Your time is now

“You don’t ask, you don’t get,” is how the saying goes. It is also one of the sayings on our inspiration wall. (What, you don’t have an inspiration wall? Well, your time is now!)

That the saying is accompanied by an illustration of Kilroy? It seemed apropos. Also making the cut: “I get to” (cue Pato) as well as, “Want fish? Go where the fish are!” on a drawing of… well, a fish.

Also on the wall: Practice Happy, accompanied by some tips (probably from HBR but regretfully unattributed) with activities to practice every day:

• Write down three new things you are grateful for
• Write for two minutes about one positive experience you had in the last 24 hours
• Exercise 10 minutes
• Meditate two minutes, focusing on your breath going in and out
• First thing the morning, thank or praise someone close to you

And finally, on the mental list: a little LovingKindness meditation.

Thank you. That is all.

You’re all awesome

I mean, really… Wouldn’t we all like to work for the Jimmy Dean Sausage Sun? He’s upbeat, team-oriented, and a problem-solver. He gets good people, gives them what they need, and then gets out of their way so they can do what they gotta to do to get the job done. Let’s orbit! 

It takes a village

Priscilla Claman had a point with ”Forget Mentors: Employ a Personal Board of Directors.” It’s a team-heavy world: you need them to advise you and guide you, to recommend you for jobs and show you opportunities, to help you hone your strengths and shore up your weaknesses, and to provide you with a safe harbor from the bumpy seas around you.

And by God you owe it to them to do a kick-ass job when you get to where they helped you go.

Be the change?

There is a quote making its way through Facebook (and beyond):

‎”I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.

My staff has heard it from me ad nauseam: it doesn’t matter how people are to us; what matters is how we are to others. Really, at the end of the day, when you go home at night, who do you want to be? How will you judge yourself? Don’t you want to be proud of how you’ve conducted yourself that day when you greet your children and sweep them up into your arms?

Count with me

100… 99… 98…

It’s called the 100 Breaths Meditation. You count each exhale, starting with 100.

97… 96… 95…

I’ve tried various meditation techniques with varying success; even guided meditation tapes, which are great in that they put me right to sleep (insomnia, anyone?) but not so great for meditation.

94… 93… 92…

And there was that free online course, which was also great but… er… <ahem> I still need to finish it.

91… 90… 89…

This technique is very portable, and I like “backward.” Sometimes, when I’m editing long documents or trying to study something, I start at the end and work backward paragraph-by-paragraph.

88… 87… 86…

So this is kind of how it goes. Focus briefly, then go off on tangents…

85… 84… 83…

Well.  Practice. And observation. That’s kind of the point, right?  :)

You are the boss of the business of you…

…so went a recent after-dinner conversation between Avelino and me, as we pored over our laptops and the girls played merrily behind us in the playroom. In his world, this is quite literal: as a Realtor, the business is as the business does, and the business only does something if he does it. And, as a long-time property management professional who recently moved from leasing to selling, right now that means farming and open houses and cold calling and all those ground-up “book of business” building activities that cast a wide net over potential clients (which, like a box of chocolate, means he never knows what he will get until he bites into it).

One of my undergraduate professors phrased it a different way: You are the CEO of your life. He is business systems theory anthropologist. He found metaphors to be profoundly valuable explanation tools, so he would probably like the Gump-isms.

Ultimately, our lives’ paths are up to us. The opportunity is there for any of us to analyze and influence our environment as best we can, and make the decisions about what we will do with what we have (ex: see Engage). Sometimes we can simply follow a path. That’s a choice. So is deciding to take the path less travelled (or not). So is deciding to walk on the grass, or stopping for a picnic, or turning around and going back to the last fork. Those are all decisions that, as the bosses of the businesses of us, we get to make.

A mouth full of sand

Remember those old DMV videos about how breaking traffic laws didn’t get you anywhere? Agitated driver #1 sped, ran lights, flipped people off, wove through traffic, etc. Mellow driver #2 just went with the flow.  An hour later, the first driver got there first: by six minutes.

I had a boss kind of like driver #2.  A  state senator in the theater that is Sacramento, he was measured and thoughtful in a world that moved a million miles an hour.  And he was one of the most effective, respected senators in office.

It was an important lesson. Work is drama. Things come at us from all sides. They come fast. Even the simple things are never as simple as they seem. And that is fine; problem solving is what they pay us for.

It’s the way we solve problems that matters. We have choices. Maybe it’s natural to get irritated at every little setback. The key is, we can decide to act irritated – or not. Oysters get irritated all the time. Then they grow pearls. But have you ever seen an irritated oyster?

The dirty window story

There’s a modern fable about points of view that shows up now and again.  It goes a little something like this.

Two sisters, Sophia and Sienna, were playing in the playroom.

The baby, Sienna, looked out the window at their next-door neighbor, who was hanging out her wash.  Sienna furrowed her brow.  ”That laundry’s dirty,” she said.

Older sister Sophia looked on, but said nothing.

Every day, the neighbor would hang up her wash.  And Sienna would say the same thing.

A few weeks later, Sienna went to the playroom window and gasped in surprise.  ”The laundry’s clean!” she said.  ”Who taught her?”

Sophia went to the window and hugged her baby sister.  ”I washed the window,” she said.

This space intentionally left blank

For every success, there is a… not-quite-success.  So now, a celebration of the posts that got to draft but never were:

I used to have skills: a manager’s dilemma

Rethinking the impossible

Diary of a mad, lactating career woman

Time

Life by Correspondence Course

In defense of multitasking

Work hard.  Stay hungry.

I study, therefore I do

Stop and smell the roses.  Or decaf.  Whatever.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

So, I’m hearing it’s okay to fail – that’s what Bob Seelert, chairman of Saatchi & Saatchiin, said in a Harvard Business Review podcast.  It’s also okay to neurotically review and re-review your emails (among other things), according David Silverman in a podcast about how to write more clearly at work.  Such things lighten my soul.