Getting there before you leave

Arriving 30 minutes before you leave

Only in the Balkans do I think such a thing would ever be possible, but seriously, this happened this morning, as we departed Istanbul at 09:00 o'clock local time and we arrived in Skopje at 08:04 local time on the same day. There are many local factors that contribute to this phenomena, in fact I am surprised that some Balkan president hasn't made an arbitrary decision to just put us on Eastern Standard time!

The photo above shows the scheduled departure time and the scheduled arrival time.

I think too that there are other times we should get there before we leave. 

1. In our spiritual walk. In my 35 years of ministry, I find that most Christians state that they are citizens of heaven, but fully embrace the world and living in the world, and I hate to say it but it is true, living like this is our real home. If indeed we are citizens of heaven, then we most definitely need to behave, live, and experience life as if we are already there. We should get there before we leave. It would change a great deal about our lives I think, were we to have this posture and attitude.
2. In our vocations. Instead of just barely showing up when we eventually arrive, why don't we get there before we leave? Frankly it would make us much better employees. We would be fully engaged in the tasks that we have been charged with, and the value that we have agreed to deliver. It would make us far more valuable to our employers!
3. In our relationships. An ounce of prevention is supposedly worth a pound of cure, and arriving before we depart would be perfect. It is the relational idea of certainty and dependability. I give my lovely bride what she needs even before she realizes that she needs it! That is arriving before you depart! That is looking ahead, so that your relationships can have all that they will need in order to thrive and grow. It is arriving before you depart.

I bet you can think of other areas where this metaphor will be helpful.

Why do we resist?

Why do we delay and resist the most difficult parts of our work lives? I mean apart from the fact that they are the most difficult parts and not easy to accomplish? 

I am usually wonderfully and pleasantly surprised when I finally bite the bullet and do what needs to be done. In fact I would argue that the sheer difficulty can greatly enhance the satisfaction of accomplishment. I mean if it was easy, anyone could do it, right? The fact that YOU find it difficult, can possibly mean that the task is beyond most other people's abilities period and that it would never get done if it depended on someone other than you. It could also be that this task is simply outside of your wheelhouse, but when you get to my stage of life and work, you have largely weeded out those kinds of tasks from your schedule and life and have past them on to someone who can do them better or more easily.

No I am talking about the most excellent parts of your skill set, I am talking about the difficult work that sets you apart from everyone else. I am talking about the type of work that demands your best self fully present and on point, work that few others could effectively do, perhaps because of your training or education, or geographical position in the world, or your position and responsibilities in your organization. This is when you need to hit a home run! 

But I often delay and procrastinate these kinds of tasks, because they are so demanding and cost me so much, or take me far outside of my daily normal schedule which I treasure and with which accomplish so much on a regular basis. These super hard ones, disrupt that flow, and perhaps part of the action of turning these pivotal moments into successes, is to allow the disruption to create something new and wonderful and to relax and permit myself to let my normal routine go, so that upon occasion I can do something spectacular, instead of the simply great work that I strive for each day. I just finished one of these kinds of work events and I am flushed with how awesome it went. So once again, why do we resist?

Like Amelia Earhart said, "The most effective way to do it, is to do it."
What really important and difficult thing are you putting off?

A thinking day

This is the one task that needs a certain ambience. I found the perfect situation for that in my travels today. Through a series of fortunate events, I had a few hours free and unstructured at the Naples Italy airport on a sunny warm afternoon.

I found a place to sit outside and enjoy a nice Honduran while contemplating the universe. Not really . . . the contemplating the universe part, but everything else was planets aligned! I worked on a number of high priority thorny situations and made a few notes, but this afternoon was 95% tech free. I can't focus on the thinking part if I have tech in my hands. It always seem that other work floats to the surface if I have tech in my hands, and this was a strictly amazing opportune moment to do the hardest work - thinking.

Now you can't wait to have such a perfect situation present itself (although I find that you can usually create a potential environment to do some hard thinking), because thinking is too important a task to relegate to pristine moments. Granted pristine moments can make them all the more powerful and productive, but this is a task that needs regular exercise. Like most things in life, if it is not scheduled and practiced it never gets accomplished.

So what were the results today? I resolved an apprentice/internship thorn that had been sticking me in the butt for almost a year. There is now a plan and steps to get to the goal. I made progress on the ongoing dilemma/opportunity (its both) that I have with my dad. After the two deaths in our family this past year, there is just me and him and I need to make more/new space in life for him and his needs and honestly just to enjoy these later years of his life with him and make some great memories.

That is it. But those were two huge buggers that have been gigantic weights on my plate for far too long. Reserve your thinking time for the most important matters. Oh, and I spent a good long wonderful half hour just mentally reviewing and cataloging all the people, relationships, structures and opportunities that I am grateful for, that make all this worth doing. After "the perils of travel" this was the best kind of chance and change. Go think!

The perils of travel

The perils of travel

We were finally all on board the airport shuttle, running a little late but doable. As the doors to the van close I see a Turk standing in the smoking area finishing up a cigarette and watching us! He gets the drivers attention as we were driving away. So we stop, back up, and open the doors to let the latecomer get on.

But wait! He runs back inside the hotel and gets his suitcase. Three times! And finally we have all three of his large bags loaded and he runs back into the hotel and disappears. And we wait and we wait and we wait until they finally unload all his luggage and leave for the airport.

We finally leave! Yet we don't make it out of the parking lot before we turn around! And pick yet a different family of three.

Fast forward an hour and a half after two complete security checks (where I was certain I was going to have to take off my underwear) and I finally get on the plane. Window seat. And then I have an extra large man come and sit in the middle seat! He poured out of his seat into my seat. Long story short I was sitting crooked the entire time to Italy. I am pinched between extra large man and the window!

And of course since we came from Turkey and not Western Europe, and since we had about 25 African men on the plane, security, customs, and passport control were completely anal, to the point that some of the Italian men started fighting each other and the police had to come break it up, it was a madhouse.

All in a normal day at the office. And some people are jealous of this, I kid you not. Not to mention I left out the Italian train station story, the pick pocket, the 12 beggars, and taxi ride from hell.

Constraints 2 Psychic Prisons

This week while I was talking to one of my key clients, he was sharing with me some of the things he has been learning in his PhD studies about organizational development. One of the metaphors used to describe organizations was "psychic prisons". I took that to mean that it is psychic in the sense of mental, not in the sense of psychotic (though if you work for certain kinds of organizations I imagine that it could also be psychotic!). I thought it was an exceptionally rich metaphor.

As I have been headhunting some new employees for The Leadership Development Group, one of the most interesting phenomenon that I come up against, is the inability to find leadership guru's who can think about funding models or salary models that are outside of the traditional employer paid exchange of time for money. They are literally in a mental prison, for all practical purposes incapable of thinking about a different funding model or a different way of receiving compensation for value given.

But this metaphor is also rich when applied to the other areas of our lives. Most of us live in a psychic prison concerning our life work, or the impact that we can make, or the significance of what we can do, or how we might simply change the world with the time, talent and treasures that God has already given us. Many of us live in psychic prisons spiritually as well. The limitations of our understanding, or the boundaries of our theology, or the constraints of our past experiences, become the bars of the cells we find ourselves in. We seem to struggle indefinitely with our lack of imagination, the confines of our narrative that we tell ourselves about ourselves and about our work and about our God.

However, logging the hours does not have to be a part of the psychic prison. Logging the hours is what my language students have to do to speak beautiful Spanish or Russian. Logging the hours is what my pastors have to do, to deliver beautiful sermons on Sunday. Logging the hours is what you and I have to do to hone our crafts and be the best that we can be. Working hard and logging solid hours is not part of the prison, it is a treasured gift, that we might do something magical in the world with the gifts and abilities and resources that God has given us.

The most beautiful thing about being a Christ-follower is that we have been given essentially a get out of jail free card! Don't you think it's time that we got out of our psychic prisons, no matter what they may be, and start to live this one wild beautiful life that we had been given to the full extent of every possibility?

The fastest way forward

"The fastest way to move forward in life is NOT doing more. It starts with STOPPING the behaviors holding you back." Benjamin Hardy

This axiom is stated by many leadership leaders, like Marshall Goldsmith, Michael Hyatt and others. However the very nature of productivity is often about doing more, not less better. That is where Gregg McKeown stands out with his excellent book on Essentialism. But most people, including my clients, want more, not a better less. The majority of people I meet and know, it seems to be almost impossible to overcome FOMO. More is more. 

But it is not. The more I add more, the more I diminish the quality of every single beautiful thing I am working to create or produce. Friends, that is less, not more. Quality and quantity are not the same. If you want to change the world, or create a masterpiece, or provide clarity, or be the best at anything, you have to dial it in, focus, intensify on less and less. Think of it as purifying the finished product, concentrating the final result, strengthening what gets accomplished, and amplifying the outcomes. Most people get stuck eternally at mediocre because they can't stop doing all the things that are sabotaging their stated goals or purposes. And if you can't stop eating french fries, you can't get to and stay at an ideal weight. As Bob Biehl says, "Either you live a life of discipline or your live a life of regret."

Less is more. It is more focused, it is deeper, it is purposeful, it is intentional, it is satisfying in ways more can never be. It is simpler, clearer, cleaner, more pure. It is a design of success. It is a way of organizing everything toward the goal. It is singular, exceptional and remarkable. If you do this, it is the fastest way forward. It is not Facebook or Twitter or TV or Netflix. On Thursday evening a young lady showed up at our door selling TV packages, and it was all about more and more channels. When I finally got her to stop her spiel, I pointed out that we do not have a television in the house. But she did not believe me and pushed her way into the living room to have a look around for herself. Magdalena pointed out that she had never been in a home without a TV.  I am not necessarily prideful about not having a TV, I am frankly much more flabbergasted and appalled that there aren't others who don't! We say no to the intrusion of TV, so that we can say yes to people, events and focused productivity that matters. Honestly people, TV never matters.

Stop. Say no. Frequently. Most of the time. Far more than you ever say yes. It is the fastest way forward.

Constraints?

HBR had a recent blog on their website that matched just what I was experiencing each day here in Eastern Europe. Constraints. Limitations. Scarcity. There is one thing every ex pat knows, if they have ever lived in a resource depleted country, you have to be creative to make do, make things stretch further, and often it just means that you have to work harder period.

It has been that kind of week. Yesterday the front door lock jammed and we could not get our keys in the door, meaning we could only lock the door if one of us were in the apartment. And the toilet continued to not work hardly at all, and the car is in the service center, etc etc. So I have to go by the locksmith shop twice to get someone over here, and then the guy who comes, isn't the guy who is actually qualified to do the repair, so I have to wait until the second guy can come, and what would take a quick trip to Home Depot in the states, is pretty much an all day kind of thing here. 

Been trying to get the car repaired ever since I got back to Eastern Europe three weeks ago, and it was finally supposed to ready to pick up at 12:00 today on the dot. Of course it was not, and after waiting until 13:00 hours, I had to scoot to my next appointment on foot. I must have walked five miles today. But I got it all done. And now, the plumber is putting in a new Throne for us, and may it please work! Please pretty please, may it work. But nothing is certain. 

Scarcity forces us to use our ingenuity, our creative abilities, to expect more of ourselves, and to just get moving, because there is no one to complain to here, who might actually get something done for you. You gotta make your own success man! Set your expectations high and don't let anything or anyone or any "lack" prevent you from being all that you were meant to be.

A better way to make a positive transaction.

There are the marvelous tax laws in Western Europe. If I purchase something here, since I am both a citizen outside of Western Europe and I live outside of Western Europe, I should have all the taxes refunded to me as I leave the country where I made my purchases. I have special receipts for the whole process, which clearly state I will receive such and such amount of euros as I leave the country. This is a great way to get me to spend my money here!

However, they make the process all but impossible at the airport. This stamp that you need is at one end of the airport, the obscure tax office at the other end, and then the final place to actually receive money in your hand can't even be found on the other side of security. The entire process, hidden location of offices, lack of signs and instructions, and multiple steps, are designed to prevent anyone from actually getting a tax refund. I travel 100,000 miles a year all over the world, and I could have navigated the whole process and completed it if . . . if I had had two solid hours to do little else but walk from one end of a very large airport to the other end, several times over.

I value my time too highly to do so, and that is what they are betting on for sure, that the small amount of money will be insufficient to tempt me, once the difficulty of the process becomes clear. This is why I so rarely purchase high price items within Western Europe. While they occasionally get a little bit of extra off of me like they did today, for the most part they lose 10's of thousands of euros of potential purchases because I don't do regular business with bait and switch vendors, even if they are the government.

The question for us leaders is about transparency, delivering at least as much as you promised, and making it easy for those following us to receive what we said they would receive. Otherwise we are doing the same horrible transaction with our clients, team or followers, and we are no better than the impossible-to-find-and-accomplish-tax-refund-offices in every airport in Western Europe. My friends - under-promise and over-deliver. That is the way to build your business and your reputation.

Embracing Halnon’s razor

My dad, can see the worst in everyone. He carefully thinks through the worst possible motivation for each person’s actions, and then deduces the worst possible judgement. He sees intentionality and malice and hurt in almost every person’s deeds. In fact I spend a great deal of mental energy, thinking through all the ways that a person’s actions and deeds could simply be the result of a mistake or misunderstanding or a lack of appropriate information, etc etc. But my dad can find villainous intentions in arguably everyone. Keeping myself out of that trap is plenty taxing as well!

The real world problem this creates for me, is that it can easily be contagious, where I start to attribute the worst possible thoughts toward each person that I meet and interact with around the world. I don’t want to move through life like this, like I did in the past. So I publicly thank my dad, for forcing me to “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” or “don’t assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding” and “you have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.” All of these quotes are from wikipedia about Hanlon’s razor.

Thinking criminal thoughts about each person you encounter in life is all too easy as my dad proves. Stopping that process once it begins takes monumental effort as I discovered. This has application to other than personal interactions with people as well - it can apply to organizations too. After 23 years of what felt like wrestling and fighting with my previous parent organization, I finally left, and changed gears. I should have done it far sooner! However, in the almost nine years since I did leave, I have come to the conclusion that there was little malice at play.  Big organizations are simply suspect to neglect and misunderstanding. On both sides! Each action fostered more misunderstanding, and soon we came to an impasse. But it did not have to be that way. Back then I had far too much of my dad in me, and far too little generosity in my heart to give the benefit of the doubt.

Do you find yourself caught in a conspiracy theory or devil theory? What steps do you need to take, to bring back a generosity of spirit that will allow you to work Hanlon’s razor to your benefit? 

In a room filled with crazy busy people

I am currently sitting in a room filled with crazy busy people running back and forth all over the place. It's the lobby of a huge downtown London hotel in the business district of Kensington. Having just checked out and waiting for my next appointment to show up, I am watching hundreds of people rush through this lobby. But busy isn't necessarily productive. Speed isn't necessarily progress.

Everyone has the same number of hours in their day, but their accomplishments vary greatly. How about you? How about me? There is a significant difference between important and the urgent. One moves things forward, the other is loud and immediate. Which one do I concentrate my primary energy on each day, each hour of effort?

My first four to five hours in each day are the most critical for me. I have sequential actions and processes that I follow in order to contain the urgent and complete the important. Otherwise I find myself having done the urgent and distracting all day, but not finishing the important actions that move life, work and purpose forward. Example: I don't touch email until three other more critically important actions are finished each day. That usually means I rarely check email before 11:00 am.

Gary Keller states that, "Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time"  That is why I block off the morning and stay with the important routine, before exposing my day to the urgent. It is also why I focus one one thing at a time. Multitasking doesn't work for most folks who are highly productive.

I find that two more critical elements to long success are exercise and sleep. When I make these two a daily priority they pay huge dividends in clarity and focus all through the day. What elements and boundaries do you need to put and keep in place to have consist forward progress on the important? Let's get it done now, because this is both important and urgent.

Fire alarms and other startling moments

As I was peacefully slumbering and trying to recover from my five time zone difference in London this morning, the fire alarm went off in the hotel bringing this blissful process to an instant end. I bolted upright in bed and started to move immediately!

Thankfully it was a "false" alarm, in the sense that the hotel did not burn down with all my gear in it, but it was an astonishingly quick way to get the day started.

Recently I have had other fire alarms go off in my life. This past year my mother and also my only sibling died. The loss of them in my life has had many of the same effects in my life like the fire alarm this morning.

The close relationships in my life have incredible value for me, and they require much more effort than I have been allocating them over the last decade. Losing my mother and brother one after the other made me stop and take stock of how I have been working this garden of relationships in my life.

A garden is the perfect metaphor. Relationships, just like gardens, require a level of regular cultivation and attention that Westerners don't naturally or easily do. We compartmentalize our time and our relationships to the point that we become offended if work relationships overlap into our "family time" or our "personal time." Even those designations are weeds in our garden of relationships! The mutuality of one single solid relationship is worth far more than a cut and dry compartment designated as "personal time" or a "family time."

I for one need far more intentionality in all my relationships, or these amazing flowers in my garden are going to wither and be gone from my life.

Hawthorne?

The Hawthorne effect

There is well-documented social science phenomenon called the Hawthorne effect, whereby people change their behavior as a result of knowing they are being observed. Never has this been more important in my life. Yesterday my mom was admitted to a nursing home. She may never leave this place. How do you know that the people you have entrusted your mother's care to, will do an appropriate job? The Hawthorne effect.

When folks know they are being monitored, their actions are more consistent with stated objectives, than those people who think no one is watching, neither today nor tomorrow.

But who is watching me? Who is watching you? Who are the stakeholders in our lives, the people who benefit from our actions? What do they see? Do you realize that you are being checked, tested and measured all the time? Of course this has spiritual dimensions as well, but honestly, I think you can see this as a blanket covering all that we do that matters. Someone is always observing and taking our measure. What is your grade today? How are you improving the value that you bring to your family, your clients, your stakeholders and yourself? I think I need to keep the Hawthorne effect on my radar screen all the time to remind me to keep moving forward.

Summations

This month has been a 20,000 mile flying month unfortunately. Back and forth across the ocean, urgencies and need driving me around like a bad chauffeur. But well practiced at this as I am, I make the best of each challenge and each day. At least as I fly over the Atlantic I get some blessed silence in my life. Not required to speak (nor listen) to anyone. Evidently I got the last seat on these last two flights, which at least explains the high price, not to mention that I purchased this flight about 7 hours before departure! Mom and dad have an emergency, 24 hours later I am at their house, travel worn and stained, but here nevertheless, from a quarter globe away.

This ability to live at the speed of sound is something one must guard against. Especially people like me, mobiles, who travel to another country each week for work. Steady dependable systems of work, relationships and structure prevent the worst elements of such a life, from overtaking you. As I was just reading this week on the hbr blog site, in a 75 year study that Harvard did, good relationships make life the healthiest and richest it can possibly be. So I stop and write one of my top 10 buds. I call one up on google hangouts, I FaceTime with another. I take one out to dinner when they show up in my town. I have coffee with another. I go drinking with yet another. I have to consciously and intentionally maintain this critical web of relationships, so that flying doesn't become my epitaph on my tombstone - "Here lies a man who flew everywhere, but had no friends." Or some sick moniker like that. Who wants that to be the definition of their life??

Instead we want the summation of our lives to read, "Here lies a man who changed the world, invested in many, loved well, gave generously, lived with his hands open, transparent and kind to all, someone to imitate." Or something along that gist, as I am no poet. We all want to matter.

A violent shift in worlds

I knew I was back in my element within moments of arriving in Istanbul. Having just left the placid cow pastures of Northeast Georgia, the slam-packed Istanbul airport was a jarring impact to the senses. You can hardly walk at a normal pace through the airport as there are so many people, and from every point in the world where East would meet West.

I headed out onto the terrance where I promptly fell into an extended conversation with an East Indian, a Bulgarian, and myself of course an American who lives in Macedonia - all within the confines of the Istanbul airport. Our conversations covered African countries (which one’s were the most dangerous at the moment and which ones were the best business environments), skiing, spicy foods (which even the East Indian admitted Thailand holds the Gold Medal), to marathons, to diving to cave diving, to banking and insurance (the East Indian who goes by the name Samil, is a banker) to engineering and communications (which covered Alex the Bulgarian’s expertise), to non-profits and leadership and cultures.

The scope of the conversations reflects the world I was made for, and after nine weeks in the USA (and ridiculous conversations about Dump Trump and Hell no Hillary), it was a shot of pure adrenaline to my psyche and soul. There is so so much more to the world that we live in, than the cows mooing at one another over barbed-wire fences. Its good to be home.

Lesson One. - Never undervalue you already have

A bed. Beds are underrated wonder mechanisms! They hold and support you in so many loving ways, even the bad ones. But they are under-cherished, under-considered, under-appreciated items that every single person reading this has . . . and I know this because I was one of you, until I rode across America on my bicycle.

Then it was eight complete solid weeks of camping, i. e. sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor with nothing between you and the cold cold floor except a one inch thermarest air mattress, that is, if it remains inflated all the night long. While indoors, it is truly still camping. Trust me. I am now an authority on this. Can you actually sleep in a sleeping bag on a thermarest for eight weeks? Actually yes, but not well, nor deeply, nor comfortably, unless you are also eight years old. Never undervalue your bed.

A shower. A shower is truly a marvel. In the last 48 hours I have literally taken seven showers. I finally feel clean for the first time in eight weeks. I wish I were still in the shower instead of on this airplane! Showers have the power to change your perspective, attitude, feelings, outlook, futures, present, memories - they are the wonder drug! Taking a shower with 20 other guys, in some of the moldiest, dirtiest, fungi-infested, stopped-up-drains, no water pressure, no lights sometimes, even in a baptistery once!, horror movie kinds of places for eight weeks, gives one a deeply spiritual appreciation for a modern shower that all of us have in our personal homes.

Showers that have hot water, and showers that have knobs from which we can call on that hot water to come-to-me experiences. Instead we had showers where you have to hold a "button" in, under pressure, sometimes under extreme pressure, in order for the water to trickle out. Try washing hair with one hand! Hey, trying washing anything with one hand while holding "the button!" Try wetting your bar of soap and rolling it around in your hand (singular), while holding "the button." It will invariably shoot across the scum infested floor to the other side of the shower directly under someone else's feet who is also trying to accomplish the same feat. Never undervalue your shower.

Finally a toilet. And of course we DID have a toilet in every place we stayed. The part you have to appreciate is that most often it was a single equal opportunity throne, to be shared with 20 other guys. Electronics were immediately banned, as were all reading materials! And trying to keep the girls from hijacking your single throne was almost impossible! Unless it happened to be one of those wonderful places where the door would not lock and the stall had no door! Assuming your place even had a stall surrounding the throne!

And while we did have a toilet, there was no, absolutely none, zero, nada, privacy ever. Imagine brushing your teeth each morning to the music of others on the throne! Imagine the hope of toilet paper which might not do you permanent damage when used. Number 10 grade sandpaper would have been kinder! Imagine never having enough TIME to finish your business, because there was only one throne and 20 guys. It's like being on the golf course and having someone constantly hurry your every shot! Never undervalue your toilet/privacy.

Never undervalue what you already have. Take some time and appreciate what you already have. Be grateful, thankful, and overwhelmed by how good you have it!

Grit?

Today was a beautiful 80 mile ride day through Ohio, on rural roads, light traffic, low humidity, and ok, we did have a headwind, but that was just a wonderful cooling breeze as far as I was concerned, although there was a great deal of whining about it from the other riders that came in after me. Today is a blog about consistency.

All my life I have gotten to where I am going, by consistency. What is phenomenally disappointing is the amount of jealousy and resentment that this has caused in so many people. Riding across America has just been a repeating story-within-a-story of what I have experienced my whole life. We have been riding on this 3500 mile ride for over seven weeks now, and the whining and complaining (jealousy) about my "speed" and "how fast I am" is just ludicrous. First of all I am riding the heaviest bike of all riders on the entire ride - the one and only mountain bike. Most people's entire bicycle weigh less than my front RockShox fork weighs! Try pushing that up the Rocky Mountains! Secondly I am a chronically weight challenged, middle-age grandfather of three. Come on people, look at the facts here!

Today is a perfect example of most days out on the route. I start off slow and steady to get my old bones warmed up and the blood flowing (which seems to take longer each and every day!). I am often at the end of the long line of riders, but sometimes I start in the middle and occasional near the front. But today is the example we are using - I started 12th out of 29 riders. At the end of 10 miles I was 9th out of 29 riders. By the time we reached the first rest stop at the 20 mile marker I was 7th out of 26 riders (because we had 3 drop out for the day at this point) By the time we reached the second rest stop at the 40 mile marker I was 4th out of 26 riders. By the time we reach the third rest stop at the 60 mile marker I was 2nd. And then at the end of the 80 mile ride I was first. Typical day. I was as surprised as always. It is called consistency, faithfulness, stubbornness, grit, focus, tenacity, determination, luck or stupidity - depending on what your point of view is and what kind of person you want to be.

Every single person can choose to ride at the exact same speed as me. They ALL have better equipment, they all have the same tools or better, many of them have youth on their side as well, and they all have excuses. I wonder what would happen if I did not stop to take pictures along the way?? My one and only point here is that consistency can produce astonishing and unexpected results over and over again. It is the story of my life. Try it and don't waver, and be amazed.

Your real face

An early early Sunday morning at Starbucks, getting a legit coffee and hot breakfast (compared to the breakfast cereals I have had to eat these last seven weeks). Sitting in a soft chair, soaking up some atmosphere and peace before heading back to the biking group, and the pain of group dynamics. I had never realized how much of an introvert I can be . . . don't laugh, because it is a big enough adjustment without you laughing at me! And yes I have snickered about this quite a bit over the last month, as the realization has come to me.

Is it possible that I have been forced into a public persona that oozes charisma and energy and extrovertism and all that exhausting group leadership stuff all these years? Is it possible that this is what I thought a pastor/missionary/leader had to be? Is it possible that this is not very much me at all??  Whoa!! 

Does anyone else find the effort to speak out loud, especially early in the morning, to be excruciating, almost beyond possibility? Do you find that not entering into every fight or conversation (ala Joe Callaway) to be freeing? Do you wish that there was a lot more silence and quiet in the world? Do you find you can impact and lead indirectly just as well, perhaps even better than from the front? Do you wish frequently that the idiots would shut up? 

Then perhaps, maybe, perchance, your real face is something other than you have practiced for 50 years.

Are we helping?

Are we helping?

This is a question that is repeatedly coming up in my trek across America. Two blogs back I ranted about the "sweeper" role on our team, and the more I think about it the more I see it as handicapping other adults from taking responsibility for themselves. A second one that is driving me crazy is the expectation to "Chalk the Turns" for those following you in the peloton. I mean you have a Garmin, and an iPhone, and the route sheet hardcopy, why the hell am I supposed to be making chalk marks on the asphalt for you? You have better tools than I do to route your way to our destination. Put your big girl panties on and find your own damn way. Think of it as scouting (Girl Scouts Boy Scouts) and you have a number of compasses and they are all pointing you a certain direction if you would just take the time to USE them, instead of expecting me to stop my ride and make a chalk mark so that you don't have to look at your multiple tools.

So both sweeping and marking penalize the faster (i.e. harder working, sweating, more disciplined) riders, in order to "help" the slower riders. This is complete bullshit. We aren't helping them, we are keeping them helpless in their own minds. Apologies to those who think this is about bicycle groups moving slowly across the USA, the leadership principles here, apply to many of not most other fields of execution. IF this were a race, then these tactics could very well be helpful to the whole team. But since this is not a race, and everyone has permission to travel at their own chosen pace (within limits), then these tactics are not helps at all.

But just so that you don't think I am only pissing and moaning about the slower riders (who I am sorely tempted to call the "complaining" riders, because listening to them non-stop whining about how I did not mark the route with large enough markings, or that we were pushing them too hard as sweeps is getting really old) I am also plenty disappointed about another set of riders who want you to "pull" them along. When you get in a pace line of riders, proper etiquette is that one rider leads for generally about 3-5 minutes and then the next rider in the pace line takes the lead and the front rider goes to the back of the pace line, because being in front is alot more work than being in any other position in the pace line. In fact that is the entire point of sharing that load of leading, so that you can go farther faster and expend less energy as a group. So we have a set of riders who eagerly join my pace line every single day, but never take the lead off my hands. This is complete bullshit. (I actually "pulled" for 22 miles three days ago waiting for someone else to step up and take the lead a single time! Did. Not. Happen.)

I have stopped pulling these people period. I just either stand up on my pedals and outpace them so that they can't keep up or I just stop and take pictures until they are out of sight (although one time last week two of the morons stopped and waited while I took pictures rather than pull their own weight and keep on riding!!) These people are not leaders. They may be fast, they may be strong riders, but they are not leaders. Leaders don't wait for others to take responsibility. Leaders don't wait for others to pull their weight. Leaders lead, and that does not have to happen at the front of the peloton, it can happen wherever you find yourself in the line or process.

The biggest value

The biggest value

For far too often I thought the best value I provided was what I did. But I could not have been more mistaken. Don't get me wrong, doing a job well, with careful excellence has great value.  But not the most value at this stage of life. The biggest value comes in careful thinking, and you absolutely must be alone in order to do that. 

Alone time, thinking time is the single most underrated activity in all my clients worlds, and mine too. Fortunately for me, I actually really enjoy my alone time, actively seek it out, start to feel desperate if I don't get it in regular doses. But my more social peers can't get off the hamster cages of expectation and opportunity for social interaction long enough to get any real thinking done. 

The best work in my opinion involves super intense quiet times followed by robust interactions with the appropriate people. You need the quiet in order to have something significant to contribute at the point of interaction. I am super appalled at how many conversations in the real world are banal nonsense! I have to carefully choose not to help that wasteland continue. Contributing real value requires real work between my ears.

Sweeper? Tradeoffs?

Today I was asked to be sweeper for the team. I said "no thank you" which was really difficult, because most of the folks on this team believe volunteering to be sweeper occasionally to be a critical part of being on this team. Not. Going. To. Happen. Again. I did it already. Once. Can't waste that much time again (five extra hours) for such weak reasons. First of all I don't agree with the Fuller Center's insistence for sweepers. I mean who sweeps the sweepers? It is redundant nonsense. (Sweepers are the two people who stay behind the slowest members of the group to make sure everyone gets where they are suppose to go, and there are so many assumptions at play here I can't even start to explain) Who makes certain the sweepers arrive? How is that any different than the last person in the peloton doing that themselves and (horror of horrors) taking responsibility for themselves! Read the route sheet for pity sakes! Use a stinking GPS that is on every single phone if nothing else! Get a life people!

Moreover I need to write you. This is a far more productive activity than babysitting people who don't meet the minimal requirements for riding on a trip like this, (12 miles per hour is a minimal requirement and if you can't ride that fast, stay home or work out more but don't waste my life). I need to work with my clients around the world. They are changing the world and I want to be a part of that, not watch some pre-menopausal over-weight woman stay stuck in 1st gear for 91 miles. 

So I will strive to be more attentive, encouraging, helpful, hard working with the chore teams, first to volunteer for work that others don't want (which are practivcally helpful to the team), but I have to stay firm in my refusal to squander my life in pointless activities, even when those around me perceives them to be important. It's called a tradeoff.

Up and down these monsters

We have been crossing Colorado and Wyoming at a frantic pace this week. Frantic in a bicycle sense, not a car/motorcycle sense. The Rocky Mountains are serious climbs and descents, and I have a burnt all my available energies this week, making my way up and down these monsters. I think I could go to bed at 7 pm each day! Of course the schedule does not allow for that, and so I have to stay up late each night and get up early each morning.

Because of all that is going on in my life right now, the beautiful fatigue I have each day is perfect. It keeps me level and balanced and just tired enough that I don't join in every fight/conversation/discussion/argument I am invited to attend. However it has a downside, in that I don't have nearly enough bandwidth to emotionally navigate all the relationships in my life, especially the ones that surround me on this adult camping trip known as The Fuller Bicycle Adventure.  I am discovering that when in such a state, that I don't have nearly as much patience or tolerance or longsuffering as I normally experience in my life. I have less willingness to allow others to dominate, or win, or perhaps rather it's a super sensitivity to the finely-tuned abuses of leadership, or position or power. In other words, long story short, I am that curmudgeon that I always suspected that I was. No one is less surprised than I am.

The reality that I take away from this, is that much of what I do and say and my public persona is relatively shallow and skin deep. Those important characteristics and core virtues are not nearly as foundational nor deeply embedded as I would like them to be. I have a great deal of work and restructuring to do still . . . yet knowing these deficits is at least half the battle, and perhaps the most necessary starting point. Your can't change what you don't know for sure needs changing. You can't address that which you are not convinced needs improvement. So the exploding awareness that I still have quite a ways to grow, is a gigantic step in the right direction. This is the up and down of the real monster.

The completely me me

Today we crossed into Colorado from Utah. Utah was spectacular. I had flown into Salt Lake City some 19-20 years ago, and I had driven into tiny snippets of the state before, but nothing like this slow four days in state on a bicycle - it was amazing. Let's hope Colorado offers as much along the route that has been selected for us. Spent the afternoon talking to my peeps and texting my niece and listening to folks struggles with life and death.

But my daily speed bumps concerning my brother's death 8 weeks ago are slowly growing smaller I think. These three plus weeks on this trip across the USA have been wonderfully brutal and therapeutic. The 1400 miles we have traveled so far have been so scenic there are almost no words to express how beautiful the trip has been so far. Yes yes yes I understand Nebraska and Iowa are coming, but flat cornfields have their own beauty I am hoping. If they don't, some other place in my near future will and I can wait.

The best part is that I don't have to BE anything for anyone on this trip. Sure I still have clients and I have affiliates and I do have to care for them, and I call my parents every single day, but the 25 people that I am crossing the country with on the FCBA tour, I have never met before and after the trip will likely never see again. There is a much needed freedom in this adult camping trip I find myself on right now, where everything is tight and significant, but temporary. There is a never experienced (for me at least) freedom to completely be whatever I need to be today kind of feel to this. I don't have to bring my best self to work, nor do I have to bring my business suit out, nor do I have to be the leadership guru, nor do I have to be "the missionary" or "the pastor", instead I just get to be me. The me of this moment. The completely me me of today. My only worry is that I might not want to go back to my other life.

Making the most of it!

Sitting in Heber City Utah, enjoying a fine beverage from the breweries in Maryland, a hamburger made from the cows I see in the pasture before me, snow still on the peaks even in mid July, and so many other things to appreciate about this moment, this beautiful Saturday. So much to be thankful for, so much to be blessed by, so much that I get to do. 

A number of people have questioned how I can get up at 4:45 am everyday and then bike 80-100 miles a day with our group? What they don't understand is that I GET to do this. It is no chore, it is no hardship, because I remind myself 49 times day that I get to do this. This one small window in my life where I don't have to work my normal schedule, where I don't have to keep my usual office hours, where I get to survey the Rocky Mountians slowly and completely each day at 15 miles per hour. It is awesome and I won't likely get another chance to do this. Making the most of it!

No language is acceptable at the most frustrating dinner ever

One of the most frustrating and amazing phenomena in dealing with 20 somethings as I travel the world, is that every single phrase and word choice and adjective that I speak, they can find something objectionable about it. There are no possible solutions to this challenge on my side. Because no matter what language I choose to employ, one of them will find something wrong with it. Simple speech does not exist any longer. Straightforward conversation cannot happen any longer. Truth can't exist nor thrive in an environment where every word is loaded with assumptions and implications in the mind of the 20 something. Regardless of the topic, homosexuality, people of color, trafficking, orphans, churches (and all these terms I just used in this sentence are also objectionable in some fashion!) they are all loaded.

Don't get me wrong, I love 20 somethings. All three of my young adult children are 20 somethings. They are very special people. But in their conversations with me, they assume the best possible meaning of each statement, of each sentence, of each vulnerability. Whereas, the 20 somethings I just had dinner with, assume every possible slight, harm, evil intention, wrong morals, bad character, and worse possible position to each word that comes out of my mouth. There is no possible way to have a conversation in that context. While we are both speak a form of the English language, we have attached different meanings to each of the words that we are speaking, and thus, while we technically "understand" what the other person is saying, we completely lose and forsake the true and actual meaning of what was said, it feels like (and this is coming from a totally multi-lingual person) like I am speaking English and you are speaking Greek. There is not much communication taking place.

And once you feel this horrible communication doldrum, and experience the agony of failed shared meanings, you see that it happens in so many spheres of the world, business, politics and society in general. We use the same words in general, but attach completely different meanings and nuances to those words, and so the results are unpredictable, and are very much like hugging a cactus. #themostfrustratingdinnerever

Too hot to be used

Yesterday I got a message on my phone that I had never seen before. It said that the "iPhone was too hot and could not be used at the moment" or something similar and it had a thermometer icon there showing red. Of course I would need the phone at that exact moment to determine if we were heading in the wrong direction or not! Thats what I get for leaving the phone in the sun. And I was very surprised to hear that almost everyone in the group that I was with at that moment had received similar messages on their phones or iPads, because this was a first for me. In Asia, my iPads get very hot.

I think we often allow our lives to get overclock, over-revved and over-heated too, and we can't really function until the temperature comes down to a manageable level. Self care and self awareness are at least two ways to stay on top of this problem and PTA - protect the asset - you and me. We need to monitor how hot our lives are getting and take appropriate steps to keep them in the prime operating range, in our high performance range. We can't expect to bring our best selves in the arena in our leadership if we don't watch the stovetop and make sure things aren't boiling over.

David is looking to get his groove back . . .

Overwhelmed and overclocked is what life in the modern world feels like, all the time. Today is the first day in . . . forever it feels like . . . where I have had the margin to do the mundane and necessary. Like changing a blown light bulb, repairing the license plate holder on the car, and the not so mundane, like taking my wife out to breakfast, and writing a blog post. For a guy who takes margin and space in life very very seriously, this is like blasphemy.

So I decided to turn the day upside down in order to try and regain my leverage on me. As my good friend Jeff said, "I think I know what you mean about clarity, priorities and leadership "being in your head". Self-leadership is almost certainly the most important variety of influence! The way I think through and operate on my priorities, how I self-motivate, self-regulate, and self-assess are pretty critical functions in a world where no one is looking out for you, no one is planning your career, and no one owes you anything, regardless of what the politicians say. The day each of us creates is a function of that self-leadership."

Notice that last phrase, the day each of us creates is a function of self-leadership. Ouch. Even a leadership focused/oriented/driven guy like me, can let the urgency of the immediate and loud, drown out the discipline of purpose and the important. Granted life is a constant flux of cycling demands, but Jeff has it right, the day I create is a function of self-leadership, and I can't lay that at anyone's feet but my own.

Birthday travels - or trains planes and rental cars

I am fairly well traveled, but I still make lots of mistakes while traveling. Yesterday I even made a dry run for the Gatwick Express to make certain I knew how and how long to take the correct steps to get to my flight to Madrid from the center of London. However in my enthusiasm to cross my T's and dot my I's, I purchased a one way ticket yesterday to Victoria station to speed me on my way this early morning. That. Won't. Work. You can't do that on the London tube because the date is printed right on the ticket and the British transportation authority simply won't let you.

Luckily for me, there are actual humans working on the tube who will listen to a sad foreigner tale and allow one to pass even without the correct ticket. I encountered three such individuals on my way to Gatwick this morning, and all three of them endeared the UK to my heart. They were so helpful and ever so polite. Dear God in heaven, may Spain be the same! I have never been to Spain, and I don't speak Spanish (the only class in undergrad I ever failed - due to excessive absences), and I have a rental car to fetch, 200 kilometers to navigate, a hotel to find, and refugee project to observe, affiliates to test, and a birthday to celebrate. We all need helpful peeps along our path to assist us in our arrival, no matter how much we have traveled.

The negators and the instructors

The negators and the instructors

There are always those people who are negative or who are going to be negative about what you are doing, or how you are doing it, or where or why you are doing it, or that you aren't doing the right thing nor the right way. It is simply the law of averages or the law of human behavior or both. You simply cannot avoid critiques. And unique to spiritual ministry (and politics I believe) is the phenomenon that the majority of people in the world think that they know how to do your job at least as good as you, and that they have the right, perhaps the obligation, to tell you how to do that job of yours that they have never done themselves.

I heard it 1000 times as a pastor, 1000 times as a missionary, and I hear it now that I am in the consulting (with a church ministry focus) business. It is simply the most frustrating and flabbergasting thing ever. I heard it on the way to the airport this morning, as my driver informed me of all the things wrong with his church, all the changes that must be made, his list of criticisms of the pastor, all from a guy who has never pastored a church for a single minute of his 55 years of living. I hear it in every single conversation about politics and "how it ought to be" or "how it would be different if I were in charge" perspectives.

There was something my dad taught me, and that I have tried to pass on to my children, in that every job in the world is much more difficult than it appears at face value, and that the more effortless it appears, the greater the master who is accomplishing it. That aside though, does not explain why these two fields in particular are consistent targets for criticism and advice. Perhaps it is as simple as the shallowness of the understanding of the negator or instructor? Maybe. I mean how hard can it be to pastor a congregation and lead a church? My grandfather always said that I only had to work one a day a week. No matter how often I pointed out to my grandfather that a pastor must excel at theology, public speaking, counseling, business, leadership, problem solving, organizational development, people development and often music as well. That is nine different fields of excellence! Even worse yet, your skills are at least equally impacted by your charisma, character and morals.

How many times someone has instructed me about how to reach more people on the mission field, even though they themselves have never learned another language, they have never learned another culture, they have never lived (much less thrived!) away from their families, traveled internationally, nor have ever worked in the church as staff! These mono-linguistic, mono-cultural, un-traveled never left their zip code negators or instructors are telling me, a professional who has 35 years of education and 30 years of experience in this work, how to better accomplish my responsibilities! The arrogance and ignorance is consistently one of the most ridiculous and insane regular occurrences in my life work. 

However the conundrum is this, these negators and instructors hold one key part of this work, one tiny sliver that gives them the right, to give me input, instruction, negatives, demoralizing derogatives, and criticism in their minds . . . they enable the work with their financial resources. This is a transactional event for them. Whereas in most industries and fields, workers exchange their time for money, which involves instruction and direction from the employer, ministry workers are servants of the public, and servants of God. In other words, we exchange our LIVES for the honor of being the one's who serve, the one's who are diminished, the one's who everyone else thinks they should be accountable to ... well everyone. 

The learner in me wants to honor the one voicing a concern, to listen carefully and see if I have missed something important or overlooked a critical element of the work, to be approachable and understanding. No one knows everything, even if they have my education and experience. But there are positive ways to accomplish this, it does not have to be negative nor instructive. But arrogance and ignorance are not the path to growth on either side of the equation. 

We have to live with the fact of negators and instructors exist, who have little if any idea whatsoever, about what they are negating or instructing, but we don't have to let it be important. If you have a calling, if you have a passion, then go do it better than anyone else. Build, create, innovate and disrupt the world for the sake of what is inside you and your heart. Negators and instructors be damned.

First day back

First day back

Today was our first day back in America. While we awoke much earlier than we wanted, the weather is mild and the kids are great and the grandkids are great and I got to see my best bud for lunch and things don't get much better than this! It is an unbelievable 61 degrees in PA on the 22nd of December. I will take it! Ribs and shrimp for lunch, homemade tacos for dinner, craft beers, lots of PTA!!

Now enjoying it all without guilt or feeling like I should be working ... now that is the tricky part. But protecting the asset (PTA) is far more important than working 24/7 and far far more productive and most importantly, builds longevity like nothing else possibly can. 

There is a difference

There is a difference

There are some lessons that I learn more slowly than other lessons. I seem to learn lessons of leadership and development very quickly and I can incorporate those principles into my life in a surprisingly short amount of time, and suddenly, they are my new habits! I honestly think this is one of the advantages of growing older and wiser is more mental agility and flexibility. I know I know that this is a razor , where there is a fine balance where this mature agility and flexibility wars on the blade edge of mental decline. But that is a topic for another day.

So while I find my mind and heart more agile and flexible than ever, my body is not following that same curve. We are moving once again (the changing address and location variety), something we have done over and over again in our 30 years of marriage. Now I workout every single day for the most part. But there is a great deal of difference between my workout, with cardio and controlled lifting of weights, and picking up furniture, heavy boxes, and carrying them up and down stairs! Just like there is a great deal of difference between my mental and emotional versatility and my physical limitations and boundaries that I have tried to cross in these last eight days.

The mental agility is awesome! I am loving it! The physical limits are painful, and depressing, are startling! I am one person with both of these realities happening within me. So the plan of action is this, set the mental agility free and let it soar, address (as possible) the limitations of physically getting older. I need a more real world workout!

The curious combination of just enough

The curious combination of just enough

There are many ways to live life, and many people stay on the extremes either planning far too little, or over-planning everything. Those who plan far too little by my estimation, make it work because they are go with the flow kinds of people, the details don't bother them or they just aren't aware or don't care about them. This requires a high capacity for ambiguity and sanguinity that I simply don't possess. Those who over-plan everything have little capacity for chance or for ambiguity. They find comfort in working out all known contingencies and all possible scenarios. 

I on the other hand am becoming a fan of just enough planning. The Wild West approach of under planning and going with the flow at every moment is too stressful for me, yet after traveling over 80,000 air miles this year, I understand that there are too many factors at play, that no one can know ahead of time, to waste my life over-planning all that I cannot possible control. 

And then there are business trips like the one I am currently on, where there simply are not enough details to make all of the decisions that even could be made . . . so you have to decide what is just enough planning to cover the bases. Stay relaxed and anticipate what you can without panicking about what you can't know or anticipate. See the big picture and identify which triggers you need to pull, even if you don't end up using them. For instance, on this trip, I could not get an answer about travel to London Luton Airport from my employer, and that was problematic because 1. It is far outside the city proper, and 2. My flight departure time dictated that I would have to reach this airport during rush hour traffic. So with just enough planning, I pulled the trigger on a purchasing a seat on a bus from Victoria station to Luton at a modest fee of 13 quid. At the end of the day, I ended up in a taxi with the boss and did not use my seat on the bus. Yes I lost the 13 sterling pounds but I saved 1000 quid of worry - just enough planning.

Of course in a perfect world, the employer would have simply communicated the details and told me that we would be sharing a taxi to the airport. However, few things in life are ideal. Not only that, had we not been in the taxi, I probably would have missed the flight, because the M25 and the M1 were both crawling at a snail pace, and only a professional driver in a nimble Mercedes could have gotten through it all in the end. Just enough planning is the conscious decision to not worry about much of what you can't control anyways, and acceptance plus responsibility for those things you probably should cross and dot.

Managing myself

Managing myself

There is probably no other area of my life where I have made the most significant changes, than in the area of managing myself. What that means sometimes is that I have to fire my wife. I had to fire her again yesterday. Taking on her drama's (she works with women, lots and lots of women! = estrogen hell), taking on her challenges, is very poor management of me. Especially when she so rarely does what I suggest! I fire every client who wastes my time in such a manner. Now don't get me wrong, I love her. I just don't want to put her or myself into a client - developer relationship. It ruins our marriage. I want her to be my wife, and I will be her husband, and we will enjoy the kids and the grandkids together. Our business lives must stay separate in order for me to manage myself well. Your mileage may vary. I know couples who are attached at the hip in work on top of everything else, and it seems functional for them. Not for me. So I mentally fire my wife as a client - that is good management of me and my limited resources.

Good management of me is the power of saying no. Perhaps you just survived (barely!) another Thanksgiving holiday, where you over-ate, and then you ate some more, followed by pies you could barely taste since you were so full it hurt already, followed by more sitting and more eating as the football afternoon wore on. Regret (and pain) is mostly what you felt that evening, and the next day. You managed yourself poorly. I had that precise experience for probably 48 of my 53 Thanksgiving holidays in my life. Well that is no longer my experience. I can and did say no. No to overeating, no to stuffing myself instead of the turkey, no to excess, no to anything that would harm me or leave me with regret or pain. I survived the whole Thanksgiving four day holiday without overeating at any meal. Managing myself never felt so good. Of course, this is not a merit badge that you win and then forevermore never have to concern yourself with these issues again, no, this is the every single day of your life variety which requires a measure of big-picture awareness, and a good dollop of common sense, sprinkled with some "do I really want to do this to myself?" questions along the way. You can also apply this to the whole shopping gig too (Black Friday/Cyber Monday), they both are just complete deceptions and fake constructs to get you to do what is bad for you, and good for the stores and markets, to eat what you don't need and to purchase what you need even less, to buy for people you don't even like! However, I was very very very thankful during thanksgiving, I just said no to excess. 

Good management of me is most definitely denying the forces of disruption, which in the modern world would be TV and the Internet. They are both designed to interrupt our lives, and not only that but to dictate what we learn, see, do, investigate, pursue, purchase, wear, reach for, want, question, doubt, find important, research, and know. I categorically want to deny any force that much power. I started strangling the power of these two about eight years ago and it was the best direction change I have made in my life in a very long time. I now willingly watch about zero hours of TV annually  (I can't control what happens in other people's homes unfortunately), and I have watched a grand total of three movies in 2015 (even while logging over 80,000 miles of flying), can you imagine how many hours of my life just those two actions give me back in a year?!?

Instead I read and read and read. I discover, I learn, and retool, I develop, I exercise to be fit, I exercise mentally to be mentally fit, I manage myself in such a way that I embrace the responsibility of becoming who I am. As Dan Rockwell said in a blog this morning, "You are the reason you life is the way it is." Yes. You. Are. Yes. I. Am.

I get to!

It has been great reading all the Thanksgiving RSS feeds coming into my Reeder these last few days. Just listening to all the ways different people experience thankfulness and gratefulness is very rich, no matter what walk of life they come from or live in. Three really stood out to me. I really liked what Laura Vanderkam said she learned by keeping a journal of thankfulness and gratitude for a month, leading up to Thanksgiving. The best take away for her was that it was creative and forward thinking, "I’d remember that I was committed to finding three wonderful things to write down that night. Rather than sift through the crappy things that happened earlier in the day for something vaguely positive, I’d try to engineer something cool in the remaining hours before I went to bed." She really made me stop and think with that observation/action. It was a slight epiphany that I can MAKE something good out of this day, even if it has been totally in the crapper otherwise.

The second was an excerpt from Oliver Sacks' book, published posthumously, "Gratitude" and what he wrote about dying is rich: "I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure." It makes you want to cry with the depth of what he wrote, but most of all it makes you want to LIVE!

Finally, the one that has been occupying my mind the very most today is what James Clear posts each Thanksgiving Holiday that one of his coaches taught him in college, about how to be a thankful person. Change just one word in your life says Clear, you "get" to. Not "have" to, but "get" to. And folks, that changes everything. I get to get up early and work out, I get to work, I get to provide, I get to create value, I get to change the world, I get to stay faithful and true to my bride, I get to serve God, I get to live the truth, I get to work hard and make a living, I get to work in some of the craziest places on earth, I get to meet some of the most lost people on the planet, I get to see some of the grimiest places known to man, I get to experience jet lag more than anyone I know, I get to love this one wild beautiful life that I have been given. I am thankful.

Last day of warmth until May probably

Last day of warmth until May probably.

It's been a great three weeks in Asia, so productive, so restorative, complete detox! Today is the last warm day until Spring for me most likely. Kimmy told me it was 27 and very frosty there in York PA this morning :-(. Don't get me wrong, I try (and mostly succeed) to maximize Winter to its best as well, but cold weather begs for different things than warm weather does. Warm weather begs me to sweat, and the more I sweat, the more water I drink and the less beer I want and the lighter I eat, etc etc, it is such a natural detox place to be. I have often said that I feel 10 years younger in Asia, and for someone who regularly acts like a 12 year old, that is saying something! Truthfully, I feel as good here, as I did in college, and that was a lot more than 10 years ago. 

Cold weather can be a rush, as you fly down the slopes on skies or a snowboard, or sit in a pub with friends drinking some local wizardly created beverage. But I don't sweat, I don't get outside nearly enough, I don't have blazing moments of creativity or inspiration.

Today I am sitting here on the rooftop in shorts and a tee. Tomorrow before the day is over I will need wool socks and a jacket at the very least. I clearly need some new strategies for making the most of the wintertime and not making any excuses for the slow down of my brains and my success. What about you?

Post crash thoughts

Post crash thoughts

I have had a number of amazing things happen to me over the course of my life, but perhaps none as wild as walking away from getting hit by a car while on my bicycle 48 hours ago. It goes without saying that life is a fragile thing, and can change in the blink of an eye, through no fault of our own. Although in this case I do bear all the responsibility of making sure there is nothing zooming through the intersections regardless if I have a green light or not. Needless to say, I have been much more vigilant in watching the traffic!

I recently had a close friend bemoaning the need for diligence and vigilance, but he got little sympathy from me, and would receive even less now. If we are to have any choice in our destinies and any say about what lives we lead, then diligence and vigilance and faithfully choosing the most important actions that produce the results we want, rests squarely on our own shoulders. Leading lives that are at the capricious whims of others is the very last thing a thinking man wants. While my friend may be correct in that this can be exhausting, the other options are unthinkable. No thank you.

All the life any of us have is this moment, there are no yesterdays and there are no tomorrows yet. Have a care, make this moment count, do what matters now.

Hit by a car

Hit by a car

Hurts like hell. Just so you know, I am a very careful person, even though I do dangerous things. I manage risk like no one you have ever met in your life, but I made a classic mistake today and am fortunate to have lived through it. The mistake I made was thinking like a westerner when in Asia.

Westerners look at the lights in an intersection. Asians look at the traffic. Usually when I am at the top of my game, I do both. However today, at the very last intersection in my 53 mile ride, less than a block from my rooms, the light turned green, and maybe my mind was mush by this point or something like that, but I just started pedaling through the intersection because the light turned green. I did not look at the traffic obviously because . . . 

Late model gray Nissan, barreling through his red light, smashed into me broadside and sent me flying. Now in Asia we always say WHEN you are in an accident, not IF you are in an accident. And it finally happened to me. Did I tell you it hurts like hell?

However, any accident you walk away from is good in my book. Nothing broken, although I have road rash and a huge raspberry on my hip, sore as bear, and I am sure the aches will be especially loud tomorrow, but I am alive and that makes it an early Thanksgiving! Lesson of the day? When in a different culture, take extra care to pay attention to the details, they really matter. After 21 years of living abroad I should know this better than most.

Robbing people

Robbing people

"DON’T ROB PEOPLE OF THEIR PROBLEMS I am not saying we should never help people. We should serve, and love, and make a difference in the lives of others, of course. But when people make their problem our problem, we aren’t helping them; we’re enabling them. Once we take their problem for them, all we’re doing is taking away their ability to solve it" - "Essentialism" by Gregg McKeown

I am consistently astonished by how many people want my input primarily as a problem solver, an obstacle remover, a resource of taking their problem and carrying some (or all) of that weight for them, the solution, the short cut, and the one who will become co-responsible for the problem. Stop. Right. Now.

It was a pivotal and epic moment in the life of the Aderholdt family, Fall of 2008. I gathered everyone around, my wife and my three young adult children, and I told them that I was through, I was finished, I was no longer the solution to the challenges that they faced in their lives. I still loved them, perhaps more than ever, but no longer was I the answer to anything.

Within a few years I expanded that audience to all my working relationships. The freedom is profound. The results for them empowering beyond what I could have ever imagined. The emotional balance is astounding. Try it. Your need to be needed is crippling you, and those you love and work with each day.

To Mark and me

I was reading a novel on my flight to Asia this past weekend, and while it was not a leadership book or a business book or even an important book, (I was just chillaxing) there was a powerful line or two in there. "Most people aren't really living. They are just planning, remembering, or regretting." 

I thought that to be powerfully accurate. While there may be more than the three listed options of what people are really doing, I find far too many of my associates, neighbors and acquaintances, not really living. Too I find myself horribly guilty of those three tasks far more than I am guilty of living.

Living means being here now, living in this moment. Not in the future because that is planning. Not in the past because that is remembering. And not in the negative because that is regretting. Well there is certainly a place in life for all three of those things in different measures, but I rob the present of all that it is and could be, when I focus excessively or obsessively on any one of those three (or others).  

So I am practicing being all here right now for the majority of each and every day. And I am flabbergasted at how difficult it is proving to be.  I have always labored under a "destination disease" cloud. As a young boy even, I remember how I would escape from the present by dreaming of all the different places, worlds, cultures I read about in books, endless books, I think I read for 15 hours a day some days. Then as a teen trying to plan, dream, scam my way out of that small town I grew up in and the life that my parents had built for themselves. Then in college where the dream was cast over and over to go and win the heathen at any cost (or some variation on that theme) and I drank the koolaide all the way to the bottom of the glass. Then in ministry, grad school, ministry again, all the time resolutely looking toward "the field" never realizing (or perhaps just not acknowledging) that some really wonderful things were happening along the way. I missed the impact and significance of about 80% of each of those days, because I was always planning something greater, reaching for more, in such a way that I lost all of those immediate, those present moments, those irretrievable nows, that will never be quite the same again. And I could go on indefinitely with this confession, as it reaches far deeper into my existence than this short paragraph can communicate or bear.

Long story short, I am still practicing this one diligently. And while I still have far far to go to call myself a success at this, I can honestly say I have done more living in the past three years, than I did in all the previous 50 years combined. I am not proud of that, but it is a great deal of progress for me. Three years ago this month a dear friend killed himself. He is no longer living on this plane of existence, but neither was I. Now I am determined to change that every single day. Here's to you Mark.

Anti-fragile

I am enjoying some beautiful autumn weather in the USA, and October may be my most favorite month of the entire year. It's perfect weather for motorcycle rides, for grilling out, and for clear beautiful days. Right now in this moment, I am sitting on the front porch enjoying a beautiful sunset and a great Honduran cigar. This is excellent PTA for almost everything that could be wrong or right in a person's life.

However for the most part I continue to undervalue and under appreciate the need and requirement of PTA. Even when I see, feel and experience the daily benefits of doing it, unprograming 50 years of "exhaust yourself to the maximum" and "run yourself ragged" and "busy equals valuable" bullshit, it is still hard to "feel" that taking care of myself is an important critical component of working hard and getting the mission accomplished.

But it is, ever more so as I get older and more fragile. I don't feel older and more fragile, yet the reality is that I am. Spending lots of time these days with my parentals as they struggle desperately convinces me of it, as I am less than 20 years behind them. 

So I will take these moments of thinking and peace and pleasure and care and let them do their wonderful work in my body, soul and mind in order to make the biggest, and longest, impact possible.

Difficult places to get to

After three days in Kusadasi Turkey, I have a renewed appreciation for the beauty of this part of the world. One of the very few advantages of my life and work (there are far more disadvantages most days, and you need to have compensation strategies to overcome them and mitigate them) is seeing some beautiful spots and amazing views. This of course is balanced out by the difficulties of travel and the hours spent getting to and from such places. But then again, if they were too easy to access, then everyone would go there and they would quickly lose their beauty and uniqueness.

This is a good metaphor for important work too. If you want to create or be a part of something beautiful and unique and special, then getting to that place can be plenty challenging and exhausting. More importantly is what happens once you get to the work place destination. You can't just stop once you are there, as all beautiful places in life, it is part of a larger journey. It is more a stopover than a final stopping place. As I recommended quite a few times to my clients in Kusadasi this week, you may need to look forward to four or five years down the road, and deconstruct how to arrive there, working your way backwards to the present. It is often a very helpful process to some really amazing experiences and destinations.

By the way, while I haven't posted much here recently, it is not because I haven't been writing, but I have been going deeper and polishing more, rather than popping one or two off to you my readers. So those potential blog posts are sitting in the percolator getting "cooked" some more, before they are made public, and frankly they may never reach your eyes, because they are not good enough, or provide enough clarity to whatever subject is at hand.