Escaping Mediocrity

Ok – it’s official. Getting rid of crap seems to be something everyone is interested in doing. (See Tuesday’s Crap Attack post for more info).  And if we are all interested in doing it but we aren’t actually engaged in doing it, perhaps we could use a little extra motivational push!

And here’s the thing. Not one of us can escape mediocrity if we are carting around loads of stuff. Even if it is stuffed into the basement, the fact that this stuff exists occupies bandwidth like a program running in the background of your computer.

So, I’ve decided to make the a Tribe Project/Challenge and I invite everyone to join in.

Here’s how it will work:

-I will regularly check in and update this post from now until Monday and share what I have gathered up and what has actually left my house.

-Other members of the tribe can do the same in the comments section.

-We also all need encouragement and cheering on when tackling projects like this so let’s root for each other as we make progress.

This is going to be fun!

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I have entirely too much stuff.

There are lots of reasons for this state of affairs.

1) I am a child of a child of the depression so I learned not to throw anything away.

2) When my dad died, I inherited both his house packed to the brim with stuff as well as my grandmother’s house packed to the brim with stuff.

3) I like cool stuff. Especially if I think I might be able to use it/wear it someday.

But the situation has gotten out of control. I have clothes I haven’t worn in years (and am not likely to anytime in the near future. I have lamps, rugs and knick-knacks that don’t really suit my style. And I have more books than I will ever be able to read or re-read.

The weight of all of this stuff is starting to strangle me. And it keeps me from being nimble. I mean, how can I trap of mediocrity if I am trapped by stuff?

So, starting today – I am pitching out with a heavy hand.  Here are my criteria:

1) Do I love it?

2) Do I use it?

3) Do I want it?

4) Do I need it?

5) It is worth trading my lightness of foot for it?

Now in the interest is transparency, I’ve reached this place before. Sick to death of my stuff and vowing to get rid of it. But my attempts in the past have been measly really. And last night I hit on why that is.

For some reason giving stuff to the Salvation Army so that it can be re-sold just doesn’t do it for me. There are people in my city who don’t even have the cash or the wherewithall to shop there. And beside, I shop there – and I am not exactly in need. So collecting my donations have been half-hearted at best.

Then I remembered something. There is a place that people go, sometimes in the middle of the night, and arrive with nothing more than the clothes they are wearing. Women, children, even men come to this place and need the very basics immediately. The items that are weighing me down would be a godsend to them. Just the motivation I need.

What is this place, you might be wondering? My local domestic violence shelter.

And if the stuff I complain about, put off decisions about and generally feel encumbered by can give someone a boost toward freedom, I AM IN!

So, starting today, I am cleaning out with a vengeance. All it took was the right connection in my brain.

So, I have three questions for you:

1) Are you encumbered by too much stuff?

2) Are you willing to let go of any of it?

3) Is there someone who would could really USE the things that are just taking up space around you?

P.S. Martha Beck always talks about how our houses is a metaphor for our lives. GULP! I don’t want a life crammed with stuff that weighs me down!

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I love naps. I can think of nothing more decadent and more re-charging that catching a snooze in the middle of the day. On the weekends our entire schedule is built around the whole house taking at least a one hour nap each day. It’s serious business around here.

And, at the request of @WarrenWhitlock, I am going to share with you a) why I believe naps are critical and b) some of my best tips for getting the most from your nap time.

So first, why do I thinks naps are so crucial?

1) We live in a rush-rush-rush, over-stimulating, sleep-deprived world. In fact we kind of glorify how fast we can do something and how little sleep we did it on. This is physically and emotionally unsustainable. Your body will rebel. You will get sick. You will run out of steam. You will b e an emotional mess. It’s just a matter of time.

2) We MUST give ourselves the gift of re-charging. Even if we love what we do, we can’t push ourselves on a indefinite adrenline-fed frenzy. Our brains, that organ we depend on to produce our brilliant work, simply cannot fire on all cylinders without rest. It’s like asking your body to run a marathon while eating one meal a day.

3) Our brains and our subconscious produce fascinating ideas and connections when they are at rest but not in full REM sleep. (REM sleep produces great stuff too – it’s just a different kind of great stuff.)

There are tons of really good reasons for taking a nap. And the media has caught on because I’ve seen articles and shows everywhere talking about how sleep-deprived culture really needs to take another look at napping.  In the comments I hope you will leave your best reason for napping – that will be fun to read!!

So, we know rest and re-charge is critical but lots of people say “I just can’t nap!”. Sometimes napping involves actually sleep occurring and sometimes it is just a chance for our brains to rest, dance around a flit from topic to topic. The point is that we set aside a time (about 20 minutes to start) and a place (more on that in a minute) to let ourselves sink into resting.

Here are some of my best ideas for for creating a naptastic nap.

1) Cool, semi dark room. Even in the winter I like to have a slow fan going. In the summer, a fan makes the covers feel that much better.

2) Your favorite pillow. You have one – I know you do. So make sure it is your napping pillow.

3) A blanket. No need to unmake the bed (assuming you made it), but covers are critical.

4) Take off your shoes, belt – anything that feels constraining. You can’t get comfy if you can’t wiggle your toes.

5) Turn off your cell phone and unplug the house phone. Trust me. Nothing will happen that you can’t handle 20 minutes from now.

6) It goes without saying that you are napping in a different room from your laptop, right?

7) Set your alarm. this will keep you from stressing out about oversleeping if you do actually fall asleep.  Again 20-45 minutes is about as long as a nap should last. Any longer and you may have trouble shaking the cobwebs out of your brain for the rest of the day.

Then again, I learned a lot about napping from a great boss I had in Washington, D.C. After lunch each day, he told me to hold his calls, he closed his office door, and laid down on the floor for 45 minutes falling fast asleep. Find what works for you.

So I am anxious to know your thoughts about napping. Do you nap? Do you resist napping? Do you have nips for creating a great nap environment?!  Please share – you know that is my favorite part.

Photo:

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So yesterday pretty much the entire world was annoying me. Everywhere I turned it seemed I was dealing with an idiot or someone mean or someone who just didn’t get it. And I kept getting crabbier and crabbier and crabbier. Just ask my family members who had to deal with me.

And then – it hit me. If the entire world is irritating, chance are it isn’t the world who has the problem. It’s me.

<SMACK>

One of the great double-edged swords of living this conscious life is that I have to take responsibility for creating my own reality. Having to do that sucks sometimes because, boy, is it easier – and way more palatable – to play the victim and blame everyone else.  It also feels really good, at least for a little while.

But, in the end, it all comes down to me and catching myself in this cycle of pissiness.  And I am going to share a tool with you that I learned long ago that helps me derail bad moods, poor knee jerk reactions, and any other bad behavior that a moment of thought would have prevented.

It’s called the Pause Button.

Just like the pause button on your remote, hitting it stops the action. Why is this a good thing? Because stopping the action give me a chance to breathe, to reflect, to make better choices about how I am thinking and how I am acting.

I remember when I learned about this concept ( I was a grown woman), it was startling to me. “You mean I don’t HAVE to react immediately? You mean my auto-response may not be the best response? You mean I have a CHOICE?”  (Read those words with an indignant tone and you’ll get the drift of my thinking at the time.)

Here’s what I can tell you, though. I have never once regretted hitting the pause button. Not one time. But there have been PLENTY of times when I regretted not hitting it to give myself a chance to breathe, collect my thoughts and proceed in a proactive not reactive way.

So the next time you feel grumpy, reactive, indignant, urgent, angry, try hitting the Pause Button as fast as you possibly can. You be glad you gave yourself the gift of some breathing room.

As for me – well, thankfully I hit the pause button, checked in with @ElizabethPW and @AllisonNazarian, got myself collected and realized that an attitude adjustment on my part would miraculously shift my perception of the world.

P.S. Last of my shameless slef-promotion plugs for a while: You still have time to shift your business into high gear, build a strong foundation and put yourself on the map by joining my eight week coaching program that starts tomorrow (Wednesday), April 14. http://bit.ly/RearInGear

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And here is a song dedicated to you – my tribe:

Don’t You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds http://tinysong.com/6Wee

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One of my (almost) daily habits is taking a walk.  I do this both as physical exercise and as mediation time.  Walking allows me to clear my head and ideas and solutions appear as if by magic.

People often ask me what I listen to when I walk. The short answer is I don’t listen to anything. In fact, to allow walking to work is special ju-ju on me, I have some particular practices that observe that I thought I would share.

1. I don’t listen to music or anything that puts speakers in my ears.

2. I usually don’t walk with a friend.

3. I walk outdoors as often as I can.

Because I don’t drown my senses in noise or distraction, I find that I

a) I pay attention to details.

b) I am fully present with my body and with my environment.

c)  I have a  keener power of internal observation.

d) I actually see things – the person walking down the street, the tree on the corner that’s just started to leaf out, the color of that car that would look great in one of my next blog designs. And if I am lucky, I get the hear the bells from the church in my neighborhood.

And, at least to me, I am a better person because I don’t shut out the world around me.

So my challenge to you is this: the next time you start to turn on your ipod to shut out what is going on around you, don’t. I’ll be curious to know how that unfolds for you.

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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my SXSWi experience. My very favorite part was meeting, connecting and hanging out with people who matter a lot to me. We are separated by distance – and some of them I’d never even seen in real life. So walking around, sharing meals, going with “flow”, laughing and talking while in their company was a total charge. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.

Interestingly, though, while all this great relationship building stuff was happening, I was also engaged in a  persistent and consistent back channel conversation with LOTS of different people over and over again. At this huge, career changing event, there seemed to be a great disconnect between the fact that people were there to meet and engage with like-minded people and the opportunities to actually DO that.

There are twelve THOUSAND people at sxswi and very few formal  gatherings or gathering spots designed to facilitate the kind of connection and conversation that I heard people craving. If you are lucky enough to know people and get invited to the small, private parties, things are a little easier, but what about the majority of people who are not so well connected?

How do we integrate, meet, connect, converse and engage with others who are like minded, interested in the same things and then develop real relationships?

Chris Brogan wrote a spot on post ( of course) on his observations while he was in Austin. You can read it here. His quote…”Know what I saw more than anything else when I really took a moment to look around? Lonely people.” was spot on. I saw them everywhere too – yearning to connect, not wanting what the huge Super Parties had to offer and with no platform to empower them to do anything about it.

I thought about this… a lot. In fact, in one of my nap-induced fugue states, I began thinking about the challenges of navigating and engaging at a mega-event and how similar they are in many ways to navigating and engaging at a mega-church (think Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in California). 

[And so you know how that connection was made in my sleepy brain, I had a conversation with the effervescent Rochelle Veturis the night before and she talked about her church, which happens to be Saddleback. See? I'm not as crazy as you think. Well, maybe I am but that is the subject of another post. ]

At any rate, here’s where my dreamy thoughts led me:

The challenges of a Mega Event and a Mega Church are actually quite similar.

Number 1:  A LOT of people are attracted to “the big idea” found in a single physical location.

Number 2:  A wide demographic of age, interests, personalities and desires are present in the audience.

Number 3:  The sheer logistics of helping thousands and thousands of diverse people get “fed” through relevant ideas, relevant conversations and relevant relationships is staggering.

I am certainly not saying that the entire burden of solving these challenges rests at the feet of the mega-event organizers. In fact, I would say that much of that weight must be carried by others who are willing to step in and fill this very real need.

Here are just a few ways that mega churches rise to the challenge and I believe there are lessons we can learn and apply as we find ways to put meaningful engagement high on the list of what actually happens at a mega event.

1) Very small (say eight to 10 people) groups gather around a core commonality – young singles, married no kids, married with kids, single again, etc.  This small group is where the most meaningful relationships are fostered. It becomes “home base”.

How this can be applied at a mega-event:

Volunteer leaders can pre-arrange dates, times and locations for non-star-power driven small group conversations. Of course keeping it to eight to ten people wouldn’t be possible but keeping it small and intimate could be. What would REALLY be awesome is if the rockstars took the time to participate in these small group conversations as actual participants. No fanfare, no entourage,  no big announcement. Just show up and contribute.

2) Hundreds of larger (say 75-100 people) groups gathered around a particular interest or topic, ie book discussion group, dad’s basketball group, professional women’s group, etc. An individual won’t connect with every single person in that room but they are incredibly likely to connect with three, four or five people in a meaningful way.

How this can be applied at a mega event:

Have “continuing the conversation” rooms set aside that have designated conversation themes. For example, at SXSWi, the themes might be “Getting heard in the crowded lifestyle space” or “How can the artists blogger actually get paid?” or “What wordpress plugins do you actually use?” – you get the idea. No facilitator or leader is present but when I walk into that room there are people there I can talk to.

Or

Have break out session after certain panels. Panels are not conversations. There are opportunities to ask questions of course but Q & A’s and conversation are very very different.

3) Offline and online channels connect members of the audience.

How this can be applied at a mega event:

Set up a site (official or otherwise) that allows  mini-groups to form prior to the event. These mini-groups can be based on geography, special interests or any other demographic so people have a chance to find their tribe and arrange to connect in real life once they arrive at the event.

Those are the three dream-state produced ideas that took hold in my napping brain. Are they perfect? No. Are there more, better ideas? Yes!

The trick is, I have to stop dreaming, talking and thinking about them and start putting feet under them. I may not have star power, but I have desire and I have the ability to fill some of that hunger for engagement I saw in Austin. Anyone with me?

As always, please make this post infinitly better by sharing your thoughts and ideas. That is always my favorite part.

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It’s a term we hear all the the time.

“I resonate with that.”

“What he said really resonated with me.”

“She writes in a way that resonates with me.”

We all have a general idea of what the word means – something along the lines of “that really speaks to my heart”, right?

Today though I want to dig in a little deeper into where the word originated and tell you an amazing story about how I saw the word demonstrated live.

So first, a definition:

Resonate:

v.intr.

Good – but still not what I’m after. Let’s try Resonance.

res·o·nance (rz-nns)
n.
1. The quality or condition of being resonant: words that had resonance throughout his life.
2. Richness or significance, especially in evoking an association or strong emotion: “It is home and family that give resonance . . . to life” (George Gilder). “Israel, gateway to Mecca, is of course a land of religious resonance and geopolitical significance” (James Wolcott).
3. Physics The increase in amplitude of oscillation of an electric or mechanical system exposed to a periodic force whose frequency is equal or very close to the natural undamped frequency of the system.
4. Physics A subatomic particle lasting too short a time to be observed directly. The existence of such particles is usually inferred from a peak in the energy distribution of its decay products.
5. Acoustics Intensification and prolongation of sound, especially of a musical tone, produced by sympathetic vibration.
6. Linguistics Intensification of vocal tones during articulation, as by the air cavities of the mouth and nasal passages.
7. Medicine The sound produced by diagnostic percussion of the normal chest.
8. Chemistry The property of a compound having simultaneously the characteristics of two or more structural forms that differ only in the distribution of electrons. Such compounds are highly stable and cannot be properly represented by a single structural formula.

Now those are some VERY cool definitions!

I like this one: Richness or significance, especially in evoking an association or strong emotion: “It is home and family that give resonance . . . to life” (George Gilder).

And I am particularly interested in this one:

5. Acoustics Intensification and prolongation of sound, especially of a musical tone, produced by sympathetic vibration. Especially these words “sympathetic vibration”.

I believe that is the essence of resonance. When someone says, does or writes something that “resonates”, with us, I believe it creates a “sympathetic vibration” in our very core. The words vibrate and create a similar vibration within us which is why our response can often be so very visceral.

And here is the story of how I saw this illustrated.

I was at a conference and this topic of resonance came up. The speaker had a grand piano onstage and invited one of her friends onstage who is a professional singer. They lifted the top of the piano and put a microphone and small camera inside. The singer belted out and held a perfect “C” note. After about 90 seconds, the C string inside the piano began to vibrate and then hum the exact same “C” note. It was amazing.

Now, when something I hear or read or see strikes me deeply, I remember this image. My internal chords are vibrating and humming at the same level as that which moved me.

Isn’t that just beautiful?

As always, I am deeply interested in your thoughts and experiences around resonance and cannot WAIT to read what you share!

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So many new adventurers have joined the Escaping Mediocrity Tribe in the past six months, that I thought revisiting the blueprint I am using for my own escape plan might be helpful.

I originally wrote this post back in  – oh wow, just checked the date – MAY 2009 as “Hatching My Escape Plan”. You can read it here.

I am going to copy and paste it here and add some updates. Plus I see that I have neglected to write posts on each element of the blueprint, so I am going to step up that game so that we all have something to go by as we design our own plan to escape mediocrity in our businesses and our lives.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Hatching My Escape Plan

So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my Plan to Escape Mediocrity. I swear it feels like I am masterminding a breakout from Alcatraz. (Cue Mission Impossible music!)

WAIT – I’ll do that for you since I now know how!! http://tinysong.com/gZY3

Seriously, I think if I – and anyone else who wants to come along – will ever break free from mediocrity and into a life and business filled with authentic adventure, we need a plan, a map, a blueprint so we can tell if we are on the right track.

I want to share what I have come up with so far. These are in no particular order because no one is going to have the exact same escape mediocrity route. But I think we can at least use them to stake out where we need to begin digging the tunnels.

My plan now is to write a blog post for each one of these so we can elaborate and discuss them.

(As mentioned above, I have dropped the ball on this so I’m going to kick up it up so we can dig in hard on our plan to Escape Mediocrity.)

My rucksack is packed – have a compass, a shovel, and a canteen. Anyone else coming?!

Blueprint for a Kick-Butt Escape Mediocrity Plan

1. Accept Responsibility, or Not. (wrote blog posts about this here and here.)
2. Define and Defend Your Integrity. (Though I have touched on this here & there, I want to write a dedicated post.)
3. Check Your Assumptions. (I talked about this here, but again – it deserves its own post.)
4. Consider Your Choices. Score – wrote this post It’s All About Choices
5. Pay Attention. Have this post already planned – yeah me!
6. Get Into Gratitude. another score – wrote about that here.
7. Secure Your Spiritual Core. Yeah….need to write this one.
8. Play to Your Strengths. and this one.
9. Seek Wise Counsel. and this one.
10. Protect Your Priorities. Ok – I wrote about creating what matters here, but I want to dig in on how to protect what matters in a future post.

***Emergency Plan for when you get totally lost: Go find someone who needs help and help them.***

Original Art uploaded on May 23, 2008
by phill.d

So, there you go. My blueprint for Escaping Mediocrity. It certainly isn’t the be all to end all, but I still think it is a great place to start.

So, as always, I am intensely curious about what you think. Do these elements of a plan of escape resonate with you? As you develop your own blueprint to escape mediocrity – however you define that – what elements would you add?

Can’t WAIT to start this conversation!!!

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Seriously. I really am.

So when I am asked about the energy and courage I must have to summon to  be transparent and work the way I do, I kind of laugh.

See, I’ve been in the space where “image is everything”. I bought that program, that ebook and that conference. And I believed that I had to project a certain image of success if I wanted to BE successful. I thought I had to be manipulative and use questionable tactics to make my business look big and important.

And though it felt totally awful, I thought those gurus knew more than I did so I sucked it up and tried to be like them.

Except it didn’t work. And more important, it made me sad, scared and exhausted. The energy required to keep up that facade nearly did me in.

So I reached the place where I had to answer this question for myself: “If being successful means living a lie, do you want that kind of success?”

(Sounds like an easy question to answer I know, but remember, there is a whole group of gurus who make that kind of success sound incredibly enticing – and make a TON of $$$$ while they do it.)

After much struggle and soul-searching, I realized that I was paying a very dear emotional, psychological and physical price for that promise of success. And I decided that even if it meant admitting total failure, I was no longer willing to do it.

So I stopped.

I stopped putting energy into remembering who it was I was “supposed” to look like. I stopped putting energy into projecting the trappings (intentional word choice) of success. I stopped putting energy into business tactics that just felt wrong. I stopped putting energy into creating an image of someone I am not. I stopped putting energy into trying to find that elusive “magic key”.

I dropped it all on the ground and let it crash into a million pieces.

Devastating and terrifying at first. I had put so much time into creating that version of myself. And if I wasn’t going to be THAT person, who was I going to be?

And then the answer hit me over the head. I would be ME. Me with all the imperfections and craziness and insecurities and fears and silliness that makes me me. And if my BFFs were the only ones who thought I was amazing, so be it.

And I’ve never looked back.

My energy, my focus and my love for what I do is at stratospheric heights. The people I connect with everyday are the most awesome I have EVER met. And my engagement with life couldn’t be richer.

This life – right now – though far from perfect -  is exhilarating.

So now I am lazy.  I will NEVER expend energy trying to force myself into some kind of cookie cutter mold. I will NEVER try to be someone or something I am not. I will NEVER drain off my precious energy to devise and maintain a mask that covers up who I really am – warts and all. It is just too exhausting.

And besides. I’d rather use all that time and energy hanging out with you.

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