What will you tell your adult child? My girlfriend’s daughter celebrated her first birthday this month. My friend asked for a note to file away for her daughter’s 18th birthday. I thought of all the things I wish I’d known when I left home for the first time as an adult. What would you say? What do you wish you had known? Granted, the world will be very different in 2034, but who knows? Life does seem to keep imitating itself. Maybe my letter will help her become a successful adult!
From my note:
Perspective is Everything!
Nothing is as it seems and there is always another side to the story, including your own. Pay attention. Listen between the lines. Don’t jump to conclusions just because someone else offers to do your thinking for you. Check your memory. Sometimes someone close to you has more information than you do.
No one is as cool and calm as they seem. Everyone is scared. Everyone is a little lost from time to time. Many people have their own defenses to keep people from getting too close to the truth of who they are. If you try and copy someone because you believe in outward appearances, you’ll find yourself disappointed many, many times. People trying to appear perfect at all costs are often the ones with the deepest, darkest secrets and the ones who are the most scared of showing who they really are.
Intuition Works
Trust your gut. God gave us a wonderful thing called intuition. It’s woven from subconscious observations, learned truths, eternal truths, brains far more sophisticated than any computer, and your conscious experiences. If something doesn’t seem right, pay attention. If someone makes your skin crawl, there may be a backstory you need to know. If you just ‘don’t feel like’ going with friends or trying something new, maybe there’s a reason. Listen to your echoes.
To be continued tomorrow…
Start writing your own letter to your adult children. See you tomorrow…
What will you tell your adult child? My girlfriend’s daughter celebrated her first birthday this month. My friend asked for a note to file away for her daughter’s 18th birthday. I thought of all the things I wish I’d known when I left home for the first time as an adult. What would you say? What do you wish you had known? Granted, the world will be very different in 2034, but who knows? Life does seem to keep imitating itself. Maybe my letter will help her become a successful adult!
From my note:
Perspective is Everything!
Nothing is as it seems and there is always another side to the story, including your own. Pay attention. Listen between the lines. Don’t jump to conclusions just because someone else offers to do your thinking for you. Check your memory. Sometimes someone close to you has more information than you do.
No one is as cool and calm as they seem. Everyone is scared. Everyone is a little lost from time to time. Many people have their own defenses to keep people from getting too close to the truth of who they are. If you try and copy someone because you believe in outward appearances, you’ll find yourself disappointed many, many times. People trying to appear perfect at all costs are often the ones with the deepest, darkest secrets and the ones who are the most scared of showing who they really are.
Intuition Works
Trust your gut. God gave us a wonderful thing called intuition. It’s woven from subconscious observations, learned truths, eternal truths, brains far more sophisticated than any computer, and your conscious experiences. If something doesn’t seem right, pay attention. If someone makes your skin crawl, there may be a backstory you need to know. If you just ‘don’t feel like’ going with friends or trying something new, maybe there’s a reason. Listen to your echoes.
To be continued tomorrow…
Start writing your own letter to your adult children. See you tomorrow…
Are you missing out on a hidden resource? Do you hire a replacement manager only to have them repeat mistakes from the past? New Concept: Hiring Interim Managers gives a company time to reassess the position and determine which skills are needed to fulfill the Corporate Vision & Mission with current data.
It was 1981 and I was ahead of my time. My first business was as an Interim Admin person for corporations and associations. I was an Interceptor, an Admin-on-Call and a Re-organizer. In short, I took a vacated position, analyzed and re-purposed it and helped them hire a replacement. I loved my career! It was exciting. I used all my analytical and admin skills which afforded me the opportunity to learn a variety of businesses from the inside. In my speaking career that knowledge has served my audiences well.
Here’s how it worked:
Company fired or lost Office Manager, Director, Admin Leader
Before Hiring a New Manager, Company hired me for 3-6 months
While re-organizing things based upon Company’s updated Vision and Mission, I learned the position
Eliminating duplicate work and unnecessary jobs, I was able to identify new positions and activities necessary to meet updated objectives of the company
Working with the team we wrote Desk Manuals, new Job Descriptions, and a new wish list for the ideal candidate
Existing team members might be re-purposed or reassigned. We included them in the process to help increase buy-in and excitement
Next we brought in Search firms to identify candidates for remaining jobs. We interviewed the top 10-15 people sent over
The CEO/President/Hiring team were prepped on the needs and details of the position being filled
Final candidates were interviewed and chosen by the appropriate parties
One or more people were hired and I trained them for the new and improved position
I then bid them adieu and went on to my next company.
Is your organization headed in the right direction?
Benefits to This System
My client companies benefited from this system in numerous ways. First, any time a person leaves a position, they leave flotsam and jetsam behind. Perhaps they set things up to serve themselves, not the company or the next person in the position. There may have been hidden mistakes, or worse, malfeasance. If they left angry or resentful, they may have poisoned the well if they hired their own replacement.
A new pair of experienced eyes cuts through the nonsense to the most important aspects of the job. Positions held by one person for a long time are subject to Normalcy Bias – “This is just the way it is! It can’t be changed. It’s too hard!” A new person will ask, “Why?” “Why do we do this? What does this mean? Who does this serve? Does this even make sense anymore?”
I looked with fresh eyes at each situation, asking a lot of questions. Together we focused on aligning the position with the Vision and Mission of the organization, ensuring a smoother transition for a new person. We saved companies time, money and energy while reducing painful downtime that comes with transitions.
Look At What Has Changed Before Hiring
When an outsider steps in as Interim Manager, office politics can be reduced. We helped everyone focus on the end game: finding the right person for the position to make the company more successful. Every company in expansion and hiring mode would benefit from a step back. Take time to determine if the position and duties have changed since the last time someone was hired for this job.
Senior executives on the verge of retirement are a precious natural resource
As I reach retirement, I realize my colleagues and I could provide this very service to thousands of organizations across the planet. We senior executives on the verge of retirement are a precious natural resource that companies could/should consider in building your businesses for the future.
Engage seniors for skills and analytical ability. They don’t necessarily need to come from your industry. They could be someone retiring from a competitor or another division as well. While we seniors may not all have the social media and tech skills of our wonderful Millenials, we do have a perspective from 30,000 feet on many aspects of business.
Think about it – #Search Firms, #Job Banks, Corporate #Hiring Personnel, #HR and all those involved in building businesses – reconsider precious natural resources available to you in the form of senior talent. Your Millenials need some grandparents and mentors. We seniors don’t want 60-hour a week jobs. We can be your interim analyst who saves you time, money and energy going forward. We can provide much needed guidance and mentoring to the younger crowd poised to take over the world. Take advantage of it!
Blended Families Can Be Challenging Especially on Mothers and Fathers Day
Kids see and know more than we think
It’s Mothers Day. Drive around your town and you’ll see daddies dropping their kids off at mom’s house. With a divorce rate at 50% or more, there are a lot of kids living in two homes. Blended families are the norm now and we really need to get a handle on it. Too many parents use kids as agents in enemy territory. KNOCK IT OFF!
These kids are people, too. They might not know as much as us, but they know plenty. One day I was asked why Mommy and Daddy had to fight so much. I told my little one, “Hey, think of it this way: Some kids don’t have ANYONE to love them.You girls have four parents, oodles of grandparents and even more aunties and uncles who are fighting to prove they really, really, really love you! You are our Angels!”
She then proceeded to draw the picture above and informed me they had halos and wings because they “flew between the houses and made us happy.”
There’s a reason I wrote my new book, Resilience Not Included: Helping Your Kids Learn to Bounce Back. I didn’t do enough for my first set of stepkids. The biological parents duked it out and competed to see who could buy them more stuff than the other. I loved those kids and in retrospect wish I had stepped in more. Maybe they would have struggled less as adults.
Make Agreements With Your Spouse
With my second set of stepkids, my husband and I made some agreements. One of them was to not play the “make mommy wrong” game, and to not get sucked into it if/when she tried the same. It’s amazing what happens when you don’t take the bait. I still would like to hug my girls’ mother because she brought these wonderful girls into the world. So Happy Mother’s Day to her!
Here’s one way to successfully navigate in a Blended Family. This is an excerpt from my new book…
Spoiled Milk And A Lesson, P. 35
It was a normal after-school day. The girls were happily playing in the living room. I noticed one hadn’t done her chores, so I called out to make sure she got them done before dinner. She came over to me with hands on her hips, declaring, “I don’t want to. Mommy says we don’t have to do chores over here. Megan doesn’t do ANY chores at all!”
I heard a little siren in my head! “Man the Battle Stations! This one is important!” Reluctant at that point to take on the Mommy comment, I headed for her friend’s situation.
“Megan is spoiled. We don’t use her experience as a guideline in this house.”
Challenge accepted: “Well, I want to be spoiled, too!”
I sighed and took a deep breath. “Honey, would you do me a favor and grab the milk out of the fridge? And bring a glass please? Thanks.” She did and I asked her to pour it. I knew they had left the milk sitting out and it was closer to cottage cheese than milk at that point. Glug glug glug, the big chunks dropped into the glass. “Can you please drink that for me?”
“NO!”
“Honey, please drink the milk…”
“NO! I don’t want to!”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s spoiled!”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her three sisters watching with wide eyes from the living room floor. One by one they figured out what I was doing. But my stubborn one was just not getting it.
“Yes ma’am. That is spoiled milk. That’s what spoiled looks like. No one wants it. And if you’re spoiled, no one will want to play with you. No one will want to hire you. No one will want to be in a relationship with you. I love you too much to let you grow up spoiled. Now go do your chores.”
Surprisingly, she did just that. End of the conversation, and as you can see from the letter in the Appendix, not only did she remember that lesson, all her sisters did as well.
I didn’t take the bait…
By diverting the conversation away from the claim that her Mother said she didn’t have to do chores I got to the real issue: I didn’t want her to grow up spoiled. In a blended family, mothers and fathers tend to take the bait and turn everything into a battleground. It took years of experience for me to figure out ultimately this is about raising healthy kids. It might be too late to raise healthy parents, but these girls were going to, By God, grow up resilient, happy and healthy!
Bless All Moms, Stepmoms, Grandmothers and Aunties!
Gratitude Matters. We know this! “Say Thank You!” We’ve all heard our moms and dads push us to show gratitude for a gift from grandma or an aunt. It turns out there’s more to it than making grandma feel good. Our own mood and productivity will instantly respond to our grateful thoughts.
Focusing on gratitude doesn’t mean being Pollyanna. It isn’t about ignoring the craziness in the world around us. And it isn’t an airy-fairy-feel-good notion.
You will notice Gratitude and Forgiveness are often tied together. They show up a lot in this blog and in Cactus Wrangler.
I write about these topics because I want you to know you can instantly feel better when focusing on gratitude instead of negativity. You aren’t alone. We all go down that negativity rabbit hole from time to time.
This morning I used a time-tested technique. I grabbed a pile of blank Thank You cards and started writing thank you notes to everyone who has recently done something wonderful for me. Within ten minutes I noticed a dramatic shift in my energy levels.
If you’re having a tough Monday, try writing some notes. Don’t take the easy way out via email, instead, grab a pen and a card. The physical act of writing “Thank You” dozens of times has a very calming and positive effect on the brain and heart. You are telling your brain to call up positive experiences and transmit those to your hands so you can write them down. It’s almost magic how quickly it shifts everything!
The Neurological Benefits
After a quick search I discovered there are several wonderful neurological reasons Gratitude and Forgiveness are therapeutic. Psychology Today recently reported on a study done in Italy that quantifies and measures the life-changing, neuronal-path-changing and productivity breakthroughs of shifting our focus and forgiving. Rita Watson does a wonderful job of explaining this study and one by Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Karen Swartz, MD.
The important point is we can choose this behavior, this focus. Even when we don’t “feel like it” we can take a deep breath and choose to find a win or a lesson in the experience. What’s the Lesson? What’s the long-term benefit? Can I find a blessing in this?
When something bad happened that is now in the past, you harm yourself by focusing only on the grudge, the anger or the need for revenge and retribution. Think of it as carrying a bag of knives around and stabbing yourself with them each time the thought occurs to you. Letting old hurts and old grudges hold you back harms you, not the perpetrator! You do have choices here. Use them!
List Your “Gratitudes.”
Remember the good others have done for you.
Communicate your gratitude to everyone who has helped you along the way.
Gratitude Matters. We know this! “Say Thank You!” We’ve all heard our moms and dads push us to show gratitude for a gift from grandma or an aunt. It turns out there’s more to it than making grandma feel good. Our own mood and productivity will instantly respond to our grateful thoughts.
Focusing on gratitude doesn’t mean being Pollyanna. It isn’t about ignoring the craziness in the world around us. And it isn’t an airy-fairy-feel-good notion.
You will notice Gratitude and Forgiveness are often tied together. They show up a lot in this blog and in Cactus Wrangler.
I write about these topics because I want you to know you can instantly feel better when focusing on gratitude instead of negativity. You aren’t alone. We all go down that negativity rabbit hole from time to time.
This morning I used a time-tested technique. I grabbed a pile of blank Thank You cards and started writing thank you notes to everyone who has recently done something wonderful for me. Within ten minutes I noticed a dramatic shift in my energy levels.
If you’re having a tough Monday, try writing some notes. Don’t take the easy way out via email, instead, grab a pen and a card. The physical act of writing “Thank You” dozens of times has a very calming and positive effect on the brain and heart. You are telling your brain to call up positive experiences and transmit those to your hands so you can write them down. It’s almost magic how quickly it shifts everything!
The Neurological Benefits
After a quick search I discovered there are several wonderful neurological reasons Gratitude and Forgiveness are therapeutic. Psychology Today recently reported on a study done in Italy that quantifies and measures the life-changing, neuronal-path-changing and productivity breakthroughs of shifting our focus and forgiving. Rita Watson does a wonderful job of explaining this study and one by Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Karen Swartz, MD.
The important point is we can choose this behavior, this focus. Even when we don’t “feel like it” we can take a deep breath and choose to find a win or a lesson in the experience. What’s the Lesson? What’s the long-term benefit? Can I find a blessing in this?
When something bad happened that is now in the past, you harm yourself by focusing only on the grudge, the anger or the need for revenge and retribution. Think of it as carrying a bag of knives around and stabbing yourself with them each time the thought occurs to you. Letting old hurts and old grudges hold you back harms you, not the perpetrator! You do have choices here. Use them!
List Your “Gratitudes.”
Remember the good others have done for you.
Communicate your gratitude to everyone who has helped you along the way.
You started out with great energy and enthusiasm. “This is the year I’m keeping my New Years Resolutions! Quitting Smoking; Losing Weight; Spending more time with Family; Finding time to read; using Social Media the right way, Blogging more, Facebooking less…” Ahh – but today is the beginning of the 2nd week of the New Year, and here you are, smoking, eating chocolate, buried on @Imgur and @Facebook and @Instagram while those goals go un-resolutely undone.
Here are three ideas.
Create a Soundtrack for your Success. The first Secret? MUSIC baby! We are all motivated by music. Find your favorites and make a soundtrack to play when you need to get going. I have Dwight Yoakam playing right now. That revs up my cowgirl heart big time! Find yours! I’m energized and have checked off three things on my Resolutions list today, including writing this, all while dancing around the office.
One technique I’ll use for simple tasks is to put on a favorite high-energy song and tell myself I need to finish the task before the song ends. Then I’m racing against the song, and mindless or repetitive tasks get done quicker. If it’s a longer project, put on an album and finish before the album does. It’s more fun than slogging through for hours and complaining the whole time.
Don’t Overwhelm Yourself by gathering all your work into one ugly pile!
Break it up! Piles of work leering at you from every corner will dropkick you into Overwhelm in no time at all. Don’t do that to yourself. We are capable of doing things well if we break down our projects into steps and then focus only on that one step at a time. That’s how you can use that one song-one task technique above.
If you want to lose weight, don’t try to lose 30 pounds in a month. You’ll get sick and you just won’t do it. INCREMENTS! Increase exercise by 10% each day. Reduce calorie intact by 10% each day. Drink more water. Slowly shift habits: eat earlier, take a walk each night, make it work for you. Cut out one thing a week or month: white flour and white sugar are good places to start if you’re dieting. Do what works for you and congratulate yourself on your small successes. It works! Increments help you not feel deprived.
Time Yourself. The song trick works. So does a clock or timer. Competing against yourself is energizing. Buy a small noisy timer or set a timer on your phone that shows countdown. You’ll be amazed how much you can do in 20 minute chunks. Say this: “For the next 20 minutes I’ll clean off my desk.” “For the next 10 minutes I’ll organize bills.” “For the next two songs I’m filing receipts for the year.” Do it this way and stop when the timer goes off or the song ends. Now you know where you have to pick it up again tomorrow or later today. Bonus: you are uncluttering your space and clearing your mind.
Be sure and Celebrate your successes. Every small success leads to a bigger Resolution being met!
I’m proud of my girl Chenty. She’s a successful manager in a Hawaii retail operation. I’ve always known she’d do well. As a teenager, she was a wonderful basketball coach for her sisters and friends. Sports is one of the great ways to learn how to be a Leader, how to share success, and how to occasionally lose and be gracious about it. (Hollywood could learn a few things from my girls right now!)
Chenty will be 33 in a few days. That’s a magical age and a wonderful number. It’s the beginning stretch of one’s “real” career life. Amazing opportunities and new doors await. I’m excited and proud of her for her work ethic and her willingness to take on these new responsibilities. (Not all “Millenials” are sitting around waiting to be taken care of!)
Pondering what gift to give for this special birthday, I remembered an inspirational leadership book from 1994. Thumbing through its well-worn pages dotted with scribbles and torn post-it notes I realized I’d used this book more than I thought. Not only did it guide my management style, it was a key to my parenting style. Looking at the arc of history with both managing employees and raising kids, it was evident how practical, effective and true these words were.
Leadership Means Being Accountable
What is this great book? Flight of the Buffalo by James Belasco and Ralph Stayer, colleagues and peers of Tom Peters. I sheepishly admit I originally bought it because of the name. I’ve collected Buffalo carvings since I was a little girl in South Dakota. It turned out to be the best Leadership book I ever read. As I scan it I can see how many of these principles settled into to the core of my Life and Management philosophies. It was that profound. So “Thank You” to Belasco and Stayer.
Perhaps the most compelling message is how vital it is for Leaders to take responsibility for whatever mess/success/direction their company takes.Leadership MUST be accountable. Pointing fingers, assigning blame, deflecting criticism, denigrating the competition, muddying the waters and building stronger barn doors after the livestock have run amok is a surefire guarantee for failure. (Again, Hollywood & DC, are you listening? I’m not being political, I’m making a practical business observation here!)
The chapter and paragraph titles give you a sense of their Uncommon Common Sense: Mistakes tell you where the oil isn’t; Beware sleeping with Corpses; Business is a Cycle; What do Customers Really Buy?; Avoiding Victimitis; Upward Delegation is a Curse… It’s worth a look at the titles alone.
The most important message? Human Beings WANT to succeed. They WANT to be led, encouraged, celebrated, and made to feel they are an important part of the success of the company. We all need to be needed, to feel our lives are worth something and our contributions matter.
The authors don’t know I’m writing this. It’s my New Years Gift to you. Go buy this book. Buy it in paper form so you can write on it, highlight it, put exclamations in the borders and fill it up with post-it-notes. Buy copies for your management teams!
Often in business we are looking for the next big thing or the latest thought leader. Looking back a few decades or even centuries can yield wonderful insights to carry you and your organization into the new year with success and positive impact.
Take care of yourself and your team! The world NEEDS successful companies and people!
Knock it off! Life can be good if you let it be. Look for positive moments, no matter how small. Ignore what you think others think of you. Celebrate little triumphs. Breathe deep and find new Life perspectives. Our selfie-culture makes random strangers’ opinions more important than our own. Instead, celebrate that which makes you unique, happy, centered, healthy and wise.
Stop. Look up from your mobile devils – er devices! Look around. Step back from social media and ask what you desire; what you deserve in your life; what makes you successful and happy. Hint: it’s not 20,000 followers. It’s human contact. One-on-one conversations. Meaningful dialog. Interesting activities that engage more than your two thumbs.
Three thoughts:
Don’t worry what others think.
They aren’t thinking about you. Don’t give yourself too much credit. Focus instead on being who your dog thinks you are…
If you think people are paying so much attention to you, ask random people to recap what you posted 10 days ago. (No fair looking!) They. Don’t. Know. Ask what you wore last week. Same response: Shrug. Focus on those who really matter: family, close friends, clients, those who can help you and those who need your support.
Stop putting things off for “some day.” How long do you think you have?
Flying over the Alaskan glaciers
Every year I have this goal: “I want to learn two new things this year, and one of them should scare me a little.”
I’m a pilot. While in Alaska a few years ago, I jumped at the chance to fly in a home built Supercub over the glaciers. It was the thrill of a lifetime. Scary too! See those snowshoes in the photo above? Those are attached to the wing in case we crashed and had to hike out! Yikes! Scary and so amazing!
What’s your goal? What’s on your bucket list? What do you do each year to give you more perspective on life? How long do you think you have?
People did something to insure your freedom. Respect that!
Be grateful – every day.
For every little thing: paved roads, indoor plumbing, lights that work, people who are willing to protect you, farmers and ranchers who grow your food, a roof over your head. Look around! Your life is comfy because other people did a thing. Say your ‘gratitudes’ every day upon waking.
I’m constantly amazed at how wonderful the infrastructure is in Phoenix. Our road crews rock! Thank you @ADOT! How they keep everything so well paved in crushing summer heat is a mystery, and I’m very grateful they do!
Look around. There are hundreds of things that people do for you every single day. Be grateful for all the little things that work well and all the people who make it happen. (And yes, I’m talking to you #Kaepernick!)
Gratitude goes a long way to making your day better and it also makes the day of the person you thank along the way. #Respect #Perspective!
Our trip on this spinning ball only lasts about 70-80 revolutions around the sun if we are lucky. Take advantage of every special day. Learn from your mistakes. Keep your head up and be grateful. Life can be good if you learn from the past and keep moving forward.
The desert air hurts in July. When Phoenix temps soar above 111º with humidity hovering below 10%, our famous dry heat assaults our nostrils, lips and cheeks with a heavy fist. Around 4pm when the “heat island” is at its worst, I feel like a circus elephant is riding a tricycle across my chest. Nothing gets done. A siesta looms as the only option.
Today, we woke to cooler temperatures after the salvation of our first rainstorm in months. The whole neighborhood was out and about. We were as giddy as Seattleites who play hooky from work to play in the ocean on a rare sunny day.
Like most of my neighbors, I decided this was a good day to mow the lawn. I got the mower, put on my D-backs baseball cap and gathered all my tools. The mower wouldn’t start. Undaunted and energized by the relatively cool morning (87º) I began mowing my lawn with the weed whacker.
I was lovin’ my new and powerful Black+Decker Trimmer, but I discovered much to my chagrin that a weed whacker doesn’t do such a great job when you’re using it for the entire lawn! I was swinging it around, making divots like a golfer, and after half an hour my arms hurt! Great power tool! Wrong job. The photo above shows you my handiwork. When I stopped, I giggled at the results.
Meh, who cares? It was good enough! An imperfectly mowed lawn is nothing to lose sleep over, it will grow back and I’ll mow it again some day. By the same token, an unmade bed is not a crime and it doesn’t hurt for the bed to air out. Often there are more important things to do than make a bed, including an early morning hike with your sweetheart who doesn’t always have mornings off.
What you can do
With age comes wisdom and the awareness that time is finite. If only I’d known this when I was younger. Some things really don’t matter. Some things don’t need to be done perfectly – or at all!
The next time you’re stressing over a task, ask yourself a few questions:
Is this really all that important?
What would happen if I didn’t do this?
What’s the best use of my time right now?
What’s the minimum effort I can commit to finish it, and not use too much precious time? Finally…
Am I properly equipped to do this, or is there someone else who could do it faster, better and cheaper?
Surrender! It’s all good! Your home will never be perfectly clean. Your lawn will never stay perfectly landscaped. Your car will never stay perfectly shiny and neat. Your wrinkles will keep on comin’ and gravity will keep on pullin’.
You are who you are. You are fine. Do your best. Stop worrying about what others think. Truth is, they aren’t thinking about you! Don’t give yourself too much credit. They are worrying about what YOU think of THEM.
