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All The Terrible, Horrible, No Good Things You Never Knew About Me

February 20, 2012 By 2 Comments

I’m hearing that transparency is a good thing, and that it helps people and inspires them. So before anyone starts to think I’ve got it all worked out, I’ll drop my trousers again and tell you about some persistent patterns that keep cropping up.

 

I don’t make a stand against people I love until my back is against a wall

I’m opinionated as all hell. At least that’s how it seems. It even seems that way to me, most of the time. But I have a very sneaky, unconscious tendency not to fight for what matters to me when my desires aren’t the same as those of my loved ones. If they not mutually exclusive, compromise is possible. But if they are, I give mine up, no questions asked. Because they’re not really needs, right? It’s not like I would die, okay?

I have a pathological need for people not to find me bossy or authoritarian

We’ve already covered that I have strong opinions, right? And I’m confident. I like to take charge. However, I get a little freaked out when you just let me take over. Who does that? I would never do that. Don’t you even want to know why I have that opinion? What my reasoning process is? If I’ve examined all the pros and cons? Are you sure you aren’t just agreeing with me to shut me up?

I have a tendency to choose the hardest path

I have the tiniest tendency towards machismo. Or masochism, whichever. This tendency has gotten better in recent years, but whenever I don’t take the most grueling path to my goals (it’s the journey that teaches, not the destination, dontchaknow?) I always quiz myself ruthlessly: Is it cuz you’re scared? Don’t have what it takes? Can’t handle it, sweetheart?

Even though I’ve recognized it, and hardly ever fall for it, it’s still my preset.

I have a tendency to overextend

And offshoot of the last item, but a separate pattern with it’s own motivations. I tend to fill space up. Not physical space, but mental space. I always want to be doing, building, learning. Those are all well and good in and of themselves, but the inability to sit and just be argues that I’m covering for a perceived inadequacy — what am I am without my achievements?

They say that when he was young, Benjamin Franklin sat down and made a list of his faults, and worked, systematically, to overcome them. I think keeping trade of these sorts of patterns works the same way.

What do you think? How are you doing with tackling your own recurrent patterns?

Filed Under: Blog, Mindfulness, Self-Knowledge

State of the Union Address

February 17, 2012 By 4 Comments
This post is different from my norm, but there is so much overlap between my friends, my clients, and my readers that going ‘on the record’ about my decision-making process is simply … more efficient. :)

Since I stopped actively promoting my coaching, several people have spoken to me privately about it, concerned that I was having some sort of crisis.

It’s nothing like that, I promise you.

 

In a nutshell, my reasoning process is this: I know who my right people are, but I don’t know how to market to them.

 

All you need to do is read my What I Do page to know whether or not we’d be a fit, and whether I could help you. But you’d never find me unless someone told you about me, or you happened to have read something I wrote, because I’m not really great at marketing myself.

The single best place to find clients is through referrals. It’s slow, but utterly reliable. And having thought long and hard about it, I’ve decided I’m fine with allowing my coaching growth to be organic. To be perfectly frank, without a clear and succinct marketing message, the ROI on my time is very, very, low, which means it’s far below the standards of efficiency I set for myself.

To be even more frank, spending my time doing ‘marketing’ things to scare up clients is a) ineffective, b)time-consuming c) has a contrary motivation to my actual philosophy, which is that change unfolds at its own pace and time, and change that is motivated by a limited time offer is simply unhealthy.

About all I can do is remind you that I’m here, I’m available, whenever you’d like my help. And the very best way to do that is just to write a few posts whenever I’m feeling inspired. I’ve gotten three times as many comments and kudos since I punted my editorial calendar, but once in a while, like this week, I’m too busy with other interests to have something on-topic to say here. Other things, which, by the way, are not only intensely interesting, but have great ROIs.

 

What I’m Doing Instead

I often give the advice “play to your strengths,” because, if you start from your weaknesses, with a lot of hard work and effort, you can get yourself up to mediocre. But if you play to your strengths, your weaknesses don’t matter. You’ll be valuable enough that your weak areas can be delegated or outsourced.

But I will admit that my strengths are particularly good ones, and my weaknesses are not really that egregious. (I’m not bragging, really. I think it’s true of most people, but they’ve been conditioned to denigrate themselves.)

I was asked to speak on SuccessProfilesRadio, (Monday, 6pm EST) which of course is a real pleasure (you know how I love to talk about myself.) But of course this raises the question of “successful.” Define your terms, sir!

I personally feel quite successful by the standard of measure that is very important to me: Control. I get to do what I want, when I want, and I’m unconstrained by a boss or a job. I am stunningly unsuccessful at niching myself. I will likely never attain success in this area.

 

Those of you reading closely will recall that I started selling used books when I move to Virginia. While enjoyable and reasonably profitable, it’s definitely only a part-time occupation, taking perhaps 10 hours a week for me and as many as twenty for my partner. (He could trim that a bit, but he’s not as obsessed with efficiency as I am). However, the business does not scale reliably, and so I’ve been researching my next challenge, which I’ll no doubt talk about when I’ve got it a bit more nailed down.

There are the added intangibles like fact that the house I’m sharing has a large yard for me to garden in, a shady screened porch for me to work in fine weather, and the fact that there are absolutely no obstacles to me stopping “work” at any point to write a post, read a chapter of a book, or research something I’m interested in.

 

And yet I don’t consider myself an entrepreneur, although I might introduce myself as one for brevity’s sake. I don’t “start businesses.” I do what I like, and I like to be rewarded for my mastery of it, which usually manifests as making money. But the reward for writing isn’t money (if it were it would fail the ROI test.) It’s the satisfaction of conveying my ideas in a clear and persuasive manner, especially if those writings spawn conversation. It’s really only a pleasant coincidence that writing well has so many other advantages.

So while it seems like I’m giving up on my coaching business, it’s only that I’m not on the hamster wheel to make it profitable (money-wise), or a full-time venture. In the sense that it’s a business, it’s more accurate to say that I’m waiting for my investment to mature, because word of mouth moves slowly. If I suddenly had an epiphany about how to market it efficiently, I wouldn’t ignore it; the right marketing would be fun to do, as well as rewarding. But I’m not going to chase it, either.

 

The Facts of Life

I don’t live on air. I like a good bottle of wine, and I like to do the sort of travel that involves hotels, not hostels.

I truly believe there is an art and a science to making money, and I do enjoy my apprencticeship so far. It begins with doing things you enjoy. I really enjoy selling books (I enjoy the profit margin more.) I would willingly do more of that, but it doesn’t scale.

I love coaching. But word-of-mouth scales slowly, and other forms of marketing… I do not enjoy them as much. Even those I do enjoy lose their lustre when I do them from a motivation to make Change Catalyst ‘pay my way’

Your motivation counts.

Maybe some people can do their art as a business, but I can’t. Not, at least, without getting my motivations clean and clear. Intrinsic motivation is a very tricky thing, and relying on money as a metric is an all-too-easy way to kill it dead. No love. No art. And No Money (if you’re lucky).

Besides all that, I never wanted to have more than a handful of clients a week. I can’t handle any more than that, physically and emotionally, and getting too busy means I don’t write as much, and I can’t have that either. So, forcing Change Catalyst to scale in such a manner that it would ‘pay’ would destroy my quality of life — even though (and this is counter-intuitive) — it’s my passion. My life’s work. My raison d’etre.

 

I am truly blessed, however, to have created a lifestyle (with multiply income streams! Buzzword alert!) where everything dovetails beautifully. Books don’t take too much time, but they allow me to squeak buy while I figure out something else I’d like to do. I write a lot, and in so doing nurture my own self-actualization. And best of all, I allow Change Catalyst to flower and unfold at its own pace.

So much of this process is counter-intuitive or against conventional wisdom that I decided I should probably share it so that you could learn from it. Maybe it doesn’t apply to your situation, but at least it’s good to be aware that conventional wisdom could potentially be wrong here.

Thanks for reading,

Shanna

 

Filed Under: Blog, Epiphanies, Musings

Passing on Good Advice

February 10, 2012 By 2 Comments

I got some great advice from Sebastian Marshall once. He said to set your metrics and track your progress against your goal and to aim for 60-80% achievement. I thought he was nuts to begin with, but then I figured out why is was such great advice. Two great reasons for this; 1 is that it inures you to failure so that you don’t fear it. You see it as a cost of doing business. 2. If your goals aren’t going to require discipline, commitment, and a rethinking of how you do things, your vision for yourself is probably too small.

 

source
 

 

I know, it seems crazy because we think of our goals as these to-do lists that we can check off and get a rush of control and feel super-empowered. But this actually tends to have the opposite effect.

I call it overachiever syndrome: You get a high from accomplishment, so you want to accomplish more. But the more takes more and more time, effort and commitment, and that’s a long time to go without an endorphin hit, so you start focussing on smaller goals in order to get that rush.

Problem is, that diffuses your focus, sometimes sidetracks you. If instead, you keep an eye on the big picture, focus on enjoying the process (which includes failure) and perhaps look at life not as a series of goals to be conquered, but a way of being to be mastered, then maybe ‘self-discipline’ and ‘lightening up’ would seem to be parallel goals instead of polar opposites.

 

They are for me. <3

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, How-to's For Life, Note to Self, Practical Philosophy

Review: The Millionaire Next Door

February 8, 2012 By 2 Comments

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. Taylor Trade Publishing, 1996.

 

Who should read this book?

Anyone. Everyone. And if you’re a woman, you should read Millionaire Women Next Doortoo.

 

What problem does it solve? What were the insights, or what did it cover?

The book was written by demographic analysts who surveyed people who have a net worth of more than $1M in the US. This is what they found out about them.

 

What will you learn? (ie, what deficit in your education does this fill in?)

This will completely reprogram your beliefs about what “rich people” do and have. What you think you know now? It was all put there by clever marketers. Read this, and find out the truth.

As far as I’m aware, there are no other books like it. However, women will probably want to pick up Millionaire Women Next Door as there are substantial differences between women who are rich and men who are rich; how they got there, how they stay there, and how they behave.

 

I’m intrigued. Tell me more.

 

First of all, rich is not what you’d think. First of all, the authors define “millionaire” as a household with a net worth of over a million dollars. But then they further break it down into people who are “wealth accumulators” Basically, take your yearly income, divide by 10, times your age, and that’s what your net worth “should be” if you’re saving and investing at a reasonable rate.

People with less than that are “under-accumulators” and people with more than that are “over-accumulators.” Surprisingly, (or not) a large percentage of people in high-earning professions are under-accumulators.

The author’s explanation is that the more you’re required to spend to “keep up appearances” the less you’re able to accumulate wealth. In fact, most of the nation’s wealthy are not the so-called “1 percent”. They are working class or middle class business owners who have been frugal throughout their lives, saved a lot, and invested well. But they nearly always fly under the radar because they don’t “look rich.”

They also budget, almost never splurge on fancy cars, clothes, or jewelry. They are (especially the women) self-taught investment experts, cautious business people and pay little-to-no attention to status.

In fact many people drew a direct link between caring what people thought of your lifestyle and “staying poor.”

 

Most noteworthy, though is that the personal households were run as businesses. This is a pretty crucial mental shift, I think. In our consumerist culture, it’s easy to look at your income, and look at your desires, and have your only question be “can I afford it?” In these households, they looked at the benefits, asked themselves what the impact on the bottom line would be, and decided whether [whatever] would be a good financial business decision.

Stanley reports that when he gives lectures, he often gets a lot of angry response about that, along the lines of “What’s the point of having money if you’re not going to enjoy it?” But he points out that when you spend money “to enjoy yourself,” you don’t have that money anymore. Also, it seems like millionaire households are satisfied with the simpler things in life — – and that satisfaction is what enabled them to become millionaires in the first place

 

What doesn’t the author cover, or what are some problematic areas in the book?

Although the author is obviously measuring wealth, at points I found this emphasis to be problematic. For instance, millionaires average 52 years old. Stanley covers extensively the problems of financially independent parents having offspring who expect handouts to underwrite their own lifestyle. But not only that, the problem of The Will is sure to bedevil the strongest of families. In many of his examples, having your fortune outlive you seemed as much of a problem as outliving your fortune.

There were also a number of sideways remarks about “liberals,” “taxes,” and a lack of charity I found off-putting — – apparently male millionaires are very likely to be conservative, and they make almost no charitable donations, (although they do often make gifts of tuition to their grandchildren and health expenses to their offspring). Women millionaires, on the other hand, donate about ten percent of their income to charities.

Another thing I had a problem with was his mention (in Millionaire Women Next Door) of farmers as being rich. It’s certainly true that farmers look great on a balance sheet: all that land and equipment is worth a pretty penny. But it’s not liquid and I find farmers are often very cash-poor. In fact, the saying is that farmers “live poor, die rich” because it’s not until they sell their land and get out of farming that they have the money to enjoy themselves. But, that is anecdotal and perhaps I overstate the problem.

 

How long will it take out of my life?

It’s a pretty hefty book (about 280 pages) with a ton of appendices. But I found it a fairly fast read because I was so interested. The text is liberally sprinkled with anecdotes and he puts his statistics into human terms, so it’s not at all a difficult read.

 

Summary

All in all I found the books fascinating. Plus, now that I’ve seen the habits of the truly wealthy, I can with clear sight adjust my own habits. For instance, saving looks more appealing, now. I’ve reinforced my choice to be self-employed, and now it appears I need to look more into investing. They don’t mention how travel works as a lifestyle option, at least with all this data I can come to my own conclusions.

Personally, I’ve noted how many problems come from being visibly wealthy. The happiest, most well adjusted families are the ones where they acted exactly the same regardless of how much money they had in the bank, so personally, my goal is not for “millionaire-hood” or especially “deca-millionaire-hood” but just enough in the bank to feel independent of the winds of fate and economic conditions. After that, it’s gravy.

 

But don’t take my word for it. Read the book yourself and make your own decision.

Filed Under: Blog, Book Reviews Tagged With: ,

Look Sweetheart: Feeling Stuck Is What Makes You Grow

February 6, 2012 By 8 Comments

 

I have something I need to get off my chest. I know I’m a coach and I’m supposed to be enlightened and understanding and stuff, but every time somebody says to me, “Ugh. I’m so stuck. I don’t know what to do, but I just hate this feeling.” I want to shake them by the lapels and drag them up close until our noses are touching and hiss, with little yanks for emphasis:

 

THAT.  *shake shake* Is the fucking. *shake shake* POINT

[That's tough love, right?]

 

Anyway. Look, human beings are such that when they feel comfortable, they are completely unmotivated. Well, that’s not true. They’re actually VERY motivated by the thought of losing that comfort. But you will note that they generally don’t risk actual DISCOMFORT to do so. At least not new discomfort. Paradoxically, people will often accept heaps of discomfort, as long as it is MORE OF THE SAME DISCOMFORT they’re used to.

[Am I ranting? It feels like I'm ranting. Oh well.]

 

But anyway. Humans, being human, LOVE comfort and routine. And if they can’t have both they’ll take routine, because it gives them a false sense of control.

All this adds up to the fact that “feeling stuck” is nature forcing you to feel uncomfortable enough that you will abandon the security blanket of routine and make some damn changes.

So when you tell me feeling stuck is uncomfortable, I pretty much have to laugh. It’s not uncomfortable enough yet, or in spite of your protests that you don’t know what to do, you would start making changes out of pure desperation just to make the discomfort stop.

And might I add that, just like your mother harping at you to clean your room, life is way more fun and adventurous if you don’t wait until your life is such pure hell that you have to make changes. I mean, the more you have to lose, the more you’ll wait to be sure until you pull the trigger, but it’s worth being aware that you’re biased for the status quo, so you don’t wait until the pot is about to boil before you hop out.

Filed Under: Blog, How-to's For Life, Musings, Rants

Change Your Life — Before It’s Too Late!

February 3, 2012 By 5 Comments

I hate the phrase “mid-life crisis.” Worse yet is “quarter-life crisis.” These reactionary wordings transform a perfectly normal transition period into a cautionary tale.

 

Allow me to explain what these “crises” really are; they’re growing pains. They’re as normal as menses or menopause. (I have no idea what the equivalent for men would be, but you’ll have to follow me here)

What happens is that, over time, you become aware that your internal sense of who you are doesn’t match your actual life. It’s like wearing clothes that don’t fit right; they bind in strange ways, they ride up and they make even perfectly ordinary activities feel awkward. Sometimes, this is accompanied by a realization of your own mortality; often that’s the catalyst, the impetus that forces you to make changes. Your insides and your outsides don’t match and it’s not okay with you anymore.

 

And Then There Are The Complications

 

As often as not, this realization comes at a point where there’s nothing overtly wrong with your life. It’s not unusual for it to happen at a particularly high point in your life – a point where your dreams are practically in your grasp.

And so, because of this, you don’t get a lot of sympathy for your awkward stage. If you’re upset, people remind you to be grateful, and if you’re invigorated people are resentful. You have all this and it’s not enough for you? What a little princess!

That’s harsh. And more than harsh, that is a hugely unfair reaction. It might help you to realize that most people are deeply threatened by your change, as it represents the loss of something very important to them (you.) It might help them to realize that this isn’t something you can help. No one gets too my choice in the time and place of their growth. Oh, sure, you might be able to postpone it for a bit, or even reject it, but dharma’s a bitch, and she’ll make you regret it. Refusing to grow is the emotional and physical equivalent of foot-binding – and about as crippling.

 

How to Cope Gracefully

These wise little mugs are for sale on Zazzle.com

 

Part of the reason these transitions are called crises is because you don’t know what the outcome will be. That’s why it’s so panic-inducing, right?

 

You knew who you were. And probably a lot of your identity was also tied up in your job, relationships, education, achievements, and potential. The foundation-shaking aspect of this transition is that you first realize that these markers are not your actual identity. Sometimes they are accurate reflections of you, and sometimes they are not. A LOT of the transition stage is spent teasing out which are which. Did you become a financial planner because you love helping people secure their future or because you were pretty good at math and your parents pointed out that it was a lucrative career?

 

If it isn’t already clear, the visible trappings of your life are not who you are. They’re a reasonable short-hand, but they’re only one set of many possible ways to express your identity.

 

That’s why, as you’re going through your transition, you’ll need to spend a lot of time in what I call the “space of potential.” This is where you “try on” the trappings that might possibly be an accurate expression of you.

This might include trying different lifestyles, moonlighting or training for a different job, taking classes or trying new hobbies, or hanging out with and learning from different people.

 

Repeat After Me: “This is Not a Rejection of You”

It’s that last that is likely to cause the most friction for you. It’s very likely that your friends and loved ones will feel snubbed – especially if you weren’t exactly the outgoing type before. And honestly, there’s nothing you can do about that. It’s their stuff. All you can do is repeat, over and over, that this is not personal. You can’t help changing, and you’re as uncertain about things as they are.

 

To help you let their stuff be their stuff, find someone to talk to who’s not invested in the status quo. You can also use my Making Changes resource (now in a printable pdf) to help smooth the path.

 

Just Remember….

The important thing to remember is that this is an awesome process. Spending time in the “space of potential” is so much fun, because it’s like trying on costumes and imagining your life with [that thing] in it. You learn so much. I’ve driven truck, I’ve worked on the rigs, I’ve been in academia, I’ve worked in sale, I’ve worked in project management. I’ve done drywalling, I’ve done roofing, I’ve done phone surveys, I’ve been a prep-cook. I have insight into a dozen industries, and I’ve been able to prove, categorically, that they’re not for me.

 

That’s powerful knowledge.

 

There’s also stuff I enjoyed. I like running businesses. I like writing (but I already know I don’t want to do it for a living). I love coaching, but I’m not such a fan of having to keep appointments. Maybe I should try workshops instead?

I’ve tried different living arrangements, different relationship arrangement, different aspects of my sexuality. I’ve tried dozens of different experiences, and I’ve read about twenty times more.

Even though who I am might be a little out of focus, depending on the day, I have a ton of data on who I’m not, or at least, who I’m not anymore.

 

If you’re struggling with defining who you are, maybe you should think about what you categorically know you’re not, and seek to make that category as large as possible.

At the other end of this journey, you are going to love your life. Your job, relationships, lifestyle, hobbies and achievements will once again be an accurate expression of who you are. You’ll be excited, inspired, empowered. That’s worth some awkwardness, right?

 

If you’d like to share a little bit about who you aren’t in the comments, I would love to hear it!

 

Filed Under: Blog, How-to's For Life, Mindfulness, Practical Philosophy

How Fairy Tales Completely Destroyed Your Life

January 30, 2012 By 6 Comments

The soundtrack for this post is provided by Against Me!

(I was a Teenage Anarchist)

 

Lately it seems like a bit of a theme for 20-somethings who are unemployed or underemployed to bitch and moan about how “betrayed” they feel by their elders, by the authorities, by society as a whole. We’ve been told our whole lives that if we do X, Y and Z, we will get “dream” jobs, make great money, and be happy and fulfilled ever after, The End.

 

This is a fairy tale that is also known as “normal”. As in, we’ve repeated the fairy tale for so long, that we really do believe it will come true.

 

To me, SOPA is the most incontrovertible evidence that the fairy tale is dead. The housing/bank bust at least started from the admirable goal of making home ownership available to low-income families.

 

You can’t blame my generation for feeling betrayed; our parents, schools, government and market forces all conspired to spoon-feed us the fairy tale and shield us from reality where-ever possible. In fact, it’s only the few of us who’ve had reality shoved into our faces who were lucky (yes, lucky) enough to realize what a crock of shit society was peddling. They were telling us what they wanted to be true, not what actually was true.

 

So, no, I don’t blame my generation for feeling betrayed. What I do blame them for is whining about it. The only way we could believe a fairy tale like that, in spite of all the evidence against it, is if, on some level, we never grew up. When we spew their bile all over the internet, crying about how all the boomers are taking the good jobs, and how I work hard, damnit. Why won’t anyone give me a job? I have a degree from Princeton! all we’re doing is bewailing the fact that someone woke them up from their wonderful dream.

 

Karol Gadja had a great article last week about waking up from the fairy tale. He realized as soon as he started college what a game it all was. But instead of whinging about his disenchantment, he set about giving himself the education the educational system couldn’t.

He writes:

Being supposedly “gifted”  everybody jammed it into my head that I couldn’t fuck up and needed to get good grades so I could go to college. Or maybe I jammed it into my own head.

A fear of fucking up pervades my thoughts to this day. It’s a constant battle and you and I are probably on the front lines together.

Sadly, thanks to groupthink, arbitrary grades and accomplishments (and they are arbitrary) doled out by teachers who mostly don’t know jack are very important.

The plan was already in place by the time I was 15. I’d get straight As in high school and get a full college scholarship. In college I would study something that would get me a “good” job. And after college I would get that job, because that’s the only way to “make it.” You know the drill. I don’t have to explain it.

When you’re an insecure, depressed, adolescent it’s not easy to fight that kind of force feeding. I bought into it hook, line, and sinker. I resigned myself to the fact that I’d get a job and be normal and hate my life. A lot of people resign themselves to that. Misery loves company and that company is large.

He soon wised up however…

A couple years into college I stopped going to a lot of classes (except the really fun ones like music business law) and, as a result, I failed 4 or 5 of them. But there’s a trick to college. You can drop a class before you officially fail and it doesn’t count against your precious GPA, which you need to get that precious job.

I wasn’t there to learn their “get a degree get a job” system anymore. Something had changed. The more I listened to and read about success & freedom the more I wanted it. Conversely, the more I went to classes the more I hated what teachers taught. I fought to figure out my own way.

In the beginning it was a struggle. I tell people I used to spend all my time at home in college reading and trying shit because I was motivated. I partied, sure, but not like most kids who go to college. Truth is it wasn’t strictly because I was motivated, which I was. It was because I had, maybe, $200 to my name. So instead of spending my last dollars on getting drunk I bought domains or books or stuff to resell on eBay. I didn’t mind failing their system, but I wasn’t going to fail my own system without going out hard.

Here’s the Problem

 

 The way I see it we’ve got three main problems:

  1. We were taught to look to authorities for guidance, not to make our own way, but to follow the well-trod path.
  2. The Fairy Tale was so normalized by our society that it’s hard for us to even conceive of a successful, fulfilling life anchored in reality.
  3. Because of 1 and 2, we never learned to operate on the basis of our own instincts and internal guidance system. As such, most of us lack crucial understanding of our principles, values, and biases. Take the Fairy Tale away, and suddenly we’re flying blind.

 

But I believe this can all be fixed by learning to build and operate our internal guidance system so we can navigate Reality. If you have that, I truly believe you won’t need anything else.

 

By the way; I’ve been talking about Millennials, but the truth is, the Fairy Tale can shatter on someone at any age. Almost all of us suffer with a bit of Fairy Tale Stockholm syndrome. It’s just that young people, by and large, have been nearly crippled by it. It’s criminal.

 

What This Rant Is All About

My coaching practice thus far has been mostly established people to whom the Fairy Tale is a distant memory, but are working on trusting themselves more deeply, on testing the weak links of the chain and courageously, systematically pushing outward from their limits.

Working with the Millennials is very different. They’re very disoriented, and often feeling bitter and helpless. They’ve been treated like children for their whole lives and they’ve rarely been given the opportunity to take chances, test their resilience and rely on their own ingenuity. As a result, as smart and driven as they are, they lack confidence in themselves.

 

I want to do a series of informational interviews/coaching sessions with disenchanted Gen Yers. Hell, I’m even flexible about age, as long as you just recently woke up from the Fairy Tale. Please pass it on to anyone you think would be interested. This is free, of course. I’m not sure how much help I can even offer at this point.

I’m not sure how many I’ll be doing. As few as five, as many as twenty, I should think. Email me at feedthespark [at] gmail [dot] com to introduce yourself and get a link to my calendar.

 

If you woke up some time ago, maybe you should take some time to reflect on how lucky a break that was, and the skills and inner strength you developed because of it.

 

Cheers,

Shanna

 

P.S. I want you to appreciate the irony that under SOPA this post constitutes piracy, and Disney and Warner Bros could shut down my site without notice and without due process.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Experiments, Rants

Who’s Afraid of the Dark Side?

January 27, 2012 By 2 Comments

One of the things I love to talk about with clients is their so-called “dark side.” Do you have one? I do. I identify very deeply with the expediency-minded philosophies of Machiavelli and the vengeful, self-destructive tendencies of Edmond Dantes in the Count of Monte Cristo. (He gets rich, then systematically sets about destroying the people who have wronged him.)

Other people describe their dark sides as selfish (honey, that’s my good side) childish, jealous, lazy, grasping, underhanded and needy. The people who most struggle are the same ones who say things like “I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but….”

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. ~Victor Frankl

You are not your dark side. You are not your thoughts– especially not your vengeful, manipulative, or jealous ones. Fighting tooth and nail against any particular aspect of yourself is nothing more or less than self-abuse. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

What about your light side? What are your good qualities? My sunny side is naive, impulsive, curious and expressive. I actually personify her as a sprightly 4-year old with a red balloon.

Now, imagine that sprightly naif was alone in the world. If her naivete didn’t get her in trouble, her impulsiveness would. She would assume everyone was her friend, and she’d wear her heart on her sleeve.

My dark side is what makes it safe for that little girl to be present as much as she is. The suspicious, vindictive side of me understands and recognizes the baddies. It’s watchful. It’s reserved. It provides a depth and perspective that the ingenue lacks.

Yin/Yang Unified

To a certain extent, you create your reality. If my dark side came to the fore, she would no doubt find enough back-stabbings and machinations to keep her vengefully occupied in keeping the upper-hand. Even if they were ambiguous to begin with, soon enough like would call to like and she’d get all the politics she wanted.

The girl with the red balloon does the same thing. Because she’s open and vulnerable, most people are to her too. Because she asks lots of questions with a genuine interest and delight, people open up to her instead of huffing about her nosiness. She finds delight everywhere because she is a delight.

And if, in the background, there is a caustic voice muttering about the darksides of the people she interacts with, well that only makes her wiser, gives her perspective, shows her that she is never seeing the whole of the person. Just like they never see the whole of her.

So here’s my question: Are you struggling with your “dark side?” Or have you embraced it? Instead of treating it as something evil to be fought, look instead to see what you can learn. A “selfish” side has a lot to say about self-care and making yourself happy, for instance. A dark side that’s vengeful has a strong interest in justice. And so on.

What does your dark side have to teach you?

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, How-to's For Life, Self-Knowledge

Review: IT’S YOUR SHIP

January 25, 2012 By 6 Comments

It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy
by Michael Abrashoff (2002; Business Plus)

This book isn’t really classic material. In ten years, I’m sure it will be forgotten. But it’s worth reading for a few aspects that make it unique.

It’s written by a former Captain in the US Navy. He commanded the USS Benfold in the late 90s and he had quite a few noteworthy successes.

 

I think it’s important to seek out people who’ve overcome situations that are markedly different than yours because if something works and you recognize it, it’s probably as close to a universal principle as you’ll see, and you should remember it, or; it’s a solution that’s never been seen in your field before and you should remember it because novel solutions are where it’s at.

 

In the beginning of the book, Abrashoff outlines the big problems he’s dealing with; the stifling bureaucracy of the Navy, 70% turnover after one tour of duty, and rampant inefficiency. In addition, there is extensive stratification between the servicepeople and the officers, and a culture in which it’s easy to take no chances, do the minimum and bide your time until promotion. (Not even retirement! Promotion!) Initiative is not encouraged, and depending on your superior’s particular philosophy, might even be punished.

Now, does that description sound too different from any aged and respectable corporation? It actually reminds me of an article on the construction trade I read. The business owner who’d been interviewed said that he didn’t mind an economic slowdown because it weeded out the herd and encouraged him to cut the fat wherever it had developed over the prosperous years.

The author also spends a bit of time talking about the type of leader he wanted to be. It’s illustrative to see his evolution; there are many places where he could have turned off the path and played the same game everyone else was playing.

 

But the story really gets started when he takes command of his own ship. The man he replaced is jeered off the ship, and he admits that his first thought was not compassion, but the awkward hope that he won’t receive the same treatment when his time comes.

 

Who should read this book?

Anyone who’s ever had to manage a hostile workforce will appreciate Abrashoff’s dilemma, and if you already manage people but have never come across this particular malaise, reading this might help you nip it in the bud, as his initiatives to improve morale demonstrate true leadership, in my opinion.

 

To a lesser extent, it’s just a great read to see what creativity in leadership looks like. It might not change your life, but what else were you going to do with your time, right? Read a Dean Koontz novel?

 

How much of my life will I give up to read it?

 

It’s about 200 pages, and it’s a pretty light read; light enough to be read before bed. Not because the lessons are lightweight, but because they’re encased within such engaging stories.

 

The GEM

 

The thing that most struck me about the book was that Abrashoff had to work with exactly what he had and no more. He couldn’t just fire the people who weren’t working out and rehire people that matched ‘the culture’.

 

In comparison to how many books emphasize how important “building the right team” is, Abrashoff’s crew was very, very ordinary. More than half were there to take advantage of the GI bill. Most of the rest were there because it was the only way out of their neighborhood, city, or homelife that they could see.

 

In other words, he did not have “the best and the brightest” that everyone supposedly looks for in their company. Nobody on that ship had any real stake in the future of the Navy, or their future in the Navy. In fact, the whole thing was a straightforward transaction; give Uncle Sam a few years of your time and he’ll see you get a college education.

 

And then you see what he did with them.

 

That’s real leadership.

 

The Bottom Line

 

Like I said, it’s not really a classic, but if you’re tired of cookie-cutter leadership manuals and you want to read something a bit different, I would look up this book. It’s just the sort of thing I like to read; insight into another world and a different culture, a reflective narrative about what happened and the thought process that went into the author’s actions, and a series of takeaways that might be fruitfully applied to my own problems.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Book Reviews

Striking a Balance

January 23, 2012 By 8 Comments

Any piece of advice I get, I can immediately think of a half a dozen situations where it wouldn’t apply; or where, if I continued it, reducto ad absurdium, it would be counterproductive, even dangerous.

 

Of course, the rejoinder to this line of thought is “Just use your common sense!” apparently oblivious to the fact that a) there is no formal training in common sense, and b) common sense is just a collection of conventional wisdom, and aren’t we always telling people to ignore conventional wisdom and think outside the box?

 

There is a reason that every aphorism has counterpart advising the opposite course: Fortune favours the bold? Or a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?

 

Therein lies the rub

 

There’s so much advice out there, each more meta than that which came before, each constructing elaborate frameworks to make decisions within. Each with a grain of truth, and each with its faults and blindspots.

I love to look at people’s frameworks. Their decision-making process is fascinating– you really get to see where their priorities are. My own first priority is elegance. My first question is, “How can we make this simpler?” Others I’ve seen are “I’m sure there’s some way to make everybody happy,” or “I’m sure there’s a way to fit everything in,” Or even, “How is this my problem?”

 

A framework is an outgrowth of your values and priorities and thought processes. Those three factors combine to make a decision-making framework that is absolutely unique to each person.

 

 

So why are there so many people giving advice?

 

Any single piece of advice is by definition a generalization, and each decision-making framework is as nuanced as a symphony orchestra. When you give advice, you generally make the assumption that the other person is using your framework – but they’re not. Sometimes it’s close enough to translate, like playing flute music on the piccolo, but other times it’s like trying to get the kettle drums to play the triangle’s part.

There are a few ways to scratch the itch to give and get advice without “switching music,” as it were.
Don’t phrase the question “What should I do?” Think of it instead as gathering insight into how other people would handle the situation. The bonus to this is that you can question their thought process and figure out how they came to that conclusion. Sometimes I know instinctively that someone’s advice is wrong for me, but I don’t quite know why until they explain it. (Generally, it’s a point of philosophy that we don’t share)

If you’re giving advice, make sure the other person knows you don’t consider yourself the be all and end all. Seriously– — why do you people listen to me?

Identify as many points of difference in your frameworks as you can. This one is hard, for the same reason it’s hard to question what shade of blue people are seeing. It’s clearly aqua – to you – and just as clearly teal to the other person. I could tell you at least 6 different points of difference between my frame of reference and each of my closest friends and family members.

Clarifying these points of difference is what allows you to see whether you can adapt their advice for yourself.

 

How about you? How do you go about finding a balance between one extreme and another?

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, Musings