Re-Thinking Screw-Ups

It’s human nature to berate ourselves over poor choices we’ve made. Regret is a common feeling among my coaching clients, family, and friends alike.

Yet, we literally make hundreds of choices every day. Instead of lamenting the wrong ones we’ve made, what about celebrating - or even noticing - all of the little positive ones?

• Should I floss my teeth this morning?
• Should I eat breakfast, or grab something later?
• Should I call my aunt?
• Should I take the escalator or the stairs?
• Should I buy a banana or a bag of M&Ms?
• Should I read the novel in my bag, or buy a trashy magazine?

True, these choices aren’t as monumental as some of those bad ones that we can’t seem to forgive ourselves for. Also true that we won’t always make the better choice in these instances. But how many of these very simple positive choices are you making every day that are going unrecognized?

Years ago, I took a parent educator course where I was introduced to this quote from Diane Wagenhals of the Institute for Family Professionals. Wagenhals said, “There are literally millions of opportunities to interact in healthy ways with your children. You can screw up several thousand times and still do enough healthy stuff to produce emotionally healthy kids.”

Whether parenting, trying to adapt a healthier lifestyle, trying to live by your values, or just trying to be a better person, isn’t it refreshing to know you can screw up several thousand times and still do millions of things right? And the coaching exercise for this post is just to acknowledge them.

All the best,

~ Sophie

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

“We don't get to choose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it.” ~ Kami Garcia, author

“The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best.” ~ Jamie Ford, author

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. President

“I discovered I always have choices and sometimes it's only a choice of attitude.” ~ Judith Knowlton, author 

“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” ~ Flora Whittemore, author

Methods & Madness

My sister, Tessa, is a chef in Manhattan. Recently she created a series of culinary events she calls Methods & Madness.  The idea behind these events is for her to team up with a professional from another field and, based on what she learns, to create a menu inspired by the work that they do. She has so far partnered with a painter/illustrator, a perfumer, and a font designer for some truly memorable dinners served at communal tables in unique settings.

What I like about these dinners – besides the fantastic food – is the creativity and curiosity that are behind it. My sister is exploiting what we can all learn by stepping out of our routines, by getting curious, and by gaining inspiration from the most unexpected places.

It reminds me of a problem-solving technique I learned many years ago. In it, you put your challenge aside momentarily and you pick a completely random topic – like things related to the beach – and you brainstorm for a few minutes about that topic. So you’d list things like sand, shovel, waves, umbrella, etc. After you’d exhausted your ideas, you’d pull your original problem back out and see if anything on the beach list could inform your solution to your current problem.  So, if my original problem was say, dealing with a difficult co-worker, I’d think about how waves or an umbrella might help me. Maybe it just reminds me that relationships with colleagues move in waves and that when they are more violent, I need to just ride them or get out of the water. Or maybe it makes me think that possibly some sort of physical barrier, like an umbrella blocking the sun - or a closed office door - would help the situation. I always liked this technique for the same reasons I like the Methods and Madness dinners – it’s another example of stepping out of your current pattern of thinking to gain inspiration.

So how can I apply what I’ve learned from watching Tessa prepare for her Methods & Madness events?  I’m thinking about talking to people in other fields to find out how processes and tools they use might inspire me. There are even people in my own organization whose jobs I don’t understand, which, if I learned more about, might inform how I do mine. Even more, Tessa really creates beauty out of everyday life by turning what someone does routinely into delicious and beautiful dishes. She’s just reminded me of the importance of reaching out and getting curious in another arena and the tasty morsels that can come from that.

Enjoy!
~ Sophie

COACHING EXERCISES

Try some methods and madness experiments of your own. Here are some ideas. If you come up with other ones, please share.  

• Interview someone who does something different than you do: Ask to shadow them in their own setting, or take them out for coffee and really try to get a picture of the tools and methods they employ in their day-to-day work or lives.
• Try the problem-solving technique above with a challenge you are facing.
• Sign-up for a one-day course in a discipline you haven’t been exposed to – psychology, engineering, religion, gardening – and see how you can apply what you learn to those disciplines you do engage in.
• Talk to someone either very young or very old for a new perspective.  With either group, you can be quite up-front about what you are looking to change or to accomplish. Children will tell you straight-out what you should do; elderly people will usually be happy to share their experience or perspective.
• Request a job rotation or take on an internship in some tangential field to your own.

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

This quote, which is actually a poem, has nothing to do with the theme of this post, but it does relate to several posts I have written in the past, about gratitude and about seeing the positive in a situation. This was shared at a conference I attended for hospice volunteers earlier this week.

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep, I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

~ Mary Oliver 

Don't Plan On It

I’m taking a project management course this week. My head is filled with SMART objectives, work breakdown structures, project requirement documents, and schedule planning.

While detailed planning is the right way to proceed before embarking on many types of projects and activities, it isn't the only way to move forward. Sometimes we need to press on even when we don’ t know what each step in the process will look like, or what the end result will be. 

An example of when we need to move ahead without knowing necessarily where we are heading is parenting. When our children are young, we have no idea what kind of teenagers they will be, or what kind of people they will ultimately become, yet we have to continue doing the best we are capable of doing to raise them. When they’re infants, we can’t imagine how we’ll handle it when they are 17 and we find pot in their bedrooms, but by the time it happens (if it happens), we will. There’s no project plan you can write for parenting.

A friend wrote to me today:  “It feels like an important time in my life and it seems to be on the right track. I read a quote sometime in the past year that has been guiding me: "Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see farther."* As much as possible, I'm enjoying the journey.” My friend has recently ended a several year relationship, is looking for a new place to live and for new ways to expand his consulting practice.  He’s moving ahead without knowing how his business is ultimately going to look, where he’ll be living, or who he’ll be living with. But he knows that as he takes action, more will become clear. And I admire his approach; how he’s chosen to be while waiting for that clarity.

Here’s hoping as you move forward, your vision expands,

~ Sophie

* Quote attributed to Thomas Carlyle, Scottish historian and essayist in the Victorian era and/or to American banker, John Pierpont Morgan. Gotta love those Internet quote sites!

COACHING EXERCISE

What do you desire (or need) to move forward with, even if you don’t know where it will lead? Is it doing some writing, even if you don’t know if you’ll ever get published? Is it thinking about some sort of move, even if you don’t know yet where you want to go? Is it making a big purchase? Getting married? Getting fit? Taking on a work assignment you have no idea how you'll accomplish? 

Your assignment: Go as far as you can see, and see what more you can see when you get there.

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

• “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” ~ John Lennon  
• “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” ~ Anatole France, French poet, journalist and novelist.  
• “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” ~ Robert Lewis Stevenson, author  
• “It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.” ~ Henri Poincare, French mathematician, physicist, engineer and philosopher

Show Up

•  At my wedding, a distant cousin and her husband told me that they attend every family occasion that they are invited to. “We got tired of only going to funerals,” they said. “If we’re asked, we say yes."
•   Recently, my mother attended a meeting that she really didn’t want to go to. She was tired, and she’d already been to enough meetings on the same topic. But she went, and she discovered that the evening’s presenter is working in an office where she once worked. Now she is advising him on a project and is excited about how that working relationship may continue to develop.
•   When my friend got divorced last year, she knew she wanted to find someone else who’d be a better-suited mate, and she didn’t sit around for one minute waiting for one to magically appear. She put herself in every situation she could think of to meet someone new – a triathalon team-in-training, speed dating, J-Date. And even if she didn’t meet any interesting prospects this way, she focused on what she learned, or how she was developing as a person, out of each one (and she completed a triathalon!).  

What do all of these anecdotes have in common? Showing up: Making an effort or putting yourself out there even when it isn’t convenient, when you don’t really want to,  even when you don’t instantly get the results you are seeking.

And showing up doesn’t just mean literally showing up – though that’s a critical part of it. Showing up means being visible once you get out there: making an event better because you were there, adding something to the situation that wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t there, connecting with someone in a memorable way.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am good at neither of these things. I just skipped my 25^th college reunion. I say I need to widen my network in New York City and I haven’t attended a single professional association meeting. When I’m at an event, I often don’t make the kind of meaningful contribution that I’m seeking to make. In other words, my distant cousin, my mother, and my friend are my heroes and I aspire to be more like them. In other words, I’m going to be working on the coaching exercise below along with any of you who take it on. Because, like all of us, I need to show up!

All the best,

~ Sophie

COACHING EXERCISE

Part 1 - Show up. Where do you need to show up this week? Is there an appointment you’ve been putting off? Is there someone you've been meaning to spend time with? Is there an event coming up you’ve been dreading? The first part of this exercise -- Just do it. Make it there. Show up.

Part 2 – Really show up. Are you an introvert? Do you sometimes feel that people don’t really notice when you’re there? What can you do about this? Start with a baby step. Make a meaningful connection with just one other person, contribute just one comment in your next meeting, ask one powerful question of someone else in the room, give one helpful piece of advice. You are unique; you have a lot to offer. Once you’re showing up literally, think about what it takes to show up emotionally as well.

Then show up here – on this blog. I’d love to know how this goes for you, or your thoughts on this post. Leave a comment below. Or just e-mail me “off-line” to tell me how you're showing up. I’m always happy to hear from you. 

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

• “The world is run by those who show up.” ~ Sometimes attributed to anonymous sources; other times to engineering expert, Robert B. Johnson
• "Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come." ~ Anne Lamont, author
• "I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often." ~ Brian Tracy, television host

Choose Your Attitude

I haven’t been happy at work lately and it’s really put me in a funk. But then somehow,  something shifted for me. I remembered something sort of Zen a former boss of mine once said to the effect of, “It’s the same day whether you choose to be happy about it or not.”

This sentiment has been expressed over and over throughout time (see some of the quotes below): That all that we humans have control over are our attitudes, not our circumstances; That a positive outlook does more for us than worldly goods, money, or status. The sentiment is especially poignant for me when expressed by Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning. He said, "The last of the human freedoms is to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances." I sincerely hope my circumstances, and those of the people I love, are never as dire as those he found himself in. So, in my far less dismal circumstances, I can certainly be guided by this belief. I can choose my attitude.

So, what have I chosen to do in my current situation? I’ve decided to focus on what I loved about my job for the first year before things took a turn for the worse; I’ve decided to really be a stickler about only working the 30-hour week I was hired for and take those extra 10 hours to do things that do make me happy; I’ve decided to work more on a coaching app I am thinking of developing; and I've decided to keep my eyes open for ways to be happier at work. 

It’s the same day, regardless of how you choose to respond to it. I hope you respond in a way that brings you fulfillment and joy. That’s your coaching exercise for this post.

Best,

~ Sophie

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW

"The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances." ~ Martha Washington

"We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them." ~ Elbert Hubbard

 “Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.” ~ Francesca Reigler

 “If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.” ~ Amy Tan

“I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days, or great days.” ~ Lance Armstrong

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” ~ Oscar Wilde

The Sound of Silence

While I usually share a coaching exercise and some quotes in each of these posts, this time the quote and the coaching exercise are one and the same.

Last week, I came across a quote I’d written down several years ago from Shirdi Sai Baba, an Indian saint. He said, “Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?”

As I carried that quote in my thoughts over the last several days, a few situations all converged that made me decide that this is a good time to write about the subject of silence.

First, I came across some reviews of new book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. In it, author Susan Cain writes about how “introverts think more, are less reckless, and focus on what really matters—relationships and meaningful work—rather than on the glittering but empty prizes of financial reward and job title. Introverts are Rosa Parks and Gandhi. Extroverts are economy-busting Wall Street CEOs.”* She posits that at times, all of us—even extroverts—would be better off being left alone with our thoughts. *The quote is from a review of Quiet in The Wall Street Journal by Philip Delves Broughton.

At the same time, I was reading a wonderful novel by Geraldine Brooks about the real-life first Native American graduate of Harvard College in 1665 (Caleb’s Crossing). It’s told from the point-of-view of a young woman in a settlement of English Puritans living alongside Native American tribes. Bethia learns over and over again “the use of silence” and both the gifts and frustrations it brings.

Finally, I was heading downtown last weekend and about to enter Times Square. ‘Darn,’ I thought, ‘I hate walking through Times Square. It’s crowded, it’s noisy; maybe I should go some other way.’ But I was already headed right there. It was early last Saturday morning and as I approached, I noticed something different. Some of the streets were cordoned off. There were no cars. And pedestrians were walking silently along the perimeter on the sidewalks while in the center of Times Square hundreds of people were seated cross-legged on the ground with their eyes closed. Meditating. There were perhaps as many people in Times Square at that moment as at any other time, yet there was a respectful hush; the only sound an occasional gong. It was truly an amazing moment: A moment when the sound of silence overpowered all else and when thousands of strangers – those seated in meditation and those who had the good fortune to stumble upon them – became connected.

All of these things – happening in such close proximity to each other - made me think about quieting down; about whether much of what we speak is actually necessary, true and kind. About what’s possible when we stop talking and start listening: listening to others, listening to our own inner wisdom, listening to our surroundings.

So that’s the coaching exercise for this post, whether you think about it for an hour, a day, or a week. What happens when you speak only when it “improves on silence?” What effect does it have on your thought processes? Your work? Your relationships? Can you tap in to the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking?

Telling Tales

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” 

~ Muriel Rukeyser, American poet and political activist

Stories play a powerful part in our lives. The stories of our families and friends are those we share again and again; that define who we are and what matters to us. In 2003, I created a leadership course for the City of Redwood City that was focused on storytelling. Here’s the rationale I shared back then:

• The right story at the right time can make a strong connection with your listener
• Telling a story lets you approach a problem indirectly, working past the defenses of your listener
• A story can establish a common vision
• A well thought-out story can make the complex understandable
• A story can give meaning and context to your work
• A story touches the emotions; enabling your message to reach both thinking and feeling types
• They’ll remember a story

Since that course, I’ve always kept a file of stories that I want to remember. Here are a couple of my favorites:

A man pulled his car in to a gas station and said to the attendant, “I’m new to town. What’s it like?” “Well,” said the attendant, “What are people like where you came from?” “Not so nice,” the man replied, “In fact, quite rude.” “I’m afraid you’ll find the same here,” said the attendant. Before long, another car pulled up and its driver asked the same question. When the attendant asked him about the people in his home town, the second driver said, “I came from a great place. The people were friendly and I hated to leave.” “Well,” said the attendant, “You’ll find the same to be true of this town.”  The first man, now irritated, asked, “So what is this town really like?” To which the attendant replied, “It’s all a matter of perception. You’ll find things to be just the way you think they are.”

When engineers came to Thomas Edison looking for work, he would give them a lightbulb and ask, “How much water will it hold?”  Engineers who used gauges to measure all the angles of the bulb and then calculate the surface area (taking 20 minutes) were shown the door.  Those who took about a minute to pour water in to the bulb and then pour that in to a measuring cup were hired.

In addition to parables like these, sharing stories of things that have happened to you has the power to heal, to help others overcome their obstacles, and to deepen relationships. The coaching exercises below can help you integrate stories in to your work or personal life.

And may you all live happily ever after,

~ Sophie

COACHING EXERCISES

·       Start a story storehouse. This can be a computer file, as I have, or a file of scraps or index cards. Collect stories that you hear, that you read on the Internet, or that have happened to you in the storehouse. 

·    Once in a while, sit and think about what challenges you’ve recently faced and what you’ve learned from them and write them out.

·    Write about people you come across in your day-to-day life who are particularly memorable, or talk about them with your friends. They may make perfect illustrations of who you aspire to be, or who you want to avoid becoming. 

·    Read stories or novels. 

·    Read books like Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling is Transforming 21^st Century Organizations and Management or The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (If you do a search on Amazon.com for books on storytelling, these and many others will pop up). 

·    Post your favorite stories in the comments section here.

QUOTES I LIKE RIGHT NOW 

• “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” ~ Rudyard Kipling, author
• “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” ~ Willa Cather 
• “The best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.” ~ Tom Peters
• “I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst
• "God made man because he loves stories." ~ Yiddish proverb