Financial meltdowns pale in comparison to the holiday madness. Add in fears of lay offs and hard times ahead and this is a very scary time for many of us.

In the “Managing Through Change: Personal and Professional Workshop I led this week at iMedia, I talked about a new vein of neuroscience/psychology called MBSR. This practice can really help you feel better by lowering your stress levels. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction combines attention to your physical body and your mental state - mind/body work. Often MBSR is a combination of meditation and yoga, but it can take many forms.

(If you are suffering from nagging fears and anxiety, you might also want to explore CBT, below)

In this workshop, I taught a meditation to 100 ad agency executives in the hopes that they would utlize this amazing tool as well as make it okay for employees to meditate in the workplace. As Meng, the Jolly Good Fellow and director of the Personal Growth University at Google noted, businesses as recently 1925 didn’t believe exercise was good for employees. Now we have fitness centers inside our corporations.

Some companies have meditation rooms already, like SoundsTrue in Boulder. This is a trend, I tell you.

This particular meditation I taught everyone is one you can do right at your desk and no one would even notice you doing it.

It’s called Calm-Abiding Meditation or Samatha and it’s Tibetan Tantric Buddhism.

You can do this for just a minute or two and derive amazing benefits - all 100 of us did it together in a conference room in Palm Springs and it was a calming and really good shared experience.

So here’s what you do. Calm-Abiding Meditation:

• Sit on the floor on a cushion with your legs crossed and your buns raised above your legs. (or sit in your office chair)
• Stack your spine for good posture, but be comfortable.
• Open your arms and put your hands on your knees. (or just rest your hands in your lap)
• Keep your eyes open and softly focus them about a foot in front of you with your head tilted slightly down. (if you are in your chair, it will look like you are thinking deep and great thoughts)
• Breathe deeply in and out.
• Clear your mind (the tricky part) and every time a thought enters your mind, say “let go” to yourself and bring yourself back to your breathing and to not thinking.
• Do this for 3 minutes, or even a minute every time you are stressed and it will calm you.

I liken this to rebooting a computer. Know how slow your computer is when you’ve used a bunch of apps and left it on for too long? It’s faster when you shut it down and reboot, right? That’s what this meditation will do for you.

Try it. Try it with your team. Make space in your group for anyone to do this anytime. It’s one more way you can be a great leader to yourself and your employees.

Coming up soon on DishyMix is an interview with Kelley Rainwater and Ben Thompson, experts in emotional leadership and self-care in the corporate world. We’ll teach you some great things you can do to help your employees get through this down market with less anxiety.

Note: MBSR is also often aligned with CBT, which is Cognitive Behavior Therapy. The fundamental strategy of CBT is that you change your thoughts to change your behavior to change your state - you learn to reframe your thinking at a very rational level - it’s not “positive thinking” or affirmations which are more like “wishful thinking.” If you want to overcome anxiety, stress or depression, CBT is an excellent tool. The best book on this is by Sarah Edelman, PhD. called “Change Your Thinking.”

Buy this book if you are stressed or if little things set you off.

“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” —Albert Camus

When the economy takes a dive, ad budgets are often the first thing to get slashed. It creates a lot of anxiety for marketers and the agencies that serve them. Our digital media industry is also staffed primarily with 20 and 30-year olds who may not have been in the workforce for a previous downturn. That makes uncertainty particularly stressful.

I recently had the privledge of creating and presenting a workshop focused on “Managing Change in a Down Cycle” for a group of 100 digital advertising agency executives.

We interactively focused on three main areas:

1. Confronting Personal Fear and Anxiety in Times of High Stress and Change (put on your oxygen mask before helping your child)
2. Techniques to Manage Through Change
3. Being an Emotional Manager

First I covered “Faulty Thinking.” Then we learned about Cognitive Behavior Therapy and practiced some “MBSR” Mindfulness-based Stress Relief with a Calm-Abiding Meditation. Then we all took a Work/Life Balance Assessment and finally I shared with everyone the four key actions to take as a leader when your organization is experiencing anxiety and change.

I was coached on Emotional Leadership by Kelley Rainwater, organizational change consultant and leadership coach and her partner, Ben Thomson, founder of the Santa Fe-based, leading edge Self Care training company, Universal Self-Care Solutions. These are the four things you can do as a manager to increase calm and be a great leader through change. I am going to have Kelley and Ben on an upcoming DishyMix and we’ll go into great detail on these action items:

• Increase Communication
• Maintain Your Executive Presence
• Create A Culture of Self Care
• Harness “Anchors” in the Organization
What makes a great workshop? Participation.

We did a series of “exercises” that kinesthetically taught us new skills for coping with anxiety and change.

First we did an around the room survey of who might be “guilty” of various kinds of faulty thinking, including jumping to conclusions, mind reading, black and white thinking and “awfulizing” scenarios. It was eye-opening to see as I went through the list that the whole room raised their hand at nearly every example of “faulty thinking.” It just goes to show you that not only are you out of your mind but so am I! It gives one confidence to question the status quo and each other in our day-to-day work. And it proves that the humanity in us leaves a lot of room for improvement in our relating.

Next everyone wrote down a nagging fear that was causing them stress. Then each person stood in the front of the room and shared their most personal neurotic angst.

Just kidding for goodness sake! Do you really think I could get anyone to do that! We named the fear, put it to paper and put it aside.

Then I taught everyone about Socratic Thinking, which is a process for rationally thinking through issues. There are a million versions of Socratic Thinking exercises, but the best angle on questions to ask yourself to overcome your fears comes out of a really, really excellent book by Sarah Edelman, PhD called, “Change Your Thinking: Overcome Stress, Anxiety & Depression, and Improve Your Life with CBT*.” CBT is Cognitive Behavior Therapy. It’s a new practice in the field of psychotherapy that focuses on managing our thoughts to change our behavior.

If this is the least bit interesting to you, I cannot recommend Sarah’s book highly enough. Buy a couple copies, as you’ll want to give it to the craziest members of your family and friends the minute you finish it.

Do this exercise right now. What is your biggest fear? Write it down.

Go ahead… I’ll wait.

Seriously. Do it.

Seriously.

Waiting….

OK, good for you if are willing to do this.

Now, let’s confront that fear with these Socratic Questions created just for this situation by Sarah Edelman:

Using Socratic Questioning To Manage Fear
1. Describe the situation that you are worried about.
2. What do you specifically fear might happen?
3. Rate the likelihood that this will happen from 0-100%
4. What evidence supports your worrying thoughts?
5. What evidence does not support them?
6. If it did happen, what actions would you take?
7. Realistically, what is the worst thing that can happen?
8. What is the best thing that can happen?
9. Are there any useful actions you can take now?
10. What would you tell a friend who was in your situation?
11. Realistically, re-rate the likelihood that your fears will be realized from 0-100%

Feel better? Nearly everyone does.

And you can probably take some action now that will alleviate some of your stress. This is a great list to print out and hang in your office.

Now that you’ve learned how to use “Socratic Thinking” to get control of an existing personal fear I’ll teach you about “MBSR” Mindfulness-based Stress Relief in my next blog post.

I’ve been pitching SIGG, the maker of really fine reusable water bottles (we have a drawer-full in our home) on sponsoring some of the shows on the Personal Life Media network. My “cultural creative” listeners are the perfect target for paying SIGG’s premium price, appreciating the beautiful designs of their bottles and sending a message, by toting a SIGG, that drinking from plastic bottles is no longer politically appropriate behavior.

I noticed this “closet” area at my daughter’s school (6th grade) was full of reusable water bottles. That’s the trend here in Los Altos, California. Kids don’t want to participate in adding to landfills and prefer to carry their own water bottles with them.

Is this a trend just in my liberal-leaning, ex officio Hippie state or do you see kids becoming environmentally conscious and carrying reusable water bottles in your town too?

Are you carrying a reusable bottle? Tell me your story. I’m trying to understand the market.

Download the whole album or just your favorite Enya holiday songs from iTunes.

Send this to your friends and family who want to learn about genealogy from an expert like Lisa. Have you collected your family stories and created your family tree?

Family History: Genealogy Made Easy

I have my strategy for promoting my brand - “SusanBratton/DishyMix.” I podcast, then blog about the shows, then promote them via Facebook and Twitter. It’s not perfect, and yes, I could surely do more. But in the time I have, that group of platforms and actions feels right to me for now. If you are still struggling to decide what social strategy to use for your brand, I have a great idea for you.

I gained some empathy for souls less tech savvy than I while presenting at both the Aloha Social Media Summit and the Personal Life Media Social Media Training Day. I understand how bewildering the social web can be.

If you don’t have the luxury of getting personalized training by Andy Beal, Dave Taylor, Susan Bratton or others like us, you can develop a social media strategy to promote your brand by reading Dave Evans’ book, Social Media: An Hour A Day.

Dave takes you on a tour of various categories of social media from blogs and WIKIs to multimedia sites like Flickr, YouTube and Personal Life Media to tagging services like Stumble Upon and Delicious to microblog platforms like Twitter and Pownce. Through hands-on experience, you can compare the attributes of Facebook with LinkedIn and MySpace and Plaxo.

He helps you see how you can aggeregate competitive intelligence and how to manage your online reputation with Google Blog Search and Nielsen Buzzmetrics. (Note: I am a proponent of a very inexpensive service called Trackur. I killed my free Google Alerts and signed up for Trackur. If you click on THIS link, my friend Andy can track your order and will double the number of saved searches for any of my DishyMix friends’ accounts.)

Once you’ve used Social Media: An Hour a Day to take tours of all these sites and services and you’ve read along with Dave’s companion information, you have a pretty darn good idea of the role these social marketing options play. You can then go through a Touchpoints Analysis of your brand with a cool worksheet Dave provides. Then you actually build your own social media campaign! Again, with a great worksheet to keep you moving elegantly through the process. Finally, you create your business objectives, metrics and ROI on the last handy worksheet and you will have tied your social media plan to your company’s largest business ojbectives.

If you actually deliver on the rigor required to think through these worksheets you will have a bomb proof, totally defensible social media strategy for your brand.

You might buy a box of these books as I know you will want to tear out whole sections and hand them out around your company. This is the kind of book that should be in a 3-ring binder with multiple copies of the worksheets for use by all the members on your team.

I interviewed Dave on DishyMix. Here is the episode and transcript.

Dave Evans, Digital VooDoo on Interruptus Vulgaris, Trusting “The Cloud” and Social Media: An Hour A Day

Tune In to Your Personal Life™

Today we announced that ten shows have debuted on or joined the self-empowerment podcast network bringing the total to 34 weekly audio shows and one daily vidcast along with their companion blogs.

Momentum and Mojo
Since launch 18 months ago, PLM has continued to grow key performance indicators. In addition to more than doubling our number of shows since launch, web traffic has increased 128% for the year. (Compete.com)

We now have 1,000 episodes available featuring almost 600 guests. We have generated over six million listens.

The free multi-show podcast player widget launched September 2008 received nearly 500,000 page views in its first month and is utilized by myriad podcasters on and off the PLM network.

Moreover, Personal Life Media shows are popular. Four are now finalists in the Podcast Awards: Inside Out Weight Loss, Expanded Lovemaking, Green Talk Radio and Tantra & Kama Sutra.

Further underscoring PLM’s momentum, the company has been added as a Featured Provider on the Podcast home page in iTunes alongside such powerful media brands as Discovery Networks, CNN, NPR and The New York Times.

Podcasts Educate & Inspire
The content of the new shows range from hobby-related digital photography, literature and genealogy to conversations about lifestyle design and holistic health to indie music discovery. There is also a motivational show for sales professionals in the business empowerment category.

Digital Photography Life - Make Every Shot Count: Digital Camera Reviews and Tutorials
Scott and Michael discuss what is new in the world of digital photography, including coverage of the latest digital cameras, digital photography accessories and software. Digital Photography Life features interviews with leading photographers, instructors and innovators in the field of digital photography, and in-depth talks with the digital camera technology companies like Canon, Nikon and Adobe.

Camera Dojo: Digital Photography Enthusiasts
Camera Dojo is home to a wealth of information about digital SLR photography with tutorials, product reviews, and tips to help you get the best pictures possible. Augment the learning you get in digital photography magazines or classes in this fun, conversational show. Learn about new digital photography software as well as hardware and maximize your photography budget.

TheDivaCast: Encouragement, Work Life Balance, Girl Talk, Women’s Issues
The Divas are five strong-willed and accomplished women who intentionally set out to form a group of honest friends who support, encourage, and empower each other to reach higher, keep growing, and have fun. This life we all live can get overwhelming and true girlfriends help fill in the gap where husbands and family simply can’t. Come along and listen to the many relevant topics we explore. Join us, Diva Sistas and . . . Viva la Diva!

Music For Midnight: Downtempo, TripHop, Ambient, Lounge, Chill and Independent Electronica
Discover a sophisticated blend of podsafe music where genre dissolves into calm and mood is everything.. Indie music is perfect for late-night listening. The sultry vocals and blissful beats of Downtempo Electronica. Darkly cinematic ambient soundscapes. The smoky urban sound of NuJazz. The melancholy lyrics of alt-country singer-songwriters. The crystalline precision of modern-classical.

Family History: Genealogy Made Easy
Do you yearn to learn more about your family history, but just don’t know where to start? Have you started, but need a genealogy research boost? In each weekly 30 minute show host Lisa Louise Cooke will guide you through the genealogy search process in this easy to follow and entertaining podcast. The world of family history is open to everyone, and climbing your family tree has never been easier, or more rewarding! Learn how to use family tree software, locate genealogy records through online searches, create a family tree chart, and get tips on free genealogy resources.

Life Zero: Adventures in Zen and Lifestyle Design
Life Zero is a collection of thoughts about lifestyle design, technology, Apple products and just about everything else. We discuss the modern world and its relationship to the key concepts of Zen (and Buddhism). We try to balance the sometimes vague and complex ways of Buddhism with the reality of living as a productive member of a modern society. Much like other Buddhists, we believe it is important to look for guidelines in others and the world, which allow us to find joy and the path we should be on in our own lives.

Sales Magic: Motivations, Meditations and Visualizations to Kick Your Assets Into Action!
Learn how to be a success…a SALES SUCCESS! Through John’s peak performance coaching, Hypnosis and NLP mastery, you’ll learn his Five-Step selling process to develop the mental habits and performance strategies utilized by highly successful sales experts! This dynamic podcast is specifically designed to help you focus your mind, maximize your influential capabilities, and overcome fears and challenges that hold other sales professionals back.

Words to Mouth: Women’s Novels & Non-Fiction, Author Interviews and Book Reviews
In this author interview talk show, readers meet authors beyond the printed page…and win free books. Come discover new and seasoned authors and the books they write. Carrie scours the literary market and keeps a pulse on new book releases for you. Hear about the latest must-read novels and nonfiction with authors you’d love to meet. She goes beyond the book subject, not only pulling plot and inspiration, but delving deeper into what makes the author tick.

Dear Zanny: Relationship Advice from a Family Therapist
Suzanne Maiden M.A. is a practicing Marriage and Family Therapist. She hosts Dear Zanny, a relationship advice podcast. Suzanne says a resounding “YES” to the universe. Her high-energy and vivaciousness brought her through experiences some only dare to imagine. Zanny answers listeners’ relationship questions as they come in. If you have a relationship problem you want help with, ask Zanny.

Modern Immortal: Unleash Your Vitality, Alternative Medicine, Holistic Health, Wellness and Longevity
Want to live more fully? Join Marco Lam, the Founder and Director of the Mandala Clinic of Integrative Medicine, as we discuss everything from traditional healing modalities to the latest in modern medicine. We define immortality as being on top of your world, mentally, physically, and spiritually. This is not just surviving, but thriving with an embodied consciousness. This is an audio tonic for the mind, giving people the knowledge to strengthen themselves in the modern world in the face of new challenges

From Where Are All These Podcasts Coming?
Camera Dojo, Life Zero and Music for Midnight were solo podcasters who found value in partnering with PLM. TheDivaCast, Dear Zanny, Modern Immortal and Words to Mouth joined PLM from other networks. Digital Photography Life and Family History are new offerings from established podcasters with successful shows who chose to launch under the imprimatur of Personal Life Media. And Sales Magic is a new concept show that offers motivational visualizations and has been co-created by Susan Bratton, co-founder with John James Santangelo, a leading NLP master practitioner and life coach with an expertise in sales motivation and training.

Making Money with Podcasts
PLM has scaled out a podcasting platform to enable established shows to easily join the network. In addition to increasing podcast audience growth through optimization, PLM manages sponsorship sales for podcasters. Using VoloMedia’s (Volomedia.com) dynamic ad serving, the network monetizes downloadable media with pre-, mid- and post-roll audio and video ads, advertorials, host endorsements and product integration into their network of shows, packaging audiences by demographics and contextually relevant subject matter in line with the Association for Downloadable Media’s Ad Standards and Audience Measurement Guidelines.

Podcasters Perspectives
“Once Susan and Tim Bratton optimized my podcast on their network, it simply caught fire,” says Austin Beeman, Host of Music for Midnight, “I climbed to #41 in the iTunes Top 100 within two short weeks of moving my show to Personal Life Media.”

“We moved TheDivaCast to Personal Life Media because the podcast advertising campaigns and sponsorships PLM is already bringing us reflect the quality of our very popular show,” says Robin Maiden, producer of TheDivaCast.”

“Michael and I could have launched a new photography show on any network based on the sheer success of our first endeavor, The Digital Photography Show, but we chose PLM because of their combination of technical savvy, amazing creativity, business connections and commitment to our success, says Scott Sherman, Host of “Digital Photography Life.”

“After successfully establishing myself in the genealogy hobby niche, I knew I wanted to reach out to a broader audience and introduce them to the joy of discovering their family history. Personal Life Media offers one-stop shopping for the savvy adult looking for top quality, innovative programming. It’s where my show belongs,” says Lisa Louise Cooke host of “Family History: Genealogy Made Easy.”

About Personal Life Media
Personal Life Media (PersonalLifeMedia.com) is a multimedia lifestyle brand providing entertaining and authentic personal content to socially conscious adults, and is the first podcast and blog advertising network for advertisers to reach the “cultural creatives” market segment. Expert hosts deliver motivational programs, talk shows, reality-audio, interviews, advanced techniques and guided exercises in blogs, web audio, video and podcasting formats.

The network offers 35 free weekly about happiness, relationships, family, sensuality, life purpose, wealth creation and wellness. Additional areas of interest include the men’s movement, women’s issues, hobbies, book reviews, life coaching, ecology, creativity, weight-loss, beauty innovation and cosmetic surgery, retirement, conscious business, ethical sales, spirituality, and personal and global transformation. Free multi-show podcast player widget for fans and podcasters.

Access the shows for free from a browser or subscribe via RSS or iTunes and listen on an iPod or MP3 player. Personal Life Media is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California.

We just hit our two year anniversary for Personal Life Media and just attained Featured Provider Status in iTunes!

Just as individual podcasts can be featured in iTunes, networks can be featured too. The place where networks are featured is on the Podcast home page on the “Featured Provider” list.

Since we started the network two years ago, it’s been a goal of ours to make it to the “Featured Provider” list on iTunes. We check it almost every day, and think “someday we’ll be on that list”. You can imagine how excited we were to log in to iTunes just a few minutes ago to discover Personal Life Media right there on the featured providers list… between PBS and PRI.

Of course the company is only as strong as the hosts in the network, so this is something that makes us very proud of the talent with whom we associate. It’s a recognition to our hosts and their acheivements that they are in the company of some of the most well known media brands in America.

Thank you, iTunes. Onward and upward!

I just interviewed Bill Tancer, author of the new book “What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters - CLICK: Unexpected Insights for Business and Life.” (phew) He will be on an upcoming episode of DishyMix.

One of the most fascinating insights in a book chock full of train-wreck style tidbits was a list of the top fifteen social “fear of” searches. Apparently we will divulge our innermost fears to Google…

Bill also says that the “strongest recurring theme that presents itself is the battle between two types of social anxieties: the fear of commitment and the fear of being alone.”

Here are the top fifteen social “fear of” searches:

1. Intimacy
2. Rejection
3. People
4. Success
5. Crowds
6. Failure
7. Sex
8. Commitment
9. Public Speaking
10. Being Along
11. Love
12. Girls
13. Falling in love
14. Abandonment
15. Broken heart

On my podcast network, we have 25 shows (more coming soon!) and 9 of them are about sex, love, intimacy, being a fearless lover, manhood and more. They are very popular. If you live your life in any way other than the total embrace of deep intimacy with your lover and your friends, you should tune in to the master, Chip August, host of “Sex, Love & Intimacy.”

Click below to listen now, download it free or subscribe free from iTunes.
Let me know what you think!

Sex, Love and Intimacy

I’m taking a page from Andy Beal and Dave Taylor’s Aloha Social Media Summit at which I spoke recently. They cleverly convened a small working group and imparted a ton of information ranging from uber concepts to picayune tactical details about Social Media Marketing.

The value of that small group exchange inspired me to conduct a similar training session for the hosts of the shows on our podcast network.

Here’s the agenda we’re planning. I’d love your feedback on anything crucial I’ve missed or what you think is most important about these subjects.

PLM HOST TRAINING AGENDA

• Setting up and maintaining a Facebook profile – the whys and hows.
• Using Twitter to increase your audience and extend your brand.
• Leveraging LinkedIn Answers, DIGG and vertical networks to increase your audience.
• What is a widget? Podcast player strategies for increasing your listenership and growing your fanbase.
• Creating and adding the Free PLM Podcast widget to your social media pages for your fans.
• Tracking Your Online Reputation and Blogging Opportunities with Google Alerts and my personal choice, Trackur.
• The line between personal and professional in the social web. (Blog Post Here on Personal/Professional)
• How to promote yourself in the blogosphere using blog commenting strategies and link bait.
• Blogging tips and tricks including guest bloggers, Facebook and Twitter promotion and inserting your show buttons and photos into posts.
• Rocking iTunes. How to optimize for iTunes and how you can get featured.
• Getting your audience involved in growing your show. Notify Me!, Survey.Personallifemedia.com and iTunes Reviews.
• Creating and distributing promotional videos, video blogging, Seesmic/Viddler and YouTube.