Travel

"Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind,
and I like to write standing up."
Ernest Hemingway



(Anybody else know where Ada, Oklahoma is?!?!?)




I traveled for three months in Europe in 2004. One of my most fun moments that I recount often--stop me if you've already heard this one--was in the coastal town of Roses, Spain. Roses is just outside of France on the coast of the Mediterranean. Pre-Franco it was Spain's version of Santa Barbara, CA... Tons of tourists, parties all the time, restaurants, chi-chi, high end, the best of the best vacationed there. Now, it's a quaint little village that's a stop-through for those crazies visiting Salvador Dali's house in Figueres.

There's also a Costco just outside of town.

Having been on the road for months, my friend and I searched out a Chinese restaurant because she was craving authentic Chinese food, which was apparently unavailable in France. We lucked out and found THE Chinese restaurant. We attempted to order in English, with no luck. My friend tried to talk with the owners and wait staff, but had no luck in her native Vietnamese. I tried again in Spanish... Success!

Oddly enough, the staff spoke Spanish... but with a Chinese accent.

I was speaking a completely different language, hearing the exact same accent as we do here at home.

Surreal like a Dali, yes. Got the lesson that day, no.

It took me a long time--and many, many retellings of this story--to realize that people are just people. No matter where you are in the world, no matter what language you are speaking, no matter how you look or what you wear, we're all just people.

Guess I'll have a California accent in Brazil! 

To my coaches

Sometimes, a little unsolicited advice is the best kind.

Whenever they're around, I up my game just a little bit more.

They sympathize with me when I lose, cheer me on when I play a hard game, and are my biggest fans.

And they give me the best insight to who I am.

They impact how I see myself and help me grow.

They care about my development and inspire me to be the best me I can be.

They are few.

They are impactful.

They are my heroes.

I wanna be them when I grow up.

To be able to give to someone like they have done for me.

And they have made all the difference.

Failure

Failure IS an option.

Failure is inevitable.

I don't like it, but I'm probably better for it.


The event I started, coordinated a team for, ran, and promoted for shut down this week. My intentions were good. Create something new and different. Get people excited and motivated. All of us work together and win together.

Yeah, not what happened.

It was a slow speed train wreck at best. You know the kind.
It's going just OK, and when you crash no one gets hurt but everyone is relieved to get off the train. Enough friction to notice there's friction. (At least the food was good).

So what did I learn?

A whole lot of practical stuff. Leadership skill. Team building. Delegating. All the John C Maxwell tricks I'd read about but never had a chance to apply. (I love his book, "Failing Forward"). How to show up in conflict and still get things done. How to come from my heart in trying to help someone improve and give constructive evaluations of a job not-so-well done.

On the emotional side, I learned how better to deal with failure. Failure is not the end of the world. It is simply releasing a negative outcome to make space for a new, positive one. It's change on a faster timeline than maybe we wanted. Sometimes, that's a good thing. Sometimes, it hurts our egos.

It is said, when you're failing, you're growing. I must be growing!

Trust

Yesterday, I went to my local Big Lots saver store to find a retractable sword for my Toastmaster's meeting (don't ask).

Giant "burled wood" mugs I painted with Cathy last year

I ended up purchasing several giant mugs I plan to paint. While unloading the clinking ceramics into my car, I realized I had been overcharged for 2 extra mugs. That's a $6 dollar mistake in their favor. At this point, I'm wondering...is it really worth my time to go haggle and harass these poor checkout clerks over 2 silly ceramic mugs? My time is worth more than that.

I decided to try it out. I loaded all the mugs back into the cart, and took them back in. Politely, I pointed out the mistake to the clerk who had helped me. I offered that instead of trying to do a return, I would gladly just take 2 extra mugs to speed things up. By the time I got back to the line, another clerk had taken over the register. Here we go, I thought...

To my surprise, the new clerk took me for my word. She said that was fine, and let me roll out the door, 2 pre-paid-for extra mugs in hand.

Many businesses have ceased to trust their customers. They force them to wait in line, fill out paperwork, go through hoops to correct mistakes that may not have even been theirs. It's easy to pin the Big with Lots of blame for our cynicism when there's all the hoops to go through. Unfortunately, I know from my experiences that it's necessary.

We as customers haven't made it easy for businesses to trust us. We are no longer genuinely interested in creating a fair exchange of our hard earned money for valuable goods and services. Many folks plain outright steal, cheat, lie, and embezzle their way into a good deal. What's up with that?

It's so refreshing to have an interaction with a business that treats us like human beings. When they take us at face value, trust their customer and are on the same side as us... we all win.

It's like the story of the woman who would order a pair of zillion dollar designer shoes from Zappos.com on Monday, wear them through the week to work, and then return them at the end of the week. Zappo's corporate culture allowed the customer to be right (although, in my opinion, she was completely wrong). Can you imagine the buzz that created around her office? She must have looked like the fool, while Zappo's got a word of mouth reputation for making customers feel human again.

It's a genuine interest in creating the win-win for customer and for business. When we do that, our customers feel safe with us, and trust us enough to refer their friends, family and neighbors.

So to you at Big Lots, thanks for trusting me. I'll be back with my $6 bucks to spend it with you.

Different

Glorious Saturday. The day before 60 Minutes comes on and all hell breaks loose... at least where I'm from. My personal favorite Saturdays are the ones about this time of the year where the air is clear, a bit crisp, and the breeze is soft and gentle in the mid afternoon.

One of my very favorite things to do is make myself a glass of iced tea (plain, unsweet), open a window, and watch my cat Eva try and figure out how to chase down the birds and the bunnies outside. Although, she's never technically really even been outside the patio.

Eva on the patio

There's something to watching a cat in action. Originally, I posted on my Facebook my personal philosophy that cats are nearly free entertainment. For you non-cat folk out there reading this, I can appreciate why you don't like them. They just aren't dogs. I pose that you just haven't met the right cat yet. They're quite like people. Some cats get along with others well. Some cat-ly personalities just don't.

The wonder of watching a cat laze on a Saturday is that there is always something to watch, even if nothing is going on. Like the scene between Nick Nolte and Scott Mechlowicz in the movie Peaceful Warrior, where Mechlowicz's character, Dan, says (in essence) there's nothing going on. Nolte's mentor character then mysteriously slows down time and allows Dan to see that there's really all sorts of amazing things going on. 

Same goes for cat-watching. A twitch of the tail. An arc of an eyelash. A ear rotated to hear the sound of an approaching... well, if I can hear it, it must be something important. When you know the personality of the cat as well as I do, you begin to recognize patterns. Smugness. Aloof impersonations. Flat-out abandon and genuine play. The nuances are nuanced, the patterns varied and strange.

Come on over, I'll make you a slightly sweet peach iced tea, and let's chat and cat-watch.

Motivated

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Colin_Powell_2005.jpg

I went to one of those “cheesy billboard seminars”. One of those seminars that’s guaranteed to revolutionize your life in 24 hours or your money back…“It’s time to….”GET MOTIVATED!” Yeah, right... (I’m a natural skeptic). And the tickets were nearly free—but I darn well better get my $10 worth! I WAS super excited to see Colin Powell and Laura Bush—I think this is the universal sign of a true Toastmaster when you get your jollies watching other people speak. 

After sitting in traffic for what seemed like hours, fighting my way through security and metal detectors skillfully hiding my packed-in lunch and water bottle in my pants pockets… hey, a Staples Center McDonald’s breakfast set my friend back 20 bucks…. I’m really cheap! I ran down the stairs and nabbed a seat in the 3^rd row of the Staples Center. As soon as I saw the stage, my Toastmasters instincts kicked in. Staples center is home of the King’s hockey games—and the stage was set in the center of the arena! A 4-sided stage… oh no, I thought… a Toastmaster's nightmare. Someone will always be staring at the speaker’s butt! It’ll probably be me!

One of the earlier speakers, Mr. Krish Dhanam came to the stage. I was close enough to see he was really tall, and broad—built like a linebacker—surprising for an Indian dude. With dark, square glasses and a mustache he looked exactly like my mentor….who used to be an engineer. He starts his speech with an introduction… and a quote. “Maybe you thought I look like I should own a 7-11. Or be an engineer.” And the crowd laughs. 

And I’m captivated. He’s the epitome of a great speaker. Posture. Depth of voice. Great organization.

He works that 4-sided stage like a natural, speaking from corner to corner, moving with purpose around the room. He uses alliteration adroitly, and creates visuals vying for detailed description.  And his one liners…

“If you’re happy and you know it, …TELL YOUR FACE!!” 

He talks about authentic leadership. Learning to love each other. And 4 levels of communicating  he learned working for Zig Ziglar for over 20 years.I’m inspired. And I’m jealous as hell! And this feeling, the gnawing tightness of envy… is completely… un-motivating! Out of the jealousy and the comparison comes my critical voice. 

We all have one, don’t we? It’s that voice that tells me… quietly at first… you could never do that.

You’ll never be that compelling.Why do you even try? Criticizing my every move, every thought and every word… you’ll never be enough. It’s that inner dialogue, that inner critic… the things I would never, ever say to someone else, but somehow it’s ok to be that terrible to myself.  Wait a second, wait a second!!! That’s the entire point of Mr. Dhanam’s speech! He said, “We have mastered love, but we are miserable at being loved! There are 7 billion others on this planet during the time we’re here. Don’t kid ourselves that we’re not unique and designed for greatness.”

And my inner critic fell silent.

In her book, “Radical Acceptance” Tara Brach writes that there is a “trance of unworthiness” that all of us fall into. She says that “The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved.” 

Even if we don’t yet know how to quiet our critical voice, we are ALL loved. In those moments we make a difference for someone else—with our words, our message from the front of the room. Our audience appreciates us and we make a difference—we are loved.In the quiet times with our spouses or families where the most important things can be said, and trusted confidences are shared—we are loved.

In the deepest, quiet places of our souls, when we stop, become still and quiet, in our hearts we know—we are loved, despite the inner critic, despite the noise of the world around us, despite the lies we believe about ourselves, at the core of our being we all know the truth—we are loved. And in that silent stillness of that loving place, our hearts can start to believe in our own potential.

And that idea is motivating!

Open

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danschawbel/files/2011/09/dave-ramsey.jpg

If you're in financial trouble, read Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover." In his companion class, Financial Peace University, Dave uses a great illustration of how money works. (Take it from me and Josh, it will change your entire life. More on that later).

Imagine someone puts a $20 bill on your outstretched, open palm. You have two choices. Your first choice is to close your fingers around that money, balling your hand into a tight fist. You hold on to the money tightly.

The other option is to keep your palm open. And Dave says, "Even a dog understands this one," as he bends down and whistles for an imaginary dog to come over to him.

When your fist is balled tightly around your money, none can get out. At the same time, none can get in, either. In contrast, the open hand allows money to flow. Some may  go out, but some might come in too.

When I've been the most stuck, it helps to keep Dave's "open hand theory" in mind. I'm not saying to go out and spend your last dime! Absolutely not! But I am saying to get creative.

How can you spend money creatively to make more money? Maybe it's spending a couple hundred dollars with a marketing coach to give you ideas on how to maximize your marketing budget. Maybe it's spending a day with a business coach to give you insight on getting un-stuck. Maybe it's as simple as taking someone out to lunch and asking their perspective on where you're at.

Money naturally wants to move around... maybe that's why they call it currency. Loosen that death grip a little bit, take a deep breath and see what happens.

Genuine

The first book I downloaded from the Amazon Kindle lending library  this week was The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. (Kindle = best gift I ever received. Thanks, Barb!).

Have you seen the Last Lecture video? I mean, really seen it? Not just watched the clips? Whether or not you agree or disagree with the content (Another post for another day...) you gotta admit this Randy guy is seriously, honestly, frankly one of the most genuine people you've ever seen on video.

He shows up and is who he is. And now reading the book, his philosophy of showing up just as he is is even more clear to me. He's arrogant. He's egotistical. He's smart. He's funny. He's sarcastic and witty. He's probably one of those smart a$$3s who drove me crazy in high school calculus class 'cause I just didn't get it.

But he's authentically, genuinely... him.

Three separate conversations in the last three weeks were about showing up genuinely in business. Two were with women who are, for lack of easier explanation, trying to act like men in their respective businesses. I know all about this feeling. I get it a lot.

 Now, this is NOT a discussion on whether men or women are better at sales... I'm just saying that sometimes I feel like the only way to succeed in business is by showing up as a hard hitting, strong closing sales MAN. Some days I feel like I have to show up as the used car salesman to be able to progress at all at work. I have to put on my pantsuit (not the cute one, either...) and wrap my hair tightly in a bun at the nape of my neck to disguise the fact that I'm of the fairer sex.

This is just so not me. I'd rather show up in Birkenstocks and blue jeans than a suit or... God forbid... pantyhose. I'm uncomfortable strong-arming someone into a sale they aren't comfortable with. But some days I think this is how I must be to get to what I want. And the same for these two ladies. They compare their successes to other people in their industries and think they have to change themselves into something they're not in order to "make it big."

How about a different kind of comparison? How about comparing ourselves to our genuine selves?


Surprisingly, is the more in-touch I am with who I genuinely, authentically am, the better I do. The more relaxed and confident I am in me being me, Birkenstocks and all, the more I find customers who are looking for just that. And weirdly, the more uptight I get about having to change myself to fit the mold and pretend to be someone else, the more I try and squeeze my thighs into the control top pantyhose, the more I push away people who would have otherwise been great clients.

If a customer wants the experience of the strong-armed sales guy, this just simply ain't the one for you. Pass 'em to your competitor. On the other hand, there are customers out there looking for you... the authentic, genuine you. (This is the person who wants that caring and that nurturing relationship that only you can provide, to my two lady readers). 

Seems backward I know. But look at Randy. Arrogant, egotistical and all. He showed up genuinely...exactly as he was... and had massive success for it.

Ask

Asking for help is the hardest part.

I'm a huge Titanic buff. I seriously thought I was in love with Bob Ballard as an Elementary schooler. This obsession predates the movie by about a decade, people... of which the only redeeming factor was the live underwater footage and the sets... but I digress.

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/when-did-titanic-try-for-help-11390.html

The ship is sinking. The water is pouring in through the gaping hole in the side of the hull, and the monstrous luxury liner is getting heavier and heavier. The passengers are standing on the bow of the sinking boat, stymied. The unsinkable ship is sinking. Preposterous!

The only ones with any sense are the young radio operators, Harold Bride and Jack Phillips buried in the bowels of the ship watching the water rise slowly toward the wires of the Marconi (telegraph, more or less) machine, tapping out SOS...SOS...SOS... into a clear, freezing dark night.


Can you imagine sinking on an unsinkable ship? Sometimes we think our lives, our relationships, our businesses are unsinkable. That things are going to continue along the course we've charted, and all will be well with the world once we get to our port of call. That there's no way our plan could be flawed... Preposterous!

We're really just sinking on our own personal Titanic.

As captain of our own lives, we have to recognize when there are problems. The biggest challenge--for me anyway--has always been humbling myself to ask the hard questions. We're inundated with messages that it shows weakness to ask for help. But basic human nature makes us need each other.

Sometimes it's hard to connect. To be so vulnerable that someone sees the darkest bowels and the innards of the boiler room of my ship is... challenging, to put it mildly. I feel like I have to present myself as perfect, or dire consequences will come. They won't like me. They will think ill of me. They will shun me or ostracize me or alienate me.

The biggest part of what Harold Bride and Jack Phillips accomplished that night was to ask. They sent out the message that they needed help. They were alerted to a problem by the captain, and immediately sent out a distress call.

What's your heart calling? What challenge are you facing? (The first thing that popped in your head is the right thing).

Who do you trust right now to call with that? (The first person who popped in your head is the right person).

My advice? Call that person with that thing right now. Send out your SOS and get a new perspective. Maybe you don't need to evacuate to the lifeboats... Maybe they can show you how to patch the holes in the boat.

Just ask.
Now maybe I should get about calling Bob Ballard...

Mavenry

In his book "The Tipping Point," Malcom Gladwell describes Mark Alpert, a man in New York City. Mr. Alpert can read through the phone book and of each of the names there, he can tell you everything about 2/3rds of the people in it. He's a connector of people, ideas and organizations. He's a problem solver--if he can't fix it, he knows someone who can.

I find myself being a maven for business associates and friends. If they have a problem, I get a call. If they need a plumber, I get an email. "Hey, do you know a good..."

As Gladwell describes Mr. Alpert, I strive to be "almost pathologically helpful." And I'm internally motivated to get better at this skill.

Why? Couldn't tell ya. Maybe it has to do with being taught the golden rule as a kid... I've slogged through all this mess in my relationships, and in building my own business, and so maybe my insight could be useful. Maybe I can save somebody the heartache I've been through. Maybe I can inspire somebody to follow their dreams. Or maybe I can impact their day... just give them another perspective and change their thinking for the day.

On the flip side, all I ask is if you find my information and insights are helpful, think about referring me to friends or people who could find this train of thought useful. Is that egotistical? Maybe... Or perhaps the drive to change the world one person at a time comes from being an incredibly people-motivated personality type... (more on that later).

Though I think Gladwell might categorize me more as a connector, mavenry (yes, I just made that word up) is a passion of mine. I'm fascinated by people, how they interact, how they buy, all the crazy statistics that Google has been tracking for years. I'm a good observer... and a great listener. So hit me with your best shot. Tell me your woes and I'll tell you no lies. I'm here to sympathise, listen (ONCE) and help you move on.

And if I don't know how to fix it, I know someone who can.