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Pause for Pregnant Thoughts – 3/3
This is the third of three summaries of the take-away thoughts I brought with me from our recent trip to the World Domination Summit (#WDA2015) in Portland OR. The excitement and follow through from the participants is amazing to me. If you want to read more from participants from other participants, I’ll have a list in tomorrow’s post.
Derek Sivers (@sivers) on pursuing freedom:
- Because most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, they settle for imitating others and going with their flow instead of establishing their own vision.
- Commit to the problem you want to solve, not the outcome you want.
- Spend more time learning and understanding and less time preaching.
Asha Dornfest (@ashadornfest) on how to be a grown up:
- Embrace course corrections. Often when your plans fail, you feel as if you’ve failed. That’s not true. Correct your course and keep moving.
- Some people just seem to be able to flip the ‘Epic’ switch and huge success comes their way. Usually success comes through a million small, consistent baby steps that are not seen by others. What the public sees is the ‘win’, not stumbling process of getting there.
- Self-confidence grows every time you keep a promise to yourself.
Lissa Rankin (@Lissarankin) on seeking your calling:
- Give life permission to break your heart.
- Can you make peace with what’s true?
- Develop “Prononia”, the belief that the universe is conspiring to back your desires.
Jeremy Cowart (@jeremycowart)
- I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Jia Jiang (@JiaJiang) on developing a personal rejection therapy:
- Developing a comfort with rejection is like martial arts for your mind.
- You have no control over whether someone says ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a request. But you do have control over how you present yourself and your request. Focus on what you can control.
- Decide on the number of rejections – a ‘no’ list – that you’re willing to overcome before quitting that particular endeavor and moving on. By picking a particular number – say 25, for instance – you can make the process sort of a game, knowing that you have to reach that number before quitting. Most people find success way before they reach their limit.
Power of Following Up
Thirty years ago as I was trying to get a significant break into the editorial market, I would visit New York a couple of times a year and schlep my portfolio around from one magazine to the next. Knowing that I was one in a million photographers rapping on the picture editors’ doors each week, I figured I needed to do something to keep myself as close to top of mind as possible.
At the time, I was hard pressed to afford more than two trips a year, but I knew I had persistence, a telephone, and the postal system at my disposal. So I used them.
I picked a small number of picture editors that I particularly wanted to work with, and every month or two I sent a post card or left a phone message reminding them that I was interested in the opportunity to work with them.
Although it took a few years, I eventually developed a working relationship with most of the editors on my list. I remember one in particular saying when she phoned to assign me a story: “I bet you’re thinking, ‘I thought she’d never call me!’, but I did call because of your tenacity.” I nearly dropped the phone.
The lesson stuck with me.
It doesn’t seam like such a big idea. But the power of consistent, gentle follow up to let someone know you’re interested in working together can have a powerful impact.
Charles
Suffering a Loss in Your Narrative
We left home last Wednesday with great anticipation for the week ahead. We had two profiles to film as part of an ongoing project and a conference to attend. Both had our creative juices flowing. We were giddy with expectation.
Because we have six cows on pasture and a small flock of chickens – in addition to our dog and two cats – we have to make extra provisions for animal care compared to our urban counterparts. For instance, we know if the cows run low on grass in a pasture, at least one of the steers has an inclination to jump the fence looking for greener opportunities. And a cow getting in the road is a car wreck and a multi-million dollar lawsuit just waiting to happen.
As we rolled down the drive, I glanced over at the layer flock with a passing thought: “I hope today’s rain doesn’t cause the chickens’ electric fence net to sag over.” We were running about 30 minutes past our planned departure with a set time to meet one of our interviewees in Knoxville. I reassured my internal alarm with the knowledge that our neighbors were watching over our animals. And anyway, we can’t stay home and be on the road doing our work, so we had to get going.
There are times you don’t want your caller ID to show a friendly face. Friday morning at 6:11 was one of them.
Our flock of 23 layers had been decimated by a pack of dogs overnight.
When a pack of domestic dogs attacks, it’s for “fun” and it’s a bloody mess. Although several were dead, many had to be put down because they were still living but too torn up to survive. Four birds survived and we hope they’ll heal and be capable of laying eggs again.
While we grieve for the chickens – and the great eggs! – we’ve lost, the fear that so quickly escalates is the vulnerability we feel to spiritual and emotional attack when we are most open to pursuing our hearts’ desires for adventure and doing the work that, we believe, has the greatest impact.
The irony is that, at our core, we understand that our lives need to be vulnerable if we’re going to do anything that has meaning or makes a difference in the world. The higher the stakes, the more exciting the game becomes.
Most people say they want an interesting life. But most people don’t want any of their own skin in the game. It’s great to be a raving, lunatic fan of your favorite sports team, but that’s a far cry from putting yourself on the field of play.
As we got the heart-kicking news of the dog attack, we were getting ready to head to the Storyline conference we were in Nashville to attend. My first reaction was that of the angry victim – “Why did this have to happen while we’re so far from home and so out of control?” But when are we ever really in control?
In the moment, I had to stop the questions of doubt and accusation in my mind and replace them with statements of fact about what I could and could not do. There is action I can take that will minimize our loss but I can never eliminate the possibility of disaster.
The most important decision we each made in the moment was to not allow a fog of anger and fear to settle in our hearts. We decided to accept the pain and move into the day with excitement and the anticipation that learning and being challenged held for us. I didn’t try to ignore my grief. But I didn’t allow it to frame my days either.
There are going to be attacks and losses in our lives regardless of what we do. But if we don’t embrace them as part of a greater narrative and push through them to a redeeming conclusion – if we allow the attacks to define us rather than us define them – then of what real value is the struggle?
Charles
An Alternative to Hate
I’ve been thinking about hate a lot more than I’d like.
I got a couple of emails from an old buddy of mine this past week. Herman is an atheist and one of the qualities I enjoyed about our friendship years ago was our lively discussions about theology and spiritual matters. I enjoy healthy, friendly debate and seek out relationships with people who have a different point of view from my own. I don’t need people to tell me more of what I already believe.
From the tenor of the emails, my old friend had shifted from being passionate to dogmatic anger, from reason to hate. Not pretty.
I understand where anger comes from. A lot of folks are afraid and feel out of control. When we feel out of control of our lives we often look at who we think may be threatening our security and want to take them out. But it doesn’t really work. Not for long, at least.
We’ve seen a lot of that anger on the political fronts where Republicans are afraid of Democrats and do everything they can – including wasting millions of dollars of taxpayers‘ money – to hurt their perceived opposition with petty politics. And vice versa.
On Facebook, I have several “friends” who exhibit outright hatred of all conservatives, and other “friends” who mirror the vitriol with their posts against everyone who’s liberal. Although some of the posts are somewhat amusing, most are sad and fearful.
One of the most powerful lessons I learned from reading Stephen Covey many years ago was the power of working within the circles of influence around us. Focusing energy into changing things we can influence can make a huge difference. Putting resources into arenas in which we have very little influence is seldom ever effective. It’s also a drain on the “juice” we do have available.
The irony is that most of the areas I see angry people target their hate at are areas outside of their influence. So their vitriol is serving no useful purpose. It’s just stirring up an already muddy pond.
The most effective way to affect change is to build trust. Interestingly, voicing your anger and hatred doesn’t actually make you feel any better, just more angry. I know this road from having traveled it so often.
And telling people we hate them doesn’t cause them to change.
One definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing repeatedly expecting different results. So why not try something different from anger.
Charles