Change | Michele Woodward

The $6.30 Solution

May 6, 2012 By Michele Woodward 1 Comment

Somewhere along the line, I acquired a cheap little eyebrow pencil sharpener. Wasn’t much – a gimcrack drugstore model – and I used it every so often when needed.

OK, every so often for several years.

And after how many ever years, the thing started losing its edge. Every time I tried to draw an almost straight line across the rim of my eyelashes there would be sharp, pointy slivers of wood at the tip and I’d have to position the pencil just so to avoid cutting my eye.

Did you read that? I am telling you that day after day, I stuck a pointy stick in my eye.

It is, in fact, reasonable to ask: What was I thinking? I’ll tell you exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking the thought chanted by successive generations of my forebears:

“You paid for it, you own it, you better use it.”

Or its equivalent (which my cousins will shout with me):

“You can reuse plastic forks! Wash the Solo cups! Rinse out your Ziploc bags! I remember when six of us would share one banana!”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know, I know.

So use it I did, grumbling and anxious (the daily sharp stick in the eye worry). But did I ever consider tossing it in the trash and buying a new one?

Nope.

Until I came home from a recent trip and found that I’d lost Old Ophthalmologist’s Nightmare.

Did I rush out and buy a new one? No, the words of my ancestors ringing in my ears, I used my semi-sharpened, splintery pencils sequentially until there weren’t even any nubs left. Which, naturally, prompted an Eyebrow Pencil Crisis.

Which might have pushed some women – and a few guys – to rush out to the store and pick up a replacement.

Not me.

No, yours truly just went without makeup for a few days – wouldn’t any new sharpener ultimately produce splinters? – until I noticed that a new cosmetics store had opened up on the same block as the yogurt shop where my daughter is now working. Huh.

Dropped the kid off and strolled into the riot of scents and girlyness and asked, as nonchalantly as my non-made up self could muster, “Do you carry eyebrow pencil sharpeners?” The woman squinted as if she was thinking hard and said, “Yes, we have a great one from Nars, right here.”

I didn’t even look at it. Just eased over to the register and paid… $6.30.

OK, there is a punchline, but you’ll have to wait for it.

That evening, I decided to try it out. I was not optimistic, I have to tell you. What could a $6.30 pencil sharpener possibly do but poke me in the eye? Alone in my bathroom, I inserted the first pencil. And twisted.

Once. Twice. Three times.

And pulled out a perfectly sharpened eyebrow pencil. I’m talking from the factory perfect. Like it had never been used perfect.

No splinters.

I was amazed. I got a little zealous and sharpened every pencil in the makeup drawer – even ones I don’t use.

And I thought:

“What else in my life am I putting up with – that’s causing me stress – when there’s a new, simple solution out there?”

The next few days, I inventoried and remedied those vexing little things around my house that I was living with because they were “good enough” and “paid for.” I replaced a cracking and peeling toilet seat. I got new towels. I hauled out a screwdriver and fixed a kitchen cabinet. I threw out three tee-shirts that really were ratty.

How’d it feel?

Lighter. Freer. Simpler. Less stress. More gratitude.

Gratitude because I have the means and ability to address the things that were in my way.

And guess what? You, too, have the exact same means and ability.

You can change whatever you’re simply putting up with because it’s already in place.

A horrendous commute? A rattle-trap car? A bully boss? A dead-end job?

A situation that’s just not going to change?

You might think there’s nothing you can do. Any solution is going to be expensive. And hard.

And maybe poke you in the eye.

But.

$6.30.

That’s all it took for me. And you? Your solution might even be easier.

And it’ll be better than a poke in the eye.

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Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: being stuck, change, limiting beliefs, simplest solution, stress 1 Comment

From Here To There

March 11, 2012 By Michele Woodward 4 Comments

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I am rather smitten with the idea of transformation. Utterly fascinates me.

It fascinates me how common things like today’s newspaper gets recycled into tomorrow’s paper towels. Like how left over table scraps can become food for tomorrow’s flowers.

Magical things fascinate me, too, like how a little baby grows into a tall adult.

And then there are amazing things like how simple trial and error leads to a new invention that changes the world. Like the light bulb. Or the Internet.

To some of these things we say, “Yes, but…”

Yes, but that’s nature’s way of doing things – has nothing to do with me.

Yes, but that’s somebody like Thomas Edison. That’s somebody like Steve Jobs. Not somebody like me.

Rarely, it seems, do we say, “Yes, but…I can do that, too.”

But it’s more than possible.

You absolutely have the power to transform things.

You.

And you can do it all by yourself, when you think about it.

You can transform the challenge of sickness into the relief of healing, just by talking about it in a different way.

As in, “I am on my way toward remission.”

You can transform the stress of working with a difficult person into calm productivity, just by managing your own energy and being an advocate for yourself.

As in, “I am not jumping into that drama with him. No, I am not.”

You can transform your business from struggling to succeeding, just by focusing on your strengths and what really matters.

As in, “Despite the advice of marketing gurus, I know I am an introvert and not at my best in large networking events. I’m going to meet people my own way.”

It’s daunting and a little confusing to think that you have any power to change anything. Because so many of us have lived our lives believing we’re at the mercy of others. That power belongs to someone else. That we’re small, insignificant, unable.

But we’re not.

I know you’re not.

The power to transform – to shift one thing into another – is your greatest superpower.

And, if you open your eyes and see, you will find that you use this great skill of yours every day, in ways large and small.

Every time you open a door, turn a corner, start a new document, begin a conversation, you have the ability to transform one thing into something else.

And guess what? The more you use this superpower, the stronger it will get.

The stronger you will get.

So begin today. Begin by transforming where you are right now, to where you’d like to be.

And that’s as easy as getting up from your chair and moving some place else.

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Filed Under: Career Coaching, Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Happier Living Tagged With: career invention, change, how to change something, Managing Change, transform, transformation 4 Comments

“Is It Fun?”

January 29, 2012 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

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A few months ago, I made a commitment to myself to start doing the Washington Post crossword every morning. I thought it would be good for my brain, and to up the ante, I made a few rules.

You know me: Michele Woodward, Rules Girl [when you know the rules, you also know how to bend them. I am just saying.]. Here are my crossword puzzle rules:

Rule 1: Use only pen.

Rule 2: Take only 15 minutes.

Rule 3: If I’m not done in 15 minutes, drop it.

Five times out of six, I complete the puzzle under the rules. Which is surprisingly fulfilling. Ups my general Happy Quotient, if you want to know the truth.

And, there are one or two things I have learned from this exercise:

A. My intuition about a word is almost always right (except the other day, when the clue was “John Paul II, e.g.” I wrote “POPE” when the answer turned out to be “POLE”. Ah, well.)

B. Sometimes an Across word is best solved by looking at the Down words that make it up

C. Challenges can be fun

That’s right, fun. Look at me – I used the f-word.

Maybe you were raised with that wonderful work ethic that says “anything worth doing has to be hard”, which leads quite handily toward “work is hard, fun is frivolous; ergo, no fun for you, bucko”.

So you equate fun with anything but work.

Fun is tubing down the river with a cooler of beer trailing behind you.

Fun is a yo-yo tournament.

Fun is running a marathon (except for that pesky mile 21 where everything gets a little wobbly and you wonder where the fun is. The fun comes at mile 26.375, baby).

Work is a grind. Work is hyper-competitive. Work is eat-what-you-kill, dog-eat-dog, scarcity thinking writ large.

Fun and work, therefore, can never be equal.

But maybe think about it this way: work is just a challenge.

And crossword puzzles are challenges, right?

And some challenges can be fun and rewarding, and even fulfilling.

Especially if you know the rules and work within them. Kinda.

So, if my math is right, work can be fun and fulfilling if you turn the grind into a a kind of game, and you create some rules for yourself – rules you stick to.

[You may have heard of this idea of rules before. We also call these "boundaries".]

Such as: “I will not work on weekends.”

“I won’t waste a minute in malicious office gossip.”

“If something doesn’t go my way, I will drop it and move on rather than obsess, stew and fret.”

These are just some of mine. Just like using a pen to complete the crossword in less than 15 minutes.

You have a choice, too. You can make your own rules.

Really.

Start by asking yourself, “Is this thing I’m doing fun?” And if the answer is no, then figure out a way to make it fun. Make it a game.

Your game.

And I’m thinking you’re going to win because you made up the rules.

You winner, you.

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Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Career Coaching, Clarity Tagged With: attitude shift, change, Getting Unstuck, rules, transform, work, workplace issues Leave a Comment

Integrity

January 15, 2012 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

Noticed a little bit of conversation these days about politics? Not only in the U.S., where we seem to have a permanent presidential campaign in place, but also in Europe, in Asia, in South America…

Commentators in this country continue to refer to the nation suffering from a “crisis of confidence”. Maybe that’s true.

Maybe we are tired of the law partner who pockets a record bonus but tells the associates and support staff that there’s no money – again this year – for their raise.

Perhaps we’re too used to hearing about the minister with the $100,000 Mercedes parked in front of his mansion.

It could be that we’re fed up with hearing that people are going to “change Washington” and yet nothing ends up getting done.

We see real incongruence between what we expect and what we get, and that’s precisely how our confidence is undermined.

That’s a word I’m loving these days: Congruence.

It’s when things line up. It’s when what you see is what you get.

Congruence is truth.

Congruence is whole.

Congruence makes sense.

And a person who is congruent – they mean what they say, and predictably do what they say they will – is truly a person of integrity. Pundits may see the world suffering from a crisis of confidence, but I’d call it an Integrity Deficit.

Somehow or other, many leaders – some of them self-appointed – seem to have forgotten that people eagerly follow those with integrity. Whether you’re a politician, an office manager or a life coach, being a person who means what she says, and does what she says she’s going to do, is the person who’s really successful.

Now, we all know people whose integrity is, shall we say, “compromised”, and yet they seem to thrive and maybe even get ahead.

That’s an incongruence right there, huh?

But what goes around comes around, and I have never, ever met an incongruent person whose personal narrative ends well. Have you?

That karma thing is plenty powerful.

And it always works.

So, now is as good a time as any to assess your own personal integrity.

Do you ever say yes when you mean no, and wince about it shortly after the words have left your mouth?
Do you consistently miss deadlines and break commitments?
Do you fib about having sent in the payment, when really you haven’t even written the check yet?
Do you concoct a story about where you just were, rather than admitting what you were really doing?

OK, you’re human. But do you feel good about this stuff? Or does it add to your stress? Create overwhelm?

Then get congruent, baby.

Start in a small way. Start by making only those commitments you know you can meet. And then acknowledge to yourself that you did what you said you’d do. Maybe even give yourself a little reward for that.

And, make an effort to really watch your words. In The Four Agreements, author Don Miguel Ruiz suggests that one way to insure happiness is to:

“Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”

I hear you – truth and love in the workplace? Just for a minute, drop your skepticism and think about it a different way.

I know from experience that shifting toward integrity will profoundly change your work experience. It will profoundly change your marriage, your parenting, your friendships and everything else in your world.

Integrity changes anything it touches for the better.

That is the truth.

You know, I have a dream. I dream that one day our global crisis of confidence will be replaced with the peace, certainty and progress that integrity engenders.

But that will only happen – our leaders will only become people of integrity – if we, first, become so ourselves.