“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
By Maryanne Williamson, and used by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural speech

The ‘awesomeness’ of Barack ObamaU.S. president

U.S. president’s winning of Nobel Peace Prize elicits Russian leader’s praise, Republican rivals’ ridicule…  more here…

South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, cited a Zulu term – “Ubuntu,” which refers to the importance of community – in saying Obama’s “leadership reflects the true spirit of Ubuntu because your approach celebrates our common humanity.”

My personal Connection

I can say that I have been in a variety of life-threatening situations and many of which I can directly attribute a particular factor that saved my life. One of these situations was during the crux of a first ascent in the remote jungles of Cambodia. And I can also say that the words of Arno Ilgner were deeply ingrained into my subconscious mind – and that the action that came forth was my unconscious reaction to the situation at hand. Before I go on too long, I’d like to suggest that you check out this webinar interview. This piece of work focuses on the exporation of Arno’s latest mental strategies for climbers, particularly in the areas of Process Goals, Stress and Learning. These important concepts can be applied to our lives in many ways.

Take a look by clicking the link below and then come back and post a comment!

Webinar Interview with Arno Ilgner.

This Thursday evening, AUGUST 20th, as part of my Success Strategies Interview Series, I will have the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Rich Handley, Dean of EQ University, about Leadership, Emotions and Executive Presence. I first met Rich about five years ago during my EQ Certification and have been utilizing the model of Emotional Intelligence for training, coaching and experiential leadership applications ever since. Dr. Handley is one of my personal mentors and I am excited to share his wisdom and insight with you! When it comes to understanding, managing and leveraging our emotions, Dr. Handley is THE MAN! I have included a little more information about Dr. Rich Handley below the registration for the Webinar.

Please forward this information to anyone you think could benefit!

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/297310034

Success Strategies with Dr. Rich Handley: Leadership, Emotions and Executive Presence

Thursday, August 20th, 2009    

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM PDT

Join us for a Webinar on August 20th

Tim Walther, President of Grand Dynamics International and co-author of Seeking True North: The Pathway to Freedom, Beauty and Success, will hold a Success Strategies Interview with Dr. Rich Handley, a leading expert in the field of leadership development and Emotional Intelligence. The feature topic of this interview will be Executive Presence, which Dr. Handley refers to as the Leadership “X” Factor. Attendees will learn how to maximize their impact through understanding emotions and applying the four primary components of Presence: Vision, Projection, Control and Connection. This Webinar will include action steps for how to manage and “put your emotions to work” as well as the “silver bullet” of self-actualization. As a part of the Seeking True North Action Seminar, September 24-27 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, participants will receive a Leadership Executive Presence report and personal feedback with Dr. Rich Handley. This is a free webinar brought to you by Grand Dynamics International in collaboration with EQ University.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/297310034

As a reminder, each Seeking True North Action Seminar Participant that registers by September 7th will receive their own Executive Presence report with your personal analysis of your leadership vision, projection, control and connection. You’ll also receive the BarOn EQ-I developmental report, which provides insight into fifteen major competencies for optimizing your performance. We’ll also be integrating the components of Leadership Presence with the Seeking True North model through an experiential framework throughout the weekend so you can fully assimilate these concepts into your personal and professional life.

If you are ready to join us for the Seeking True North Action Seminar, click on the personal invitation to the left of this post!

Here’s a little information about Rich Handley:
Dr. Rich Handley is the foremost expert on optimizing people for success by understanding and applying concepts of Emotional Intelligence. He is a leading business strategist in leveraged, high-performance human capital solutions and has worked extensively with Fortune 500 firms world-wide in areas such as employee selection, organizational and leadership development, employee development, and sales training. He also conducts the EQ-i® and the EQ360® certifications for EQ University, having certified more individuals world-wide than anyone.

Rich is the co-author of the book, Optimizing People, the EQ360 Assessment, the EQ Interview, the Behavioral Health Survey, and the Benchmark for Organizational Emotional Intelligence. His work has been featured in Fast Company Magazine, Inc. Magazine, Harvard Business Update, Training Magazine, H.R. Magazine, Controller Magazine, Selling Power, the Dallas Morning News, MSN, ABC and Fox News.
The Leaders job on the high performance frontier is about Influencing, training and developing people. In Rich’s new book, Leadership Presence, he explains the Leadership X Factor and how Emotionally Intelligent leaders have higher impact through stronger Vision, Projection, Control and Connection.

Have an incredible day, stay positive and powerful, and LIVE YOUR ADVENTURE!

Tim

Let us know what you think about the tips.

Enjoy!

Tim

Hillarious

Following my Abalone Diving Experience Holly and I cruised to something a bit more familiar – the land of beautiful rock – Yosemite National Park. 

We met my climbing partner Gary Falk, who I last climbed with in Potrero Chico, Mexico in December.  Our first day was a nice warm up and Holly got to experience the beautiful Yosemite rock on Munginella – a classic four-star multi-pitch.

That night Gary and I decided to step it up and link up two Yosemite Classic crack climbs – Serenity Crack (5.10d) to Sons of Yesterday (5.10a).  Super-topo Yosemite Classics calls this link up “the best and most sustained 5.10 route in Yosemite!”  We sat around the camp fire that night and thoughts raced through my mind…  This Spring has been interesting for me. Late Winter and Spring is typically filled with intense training (climbing gym in particular) for me. However, this year my focus had been on music – playing the drums with my Rock Band Wounded Knee.  Sure, playing drums intensely is a work-out, particularly when we play marathon 10-12 hour sessions, but nothing can replace training for climbing, like climbing.  Anyway, when I climb with Gary I know that he will catch me if I fall, and when i climb I shoot for being in FLOW. Optimal climbing for me lies right on the edge of my ability and the challenge that presents itself. Isn’t that true for most things in life? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would certainly agree! He wrote the book FLOW – the Psychology of Optimal Performance. And it’s one of my favorites. I’ll leave you with one of his quotes at the end of this post.

Back to the camp-fire.  There I was, thinking about just how difficult a 10d crack in Yosemite might be considering my current state. Tim: “So, Gary, I imagine that the falls will be pretty clean on this on, eh?” Gary: “Why do you have to do there? There’s not going to be any falls tomorrow. We’re going to send Jeronimo to the grave!”  To put this comment in context, Geronimo is the nickname Gary has given me because of my propensity to fall while climbing. Yes, it’s true. I tend to fall a lot. Well that’s the case because I am always pushing my limits. And as Scottie McGee said in the Seeking True North seminar in Jackson, when we fall while climbing, we actually successfully determine our limits! In any case, there is something to be said about “sending” a climbing route. That is, climbing it completely without a hang or fall.  THAT was our intention. 

Serenity Crack begins with a run-out start where you follow a tight seam of piton-scars (spots where people have hammered in iron steaks to ascend the route with aid).  Gary led the first pitch and the day was fairly windy and a bit chilly. Perfect climbing weather to add a bit of drama!  Pitch two was my turn to lead and has beautiful hand jamming cracks with a middle crux (most difficult part) which involves a delicate sequence of moves across a seemingly blank face.  I stepped across with some friction and made the move with grace.  The final part of the pitch has a classic overhang where you get to experience lieing backward 300 feet off the deck and power through the roof! Sweet. 

Pitch three is the crux of the climb is a continuous, beautiful hand crack which diminishes to finger locks and tips!  I got to the crux and Gary was above me some 15 feet.  “Come-On Tim! Send It!  It’s gets better… it gets better! Come-On!”  I locked my finger tips in the crack and powered through the sequence.  Gary’s words gave me encouragement to continue on in the difficult moment, knowing that a better hold was coming.  What a great coaching technique!  Letting someone know that, when you are in the midst of a very difficult project or challenge, that light is at the end of the tunnel.  Yet another climbing metaphor for life and business.  We continued the climb and on to Sons Of Yesterday, which was above it.  The whole thing (several pitches) was one beautiful, clean, classic Yosemite hand jam crack after the next! Awesome.  We finished the climb about 1000 feet from where we had started a few hours ago. We started to rappel and Gary said, “We should bang out Royal Arches next.” WHAT?  He wanted to not only go climb something else, but he wanted to climb another 1600 foot route!  One which is has been dubbed a “50 classic of North America” climb and one that many people would consider a massive undertaking in and of itself.  The guide book says Royal Arches is “committing and has benighted more that a few climbers…” good thing it was about 1:00 pm when we started!   ”Um…. okay!  Let’s do it!”

I will spare you the intimate details of that climb. You must know that it certainly is worthy of the classic rating and is filled with exciting moments, and certainly lots of incredible climbing.  Gary and I simul-climbed it, which means the leader goes first and when he gets to the end of the rope, the follow starts to climb at the same time as the leader. Both climbers are secured on the mountain by pieces of gear in between them which are attached to the rock in the event that one is to fall.  We climbed the entire route in 4 pitches! Awesome.  At one vivid point I was in the lead, climbing up the classic “tree pitch” where you have to swing out over the rock face, feet dangling.  I swung around to see Gary about 200 feet away at the end of the rope swinging across the pendulum pitch, with a beautiful waterfall in between us.  Quite the mountain experience….

In summary, we finished the incredible day of climbing and made it back to camp in plenty of daylight.  rock climbing is an incredible metaphor for WHAT IS POSSIBLE and for the psychology of optimal performance.  I had indeed experienced the flow zone nearly the entire day.  No-one had fallen.  As we put out the camp fire, Gary’s put a final stamp on the day with the perfect final comment, “GERONIMO IS DEAD!”

From FLOW: The Psychology of Optimal  Performance

“We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like….. moments like these are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times…the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”