Back by popular request for one more month, an article by Marlene Chism about workplace drama and how to make effective change!

Change, whether it is wanted or unwanted brings out our best and worst. The Stop Your Drama Methodology incorporates 8 principles and multiple tools for navigating change or reinventing any part of your life or business.

1. Clear the Fog
Where drama is, clarity is not. If you feel like you are shoveling coal in the boiler room instead of navigating the ship, then you have a clarity issue. When you are clear, your decisions are easy and emotions are steady. Clarity helps you handle the winds of change and life flows. First get clear about your values and vision. Everything flows from there.

2. Indentify the Gap
The distance between where you are and where you want to be is the gap. The bigger the gap, the more potential for drama. If you can identify those times when you are moving faster than your resources allow, or when what you want seems too far out of reach, find a way to shorten the gap, by taking only the next right step. When you learn how to identify the gap, you can shorten it instead of suffering.

3. Tell Yourself the Truth
Drama is often the result of undisciplined thinking, manifesting as over-reaction to some imagined problem, regret about the past, worry about the future, or denial about the present challenges. To stop your drama, lean how to separate the fact from feeling. Knowing your feelings won't change the facts, but knowing the facts can change your feelings. Consciously changing your thoughts and feelings is the beginning of stepping into a new truth.

4. Reinvent and Realign
When your actions do not align with your values and beliefs you will experience an integrity gap. The integrity gap is when your desires are in conflict. You have the power to reinvent a new you that aligns with your values so that your life is congruent and you are not pulled in opposing directions.

5. Stop Relationship Drama
Where you struggle, you will find a relationship problem. Besides the relationship you have with yourself, there is the relationship you have with others. Then there is the relationship you have with the situation, to your past, your imagined future, to time, money, food and everything else in your life. If you want immediate change, change your relationship to the area where you struggle.

6. Master Your Energy
Down to the smallest unit, everything in the universe is energy. The five types of energy are physical, environmental, emotional, spiritual, and mental. Since even thoughts are energy, remember that negative thoughts drain your energy and can contribute to illness. Slow down and make decisions from inspiration rather than from desperation. Take charge of your energy by mastering your environment, your physical health, your emotions, spirituality and thinking.

7. Release Resistance
Resistance is an energetic state in the form of non-acceptance to what is. Before you can make any change you must quit fighting the current by blaming, excusing, and judging. Accept where you are, then be willing to do what is required to make the shift.

8. Become a Creator
Instead of waiting for the things to happen to you, initiate change. Become fully responsible for the contents of your life. Entertain the possibility of what you want by asking, "What if." Until you consider another reality you cannot create a new one.

Marlene Chism is a speaker, author, and founder of The Stop Your Drama Methodology, an 8-part empowerment system to help you increase clarity and improve productivity and personal effectiveness. March is Stop Your Drama Month. To get free "Stop Your Drama" resources, go to www.stopyourdrama.org.