personal growth – Page 4

a parable

Although we love certainty, and work to make our lives operate in such a way that we know what to expect next, we also conversely crave uncertainty. Another word for it is variety.

There was a gambler who died, and as he approached the pearly gates, he was amazed and ecstatic that he had made it to heaven! He was so delighted to see that heaven was as if it had been created just for him! There were roulette tables, blackjack, slot machines, showgirls…a real Monte Carlo. As he stepped up to place his bets he found his pockets full of cash. He placed a bet, and won. Another, and jackpot. Again and again he bet, and won. After some time had passed he began to feel not just bored, but really unhappy and dissatisfied. All the winning was great, but something felt off. He went up to St. Peter, “Hey Pete, I don’t know about this, I think I am over heaven. I want to go to hell instead.” St. Peter replied, “Sir, I am sorry to tell you, but this is hell.”

The ups and downs, the wins and losses, are the juice of life. Without failure we would not learn, without the night there would be no day. Remember the parable of the gambler as you work so diligently to make your world comfy and certain. I have a love and appreciation for my losses and the darker moments, because they help me see how blessed I truly am.

it’s worth it

What would someone have to believe about a product to wait in line for it? I was in Las Vegas for an event, and found myself with some free time. It may or may not surprise you that I love food. Whenever I travel to a new city, or even one I have been before, one of the priorities is that I search out the best food in the area. I peruse the online review platforms, yelp, tripadvisor, google, I talk to the locals. I make mental lists of places to check out, food to try, menus to read. One place in particular drew me in with their name, a slightly off color, but appropriate for Sin City moniker. I went over to see what it was all about, and found a line of people wrapped around the entrance. I am a hard sell, so looking at the line was not enough to convince me to fall in. But it was interesting to think that most of these people waiting in line had not been to this place before (tourists). Most of them are impatient and don’t like to wait in line (human nature). Most of them consider themselves to be foodies and had sought this place out for it’s unique name and something that would please their jaded palate. As I watch, some decide to abandon their place in line and move one. So what do the ones who wait have to believe to stand in line for over 45 minutes to try it out? They believe it is worth it.

Whether the belief came from the reviews, word of mouth, or their own personal experience, the belief is there. As you dream big, it it may take a long time, you will have to practice patience, you will have to go places you have never been. You will be tempted to second guess yourself and give up. Unless you hold steady to the belief, “It is worth it.”

the professionals

They make it look so easy, as they glide along the dance floor, appearing to float. It reminds me of watching the cooks on the line during a busy shift, there is an energy, a flow, that is beyond thought. They have so perfected their art through hours and hours of training and practice and doing, that the motions become ingrained in their bodies. Unlike me, who needs to count on the dance floor, they are operating on instinct. It is like any skill or talent you choose to master, you have to lay the bricks, the foundation, the practice that is the mortar and glue to make what you are learning stick. Everyone starts not knowing how, its where you choose to go from there that determines your destination. It’s okay to not be good at the beginning. It’s okay to suck at writing, or dancing, cooking, or tennis. Just try it. It’s never too early, it’s never too late. You never know what will touch your soul and change the course of your life.

“The doer alone learneth.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

you’re not that good

You’re good but not that good. No matter how good you are, you are limited by the fact that you are one person. The way to multiply your impact is to lead, to duplicate yourself, to get the other pieces of the puzzle by building your team with people who are strong where you are not. Earlier in my life I would fall into the trap of thinking I had to do it all myself. Call it perfectionism, ego, pride…all just words that had the same outcome. I thought no one could do it as good as I could, and sometimes I was right. But this thought was the prison that was holding me back from growing. It held me back from growing my company, because there is only so much a one man show can accomplish. It held me back from growing as a person, because if you are not challenging your beliefs you are limiting yourself.

Side effects of thinking you have to do it all yourself can be overwhelm, overload, stress and breakdown if you don’t wake up and realize what you are doing to yourself. You can get pretty far on sheer force of will, but eventually that “force” will break you. The break can come in the form of being surly with people, getting physically ill, breaking out, gaining weight, angry outbursts, that nightly cocktail…Maybe you are not like me, where it was hard to ask for help. But if you are, there is hope. You can open your mind to the belief that you can do more by doing less. It’s true. I am proof. Once I really opened myself up to getting help, the stress lifted, the dream got bigger, the clouds shifted and there was the big bright sun.

“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock

principles

What are principles? And how does one recover from violating them? I had someone tell me they would not go back to a business “As a matter of principle”. It was a line in the sand that they drew, and as long as everyone stayed just south of the line, they were cool. You could come right up to the line, even brush against it lightly, but cross it and you are toast. As I talked to this person, lets call her Beth, it became clear to me that she had very distinct rules about what was acceptable and what was not. Her threshold was large, she gave off the impression that she was very flexible and tolerant. Easy going, nice, a real sweet lady. But she had a line nonetheless, and when someone crossed it, it was the final straw. All of the mini sacrifices she had willingly made all of a sudden became the score she had been keeping.

Nothing I could say or do would turn her around, she had made her decision, “As a matter of principle”. If she didn’t stand firm as judge and jury of her own life, then what would come of the world? At least this is what she thought. I am going to propose that when you have a line, any line, you are putting up an invisible sign that is challenging someone to cross it. You are locking your gate, with an angry dog laying low in your front yard just waiting to pounce, and signs saying “stay out our else”. This works much of the time, since most people don’t want to get bit, but what about when someone doesn’t see the signs? Or they are so invisible and well hidden in your personality that not even those closest to you know you are keeping score? You have just set yourself up for conflict. Your line in the sand will attract the threat you seek.

Principles are rules. Rules are lines. Dissect your principles and see if they are opening you up or closing you off. Flexible or rigid. Open or closed. Fear or love.

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

everyone is different

“He who thinketh he leadeth and have no one following him is only taking a walk”

I am back to the subject a leadership, it is a topic that is always on my mind, both as a business owner and as a parent. When I first became aware of this thing, “leadership”, I was not really clear on what it was, or how it was different than being an owner or a manager. I just knew that there were people in my life that were natural born leaders, and that I did not see myself as one. I may be behind the times, but it is a relatively new concept for me, this idea that you can create leaders. As I began delving into learning about this leadership thing, there was one simple definition that helped me see what it really means. Leadership is influence. If you have no influence over people, it is impossible to lead. If you don’t have the ability to touch lives, to create change, you are not a leader. Can a leader be destructive? Absolutely, as we have seen and continue to see in world we live in right now, with the tragedies and injustice we see happening on the world stage. So influence makes a leader, but to be a truly great leader there is more to it than that.

Integrity is the variable that determines the type of leader you are. Who you are is who you attract, and if you are working to create leaders as I am, it is important to be the model and live what you believe in.

The biggest lesson I have learned as a parent is that everyone is different. You cannot treat everyone the same, because everyone is not the same, even with the same upbringing and the same gene pool. As a leader it’s like you have to be a practical psychologist. You have to learn to read between the lines and to become aware of what works with each person you are in contact with. Sometimes it means being very strict and matter of fact, other people require a softer touch. Ultimately it means connecting with people and paying attention to your intuition when listening to what they say, through their words, but more importantly, through their actions.

Most of our communication is non-verbal, and that is why “do as I say, not as I do” is so ineffective. People do what people see, your actions and your intentions speak louder than words.

“Above all else, good leaders are open. They go up, down, and around their organizations to reach people. They don’t stick to established channels. They’re informal. They’re straight with people. They make a religion out of being accessible.” —Jack Welch

living on purpose

Good intentions are a world away from living with intention.

Good intentions mean you hope things will work out well, you wish things would change, you desire it to be better. Good intentions will get you thinking about what you want to do, but it takes more than thinking to make things happen.

To change anything, to improve your life, to grow, you have to be on purpose. You have to take that leap from wanting to doing. From hoping to executing. From dreaming to living. It starts with the intention, the dream, but sitting at your desk thinking about it will never bring it to reality. You have to express it. By talking about it, by writing it down, by enlisting help, by looking for people that are doing it already successfully and modelling them.

That dream going round and round in your head, that vision of a world without violence, the dream of being an artist, the hope that you will find the perfect mate, the dream of owning your own business- they are all possible. They are possible because we are the authors of our stories. We don’t realize it until we see it, that we can start right now changing the direction of our path. We can choose to verbalize, to vocalize, to take that dream, that vision, that hope, and place it out here. Take it out of your head, put it into the world.

All of the stories you tell yourself about why it is impossible are B.S. The story that no one can make a living as an artist, that businesses fail, that you need to have a ‘real job’, that violence is too ingrained, that all the good ones are taken- all B.S. They are the stories of your life that were written by other people. Take hold of the pen, and begin writing your story ON PURPOSE. With intention. Out loud.

“Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope.” – Bradley Whitford

fear

Everybody feels it. It is the biggest thing, that holds us back from taking action. Fear of leaving something that is secure and stepping into the unknown. Fear of trying something new that we may not be good at. Fear of what people will say if we fall on our face. Fear of not having enough money. Fear of losing love people have for us. Fear of speaking up and asking for what you want. What is that feeling? Where does it come from?

I can pull it up in an instant just by thinking of some of the moments in my life where I felt it. The sick feeling in your gut, the heavy weight of some negative energy that just cloaks your body, the hyperawareness that suddenly occurs to every perceived threat to your current world. We have a global connected consciousness that has a deeply rutted path of fear, of scarcity, of separation. But we also have an even stronger space that is tremendously powerful, strong and able. Able to create a beautiful life in spite of or because of the challenges that we have faced along the path. I am not going to say it is easy to disconnect yourself from the stickiness of fear, it is freaking hard shit. It can take a cataclysmic event like losing someone or getting cancer that shoves you into another reality where you have to question who you are. It can take going bankrupt, losing your business, the end of your marriage, losing your home. But it can also happen another way – you can choose to let go without needing the hard lesson. You can begin to open your thoughts to the idea that fear is not acting in your favor. Begin to open your mind to the idea that fear is not a message to stop, but instead a message that you are headed in the right direction. Fear is telling you to step forward, step up, hold someones hand if you need it, but move.

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso

trade up

There are many lessons to remember when you are leading people. Some lessons become ingrained, such as the fulfillment that is achieved when you look outside yourself and help others. Others need constant reminders, like it is a process, and to look at the big picture. Every person has their strengths and their weaknesses, and although it can be tempting to focus on ever facet of yourself at once, for me what has proven to be most effective is to surround myself with people who are strong where I am still growing. If you look at anything too closely, you will lose the perspective that standing back brings. For me, the big picture is definitely a weak point, but I have learned to imagine myself physically above, in the air even, and looking down and around at the world I am living in. I can take myself back through my memory to 5 years ago from today, and scan forward to now and see the progress I have made, not only personally, but in our business. It can be challenging when facing the day to day issues than invariably come up to test us, but if you can see the progress, and look at how life has unfolded for you, then can you really start to believe in the power of process.

I am still learning, every day and every moment. I think that I have found the perfect solution for a problem, only to trade one issue for another. The key is to trade up. The problems we had at the beginning of our business, not enough customers, got traded for the problem of not enough employees to serve them, to the problem of not enough seating, to the problem of not enough parking… The person you were sure was going to be able to handle the project falters, the timeline you had set gets blown, your plan has to change. Life is full of puzzles and opportunities for us to choose how we look at what is going on in our lives. Remember to reflect and to give yourself the occasional, or frequent, pat on the back for how you have grown. Each trade up is another way for us to use the tools in our toolbelt and learn again. Be a quick learner, and keep moving on up.

“A Pessimist Sees The Difficulty In Every Opportunity; An Optimist Sees The Opportunity In Every Difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

answers inside

Even with the best intentions, there are bound to be distractions that take you (me) away from doing the important stuff. The stuff that matters. The lure of the internet and all of it’s infinity of answers to every possible need or problem I can come up with is definitely a level one distraction. The amount of information that is accessible to us at the click of a button would have blown our minds 15 years ago. I think it is an amazing gift we have been given to be so connected – albeit virtually – with what is going on all around the world, however I also think that it has made us lazy. We have become dependent on finding the answers we seek outside of ourselves, through Google, or Bing or whatever your search engine of choice is.

I was trying to remember the name of a movie, that movie* with Kevin Spacey where he telling a tall tale yet was the mastermind behind the heist, and the overwhelming instinct was to “google it”, instead of using my brain and searching my memories for the title that was filed somewhere in the filing cabinet in the corner of my mind. As we habitually Google the cause of our headaches, the best way to terminate someone, how to get your kid to help with chores, are we losing the ability to find the answers we seek inside us?

The work that has to be done is to build the muscle of self knowledge. How? By listening to the gut, and trusting your instincts. I can certainly find as many answers as there are opinions on the great world wide web, but ultimately the best answer for me is always going to be the one that sounds true. So go ahead and Google if you think you need it, but wake up to the fact that for every “best solution” there is and equally valid opposite solution out there. You have the answer already, you are just looking for verification. Start practicing being confident in your gut, and looking less for the quick answer. This is just one more road to becoming more self aware, which for me is the journey of my life. Getting to know me.

*The Usual Suspects

“Inner guidance is heard like soft music in the night by those who have learned to listen.”
― Vernon Howard