Are you interesting or interested?

Posted by random olio

Are you the person in the room that is interesting or the person that is interested? I just finished a book called: “Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone” by Mark Goulston. I encourage you to read the book, for a number of reasons. One: it will make you think differently about your employees, team, and co-workers. Two: it will make you think differently in your personal life. Three: it will remind you that we rarely listen. All three combined, if we only listened more our work and personal lives would be transformed.

I will give you an example that is shared in Goulston’s book. Do you know at Christmas time when you send out your Christmas cards? Are you the one that writes a long rant about all that you have done that year? All the promotions you received, possessions you gained, and trips you have gone on? Do you ask the recipient of the card how they are doing? Do you do anything to remind them how much you care about them, or want to connect with them, or is it all about you? Goulston talks about how much we are interested in ourselves, or how interesting we are, then in being interested in others. He writes:

“If you want to have an interesting dinner conversation, be interested. If you want to have interesting things to write, be interested. If you want to meet interesting people, be interested in the people you meet—their lives, their history, their story. Where are they from? How did they get here? What have they learned? By practicing the art of being interested, the majority of people can become fascinating teachers; nearly everyone has an interesting story to tell.” Page 56

I love, love, love this. If we all spent more time being inquisitive and interested, we all might also feel more listened to and heard. We all have our own story to tell, but so does everyone else. Like the vastness and uniqueness of a snowflake, so are each of our lives. What if we could be students to all the teachers in our lives? I know I have work to do. While I am an information nut, love learning new things, am constantly researching anything and everything, and love finding solutions — I could be more interested in others.

Could you?

Tardypants

Posted by random olio

We are not always the same people all our life. We change, life changes, and sometimes we end up doing things so differently than what we remember. I never remember being the kid that was late. I think I was actually fairly punctual. Somehow over time (as I discuss in the blog “Savor Every Conversation Bite“) I have turned into that person that is late. My colleagues jokingly call me Tardypants. On Monday I started reading the book “Never Be Late Again: 7 Cures for the Punctually Challenged” by Dianne DeLonzor. What is interesting is that I have checked out this book from the library a few times. Each time I never read it. There are always more interesting ones in my stack. Eventually, when I see a book continue to make its way to the end of the stack, I pull it out and decide if it interests me and I read past the first few pages. If it does, then I commit to finishing it, return it, and not check it out again.

Over the weekend, there was a hefty stack that made its way back to the library in the category of “not interested.” Somehow, “Never Be Late Again” found me at the right moment. After multiple check-outs, this moment in time seems to be just what I needed to read and absorb. Fast forward to Tuesday morning. Chris has an early morning meeting. By early I mean 8:30 (which I think is early). I am not a morning person. It is my zen/quiet time and I do not like to be rushed. I like to get a lot of personal things done in the morning and I do not like to wake up early. Not an easy dilemma to solve… sleep longer and get less time to myself or get up earlier and have more time to get things done for me. Alas, it means I am often rushing (or Chris is often rushing me) out the door.

An hour later at work and I was already behind. Each meeting of my day went long which meant I was late to my next meeting. It was like a domino effect for the rest of the day. Does this bother me? Should it bother me? Yes. On the one hand it is the situation I am in and, on the other, I feel like it might make others that interact with me frustrated and feel like I am being disrespectful. Yet none of my intentions are malicious. I focus my entire self in the meeting I am in. I care about each individual. Sometimes that means I go over time with the person and that trickles into being late for the next person.

My dilemma is how do I fix this? How do I get back on track, keep the respect of those around me, continue to care in the way I do, yet be timely? Maybe this is an easy answer, but it does not feel so simple for me. I am hoping as I continue to read “Never Be Late Again” it will shed some light and give me some aha moments. Do any of you struggle with this? What ideas would you share?

#yesiamlateagain

Unthink outside the box

Posted by random olio

I am not getting old, or maybe I am. This book has reminded me to be a child again. As always I have been reading like crazy. I just finished “Unthink: Rediscover Your Creative Genius” by Erik Wahl. A book that has opened my ideas to how much and how often we try to fill in the blank, find the easy answer, and not use our brains. Early on in his book he explains this in such a succinct way:

“The short story goes like this: Our education taught us to memorize the predetermined answer or study the predetermined method in order to deliver the predetermined solution. There was nearly always one right way to one right answer, and an A+ job meant finding and then following that path repeatedly. There was rarely if ever room for what we so fondly call ‘thinking outside the box.’ You and I were rewarded for—often literally—making a check mark inside the right box. We were taught to be art critics but not artists. To think but not to unthink.” Page 17

How true is that? We were taught to score well on the SATs, to do well on standardized testing for our states and counties, because that is what determined if we were learning in school and if our teachers were doing a good job. Did it teach us how to think creatively? Did it teach us to solve problems? No, it taught us to fill out the correct answer on the scantron test and accurately use our #2 pencil in the oval, being sure not to color outside the lines. So how did we learn how to think outside the box?

I cannot remember when I started to think differently. At a certain point I think it happened in college when I got so sick of the status quo. A part of it had to do with being a woman and yet not treated fairly as a woman. It made me think I am going to do better than a man can do, I am going to learn what I can so that I can never be in a situation where I get stuck or cannot do something I cannot handle. I think it also was being so clear that I do not want to live how I grew up, that I wanted a better life. That desire and drive taught me that I do not want to live inside the right box. At a certain point we end up stuck in our ways, or our routine causes us to not take risks or live life differently. Which is why I love this quote that Wahl shares from Anais Nin:

“Older people fall into rigid patterns. Curiosity, risk, exploration are forgotten by them. You have not yet discovered that you have a lot to give, and that the more you give the more riches you will find in yourself. It amazed me that you felt that each time you write a story you gave away one of your dreams and you felt the poorer for it. But then you have not thought that this dream is planted in others, others begin to live it too, it is shared, it is the beginning of friendship and love…You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings.” –Anais Nin page 183

Aw man does that resonate with me. “…the more you give the more riches you will find in yourself.” We cannot give when we check the right boxes, when we fill out the scantron test. We give when we live outside of ourselves, and when we are raw, authentic, and real. Stop caring about the A+, and think like an artist…outside the box.

Is chivalry all about intent?

Posted by random olio

He is a gentlemen. He is listening, watching, and aware. However, do not be fooled, he can have a bite too. As you watch him in a room, he can often be the quiet one, but when he talks others listen. Most likely it is because he does not fill the airwaves with mindless banter (as I might be more accused of doing). Regardless of his quiet demeanor, he has always put me first (well 99% of the time–no one is that perfect)! Yes, I am speaking of Chris. My man, my partner in crime. He is good to me, takes care of me, and does little things that make me feel safe. An example, walking back to our car in a sketchy part of town, he will open the door for me and make sure I am in the car safely. Does he do it all the time? No, do I want him to? Hell no. Do I love that he does it randomly? Yes (said with a smile).

I just finished reading a great book with each chapter having an excerpt from a different woman called: “Mistakes I Made at Work: 25 Influential Women Reflect on What They Got Out of Getting It Wrong” edited by Jessica Bacal. It was an interesting read on a variety of topics. 25 women talk about lessons they learned on the job, at some of their toughest moments. One of the ideas that stood out for me was from author, Courtney E. Martin about chivalry:

“I wrote a post about chivalry, trying to unpack what it means to be feminist in romantic relationships. I liked when guys opened doors for me but wondered if that fed a stereotype that women were weak and needed to be taken care of by men. I thought about it and felt good about the distinction that I came up with—door opening as a loving gesture versus door opening with an ‘I don’t think you can open this heavy door by your little self!’ attitude. What I ended up writing was that it’s romantic if it happens out of care and interdependence but not romantic if the guy thinks you are an ‘invalid’—a word I was trying to use ironically.” Page 229

Martin mentions romantic relationships, but I think as a woman it can also translate to work. You can tell which male co-workers open the door because they are just opening the door for you, (and you would do the same for them) and how many are doing it because of a power play. They feel like they should, as Martin mentions they think you are too weak to do so, or they are better at the task. It is always a little strange as a woman, that men let me go first through a door. I mean–why does it matter who goes first?

Whether the men I work with everyday, or the one I have chosen to spend my life with decide to do it as a “loving gesture” or not, I hope they at least think about their intent. That is all that really matters, right? At the end of the day, power over another does not make us equals. Why not look at the relationship and decide what works? Maybe we all have different ways to show we care, and we also have different ways to show our power.

What do you think?

No Sugar For A Year?

Posted by random olio

Can you imagine a year with no sugar? I cannot. Not that I have a sugar tooth, because I do not. I crave and want salt all day long. That does not mean, however, that I do not have sugar all the time. I will tell you why.

I just finished reading: “Year of No Sugar” by Eve Schaub. An interesting read. Schaub decides to have her and her family go an entire year and not eat sugar. The thing is – sugar is in everything. Of course desserts, breads, and sweets, but also ketchup, sauces, and mayonnaise. Literally everything has some amount of sugar. Even if the ingredient list does not say sugar, companies have found ways to break down the ingredient list into fructose, glucose, etc to make sure it’s not the top ingredient because it is broken into three smaller ingredients. Clever, but dishonest too. Schaub and her family are not 100% hardcore. She has two kids and so over the course of a year they decide that they will have one “sugar-filled” dessert a month and if it is your birthday month you get to select the dessert.

After many months on their adventure, and digging into a monthly “sugar-filled” dessert, Schaub states:

“But now what struck me perhaps most of all was the fact that when I would give in and have something that I wanted, or thought I wanted, or somebody else thought I should want, often it failed to be enjoyable at all. This was newly noticeable–a disconnect between what my brain thought I’d enjoy and what my body actually did enjoy.” page 256

Interesting, is it not? What we think we want is not always what our body wants and what we think we want does not always taste good. I think that is true for a lot of bad foods, bad relationships, and bad jobs. Sometimes we are just good at telling ourselves what we think we want, and maybe it is not at all what we need, or what is good for us.

Yesterday at work I opened a bag of mixed fun size candy bars from Costco. Of course because of just reading Schaub’s book I was very curious about the sugar amounts. You’ll have to click the photo to be able to read the packaging, but in order to truly know how many grams of sugar was in each serving size you have to take the number of candy bars per serving size and divide it by total number of sugar calories.

So the Milky Way has the most calories at 2 bars per serving size, for a total of 20g, which means 10g if you eat one bar, and Nestle Crunch being the best for you at 22g for 4 mini candy bars, so 5.5g if you just have one. GROSS – all that sugar! But they sure do not make it easy to figure out the true number of grams of sugar.

I love how Schaub ends “Year of No Sugar” with such an appropriate quote:

“We save actual sugar for the ‘worth it’ stuff, stuff that is truly meaningful–for birthdays, at special occasions, that wonderful piece of chocolate after a meal. Who knows? Maybe a perfect, shining piece of Napoleon will one day come my way. If it does, I don’t want to be sated with Cocoa Puffs and Snapple–I want to be ready.” page 272

That is how I roll. Make the best of the sugar you have each day. Make it count. Be ready for the good stuff. The homemade cupcakes and damn good desserts. Do not give away your sugar allotment for crappy, processed, shitty food. Hold out for things that matter.