Floods headwinds and waiting

Floods headwinds and waiting

It was a disaster from the beginning, or you would think. When I opened the door in the pre-dawn gloom, there was six inches of water lapping at my feet! You know something is wrong when the water is that deep in the main dining room! Someone left the spigot tuned on! No! When I turn it off, the water keeps pouring. Burst pipe. I am here alone. Not my house. No idea where the water main is, and it takes me 30 minutes to realize that I can't fix this (i.e. stop the flow/flood) and call for help.

By now my morning ride is way behind schedule! And I have a full day beyond that scheduled. All you can do on a day like this is pedal harder and make up for lost time. If only it had ended there. So when I finally get on the road, I have a headwind right in my face, slowing me down, holding me back . . . you just keep on pedaling, and face the fact that while it is mentally twice as hard with a headwind, it is only actually slowing you fractionally.

And then with the breakfast break it continues. After crossing three incredibly steep and long mountain ranges, your body needs food! And so I stop at my usual place. Where I usually get my food in less than 10 minutes. Of course not today. 40 minutes later I am finally rolling out there, way way behind schedule. Pedal harder, focus more, keep pedaling.

And the final stretch finally comes into view, the last eight miles of the 56 total. And I hit every single traffic light as RED. All six of them. And now that I am out of the mountains, headwind again. Pedal harder, focus more, keep pedaling. Resilience and consistency and effort go a long long way. I made up almost a hour of time by pedaling harder, focusing more, keep pedaling. Even all these factors that I could not control, only pushed my schedule back by 20 minutes in the end, because of intensifying what I could control. Me. 

We are stronger than we think.

A babe in comparison

The trafficking and rescue operation was really amazing. Things have changed so much there since I was last cleared to visit the facility. This time I actually got to speak with six of the girls, as they shyly practiced their English on me. And since Asian men generally color their hair until they die, they all thought I was older than dirt with all my gray beard and gray hair. I had a good laugh about that, because I feel about as old a dirt much of the time. But compared to what these girls have gone through in their horrible short lives, I am a babe.

Comparison to those who you think are better off, rich, pretty, younger, more carefree, or whatever, is a great joy stealer. But sometimes, comparison to those who are far worse off, can be an excellent gratefulness, thankfulness, appreciation generator. I practice gratefulness each day on purpose, but this was sobering at the realization of how very little suffering I have ever experienced in my life. As if the Khmer Rouge was not enough to destroy Cambodia, then the traffickers, and the sex tourists, and the sex-pats and those who want to hurt and destroy, generate a system of slavery and abuse that affects every level of society. 

While I am thankful for all the privilege of my life, it is not enough. One has to take actions, give ferociously, work tirelessly, and make change happen for the sake of these individual girls, but also for the sake of the world at large too. This is what we get to do. Don't miss your part.

The contrast

It is a hot sweaty 99% humid Siem Reap Cambodia evening. Sitting by the pool having a fine cigar and a Jamisons. It is quiet and peaceful here where I am sitting, but that was not the experience a few moments ago in the night market. Endless offers, requests, propositions, hopes and wishes. Very dangerous for a man walking alone! 

It is difficult thinking about how close to the edge of survival these people are, and how little money was being asked for these proposals. As a friend of my recently remarked, we have never known what it is like to live like this. So close to disaster all the time. Desperate to eat today. To feed the kids a single meal a day.

Makes one despair unless you dig in and resolve to make a difference in this world. That is why I am here. This is what we were made for. This is what we are called to do.

I am being managed!

I am being managed!

It was shocking to discover. Not. Of course I am being managed. Mr Tsa has long been impressed with my abilities to burn through his bike repairs. I stretch chains faster than anyone, destroy front brakes faster than anyone, and log more miles than an antelope. So when I show up at his shop to rent a bike for the month, of course he is gonna manage me. He has 10 years of experience fixing my wear and tear on bikes. 

He started laughing when I showed up today. He said, "even I did not think you would be back for repairs this quick." I mean I have only put 400 measly kilometers on the bike these five days. But he happily told me why I was riding this bike, rather than one of his fancy bikes - he knew he was gonna have to fix it three or four times this month. And now it is as good as new. I mean I can't help it if it rains all the time nor that the mountains are so steep.

This is only one example of me being managed. I could tell you ways that my wife, my dad, my neighbors are all managing me. You are being managed too!

So the question is not if I am being managed, the question that is important is WHY am I being managed?? There are bad reasons for being managed, like you are a problem child, or like you are a bad attitude poisoning everything in your wake, or you horriblize everyone you talk about, or you only see the bad in everything, etc etc.

And there are great reasons for being managed, like I am a stud on a bicycle and yet Mr Tsa needs to make a profit. And reasons like I also bring great value to the lives of my wife, dad and neighbors, and so they manage me to keep things humming along. These are the calculations that we all make in order to keep things in the best possible balance, and to make sure that we raise boundaries against damage to ourselves and those we care about and those we interact with every day.

There are so many possibilities

There are so many possibilities . . . 

It can be paralyzing. It is imperative that we find and groom our best selves - to be more. If we fail to accomplish this, the best of those possibilities will never get sifted, tried, sharpened, experienced, polished, and this needs to happen on my own terms and definitions, not someone else's terms (to raise the bar, not make it more manageable). No whimpering exchange of time and effort for money. This requires far more risk, because I gotta own this.

You have to know your calling, how you can best serve, what you were designed to accomplish, what you are made of, how much grit you may have, where your lasting contribution will be made, what you are compelled to accomplish. This demands you push yourself on a completely new scale. This requires far more risk, because there are no more safety nets (actually they never existed before, but most delude themselves into thinking that there are safety nets around them).

In this VUCA world, remarkable leaders are more sorely needed than ever before. Take the chance, stop living a 9-5 life, and let's go change the world. It will probably take and cost everything, and then you are only at the beginning. But you can't take it with you when you leave this world, so why not die by living the most audacious life possible - life was meant to be spent (Wilson).

If this does not sound like you, or at least the you you want to become, then hit delete, this is not for you. Your possibilities are limited. Your risk is low.

We leave 15 minutes early?!

Anyone who spends as much time as I do, chasing flights and connections around the world, can tell you what a rare rare experience this is, for a flight to leave early. Not on time and not when scheduled, but early. I think this happens to me about once every 100 flights or so in a good year. This is the first time in about 2.5 years that this has happened the best I can recall. Needless to say, this is a huge anomaly. It bodes well for me, if this is the standard that the entire 3.5 week trip entails. I could really use some better than expected, or better than the norms experiences. Too much has been really disappointing in recent weeks.

What makes this early departure so great is that it exceeds my expectations! So few companies do this on a regular basis, that when it happens, it is worth noting and remembering. I regularly experience this with all things Apple, and most things Amazon. That is why they have not only my regular faithful business, but also endless recommendations to others in all my networks about how great they are and have been etc etc.  These recommendations are worth three to four times as much as my personal business transactions with these two businesses.

Apple and Amazon get it. They will work tirelessly to give me "exceed my expectation" experiences. Anything else for them would be a failure. And this is not to say that every product I purchase from Apple has been perfect. Nor is every transaction with Amazon and their market solutions always perfectly satisfying. But they are stellar enough that they are head and shoulders ahead and above anyone else out there. Can't believe that I used to feel this way about Toshiba computers, and then Sony computers, neither of which would I use as a tire chock for my 20 year old Renault today. You would have to pay ME big bucks to summit myself to those experiences again.hu

And why did I recently stop using Holiday Inn affiliate hotel, Candlewood Suites? Because of one horrific gaffe and all the little gaffe's that followed as they tried to "make up" for a huge leadership failure. I had one of the worst experiences ever in a hotel on my trip recently to PA from GA. Repeated calls to the front desk received no actions, finally only a threat to involve the local police and deputy sheriffs got me any relief at 3:36 am. I didn't think I should have to pay for such an experience, but I did - $178.10 worth, of which they eventually refunded me a third, and gave me 10,000 useless points on a less than useless card which I will never be able to take advantage of. And they wrote me a bunch of letters apologizing. But they never once admitted that they cost me a nights sleep, that they cost me business the following day, and that they are responsible for the property and grounds that we all pay them money for, so that we can SLEEP! When 11 pm rolled around it became clear that the party was not going to be stopped by the local employee's, I should have taken responsibility for myself and moved to another hotel, regardless of the cost, because my clients are worth that much and so am I. However I have properly voted after the event, by taking my considerable business account to other hotels, and most importantly telling my networks that you cannot reasonably expect the previous hotel chain to step up and do the right thing for you as the customer.

So an early departure? Exceeding my expectations? Damn right it is important. It is the only way to keep customers in the modern world, and I am far more forgiving than most of my fellow travelers! You can reference this "Good" is not enough - Lead Change Group blog to see my point and my point of reference.

How much things have changed

No Malev Airlines, no Czech Airlines, no MAT airlines, and these three were the primary airlines I would have used each day when we first moved to Macedonia 18+ years ago. They don't even exist any longer. When I flew out today, I flew on Qatar Airlines! And sitting at the gates were four aircraft for Wizz Air (yes that is really their name and no English is not their first language), one Austrian airline plane and then this A320 for Qatar. I am sitting here snacking on warmed mixed nuts and drinking a 15 year old Glenfiddich writing to you on a computer thinner than the old paper books of long ago with a touch screen and a Bluetooth keyboard, neither of which even existed when we first moved to Macedonia (and since I am going to rural Asia and roughing it a bit, I don't even have the nice new iPad Pro with me, but still the tech I do have with me was inconceivable 18 years ago).

That is the most basic summary of the massive world changing difference in air travel out of little old Macedonia in 18 years. Yes air travel is a lot less fun and pleasureable than it was 18 years ago, but many of the changes are for the better. More flying options, far cheaper, and the ability to actually get some awesome work done on a machine that does not even weigh a pound. And granted, this is on good days. Flying on those Wizz Air flights is serious Cattle Class battles ... 

And don't forget that my pilot is British and my cabin crew is Serbian and Macedonian  both schooled in USA Universities. While I may be flying a Muslim Airline, the staff is a great mixture of local and International, and all Western Trained. Having said that, this may be the oldest A320 I have flown on in two decades - no USB ports! No Screens in the back of the seat in front of you. I like it! 

The book I am currently reading "The New Leadership Literacies" says that the changes I am documenting here are nothing compared to the ones that will take place in the next 10 years! It hurts my brain to think about it! I can't wait!

Sleepwalking

I did not miss the irony that this post following the one entitled Rest, is Sleepwalking :-) . . . however . . . 

Too many days I can find myself sleepwalking through life. I don’t want to do this for even one single day ever. When I find that I am drifting along, and it is getting more and more difficult to focus throughout the day, then I am falling into sleepwalking. I am embracing ALL that could possibly be done, rather than focusing on and celebrating that which is most important to be done. I means I gotta resharpen my “no” and eliminate all the noise in life. I cannot do it all. Shouldn’t even try at this stage of my life, because i know far far too well that I can and must do few things well, and the payoff is clarity. No more sleepwalking!

Rest

A much overlooked aspect of PTA and DTA is rest. I am not talking only about the over advertised part sleep plays in this subject, but just rest as a central part of a healthy life. Far too many people start to scratch their heads at this point, because they have no idea what I am talking about. They are so overrevved and overclocked that rest is something no longer remember from their childhoods. 

I am currently on a rest. I am at the beach with all my children and grandchildren and nieces and their kids, as well as my parent, and even my brother's ex-wife! I know I know, that does not sound restful at all. But it is, because I am not emailing, video-conferencing, twittering, facebooking, browsing, studying, reading, or working at all. Instead I am having great conversations with my adult children, telling stories to my grandchildren, getting a tons of hugs, body-surfing the waves (and yes I am so sore I can barely move - priceless) listening to my son howl with laughter (this is something everyone should experience in their lifetime) and listening to the huge roar of the winning team in any particular game, no TV's are on (there are 7 of them in this huge condo), no one is sitting around staring at their phone, ok very little compared to normal, and this my friends is rest. Not to mention the hours of sitting on the balcony watching the storms, sunsets and sunrises while rocking in a chair. This my friends is rest.

Too much

Jon Wortmann writes that we are far far far too . . . everything. Our brains are simply not wired to stay engaged all all all the time. He points out that in the military when someone is on point, they rotate out every half hour, because few people can consistently focus intently for more than 40 minutes at a time without a break.

But most people in the West are living at the ragged edge, and their kids schedules are even worse! And we are constantly available to the entire world with our phones and the internet. We are so drained and focus depleted that we have nothing left. Work and the important things like love, relationships and living get the dregs that might remain. Add our constant movement from one place to another, along with the constant distraction of email, text and YouTube, then, well you get the picture, you live this life.

The problem with our global economy, political uncertainty, and reactive media is that too many of us are living at our edges. We work hard. Our kids’ schedules make us look like our schedules are calm. We play a lot. We travel constantly. We are on our phones frenetically. This means that our brains are always paying attention to something—until they can’t.

It is time to return to a more sane life, to regularly unplug and disconnect and have margin in our lives. This requires us to have a come-to-Jesus intervention in our schedules and expectations. Our mental health and our productivity demand that we do so. Let’s pace ourselves for the long haul, and a haul that produces more than frenetic movement and busyness, which by no one’s calculation is necessarily progress nor accomplishment.

You can read more of what Jon wrote here.

DTA

Those who are well read in the leadership and personal development fields are likely well versed in Greg McKeown and Essentialism - the diligent pursuit of less but better. One of the amazing ideas he espouses is PTA, Protect The Asset, and the asset is you! 

This is a wide ranging idea that covers everyone, no matter what your work, life and circumstances are like. If you have a high stress job that keeps you crippled and overextended, then PTA is the idea of making space and margin in that chaos so that you don’t burn out and and so that you can bring your best self to the work each day. If you have a high freedom job, like I do, then PTA takes a different bent.

As I was talking with a good friend/client today, it occurred to me in the middle of our conversation about PTA and the people we seek to develop, that a different acronym may serve us better - DTA - Develop The Asset, which once again is you and me. This idea came about as we were discussing that the key to successful development of others is development of yourself.

Read that sentence again. It is the crucial fulcrum of development, that I am developing me. This requires all kinds of intentionality and processes. As I wrote in my previous post about the Genuinely Wealthy, freedom to develop myself each day is real wealth. You can’t develop others if you aren’t moving forward yourself.

Genuinely wealthy

There are many many ways to calculate wealth. Most people just count the money. But honestly money does not equal wealth, at least not in my world. I have come to redefine wealth in terms of freedom. “Money pays the bills, but being able to control my own schedule and not miss out on family time is priceless.” That is true wealth in my world and in my understanding.  There are so so many ways to calculate wealth rather than with money alone.

First of all are the benefits that my current life brings me. The best perk is being able to define what I do and with whom and for how long. When I left my previous parent organization, this became one of the defining perks - that I no longer had to work with people I don’t like or care for or who are disgustingly negative with regularity. I get to work with the people that I can argue with yet not lose relationship over things, and that I enjoy. Best Benefits - the time to work out each day and develop myself each day and to invest in me each day. This alone is worth a 50% percent cut in pay, because the value is worth is 200%. Quite the payoff in my opinion.

Even though it is still 94 degrees on the balcony, I get to sit here and think and write and work on stuff that is important to ME. How do you put a price on that kind of stuff? You can’t, because it is more than a number in terms of what it means. I get to go to bed when I choose, I get to get up when I choose, I get to do what I want with whom I want each day, and that is worth more than any amount of money or financial compensation.

The genuinely wealthy don’t measure their lives in a a dollar figure. They measure their lives in advantages and benefits, and in non-monetary kinds of ways every day.

Enamel burning

There is nothing quite like the smell and taste of burning enamel, the kind of enamel that is on your teeth. In America, they numb you up so much that all you can do is vaguely get a small whiff of what is actually occurring in your mouth as they drill on your teeth. But here in Eastern Europe, four cavities filled with no novocain or pain relief of any sort, the smell and taste was keen and sharp. That was a two hour trip to hell today. I left the seat completely soaked and a puddle of stress sweat in my wake today. I had to come home and take a couple of hours to find my equilibrium again. Which included an hour long nap! Which I never do any more! That was probably my first nap in over three years, maybe longer. My neck feels like some hit me with a large hammer, and that I may never recover. I am such a wimp I know, but I totally had to come home and change every single piece of clothing today. These are the few times in my life where I miss North America.

It clings to you

Today I read, “... grief didn’t work that way. You couldn’t squash it out or get over it. You just had to get through it, but it was like a spider’s web. It clung to your skin.” So very accurate. It just clings to you and you never know how it may work itself out on a particular day. 

Yesterday was my brother’s birthday. He would have been 53 years old. I am appalled at how much that stumped me yesterday. How much that stopped me in my tracks. I had to take a long day to just grieve. So many lost moments and opportunities and moments of LIFE.  To just understand that I am alive and he is not and just be ... I am unaccustomed to giving myself so much compassion and space to just feel. It is hard to be patient with myself and let me grieve his going, and the hole that presents us in the fabric of life. 

It is not something you get over or around, just through. It clings and bites and hurts and costs and just is. Why does no one ever talk about the price that comes with grief? What it demands and what it takes? There is no calculator that can compute what price it extracts. I am not angry, just more lost than anything else. Just wish I could sleep through it all and wake up from this terrible nightmare.

When I am the first person on an early morning ride up the mountain, I catch all the webs that the spiders have spun across the road. This clings like that, nothing you can do about it but go through. 

pace and luxury

I have noticed something wonderful in the last three weeks, that my pace of work and life has coalesced into the perfect luxury. I can write! That is such a wonderful piece of life! But what I mean is that I am just busy enough that I can still write!!

Did I tell you what a great gift that is for me? It is awesome. It means that I have found the perfect rhythm, the precisely correct amount of work and tasks and activity to be my very best. The exact amount of focus and time and effort to produce the most amazing pieces. Everything has fallen in The Zone.

The best possible synergy of all things balance and life and work. The right amount of emails, video chats, calls and SMS to get done in a day. The right amount of demands and productivity to strike the perfect storm of production every day. This pace is a luxury unrivaled. Of course I am going to Ukraine next week and it will be wrecked once again. Then I am going to the States and staying with my dad and it will be a disaster once again, but this pace does actually exist. It is The Zone, that I can always strive for and toward. It will let me know when I am there, where work feels effortless and freeing and stress-free. Do you know what your right pace feels like?

This means that I say “no” pretty much to everything else that comes my way, regardless how sexy or awesome the opportunity sounds. The decisions you make about your life work and the important pieces of your life (not the urgent or loud pieces) need to be made in the cold abstract of deep thinking, not in the moment when the board is selling you on becoming their next CEO. And for clarity’s sake, I have been offered multiple CEO and other sexy positions of large power and money, and it takes me about 5 seconds to say no, because I have already decided what is important to me and life. This is not a missed opportunity, it is intentionally avoiding a horrible humongous distraction. 

July flies

As I am sitting out on my balcony enjoying a fine Dominican Republic cigar at the end of a 96 degree July day, seeing the mountain ranges to the West, and thinking about what a great month this has been, I remembered the July flies from my youth in rural Georgia. They are better known perhaps as annual cicadas which emerge in late July or early August.

I came around to thinking about those boyhood sounds and insects because I will be heading back to Georgia in a week and will be hearing them again. But that prompted me to reflect on how this month has flown by - July flies indeed. This is significant at the moment, in this cycle of life, as I have had one of the most productive months of the last 15 months, - because of deaths, weddings and the challenges of those life events.

Writing blogs is a great way for me to measure how productive I have been, because it requires time and space and the right mindset in order to write. And I have written more blogs this month, than at any point in the last three years. While they may not have been the best blogs I have written, they have certainly flew off the digital page so to speak. With my return to the States and living in the situation with my dad, this will come to a close.

That is not bad, it just is one of the realities of sharing my dad’s twilight years with him. No full attention to my thoughts and no deep work is possible, and again I state, that is not bad, because I know that I can still produce my best stuff given the right setting and opportunities. Something I was no longer positive was true after all the holes were torn into the fabric of our family these past 15 months. (I in fact wrote quite a few more than I published).

Writing blogs requires two things: the margin in which to order one’s thoughts, and the important work and experiences each day to make putting those events down in writing significant. Both are more complicated than that, yet that simple at the same time.

So yes . . . July flies . . . and has flown.

Missile avoidance??

I have to confess that although I have lived in some hairy places around the world, this was an approach like no other I have ever experienced. We were flying along, descending from cruising altitude like normal, when suddenly the plane drops to about 300 meters off the ground and begins a series of S maneuvers like I have never experienced. Either the pilot was drunk, or, the pilot was a proud Ukrainian and he wanted to give us incredible multi-G-force views of Ukrainian agricultural practices, or, the pilot was hugging the ground avoiding the Russian radar just down the road and taking no chances on meeting an incoming missile since they have already shot down one plane. My bet is on the last option, it is the only one that makes sense given the military action in the region. 

Then there was the end, which far more resembled a crash than a landing. I thought the pregnant woman in my row was gonna give birth immediately. I am not sure I have ever gone through a more painful and sudden landing in my long years of flying (over 40 years). 

Of course no information was given to us, and this is pure speculation, but it was definitely a landing approach I will never forget! 

The problem of no boundaries

Most Americans who grew up in the church will immediately think of moral boundaries or ethical behavior when reading this title, and we absolutely need those. That goes without saying. But I am more addressing the infinite possibilities that the world affords us today. I find this to be one of the most pressing personal challenges of almost every leader I work with in Europe, Asia and North America.

We have almost boundless choices and endless options. The possibilities that this creates for us in our work and life are astonishing. We love having choices. We can live amazing realities with all these choices. But all these exhausting options and flexibility is also The Problem. Because you have to CHOOSE. And if you choose poorly (to quote an Indiana Jones movie) you lose. You lose all the other possibilities and options that the other choices would have afforded you.

This, my friends, is the horrible conundrum of the modern world. So so so many choices . . . this we generally perceive as a great thing . . . but we have to choose, and this we generally perceive to be a bad thing.

There are in fact so many options, that I find ordering food at a restaurant in the States to be an extremely exhausting experience. And those aren’t even important choices! The choices I make about life and love and work and meaning and eternity are the critical ones, they convey all the significance of a life well lived, or all the regrets of one poorly lived.

As Eric Barker says, “You have to make a decision. The world will not draw the line. You must. You need to ask What do I want? Otherwise you’re only going to get what they want.”

OW?

This is my organizational handle. Everyone calls me this! In my previous parent organization, my name could split a room, divide a group, foster a new schism, create anger and chaos faster than Satan himself. In my new (well nine years now is no longer new, but since I spent 23 years with the previous org. this one still feels new) organization, I am the ambassador of peace, the bringer of wisdom, the force of stability and dependability for the entire network.

What changed? Well the pool changed, and my fish looks very different in this pool than in my previous pool. I did change some, but not much. I am still the same old salty dog crusty and unfriendly as ever. But how did I ever obtain the designation of OW - Obi Wan Kenobi? The famed Jedi master from the first Star Wars film? Only Yoda has more swagger than Obi Wan Kenobi! 

It is incredibly important to be in the right pool. As Eric Barker states in his book “Barking up the wrong tree, ” . . . but sometimes an ugly duckling can be a swan if it finds the right pond. The thing that sets you apart, the habits you may have tried to banish, the things you were taunted for in school, may ultimately grant you an unbeatable advantage.” 

Changing ponds/pools did not make me a better missionary or pastor or person. But it did completely and totally change my role within the organization. Maybe after you have tried everything for decades to make it work well, you have to change the pool to be a different fish.  May the Force be with you.

Something fixed something broken

Well it is Saturday and I am working hard at not working. Does that make sense?  Honestly relaxing is hard work, or effort, finding the way to just BE is so . . . seems to take so much energy! Clearly I need more practice and more success. Mostly I just need to chill I guess.

So lets write about it, that has to be good therapy, and good practice. So as I laid out my day to relax and chill, I had planned to take off to the lake for the second half of the day, spend the night, do some serious bike riding and then return tomorrow. But after I finished my sports massage I came out and the car would not crank. Not a happy experience under any circumstances, but especially after the car had been in the shop for 10 days!!

Thank God there was a battery store not too far away and so I had a new one installed and off I go. Thought I should give the old car a good test run before packing up and heading out and low and behold, I had a brake caliper or something start to freeze up and make the most awful moaning sounds and then I could smell the brakes getting hot. Got it to release by pumping the brakes some and headed back to the apartment. Since it is a stick shift, I was able to do most of the braking on the way home by downshifting. And since it was Saturday afternoon, pretty much everything is closed until Monday. So no chance of repair until then. And going out of town is now not an option.

So I made the best of a day with all the plans down the toilet and it has been good. Not perfect, but good. Another great cigar and another great view. Thus I got a new battery, but I need new brakes. And I am blogging! Another day in the hairy armpit.