Eating with my hands

# Chapter 304

To teach our younger grandkids how to use a spoon and fork we have to first teach them to stop using their hands. In many areas of life, we have to unlearn a wrong or unsustainable action, before we can learn something correctly. Brenda and I still have no idea why our daughter lets the babies eat with their hands, but in order to successfully use a spoon and fork, the hands have to stop. Good luck with getting them to stop using their hands! It is what they were allowed to do and what is easiest for getting food in their mouths. That is a lot to swim upstream against.

But we all face these kinds of things. I have had to unlearn how I developed my typing skills decades ago, in order to learn how to type correctly and not look at the keys. The same with the guitar. I learned how to hack these things years and years and years ago and never learned the proper way to execute these actions. Breaking these decades old patterns for doing things is really difficult. The intermediate state between unlearning and relearning is the most frustrating and will require the most patience. Retraining myself is no less difficult than retraining the grandkids, but a little less messy I hope.

Ghosting

# Chapter 303

So confusing the way people work. They start off fine as a general rule and they make good progress at the beginning and all looks good and then . . . they just quit. They stop. They leave. They make excuses. And heck who knows, they may have perfectly good unstated reasons for their actions (because the excuses they gave you are totally bogus) that they don’t want to share, even though it makes them looks suspicious when they deflect your inquiries, and none of the reasons they gave you for leaving and not finishing are legit. Very confusing and very disingenuous to be on the receiving end of these actions. And I have been very recently.

The following day was a far less ideal day to be doing the work, but the weather is what the weather is and this is what they have to work with for good or bad. So we will see if this unpacks any better today than it did yesterday, and then the question occurs to me am I a good judge of whether or not it is a good day or a bad day? Probably not because of how the communication was handled.

So rather than leaving me in the dark about your real purposes, your real and actual plan for the day, your real schedule, your real expectations, why not just tell me in plain English or plain Macedonian or Russian? You can only go as far as you can communicate in life, Art Petty said it so eloquently and well. I am pretty sure that I can hear it if you try to communicate it.

A cabin the woods

# Chapter 302

Some really great leadership conversations this week where I realize more and more that I don’t have the answers to most difficult questions and neither does anyone else. We are all looking for those answers and we aren’t giving those questions nearly enough of our thinking bandwidth nor nearly enough intense focus to come to some good resolutions anytime soon. We are thinking about these problems, these difficult to resolve challenges, in the cracks, a moment here and a moment there, or a quick conversation here and a quick conversation there. This is not an approach that will lend itself to a swift resolution.

These kinds of situations demand intentional deep focus, unrelenting mental pressure, a lot of mental horsepower applied over a long haul to get this baby moving and resolving. More and more I am starting to think that few people have every tried to resolve something with the force demanded by problems of this caliber. Unfortunately neither have I nearly often enough. The terrible fractured urgencies of modern western life are deadly in disrupting this kind of thinking and focus and thought. Heck it is hard to have any thoughts! The noise and bluster and volume of life here is like an unpenetratable fog of defense against all thinking and focus. You and I need a cabin in the woods, far from all internet and tv’s and radios and people, where we can think and focus. How to create that in our real lives every day?

Hero’s and victims

# Chapter 295

So what kind of person are you deciding to be where you are in life? Are you the victim? My dad can’t stop talking about how tired he was the night I was born nearly 60 years ago. No talking of my mom who went through all those months of pregnancy and all those hours of delivery and all that trauma afterwards, nope, just how tired he was. Making it about you means you are the victim. Perhaps you are the hero, always smarter and faster and more clever than everyone else in the story? Stronger and wiser and just more, than someone else. You once again are the center of the story. I use these two common, very common postures to explain that we usually get to choose what kind of person we are deciding to be in the world that we live.

But there are many other choices and far better ones. You can choose to serve, to be the ever-present helper in other people’s stories. These people are the Mother Teresas of our lives. We all know one or more and they are most often the real heroes in the stories of our lives. Or you can choose to be the teacher, ever learning and modeling a life of curiosity and understanding as you seek the answers that could change all of our lives. Or you could choose to be the impact person, making things happen for others. This could be personally or corporately or a combination of the two. You can leverage relationships and opportunities and ideas for the great good of all, you can let your contribution be a weight that swings the momentum in ways that make things better for those you aim to impact. And 100 more . . . all better than victims and heroes.

Hatched!

# Chapter 294

So baby girl Emma “hatched” as Micah said. Now we have a new granddaughter and we are so thankful that mom and baby are well. It was a long long day for them. It was a long nine months for all of them. Having babies is no quick process. Yet, compared to the 30 years we now have invested in our kids, the pregnancy and delivery day were a blink of the eye long long ago. Yesterday while Helen was in labor Brenda and I were trying to remember HER delivery day 28.5 years ago and realized that we can’t remember a bit of it! There are several possible ways of looking at that awful confession, but the way that we look at it is, that Helen’s life has been so amazing and vibrant that pregnancy and delivery so paled in comparison that we can’t even remember the finer details. Thats my story and I am sticking to it.

Her arrival was and is important but her days from here on out are far more important. I just hope that I am around to celebrate her first baby, our greatgrandbaby! This is my dad’s eighth great grand baby and he is so happy to have another. I can’t even get my mind around GREAT grand babies yet. The greater question is what kind of grandparent am I going to be? Especially in light of the fact that I am the only Opa (grandpa) she will have since Michael’s dad passed away during the pregnancy. The question of what kind of grandparent we are is crucial in the world today. Kids need way more support than we did growing up. Be awesome!

Additions

# Chapter 293

Today has exciting events moving along. Helen’s water broke this morning and so we might be having a granddaughter arrival today or tomorrow. And foster baby’s court case is on zoom today and perhaps soon we can start the adoption process with him. Additions. If you don’t have additions to your life, it pretty much dries up and dies soon. You need additions in your family, in your work, in your social circles, in your church, in your travels, in your retirement, in your world. Additions are fresh life and new beginnings to everyone. A pond without a source of fresh water coming in, grows stagnant and brackish in short order. It will smell and be unpleasant and no one will get any enjoyment from that pond.

Yes we need outflows and goodbyes too, but that is a post for another day. Today is about additions. Additions to the family change the dynamic every single time. Each new member of the family brings strengths and trials and they affect all of us in some fashion. This is what gets the blood pumping and that mind working, as we integrate all the additions that God sends our way. As Brenda said this morning, we have to figure out what kind of grandparents we are going to be. There is no book or destiny here, we have to decide and then live it out, what kind of grandparent are you going to be, because just as exciting and necessary are the additions, if you are the grandparent in this tale then you are going to be part of the soon departed. What stories will they tell about you when you are gone? What kind of stories do they tell about you while you are still around?

Accommodating the future

# Chapter 292

The future has arrived. And well Emma is gonna arrive soon too, but the future has arrived in our lives. That future where we leave our lives in Eastern Europe and restart our lives in the West. We thought that future was much further down the road but it got here much much sooner than we anticipated because of coronavirus primarily. Yeah simply a virus on one hand, but one that basically stopped all in person meetings around the world, effectively bringing our work in Eastern Europe to a total and complete halt. That brought a universal end to that work in that way, probably forever. It brought the future into the immediate present.

This future is no longer vaguely way out there in the netherworld somewhere coming some time later. That future has arrived and we need to make it work or it will kick us to the curb and we will not thrive on the curb. The problem is that we are not ready for the future to have arrived! Nothing is in place for this future now! Everything was playing out on a long game for 10 years from now and even easing into it slowly at the 10 year mark. None of those plans and investments are ready to produce today. So we need to reassess that plan and remake that plan and to have some new plans and that is what the future arriving early has brought us to. So what is your course of action to accommodate the future arriving today?

That kind of person

# Chapter 290

Already made a pharmacy run this morning for a sick kid. Pharm shelves were bare for the stuff I was looking for, guess there are lots of other sick kids this morning too. Finally found some at the next pharmacy and the daughter is happy and hopefully the baby will feel better soon. And all this before most stores have even opened up their doors this morning. It is going to be an exciting day.

You want to be this kind of person in the world, where people will not hesitate to ask you to help, where people know they can depend on you, where you are the first person they think of in an emergency. First responders of the everyday variety and type. This is what we all want to be known for all our lives. But most of us find it too difficult to stay in giving mode. We can do it occasionally but to be that person who gives and helps every day all the time is too much for most of us.

We are far far too wrapped up in our small selves and our small worlds and all our thoughts revolve around us and pretty much that is all. Period. End of story, end of your life. I know way too many who are just like this. I can be like this. Stop. Today.

Life designing

# Chapter 289

This whole week has been a line of thought about dealing with overwhelm and how to have processes and systems and make progress. Overwhelm can be a constantly refilling well that seems to never run dry. You need to find your way forward with this, because it is not going away. Here we are four days later and my to-do list is still full, not because I haven’t worked diligently on things all week, but because that well of overwhelm just keeps filling back up. Its called life and we obligate ourselves to accomplishing something when we say yes, instead of no. As James Clear said, “Yes is a responsibility. No is a decision.”

Life design is something we all should consider. Is this currently refilling bucket of overwhelm the way I want to be living out the rest of my days? What about next year? Five years from now? If life design is too big an idea to get your mental arms around, what about this: is this approach producing more of the kind of life you want, or less? That constantly refilling bucket of things to accomplish and complete isn’t going to magically stop tomorrow, or next week or next year or next decade! Yes is a responsibility. And every yes produces and produces more and more and more. If it is producing what you want and seek, then excellent. If it is producing less of what you seek, then ouch.

Life design to the rescue. This is why I only have 26 clients, one wife and three kids, because I don’t want more responsibility than this! No is a decision to contain overwhelm, because you can’t put that genie back in the bottle once released.

Systematic energy

# Chapter 288

Progress is usually a gift of process. And process is usually a systemic use of energy in a certain direction. That is how I came to be hanging valances before 7:00 am this morning. It only took us seven months! Those seven months have been filled with many many processes as we slowly turn this house into the home. It was a bare shell to start with for the most part and then there were the repairs and then there was the painting and then there was wall hangings and pictures, and now there are valances. And those are just the processes that brought us to the valances! There are other processes happening for window replacements and floor repairs and more and more.

The point being that no matter what you are working on, you need a process in order to have progress. How do you consistently continue in the direction you wish to go over time? This is your systemic pressure toward progress. This is how you make a process, and accelerate your progress. Apply systemic energy to a direction you wish to move. And like a locomotive it may start to move slowly at first because there is so much to move! But it will pick up speed gradually and eventually be moving at the pace you want, all because of systematic energy applied to the direction you wish to move. You can do this and apply it to anything and every challenge you face, and succeed if you learn to put a process in place to scale that mountain.

Where is that coffee butter?

# Chapter 287

A steady plowing of the work. This is how to break the inertia of overwhelm. Staying at the work steady all day from beginning to end. The primary downside to that was that I couldnt turn off my brain and get some decent sleep. And now I can’t seem to turn my brain back on so that I can write and think! The day is just flowing away and I sit here in a stupor unable to produce anything readable or interesting much less awe inspiring or publishable.

But I can say that, action led to action yesterday and that got all my major items either done or solid progress made on them. It may take me a week to write this 15 minute segment, but yesterday was a slam dunk. There is just as much to do today and so I need to get this mental motor revved up and moving or the day will end and I will be frustrated with overwhelm again. Get that steady plow moving and keep it going. Maybe I am gonna have to try that crazy idea of butter in my coffee because I definitely need more boost than I am getting from my Yukon or Veranda blends this morning.

Get moving. Start living. This is a theme from my ultramarathon days and it has stuck with me. Living is about food for my dad. Living is about moving for me. Motion, action, running, biking, mowing, hiking, walking, and biking some more. These are the actions of thinking and processing too. When that blood is rushing to the brain, it puts everything into turbo. Where is that butter?

It’s just a mental construct

# Chapter 286

Well I got back, and I am feeling overwhelm with all there is to do around here, after being overwhelmed with all that I had to do at my dad’s house. So is overwhelm my new normal? Heck I don’t even have a regular job, how can I be overwhelmed? Perhaps the right question is how does anyone else keep up with all the work they have to do outside their regular jobs?? Sure some of my overwhelm is about being five days behind in my client work, but I can catch that up given enough quiet and focus. Overwhelm means different things to different people, but the crush of the feeling is universal. We all face it at times and at various stages of our lives. So what do we do?

My primary approach to overwhelm is to dig in at a steady pace and realize that every task done is a one off the list and that the list is getting lighter every moment. My primary wish when presented with overwhelm is procrastination! Of course that is not going to accomplish anything, but confession here, procrastination was my go-to action (or non action) for years. I just could not face the overwhelm so I basically stuck my head in the sand and ignored it. It only made things worse, and there were a number of times I failed shamefully and wish I could go back in time and change some of those ostrich moments, but we can’t do that.

I finally grew out of procrastination and that is a really good thing. Now I generally dig in and dig myself out of this mental construct of overwhelm that I regularly am finding myself in. How are you planning to deal with your next overwhelm?

Slow time

Chapter 285

Slow time. Slow time was when I was a kid and summer vacation finally finally rolled around and got here and other than some daily chores, the days were mine. Every day lasted a year and it was amazing. Probably seems more amazing to me now than it did to me as an eight year old. I did not have to hide the books I was reading from the teachers in class any longer. Hiding them because I was reading while they were teaching and I have no idea what they said then or now. I had no restraint when it came to books and finishing them. The story took priority over everything else in life. Frustrated my parents a great deal. Heck I used to read actual real dead paper books while driving on the interstate! I was a distracted driver long before it became vogue to be so.

But I digress from slow time. Slow time was when a day of summer vacation seemed to last forever and the luxury of that time to play and to read was what summer vacations should be all about. Now time seemingly disappears in large swaths without a moment passing. Chores interrupted those long hours of slow time, and I resented them as every child of that era did. Now my grandchildren don’t know what a chore is at all. And their idea of long endless hours of fun and slow time most definitely include a screen. It is a different world in the here and now. Slow time doesn’t exist anymore for me, but is fun to walk down memory lane and think about what it was like and the why and how’s.

Bright waving flags

# Chapter 284

Well patience did not win out, we are still gonna paint this morning even though there is probably three to four weeks of work still to be done to make the material truly paint ready. However we did end up working an extra day on them and they are better looking and more ready than they were day before yesterday. So some progress but still not enough patience to do the work that you are completely proud of and know is your very best work. But we will paint those bed panels today and then I will listen to how we should have prepped them for another three to four weeks for the next coming years. This is the scenario of our lives. Too much hurry too little patience and too little self-discipline.

This is is simply how we live in all areas of our lives most consistently. We should not be surprised that we are doing it here. And stop with the excuses, you are making excuses and that should be another bright waving flag that you are going too fast and that you are not exercising judicious restraint in your processes and in your expectations. Slow down and make it right and then be proud of yourself for doing the best possible job.

You aren’t going to listen are you?

/"If you do the work you get rewarded. There are no shortcuts in life." ~ Michael Jordan/

Overcommitment to progress

# Chapter 283

It is far too easy to hurry. Especially when the job is hard. We are doing the extra hard jobs right now and Earl wants to hurry up and put paint on the metal. But it actually needs lots and lots more work. Did I mention it needs lots more work? But it is hard work and it is slow hard hot work and very not sexy. You just want it to be over, but hurrying the process and the steps that need accomplishing will just make you unhappy with the results in the end. So you can be unhappy on the front end at how difficult and challenging the work is, or you can be unhappy on the back end with results which you will be looking at and experiencing far far longer than anything on the front end.

Our eagerness to see results and progress lead us to make poor decisions and cut corners and do everything we can to hurry the process. I have done this far too many times, and I am sure you have as well. We are over-committed to seeing progress and under-committed to the process which will give us results we like a great deal more. My respect for body men who fix and paint cars has gone up astronomical amounts now that I have had a whole year of trying to emulate them and their work. But I am convinced that their greatest skill is patience. It takes patience to produce the results you really want and will enjoy and be proud of . . . choose your unhappy point and enjoy your satisfaction point.

Crushing the plateaus

# Chapter 282

Sometimes you hit the hardest plateaus and it seems there is no way to move in the direction that you want. This happens to us in our professional and personal lives all the time, at least it does to me. I can think of at least four areas at the moment that I am experiencing plateaus right now and I want to change that song and dance and get things moving again. And moving again is a key phrase and thought here in this subject matter, because progress is simply a direction. A direction of your choosing.

I want my professional development plateaus to be crushed. I am behind in all my metrics for the year and it is killing me! This is essentially a time management pattern that you have to change, and to a lesser extent a MIT choice over and over. My KPI’s are pretty far behind my last year successes and that is a challenge all by itself, because last year was coronovirusworld year and the year we all stayed home. I have far far more competition for my attention these last six months than I did in the previous six months. These are definite factors in the success that will be found or not in the coming six months. These factors affect my personal plateaus as well. But don’t let these be excuses to not take action. Crush those plateaus!

Thinking about thinking

Chapter 281

This is the best part of the day, coffee, peanut butter, Nutella, a beautiful computer and thinking. Not necessarily the best thinking in the world, but it is a fine start to most days. The coffee PB and Nutella is world class even when my thinking is not. Thinking is difficult and always twice as difficult when I am in Georgia and only able to give it partial attention. Thinking, at least good thinking, requires twice the focus that normal living does. Chessmasters burn thousands of calories as they sit motionless for hours thinking about their next move. That brain of yours might be the largest muscle in your body! In many of the people I meet in the world it is also one of the least exercised.

Thinking is hard work and few people want to do it regularly. I reward myself enthusiastically just for thinking about thinking. If I don’t then it probably would never get attempted because it is just that challenging. It is not the type of thing that hardly anyone does for fun, nor would choose to do for leisure because it is not a leisurely activity. Put it in the same category as digging ditches and cleaning the bathrooms and oven.

But the benefits are outstanding if you venture here. Clarity clarity clarity is the best one, and you won’t be disappointed except when you realize how little clarity you had before! The second best benefit to me is that it warms your mental engine for other activities. There are lots of things I need to use my brain for in addition to just thinking - intellectual conversation, writing, research, planning and etc etc. Give it a go and you might just change your life forever.

Thorny thinking

# Chapter 280

10 hours of thinking and it is still not enough. Thorny problems are not easily solved, if they were, they would not be thorny and anyone could solve them. And I would argue that anyone can solve these thorny buggers but the majority aren’t remotely interested in giving these problems the solution hours they demand. And I did make some minor headway after 10 hours but I have not found the right resolution. But then again this is a multiyear problem and so 10 hours is not much effort toward resolving it in the bigger scheme of things.

Yes I did say multiyear problem. Some things are systemic and are highly intertwined with other systems and that makes for a very big multilayered knot to keep untying for years, and when you get this multilayered knot undone, you discover that there are several more underneath more knotty than the one you resolved. Don’t let this discourage you, let it inform you. These are not shoelaces we are metaphoring here! These are change the life, change the world level knots. This is to inspire you and show you how much you are needed and what is demanded to make headway on these huge problems.

Or you could sit at home and watch TV, complain and piss and moan about the state of affairs and not do anything to change anything. You could be the majority. You could play vids and YouTube the day away and in the end nothing will have changed or improved, especially you.

Great Days

# Chapter 279

Was a great awesome day filled with the people important to us and that is what makes all the difference in the world and to us specifically. Good times with grandkids, pitching ball with the boys and figuring out ways to play with them and reduce their whining and squabbling. This was more difficult than I had imagined and that made the result more worth it. Take turns and pitch an even number of pitches to each of them and find things to compliment them for which will be vastly different one kid to the next because they are vastly different children. And they are especially spoiled children which makes it harder.

But the temps were great and the outdoors was ours to enjoy and the cousins had some good game times together, and I don’t do that part. They are called board games for a reason. And they are super boring to me, yet I love hearing them have fun and the house be filled with the sounds of joy and laughter. This is what makes it a great awesome day. I was whooped by the end of the day, and the first in bed and the first to sleep and the first to get back up this morning, but that is ok, the house is coming alive again and this too will be a great day I am sure.

You haven’t been having enough great days. Time to make some happen in your life. Your great doesn’t have to look anything like my great day it just has to be great for you.

Hard communications

# Chapter 278

A bad day of communicating. Every single person got their wires crossed multiple times yesterday. Lack of sleep, meds, lack of listening carefully, not being able to decipher what is REALLY being said, unable to decode the body language, listening but not hearing, she is from Venus and I am from Mars, whatever the reason or the excuses or the problems, communication is hard on the best of days. Even when I am all here and listening until I hurt, I still get it wrong many days. None of us are as clear as we think we are either.

This became apparent to me first through transcribing lectures and sermons. When I saw what the transcriptionist typed up, I thought that there must be some mistake at first. There is no way on earth that this internationally well known speaker is saying “uh” and “yeah” that often, and leaving that sentence incomplete over and over, and breaking off in mid sentence and changing direction entirely! One of the “best” communicators on the planet and I paid bukoo bucks to go hear him and record his lectures! But when I saw the print version of his speaking!! Wow. We aren’t nearly as good at this as we think we are, and while what you said is super clear in your mind, that does not mean the receiver or listener, remotely heard what you think you said. Trust me on this one. If we transcribed every sound coming out of your mouth, you would be flabbergasted at how much you hem and haw, at how many incomplete sentences you start and never finish, at how many times you segue into a completely different direction in the middle of another subject!

So lower your expectations of what you think you said and communicated and raise your bar on how committed you are to getting the messages across to your listener. Everyone will benefit!