Airplane communications

Airplane communications

This is means bad. I observed that on my two flights today that I might have heard and understood three out of 36 messages over the PA systems. When your communication system and or process is poorly done, or the equipment fails to help you give clear and concise messages, then it is just noise that everyone automatically filters out. The brain is designed that way it seems to me. 

I am paying attention to these matters more nowadays because I have been challenged to tighten up my communications. While I don't use an aircrafts PA system, my tools may be just as poorly implemented. Not only are the voice communications ignored, but also the signs employed on the aircraft because they often are not current. Like the fasten seatbelt sign is still lit even though all the staff are moving around the cabin. While there may be rough flying in the next few minutes, no one believes it because the cabin crew is braving it. I understand there may be different standards and rules of conduct between staff and customers, this particular customer needs to go to the bathroom. But I abhor breaking the rules, especially when I might regret it, even though I probably wouldn't.

Communication has to mean something if you want folks to pay attention and follow along. Communication has to be understandable in order to be viable. Just because you said the words out loud into the PA system and that may free you from some legal liability, it accomplishes nothing, if you can't clear say the words in one of the four or five languages I can follow.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

A cockroach in my grits

A cockroach in my grits

There are weeks in my life that I would rather forget. This week has been one of those in part. In "part", because there have also been some spectacular wonderful moments as well. But overall, it has been a cockroach in my grits. 

I use that particular metaphor because of the spectacular cockroach (if spectacularness is measure in size alone) I saw the morning the whole mess of the week began. 

So I have practiced over and over and over again, changing the narrative, changing the story I am telling myself about what is happening and why and what choices I have about what is happening to me (because in the end that is the only choice we have most times, and it certainly is the only thing we can control - our response), and then I even moved it up a level to changing the lens - not just the story I was telling myself, but moving (metaphorically) into a different seat, a different point of view, a position that varies from the one I think I am stuck in - and still the injuries mounted.

It has spiraled to the point that I am a little wary of even flying these flights today, even though honestly I am not superstitious, . . . really . . . seriously, I am not.

Perhaps all that is left to do is throw the whole lot out and start a fresh batch of grits? If the plane doesn't go down in flames, I think I will. Let's start by counting all the things I can be grateful for . . . and so it begins.

You really took my scissors?

You really took my scissors?

Seriously? I have always experienced that the smaller the airport, the more anal the scrutiny and abuses. Those scissors have literally flown 100's of flights, passed through 100's of security checks, been touched and handled and ultimately passed by 1000's of security personnel in airports all over the entire planet. You were just too damn lazy to even look at them, see their blunt tips, see how impossible they were to use as a weapon. In fact if I _could_ have used them as a weapon I would have stuck them in you somewhere!

Yes I am ripped. Hopefully this is the final, the very last injustice of my "cockroach in my grits" week that I have been having. The hysterically funny thing here (yes I am trying to find humor, solace, a reset button, in all of this), is that I have far far far more dangerous things in my bag, than were my beard scissors.

I have a lighter in my bag, I have a cigar cutter in my bag, I have creams that could blind you in my bag, I have my French press and my coffee grinder in my bag, all of which are more easily weaponized, than are my beard scissors!

Of course I don't have to enter into every fight I am invited to as Joe Callaway famously said, and so I guess my future strategy for world travel will have to be purchasing my beard scissors in bulk, like I do cigar cutters (because those regularly get taken in security checks - that is just the cost of enjoying a cigar). And this trip to Cambodia is just gonna have some wild hairs in it.

First of all we killed no one

First of all we killed no one

That was a miracle all by itself, because I am pretty sure we broke every single law in the country as we sped through village after village on our way to Battambang. We covered a three hour trip in two hours and 20 minutes. Our wake probably harvested some of the rice fields we passed in a blur.

I just kept my head down and continued working on my client work, rather than watching our constant near misses and getting all tense and frustrated and fearful. Death won't be any more or less painful because I saw it coming. I can't control most of these events in my life, the driver speaks no English, and I speak no Cambodian. Just trust Jesus and pray for the brakes.

Now the return trip begins in 41 minutes.

Dissatisfaction with yourself

Dissatisfaction with yourself

This relates to self-awareness. According to HBR only 10-15% of leaders are self-aware. The general population will be even less for sure. This is awful amazing. I meant to say it that way, because it is awful and amazing at the same time. To never or rarely consider how others experience you in the world, is a pure tragedy. The wake we leave in life needs to be considered carefully and regularly. Irresponsible living is the only other result possible. This line of thought is largely about others dissatisfaction with how they experience you.

However an aspect to a lack of self-awareness that is not considered very often is the dissatisfaction with yourself. I find 100% of the people who are dissatisfied with themselves, are basically about as self-aware as cement block. They can't figure out WHY they are dissatisfied, nor what things they need/could do to rectify the situations of their lives in a positive manner. This of course leads to ongoing never-ending dissatisfaction. It is a repeating circle of pain and unhappiness.

There are other negative results that come from a lack of self-awareness, and no positive ones unless you consider cluelessness throughout life to be a positive. Hell, just pay attention to your anger, stress and you will get tons of feedback about what you value and what your weaknesses are, if you think that you need some kind of special dispensation to excuse your bad attitude.

Wake up man! See and feel how others are experiencing you! You will eventually be a lot happier with yourself when you get a grip on this one.

Reframing your thinking

Reframing your thinking

There are a number of ways that leaders of every variety accomplish this, from changing the narrative that they are telling themselves all the way to changing the lens through which we view the scale and scope of the problem or opportunity before us. It is the last way that I want to focus on today. But let me state that the first one is really important too! In fact it has produced the best and largest changes in my day to day experience of any tool I have used in the last three years. And having shared it often with others, they too regularly quote it and practice it as well. I am sure it works.

But to change the way you think on a larger and deeper scale, especially as you get older, requires more than just changing the narrative, as powerful as that may be. Changing lens is necessary because the one most of us employ is from our childhood - and this is a very very different world than you grew up in and developed in. The lens most people use is just too limited to be very helpful. You need a better view, a better perspective to be able to reconstruct what you are trying to accomplish. Most people die with their best work still inside them, because they are using an outdated or too small lens.

When I was a boy growing up in MooCow GA, there was a woods behind our house. It seem large and huge and vast to me as a kid. Now I realize that it only covered a couple of acres at most. After living in five different countries over the last 30 years, that tiny forest was in reality just a stand of trees. But the lens of my youth could not see it for what it was. Having said that, it was adequate for what I needed at that time in my life. I need far far more today. Likely you do too. Especially as we get older, for the tendency will be to pull in our boundaries rather than forging new and expanded ones.

Whether you like what I am stating or not, it doesn't really matter, since you will invariably face opportunities and challenges whether or not you want this to happen. It is simply part and parcel of living. As long as you are living, you might as well live well and fully. My learning curve and my change curves are so sharp, that it makes my hermit soul shudder and scream! But in order to see the world, _my world_, as it really is, I have to move out of the woods of my youth, and fly high so that I can see the endless jungles of the Amazon or southeast Asia.

When we change the lens through which we are viewing the world, we can change our entire reference point. This is how we can thrive in the opportunities and challenges that we have coming our way. The questions that I ask myself each day to reach these heights, are "what value am I providing in this situation?" "What do I need to learn in order to help this move forward?" "What can I ask to help others see a panoramic view?" What will bring clarity to this situation or event or person?" "What needs to happen to see growth?"

How much do you need to be rich?

How much do you need to be rich?

Ok it might of had the smell of clickbait, but it was fairly irresistible clickbait. I bit. And it made me think hard about being rich, and that thought makes me stop literally (stopped here to text the kids and say thank you for recent actions). Ok thank you said. So clearly I measure the idea of "richness" more along relational lines than financial lines, but as I was thinking about it, you could measure it in a number of other ways as well. 

Lots of people measure rich in terms of experiences. Like this business class lounge where I currently sitting would be considered "rich" by many peoples standards and expectations. However I sit in a lot of business class lounges and not a single one of them equals the comfort and pleasure of sitting in my own living room. On the other hand, they are more comfortable than what those people outside of this lounge are sitting on. So business class travel I would put into the category of experience that the more rare it is, the more rich it feels. And now that I consider that thought more carefully the more I think that this will likely be true in most categories.

So what is rich, yet not in the rare experience category? Well I think that my relationships with my wife and dad, then my children and their spouses, and then my grandchildren, and then my friends have generally an even and steady flow of rich about them. They aren't rare, but they are almost always positive. That is rich of the first order. Hell, it might even be rare as well. Relationally and emotionally and spiritually and physically my life is very rich by any standards.

It was the financial amounts listed to qualify as being rich, which astonished me. When surveyed 1000 people said that to be "comfortable" financially they needed $1.4 million, or $2.4 million to feel "wealthy." While I may be very very rich in many ways, these numbers don't even feel real to me. Completely in a different financial universe than were I live. Not really all that interested in this much stuff because I want to own my stuff and not have it own me. I am already rich beyond counting. (You can read the article that got me thinking along these lines here)

Every year it gets more difficult to change

Every year it gets more difficult to change

This is more technically known as "cognitive inertia" as most of the time we find ourselves searching for and seeing confirmation for what we hold as true or accurate - confirmation bias they call it. But change is more important than ever as we age, and in fact is one of the few undeniable things that we can't avoid if we want to continue to have a life.

Yet increasing years and the culmination of experience and our histories, combined with a nostalgia for the well-polished past, selective memory about ourselves and our actions, decreasing mental agility, overflooded minds, under-active imaginations, little play, ever more limited energy, and obsessions with health issues, among a hundred other concerns and foci, make change take on an oversized pressure and challenge. It "feels" more difficult, and that becomes a self-fulfilling experience for most as the years pile on and on.

All of this came to mind today as I met a "husky" young man this morning as I was starting my daily bike ride of 11 miles straight up the mountain. I immediately felt terrible for this young fellow. Husky was the polite word used for overweight boys in the 60's and 70's. I bought jeans out of the Sears and Roebuck catalogue in the "husky" section. I continued purchasing clothes in husky sections and the big man sections, and then XXL sections of stores until I was 50 years old. And honestly I may do so once again in the future. But miraculously (for me), I changed.

I changed my belief that it was in my genetic makeup to be overweight. I changed my belief (i.e. excuse) that I had no control over my weight. I changed what I thought was an appropriate amount of food to eat each day. I changed my acceptance that I did not have the personal resources or self control to take charge of my life. And as I said, it would be ever so easy to allow my discipline to fail, and for me to return to my husky state of existence, but at least for the last six years, I have been weight-appropriate for the very first time in my life. But if I do return to that undisciplined state I lived in for 50 years, it won't be because I no longer believe that I can't change. It will probably be because I am a lazy butthead, or some other nonsense as that, but I HAVE done it for SIX years. I did and have changed.

Some other things I am thinking through about changing are like: work, alcohol, church, what kind of son I am to my dad, purpose, significance, meaning, impact, technology, communication, power, money, retirement, and my wake in life ... I am at various stages of reassessing these matters - all of them.

I am intentionally and consciously changing and reassigning these matters importance in my life, and what I will choose to do about them. This kind of thinking is "thinking about thinking" kinds of reassessment. The very foundation of change. I have been meeting entirely too many people my age who are walking through their one and only life sleepwalking, or at the very least just waiting for it to end. So perhaps this blog will not resonate with you at all, but perhaps it will shake you up enough to realize that you are largely the sum total of your choices and beliefs and that you can chose where you stand on each one of them and do it differently. They call it change, and it will never be easier than today.

4:53 am and the sky is lighting up, but am I?

4:53 am and the sky is lighting up, but am I?

Yes this means that I am back in Macedonia, where the sky begins to color and the Muslim call to prayer both are happening at 4:53 am. It's been a very short night and will be a very long day as my jet is lagging more and more with every trip I take it seems. This is a day for strong coffee, grit and low expectations.

But I am in the world where I am this morning, Eastern Europe. And only I have the decades of history and experience in this place where I am. Only I have walked the paths that I have walked and with the peeps that I have walked this life with alongside of me. I have a definite unmistakable perspective that I can bring to these situations and these lives here. I have unique insights because I am unique. Perhaps I can even be astonishing and world changing with the ideas that are floating around only in me.

Seize the opportunity to be you today. There is no one else like you anywhere else, and we need your best self. (I am beholding to Nilofer Merchant for spawning these thoughts in me today)

Five Guys, . . . but not those five guys

Yes I wish this were a post about Five Guys, the bestest hamburger and freshest fries in the whole world kind of place, but it is not. Instead it is about you and me becoming like the five people we spend the most time with, or as Jim Rohn said it, we become the average of the five guys we spend the most time with.

The terribly difficult thing for many people who work regular jobs, is that they have little control over who they spend the most time with because their daily exchange of time and energy for money (work) dictates who those five people will be. I know. I "worked" for 33 years. Never had any real control over those five people.

But this is both true and not true, because now that I run the company and I only pick people to work with that I adore and value, I have come to realize the power of these choices is breathtaking. I have a number of teams of five guys that stretch pull push bulldoze smack shove force invite and tease me to be the best version of me. In fact one of the leaders of one of those teams of five, JS, I often say to him, "may I be the man you think I am" as I sign off on one of our great emails (that are often more meaty than actual conversations with regular mortals). And if you are fortunate enough to get an email from JS, or even better yet BV, then you better put your thinking cap on and show completely up, because these guys expect you to bring your best self to the table.

Yet the five guys is not true in the sense that you can raise the stakes and make it 10 guys, or 15 guys, or maybe even 20, but I don't have the relational chops to intensely interact deeply with that many people. But Rohn still has a point in making the five (in my case I made it six) guys be an intentional choice on your part. Own your life, decide what average you are gonna be.

“You have the face of an Italian”

”You have the face of an Italian”

Yes this was actually said to me! I know that you think I am joking but I am not. I have been called many things in my life but this was a first. Maybe I should get my hair cut at that salon more often?

Clearly the police officer was delusional but like all of us, he has certain concepts that he is dealing with. In his mind, however strangely, today I looked like whatever concept or mental picture he has of what an Italian face looks like. Now no one in Italy thinks I look like an Italian, but I digress.

These concepts we all carry around with us, shape what we see. Moreover they cause us to see things that may or may not actually be there. Clearly they can misinform us as well as help us make mental leaps. 

So while we cannot, not have these concepts, we can treat them carefully. They are mental spaces where we store things, or construct things that keep our presuppositions and assumptions warmed up and ready to go. They can also be mental handcuffs that prevent us from seeing and experiencing and changing the world with our eyes wide open and our hearts engaged. So I need to regularly question how I think I know what I think I know.

My apologies to all my Italian friends, but I rather liked the idea of having an Italian face.

Space

Space

I don't mean outer space, I mean space in our lives to live them properly. In a world that seems to be ever hungry for more and more, faster and faster, higher and higher, I desperately feel the need for space. In fact we might take years to get all the space that we really need.

Space to think, space to innovate, space to care, space to make something important, space to be compassionate, space to change the world, space build, space to create, space to serve, space to consider, space to contemplate, space to work excellence, space to be brilliant, space to matter and more space and more space.

Are you making space in your life?

So much that could be done

So much that could be done

But that would require you and me to make space in our lives to do it. And that unfortunately requires trade offs. Trade off's suck because, well . . . you have to trade off something else of value. So in the end it is a triage of value. I live on this razor's edge all the time. I actually have come to the place where I count how many weeks a year I am in this physical location over that physical location. It is the sharpest kind of trade off, where the values are so close together that it is nearly impossible to find a difference in them some days. And you thought this was going to be an easy task??

It is easy you argue, you just need to see the big picture and which value you choose becomes clear. If only. The big picture makes a number of assumptions that may or may not happen. If you were as old as me and you were certain that I had 20 more years to live this out and share this life with this person or affect that series of events, then agreed, the big picture could make it easy to have clarity. But since neither I nor the individuals in question have any such certainties, that big picture is only one of many other possible futures. And yes, you can get completely and utterly lost in these kinds of equations and unknowns. So don't.

Instead, plan as if the big picture was knowable and doable and reasonably certain. But live as if all you have was this moment for this is true and certain. And I for one make plans within plans and live moments within moments - regularly adjusting to the new moments I yet have because there is so much that could be done, to change the world in meaningfully better ways. Don't allow the trade offs nor the unknowable future paralyze you into inaction. 

The struggle of constant partial attention

The key word here is CONSTANT! Occasional partial attention is altogether something else than what I am struggling with here. I literally mean constant. If you think I jest, know that at this very moment I am hiding in a different state, off the highway, in my truck, with my phone turned off so that under no circumstances can I be found, and once again have what little focus and attention I can muster be fractured. Constantly. Incessantly. Relentlessly. Unceasingly.

Instead of increasing my skills and abilities at deep work, accomplishing something important, completing with excellence those actions expected of me, I fight to even hear what has been said, to process the noise filling the room, to engage in anything more taxing than solitaire. While my presence here in this location may be important in a lifelong relational sense, to honor and respect the person I am with, the price is proving to be very very high.

This practice of constant partial attention is derailing years of discipline, decades of effort, systems that have been formed carefully over a lifetime. Of course if you have a TV in your house and you have it on for hours each day you too struggle with this same dilemma. I am talking about a person and a situation, but you might find yourself facing the very similar scenario where you are finding yourself ever further behind in the important business of conducting yourself appropriately and with excellence in the world.

You may need to find a secluded place to park your truck, in another state, turn off your phone, light up your cigar and get to work.

Bombarded with opportunities

Bombarded with opportunities 

One of the most unexpected and wonderful and terrible things that happen in your 50's is that you get bombarded with opportunities. Really. Great. Opportunities. Not generic run of the mill stuff, but really great opportunities. The kind you could only dream about 20-30 years ago. Now they are here, knocking at your door. Almost begging you to take them and seize the day and change the world!

You had darn well better be unbelievably good at saying "no" otherwise you will destroy whatever synergy/excellence/effort/experience brought you to receive these opportunities in the first place. Do you have whiplash yet? Yes this is the stage of life where your best opportunities come, and where you say "no" more and better, and more frequently than ever before.

Pay attention here, you are probably looking at all of this wrong. Offered opportunities are NOT an invitation to change the world, they are instead mostly a social phenomenon designed to ride your coattails, mine your networks, and get something for nothing. For these reasons and many more, as I said you damn well better be unbelievably good at saying "no" to the vast majority of these really great opportunities. Offered opportunities ARE however an acknowledgment that you are at the peak of your career, that you are providing consistent value in your field, that you have something important to consider. 

So while being bombarded with opportunities is a standing ovation kind of experience, the wise will be super selective and say "no thank" you to the majority of them . . . so that you can keep producing the awesome stuff that got you to this point in the first place.

The central coast effect

The central coast effect

When I got into the car to drive to the airport it was 8 degrees Fahrenheit. It was so cold that the defroster button was frozen so tightly that I could not get it to work. The horn was frozen and it wouldn't work. Thank God the car actually started and got me to the airport so that I could go somewhere 50 degrees warmer!

Now three beautiful warm days later, I have to head back to the colder weather, but at least I got a great reprieve from the harsh winter weather. This is what I am mentally referring to as "the central coast effect" or another way to say it is change the story you are telling yourself or a third version could be, let's change this tune so that we can have a mental restart and do something beautiful.

We need these "mental weekend trips" away on a regular basis, so that we can see and experience all that is the now in vivid sharp accurate immediacy. We can be all present if we don't feel like we are stuck forever in a frozen wasteland. As Earl is fond of saying, "everyday is beautiful at my age" so too is the beauty of the central coast effect in mid-winter. 

Proud of the wrong things

Proud of the wrong things

Society and culture can be a confusing experience. We are conditioned to be proud of how busy we are, how hard we push ourselves, how little sleep we get, how much we can drink, how much we can accomplish on the least amount of resources.

I don't know about you, but when I do any single one of the things listed above, it has only negative consequences, except for the humble-bragging rights. Those are not the things we should be proud of at all. Instead . . . 

Today I am flying to work as is my standard custom, but I feel strong and invigorated because I precisely HAVEN'T done any of the things listed above. I limit my work on purpose, I Protect The Asset (ME!) from pushing too hard, I slept 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night. I did not drink anything for the last week. I make sure I have the resourcing to accomplish the tasks I need to do. So I am cranking it out and getting it done and changing the world precisely because I am proud of all the "wrong" things, which are really are all the right things!

Foggy days

After a great party last night for a friend's 41 birthday, it was deadly difficult to get up at 2:30 am this morning for the rush to the airport for my early early EARLY flight. But I did. It's the adult thing to do, you know, that whole go to work thingy. But I am certainly a little foggy today. 

And not only me, it was so foggy outside this morning that I could hardly find my car! And no that was/is an actual weather phenomenon not a metaphor for my mental struggles today. That was in the previous paragraph. But I digress, it was actually so foggy this morning, that I was pretty sure my flight was going to be canceled which often happens here. (And I would have happily drove back home and went right back to bed!) A few years ago the airport was closed almost every day for a six week fog extravaganza! But alas, since the plane I am currently riding in arrived last night BEFORE the fog arrived, we had something to ride the friendly skies with this morning, and the fog has never been a problem for the planes taking off, only landing.

So my flight flew, and so have I. And now I have a lovely 6 hour layover in Vienna before heading to Naples, and then a bus and then a train, and if all continues to go well I will arrive at my destination, at my hotel some 18 hours after getting up at 2:30 for the rush to the airport. All in a foggy day's work.

All the snowy travel places I have been

All the snowy travel places I have been

I am currently in Zagreb on my way home after a great week of work in Bosnia. But it is snowing like mad outside and my flight is questionable. As I was standing outside watching it snow, all the airports and bus stations I have been over the years in snow storms watching it come down in buckets and wondering if I will get home or not came back to me.

First of all were the years we lived in Central Canada. There we lived in the coldest temps we have ever experienced and there were a number of ice/snow/cold travel experiences. The worst one was when I had to go down to Minot, ND to pick up Brenda's mom from the airport so that she could be there with us for Jake's birth. It was in the -35 to -40 degrees below zero range, and the defroster in the car could never manage more than a small circle of cleared glass on the windshield even with the defroster on high the entire trip.

Then were the years we lived in Russia, where snow removal was iffy at best and de-icing non-existent. Those were some hairy flights, take-offs and landings. And many a bus trip and the waiting for a taxi or tram were done in the falling snow for hours.

And then the last 18 plus years in the former Yugoslavia. I have lost count how many days and hours I have waited and waited and waited to find out if we were flying out or not. Tonight is just another one, in a long series of such events in the life of an International worker living abroad in cold climates. But eventually I will get home, even if I have to wait until Spring.

Zagreb work days

Zagreb work days

It seems that I get laid over in Zagreb at least once every year for an extended time. Between the last time this happened and today, hell they went and built a new airport!! The arrivals hall alone is bigger than the last airport altogether. Now I sit here at Nero Coffee enjoying space, time, quiet (before was always so crowded and noisy and intrusive) the warm sun on my back, a fine coffee, an excellent apple strudel, and free WiFi. Now if I were only well rested, it would be an ideal working day. In the past this airport was so crowded I would go to the nearest hotel and pay the day rate so that I could get some work done.

This layover is not quite long enough for that, but I am not sure that it is even needed. This ambience works just fine for 3-4 hours. So I am traveling light and fast, only a Timbuktu messenger bag for the three day trip to Bosnia. A few shirts, clean undies, a few socks, a few cigars, an iPad and couple of phones, and I can conquer the world of travel and client work.

Now if I could only resolve the Brenda Earl Asia conundrum I would be a rock star. That will be what I work on after I finish writing this short blog. THAT requires a great deal of thinking, and then, a great deal more thinking. Ah Zagreb work days at their best.