Blogs

Do what is hard.

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Success comes from doing what is hard. This recent Seth Godin blog inspired me. My analogy to this idea is eating your vegetables. Eat your vegetables first and then you can have dessert. Do the hard stuff first, and the rest of it feels easy, a piece of cake. First we have to get through the forest, the battle, the tough moments. Once we have made it through those moments we can rest, celebrate, and eat our cake.

Here is an excerpt of Seth’s blog:

You will care more about the things that aren’t working yet, you’ll push through the dip, you’ll expend effort and expose yourself to fear.

When you have a lot of balls in the air, it’s easy to just ignore the ones that make you uncomfortable or that might fall.

Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you’ve got, you’re more likely to do it.

And this is precisely why it’s difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part.

It means that you do not eat your dessert first. You eat the yucky parts. The ones that keep you strong, full of fiber, but sometimes taste the nastiest. It is easy to ignore the lima beans and/or peas, and eat the tacos on your plate, but the healthy alternative does not always taste the best. It might even be worth a detox so all you eat are the lima beans, peas, and brussels sprouts, aka the hard stuff. These are the foods that make me wince, they gross me out (brussels sprouts are like little mini cabbages). Not fun at all. They are foods that make me uncomfortable and squeamish. They might be easy foods for others. The hard part is different for everyone. Note: I never knew it was brussels sprouts (brussels with an “s”, I always thought it was brussel sprouts).

Are you double fisting the sugar? Or like I do, do you double fist the fries? Start with what is hard. Fight for it, live it, and then put up your feet and relax, and have some cake.

“Not one more” shooting

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I had to wait a day or two to formulate my thoughts about the shooting in a local Troutdale, Oregon school. Social media sites are being bombarded with statistics about the number of school shootings all across the United States, and comparing them to other countries. Maybe I am thinking about it more because it happened less than 30 minutes away from me, or maybe I am sick and tired of watching innocent children be injured or die.

Bulletproof blankets for schools at the low price of $1000 a blanket, metal detectors in all school entrances. What has it come to? I do not really care about your politics or your personal opinions on gun control. I want to talk about the real issue, which is whether our children are safe or not in schools. Children go to school to learn, to trust, to push our boundaries. How can children learn when they are afraid of their fellow students? When they might fear that those that bully them might kill them to? It scares the crap out of me to think about sending my future kids to school. Will all parents have to start home schooling because we do not have the proper security and safety in our schools? Gun control, gun rights, politics, bearing arms aside, what are we going to do to protect our children?

I am angry.

What are we doing as a country to handle and resolve this issue? There was a visual icon on a friend’s Facebook page that said: “NOT ONE MORE” in support of finding a solution to school shootings. We all remember Columbine. We remember Virginia Tech where it was a massacre of lives. We remember Newtown. Are the shootings where one or two kids are shot not as important, or does the large volume of schools where incidents have occurred (fatalities or not) matter? They all add up do they not? There is a real issue, and we need to resolve it.

What are we going to do? What are you going to do? What am I going to do to step up and be apart of the change that needs to happen? How long are we going to continue to watch the news each day, and continue to be desensitized to the issues with guns? This Bill Moyers article lists the actual gun deaths or injuries in schools by date since Newtown – a shocking 79 in the last 18 months.

I am shocked. I am disappointed. I want answers. I want solutions.

Sweeping

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Growing up in the Midwest, we called the thing you use to clean your rugs a sweeper. Yes regardless of whether you were cleaning a hardwood floor or a rug or carpet we would say: are you going to sweep? Now I say the collective “we” but I really mean my family growing up. Jump forward to my life with Chris and I would ask if he was going to “sweep” and he would just chuckle and ask what I meant. To him sweeping was when you were going to use a broom and truly “sweep.” Using a vacuum on carpet was “vacuuming.” I think I am 75% converted, but I still have slips where I ask if he is going to “sweep the rug.” Any other Midwesterners out there that said the same thing, or is this just something that was strange about my family?

In any case, this idea of sweeping was one I came across recently, and it made me ponder the idea of “sweeping.” The idea of sweeping and clearing away the gunk for new energy, is a welcome concept for me. One I had not thought about much before reading this Daily Om, titled: “Releasing and Welcoming.” This line particularly inspired me:

“Sweeping each morning prepares the ground for the new day at the same time as it deepens our awareness of the importance of letting go of the past to welcome the present.”

While I do not sweep each morning I am a clean freak, and this idea can translate to many other cleansing rituals I do around the house. For example, if I am inspired to be creative, I first want to clean and clear the gunk, extra stuff, and organize my life first. Once I have done so, I find that my creative time whether in front of the easel, or with pen and paper is that much richer. I have unearthed and removed the dirty thoughts, frustrations, and extra junk in order to find the space to welcome new creative ideas.

I do just the same thing at work. At times I might feel stuck about an idea or a new project. My teammates might find me start to clean my desk area, or the larger team space. I begin to organize. Sometimes I hear the mutter of: “here she goes again.” Often in the act of cleaning and organizing, I find the answer I needed for that project, and I go back and dig into it with gusto. It is amazing what a “vacuum” or “broom” can do to sweep away the crap. Yes, the 25% of me that still says “sweep the rug” will always be. You can take the girl out of Indiana, but you cannot take Indiana out of the girl.

Happy Sweeping…

A Phenomenal Woman

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I am sure a lot of people are writing and sharing about Maya Angelou today, yesterday, and in the coming weeks. She deserves the fanfare. A stellar woman, with so much poise, brilliance, and badassness. The Internet is buzzing with her quotes, thoughts about her life, and how she inspired millions upon millions of people in the course of her life. I love, love, love her last tweet:

Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.  11:43 AM – 23 May 2014

I wonder what was going through her thoughts, if she was coherent, if she was so closely talking to God. Regardless, she shared such wisdom with the world, and we are all the better for it.

One of my all time favorite Maya Angelou poems is: “Phenomenal Woman.” In case you have not read it, it still brings tears to my eyes. I think I first read it in college. It was one of those poems that I instantly memorized and often has come back to my thoughts. I often wonder if it was the first time that I actually thought about the idea of a woman being “phenomenal.” Sad, but true. Here is the first verse, but I encourage you to click the above link and read the entire poem.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say, It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
I 
I only hope that we can continue to raise our girls to know they are phenomenal — whatever their age, background, or disposition. Here is also a past blog post with another favorite Maya Angelou quote.

Our lives are not vacuums

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Sometimes we live in little bubbles. We get in our cars in the morning (or maybe on a bike, or via public transit) and go off to work. Some days we highly engage with others, and some days we may never leave our desk, but often the routine is the same. We spend our days in a fairly similar fashion, and then turn around and come home, partake in our evening activities, go to bed and turn around and do it all over again the next day. We all have our own form of a bubble, just some of us have larger or smaller bubbles than others.

Yet, we have the ability to pop those bubbles, to expand and grow our horizons, learn new things, or never take the same route home each day. Our lives are weaved together each moment of every day. Our choices build the story of what others think of us, good or bad. If we are continuously dependable others will begin to depend on us. If we do not show up as continuously dependable then trust begins to erode. We always have a choice to how we show up, and how we tell our own stories.

I wrote a blog post last year titled: “Brand YOU” and discuss how we each create our own brands, and decide how we market ourselves. I recently finished reading Austin Kleon’s newest book: “Show Your Work” and well I am always a sucker for inspiration around telling a story, specifically when it relates to a personal story. This idea specifically resonates with me:

“Your work doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Whether you realize it or not, you’re already telling a story about your work. Every email you send, every text, every conversation, every blog comment, every tweet, every photo, every video–they’re all bits and pieces of a multimedia narrative you’re constantly constructing. If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself and your work, you need to become a better storyteller. You need to know what a good story is and how to tell one.” page 95

Pop your bubble, remember that every interaction you have is a line in your story, and how you tell your story (via in person, Instagram, Facebook, etc) is part of the Brand you are weaving. Now with the Internet that weave is permanent and hard to unravel, so put some thought around the mark you want to make.