Mistakeless

Chapter 360

"The only man who never makes mistakes, is the man who never does anything." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I make lots of mistakes and those don’t bother me so much, its when I repeat mistakes that it bothers me a lot. Oh and when you point out that I made a mistake bothers me a lot. But Roosevelt and we have this wrong, the mistakes aren’t even the issue nor the focus, getting stuff done, learning new stuff, trying to change the world, those are the things that are important.

We get so obsessed with the mistakes or the failures or the blunders, that we distract ourselves completely from the meaty and important matters. Where did we ever get the idea that people ever want to be mistake free, that this is a desired state of being? Who decided that we wanted to even try to be a person who never makes mistakes? Of course the President here is trying to diminish the importance of mistakes, and encourage people to get things done, but I wish he focused his statement around the doing. Said something like “Get out there and change the world, mistakes be damned.” Or “Go big or go home, and what is a little ole’ mistake.” Or “Reach far and attempt more and accomplish the impossible, while others sit at home and fear mistakes.”

You should try this - pithy statements are hard to write well. But the point is that words are important and you can move mountains with the words you craft or tell yourself. So focus on the important ones.

In favor of tortoises

Chapter 359

As I'm driving along in South Carolina dictating this, I am feeling ever so thankful because I just missed a car accident by about 100 feet. After 20 miles of construction, traffic was compressed and concentrated very intensely into a tight pack, and suddenly the construction ended, and everyone who was in a great big hurry went crazy. The result was that 100 feet behind me two of those crazy fast in a hurry people, smashed into each other and stop traffic for miles and miles. I don't know who was hurt, or if anyone was, because I was ahead of the pack and I didn't stop. Just ever so thankful that I wasn't actually in the pile up!

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Since I was being tailgated ever so closely by 15 different cars throughout that 30 miles of construction, this isn't the least bit surprising that these accidents happen. I was one of the very few old people driving evidently, who was giving the car in front of me some space. I mean I had like four or five car lengths between me and the car in front of me. Not only did the this not slow me down as we were traveling through the construction, but it also provided a great buffer for me in case of some recklessness on the parts of others. You can build margin into your life by the choices you make every day.

Remember the tortoise and the hare.

Guns or thinking?

Chapter 358

“Life might be a race against time, but it is enriched when we rise above our instincts and stop the clock to process and understand what we are doing and why. A wise decision requires reflection, and reflection requires a pause.” - Frank Partnoy

Today is pause day. Sunday. The one day in the week when I stop my regular schedule and do . . . other nothings. Said another way, this is a day to relax and think and pause our busy scurrying around, our relentless push to get stuff done, to finish this and that and all these other things. That constant push is draining you dry, emptying your soul, limiting your creativity, keeping you from your potential. All your energy is being burned up in the Push to get things done. Take a pause day, decide Why you are Pushing so hard. Understand what is motivating you, and take appropriate action.

While this all sounds reasonable and simple when I write it in a paragraph, few of us do this. Oh we are eager to take days off and do the silliest things, but Deciding and Understanding take intentionality and effort and energy of a different sort, and few around here “waste” their time thinking. There are guns to be shot, and dogs to be bred, and guns to be cleaned, and car races to attend, and guns to be organized. Thinking is for other people, or better yet no people! No mental effort to be exerted around here. 

And thus is wisdom lost. Because there is no reflection, no thinking, no understanding, no pause in our scurry, we lose twice in the race against time.

The barometer of leadership and writing

Chapter 357

I am almost done with my one year commitment to 275 words a day in this format. Mostly I have learned that I don’t have nearly as much great and significant words and thoughts as I believed in the past. A kick-starter idea makes it much easier to get started writing 275 words each day, so I am constantly looking for those. And trying to focus and think and write while my dad is droning in the background is damn near impossible. And that has been my Coronavirus reality for the last four months, soon to be five months and counting. There is no end in sight . . . of the droning . . . not the 275 words a day.

The only thing that has kept me going is the firm belief that leaders write. So my level of struggle with writing is also my level of struggle with leading. They are good barometers of each other. When I am leading well, writing is much easier. When I am struggling to lead, writing is a nightmare. Leading is the actions I take in the course of the day as I live my life. Writing is the outpouring of what I learned, experienced or failed at. When I struggle to write, it is usually after I struggled to lead in the ways that I am capable of and the ways that I encourage others to do so. Yes I still struggle in certain situations and at certain times to lead well. 

But I have a mental conversation with myself and get back on that horse. No there is no need to argue with me here, not getting back on the horse is no option. Life happens and we have to power through the failures, the droning and the maddening TV playing in the background.

The real leaders

Chapter 356

“The people you’re leading want to know that you’re the kind of leader who shares the blame and gives away the credit. It’s not easy to accomplish, but it’s a hallmark of the best leaders.” - Lolly Daskal 

What Lolly is describing here is the kind of leader we all want to work for, the kind of leader we want every leader to be, the kind of leader we are supposedly aspiring to be, and the kind of leader that is far too rare. Those number don’t add up. Why? Well she pointed that out too, its not easy to accomplish.

I run a Leadership Think Tank, actually a Leadership Development service, and the kinds of “leaders” I find are far far away from this ideal. They think of leadership as privilege - for them. They see leadership as perks and advantages - for them. They will penny-pinch you and your department to death, yet splurge big time on their rental car, their hotel room, their meal while traveling so they can bill it back to the company. They will openly diminish every project and other leader that is not under their prevue, while shamelessly promoting all their cronies. And you and I could go on and on with all these pork-belly practices that our leaders do . . . and I don’t take any of these kinds of leaders on as clients. And lets be honest, these kinds of “leaders” never believe they need development anyways. 

While the majority of leaders may be this way, there are clearly those that are not. Those who hold themselves accountable before any one else, those are the real leaders. Those who never ask someone to do what they are unwilling to do, are the real leaders. They share (or take) the blame and give most of the credit away if not all. Be one of those kinds of leaders.

Freedom

Chapter 355

Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is freedom from hate.”

—  Valarie Kaur 

In these toxic scary fear-monging explosive days and times, grace mercy pardon and forgiveness are often never considered as a direction, a path, a road to choose. Especially in these days of blame, the suicide of liberty as I wrote two days ago, the path of forgiveness should be at the top of our considerations. Instead of rampaging about who has been most grievously injured or violated, who has had the most rights trampled, who is most oppressed, and who bears the most wounds, we could forgive.

We don’t need more rage, the world is burning up with that already and its not getting anyone anywhere they want to go. Rage just eats up the person raging, while indiscriminately destroying relationships, people and stuff around them. Rage destroys. It’s heals nothing, and hurts many. “But it forces change” some would argue, yet I would argue that it simply fosters more rage, rather than the sought for change. Love Faith and Hope are the three mainstays of greatness, not Rage Blame and Hate. What kind of world will I leave my children and grandchildren if I live by Rage Blame and Hate?

Forgiveness is not being a pushover so that someone can harm you again and again. Forgiveness is not passively allowing those actively doing wrong to go free or escape proper judgement. Forgiveness is setting your heart free from those very things that make your nemesis do the vile things they have aimed at you. Forgiveness is choosing a different character than the one your enemy’s cultivate. Forgiveness is freedom and liberty from the caustic corrosion of hate in your heart.

The suicide of liberty

Chapter 353

“Blaming others is the suicide of liberty.” - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Resentment blame and injustice rage and anger, all flow freely when you have a victim mentality. And America is rife with a victim mentality. No I take that back, the world is rife with a victim mentality. I see it every much in the former Yugoslavia as I do here in the states, and I can see it in the working class in Asia too. Don’t know about Africa, though I do know quite a few Africans. No this is not only an American thing. Blaming others is a favorite pastime of every people, and color and shade and economic or social status. 

Why? Well its easy and its fun! And it gets you off the hook for being responsible to make the choices you can make. This is not a post suggesting that the ground is level in ANY country or place in the world. There is discrimination and prejudice and unfairness everywhere in the world. I have lived in five countries and visited almost 60 and I can say this very confidently. But each person still has choices and decisions, even if the only choice and decision is how to respond to the lack of choices and decisions.

I need to own what happens to me 100%, especially the bad stuff. This is the only way I can let liberty flourish. Where I understand and accept my contribution to the situation, where I blame no one, but seek a better resolution to what comes my way. Blaming others produces absolutely nothing toward resolving it, and locks you in a psychic prison where you feel more powerless than ever to change things. Stop.

Embarrassed

Chapter 352

Alain de Botton once wrote, “Anyone who isn’t embarrassed by who they were twelve months ago isn’t learning enough.”

I think most of us are both rarely embarrassed and consequently not learning enough. As my learning curve continues to climb as I continue to age, I can say that my humility has grown with time. There is so little that I know, and so much that I don’t. This is reinforced over and over in my 50’s. Yet too often, I just want to choose something just because I want to, rather than because I know what I am doing. But I am learning so much and I have discovered that it is easier to learn under certain circumstances, than under other circumstances.

Too often as I am working with my dad and have too much to learn, it becomes a contest of wills, rather than a learning experience. It usually happens when he is not the undisputed expertise in an area we are working on. If we are working on an engine, I do not object to anything he tells me because he is da bomb. And he is eager to tell me the whys, the hows, and some of his experiences in the past concerning that engine or process. It’s when he is only good at something, that it becomes a contest of wills. I ask my usual questions and he gets defensive, which generally leads to me asking more questions, which leads to a less than conducive atmosphere for learning. Does he know more than me, probably. Does he know everything, nope. Unfortunately, I need to be more humble because he still knows more than me and I could learn something valuable if I would let myself not care about who is right. I do get very tired of the whole victim/hero thing going on with him.

But I should be embarrassed by how little I know and learn from the master.

Transformed

Chapter 351

Anyone who’s ever done something great with their life had to transform themselves from who they are to who they became. - Benjamin Hardy

We are all in transition. Some move at an incremental pace, others with giant leaps, but we are all in transition to becoming who we will be. If you are not, then you are most likely dead. But transition and transformation are not the same. Transition happens to everyone, whether they want it or not - life happens - I am now the parent to my parent kinds of things. We graduate from high school and nothing ever is the same again. We get married have kids and gray hairs. These transitions are universal.

Transformation is altogether a different animal. Sure it will also bring transition, but in a planned design sort of way. No one ever completed their doctorate without a plan. No one started an International Business to change the world without design and intention. No one shook off the shackles of their upbringing and moved overseas to live, without great sacrifice and planning. No one rides their bicycle across the USA without significant preparation and planning. 

All of these are transitions, but they are more than that, they are transformations. You have to reach deep to do the great things in life and that process changes you in a fundamental way, like nothing else. You can never go back to what you were, and you have taken a giant leap toward becoming something more and different. You have transformed.

This is intentional.

Requires planning.

Will change you forever.

Stones

Chapter 350

"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." ~ Confucius

Most of us spend our lives carrying small stones and that is why we get so much accomplished over the span of our very short lives. Consistency and persistence are two of my favorite topics and definitely my go-to dependable way to live life pieces. I am doggedly persistent, and somewhat less consistent, but I love these two virtues. Carrying away small stones is a great visual for moving the mountain using my fav strategum.

The point is at the end, that you can move any mountain you want to, with enough persistence and consistency. This means you have to sweat and lift, mentally or physically. This is where it breaks down for many people - because I don’t meet nearly enough people who want to lift and sweat, no matter how much they say this mountain is important to move. Their lack of action, does not agree with their words.

External factors which overpower your internal motivations and actions, informs you that you would “like” this mountain to move. You might claim that I don’t understand how powerful these external forces are, preventing you from moving your mountain. I say, carry a smaller stone. I say, want it more. If external factors consistently overpower your internal motivations and defeat you taking action, then you don’t want it enough, and/or you are trying to carry too much stone at one time.

Adjust.

Stop complaining about the mountain.

Get ‘er done.

Keeping it working

Chapter 349

Long-term productivity requires that you keep your body in good working order. - Lolly Daskal 

This is surprisingly hard to do. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday talking with my 30 year old, who is facing knee surgery. At 30! That knee needs to take him a great deal farther in life than it has so far. I know a 20-something year old couple here in MooCow GA that are both in the hospital, the hubby for over 50 days now, and neither have Covid-19, at least not yet. And then there is Coronavirus, a huge scary virus that is highly contagious and seems to have almost mythical destructive powers.

Some of these things are genetic and none of the people listed above have control over what is happening in these specific situations. The shear number of things that can go wrong with your health is daunting. The number of external bugs you can catch is frightening. The number of falls I have is disturbing, and they all really hurt! There are way too many factors trying to work against you in your quest to keep your body in good working order. It can be overwhelming.

However you have control over the two most critical and high impact areas to your health and keeping your body in good working order so that you can do something important and productive every day - what you eat and how much you move. You may not be able to control many other factors that come your way, but these two are totally in your power. 

Now use that power to your benefit instead of harm.

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Small steps with a chainsaw

Chapter 348

"It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward." ~ Louis Sachar

Most of our knowledge and understanding is built on smaller blocks of acquired information and experience from living life. When we take that information and experience, we combine it and make knowledge and understanding and we can move in the right direction. If we keep the process moving in small incremental steps, this can serve us well our entire lives. A continual expansion of our abilities and competencies.

But sometimes for many folks, and often for unfortunate others, this combination of information - experience - knowledge - understanding gives us overconfidence, a false sense of certainty, a fatal surety that we understand more than we actually honestly do. It’s an easy mistake to make. I do this occasionally, and even Earl the master guru does this occasionally. We did it this week in fact.

We have a very rapid growing oak tree in the yard, and that is rare, because oak trees don’t usually spread out as fast and this one is determined to do. So it become apparent that we had to trim this tree up because of it blocking other things, like the road. We have trimmed this tree before. Many times. This time however, we placed a ladder on a limb without all the proper calculations. Long story short, a quick few minutes later found me falling out the tree with a live chainsaw running in my grip!! This is a literal “stumble backwards, except from 15 feet off the ground. But the chainsaw!

I did not need another fall, coming so closely after my dead armadillo flight, and my ankle is badly twisted, but thank God the chainsaw did not connect with any live human limbs throughout this fiasco. 

Take small regular steps. Think.

Doomscrolling

Chapter 347

Doomscrolling 

This is what passes for news and entertainment these days. My wife has been doing this with the Coronavirus pandemic. Every day she reports to me and my dad what terrible statistics are taking shape in the world. My dad watches the “news” each evening - essentially a highly concentrated toxic clip of every bad thing that has happened in the course of the last 24 hours for all 8 billion people in the world. This is doomscrolling. 

It is facebook, where you can see every conspiracy theory the mind can concoct, and then you follow the links to their “facts” and this too is doomscrolling. It is twitter and Instagram and any other place online where people with too much time on their hands sit and fester.

It is the advertisement last night during the “news” where Donald Trump was playing on your every fear so that you don’t defund the police. That one was particularly twisted, with the idea that the only thing holding back crime, are violent police with guns. This makes me laugh so hard, because London has been patrolled for years by police with no lethal weapons and they are reducing crime just fine. This is another form of doomscrolling.

Everything I have written here is negative. This is doomscrolling - its negative. It plays on your fears. It doesn’t produce anything positive. It doesn’t help you be more creative or inspired. In fact, it has no value whatsoever, even if it all were true, which it isn’t at all, you could do nothing to prevent what was coming, and “knowing” about it only makes it worse.

Quit this nonsense!

Thankfulness on a Tuesday

Chapter 346

My aunties are making me thankful . . . That I am not them. One is dealing with chronic insomnia. You do not want to be in the same state as me, if I am not getting enough sleep. You perhaps can go like you are still in college, but David can’t. Nope. I need a minimum of eight, preferably nine house of sleep a night, and on special occasions I get 10! Without my sleep, I am a growling short-tempered explosive human bomb waiting to go off.

My other auntie is in the hospital after a fall and a broken hip and now a total hip replacement. I stay as far from hospitals as I can. There are no good memories attached to hospital stays. While I can be thankful that hospitals exist for when we absolutely must have them, there is no time that I want to need them. Every memory of a hospital is negative. My most recent one was a $20,000.00 plus experience with my wife for 27 hours total. Again thankful that my wife is all fixed up, everything else was a negative. So I am feeling extra sorry for Aunt Edith this morning, as she lies there with a new hip, when just a couple of days ago her old one was working just fine.

So these two aunties give me pause this morning to be grateful that I, today, have not yet had to struggle with what they are facing. I recognize that it could happen to me today, so I will be thankful for the time that it has not. 

Improbably - the bridge

Chapter 345

"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable." ~ Christopher Reeve

That is quite the transition and mostly it happens in your head before you ever work it out in real life. You have to dream it and think it and do it in your mind and imagination before it can happen. When you first think of it, first dream of it, first imagine it, moving from impossible to improbable is a huge step. Perhaps the most difficult step of all is staying in the game from impossible to improbable. It’s when things seem most unlikely to ever become a reality and that is why we call it impossible.

But for me, steady actions and pressure on the impossible often yield at the very least, improbable situations. I am pretty sure my current weight, my current job, my current life, my current finances were all highly improbable 10 years ago. They were impossible 20 years ago. You see the point? Honestly that is exactly how it happened, steady actions and pressure on the impossible. That moved us to the highly improbable. Now we are at . . . ?

Well the inevitable of course. My life is unbelievably different than it was 20 years ago. And not all of that is positive, and the dreams change as the circumstances of life do. Look at the Superman quote above. It was made by the actor who played the role of Superman, and he was so famous rich and well off, but then?  But he didn’t falter, and his dreams didn’t either.

Under promising and over delivering

Chapter 343

“How good are you at delivering what you said you would do?”

In my opinion, this is the most important deliverable there is out there. How you do or don’t deliver is precisely the way that people will remember you. Think about it, you said something that implied you would do A B or C. You might have been just thinking out loud or wishing for something, or only observing that it needed to be done or purchased or accomplished. Nothing committed on your part in your mind.

But in the mind of those who are hearing you say those things, they are promises, commitments, near accomplishments! This is true in what you say to your kids, and its true in what you say around those you work with and those you lead. Not it is not fair, but this seems to be the normal human exchange in relationships. This is why I have adopted the motto “Under-promise, over-deliver.” It was clearly important to my children (and now my grandchildren!) that I deliver at the very least what I spoke out loud.

This is something I have seen and experience 100’s of times in my work overseas during the last 26 years. A foreigner (i e American) would stand up in front of these people that I worked with for decades and make so many promises, none of which are likely to happen. I can say with great certainty that far less than 10% of them will accomplish or deliver what they are saying they will deliver.

As a direct correlation my co-workers don’t believe you 90% of the time.

Narrow

Chapter 342

your narrow band of strength  - Rockwell

The best of us only have a narrow band of strength, and the most of us are generally generalists finding it difficult to even find a narrow band of strength. In my opinion, this is the truth of the matter, however, many people think they are an expert on everything, that they know everything, and that they are basically omniscience. But this chapter is not about the many, its about the best who understand that they only have a narrow band of strength, a narrow band of capabilities, a narrow band of skills and abilities.

Nothing has shown me this in such abundance as these last four months living with my dad. While he is an irascible old crudmurgeon, he is also easily one of the talented people I know. Welding cutting bending repairing remodeling hammering sawing nailing brakes carburetors radiators engine-rebuilding steering wiring he can do it all. BUT he is only really really really good at the engine components, he is merely competent at all that other stuff. So even the amazing Earl only has a narrow band of strength. But the real lesson lies in this, he is always learning, and that is how he gained such a broad base of general competency. 

My narrow band of strength lies in a completely different direction than does my dad’s, but I am soaking up all he is willing to teach and show and model in his areas, so that I too can learn more and more. A couple of days ago Seth pointed out that we could spend 100 hours of intense focus on learning something new. And that is what I am doing.

When you are most alive

Chapter 341

"Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing." ~ Leo Buscaglia

For risk-averse people like me, I don’t particularly care for this statement. I am not a gambler, unlike the people of Eastern Europe where I live, who put gambling right up there with breakfast in importance. I only like to bet on sure things, and even then I feel like I could lose. I don’t like to make wagers, I am not competitive and I don’t think you can make money in a casino unless you are the owner. If I could only figure out a way to make money on death and taxes, now that would be a sure thing!

But Leo is not really talking about financial risks and investments, he is talking about love and life. Where you got skin in the game and losing will hurt far more than just a your pocketbook. It’s when you are this vulnerable that magic can happen. And once you have experienced and understood the magic, then the risk is worth it and you are all in. Even if it hurts, and maybe especially when it hurts. That’s what books are written about, overcoming and risking and taking a chance on someone and even though some may fail you, one or more come through and make it worth it.

Call it romance, and say it isn’t real, but you are wrong. It’s when you are most alive. It’s when life matters most. It is when the sun shines brighter and the days seems shortest. It’s when you are alive! All other moments in life pale in comparison.