A Generous Spirit

This week, I was going to write about Dan Pink’s new book about motivation, Drive.

Then, I also considered writing about Brigid Schulte’s article in The Washington Post, about a busy working mom’s search for leisure time.

I also thought about writing an arch, sassy essay on New Year’s Resolutions.

But I couldn’t write those posts. They seem so inconsequential.

Because I can’t get Haiti out of my mind.

The scope of the loss there is so hard to grasp. The only way I’ve been able to understand it is like this: It’s as if Land Shark Stadium in Miami, filled to the rafters for the Super Bowl, collapsed and suddenly every single person in the stadium – players, refs, fans, vendors, women selling programs, beer guys, security guards – died.

And as if every single car in the parking lot were filled with people who were hurt by falling debris from the stadium, had no gas, no food, no water, and no where to go.

And everyone in Miami suddenly had no power, no police, no firemen, no nothing.

Imagine if we began burying people in a mass grave in the middle of the football field.

That’s what Haiti is like.

And so much else feels insignificant.

Last Friday as I watched the news coverage out of Port-au-Prince,  I found myself feeling much the same way I did on September 11, 2001. I live four miles from the Pentagon, and I knew someone on that plane. I knew people who worked at the Pentagon, and a security guard who saved lives. Firefighters just down the street were among the first responders. I saw the smoke, I smelled the jet fuel, I saw the scorch marks. The loss felt so heavy.

One hundred and twenty five souls died that day at the Pentagon. Almost 3,000 people died in New York, Pennsylvania and DC as a result of the 9-11 attack. Our attention has been grabbed by other recent situations. Nearly 4,500 soldiers have died in Iraq since 2003.  Eight hundred and fifty in Afghanistan.  Six thousand five hundred people died from swine flu in 2009, worldwide.

All of these instances have received understandable media coverage.

But Haiti’s death toll is almost 1000 times that of the Pentagon. More than thirty times the losses of 9-11. Twenty times the soldiers lost in Iraq. Fifteen times that lost to swine flu.

It is so big.

So what can we do? We can, and have, given to charitable organizations who are on the ground in Haiti, delivering basic supplies, medical assistance and coordinating recovery efforts. In just a few days, $12 million has been generated in ten dollar increments for the American Red Cross by text messaging alone.

We are a generous people.

And catastrophes tend to bring us together, and bring out the best in us.

So I have an idea.

What if we could keep that generosity going? Certainly to Haiti as it rebuilds.

But also to Flint, Michigan, as it recovers.

And to Schenectady and Siler City. And to Des Moines and Danville.

And to Main Street and to your very own street.

Amid our personal concerns about our financial health and prospects for the future, what if we made a commitment to keep on being as generous in the future as we are right now?

What if, as a business owner, you hired someone and accepted a slightly smaller profit margin for yourself?

What if, as a homeowner, you hired someone to repair your roof rather than get up on a ladder?

What if, as a corporation, you added just one percent to your workforce?

What if, as a bank, you lent money to people who will use it to create opportunity for others through employment?

What if, as a society, we figuratively kept texting each other $10 each day?

Why, we’d change everything.

Loving Change

It’s funny. I am usually the cock-eyed optimist who writes about how to create more happiness and joy in your life and your work.

I often tell you to focus on what’s working, and do more of that, and do less of the stuff that drains you or makes you unhappy.

I will tell you that’s The Secret of Life.

However.

Today, I’m telling you that sometimes, to make a change, you have to dwell in what really stinks.

Today, I’m suggesting that you have to wade right in and bathe in what’s worst about your situation to really make a change.

You know, maybe it’s human nature to hate change. Maybe it’s human nature to gaze at the bright side and tell ourselves that it’s really not so bad, this is what we need to do, maybe something else would be worse. Or harder. Or suck even more than the sucky thing we are already acquainted with.

But when you’re exhausted, or sick, or heavier than you need to be… Or when you have a short fuse, or are constantly on edge, or hate going into your office…

Then you’ve gotta start loving change.

It’s kind of like making your grandmother’s favorite casserole. The recipe calls for sour cream, butter, cream of mushroom soup, cream cheese and cheddar. You love your grandmother, and you love her cooking. Brings back memories. But eating sour cream, butter, cream of mushroom soup, creamed cheese and cheddar all baked together is not how you want to live your life today.

To change the recipe to suit the way you want to eat today, you make changes. Substitutions. Like using chicken broth, herbs, more protein. Sure, it’s not grandma’s recipe exactly. It might taste kind of like hers, but really – it’s yours now.

You know I have the idea that we each have 100 units of energy to spend each day. Yesterday’s are gone, and tomorrow’s belong to tomorrow. All you’ve got is 100 to use today. And if you have created day-after-day which calls for 120, you’ve got a problem.

It’s just like having too much dairy and fat in a recipe.

Something’s gotta go.

This is something that I’ve begun to realize about my own life. There are tactics, approaches, habits, ways of being, that worked for me as a coach, say, five years ago, but don’t particularly work for me today.

So, I’m going to let them go.

I’ll admit it – I feel a little uncertain about the changes I’m going to make. Will they work? Will I be happy? Will I make the revenue I want to make?

Truth? I don’t know. I could be making a mistake.

But.

The alternative – not making a change – feels like continuing to eat food that’s satisfying, but not really supportive of the way I really want to live.

You’re probably wondering what I’m going to do.

Right?

I’m going to do less one-on-one coaching, and focus on groups, workshops, retreats and speaking. I’m talking about having maybe five individual clients. That seems about right to me.

And it’s a big shift. Because right now? I’ve got about 20 individual clients. And the paradigm for many coaches is a plethora of clients. For many coaches, that’s their bread and butter. The source of most of their revenue. And I’m letting that go.

Kinda scary.

What I want is more time to create. What I want is more time to focus. What I want is a few of the absolutely right clients to work with very closely. And I want a bunch of the absolutely right people to work with in groups.

Because I have a priority around creating. Which is hard to do when you’re flat out. So I am reallocating my energy units so I can have the space, and time, to create.

Maybe you’ve created a recipe for your life that once worked, but isn’t working so well for how you want to live your life today. If so, wade right in and figure out what ingredients need to be swapped out. Figure out how to make a satisfying dish out of healthier stuff. And love that change.

Change: Tastes great. And, less filling.

Happy New (Fill In The Blank)!

OK, I live with teenagers. And teenagers are amazing, wonderful, vexing creatures. They are truly experimenters – trying on this idea, that sweater, this hairstyle, that belief system.

I love them.

Because they remind me to think outside the box and change things up, too.

Let me ask you this: Why is it, just because we started a new calendar year, that people do all sorts of planning, resolutions and intention-setting? (”Calendars are arbitrary and made up by some ancient Romans anyway, Mom,” says the Dude, true to teen form.)

Well, my coach brain says: “Doesn’t really matter. Today’s just as good as any other day.”

And I do love me a good plan. So, I jumped right on in, regardless of who made the calendar.  Just before the end of 2009, I released a Personal Planning Tool and about a thousand people have downloaded it.   You can, too, by clicking on the highlighted text.

What I tried to do with the tool is create a way to make a Plan That Works.

But let’s take a minute to talk about change. Because I can make all the plans I want, and if I don’t execute them… they ain’t nothing but paper.

And if I don’t execute them, it’s likely because I’m afraid of change.

Laurie would like to leave her job. She’s been there five years, there’s no room for growth, her co-workers are not “her people” and she doesn’t fit in.  It’s time to go.  But she can’t.  Oh, she routinely tries.  She puts together a resume, sends out one or two, has a coffee with a prospect and gets cold feet and stops looking.

Why?

Because she’s scared.  Because she tells herself that maybe  things aren’t really that bad where she is, that maybe she’s unhireable, maybe she needs that Master’s degree, maybe all jobs are disgusting, time-sucking, mind-numbing black holes – so in that case why not stay in the time-sucking, mind-numbing black hole that she knows?

Here’s the real thing holding Linda back – she sees no real, positive outcome to making a change.

Not one positive thing.

And until she can see one, she’s not going to execute her plan.

Same goes for Kristen, who wants to lose 40 pounds.  Ask her to envision an outcome to that kind of weight loss, and if she’s honest with you (and herself) she’d say: “People would expect more from me, because they would see that I can make things happen. Oh, wow, I might have to dress better. I might look like a hoochie-mama. I might find someone other than my husband attractive, I might get divorced, I might have to move. What about my kids? I dunno, losing weight would mean I have to change too much.”

Who would lose weight with that kind of dismal future in mind?

When you complete your Personal Planning Tool, there might be things you’ll need to change.  And you might feel some teensy (or humongous) resistance.  That’s the moment to say to yourself, “What will happen if I really do this?”  Listen to the negative outcomes and learn everything you can about your fears. But don’t let fear stop you, baby.  Immediately start focusing on one positive outcome.  Just one.

“If I find a new job, I can have more friends.”

“If I lose 40 pounds, I can start skiing again.”

Just one positive thing.  It’ll do the trick.

So, Happy New (Fill In The Blank)!  How are you going to fill your blank?

Make Your Own Thanksgiving

This week I’ve been thinking about money.

And how so many people get all weird and wobbly when it comes to talking about it. Asking for it. Having it at all.

And it’s interesting that they way our parents and grandparents handled money probably affects the way we handle money. I think about the woman whose immigrant parents struggled and sacrificed and lived in poverty. And now, even though she makes a million dollars a year, she hoards paper towels and soup… just in case.

Or the guy whose dad was a dreamer and a schemer. When they had money, they spent it – lavish dinners, fancy trips, stylish clothes. And when they had no money, they fantasized about how they’d spend it once it came back. Today, this guy has no savings and wonders what happens to his cash.

A couple of months ago I wrote When Gifts Become Junk – just because someone gives you a gift, like a legacy around money, you don’t have to take it.

It’s kind of like Thanksgiving.

I remember the first time I had to cook Thanksgiving on my own. I planned to carefully replicate the traditional family menu, but then ran into a little blip. Where my family had bread-and-oyster dressing, heavy on the sage, his family had cornbread dressing with plenty of celery and onion. My family was mashed potatoes, his was rice. Ours was brown gravy. His had hard-boiled eggs floating in a yellow gravy.

We each had our own idea of What Thanksgiving Is and What One Must Consume So It Is Truly Thanksgiving. Compromise felt like loss.

Oh, I come by the feeling of What It Should Be quite naturally – another family legacy. I remember my mother preparing Thanksgiving when I was a child. She looked at our loaded table and would always say, “You know, my grandmother would have chicken and dumplings, ham, turkey, fried chicken, and four different kinds of pie…this just doesn’t seem like Thanksgiving to me.” The fact that we had ham and turkey and three pies – never lived up to what Thanksgiving Should Be.

What a struggle. It’s the tension between fantasy and reality, really. It’s the tightrope of being present right here and now, and living in a storied and maybe flawed recollection of a “better time.” It’s an oppressive and unrealistic burden because the past you’re trying to match was probably not as wonderful as you recall. It probably wasn’t any more happy than you can make today.

So to be firmly here in the present, and living a happy life, there comes a point when you simply choose to make your own Thanksgiving.

Take a look at the heritage of your forebears and decide what you want to consciously take forward with you in your own life. It is absolutely OK – hey, it’s more than OK, it’s imperative — to decide whether you want to continue with the tiny marshmallows on the top of the super sweet potatoes, or go a bit healthier and replace that traditional dish with, oh, steamed broccoli.

You create your own traditions, not because what your parents and grandparents did was wrong. It may have been really right. For them. At that time. But now, it’s your life. You can create your own way of being in the world, darling, because you are you – not them.

Look at the legacies gifted to you by your parents and grandparents — around money, around relationships, around body image, around holidays – and decide: “Is this what I want for myself? Does this make me happy, or give me stress?”

If a tradition works for you, and makes you very, very happy – then keep it. If a tradition feels like a heavy obligation, and makes you very, very stressed – then it’s time to lovingly let that relic go.

Feel free to make your own menu, and it will be your own Thanksgiving. Every single celebratory day.

Turn Your Love Around

I met the woman at a local coffee shop. She’s a Chief Operating Officer, working as an interim or temporary COO in situations where someone left, or the organization needs a turnaround. She’d been a coaching client for several months and her business was going well.

She had asked for the meeting because at age 42 she was feeling…stuck. Unhappy. Not quite…there.

The last time we had met, I had taken a gamble and suggested that perhaps her dissatisfaction was not so much around her professional life, which was humming along the way a great COO gets things to hum along. No, I had a hunch that she was unhappy because something was missing. And I said it. Out loud. “Maybe what you’re missing is a partner.”

And as hard as that had been to hear, she had come to see that what she wanted more than anything was, as she put it, “love and community.”

So, that morning we began to hone in on what “love and community” means — to her. And figure out how she could invite more of it into her life.

Here’s the point where I went all woo-woo on her. I told her a story about a green candle. See, I have this friend who is steeped in Native American culture and she recently told me to light a green candle on days with an eight in them — like the 8th, 18th, 28th — and say a prayer for increased prosperity. She’s kind of a bossy friend, so of course I did exactly what she said.

And within 24 hours, I had received nearly $11,000 in new money.

Another friend, Susan, lit the green candle and a house sold. $65,000.

But. The key thing is that you have to light the green candle and ask for prosperity for yourself AND FOR OTHERS. Can’t be self-centered, can’t be hateful and mean toward your enemies and exes. You have to be open and generous and spread the wealth.

So I asked my client, “How can you devise a little ritual where you invite love and community into your life, and claim your role as spreading love and community, too?”

She had tears in her eyes. She clutched her throat. “Oh. My. God.” she repeated over and over. “What?” I asked. “Oh, my God. I have been so greedy,” she announced. “All this time, I have been saying that I need to get someone to love me, and I have never thought a minute about loving them back. Oh. My. God.”

Right at that moment, I caught the tune playing on the sound system: Turn Your Love Around by George Benson. We both laughed at the utter appropriateness of the song. And I took the opening and ran with it. “So, how can you turn your love around? How can you walk around being a magnet for love and community? How can you bring as much as you receive?”

She said, “I know this is exactly what I have to do, but it seems like whenever I open myself up to a man, I end up disappointed.” She then told me a story about meeting a man who said he’d call and… didn’t. “What do I do with that?” Need I tell you that this 42 year old, green-eyed blonde is a knockout? So he’s not calling because she’s not a babe. There’s another reason. It’s her energy, her vibe, her mindset. We talked about how different it would be to meet men if her energy were focused on giving rather than getting — and how that would open her up to not only more men, but to more friendships.

We worked out specifics about how she can set her intention daily to be a creator of love and community and how she can express gratitude for all the good things in life. And, we parted ways.

When I got home, I had an email from her, saying, “YOU’RE MAGIC!” It seems that as she drove away from the coffee shop, she got a call from the man who had said he would call. I smiled. About an hour later, another email, “YOU ARE REALLY MAGIC!” She had received an invitation for an impromptu get-together with friends that evening.

Truth is, I’m not magic. Hard as that is to admit. Rather, she’s magic. And she’s magic because she was brave enough to move from focusing on what she was going to “get” and center in what she’s going to “give.”

Now. I am an Executive Coach. She’s a Chief Operating Officer. Was this executive coaching? Or woo-woo coaching, or what?

Here’s the way I look at it: people are people, and everyone’s personal life influences their professional performance. By spending this one hour on her personal life, and beginning to shift her area of dissatisfaction into greater satisfaction — this COO’s work performance will only be enhanced. Her life will be happier.

And that is why I do what I do.

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