Life’s creative solutions require alonetime. Solitude is required for the unconscious to process and unravel problems. Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers.
- Ester Buchholz

The message today is a simple one, but important. In many common environments we find ourselves in – families, school, work, etc – there are times when the situation calls for you to be a dedicated team player, and others where strong independent contributions are needed. Leaders, for example, rely on their teams to realize success in whatever they are trying to accomplish. However, it is the decisive actions of that leader, the choices made when that leader is called upon, which are looked upon to provide direction and guidance. As much as that leader may take in advice and feedback from team members into consideration when making those tough calls, the gut instinct of that leader plays a factor important enough that they “own” the decision more than any other individual in the team.

When Michael Jordan played for the Chicago Bulls, winning the NBA Finals many times over, he was a phenomenal individual contributor. Without him, his team would have been hard pressed to be as successful. However, visualize a basketball game in which the opposing team had to only play Michael Jordan. Five against one, a very different story would likely be told.

The fact is, successful teams are filled with strong individual contributors. The more you enhance yourself as an individual, the more the team can benefit from having you as a part of it.

This weekend, Joel Osteen said something in his sermon that really stunned me, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since. He pointed out that we feed our outer selves, our bodies, very regularly – many of us eat three squares a day, or certainly enough to sustain and nourish ourselves. In fact, we often eat more than we need, enjoying a bowl of chips or ice cream not because we need it but because we feel happy when we do. And yet when it comes to feeding our inner selves, our souls, our inner well being… we tend to often have “one cold snack a week”.

If you know you are going to face something you have difficulty with, or be exposed to a situation where a weakness of yours might rear its head, get yourself prepared for it. In the last post I talked about identifying your areas of opportunity – now let’s discuss a tactic for building those areas into something more positive and strong. Being prepared in advance for something you know you will struggle with in the near future can be your ticket to overcoming obstacles that an area within yourself you usually struggle with might create.

One of my biggest challenges is that I have a less than stellar memory. If I need to drop a letter off in the mail the next morning, I’ll be halfway down the freeway to work before I remember about it unless I set myself up for success ahead of time. My system is to leave the letter on the floor right in front of the stairs leading down to my garage. I literally can’t get out of my condo in the morning without seeing the letter on the ground. Post-it notes tend to find their way to the same place, or if it’s especially urgent to handle before I think about heading to work, I’ll post-it the milk in the refrigerator or the monitor of my computer.

Another thing I struggle with is my weight. I’m doing pretty well now, slowly losing pounds here and there and making healthier choices about my diet. But if there’s a counter at work with free cookies or cake on it, I know I’ll get snatched right up into that trap unless I’m prepared to do battle with it ahead of time. If I know we’re having a birthday celebration at the office I can guess cake will be involved, and that day I’ll bring a healthier alternative to enjoy while still celebrating with the group. Or, I’ll at least be mentally prepared so I only take a small piece of cake, and eat it slowly to enjoy the food and finish at the same time as the others (and then leave before I have seconds). I’ll have a talk within myself ahead of the event, about what is more important to me – eating a piece of cake, or living a healthy lifestyle so I can spend more happy years with my wife and doing the work I want to do while I’m here on the planet? It may not work exactly the same for others, but keep the big picture in your mind of why you want to change your bad habit, what’s in it for you if you overcome obstacles, and you’re on your way to success.

I think examples are important to hammer home a concept like this, so here’s one more. I am a very patient, calm, caring person, until you get me behind the wheel of my car. I have the potential to turn into The Incredible Grump when I’m on the road. I don’t swear any other time in my life than when I am driving, and I have my most negative thoughts about others when I’m behind the wheel. I get really indignant when people risk my life and theirs doing a crazy stunt so they can get to Starbucks two minutes earlier in the morning. But how I feel about those people, how I react in those situations, is often the opposite of how I try desperately to live my life the rest of the time. So I’m trying to be better about it, in baby step fashion. I have stopped swearing at people, and instead the only word I’m allowed to call them is “creep”. “Creep!” gives me some satisfaction, some release, but it also deflates me a lot more than going on a cursing spree would. And when people cut me off or pull some sort of crazy stunt, I don’t honk my horn at them to “teach them a lesson” anymore. It just gets them angry, or nervous, and likely creates a worse driver out of them for the next little while. Heck, it could put them in a worse mood that carries through their whole day and into their interactions with everyone else they come in contact with that morning. Instead, I simply smile at them and think about what a great day I’m going to have, or how wonderful my breakfast was, or some positive distraction to get my mind off of the negative.

Keep things around you that remind you of the positive in your life, and that will help you overcome your obstacles. On the wall as I walk out the door in the morning, there is a poster I made a few years ago that says “It’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away.” It puts a great, cheerful song in my head in the morning quite often, at least for a few minutes, and gets me out to face the world with a better attitude. Because the fact is, it is a beautiful day. At least, it is if you allow it to be.

Often, when someone is close to a subject, they have a hard time being objective. And the subject most of us are closest to is ourselves. In order to overcome this lack of objectivity, you would normally call in some sort of third party support to offer you a more objective opinion. This is what I suggest you do in order to better understand not just where you might have some need to grow, but also where your great strengths lie.

Go ask some trusted friends to do you the following favor (and offer to return it if you wish) – ask them to write down five strengths that you possess, and ask them to write them in order of how great the strength is. Then, either on a separate sheet of paper or preferably on the back of the same sheet, have them write down what they perceive your greatest opportunity is for growth. (Note – I’m purposefully not using the term “weakness” anymore because it’s negative and self-defeating, and what we are trying to do is positive and uplifting.) There is a school of thought that it takes five praises for each criticism we receive to have balance, because of how we take both things inside of ourselves and process them, hence the 5-to-1 ratio.

I think as you ask a few people to go through this exercise and gather a small body of data, some things will probably appear (they did for me). One, there will be some things that appear on your strengths list that are essentially the same as what someone else writes on your opportunities side. This just comes down to other people’s perceptions, and while valuable to be aware of and think about, is perhaps not something to concern yourself about. Two, there will likely be things that you already knew on both sides of the paper. However, there will also be those things that catch you by surprise, that you were unaware of. Things that others perceive in you as greatness whereas you never considered it any more than the way you go about your day. Things that are so natural to you, they aren’t things you are particularly conscious of. What I personally think is the most valuable, and the hardest to pry out of people sometimes, is something that you were completely unaware you were doing that is holding you back, or making you shoot yourself in the foot.

Often when these things are brought to light, you have one of two reactions. Either you have an “A-Ha” moment where light shed on it was all you needed in order to try to begin making things better. Oh, you have an “Oh no” moment where you have a hard time processing what has been brought to your attention, go into denial about it, or ignore it rather than trying to deal with it at that point. All very reasonable, natural reactions to have. We’ll talk about how to work through the harder things we struggle with in the next blog post.

One thing I discovered early on, which I have transferred into many other aspect of my life, is to set expectations accurately, and to do so as soon as possible. If a group came into the restaurant, were seated, and then I didn’t get to them to take their drink order for five or six minutes because I was swamped (”in the weeds” is the restaurant term for “swamped”), the customers would be very agitated when I got to them. This would not bode well for my tip. However, if I got to the table within a minute or two and just said “Folks, just want to let you know I’ll be with you shortly to get your drink order”, then they’d usually be quite fine with not getting their drink order five to seven minutes after they sat down. I managed their expectations appropriately, they felt acknowledged and not forgotten, and as long as there were no other problems with the service that evening, I was probably in line for a decent tip.

Nowadays, everyone talks about the forty hour work week in America as though it is an urban legend, continued by cruel people who want to set our expectations of corporate life in some way that is not in line with reality. True enough, many exempt employees work fifty, sixty, seventy hours a week – voluntarily! They say it’s good for their career, proves they’re team players, and you might as well get used to it now because it’s just how it is. I know people who work over eighty hours a week, and proclaim that if you want the job they have that’s just what you have to do.

If you want to work that many hours, and you’re just really passionate about your work, and that all fits in well with your perception of a quality work/life balance, then good for you – you found your place in the corporate biosphere. But I know more people who work tens of hours of overtime each week and then proceed to do nothing but complain about it. For years. They get up early in the morning, dreading to go to work. They work ten, twelve, fourteen hour days regularly and have an ambiance around them like they are martyrs, doing what’s best for the company at the expense of themselves so that they can further their career. Then, when they finally leave, they go home and complain about the day at work, and have little energy to do much more than watch television and go to sleep. Or, maybe, to log into work from home and check on things for a few hours.

Let me be so bold as to suggest that there may be a few questions you ought to ask yourself if you are in this boat, or more importantly, to consider carefully if you are thinking of getting into this boat.

- Are you working hard, or working smart?
- Does your manager know that you really don’t like working this many hours?
- Do you live to work, or work to live?
- Would you prefer a work/life balance, or a life/work balance?
- Have you managed your employer’s expectations accurately?

I’m not saying forty hour work weeks across the board is going to be realistic in today’s corporate environment in America. But by setting people’s expectations to be that you are going to work smartly, diligently, and passionately during the hours you are at work, in order to work less hours and spend your evenings and weekends happy and enjoying your life outside of work (enjoying the fruits of your labor), you can probably find a happy medium somewhere between forty hours a week and where you are today. When you find it, stick to it. You’ll be a much happier worker, which translates into increased productivity, could boost the morale of those around you, and will improve the quality of your time outside of work.

“When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‘Did you sleep good?’ I said ‘No, I made a few mistakes.’”
- Steven Wright

It’s very late and I have not begun formally writing Friday’s post yet. So this will be brief, because I have many hours to fill with fun, life-enriching activities, and some of them will occur rather early.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine today about the universe and how to fix it. Or really, rather, that it is our perception and perhaps not reality that it is “broken” at all. I believe, you see, that our perception defines our reality. As a Christian, I am sometimes asked what proof I have that my beliefs are true. The best answer I have is, it’s called a “faith” because that’s what you have to have to truly believe in something you can’t physically hand someone or show them. I look at the same evidence around me as everyone else, and I perceive a completely different reality about what makes sense as a base of my spirituality.

Have you ever just “known” something was going to happen, and then it did? When I was going through all of my interviews in my senior year of college, I “knew” which job I’d end up with. Before we ever actually began formally dating, I “knew” that I was going to marry the woman that became my wife. Did a series of my choices, conscious or not, lead to those outcomes in some sort of self-fulfilled prophecy? Did my conviction and absolute certainty in my heart about these things lead me to influence others into believing there is no other possible outcome? I can’t answer those questions with any certainty, but I can say that my best guess is that I had gone through enough deep self-evaluation to know how to recognize the best fit for me in each situation when I came across it, and from there the fact that I kept perceiving my reality to be that getting my top job pick and marrying my wife were foregone conclusions at least probably didn’t hurt the eventual outcomes.

Your mind has the potential to be incredibly powerful, regardless of how you choose to use it. Wielded wisely, it can be an incredibly potent tool for good.