How To Embrace And Conquer Pain

Let’s face it, sometimes you feel horrible. You feel like the universe is conspiring against you. It could be caused by an upsetting event, such as the end of a relationship or the loss of a job. Other times the feelings are elusive and unexplainable, thus attributed to the alignment of the stars or a chemical imbalance. All you want is to feel better.

Friends and coworkers may tell you to snap out of it, or find a meaningful project. As well meaninged as this advice may be, it can have a tremendous impact on your ability to effectively move forward.

Think about it. If you are angry and focus your attention elsewhere, do the feelings really go away? No. You are simply diverting your attention temporarily to avoid the experience. Even if you are not focused on the upset in the moment, you can rest assured it is still there. And it will be until you deal with the underlying issue.

Most people combat undesirable feelings by consciously or subconsciously creating a goal to feel better. However, consider the old adage, “The more you try to change things, the more they stay the same.” Trying to feel better will most often be a futile attempt.

I believe in living in the present. Although you may have to embrace something that you don’t really want, the more you deal with the now, the better the future. In college, there were moments when I would feel a little melancholy—it was typically due to women problems. Women were more important than grades. I didn’t do particularly well with either. For these occasions of sadness, I made this mix tape, aptly titled “The Depression Tape.”

When I felt down in the dumps, I would put that tape in the stereo, open a bottle of wine, turn off the lights, and allow myself to experience my sadness. Eventually I would fall asleep. When I awoke the next morning, I felt like a new man. The experience was very cathartic.

I have since learned to turn this approach into something a bit more, um, healthy. I have replaced the wine with journaling (better for my liver) and substituted the wallowing with a healthy dose of embracing the pain.

Read the rest of this article on the American Express OPEN Forum

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Don’t Present What Can Be Pre-Sent

Being a professional speaker on innovation, I attend a lot of conferences and meetings.  And I am always amazed at how poorly most meetings are run.

One things in particular disturbs me…

When meeting time is used to present things that could have been sent via email.

Don’t do it!

Meeting time should be viewed as a huge investment in the attendees.  If you present information, status reports, or anything other static information that could be distributed before the meeting via email, you are wasting everyone’s time.

Next time you are holding a meeting.  Look at the agenda.  Decide what information can be disseminated in advance.  Then use the meeting time for conversation, networking, experiential learning, action planning, and other activities that can not be accomplished easily through electronic means.

When done properly, meetings can provide great value with a limited investment of time.

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Is It OK to Marry Your Work (part 2)

Last week I wrote an article for American Express about “marrying your work.” Unlike the “ball and chain” picture that tends to pop into our heads, I espoused the merits of loving your job, just like you would marry a spouse you love.  Be sure to read that article before reading on.  I’ll wait.

OK, now that you read the first part, here is, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story…

I’m on vacation this week in Mexico and I just had an epiphany.

Tonight while cooking up some steaks on the barbeque, I looked through the window and saw everyone else on their computers working. In fact, all day long while I relaxed in the pool with my Kindle, everyone else was busy working away.

Admitted, I work a lot, but I love what I do. I truly do. Regardless, I have not taken a “real” vacation in 2.5 years and I work 80+ hours a week. I use this “dedication” as a badge of honor.

But tonight, while watching everyone work while vacationing in paradise, I realized something important.

You can be married to someone, yet not spend 24 hours a day with them. The best relationships are often those where each individual has their own life in addition to their marriage.

Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” is one of my favorite books. In his poem “On Marriage,” he so beautifully says:

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

For me, this always described the ideal relationship. A deep closeness that is not TOO close. There is space.

Last night I reread the poem through the lens of “marrying your work,” and it took on a whole new meaning.

You can love your work. In fact, you can be married to your work. This is a good thing.

But just as you do not need to be with your spouse 24 hours a day, you don’t need to be with your work around the clock.

Ok, now I need to get back to my vacation…

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Is It OK To Marry Your Work? (part 1)

I was talking to a Thai friend of mine recently; someone who knows that I work a lot. She also knows that I love what I do.

She said I am, “Thang kub ngaan.” This literally means “marry with work/job.”

We sometimes jokingly say that we are married to our job, but we tend to mean it in a negative way. But in Thailand, this expression is used in a loving way, the same way we would refer to being married to a spouse. When they say you are married to your work, they mean that you are in love with what you do.

Why don’t we have an expression like that here? Maybe because it is culturally not acceptable to love what you do. If you are enjoying your work too much, you are probably not working hard enough. Or perhaps it is viewed as unattainable. We have succumbed to the fact that work is just that, and play is what we get to do on the weekends.

Western expressions here are more akin to diseases. For example, a “workaholic” is someone who works long hours to satisfy a deep-seeded need to prove oneself or become wealthy and successful.

Even the word “work” is defined as to “exert oneself by doing mental or physical work for a purpose or out of necessity.”

With that as the definition, who would want to be married to their work? But is there a way to love your job?

First, figure out what you love. It is important to note that this is very different than what you are good at. Our society places more emphasis on overall skills, than on natural skills and passion. We take strengths-based tests to determine our aptitude. But it is much more difficult for us to determine what comes naturally and what gives us energy.

Read the rest of this article on the American Express OPEN Forum site

[Tomorrow, I will post part 2 of this article here on my blog.  Part 2 will not appear on the American Express site]

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How to Get Emails Instantaneously On Your BlackBerry

I’ve been using a BlackBerry for many years now.  It has always annoyed me that it takes 15 minutes for emails to arrive when using a pop3 email account.  Today I figured out a way to get all emails on my BB instantaneously, even when using a pop3 account and not using a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. And it was so simple.

All T-Mobile BlackBerrys come with one dedicated BB email address (username@tmo.blackberry.net).  Emails sent to this address arrive immediately on the phone.  I assume other carriers have a similar email account.

Instead of having my BlackBerry retrieve emails from my pop3 accounts, I now have my pop3 accounts send a copy of every email to my tmo.blackberry.net account. As far as I can tell, everything functions exactly the same as before…except now the emails arrive instantaneously.

Although I believe there are more sophisticated ways of doing this (e.g., using IMAP instead of pop3), I found this to be a very simple solution.

I thought I kicked the CrackBerry addiction, but I guess some habits are hard to break.

If you have other BlackBerry tips, please share them.

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