Exactly two years ago . . .

Exactly two years ago . . . 

I was on this same flight number, same airline, same destination, same route and when I landed in Atlanta my son Jake called me and told me that I was too late, mom had already passed away.  Not unexpected, not a surprise, but life-changing nevertheless. Another part of the fabric of life was ripped and can never be the same. A pillar in my life was destroyed and removed.

There is no way I would be sitting here and wishing her back with us in the same condition she found herself at the end, but God I miss her. I miss her laugh, her wisdom and her mercy. No one has those in the same qualities that she did. My life would be so much less if not for her. I may have come farther than any man before me in the history of the world, because of the influence of my mom in my life. I miss you girl . . . 

Powerless at foot drop

Powerless at foot drop

There is a point where you can experience the terrifying vulnerability of having your body fail you for no damn good reason. This powerlessness is awful. I wasn't even doing anything remotely dangerous or exotic or life-threatening (and I regularly do all three of those). No this came from sitting on a hard chair, for 3.5 hours, with my legs crossed. Yeah you can reread that sentence and wonder if I made a mistake or did not proof read my blog, but no, you would be mistaken. According to my nurse/neurologist, I effectively did nerve damage to my peroneal nerve by sitting on a rock hard chair for 3.5 hours with my legs crossed. This nerve damage results in a condition known as Foot Drop. Yes I damaged myself by being in a meeting!

Powerless. Because I sit on hard chairs all the time. I have almost no control over the chairs in my life when I am on the road traveling 100 days per year. I have been crossing my legs Euro-style for decades. Ok ok this was a pretty long meeting, but it wasn't THAT long! And I get up out of that chair and find out immediately that my left ankle and foot will not work properly. It's like they have gone to sleep without the whole tinglely thing. They will not articulate properly, they won't climb stairs properly, I am dragging my left foot like a cripple. Powerless.

Three weeks have passed since this first happened, and I am making tiny incremental progress each day toward normal functional foot and ankle. But I don't even have control over that process. There is no pill to take, there is no exercise to do, there is no decision that can be made to make things better. I am a terrible patient.

There is a special kind of trusting Jesus that is required when faced with powerlessness. And then over this three week period I realized that there is no special kind of trusting Jesus at all. We trust Jesus period, when we realize our powerlessness in any area of life. And frankly I am far more powerless in far more areas of my life, than I had ever considered before. It's ok to trust Jesus. It's foolish to trust your own abilities, because they can just stop working at any time with no notice. Jesus doesn't operate that way.

Careful to not let it touch your lips

Careful to not let it touch your lips

There are some wonderfully hot things in Asia, and some that you might need to be extra careful with as you experiment with them. The "pic-nam-blough " can be particularly deadly. And then I have found there is one level even above that, which I don't have an official Thai word for, but I privately call it thermonuclear.

I had that for breakfast recently with my fish and rice. There were so many peppers in there I could not see where the fish started and where the peppers ended. It was wonderful, unless you let it touch your lips. If you do that, expect 10-20 minutes of numb useless nerve endings that have been rendered unresponsive by the thousands of Scoville heat units assaulting them. I learned that I had better eat my pie first if I actually want to taste it. Then again I often eat my pie first, and last. Regardless, enjoy all the spicyness of what life has to offer, but be careful with the lips. 

Totally awesome change-the-world tech

Totally awesome change the world tech

I have accomplished more in 40 minutes on this airplane, than I did in the last 10 days combined. And I only used 4% of available battery power to do it. You gotta love tech like that. I could have pulled the laptop, but that goes through battery like a fire through gasoline. The iPad Pro, oh dude! All day working on this thing. The only limitation here is my imagination - and ok, that is actually pretty limited, but the tech isn't holding me back.

So I have jumped on four blogs on the first leg of my journey. That is huge, because the last three weeks I haven't had a single second to write a thing, and when I am too busy to write, then I am too busy period. What that really means is that I am too busy to think, and that has far deadlier ramifications. When I am not thinking first and foremost, then I am responding, and that generally leads to paths I had rather not travel. Not only that, responding to everything is just a tiny step above being a consumer, the bottom dregs of a life not worth living.

Instead, to be the designer of your life. It requires boldness and risk and that difficult "no" to everyone else's agendas. Stop living their lives. Start living yours. The tech is available. You are here now. Do it!

Doing the hardest things

Doing the hardest things

Lots of advice says do the most difficult thing first in the day, to get it accomplished and out of the way. It's the "eat your vegetables first" way of thinking. Well I have long known that I am a "eat your dessert first" kind of guy, so this kind of thinking and approach is not easy for me to do. I have discovered that it is difficult for many of my clients to do also.

It's really hard to have objective clarity about the next correct course of action in many situations. And even when I know what I should do, there are often many emotional non-logical reasons why I don't want to do it even though I know I should. If you never face these emotional quagmires, then you likely are not still fully human.

I was lying in bed, mentally reviewing the last several days, and there was a clear course of action that I should try, even though it may have failed, but an attempt was necessary on a number of levels in order to have integrity in the relationship at the end of the day. But there was all this messy emotional shit obfuscating my will to act and do the right thing.

Not only that, as is often the case, there was a very short window of opportunity, which meant I need to act quickly, or the opportunity was going to pass. So not only am I doing the emotional quicksand dance in my head, but I also have a ticking clock clanging in there! Opportunities don't generally sit around for weeks and weeks at a time. They come and go quickly.

Wisely I mentally gave myself a vicious kick that almost knocked me out of bed, and pushed all the messy emotional stuff to the mental corner, and took action . . . probably mere seconds before my opportunity vanished. I need to succeed more like this one. Too often I fail to act, or hesitate so long, opportunity lost. These are the hardest things to pull the trigger on.

Why - part three

Why - part three

First of all let me state that I am breaking this up into smaller bites, because too many of you are tld'tr people (too long didn't read). And shame on you. On the other hand, I need to speak more concisely and this is helping me do so. 

So "why?" no triage allowed? Because triage allows others to leverage your values and motivations and time and space and capacities and potential and gifts. Triage means that you have said yes too many times, and that guilt and pressure and mental/emotional games can be leveraged against you and your very limited time and energy. Triage means that you have too many choices. Choice is only your friend when you are in the Essentialism Part of your life, when PTA (protecting the asset) is easy and the first priority of each day. When I let my PTA slide then that totally should be the first and brightest RED flag that I am going the wrong direction!

Of course, there are clearly times when that is taken out of your hands, like this 30 hours trip to Asia, takes most of my daily practices away. They simply cannot be done in airports, and inside of airplanes, and while moving 5000 miles across the planet to a new spot. But the minute I land, I am going to the bicycle shop, to get the most important piece of equipment for my PTA, a bike of course. I won't ride it until the following day, because I will be out of my brain with fatigue by that point, but no going to bed, without setting myself up for success the following day.

If I land and instead have to follow everyone else's agendas, plans, needs and wishes, then I am doomed to triage rather than making the impact on this world that only I can make. This is the why. Keep focused. PTA. Essentialism. Make a real difference in the world.

No more triage

No more triage

Part two. So now that I have some time, and I have to confess that I did not MAKE the time, it was hoisted upon me by the airlines, distance, and layovers. However I am not being foolish, I am grabbing the gift that it is, even if I did not make it happen myself - and I should have.

Part of this reclamation of the essentials, my essentialism, is rethinking Mark Manson's book, "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k" because you get into these situations because of guilt and pressure and other people's agendas, not because you are thinking clearly. Manson's book reminds you what to care about, and quantifies how little you CAN care about and actually get something important accomplished. I was a glorified chauffeur and babysitter all week because I was too weak to have clarity and say no.

Oh yeah, you got to own this. No shifting this to anyone else, otherwise you will never have the will or power to escape the clutches of these endless intrusions into the important and significant contributions that you and only you, can make in this world. No more triage! Say no, and continue saying no until the bare essentials remain. Then knock them out of the park! If you are doing triage regularly, then you are doing this wrong. 

Why - part three.

Some time at last

Some time at last

Hopefully this will be a recall of my life, as in getting it back. As in it has belonged to others too long, and hell fire if you even get a thank you. That should teach me, and should have taught me decades ago but that is a blog for another time. Today's blog is about recalling what is Essential in your life, and why that Essentialism is critical to your effectiveness and well-being.

Before we do recalling though, let me say that this is the giving economy. In the famous words of Earl, all you have is what you give away. That being said and stated upfront, let's also make the painful observation that not all gifts bear the same fruits. So I am not suggesting that we give less, but that we give smarter and with more discipline. Quicker to say no, and slower to give our commitment, and in my case for the last two weeks, far far slower!

On to recalling. What is absolutely the most important thing for me to be doing and how do I structure my days to live it out? The more mental triage you find yourself doing as you answer this question, the  deeper you are into giving of yourself unwisely. In my perfect world, there is no triage. The essentials are apparent and all there is to focus on, not 99 other competing agendas and tasks and wish-lists that others foist upon you. Unfortunately the reason I am writing this precise blog is because I have recently gone to the dark side - the unwise side. I had to do mental triage to answer that question. Shame. The leadership consultant who doesn't follow his own advice. Shame.

Next blog - revisit your essentials and restructure so that there is no triage

24 hours

24 hours

24 hours of silence. 24 hours of thinking. 24 hours of not talking. 24 hours of not listening. 24 hours to contemplate. 24 hours to be. 24 hours to savor. 24 hours to focus totally and completely. 24 hours to change the course of my life. 24 hours to plan. 24 hours to finish important mental work. 24 hours to complete unfinished tasks. 24 hours to myself. The possibilities . . .  

The narrow band of remarkable

The narrow band of remarkable

I am not all that talented, and neither are you. Oh people look at you and me and if they see the image that we try to effect, they may think us powerful, purposeful and all-talented, but the truth is that you and I are not remarkable at very many things. It just takes too many years and too much practice and education and experience and gifting to be remarkable at more than a few.  I am perfectly comfortable with this fact, but I do get ever more weary of other people insistence that I am this or that or those kinds of experts and craftsmen. I am not. There is a saying used in every doctoral program, and mine was no exception - we realize somewhere along the way as we desperately struggle through our dissertations and defenses and research - that we know more and more about less and less. Read that again, because it is so very true.

I have a doctoral degree in leadership. I know almost nothing about leadership. However, I know a great deal about one little tiny corner of one large stone of thousands of large stones in one huge pyramid of leadership around the world. Yes I am remarkable about what I know and can do and accomplish in this one tiny corner, but precious little else. I can be remarkable in this one little fractional niche of expertise, and that has taken me a lifetime of work and learning and failing. How can I think myself remarkable at dozens or hundreds of other skills and knowledge-bases?

My dad and I were building a new well house last month. Well it would be more accurate to say that HE was building it, I was the gopher. He was appalled that I could not even drive a nail very well. I on the other hand, came to grips with my lack of carpentry skills decades ago.  In order to specialize my actual remarkable skills, I had to forego learning many "basics" that all southern boys are expected to know about and do at least a little respectably.  I am ok with that completely, he is still giving me grief over it. But that is his problem not mine. I know that a person can only master a few remarkable skills, and everything else I will have to let someone else be the expert. 

Since I understand this about myself (and everyone else) its easy to listen, its easy to learn, its easy to let other shine in their areas of expertise. I don't (can't!) know everything.

Motivation rises

Motivation rises
Motivation rises when you get a sense of the limitless possibilities of your work, or your relationships, or of your calling or business.  We can all accomplish more than ever before. Technology, communications, and travel have violently changed all the infrastructures in the modern world. It has changed so fantastically in the 24 years I have been working abroad, it honestly is a great deal like a whole new universe.

In Russia when we moved there 24 years ago, we spent more or less $300 USD each month for about an hour of actual phone time back to America or to Germany to talk to the kids. That's right $300 for an hour. Now I can talk to people on three different continents all at the same time and it costs virtually nothing, $40 a month for unlimited hours and conversations. That one piece alone is a game changer.

Flying used to be a big deal. People did not move around the globe all that much. Now I fly 100,000 miles a year, and so do lots of other people. It is not something I am particularly thrilled about, while the cost to return factor is great, the cost to the body and health is not. Virtual is the way to go. Read that sentence again David! While I am actively winding this one huge change in the world back, it is still a game changer. Now I am focusing more on longer trips but less trips.

Technology is the piece that makes all of this possible. My world is so different now than the big old computers I used to lug around. Now I basically hold a screen in my hand and it has far more computing power than I will ever use. I can also write on the screen, read from the screen, type and collate and compare, and a thousand other things on this screen in my hand. Simply elegance and astonishment.

But the biggest changes are inside me. You have to embrace all these changes, or they are practically useless. On the other hand you don't want to get overly enamored with the changes themselves, but rather how they alter the possibilities of what can be accomplished. These changes primarily affect scale and scope - you simply can do so much more with so many others than you could ever before. And along with these magnificent possibilities, comes new responsibilities to keep that genie in the bottle. But motivation rises with all the possibilities. Go change the world, its within your grasp to do so like never ever before.

The beauty of possibilities

There are so many ways to live your life, but for me, one rich with possibilities to make the world a better place is the most beautiful one to live. Leadership is the process of hope giving and hope making and realizing hope. The more possibilities a project has, the more hope angles you have to work with in any given situation.

It is very difficult and challenge work (read that word WORK again) to be a conveyer of hope. It requires that you explore, develop and most importantly, and the most difficult task, is to think. Thinking in these kinds of potentials and possibilities is the pivotal skill that leaders have to hone all the time. I have to remind myself regularly, that this is what is required of me. I have to be intentional and focused on the idea of the possibilities. This is what people pay me for, it is what I do best. It is beautiful. The next post will be about how this can happen in the real world.

Graveside

I come to the states about 3-4 times a year to look in on my dad and spend some time with him. That also facilities me not only spending some quality time with him but catching up on the chores around the farm place that are now beyond his physical abilities. They are many times beyond mine too! Needless to say, I have sweated a great deal since arriving a few days ago.

But coming here means that I visit my mom's grave site each visit too. The cemetery is always a peaceful place, well manicured and orderly, beautiful vistas and little to no noise for obvious reasons. Yet it is never a very peaceful experience for my heart. I imagine that missing her is a very normal experience, but it is not peaceful. The jagged hole her absence leaves in our lives is unrelenting.

Loss like this is something that everyone experiences eventually if they live long enough. However I think that the individual process is different for each person. And the closer you are to the person the more powerful the distress can be. My experience when my grandparents passed away was and is far less traumatic to my soul than my mom, and my brother's passing has been.  I don't like this stage of life very much and find myself sorely unprepared for it in most every way.

This is in memory of, or at least I am thinking about all the losses in the last two years alone; Donna, Dale, Josie, Tracy, Malcolm, Coach, Susie, Darla Jean, Dr Peyton, Doug . . . way too many funerals, each making life tougher and more precious at the same time. You and I have this one wild beautiful life, and what are we going to do with it?

This is my future unless I choose a different present

What? Where? When? How? Yes. All of these. Wherever you are in life, whatever you are in life, whenever you are in life, however you are in life today, this is your future unless you choose a different  action today. A different present. A new course of near-future experiences, actions, decisions, thoughts, risks, options, pains, pleasures, structures, networks, relationships, etc etc if I wish for a different future.

Yes this has to be navigated even as choice overload is also an ever-present challenge in modern life, but these choice you make, make you. The choices you have made up to this moment are the present you have, the current life you have, the situational result you find yourself in, and the only way to change the tomorrows is chose a different present. Right now. Not tomorrow. You are making a choice even as you read these words . . . even if it is a choice to do nothing more or different than you did yesterday which led to this present. Not choosing is also a choice. But never doubt that this is your future, unless you chose a different present.

Climb the mountain, change the perspective

It is always amazing and astonishing how different everything looks from the peak or high up on the mountian versus when you start the climb. We did that this morning in the Jarillda mountains of Spain. Even 100 meters of elevation gain, provided a nearly completely different view. But there are so many nuances here . . . the climb always looks easy at the start, but soon into the climb, you will change your mind about that!

Life is so totally like that, and this can be a powerful metaphor for helping you hang in there when the view isn't so great, i.e. things are almost always difficult to parse at the beginning. Really always. If you don't think they are tough, it is usually because you don't even have enough perspective to know that things are tough. (And count your blessings, that is not always a bad place to be in life. I purposefully choose ignorance in certain situations so that I won't know how bad it really is, but that is a post for a different day)

This post is one about being confused. The view of the surrounding terrain is confusing from the base of the mountain. You simply do not have enough elevation (perspective) to accurately map the reality around you. You have to stay with the climb long enough to gain that perspective and elevation in order to even have a chance of seeing the reality around you.

Most people I meet in life, bail on pursuing the trail, before they can gain perspective/elevation/inspiration/understanding of what really truly lies before them. Climb the mountain, gain perspective, be part of the 5% who reach the peak.

The metro - the melting pot of Berlin

The metro - the melting pot of Berlin

The guy siting next to me is reading Arabic facebook on his phone, the girl across from me speaking Farsi on her's, the kids behind me are speaking Her Majesty's English, the guy across the aisle is reading a Russian language newspaper, and so on and so forth.  I can't even recognize half the languages being spoken around me.

So if you want to see how metropolitan and multi-cultural and multi-lingual Berlin is, all you have to do is jump on the metro for half a line or so and you will get a good dose on any given day. This is so different than when I would ride the metro in Moscow. No language but Russian being spoken there. The contrast is astonishing.

With a view like this . . .

You should be able to change the world, be inspired to create the impossible with nothing, to challenge the assumptions of the ages, to matter to those who have little hope, to be significant in what you bring to the table, to design your thoughts and structure life to leverage the most amazing life ever . . . 

And on and on I could go but I won't. Inspiring spaces in which to work are great and I love every one of them. I love it when I get the chance to crank on my brain in places like this, because it is inspiring yes, but it is also a new context so I can think new thoughts and consider old ideas in new ways, all because of the ambience and the swirl of life and the energy going on in this place.

There are no slackers here. Everyone has a deep purpose, a reason for being and doing, its contagious. Choose and design your space. Today I am @ WeWork Berlin #dowhatyoulove

Why arrive early, the plane never leaves early??

Another delayed flight. Is there any other kind?? Not so much in my life. So why do I ever ever leave for the airport early? Earl's disease is one reason. Earl is my dad. He is spectacularly gifted in his imagination. He can imagine more things going wrong in each and every situation, than any other human on the planet. We sometimes refer to the malaise as Earl's Disease. (It also has a seconded useage, in that your car must run perfectly, or you are forever obsessed with getting it to that unreachable condition)

So why did I leave for the airport early today? And of course end up departing almost a whole hour late? I mean I could have: 1. Finished my workout this morning rather than cutting it short because I feared running out of time; 2. Relaxed more with Brenda at the breakfast table this morning; 3. Enjoyed my coffee more and more slowly; 4. Not gotten sucked into a long conversation with people who recognized me at the airport and with whom I had no real interest in talking to or with; 5. Perhaps avoided the stupid lizard-brained airport officials who have absolutely NOTHING to do except harrass passengers with the tiniest of rules and pressures (I want to scream!); 6. Enjoyed a decent long hot shower instead of the quick rinse I ended up with . . . all because of the internal pressure and all the unknowns that could go wrong, so I leave home with PLENTY of time. Far too much in reality.

Folks, the plane never leaves early. Manage your life better.

Everybody is dying it seems

You go through stages in life, although it does not feel that way when you are going through them, it just feels like . . . living at that moment. But the older you get, the more perspective and context you gain, to look back and see the stages. For instance I am fond of saying that  I have been married to three versions the same woman - meaning I have only and always been married to Brenda, but she/us/together have been through at least three stages in life.

This current stage of life (not Brenda) seems to be the death stage. Not my own, although that is more than possible at any time, but those solid and formative people of my life are dying. And it "feels" like all my friends and clients and coworkers are experiencing the same thing, and so it seems like a tsunami of deaths and more deaths. 

Just yesterday, my colleague and I started this trip to Spain together, and between the two of us, we experienced four deaths of close friends and/or family members! All before we even got on the plane for Madrid, even though we did not know it at the time. We received this news later in the day, but it tore the fabric of ours lives nonetheless.

Sure this is an inevitability for everyone if they live long enough, but I always thought this was an experience to wrestle with far out into the future, like in my 70's or 80's . . . but evidently you can start this stage well and good in your 50's. I reckon we can let it be fuel for depression and emotional fractures, or we can let it be fuel to bring our best selves to every moment today.

Eight days of business travel = no control?

No control over my diet, yet I do have control over how much of that diet I put in my mouth. No control over my exercise (lack of my usual tools - bicycle) but I can still get out and take a walk and not just sit on my bony backside every minute of every day for the next eight days. No control over lifting weights (lack of access to a gym), but I can realize that eight days "off" is not going to make me lose muscle mass in any significant way. No control over my internet connection, but I can write offline and when I can connect is when I can connect. I do not have control over the bed I am sleeping in, but I can make sure I get as much sleep as possible in whichever bed I end up with to be fresh and invigorated for the work facing me on this trip. Little control over my schedule, but I can find little spaces/times along the way/day to get those important-to-me pieces done. No control over my laundry, but I can pack smart and keep my cool. No control over so many things = this is what business travel looks like in the real world. Period. 

Action point? Don't stress over what I don't have control over. Stress over what I DO have control over. I have control over my character, my thoughts, and my actions in each situation.