I Help Leaders Get Things Done.
Positive matters for the simple reason that being and staying positive makes everything better. It makes the world a nicer place. It makes it easier to enjoy your family. Not unlike garlic, it makes food taste better. It makes vision clearer. It makes hugs warmer. It makes working with other people so much simpler.
Positive matters because, without it, good isn’t quite as great as it could be.
You cannot choose for yourself. You are too dumb to choose for yourself. You are not worthy to choose for yourself. Sit down. Be quiet. Wait to be chosen.
Wait to be called upon.
Wait for the selection.
Wait to be tapped on the shoulder.
Wait to be annointed.
Wait to be given the opportunity.
Wait to prove yourself more worthy than your peers.
Wait for the succession plan to slide you in the slot they’ve chosen for you.
Wait, wait, wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait to be told you can retire.
Wait to be told you can begin to live your “real life” now that your time has come.
Wait until you have arranged everything just so.
Wait until you’ve planned out the realization of your dreams.
Wait.
At some point, the waiting has to end. You choose when to make your dreams reality. Or you an wait so long that you slip out of this life with so many unfulfilled dreams left behind to evaporate into nothing.
Did you know that you can choose now as opposed to then? Did you know that you can choose so many whens and hows throughout your lifetime? Did you know that you have the right to choose? You have the right to choose.
You have the right to choose. You are worthy. You deserve more. You deserve peace. You deserve fulfillment. You deserve happiness.
You can choose for yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I wrote about leaders and teachers over at BuildingConfidentLeaders.com:
We’re all teachers in one way or another. At times we’re the lighthouse guiding ships through dark and stormy times. At times we’re the majestic mountain, easily seen from a distance and a landmark for navigating life’s tricky paths. And at times we’re the grounded ocean freighter, leaking oil into the sea and rusting slowly atop one of life’s hidden but treacherous reefs. Lighthouse…mountain…freighter. We teach intentionally and unintentionally. Either way, we teach.
Check out the rest here: http://buildingconfidentleaders.com/2012/05/02/a-purposeful-teacher-a-reflect…
Not my list. But does that matter? I can’t recall where I got it. It’s an awesome list.
You can totally do it…
7 Steps:
1. Look around until you find something that interests you.
2. Think about it a lot.
3. Make some interesting observations.
4. Have a few new ideas and form a couple of theories.
5. Put your ideas and theories to the test, then
6. Begin sharing what you’ve learned.
7. Continue to repeat steps 2 through 6 and soon you’ll be recognized as an expert. Crowds will come from far and wide to hear what you have to say. You’ll be asked to speak at conferences. People will give you money. Yes, it really is that easy.
When you sit too long in the same position, your foot falls asleep. Or your leg goes numb. Or your butt aches. These are your body’s way of telling you that you better get up and move. We’re designed to get up and move. It’s part of the machinery. You’ve got to keep it lubed and flexible. Discomfort is nature’s sign that it is time to move on unless you’re interested in atrophied limbs or blood clots.
Emotional discomfort is pretty much the same thing. Chances are, you know exactly what I’m saying. You can relate. And chances are, in one aspect of your life or another, you’re feeling discomfort. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just me. It’s not that I don’t think that there are people out there who are at peace with the balance in their lives and who truly aren’t ignoring the discomfort, but I just don’t think that there are more of them than there are the rest of us.
You can figure out where you fall in the spectrum. There’s nothing wrong with placing yourself anywhere other than “Zen-like state of bliss” on said spectrum. I listened to an interview that Piers Morgan conducted with the Dalai Lama not to long ago. Piers asked him if he ever tried alcohol or smoking or other kinds of drugs. The answer, of course, was “no”. Do I believe him? Sure. I do. And I also think that he’s an exception. We should all be so lucky.
I think discomfort is good. It keeps us awake. It keeps us honest. The problem isn’t experiencing the discomfort. You should allow yourself to feel it. Relish it, in fact. Embrace it. Listen to it. Follow it. It will take you to amazing places. The problems arise when you find yourself ignoring the discomfort. That leads to the emotional equivalent of blood clots, and those suckers can kill. If nothing else, they damage.
OK. Read this article first.
I bet 96% of all “super-taskers” are women. Sorry guys, but you know it’s true. I think the studies cited in the Wall Street Journal article (name dropping to increase my own credibility) support my “Mastodon Theory”. A man cannot multi-task because we are hard-wired for exceptional powers of focus. Like human lasers without the devastating heat effects we sometimes wish we had, the male brain is capable of zeroing in on a single source of stimulus to the exclusion of all others. This amazing skill reached its evolutionary pinnacle towards the latter part of the Pleistocene, roughly 15,000 years ago. When you are a small, hairy mammal with no visible means of protection other than a few animal pelts and a sharp stick (we have no fangs, claws, or armored shells to speak of), absolute focus on the Mastodon (genus Mammut) standing in front of you is pretty much a good skill to master. Critical, actually. Thus, we cannot multi-task.
Voila: the “Mastodon Theory”.
No?
Alright, maybe you’ll grant me this: the brains of boys and girls do not develop in the same way, at least not when you start getting down into the nitty-gritty and don’t just look at the basic human trends. As an anthropology student, I learned that there are trends and characteristics that serve to differentiate between species, and then there are trends and characteristics that serve to differentiate within species. All I’m saying is that when you get into it at the intra-species level, you have to admit that there’s a good chance that the men in your life will be doing that Mastodon thing more often than they will that super-tasker thing. Provided, of course, they can do the latter at all. Conversely, the women in your life will be managing many more moving parts. All at the same time.
I guess the point I am attempting to make is simple: there is a biological basis for human behavior, and the behavior in which we engage is often indicative of the talents we possess. There are also trends to these behaviors. So, if you become conscious of the trends and attempt to study some of the ways in which the human brain functions, you’ll open your mind to a whole new way of perceiving and appreciating the people with whom you interact. We may not be facing down those Mastodons any more, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an echo of those ancient moments reverbrating inside of us today. All of us.
One of the things I love most about iTunes is “The Song of the Week” freebie. I try not to be one of those people who troll the interwebs for free stuff. The iTunes weekly freebie, though, is one of my guilty pleasures. The thing I love most about it is the fact that I get to sample music I would never have otherwise listened to. I mean, NEVER. But I listen, and most of the time I enjoy.
Today…well, let’s just say today’s download struck a nerve. I’ll leave it at that.
If you use iTunes, go grab this week’s gem by Greg Laswell entitled “Come Back Down” featuring Sara Bareilles. It’s worth a listen.
Lyrics follow:
Come on now
you’re good friends are here waiting this one out
you’ve gotta come back down
you’ve gotta come back down
look around you
you’re the only one dragging this out
you’ve gotta come back down
you’ve gotta come back down
all of your wallowing is unbecoming
all of your wallowing is unbecoming
you’ve gotta take it on your own from here
it’s getting pathetic and i’m almost done here
you’ve gotta take it on your own from here
it’s getting pathetic and i’m almost done here
what you set out to kill off has been gone some time now
you’ve gotta come back down
you’ve gotta come back down
head out any further and you might just forget how
you’ve gotta come back down
you’ve gotta come back down
all of your wallowing is unbecoming
all of your wallowing is unbecoming
you gotta take it on your own from here
it’s getting pathetic and i’m almost done here
you’ve gotta take it on your own from here
it’s getting pathetic and i’m almost done here
all of your wallowing is unbecoming
all of your wallowing is unbecoming
you’ve gotta take it on your own from here
it’s getting pathetic and i’m almost done here
you’ve gotta take it on your own from here
it’s getting pathetic and i’m almost done here
you’ve gotta take it on your own from here
come back down
you’ve gotta come back down
you’ve gotta come back
you’ve gotta come back down
you’ve gotta come back down
you’ve gotta come back down
you’ve gotta come back down
I’ve become increasingly convinced that a leader’s voice is one of the most crucial characteristics to leverage when building an organization. Leaders build organizations in many ways and in many circumstances. However, regardless of whether a leader is building a new organization within a company, taking the reigns of an existing organization, or growing an organization that they’ve been leading for years, the shape that things take depends mostly on the leader’s voice.
Few things are more important to the workforce than hearing the leader’s voice. We use the term “organizational culture” to describe the set of beliefs and rules, both written and unwritten, that determine the way in which employees interact with one another and carry out the business of the organization. Culture, though, is created primarily by the constituency, the individuals who make up the whole. Culture is a collective construct, and the collective organically guide the evolution of the culture. Leader’s play a role in that evolution, but the collective can and will correct for aberrant, dysfunctional behavior. History is filled with examples of leaders who took the proverbial left turn and watched as the collective corrected the course. Some corrections take generations and some take weeks. The thing to remember is that leader’s are left to decay while culture marches on.
In contrast, an organization’s culture is heavily dependent on the leader. From a corporate perspective, the leader shapes the organizational set of beliefs, and the collective follows. The collective can influence, for sure, but the leader can perpetuate behaviors and situations that are aberrant and dysfunctional. The collective follows, regardless. There are, of course, examples of corporate rebellions and revolutions, but history is filled with examples of leaders who took the proverbial left turn and drove their organization into the ground. On the flip side, history is also filled with organizations that have collapsed once the charismatic, visionary leader has left the picture. The thing to remember is that leader’s in most organizations can move on, leaving the organization to decay in their wake.
Human cultures exist over time, evolving and transforming, merging and diverging, separating from and subliming into other cultures. Organizational cultures are tightly tied to their leaders. This is why the constituency must hear the voice of the leader. A leader influences through action and inaction. As Lao Tzu taught, inaction is, itself, action. A leader’s sphere of influence spreads in one of two ways: through direct interaction between the leader and those they lead or through myth and legend passed on from the eyewitness to the audience once and twice removed. In the absence of voice, the leader puts the perception of their intent into the realm of myths and legends. They put their story into the hands of others. Only through exercising their voice, by ensuring that they are heard as much as they can be, does a leader pull perception of their intent out of that nebulous realm of hearsay and into the brilliant light of truth.
Here’s a weird paradox that I’ve noticed in life: the smaller you make your world, the larger the emptiness becomes…conversely, the more of the Universe that you let into your world, the smaller the Universe itself becomes. This is the paradox of emptiness.
How can this be? I believe that everything in this Universe is connected. When we deny the connections, we deny a fundamental piece of our very existence. This causes a schism in our psyche, a disconnect between what our Higher Self knows and what our ego-bound self thinks. Intuitively, we understand that, at minimum, people are connected. We are gregarious animals, if you will, and we find joy in the presence of others. This should be our first clue of the important role that connection plays in our lives! We desire connection to different extents, of course, depending on our life experiences, but if you are honest with yourself, you will appreciate that a balance between solitude and interaction with others brings a certain peace to life. Thus, connection is an important part of the human experience, and resisting it is bound to cause disharmony. When we shutdown and limit the connections, we amplify this disharmony and feed the negative emotional and psychological drivers that cause us to want to isolate ourselves. It becomes a self-fueling cycle, and the end result can be nothing other than sadness. Eventually, it can become tragic.
This is how making our world smaller makes the emptiness loom larger.
When we embrace the connections and feed them, they will grow. Strong and healthy connections lead to balance, to harmony. Embracing the need for connection and nurturing the ones we already have is a method of affirming the innate human need to be a party of the collective. There is value in retreat, in meditation and internal reflection, but I do not believe that the average human being is meant to sustain a solo journey over the long haul. Connections are safe harbors during life’s storms, and life is no less temperamental than the weather on an open sea during times of climactic change. Our journeys are different, of course; each human being has a path to follow. The Universe nudges us towards one another, into each other’s paths. We weave into and out of each other’s lives. If we could visualize them, the sum of our paths would look very much like a giant, cosmic net. In the net, all paths lead to all others. The weave is tighter than we think. We understand that only when we allow ourselves to perceive the net. We perceive the net only when we allow ourselves to flow into and out of the connections.
Universe. Connection. Flow. This is how letting in more of the Universe makes the Universe itself smaller.
A paradox can be weird, but it does not have to be beyond our ability to comprehend and leverage it.
Illuminate Possibilities 