Tag: change

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Own the Decision

own the decision

Create credibility by taking responsibility

Own the decision by taking responsibility for it.

Although it can get painful if you care about “optics,” it’s a quick fix for credibility.

There are few things more frustrating than working with someone who changes direction regularly. It’s textbook intellectual laziness from a leader.

Changing direction in the middle of a project is usually the result of not being thoughtful with the people to whom you delegate work.

It’s easier to “spray and pray” because finding a direction is hard work. It requires confidence and vulnerability.

Use this exercise to start to own the process.

Exercise:

Before you start a project or process, find the answers to:

  • Who?
  • What?
  • Where?
  • How?
  • Why?

Your answers to each of these is no longer than two sentences.

Thinking about who, what, where, how, and why and clearly articulating each one makes delegation easier: it frames the project from its start.

Then, if you have to change something, you have a quick tool to see if fear is operating; if those five elements don’t change, your shift won’t be effective.

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Freedom to Switch It Up

GirlyGoingAwayParty

Traveling a well-worn road is easy.

In many cases, it’s necessary. In high-stress situations, the well-worn road keeps us from going insane. The idea of “knowing” allows our energy to focus on problems. Focus is far easier to come by when you are comfortable in your surroundings.

Our habits are the well-worn roads of our conscious in our personal lives. Patterns make our lives easier, but because they make our lives easier, models can become a trap.

The way to avoid that trap is when things slow down, change the way you try with a habit. Change something small about what you are doing. If you clean the dishes at night in a big batch, try washing the item as soon as you use it. If you read before bed, try batching (doing it all at once vs. spread out) your reading for the week on a Sunday afternoon.

What happens? Perhaps nothing, or you find a way you approach your habit improves the way you help it. If you read fiction better batched and non-fiction on a consistent basis, then you’ve found an actionable insight that you can spin in different ways.

Instead of grabbing a non-fiction book for a flight, you know it’s far more enjoyable to read that Kafka novel you’ve avoided for years.

Little experimentations like these can lead to serious results.

Exercise:

  1. Write down your consistent habits.
  2. Figure out one change you could make.
  3. Try it a few times, take note of the differences you feel.
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The Garlic Problem

We Aren’t Logical, So Prepare For It

When you eat garlic, the smell gets on your hands, around your mouth, and on your breath. People notice, but mostly, you care. Should you do something?

Options:

  • Do nothing.
  • You can excuse yourself, go to the bathroom, wash your hands, and pop in a stick of gum.
  • You could either register this change as the start of a catastrophe and run away from the dinner.

While we sit here and read this, the first two options seem reasonable. With no skin in the game, you recognize the best choice is the second, but you could live with the first.

The last choice seems insane. In life, when you add emotion, it isn’t that simple.

You can feel the slight change of disposition in the room.  And in our worst moments, it can cause us to lose perspective.

When the pressure is on, the third option becomes much more reasonable in our heads.

Tomorrow – I’ll talk about why this is important.

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Never isn’t Forever

Also, forever isn’t never.

Time is relative and so are we. If you think of life as a game, the board is never “frozen.” There is always the next move.

People forget, forgive, change, react, adapt, evolve etc.

We are always moving.

Compare yourself to the person you were 5 years ago. Are you the same?

  • Do you have the same thoughts?
  • Talk to the same people?
  • Have the same hobbies?

With this in mind, there is an opportunity to check in with people to see where they are. They certainly have moved, and they are interested to see how far you have moved too.

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I Trust That You Don’t Know

I used to think I knew a lot

I based my personality in “the know.”  I was proud. I built opinions on “knowing” things. I judged people on how “much they knew.” My religion was my perception of knowledge and I made sure you knew it. If you didn’t know anything then why were we talking. I needed to talk to people who were confident, and if you didn’t know you are scared since you didn’t pick a side.

I don’t think that way anymore. In fact, I go in the opposite direction. I am more impressed in what you don’t know. Anyone who tells me they don’t know something gains that much more credibility in my book, I am more apt to trust them, and get curious about who they are and what they do “know.”

What caused this change

Studying human psychology, philosophy  and management shifted my thinking. Spending time digging into Jiddu Kristamurti, Peter Drucker, and David McRaney, along with the ancients like Confucius, Socrates, and Seneca, got me to understand that the minute you think you know, you stop thinking.

One of my biggest influence in this line of thought is Robert Anton Wilson

In fact, the two thoughts (thinking and knowing)  are diametrically opposed. When you know you don’t question, and if you don’t question you don’t think. You can’t know a subject and think about it. Your brain has already created the model and the brain hates moving on from what it “knows.” Thinking takes a ton of energy, knowing doesn’t.

So why trust people who don’t know?

Saying you don’t know is a direct assault on the ego, and the starting point to think about every subject you don’t know about.  When I hear that, I get comfortable because I know that we can start to talk, and maybe an opinion can change. Talking to someone who knows is like talking to a brick wall. It may feel better to scream at that wall, but you aren’t going to change the form.

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There is Freedom In Hard Work

Business is hard work

It’s easy to talk about, but hard to build on. Each dollar you collect from someone represents your mark on an economy, and the work that you or your team put in to get someone to part with that resource. It represent

When I look at my bank account, it’s a direct correlation to what I believe and more importantly invest in.

I don’t take it lightly

Although I used too. I used to think it was easy, getting money from people. It’s easy to spot someone who thinks like this, because they constantly say things like “It’s easy to do that” and when you ask them, they already have an excuse on how it won’t work.

I don’t judge them too harshly. As I alluded to above, I used to do the same.

So what changed

But I learned, when I started to put my money where my mouth was, just how hard it is to get people to part with it. And when they do part with it, how difficult it is to keep people parting with it.

It’s an ego buster.

With any product, watching people connect and disconnect is …well weird. What worked a year ago suddenly doesn’t work anymore. Sometimes it just catches fire. Sometimes people just see it and love or hate it.

It is a slap to the ego. Learning that it’s about the other person, not you, the world buster, takes a lot. But it becomes beautiful, because through that effort, you learn. When you learn, ultimately you earn the right to do it again, and again.

Freedom

This isn’t easy. No one helps you, and there is a huge cost of entry (although it’s getting lower, you still have to dedicate time), but its a constant learning opportunity.

Freedom ain’t free.

 

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Time and Enviorment Matter

You take it to the next level.

With that said, you have to get to an enviroment where you can grow.

Do an inventory, figure out where you are, and decide to move if it isn’t for you.

Time means everything. The only thing you can’t get back.

So protect your time, and make sure it counts.

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Excuses to Anxiety and Back Again

Excuses means feeling better.

Feeling better means comfortable.

Comfortable means no change.

No change means being stagnant.

Being stagnant means feeling stuck.

Feeling stuck means depression.

Depression means anxiety.

Anxiety means excuses.

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Big Changes Lead To Big Nothing

 

New Years Eve is a night surrounded by friends, parties and drinking. It is a day where anything is possible. You are crossing the finish line, and it is time to let loose. New Years Eve soon turns into New Years day. Since New Years marks the start of a calendar year, there is no bigger day for “a fresh start”than New Years Day. People tend to use the day to set out new goals and decide on how they are going to spend the next 365 days improving something in life.  Most of those changes aim to make that person better, and no one is more supportive than the people around them. It is no coincidence this is also known as hangover day, because what better time to think about being better than being slammed by a major headache.

When I was younger, I often thought of personal changes as an introduction to a new chapter(think fiction) in life.Personal change was a huge event, one marked by all the pomp and circumstance that usually comes with a chapter in fiction.  With the new challenge there are new villains. New heroes  come save the day and old ones die out. It would all be very exciting and it would always start with an idea. “Today I am a new person.”

And then the cycle begins. We sign up for the gym, we set the alarm clock, and we buy all the books we could ever read. We are going from a pleasure-seeking dilettante to a studious monk, hardening our resolve, mind and body to a complete person. And it works for one day, and another, and maybe even another. We are starting to learn our favorite machine at the gym, understanding the levity in War and Peace, and enjoying the sunrise at the crack of dawn. Life is good and stays good, until we miss a day. The train for changes stops cold.

The miss, especially for me, comes to represent a stopping point because after dropping those tasks once,I can’t find myself in the mood to start over again. It is as if I dropped a deck of playing cards and to play 52 pickup. I never play 52 pickup, I simply wander to another game. More things start to fall apart, and it becomes easier and easier to let things go. Soon you are in July and you don’t even remember what the resolutions were. It just becomes easier to look forward to December 31st.

It seems like it would be easier just to think smaller.

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Its About The Story

Story is very important to me.

I should define that story is not history. History is a line of facts, story is a narrative. Humans love narrative and computers love facts. As attached as we are to our cellphones, we are still human.

If you know your story well, and you can tell it with passion and warmth, I get excited.  If you do it within an ear shot, I perk up. I being to think how you have your life together.

To be able to wring out what you do and have done in a time proper way lets me know how focused you are and how dedicated you are to whatever mission you have. It is a sign of strength, and I envy it.

The base of my envy comes from my lack of ability to do it.  It’s all a jumbled mess.

When someone asks me – what do I do, I start to panic. I repeat it back as if the extra few seconds would allow me to untangle it all. What do I do? Can I phone a friend? Maybe there is something in my pocket that magically has the story for me.  Unfortunately, nothings ever there and I remember that yes, the story is a jumbled mess.

 

That thought kept coming back at me when I looked at the front page of my website.The jumbled mess effects other parts of my life.

Questions such as:

What do I want?

Who do I want to become?

What have I done to get me there?

When I saw the front page of my website now it answered none of those questions. Even worse, I don’t show what I can give to people. There is no value add. My writing, my comedy, my leadership training, my decision-making, and my curiosity are no where on display.  It is all kind of bland. It made me realize how important my story is. It is missing copy that extends that into something that makes sense.

I need to tell a story. Luckily for me, and my horrible story, is that there is still time for me to put it together.

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