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My first newsletter was called Hardiness For Hard Times®. It was published from February, 2000 through December, 2002. At that point the name of the newsletter was changed to Synergy For Success™. You can obtain copies of archived issues by sending an e-mail to Michael01@mhkcoaching.com with REQUEST BACK ISSUES in the SUBJECT line. Be sure to put the specific issue number(s) and title(s) you want in the text.

Hardiness for Hard Times® Newsletters

1 HARDINESS & PERSONAL RESOURCES

Explains the fundamentals of hardiness, how they apply to entrepreneurs, and the need to make enjoyment a priority.

2 MINDFULNESS Introduction to basic concept of mindfulness, its importance for entrepreneurs, and methods for integrating into daily work routine.

3 NATURE Reminder of the richness of the nourishment we can get from being directly involved with nature in contrast to television and other artificial sources of enjoyment.

4 TIME OUT Explains the healing value of intentionally taking a true break during the work day and how to do it.

5 HEALTHY PLEASURES Looks at how you can get distracted from enjoying life and some simple steps you can take to bring enjoyment back.

6 ELIMINATING STRESS! Shows how the source of all stress is the subjective meaning we attach to events and how to transform those meanings thereby altering the impact of the event.

7 PLEASURE vs. HAPPINESS Shows how long-term happiness and personal growth are derived from fulfillment rather than pleasure.

8 BUFFERING STRESS Shows how social support serves as a buffer against all types of stress. Provides guidelines for empathic listening.

9 VACATION WISDOM Demonstrates how vacations enable us to get perspective on our daily life that can be the source of important changes when we return.

10 MANAGING TIME Discover how a simple time audit can give you invaluable insight about where your energy is going each day. Provides guidelines for creating an energy budget.

11 HAPPINESS & WEALTH Examines how seeking material wealth can distract us from other sources of happiness and provides steps to increase happiness.

12 TRAPPED Explores sources of feeling trapped and provides insights into creating options and thereby getting unstuck.

13 THE BEST LAID PLANS By appreciating the uncertainty of how our lives will go we can make a concerted effort to integrate present satisfaction with long term goals.

14 PRIVATE VICTORIES When you shift your focus from external results to appreciating the small skill gains throughout the day, the enhancement in your attitude, satisfaction, and performance can be dramatic.

15 LETTING GO Shows how developing mindfulness can be a key to getting out of the mind traps that are a major source of stress.

16 A LOVING GIFT Shows how to be a loving friend to yourself by getting clear on your priorities for a meaningful and stress free holiday season.

17 NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS Provides the seven essential ingredients for succeeding at keeping a resolution.

18 COACHING Describes the basic components of what personal coaching is and how it works.

19 SPECIAL NEEDS I Shows the special challenges that medical problems pose for people who are ambitious, and provides guidelines for managing them in order to optimize work performance.

20 HARDINESS II Describes how regulating your energy resources by meeting your recovery enables you to effectively deal with sustained high stress.

21 RELATIONSHIP MINDFULNESS Provides an example showing the importance of nourishing personal relation ships as part of a life strategy designed to enhance good health, productivity and fulfillment.

22 EXERCISE Shows how a well conditioned body is hardy, enabling you to mobilize your energies to meet life pressures as challenges, and to settle back down quickly so you can recover for the next challenge.

23 VACATION WISDOM (same as #9 with a new introduction)

24 LETTING GO Explains how self awareness training can enable us to rise above reflexive mind traps and use more adaptive responses.

25 TRANSITIONS Provides a description of the challenges of going through the transition of losing a job, and guidelines for successfully navigating these troubled waters.

26 AFTER SHOCKS Presents my personal and professional reflections on the continuing impact of the terrorists' attacks of September 11, 2001. Gives guidelines for how we can help those who were directly impacted.

27 REGULATING INPUT Describes the need for, and methods to regulate the input of stress-producing experiences so you can harness your best energies and perform well during high stress periods.

28 A LOVING GIFT (same as #16 with a new introduction)

29 NEW YEAR'S MISSION Shows how to identify your priorities and goals for the year and how having them will mobilize your energies and organize your efforts to move you towards them.

30 STAYING THE COURSE I Explains how comfort zones can undermine efforts to make positive changes, and provides steps to develop new comfort zones.

31 MENTAL SKILLS I Challenges people with a Type A personality to upgrade to Type A-Plus Personality(™) by providing simple guidelines for tapping into your inner mind to discover deeper values and needs for career and lifestyle.

32 TRANSFORMING ENVY Shows how shifting your focus from what you lack to what you desire can open a wellspring of energy. Then you can start exploring what it will take to make your dream a reality.

33 MENTAL SKILLS II: Rituals Explains how performance rituals enable you to mobilize the necessary physiological, mental, and emotional mechanisms for optimal performance. Provides guideliness for developing them.

34 VACATION PERSPECTIVE (mostly the same as #9 & 23 with a new introduction)

35 FLEXIBILITY Shows how people who are hardy meet the need for change as a challenge and an opportunity for growth and development. As such, they must use a flexible coping style.

36 THE VALUE OF DISCOURAGEMENT Provides steps to use the feeling of being discouraged as a signal to assess what is out of synch. And thereby how to gain an opportunity to make a corrective adjustment.

37 LIVING A LIFE WITH HEART I � The Decision Shows how to prepare yourself to deliberately choose to grow and to develop a greater sense of living a life that is in harmony with is most important to you.

38 LIVING A LIFE WITH HEART II � Resistance to Change Provides guidelines for dealing with the part of you that is devoted to preserving the status quo, and suggestions to help you sustain the process of growth.

39 LIVING A LIFE WITH HEART III � Authentic Happiness Describes how to identify the elements of your authentically happy life and shows the steps you can take to start creating one for yourself.

40 ACHIEVING SUCCESS Focuses on a key ingredient for achieving success: the synergy that comes from effectively integrating your career and personal life.

Synergy for Success™ Newsletters

SFS#1 WELCOME TO MHK COACHING Describes the rationale for synergy for success: both sides of the career/personal equation can be brought into harmony so your work performance leaps to higher and more gratifying levels.

SFS#2 PERSONAL POSITIONING SYSTEM BASICS Provides the basic concept and components of a Personal Positioning System (PPS). Analagous to the Global Positioning System, its purpose is to monitor where you are each day in relation to the essential components of your work life and personal life.

SFS#3 PERSONAL POSITIONING SYSTEM-II: ABSOLUTES Describes the value of identifying the points where you want to be certain you DON'T GO. With all the competing pressures of life, one component that needs to be hard-wired into your PPS is the absolute or non-negotiable factors. What are your inviolable boundaries? Where do you draw the line?

SFS#4 PERSONAL POSITIONING SYSTEM-III: MONITORING ENERGY Describes the rationale for monitoring energy levels througout the day in order to enhance performance. Guidelines are provided to start you on becoming more observant of the shifts in your daily energy levels.

SFS#5 PERSONAL POSITIONING SYSTEM-IV: REFINING OBSERVATIONS Provides guidelines for refining self monitoring by identifying patterns and noticing alterations in attitude, feelings, and behaviors that result from simply being more aware.

SFS#6 VACATION PERSPECTIVE Each year this newsletter is sent out during the height of vacation season. It is a reminder of the opportunity for fresh perspective provided by the real breaks from the rigors of our daily routines while on vaction. The suggestions can be used to prime yourself to be ready to discover some new insights which can be incorporated into constructive changes upon returning to work.

SFS#7 PERSONAL POSITIONING SYSTEM-V: IMPROVING ENERGY Provides simple steps you can take to bring good mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual energy to any endeavor throughout the day, thereby reliably enhancing your work performance and your satisfaction in your personal life.

SFS#8 POWER BREAK RITUALS(tm) Describes the guidelines for a simple but powerful method to improve stress management at work. The method incorporates the benefits of a ritualized energy recovery break with the power of focusing on specific outcomes for the day.

SFS#9 MINDFULLNESS Provides the rationale and simple guildelines for developing the skill of mindfulness: the ability to self-monitor. This capacity is a crucial skill enabling you to know when your stress reaction has been triggered so you can respond to it constructively.

SFS#10 USING POWER BREAK RITUALS(tm) Describes ways to incorporate a power break ritual(tm)into the work schedule and how to assess its effectiveness.

SFS#11 A LOVING GIFT This seasonal message shows how to be a loving friend to yourself by getting clear on your priorities for a meaningful and stress free holiday season.

SFS#12 EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR PERSONAL CHANGE Provides specific guidelines for successfully making and achieving behavioral changes in the context of New Year's resolutions.

SFS#13 PERSONAL PARTNERSHIPS I Describes how to build greater congruence between your most important personal relationship and your career by making a priority of building and maintaining the personal relationship into a partnership.

SFS#14 PERSONAL PARTNERSHIPS II - REAL INVOLVEMENT Provides strategies used to build greater congruence between the often competing demands of one's career and homelife.

SFS#15 PERSONAL PARTNERSHIPS III - AUTONOMY Describes guidelines for fostering autonomy as a crucial component in one's personal partnership. When each partner supports the other's separatenes the partnership feels less like a trap and can provide the foundation that allows each to go forth confidently into the work world.

SFS#16 PERSONAL PARTNERSHIPS IV - ALIGNING VALUES Provides strategies for aligning values with your partner so they are congruent -- an essential element in the development of a smooth-operating personal partnership that can provide the foundation that allows you to go forth confidently into your work world.

SFS#17 VACATION PERSPECTIVE This seasonal article describes how vacations enable us to get perspective on our daily life that can be the source of important changes when we return.

SFS#18 FUELING PHYSICAL ENERGY I -- FOOD Describes common attitudes of entrepreneurs toward eating, how the food we eat is one key source of energy, and some strategies to develop better eating habits.

SFS#19 FUELING PHYSICAL ENERGY II -- SLEEP Provides strategies to improve sleep from a coaching perspective -- when the pressures of work are the prime source of sleep disruption.

SFS#20 CEO STRESS PROJECT - INTRODUCTION Explains how the CEO Stress Project is a means of identifying and sharing the most effective stress management strategies used by high level business executives. It also shows readers how they can contribute to the study.

SFS#21 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT I INTRODUCTION Provides guidlines to create a mind set for how you want your day to go.By visualizing what you want to happen -- the way you will conduct yourself -- you set in motion an image and set of mental guidelines in your unconscious that organizes and shapes your behavior.

SFS#22 STRESS MANAGEMENT 101 Explains what stress is by providing a truly functional or operational understanding of stress. Gives guidelines for a simple but effective strategy for managing stress so you feel less distressed.

SFS#23 A LOVING GIFT - 2004 Shows a way to offset the usual pressures of gift-giving by asking:"What is the one gift you could receive that would improve your life the most?" In seeking to answer this question, you set in motion a process of reclaiming your own goals in life and living your life with intentionality.

SFS#24 STRATEGIES FOR LETTING GO OF WORKUnderscores the importance of bringing good physical, emotional and spiritual energy to the new day as key to feeling minimal distress and to getting good results. Provides guidelines for managing your day to set the stage for letting go of work in the evening to enhance good energy renewal.

SFS#25 RECOVERY FOR THE NEW DAY Continuing from the previous newsletter, this one explains the importance of letting go of work at the end of the day, and provides guidelines for developing effective recovery strategies to replenish your energy.

SFS#26 MAKING STRESS MANAGEMENT A PRIORITY Emphasizes the value of increasing your capacity to effectively manage pressures in order to keep improving your performance. Guidelines are provided to help you shift the way you think about managing stress from a quick-fix model to one of life-long learning and mastery.

SFS#27 WIGGLE ROOM Provides some simple yet surprisingly effective means of incorporating wiggle room into your daily plan as a strategy to maintain a psychological separation between yourself and your responsibilities.

SFS#28 THE BUDDY SYSTEM Shows how a supportive buddy system can offset some of the pressure to maintain a consistently high level of effectiveness that is an underlying source of distress for business executives and entrepreneurs.

SFS#29 VACATION WISDOM Invites you to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by vacations and summer week-end getaways to get insights and to see strategies for making improvements in your normal work and personal life that are generally not available while immersed in business as usual.

SFS#30 THE BUDDY SYSTEM-II Shows how several high level executives utilize the buddy system as a back up system for when they "crash." The examples illustrate different ways of enlisting others when you need to regain your composure for a business meeting or to be with personal relationships in a positive way.

SFS#31 HIDDEN COSTS Provides guidelines for identifying a common pitfall for those driven to succeed: becoming so focused on work performance that other areas are neglected. This creates hidden costs. .

SFS#32 PPS -VI USING ROUTE POINTS Describes how some of the CEO Stress Project participants use values and goals as route points to navigate their work week. Guidelines for refining your Personal Positioning System are provided.

SFS#33 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT-II STAYING COOL Reviews some basic principles and guidelines of being cool. Provides guidelines for developing "cool" so you can start to harness the power of your mind and body to stay cool when life heats up.

SFS#34 A LOVING GIFT - 2005 Shows a way to offset the usual pressures of gift-giving by asking:"What is the one gift you could receive that would improve your life the most?" In seeking to answer this question, you set in motion a process of reclaiming your own goals in life and living your life with intentionality.

SFS#35 REGAINING THE EDGE Describes and explains three steps to take when something has happened that throws you off center. The steps enable you to quickly recover from a setback so you can realign your mental edge.

SFS#36 PAUSING FOR BEING Are you so often consumed by hurrying, doing, achieving, acquiring, and producing, that you can't pause for being? To offset the feeling of being like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, this newsletter provides guidelines to reclaim your sense of being.

SFS#37 CUTTING OUT THE STRESS MESSENGER'S TONGUE Addresses the tendency to ignore the messages that signal stress by providing evidence for the connection between stress and illness. Points to a healthier coping strategy.

SFS#38 LISTENING TO THE STRESS MESSENGER Provides some fundamental guidelines and steps for listening to the stress messenger in ways that foster faster and more effective responses.

SFS#39 VACATION WISDOM - 2006 This seasonal article describes how vacations enable us to get perspective on our daily life that can be the source of important changes when we return.

SFS#40 MAKING SELF-REGULATION A PRIORITY Provides cautions about how "quick fix" stress management methods lead people away from deeper satisfaction in life. Describes a rationale for focusing your efforts on the path toward a better life using self-regulation � your ability to take control of the inner part of your life.

SFS#41 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT - III: GOALS, VALUES & DEADLINES Shows how pressures that can lead us to feel distressed at times take on a different cast when we are willingly taking on our tasks in order to clear the path to a desired outcome. Guidelines are provided so you can take better control of your goals and meet your deadlines in a way that is consistent with your values.

SFS#42 REFLECTIVE ENGAGEMENT Explains the necessity of being able to disengage from pressures in order to observe what is happening from different perspectives. This enhances one's capacity to make good assessments of their situation, develop plans and strategies that are sound, and move decisively to actions having positive outcomes.

SFS#43 REFLECTIVE ENGAGEMENT - II LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE Provides guidelines on how to improve the systematic use of reflection for the purpose of improving one's capacity as a business executive. Research-based practices show how to systematically evaluate an event to maximize learning.

SFS#44 DELIBERATE PRACTICE This newsletter dispels the tendency to explain good performance as being due to natural talent. The most influential and best supported theory regarding expert performance is that it is a case of utmost skill acquisition -- the final outcome of gradual improvements from extended and deliberate practice within a specific area.

SFS#45 A LOVING GIFT - 2006 Shows a way to offset the usual pressures of gift-giving by asking:"What is the one gift you could receive that would improve your life the most?" In seeking to answer this question, you set in motion a process of reclaiming your own goals in life and living your life with intentionality.

SFS#46 NEW YEAR'S MISSION - 2007 The start of the new year is a psychologically ripe time for transition. This newsletters shows how to identify and use a clear and detailed image of your priorities and goals to mobilize your energies and organize your efforts to move you towards them during the coming year.

SFS#47 DAILY TASK MANAGEMENT-I Being bright and ambitious are not sufficient to make things happen. Mastering the skills of daily task management is essential to success and fulfillment in one's career and personal life. This newsletter provides a framework for the nuts and bolts of task management, based upon the CEO Stress Project.

SFS#48 DAILY TASK MANAGEMENT-II To be successful an executive needs a high performance operating system to efficiently manage the many tasks that are the nuts and bolts of all projects. The newsletter describes some of the basic methods Project participants employ, including the use of technological devices, paper and pencil methods, administrative assistants, and planning.

SFS#49 ENLISTING OTHERS Participants in the CEO Stress Project are good at coordinating their lives with others. Specifically, they are good at enlisting others. This newsletter describes some basic guidelines for making requests of others.

SFS#50 DECLINING REQUESTS Requests made by others is one of the top sources of stress cited by executives. If you cannot decline requests then you become a slave to other people and to your subjective belief about what they want from you. This newsletter describes basic guidelines for declining requests.

SFS#51 FLEXIBILITY People who are hardy see the need for change as a challenge and an opportunity for growth and development. As such, they must use a flexible coping style. This newsletter describes some guidelines for fostering flexibility in your approach to management and leadership.

SFS#52 VACTION WISDOM - 2007 This seasonal article describes how vacations enable us to get perspective on our daily life that can be the source of important changes when we return.

SFS#53 MANAGING HARD TIMES There are times when life intervenes to disrupt our best efforts to be in control. This newsletter presents the personal coping skills and the ways to use supportive relationship to manage the disruptions that are trustworthy and effective for whatever challenges you encounter.

SFS#54 PPS THE DAILY ACTION PLAN - I CEOs, and anyone with a mandate to be optimally productive, need a daily action plan. Their efforts must lead to the measurable outcomes. This newsletter provides some guidelines for setting up and following a daily action plan using snippets from the interviews for the CEO Stress Project.

SFS#55 A LOVING GIFT - 2007 This seasonal newsletter shows how to offset the usual pressures of gift-giving by asking:"What is the one gift you could receive that would improve your life the most?" In seeking to answer this question, you set in motion a process of reclaiming your own goals in life and living your life with intentionality.

SFS#56 NEW YEAR'S MISSION - 2008 Explains the value of starting the New Year with a clear and detailed image of your priorities and goals. It shows how to identify and incorporate your ingredients for a fulfilling life into your mission, which will mobilize your energies and organize your efforts to move you towards them.

SFS#57 THE DAILY ACTION PLAN -II Because your plans for the day, week, and the longer term invariably have to conform to the unfolding realities of the real world, you need to be able to modify it as a work in progress, while staying aligned with priorities. This newsletter provides guidelines for the mechanics of making it work.

SFS#58 BRAIN GUARDS 101 Describes how the many disruptions in the work environment undermine our ability to focus and to work effectively. This newsletter provides guidelines to regain control of what is streaming into your brain to protect your mind from all the stimulation and distractions.

SFS#59 BRAIN GUARDS 102 This newsletter provides guidelines for you to take specific practical steps to shield yourself from electronic and digital disruptions, while maintaining adequate access to essential communications.

SFS#60 ENFORCING BRAINGUARDS To get work done, you must be able to count on yourself to be fully aligned and engaged with the task at hand, when you decide to do so. This newsletter provides a framework so you can build the scaffolding to stand firm when it is time to get things done, thus making you a better Chief Executive Officer of you!