Honey and vinegar

Chapter 340

It’s so hard to be the person that encourages everyone all the time. It’s far too easy to get bogged down in your own concerns and worries. But people have little desire to be with someone bogged down all the time, instead they want to be with someone who is breathing sunshine, farting love, and overcoming all the challenges of life and are oozing that energy out their pores. I know that is who I want to spend my time with, and I bet you do too. This occurred to me this morning in a powerful way for some reason, when I laughed out loud to something in the audiobook I was listening. I realized then how long it has been since I laughed out loud. People need to hear me laugh. They need to hear you laugh. It will make them believe that they can laugh too.

Obviously this cannot be faked, and so don’t even try. The point here, is to look for, and find the humor in life and situations and put the best possible narrative to life far more quickly than we have been doing for the last 6 decades. It’s time to be a huge ray of bright optimism for the world, especially those in our world closest to us. 

Let me say it a different way - be a joy to be around. Honey attracts far more flies than does vinegar as the saying goes. I for one have developed (or just naturally am) a personality of vinegar. I must take intentional steps to mitigate the sharpness of my vinegary persona and look for more rays of sunshine and blessings to pour out. Or in my case, be forced out.

Think of it as the discipline of spreading power and love. 

Dreaming

Chapter 339

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird, that cannot fly." ~ Langston Hughes

Hangin’ on to dreams is tougher than you might think. It feels like everything in life is aiming to crush your dreams and take them away from you. Both internal and external things. The external pressures of making a living and keeping your head above water is a dream smasher. I have a much better job than most and even I can still feel this one sometimes. But in the past I felt it all the time, and I think that many people are right there. Having their dreams smashed. But this does not have to remain. You can change jobs and you can change how you structure your life and you can make choices. Perhaps not big choices, but you can make choices. You can stand against the tide of dream smashers.

More insidious are the internal dream wreckers: inertia, selfishness, negative self-talk, feelings of unworthiness, self defeating thinking, self centeredness, small world narrow world, all these small and all these self-focused things make dreams unlikely. Make flying even less likely. These are the internal struggles that everyone faces eventually and some people face incessantly. Most find these more difficult to overcome than the external ones, which are usually large and easy to grasp, whereas these internal ones are such a part of our “normal” thinking, they are hard to recognize and harder to wrestle with.

So let your dreams help. Let your dreams free you from the bonds of external factors, and energize you to discover and face the internal factors that would want to keep you from flying.

Not even Jesus

Chapter 338

The 4th of July

A great day. A great holiday. Even though there are no big fireworks displays tonight as there would have been in previous years. The pool was great with the grandkids and the frozen yogurt place was super and we had the place to ourselves, though I am still trying to figure out how three little people ate $30 worth of yogurt! But that can be the focus of another post another day perhaps.

Well there were lots of private fireworks booming last night. Lots of folks decided to take matters into their own hands and have a 4th of their own liking and making. It’s the American way. Compensate, innovate, find a way to make it happen. We can be some of the most pragmatic people on the planet. That gives us a mighty strength and a deadly weakness. It makes us blind to what others are going through and how they process and what they are feeling. Honestly it makes us jackasses to the rest of the world. And when we are here, that is generally ok, because that is how we generally are all the time.

But when we travel and live abroad in other countries, cultures and languages, it is terrible overall. This is not a chapter about Americans in a cross-cultural nightmare, but rather about Independence Day. For good or bad, no one is gonna tell us what to do for very long, it won’t be tolerated. Independent is the key word. Heck I even grew up with the religiously independent and that is wilder yet. No one can tell us what to do not even Jesus.

Making the difference

Chapter 337

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." ~ Jane Goodall

Your life matters, it always has, regardless of your shade or color or gender. And because it actually matters, what you do has always made a difference. Perhaps not where you wanted it to and to the level you wished for, but it has made a difference. But you have more power in this choosing than it likely feels like you have.

But deciding which difference you want to make, or differences you want to make, may be the really difficult part. At least here in the West, and more and more so in the East, life is about money to pay for stuff we buy. While that may make a difference to your local retailer, this is not the change in the world difference that will matter beyond our years on this planet. This is not a difference. Nothing changes except your credit score, and that is not a difference worthy of you. You were made for better than this, more than this. While you intrinsically matter right from the beginning of your life, you want to leverage that into more.

Not more for you, but more for others. You don’t make an impact on the world by doing more for you. A difference is made when others benefit, whether they be ape or slum-dweller or slave or your neighbor in suburbia.

What you do already makes a difference, now just make it count.

Terrible Wonderful

Chapter 336

What a wonderful terrible day. Sometimes you want to ask the question, “why can’t we just have some ALL good days thrown in with the mix?” Instead for most of us, each day is a terrible wonderful event. Some great positives and some great negatives. This is the world we live in.

I failed to write the 275 yesterday (that’s a discipline failure not that I had something amazing to write down on virtual paper), yet I got an outside bike ride in, but the car drivers were angry and aggressive, the views were beautiful, but the fear was ever-present, the meeting with the client was wonderful, the meeting with the client was terrible, I saw my grandbabies, but I lost one too, the hug from granddaughter was unexpected and wonderful and wet (she had her swim suit on), but the pain my daughter was in was terrible, the cigar time was beautiful and relaxing, but the conversations were all about problems ( many of their own making). If I give myself a minute here, I am sure that there are 100 other examples as well. Most days are a mixture of the highs and the lows, the great and awful, the wonderful and the terrible.

The point here is that not one of us has much control over these ever-changing flows of life during the course of a day. I am pretty sure I am correct that this is not the part you can control. The only part that I have seen that I can control is how I respond to all these ups and downs. My attitude can be the great equalizer to the unstableness of the flow of the day.

Focus on what you can control.

Good fear

Chapter 335

Do one thing every day that scares you." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

This is not about being afraid or frightened all the time, of course its about stretching your boundaries. And stretching your boundaries is about being uncomfortable,and the more uncomfortable you can manage, the closer you approach that which scares you, its your edge, your boundaries, unchartered territory for you. You don’t know how it will turn out, or IF it will turn out. You don’t know how badly it may hurt, how difficult it may prove to be, nor how much it may cost you in the end. All these unknowns have a cost.

But you push your boundaries wider, deeper, taller, every time you do this. Your world gets bigger. Your hemisphere grows. You can no longer be threatened afraid or contained by the world you once lived in. You have changed. You can never be the same. How you see the world is forever altered. This is what happens to you when you do one thing every day that frightens you a little bit. It doesn’t make you more afraid, it lessens your fear, increases your confidence, expands your world.

Forcing ourselves to do this with any sort of regularity is the real challenge in my opinion. There are so many demands and expectations on our time and schedules that seeking out the boundary-expanding experiences seems to get pushed to the sidelines of the maybe tomorrow and not right now categories. But how much do we lose each day, playing it safe, in the known and expected and sure parts of life, rather than exploring and seeking out the edges. It’s from the edges that all the life-changing pieces come.

Be a bit afraid every day, by choice.

Have a great day

Chapter 334

New possibilities 

It's so good to be back on the road again. Everything is new and possible shiny and bright. It's quiet enough to think, and it is silent enough to get real work done. I have missed this tremendously! Also seeing new people every day and seeing my son for two days in a row, has already made this a wonderful trip. Now I get 10 hours on the road and a car by myself, well sort of, since everyone can call me and everyone plans to talk to me, and there's so many things to write like I'm writing this blog just by speaking it, obviously I'm not really :-).

But the world is filled with new possibilities this morning, and that makes me smile. I feel like I could change the world today. And I think I'm going to actually think about doing that! And if I actually get to "think" that alone is a great success on any given day. Thinking is not allowing the tornado twisting muddled thoughts of all that you've done and all that you're going to do flowing through your head, thinking is being quiet and silent and very intentionally focus on resolving or finding solutions to a particular problem or challenge that you or someone else is facing. That takes a lot of energy and focus and concentration. It's a great privilege in life to have the freedom to think and solve problems. That means that you're not having to worry constantly about food housing and basic necessities. It's a great day.

Value value

Chapter 333

"Whatever you are, be a good one." ~ Abraham Lincoln

There is a movement in America to not value value. It is a movement to destroy our meritocracy, a system that we mostly still have in place, where those who are the most talented, work the hardest, achieve the most, are given the place of prominence and leadership and power, because of their outstanding efforts and abilities. This is the surgeon you always want, this is the tax professional you always want, this is the dentist you always want, this is the construction team you always want, this is the lawyer you always want. You get the picture. 

Having lived in Socialist countries for the last 26 years, I know far better than most, what results when advancement is based on political affiliation or ideological basis, rather than talent and effort. The whole damn country falls apart, doctors can’t doctor and nurses can’t nurse and engineers can’t engineer and dentist are nothing more than butchers. Don’t tell me that it is not true, I have and do live in these places and I can promise you this is so.

The anti-meritocracy group wants to affirm everyone’s intrinsic value, and I do too. I believe everyone has value as a person. This is no slam on personhood. Each and every person is valuable and important. But I want the top surgeon in the class to be the one operating on me, and if that costs double in a meritocracy then so be it.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Forced to detour

Chapter 332

You are trying to reach your destination. You are driving hard and relentlessly toward getting there. Suddenly all the traffic stops! You sit for an hour. You finally decide to get off the interstate and see if you can make your way around whatever is blocking the road. Actually the interstate has been closed! So cross-country it is whether you want to or not. Many of us have to be forced off the trail, in order to try something new and seemingly perilous. However most of the time you can find these detours to be delightful.

This scenario above actually happened to me yesterday. On second thought, it has happened to me many times in life. I have or had a plan and was so committed to that plan or trajectory, that I would not consider any diversions unless forced to. But once acceptance of the inevitable occurs, then you can relax and enjoy the detour for whatever it presents you.

So yesterday my enforced detour provided me with lovely vistas, winding twisty roads, unexpected views, rolling hills, green valleys and relief from the monotonous frenetic pace of the interstate highway. 

I need to take more detours.

The consistency you want to become

Chapter 331

"Quitters never win, and winners never quit." ~ Unknown

There is a consistency to this that rings true. And there is a simply a consistency to this message by the twice use of the word “never”. Of course it doesn’t actually mean “never” but perhaps that is a blog for tomorrow. It does however, mean that those who quit, regularly continue to quit and quit so often that they rarely “never” win something. Winning something generally requires staying at the said something, focused and practiced daily, long enough to beat out the competition.

Winners have a consistency of showing up and staying at it, focused and daily practice, long enough to beat out the competition. They just show up, they are not necessarily more talented that the others, but simply more consistent. They consistently show up with more effort and more intention and focus than others. They imagine themselves on the winner’s platform and they rarely doubt that they will get there eventually. They make these efforts a normal natural part of their everyday.

Several things stand out here - most of is that both parties are equally consistent. Consistently making different choices, but they are both nevertheless consistently and dependably making those choices. (This could have business applications? Helping quitters stop quitting?) Everyone is capable of consistency, why not be more careful in your application of it? And the second thing that stands out, is that these binary endings not the only option available. Winning is not the only positive outcome, nor is quitting a necessarily negative one.

But you are consistent. So choose the consistent you want to become.

Narrowing

Chapter 330

This has been the most unusual year ever. I have been in the same spot on the planet for 15 weeks. Unprecedented for me personally, and many others too. Over 100 days and no flights, no road trips, no travel except virtual, this is the weirdest life ever for me, because I generally live in airports and hotels for at least a third of every year.

I booked my first hotel room of the year last night! Six months into the year, and I am booking my first hotel stay of the year. (Slowly shaking my head in disbelief). But it has been a wonderfully refreshing break in most ways. My body is thanking me and my circadian rhythms are thanking me, my sleep is thanking me and my brain is thanking me.

On the other hand, it has been terribly narrowing. My entire world has narrowed, and that has been especially dangerous in a time of sickness (COVID 19) and racial reactions (George Floyd death) and separation from my wife as she is stuck on the other side of the planet from me, and we have never been apart for this long before, and we still have a long way to go. Narrowing is also dangerous, but especially in times of crisis, when you need to think as inclusively and broadly as possible. You need to be your sharpest! A Narrowing world is not going to assist you in being your sharpest.

Our world here on the farm has narrowed down to our Coronavirus project and cows and guns and ourselves. Watching the news only makes it worse.

You need to read and to think. Those are the antidotes to narrowing.

How bad can it be?

Chapter 328

catastrophizing

I read this word recently and it describes people I know to a T. Everything is tainted by the worst possible scenarios, this just gets so boring and old, having to deal with their predictions of every potential disaster that will never happen. It was funny for the first 10,000 times, but now it is just plain ridiculous. We are tired of hearing about all the dangers that have a less than 0.001% chance of happening in the next 100 years. It reminds me of the tone they use on the national news cast each night. I no longer watch that, and haven’t since the Fall of 2007, but my dad does and I catch that tone immediately. It is high pitched and urgent and deadly and dangerous, as if what I am reporting on, will jump out of the tv and infect you immediately if you dare touch that remote to turn me off!

Folks, if this is what network news casts are built on, you surely can see that you don’t want to build your life on any of this posture. Hahahaha, as I sit here writing this, my dad is just a continuous stream of catastrophizing, across the table from me. Everything is wrong, difficult, broken, damaged, dangerous, and out to get you. Few things are good and awesome. And those require heroic effort to discover and enjoy. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live like that. There are more things that are good than bad in the world, and I can choose to live with that posture and not ascribe bad intentions to every person in the world. Will I get burned with that posture? For sure, and again! But in between the few burnings, is peace, relaxing, enjoyment, learning and humility.

The upside to staying in one place on the planet

Chapter 327

100 days. 

There is nothing unusual about me having worked out for 100 days. My annual average is around 300-320 days a year. And that would be true of the last 25 years. What is unusual and has never happened before that I know of or have records for, is that this milestone was for 100 consecutive days of working out! Consecutive days!! Thank Coronavirus for this, because that is the only way that this could have ever happened.

This does not mean that I am a stud or an elite bicyclist or something like that. It just means that I have been stuck in the same place on the planet for the first time in 25 years for 100 consecutive days! That is the most unusual experience for me, because I live in airports and hotels and on the road for a third of each year as a norm. And each one of those travel days presents me with a huge challenge of working out, so I always choose to stay in hotels with gyms whenever possible. I try to schedule my flights to leave as late in the day as is possible, so that I can sleep for sure, but also so that I can squeeze in a work out. Or if that is not possible then sometimes I will schedule a super early flight in the morning so that I can work out when I get back.

And of course there are places and times and schedules that won’t allow me a chance to work out in any form and that is why over the course of a year, I lose 45-65 days to factors out of my control. This is why 100 CONsecutive days is such a big deal. 

Mental weightlifting

Chapter 326

"Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like muscles of the body." ~ Lynn Jennings

There is a fair amount of talk about the limits of will power, how you don’t want to stretch it too close to its limits. But I think Jennings is more right than wrong. Everything gets more limber, agile and strong as it is used regularly. Can’t think of a single exception. I lost all my agility and suppleness on Sunday when I hit the asphalt and wrecked my back and shoulder. But I have been forcing myself to move constantly since then to regain it as soon as possible, plus when I stop moving, I start to freeze up badly. This is making it difficult to work work since that happens sitting down in front of screen, but I research for a client, and then I walk a few laps around the house, I research for another client, I walk a few laps around the house. The whole point here, is that perhaps mental will is like a body, that if you don’t use it, it freezes up and doesn’t function well at all.

I believe we need to have weightlifting exercises for our mental will. Richard Neihbur is mental weightlifting, Nora Roberts is not. Solving real problems in the real world is mental weightlifting, solitaire is not. Listening is mental weightlifting, talking generally is not. Thinking is mental weightlifting, facebook is not. Learning something new is mental weightlifting, coasting on what you already know is not. I am sure you can add more examples here.

Be strong, agile and supple. Lift mental weights! Exercise!

Dead Armadillos

Chapter 325

Head over heels. Ouch. It really hurts, almost as much as getting t-boned by a car in an intersection like I did two years ago. Was riding downhill, i. e. fast, looking at the three dogs chasing me, and suddenly I was flying through the air, and then slamming down on the asphalt and screaming in road rash pain. The asphalt always wins when I fall off my bicycle. This one left me short of a great deal of skin and I must have harmed every muscle in my whole body. I can’t hardly move. All because of a dead armadillo in my way that I did not see until after the asphalt beat the crap out of me.

It was a happy Father’s Day gift from the universe, to remind me of how fragile that I am. The asphalt always wins. The car always wins. The bike never wins, nor does the body, when there is contact between me and with asphalt and cars. I have been reminded before, and I have the scars to prove it. There will be additional scars from this encounter that I lost. And lost sleep. And Slow moving for a week or more. Very unsubtle reminders at every move, that you are lucky to be alive after slamming into the highway at 30 mph, ripping your clothes, breaking your helmet, and generally scrapping your skin off your body.

Somehow the dead armadillo doesn’t care.

Making things better?

Chapter 324

The only reason to open your mouth is to make something better. If things are worse when you’re done speaking, you failed. Dan Rockwell

If this was happening, there would be far less speaking going on. Nine out of every 10 words I hear further the pain and disharmony of the world, not make things better. Online is even worse. People say things online they would never dare in person, and you can see there that what many think is even worse than what they are willing to speak out loud. There should be long stretches of silence, where we are thinking and considering and figuring, before opening our mouths, but around here, silence can’t be tolerated for 10 seconds, so thinking is in very short supply.

We have all experienced at one time or another, making things worse by speaking up when we should have said something different, or nothing at all. If you have a heart, you feel badly about the part you played in making things worse. If you don’t have a heart, then you are likely doing it again and again. But from a human being point of view, you have failed, if you make things worse. Unless of course, you made things worse on the way to making things better, this is the exception to this rule.

Often in leadership, I have to say things people don’t want to hear, and they may (and often do!) get upset and be angry, but if they follow those words, things will get better. So this is a case where you make things worse on the way to getting better - some corrective input will always seem to make things worse at first.

Mental retirement

Chapter 323

"There are plenty of clock punchers out there—folks who are physically working but mentally retired.” Bill Treasurer

Mentally retired. I think most people have felt this way at some time or another. You start dreaming about going fishing or boating or motorcycle riding or camping or hiking or cycling or whatever leisure pleasure is your choice, and suddenly work seems like slavery and drudgery and the clock is moving backwards rather than forward and you can’t wait to get out of that building toward your imagined escape. This everyone feels at some point and I think it rather normal.

But when these feeling and these actions become systemic and habitual, things are turning serious. Everyone loses when this happens - the worker, the employer, the co-workers, the product, the customer, and the investors all suffer loss of some type when you and I are not engaged and not all there at our work. Each moment will start to feel pointless and a waste of time and a waste of our talents and efforts. Each hour will feel meaningless and you and I will start to travel mentally, to some other place, some other focus, some other fantasy or psychic prison, and rob this place, this job, this task, this responsibility of all that we could have given.

Of course you have to be of a certain age and generation to even know what a “clock-punching” actually is, I mean I haven’t actually physically punched a time card in a clock in 30 years. But I have still worked hard for the last 30 years, and each of these scenarios I mentioned above, can happen just as easily for those who own the business, as those who work in the business.

Save retirement for retirement. If you are engaged in an endeavor where you trade your time and effort for money and a paycheck, then give it all you have, you are worth that.

How good you want to be

Chapter 322

"It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be." ~ Paul Arden

Raising your game. This is what separates the good from the great. This is where the 10,000 hours of practice makes the difference. This is where continuous learning is a core part of your approach. This is why you stay longer and get there earlier than others. This is why you dream about it and think about it even when you aren’t working on it. This is why couch-potatoes call you obsessed, even though you and I would only call you committed. You are the person who takes the initiative and makes the necessary happen, without needing direction. You are more and more the person people look to for direction and for making decisions. You are determined to either be the most valuable person on the team or own the company. You are unstoppable. This is how good you want to be.

You want to be so good in fact that you never ever have to look for work again, because it comes looking for you! You are relentless in improving and gaining expertise. You are always improving, its part of your daily practices and expectations of yourself. You are regularly looking for ways to increase your productivity and “no” is one of your most used words. You keep the boundaries in tight so that you can focus and be the best of anyone in your class. You don’t run rabbit trails and you aren’t consumed with FOMO. You aren’t driven, but you are having fun. Professional progress is always fun.

And there are one thousand more ideas that could be listed here, but honestly, this is mostly an attitude, a posture toward life.

How good do you want to be?

Mastering the mountain

Chapter 321

“Remember when you see a man at the top of a mountain, he didn't fall there." ~ Anonymous

No he climbed scratched clawed worked sweated labored planned executed followed through finished completed successed himself to the top of that mountain. Or herself. Or yourself. Those who have reached a pinnacle know what it takes to get there. These are not unicorn experiences, where you just fall down and find yourself on the top mountain.

Of course “the mountain” can be anything. My dad always said, “when you see someone who makes a job look easy, a master is at work.” I have verified this statement many times in life, by trying to copy “the master” and finding out myself how very difficult that easy job is to do. Another Earl saying, “Everything is more difficult than it appears” reveals that each tiny job and responsibility in life has its own hidden mountain inside. Everything is more difficult than it appears, but as you do it over and over and apply yourself to learning and accomplishment, it will, and does, become more easy. If you stay at it long enough you may even become a master of that mountain.

I am constantly learning, and that is a great thing, but it mostly shows me just how little I know about a given area of expertise. It keeps my humility level very high, but I haven’t become a master at very many things, because of all that stuff in the first sentence. Few people become a master in multiple fields. But know this, you can become a master. You will know great pain and joy as you make this journey, but you already know, masters don’t fall on top of the mountain.

The right friends

Chapter 320

“Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” Dan Rockwell

Every bit of positive change and improvement in my life, is because of friends. As the quality of my friends improved, so did the quality of my life. Others might argue that the quality of my life improved so the quality of my friends did too, but that doesn’t hold much water in my life, because my “improvements” are not financial or monetary, but rather by the power and control that I have over my own destiny each day and the caliber of people I get to spend time with each day.

I would say that I am on my fourth generation of friends and very very few have made it from the first or second generation to the current cadre of friends. And those early friends struggle to keep up with the power and goodness and generosity of the later generations. You think that sounds cold, but it is simply life moving forward. Because great friendship is about a great balance of power and giving and receiving. When it becomes clear that I am doing all the work of the friendship, it is time to move on, regardless of how much I like so and so. Don’t get me wrong, we are still “friendly” but we aren’t investing what is necessary to build a great future together. 

And its always about your future. If your relationships aren’t moving forward, then they are likely moving backwards, which is still preferable and more clear than static ones. The right friends will always, always be cheering your progress. The wrong friends will be holding you back, sabotaging your progress and choices, wanting you to go back to the good ole’ days and do stupid stuff again.