are all bound by the same relentless 24-hour day, we would be best served by looking at not how much we can cram into the blocks called "time", but how wisely do we choose what we put into our finite day.

Leadership means different things to different people and different things in different situations.  Leadership is not an exact science but there are some things all leaders doing and some things they should avoid. During the best and worst of times leaders should avoid these five mistakes. Mistake #1:  Become reactive and reactionary. There is truth in the old saying "Respond in haste. Regret in sorrow." This is also known as the "ready, fire, aim" approach of leadership. When leaders fail to gather the information and critically assess the long-term impact of decisions, severe errors are made. Consider the Big Three auto executives who knee-jerked their way on private planes to ask for a handout without ever having a plan. Now that's a bonehead mistake. First, stop any action and breathe. Think long-term strategy. Be cautious. Be proactive. Test out the decisions by saying, "If this… then this…" so you can try it on for size. Mistake #2:  Huddle with only the corporate folks. First, answers are often found at the floor level, not at the ceiling. Involve everyone in the search for efficiencies and innovations. Engage everyone in a common vision and mission. Besides, if managers tell employees what to do, you've taken away all sense of responsibility and ownership. How refreshing to have the Obama team now posting discussions on the internet and seeking input from a variety of people with differing viewpoints. Building transparency goes a long way for building trust and making us all feel we are part of the solution. Mistake #3: Cut. Cut. Cut. No one EVER downsized their way to greatness. Wholesale termination of employees without thinking about the cost of underserved customers and too much work done by too few people or canceling the meeting without realizing that this is the time TO GATHER and candidly talk are just two examples of cuts that could have been done with a scalpel instead of a hacksaw.  Substitute Jello for Jamoca Fudge and Two Buck Chuck for Dom Perignon but bring people together.  As for layoffs, if your organization or department can handle this—bring everyone together and spread out the facts. One very smart leader found that employees were willing to reduce work schedules, work half-time, and job share rather than have members of their team terminated. For more ideas, read Responsible Restructuring: Creative and Profitable Alternatives to Layoffs by Wayne Cascio, professor of management at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School. Mistake #4: Go after new clients and customers. Unless your current customers have vanished because of poor quality or service, these can be your best source of new revenue.  Ask how you can turn them into champions of what you provide. Make them feel special and valuable. I've noticed that my bank is now making every effort to thank me for my business, to call me by name, to answer any request with a "no problem" attitude.  Sure, they should have been doing that all along but—better late than never. Besides, they've already got all my money in the safe. I think they'd like to keep it. Mistake #5:  Do more with less. We've been hearing this for years. In my consulting practice, I have often found that much of the "more" is work that provides no value at the end of the day. Scrutinize every process; get rid of the sacred cows and the egos. Translate every action into a dollar value. In one organization, we found that senior executives were tripping over each other to put their two cents into every PowerPoint presentation that was made. It was a waste of executive talent, made each project longer than necessary, disempowered the employee creating the presentation, and actually used up some $15,000 worth of senior management time! BONUS Mistake:  Buy into pessimism. It's a huge mistake we ALL make when we let the news of the day finds us hiding under the covers, chopping up the furniture for kindling and searching for recipes made with bread and water.  What we have here is an opportunity to really consider what is most important, to spend time at work that is meaningful, and to nurture relationships that matter. We have an opportunity to reclaim our reputation, our integrity, and our future. Not to do this would be our biggest mistake. To condense the wisdom of a Hopi Elder, "This is the Eleventh Hour…and we are the ones we've been waiting for."