Motivation

If I told you that you were a unicorn, would you believe it? Probably not. While it’s not likely that you’ve been accused of being a unicorn, I would bet that you’ve been told you’re something else that’s also not true and ideally you won’t believe that either.  And yet we often do.

Years ago, as I was working to build my career, I was focused on doing the highest quality work possible. I am by nature a serious person as well as an introvert.  Take those two qualities and add a pressing deadline and I can seem aloof and unfriendly. Someone who doesn’t know me well might label me any number of things, but that doesn’t mean they’re true. Conversely, if we’re called something like superwoman or superstar, it’s not necessarily true either is it?

I’ll never fully understand how someone could feel entitled enough to label anyone negatively or to be bold enough to declare how someone else is feeling, but it happens.  So, what do you do when it happens to you?  Here are some tips:

1. Ask yourself if you care what they say. If you don’t care, then let it go, no further action required.

2. Is it true? If there’s any truth to what’s being said, it may be worth it to you to understand why you’re behaving in a certain way and whether that behavior is against your values.

3. Decide what you should do (modify your behavior, apologize, explain, etc.) and do it.

One thing you shouldn’t do, however, is enable someone to treat you disrespectfully. I am a firm believer that people will treat you in a way that you allow. So, if someone is disrespectful, calls you names, tells you what they think you are, etc., stop them immediately. Let them know that it’s unacceptable to call you names, label you, etc.  You can do that by saying “you cannot speak to me that way”.

I want you to know that when you know yourself, you believe yourself more than you believe others when it comes to knowing who you are.  I know I’m not arrogant and, as a result, I couldn’t care less if someone who doesn’t know or like me calls me arrogant.  If someone tells you you’re lazy or uncaring or anything else and you know it’s not true, trust yourself to know your truth.

When you know who you are and what matters the most to you, you will quiet a lot of the negativity and judgment that may come your way.  Time is precious.  Don’t spend it feeling bad about yourself because someone who doesn’t care about you said something negative.  Remember, just because they say it, doesn’t make it true.

Take good care!

I wholeheartedly believe that to be good at anything, you must put in the work required to do so. Some must work harder than others but it is work, nonetheless. I have found that everything in my career took work. I had no experience with even ever talking to someone in a corporate role before I found myself in a corporate environment. I did not understand corporate culture or politics. I did not understand the role that shareholders played or even what role the stock market played for corporations. I knew absolutely nothing.

My ignorance aside, what I knew without a doubt was that I loved business. There was something so exciting to me about it. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to work in business. But because I knew so little about business, “working” in business meant typing. It was all that I knew existed and that was good enough for me. I just wanted to be in the mix; I did not care what I did while there. All this is to say that there was a passion for that world that existed before I knew what was possible for me in it.

“There is great possibility that we simply are not doing the work that speaks to us.”

Of course, once I got into the business, I could not get enough of it. I still cannot; I will forever be fascinated with how organizations operate.
Steve Jobs gave an inspirational speech at Stanford University years ago. This is one of my favorite quotes from that speech:
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

It seems that in recent years we have found countless things wrong with organizations and their leaders. I’m not saying they’re not without fault, but I wonder if sometimes when we’re pointing out all of the problems with “them”, that we’re not asking ourselves why things aren’t working or why they’re not fulfilling us.

There is great possibility that we simply are not doing the work that speaks to us. Sometimes reaching this conclusion is painful, especially if you have spent thousands on your education or are trying to fulfill someone else’s dreams for your life. I started this blog today with the hope of conveying that everything good in life takes hard work. Relationships take work. Long relationships take an enormous amount of work.

Achieving excellence in work takes hard work over many years. If you are going to work hard and perhaps work hard for many years, shouldn’t that work be fulfilling? And if it is not fulfilling, is it possible to be exceptional at it? I do not think so, but that is not really what makes me sad. What makes me sad is that people spend a lifetime doing something they do not like only to find themselves inevitably feeling like they wasted their lives doing something that did not really matter to them. In other words, they did not live authentically. Of course, we all must do whatever it takes to put food on the table and pay our rent, but please find time to do the things that fulfill your soul. Do the work to understand what it is that you find fulfilling and then do it.

This is your life. You deserve good things.

Since leaving a regular, full-time role (I cannot bring myself to say “retired”), I’ve done a lot of self-reflection.  Admittedly I am a self-reflective person anyway, but lately, I’ve dug into some of the things I’ve been avoiding coming to terms with for myself.  Being busy is one of “those things”.

I’m a master at being busy; I am always busy doing something.  I love checklists and ticking off the boxes as I go through my day.  But after a lot of self-reflection, I realize that I’ve been busy doing many things, but have made little progress on the things that really matter most to me.  I can spot this issue in my clients from a mile away, but I have been avoiding acknowledging this is an issue for me too.

Now that I’m clearly aware that I’ve been avoiding doing some things that are important to me, I’ve got to understand “why” I’m avoiding these things.  I have been trying to protect my time so that I can do things just for fun.  I’m not great at fun; it’s a chore for me to just “be”.  I’ve made great strides in the last two years, but it’s still a challenge.  I know that I can protect my personal time and do the work that’s important to me so it’s time for me to increase my discipline in my scheduling and work at it every week.

Here are a few things I’m doing that will help me increase my productivity:

• Documenting my highest priority projects for the week in my calendar.
• Building in time during the week to complete essential tasks. I’m a morning person so I have scheduled the time during my most productive hours of the day.
• Looking back at the week and being honest about whether I accomplished the highest priority items and assessing if I’ve missed anything.

Priorities are personal and you must define what is most important for you.  If relaxing more is a priority, then make sure you consider what that will look like for you and schedule that time for yourself.  If you’re striving to acquire some learning or you want to be a better partner, schedule that time and then assess whether you spent your time on that priority.  Be honest with yourself and if you didn’t meet your goals, then consider where you lost your way and commit to staying on track next week.

I believe we’re all trying to attend to the important things in our lives, but often we don’t because we are too “busy”.  This is what I meant by my post yesterday: “Manage Your List of Things to Do or It Will Manage You”.

My hope for you is that you will use your time and energy on the things that matter most to you and let go of some of the things that aren’t serving you well.  This is my hope for myself as well.

Hope you all have a great week!