“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve Jobs
Click here to read the entire commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, and to see the video.
I learned many many lessons over a few short weeks.
One of them is that I don’t have to assume the level of panic of another person.
But then Andy taught me that if you don’t acknowledge the panic of the other person, it can just increase their panic, and their need to get you to see the gravity of the situation.
I have learned, much more than once, that if you have bad news for work customers, make a phone call! If you don’t reach you person, just keep playing phone tag until you connect.
An email just has way too much potential to be misinterpreted, forwarded, both.
You might think it’s the other way around (I did!), but with a call you get to hear the questions and concerns, and address them on the spot.
I am also learning not to kick myself (for very long) when I get it wrong and have to learn something again (and again).
I learned the grass is always greener on the other side of the street if you are wearing rose-colored glasses when you look in that direction.
What a bizarre experience. I was able to observe two people long for the position of each other, imagining it to be the solution to most or all of their problems, in the face of evidence to the contrary and/or a significant lack of evidence.
I was calling this a Frog-and-Toad story (they swept each others’ leaves – who remembers?) but it’s not really the same plot. But let’s use their names anyway. I’m pretty sure they won’t mind.
Frog wanted what Toad had. Imagined it to be so different, and in just the ways that would make Frog happy. None of the same problems would exist. Where Frog didn’t know the details, she just made them up! She’s had a lifetime of experience in doing that, so it was easy.
Toad wanted what Frog had, and an opportunity to have it came up. They talked (they aren’t really amphibians, remember, those are just their names for this story). Frog told Toad some facts, some good and some bad. Toad pretty much focused on the good, and told about why she thought being in Frog’s situation would be awesome. While she was at it, she talked what she was leaving.
Frog looked around and said “Wow. That is another way to look at this deal”. Now Frog is happy.
Toad? Stay tuned!
I once had a CIO who had a five core principles of business and one of them was “Fail Early”. I learn this lesson over and over.
The entire Agile software development process is based on this. I’ve often seen the success of showing early results “Is this what you meant?” to get a Yes, or way more importantly, a No. So easy to change course early, if you just get that feedback! So much harder if not.
Nowhere, perhaps, is this more applicable than to driving when lost! Why not find out if I am or I am not where I think I am, way before I go even farther in the wrong direction?
In my car, I have two separate devices to tell me how lost I am, and to get me found. Sure, they don’t always work in the wilds of the places I drive, but they definitely don’t work when I don’t ask them!
It’s nice to putter around back roads when that’s the intention. But I’ve learned (or I’m fixin’ to learn) that when I am really trying to get somewhere, it’s important to know if I’m driving in the right direction. Or not.
Today we feature two lessons taught to me by two teachers, both about Tree pose. Which one speaks to you?
Celeste, one of my wonderful teachers at Mandala Studio of Yoga, taught me this: “If you lose your balance but you keep your breath, you haven’t lost anything at all.” Wow!
Michelle figured out that if you practice Tree pose enough, you may find that you have enough balance to change your clothes in a gross beach changing room while balancing on one clean flip flop, never having to step directly on the icky floor.
You would think I would know this by now, but sadly not yet. I learned that even if my car gets 39 miles to the gallon, I still need to put those gallons in, and to do it way before I head into the Big City to meet a bus on a busy weekend evening.
After an adrenaline-filled workday, I was calmly on time to drive into Boston when the gas light came on.
Here’s another lesson: Never try to use the GPS (which wanted to tell me that newsstands in downtown Boston sold fuel – like what? lighter fluid?) and Yelp on the iPhone while driving alone! As I watched the “range”/miles remaining indicator head for single digits, I took a wrong turn onto the Mass Pike and had to drive in the wrong direction before doing that Boston-U-turn exit to come back and find the gas in Charlestown. All with a deadline. And traffic.
Very very stressful.
My very wise sister pointed out that the bigger lesson was to learn to skip the adrenaline even while doing the rest of the adventure. And if I’m going to that, I might as well skip the daytime dose as well.
These are all the things I learned today about our 12-year-old gas grill:
1. How to diagnose the problem of the high-flaring back burner and where and how to order a new burner assembly from Weber.com
2. How to question my own diagnosis and call Weber and get instant instructions, via email. On a Sunday.
3. How to disassemble and deep clean the grill, including inside the burners. And how to put it back together again in a way that it works.
4. How to cancel my order for a new burner assembly.
5. How rewarding it is to fix something we already own Perhaps we were channeling our fathers, who both absolutely loved to do just that, on this sunny Fathers Day.
Weber rocks. And so does Steve. And Maddy, who held all the directions and cheered us on.
Almost exactly one year later, one of my favorite sources is repeating a quote, and this time my reaction is completely different:
On June 23, 2010 I posted, without comment:
“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill via www.meditation.org.au
That was a particularly dark time for me, and I liked the idea of some kind of valor in my serial failure. Courage? Sounded good to me.
But now, one year later I don’t feel that way at all. It’s not about going from failure to failure with a good attitude. I am much more interested in going from failure to success, from sadness to happiness, from darkness to light.
I do realize that this is about the journey, the process, the “now” of it all, and this this is a big circle or spiral, not a line. But the next time I am in a hole, I want to be about getting out, not about decorating the space.
I love coincidence. Or cosmic alignment. Or grace. Or whatever you choose to call it. The blurb, below, titled “Shift to Neutral”, came into my email inbox just as I was appreciating an amazing time of watching pieces fall into place, in a work setting, just by not acting, by being quiet, by truly watching and letting things happen as they need to happen.
For those of us who want to DO, the doing may be shifting, Shifting to not doing.
In this case, I learned that I had already done that, and that it was awesome.
The article below is more about how to downshift to quiet in a specific setting, the start of a yoga practice, and that’s good to learn too,
From Yoga Journal:
Shift to Neutral
When do you practice yoga? For many of us who attend classes during the work week, our practice has to fit into whatever time is available, whether that’s before work in the morning, during our lunch break, or after work in the evening. And those of us who don’t work at a formal job still must balance many activities during our busy days.
So how do you bridge the gap between your frantic life and the peace and calm of the studio?
If you find yourself impatient at the start of your practice, anxious for something to happen, just recognize that you’re bringing some of that outside mentality into the classroom. Once you see what you’re doing, mentally reach inward and downshift your gears. If you’re in overdrive, downshift to fourth gear, then third, second and finally neutral. Relax inside, breathe deeply and savor the way it feels.
Jane's Lessons Learned 