See a moment. Take a moment. Give a moment.
Do you have some goal that’s hard to reach, a barrier that seems impassable, no matter what you try?
What if – just to experiment – you walk the opposite way? What happens then?
You may see new routes, new paths you’d missed when you didn’t give them a chance.
If nothing else, new and better ideas may emerge – even if walking the opposite way, itself, is not the ultimate answer (any more than the other paths you’ve tried, up to now).
Just a thought.
At the end of the day, change is always, always underway.
No matter how stable you think things are, something is moving somewhere in the landscape you survey.
Nothing freezes in place for good…you CAN count on that.
So with change, it’s not if, but since…
It’s not if, but when…
It’s not if, but how…
How can you make change, and make it best, since change IS underway in your world, too?
Looking for a few quotes for a project, I found these, among others I’ll also use.
See if these provoke a few ideas, thoughts, or laughs for you, too, as a new week gets underway:
One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.
G. Weilacher
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank
When the music changes, so does the dance.
African proverb
You must first leave the old shore before you can reach a new one.
Unknown
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Chinese proverb
An apple pie is accidentally in the oven.
It’s not quite THAT accidental. It’s a late Valentine’s Day gift for my family (in a wildly – but productively – busy week, I knew I’d never get a pie made on a Thursday Valentine’s Day. It was definitely a present that had to wait until the weekend).
But the accidental part? It’s done hours ahead of what I expected.
“I’ll just start with the crust,” I thought, as I planned other work today, including final prep for a workshop this Tuesday. And then, still needing more time to think before my fingers started flying over the keyboard, I thought I’d just roll out the crust. And then, as a “game with self,” I thought I’d see how fast I could get the apples ready. And then…
You get the idea. Each step, quickly and more easily completed than I expected led, simply, inexorably to the next.
Soon, the apple pie was going into the oven. And now? The glorious fragrance of a pie that’s baking is lazily wafting through every room of the house.
Is there a goal in your work or life for which, once you complete each step, it might lead inexorably to the next?
Is there an accidental apple pie that could be baking soon for you?
Faced as we all are with, “How do I get it all done?” days, try one or more of these ideas:
Strap on your blinders
Turn off e-mail. Really. You can check it at a few defined times during the day to see if you need to keep something moving. But the open e-mail flow on “Just this. Now” days? No.
Resist the urge to “just check…”
If you’re a Facebook or MySpace user, on LinkedIn, or you frequently check your stock market portfolio – or Amazon rating if you’re an author – resist the urge to “just check…” That little “just check” moment could turn into much more of a time sink than you might guess.
Make a list and check it twice
Break big deliverables into specific, manageable “chunks,” make a list of them, and check each item off – literally – as you complete each item.
Speed it up
Set a time limit (complete with a beeper on your watch, if that works for you). Sometimes an interim deadline moves things through faster, better, without time for worry or extraneous detail along the way.
Or slow it down
Or maybe the opposite work rhythm is what you need. Maybe your mind is racing, your fingers are flying across the keyboard, or if you’re working with a group, you’re talking and working too fast to make sure you’re all on the same page. I was just on a conference call like that. The team is used to a leader with a “Are we done with that? Now let’s move on…” style of pacing our work together. Our new leader sets much more of a “Race you to the finish line!” pace, which works, too, until it doesn’t. Sometimes slowing yourself, or your team down a bit speeds everything up more than you would think.
Pause and applause
A client team member joked one time about how he gave himself a little “silent self-applause” whenever he got something done. We all laughed, but he had a point. Pay attention to what you’ve already done, in addition to all that’s still ahead. I like to see the to-do list shrink as I erase items as they are completed. Other people like to see evidence of what’s done with a big check mark next to each one.
The busy man is troubled with but one devil; the idle man by a thousand.
Spanish proverb
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.
Lucille Ball
He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of the most busy life.
Victor Hugo
Being busy does not always mean real work…seeming to do is not doing.
Thomas Alva Edison
And finally, an amusing one:
Don’t worry over what other people are thinking about you. They’re too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
Unknown
Sometimes a problem or task can seem insurmountable, intractable, like an immovable object that has dropped right on top of your calendar and your life. (I had one of those yesterday).
So where do you begin if this is the situation you’re in?
A few ideas for now (there are more):
Start with the truth for you. Go from there.
What, exactly, is the problem as you see it? What would be the best solution? What’s the simplest path between “here” (the problem) and “there” (the ideal solution)? Take the first step down that path. Then take the second one. And the third…
Pick a point, any point. Start there.
Take an action, almost any action. Do something to move forward. Then, when that’s done, do something else. Just get in motion. Stay in motion. Get going, slowly even, but get moving. Forward. Let the momentum build, and be your guide.
Stand back.
Look at the problem for a minute, from a distance. What do you know, from a distance – that you can’t see, can’t know, when you’re right in the thick of it, in the middle of the “overwhelm”? What does that tell you about what to do first? Do that.
Walk away from the vehicle.
Leave the problem alone, in all its glorious mess, for a bit. Get some air. Get some sunshine on your face, and on the problem, itself (but don’t go have a cigarette. That just creates more problems…but you already know that). Walk around the block. Jump rope for a minute or two (OK, I’m mostly kidding on that…but a little bounce in your step might help, as well). Get back to work with a little more oxygen in your lungs, a few endorphins coursing through your veins. Begin again.
Change is name of the game once again this year, an election year, in the US. And change, so easy to ask for, can be oh so hard to complete. Think of people trying to lose weight or quit smoking, and then multiply that by thousands, if social change is underway.
The change? Desired. The change process? Not so easy…
Change can be:
- Invited
- Incited
- Embraced
- Rejected
- Game-changing, rearranging, or even game-ending as some industries have or are seeing.
Change is rarely all good or bad. Think of the last big change that happened in your world, personally, or professionally.
Were there good things that came out of it which you didn’t expect?
Less than good things, too, may have accompanied big changes you invited into your life or career at some time in the past.
Here’s a little more perspective:
Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have—and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.
James Belasco and Ralph Stayer
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place.
Washington Irving
Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.
Unknown
The key to change is to let go of fear.
Rosanne Cash
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
Maria Robinson
And then there’s this one, just for fun:
Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it.
Unknown
No time can’t wait must hurry soon late
Originally uploaded by jcgr.
It’s been a wild, and wildly productive, last few days on my way to an important meeting and presentation. The puzzle came together in very good ways, but it’s sometimes an adventure, like it or not, on the way to that result. Sometimes the puzzle takes a little while to resolve, and sometimes there’s just no hurrying it – it comes together when it does.
The zip zip zoom zoom (as my mother used to describe traffic on California freeways…I realize she never saw a California "traffic frozen in place" day) of the past few days was allayed for me, unintentionally, by a delay at the Denver airport that gave me the gift of time (really) to stretch out and "people watch" for a while. I haven’t done that in a long, long time.
The passing parade can be quite entertaining. These moments from last night near a Denver arrival gate:
- A young man waiting eagerly for someone, big bouquet in hand
- A young dad and his 9 or 10-month-old son, being greeted by the returning mom, who quickly kissed the dad, then scooped up the baby with the world’s biggest hug
- A team of chattery, excited girls with glittery, homemade posters, waiting to greet a victorious returning team
- An airport worker moving through the lobby, stopping now and then to dance in place when he could no longer resist the beat of his private iPod world
- Groups of 20-somethings meeting up for ski weekends. In one group of four, a young man picked up the girl who’d just returned and exuberantly twirled her in a full circle before they caught up with the rest of their group
Find an airport arrival gate sometime soon and fill your reservoir, watching the happy moments that spring up. You’ll find your own "so glad you’re back!" memories come zip zip zoom zooming back to you.
