Quiescent

I’ve fallen into a new way to start my day.  With running tenuous due to my calf injury, I was forced to abort this morning’s workout after only one measly mile.  Feeling sorry for myself, I grabbed my coffee and settled into a lounge chair on my patio, rationalizing that I would normally be using this time for exercise, so a few minutes outside wasn’t really cutting into anything productive. I think it may have been the best decision I made all day.

While my property is tiny and nondescript from the street, the backyard opens up to a three-acre pond.  There is enough mass to keep the water moving, evoking tranquility, especially on a balmy, bright and breezy day like today.  Simply saying it’s good for the soul doesn’t begin to get at what the experience really does for me.

With nothing but upside from this brief and harmless hiatus, why do I have such a hard time allowing myself to indulge?

I am always on the move.  Down time is a difficult concept for me.  I run hard and fast at all things, often berating myself if I’m caught in an idle minute.  I spent many years operating under the premise that I needed to get everything done before I could sit down for a moment of peace for myself.  What I didn’t realize is that the list of things to do is endless.  It’s like the register of “People You May Know” that LinkedIn kicks you to the second you send out an invitation to connect:  Scrolling down to the bottom only results in more names and faces appearing.  It is a hypnotic vortex feeding on our insatiable curiosity and need to get to the end.

Much has been written on the topic of time management and the impossibility of getting it all done.  One of my favorites is an HBR blog written by Peter Bregman. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve fallen a little bit in love with Bregman, not despite the fact that he is married, but more likely for the very reason he is married:  He regularly weaves into his writing references to the relationship he and his wife cultivate.  He’s dreamy.  His style speaks to me. He writes consistently on the ethos of business and the value a keen sense of self-awareness brings to everything in life. It’s refreshing to get this perspective from a successful male. Check him out here:

http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2012/01/the-biggest-myth-in-time-manag.html?cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-management_tip-_-tip042512&referral=00203&utm_source=newsletter_management_tip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tip042512

Since I’ve finally conceded I can’t get it all done and I deserve some time to breathe throughout my day, I am a happier person.  I’ve found that setting time limits, especially for tasks I find it difficult to focus on, keeps everything moving and ensures I touch multiple priorities each day.  This same practice also justifies my own version of playing hooky:  Allowing myself a finite period of time at any point in my day to take a break and do something I totally enjoy. 

A friend of mine  does this well. She has found a niche job that nourishes her craving for books and reading.  When she runs across something so compelling she just has to read, she allows herself a few minutes to stop and feed her habit.  How decadent is that?  I have been the beneficiary of some of her discoveries in those moments and I’m better for it. 

There will always be something that needs to be done.  No matter how hard we work, we never seem to get to the bottom of that list.  It doesn’t mean we’re ineffective, or we’re slackers.  As Bregman points out in his blog, we’re limited resources.  Bound by 24 hours in a day, we reach a saturation point.  Is this hard to accept?  When you’ve always pictured yourself as Superwoman, it probably is.  But it’s also a relief.

Take off the cape.  Look across the spectrum of what you could be doing, and decide what you should be doing.  What really matters should always be at the top.  Things that don’t matter can slide.  They really can.

Make time for yourself by giving your time only to what really matters.

"Things which matter most, must never be at the mercy of things which matter least".  -- Goethe

Aver

This morning I did the unimaginable for the skinny, timid girl inside of me who was once afraid of her own shadow.  I spent 1-1/2 hours on stage with a microphone in front of 120 women talking about how I’ve found my voice.  The beautiful thing is I did not lose a moment of sleep agonizing over what I would say, or feel the slightest flutter of a butterfly in my stomach at any time.  I was completely in my element.  Who knew?

As a guest of the women’s group at a Fortune 100 company, I was invited to join a panel centered around a Today Show segment about the difficulty women have speaking up in the workplace. You can view the video here:  http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/46495654#46495654. While the information presented supporting biological reasons for this problem is debatable, it’s a real issue. In preparing for the discussion, it was hard not to think about what finding my voice has meant for me.

I have always been shy, in fact painfully so as a child.  I couldn’t even ask for ketchup at the counter at McDonald’s. I once rode in the back of a two-door Thunderbird, my foot wedged under the seat because I was too afraid to tell the guy in front of me to move.  No lie. To this day I can’t believe I didn’t break my toe. I improved somewhat with age; however, speaking up in any arena outside my closest friends always meant pushing way outside my comfort zone.

After my first baby was born, the mother of a friend of mine spoke to me about the responsibility I now had to advocate for my child.  I’ve never forgotten what she said; or the conviction in her voice when she stated that if I didn’t speak up for him, no one else would. Like any good mother, I took her seriously.  But I probably didn’t need her advice, there is something innate to a mother’s love that causes us to find courage we didn’t think we possessed to fight for and protect our young.  When a feeling in my gut told me my baby was sick, I would muster the nerve to risk the ensuing humiliation if my trip to the pediatrician’s office turned out to be unwarranted.  Of course, my instinct was always right. 

Outside of parenting, anxiety about speaking up lingered. Phone calls to people I didn’t know; business or otherwise, always fell to the bottom of my list of tasks.  I would have to psych myself up to dial, and this was only after I had anticipated every question I could possibly be asked or rehearsed in my head at least 100 times the request I was going to make. Deep down I knew if I ever wanted my career to go anywhere I was going to need to get over myself and pick up the phone.

I’m not sure exactly when the tide shifted. It was slow moving.  I became adept at running my project meetings.  And, yes, making phone calls.  But I was still occasionally burned by the old adage “silence means consent” when a decision I hadn’t weighed in on didn’t go my way.  And finding the courage to speak up about money was the absolute last hurdle I cleared.

Likely some combination of landing a job I absolutely loved, having a few years of work experience under my belt and lots of practice speaking up finally pushed me over the top.  Having more confidence is at the heart of it all.

I’m pretty certain I can attribute many of my failures and disappointments in life to silence.  People are not mind readers.  In this life we truly do need to ask for what we want.

Finding my voice has meant a whole new, happier life for me.  I’m able to set my own boundaries in terms of time I give to others, which nets more time for me.  I’ve made things far more personal at work and have seen the benefits that making connections bring.  I am a legitimate networker now, a necessary evil I always met with dread.  I have made more friends in the past 5 years than I probably made in the 15 prior to that. 

Speaking up doesn’t guarantee I get what I want, but more times than not I do.  And if I’m not fully satisfied, I can usually at least negotiate to a reasonable compromise.

Now I’m described by others as someone who has an opinion about everything.  People who have spent time in meetings with me expect that I will have something to say.  There are those who are surprised that I would consider myself an introvert.  Who knew!

Plenitude

I’m visiting my financial planner this week.  I hope I recognize him. 

It’s been years since we’ve been together.  My fault, maybe partially, but I would have expected better client service from him.  While we haven’t talked, I have been acting on his advice and I think I’m doing all the right things:  Investing the maximum into both my individual retirement account and my 401K, collecting my employer’s matching contribution, tucking money away in an emergency fund.  But I’ll admit I’m clueless when it comes to projecting how much money I’ll need to live my life when I’m not afraid to show the world my gray hair, or knowing, even, when I can safely stop going to the office every day without fear of living in a cardboard box.

I’m fortunate to have a thriving, successful career, and I feel like I’m just hitting the heart of my earning years.  Yet I’ve never been able to imagine myself wealthy.  Yes, I know, this is the kiss of death.  It’s common knowledge that if you can’t picture yourself achieving something you never will.  But I honestly can’t see coffers of money in my future.

Compensation, for me, has almost always been a disappointment.

I think some of it has to do with weariness with what feels like the hundred-year war I’ve waged, as most women have, over inequities around money.  Like many, I put myself in a hole early on by not negotiating salary fresh out of school.  By the time I woke up and realized I should be advocating for myself, the gap had grown to a chasm. When I spoke up, my audience either didn’t want to hear it, or didn’t know how to handle it.  I was told  “your time will come”, “you’re writing your ticket”, “just finish this project”.  When I asked point blank if I was standing in a line waiting my turn, I was told yes.

I really thought things would change for me a few years ago when I won the leadership role on an epic, career-defining project.  I never worked harder in my entire life.  The hours were insane.  We needed to figure out how to get work done in countries and cultures I’d never set foot in. There were delays and indecision at every turn, but never a change in the deadline.   The stress was unbelievable. And sadly, the closer I got to the finish line, the more evident it became that completing this monumental feat would never net rewards commensurate with the time I invested.   

From where I sit today, I finally feel like I have been heard, but I wonder if it is too late for me. Am I so far behind I can never catch up? 

I’m past the age where an advanced degree will net a reasonable return on investment.  At this point, my experience is worth more.  In some ways this is a relief.  Putting kids through college, and also finding the resources and time to put myself through school too seems daunting.   I’m happy to finally be done wrestling with this and put it to bed.

I’ve learned a lot about myself and about what money means to me.  I value security above all else. And I want to be as precise as possible when it comes to aligning effort with reward.  I’m working to get all of my eggs out of one basket.  Not because I’ve given up negotiating for what I believe I’m worth, but because you never know what life will send your way.       

I would like to retire eventually from Corporate America as I know it today.  But I don’t know if I’ll ever be out of the workforce. It’s not the same world my parents lived in.  Very few spend an entire career at one company, retiring at 65 with a nice pension and paid insurance.  Many people change fields completely over the course of a lifetime and make money from multiple sources.

I’m pursuing areas of interest to me and looking at them through the lens of profitability, with the intent to diversify.  I want the freedom that comes with knowing I could walk away from any one endeavor without my whole world falling apart.  I know it is short-sighted to think I ‘m guaranteed the ability to care for myself for the rest of my life, but for right now, based on what my current level of wisdom will afford me,  I plan to be self-sufficient for as long as possible. 

What do I want my next career to be?  I know I want it to be something completely flexible, so I can live full-time at the quaint beach house I expect to someday own.  I want it to be something creative because I picture myself in a sunny studio surrounded by all of my favorite things. 

Hmmm.  Wealth to me looks like being able to support myself pursuing my dreams, whether they are terribly profitable or not.  My financial planner better be ready to work this week or he may find himself looking for another client.

Buttress

Every day I’m reminded getting where you want to go is a lot about being quick to adapt and a willingness to  rely on others:  Little in life goes as expected. This weekend’s two-day relay race from Madison, WI to Chicago was an eloquent illustration. 

Five changes of clothing stuffed into my backpack, sans all the usual accoutrements:   Cosmetics, jewelry, perfumes and adornments of any kind are unnecessary baggage.   I had the basic survival gear:  Running shoes, hairbands, sunscreen, and lip balm.  A toothbrush and soap, on the off-chance a shower crossed my path at a point in time when I could capitalize on it.   

I was trained, hydrated and stoked for the 21 miles I was slotted to run.  The anticipation had been brewing for weeks, leaving me beside myself, barely able to concentrate on little else.  Some might call me crazy, I prefer competitive and ambitious, finding it almost impossible to turn my back on this annual endurance challenge.  This is a favorite moment of my year. 

Our team of nine runs 36 legs comprising 198 miles over the course of a little over 24 hours.  This race embodies life in its most simple form.  It strips us down to minimal human needs.   The only concerns are around when I will eat again, sleep again and run again.  I don’t worry about who might be trying to e-mail, text me or call me.   It doesn’t matter what I look like.

But this year did not go as planned.  Our two strongest runners, elite athletes, really, the anchors of our team, dropped out in the 48 hours prior to the start.  We decided to go anyway, with seven runners.  Legs were reallocated; I was now up to 29 miles.  Yikes! 

My first leg, 6.3 miles, was in the afternoon sun on open farm-country roads in grueling heat.  About half-way through I decided this was no longer a relay race for the best time, this was a test of survival for me, personally, and for our team.   Even though we were never going to win this race under the best circumstances, in the past I had looked at it as a need to push myself to run as fast as I could to impress my team.   This year it was about managing all of my resources to get through.   I paid careful attention to my speed, forcing myself to slow to and maintain a 10-minute mile pace even though it felt like a crawl.  I walked a tough hill and drank my water.  When I passed the slap band to my teammate at the exchange, I felt strong.  I wasn’t gasping for my last breath or guzzling water like I’d just found the oasis in the Sahara.   I felt good and ready to go again. 

We pushed ourselves to the limit and our bodies screamed back in revolt.  Our collective legs were breaking down:  Knees, groins, toes, calves, you name it; one of us on the team was feeling the pain somewhere.  We got resourceful and split long legs among multiple runners.   We adjusted on the fly at every turn.

When my calf cramped up severely during the 5^th mile of my 6.8 mile leg, I was incredulous that my body was letting me down.  How could this happen to me?  I was feeling so great and ready to take off in the refreshingly cool air that came with the waning Strawberry moon, huge at the horizon as it rose in the sky.  I started walking, sweaty headlamp lighting my way on a peaceful nature trail under the stars, totally defeated.  

The field in this race is full of incredibly supportive people.  I was passed by a competitor who said “Nice job, runner.”  I remember thinking bitterly, “Really?  I’m walking when I should be lighting up this trail.  This is not a nice job”.   A little later I was met by a man from another team who had heard there was an injured runner.  Turns out he was looking for a teammate, a really fast twenty-something who had not shown up at his projected time, and was thought to be hurt or to have veered off course.  Even though I was not who he was hoping to find; he walked me all the way to the next exchange.  When I lamented that I thought my team would be disappointed in me, given all of the other hardships we faced, he assured me they’d be proud and told me to raise my arms in victory as I was cheered across the finish.  Of course, he was proven right.

We resorted to drastic measures when one of our guys limped into Exchange 18 with an injured knee, and I couldn’t run leg 19 due to my calf cramp.  We consulted with a race official and decided to leap frog ahead.  We drove to Exchange 31 and slept in the parking lot for about 2 hours.  Our remaining healthy runners each took the balance of the legs, and we decided to split the last  8.2 miles from Northwestern University into Montrose Harbor between four of us. 

I ran only one short mile of the last leg, but it felt better than my previous 13.1.  Even though my calf still hurt, I was fast.  I poured my heart into it.  And it felt like a fitting end.  We each shared in the glory of that final leg.  Our runner who crossed the finish line at the beach had truly earned the crown as our new anchor, totaling nearly 40 miles of our truncated 132 mile race. 

Will we be disqualified?  Yes, probably, and justifiably.  But somehow that's not important anymore. As we enjoyed beer on a gorgeous day at the beach along Lake Michigan, we took our team photo and congratulated ourselves for getting to where we wanted to go.  It wasn’t pretty.  It wasn’t how we had pictured it or wanted it to be.  But we made it through, and we’re stronger for it.  Sometimes that’s all that matters. 

Refulgent

I have spent most of my life going where other people wanted to take me.  Fresh out of college, I set off for California, not because I had a burning desire to blaze a new trail for myself, but because I was following someone else on his own adventure.

I got married, not because I particularly wanted to, but because I felt like I was only allowed my somewhat gypsy lifestyle for a finite period of time before I needed to get down to the real business of living.  People were beginning to ask questions about where it was all leading to, being obsequious and without a good answer, I followed the norm.

For years, my career followed a prescribed path.  I worked hard, head down, and took my position on the next rung of the ladder when I was tapped on the shoulder. I accepted whatever amount of money I was offered in exchange for my exceptional work.  Although I sometimes went home and cried about it, I accepted it nevertheless.

I remember vividly the look of shock and surprise I gave a mentor years ago when I was forced to contemplate a career move on my own and he asked me what I wanted.  I was speechless.  What?  I actually get to choose?  Are you kidding me?

It has taken me several more years to thoroughly grasp the magnitude of the power I have to make things happen for myself. To move from follower to leader of my own life required that I experience some tremendous failures, both personally and professionally. 

We can wallow in our mistakes and blame other people.  We can feel sorry for ourselves.  We can say we’re stuck and wait for the next person to come along, pull us out, and take us where he wants to go.  Or we can decide for ourselves and take the lead.

The difference for me is that I now fight for the good. Always.  Even when situations seem impossibly black, I search for the tiniest glimmer of light. It might take me a while to find it.  I might take a quick detour for a moment of self-pity. But I don’t stop. I fight for the good.

Sometimes it is to my detriment.  Maybe this is a naïve approach. Maybe I am occasionally taken advantage of.  Maybe I give people too much credit.  But, you see, looking for the good keeps me moving through life.  If I can’t see the good, I can’t find my own power when I need it most.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, sweat beading on my brow.  Am I really raising two teenage boys on my own?  Do I really have a job where I’ve led hundreds of people and managed millions of my clients' dollars?  Am I really giving advice to other women on how to move their careers forward when it seems like just yesterday I didn’t know how to do that for myself?

The answer is yes.  Yes I am.

At the risk of falling into a rut quoting the same guy in two consecutive blog posts, I’m quoting da Vinci again: "People of accomplishment rarely sit back and let things happen to them.  They go out and happen to things."

Now that I can make things happen for myself, I am going to go out and happen to things.

Agape

“If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself...If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself. . .” - Leonardo da Vinci

I don’t know what prompted Leonardo da Vinci to utter those words, but I read an interpretation of this message over the weekend that has me thinking about the power of being alone.

Life is set up for partnerships.  Society’s underlying message is that we should all have a mate, a significant other, our “person” who we commit to being with on this journey.  Being without a partner somehow feels odd, like something is missing.  In the event circumstances leave us standing alone, many of us make quick work of partnering up again.  The notion is that two is better than one.  Romantic sentiments like “you complete me” leave us swooning and salivating for that person who will make us whole.   

Ran Ortner, an artist recently interviewed in The Sun magazine, paints a different picture.  I do not know Ortner’s work, but I was drawn to the article titled “Water, Water Everywhere:  Ran Ortner’s Love Affair With The Sea”.  He creates enormous canvases depicting the many faces of the ocean.  He has spent the past 30 years alone either working in his studio or surfing. 

The crux of the message is that in order for art to be any good, it requires that the artist become who she really is in her work.  Ortner asserts that when we are able to get to what’s intimately personal in ourselves, the most tender and raw places at our core, we get to what is universally personal. This is how we connect. I believe this concept transcends art.  That in order to connect and give fully all that we have to offer, we need to be highly personal in everything we do. 

Ortner believes, however; that most of us are only able to create extraordinarily personal work when we are alone, stripped bare of the disguises we put on for others.  According to Ortner, you’re not truly yourself unless you’re alone.

We all have the propensity to alter ourselves, maybe only ever so slightly, but alter nonetheless, when we are with others.  We become a little less of who we are and a little more of who we think others want us to be. It’s nyctinasty:  The phenomenon that causes a plant to close up its petals in response to darkness. Our light shines less brightly as we unconsciously filter ourselves to some degree when in the shadow of others. 

I have experience in this realm and relate to his theory.  I like who I have become as an unmarried person.  I don’t know how to qualify the reasons behind it, but being alone has allowed me to put more of myself into everything I do.  I feel free to pursue lofty goals that are important solely to me, without fear of criticism or detractors.  I can spend as much time as I want honing my work without the guilt of neglecting someone else’s wants, needs or expectations.  I don’t feel obligated to ask an opinion or alter my process, content or direction based on someone else’s feedback.  I have so much more to show for myself than I ever did when I was married.  It’s the most liberating space I’ve ever been in.  And it is entirely my own.

Could I still make valuable contributions in my chosen arenas if I wasn’t alone?  Of course, but I could argue they wouldn’t be my best work unless I felt completely comfortable being myself. 

Most of us aren’t living a reclusive life.  We’re surrounded by others, in relationships with others.  What sort of karma or alchemy is required to shed our skin and get personal?

To really be myself I’m discovering I need to be pursuing what I love.  Anything else I’m spending time on is just filler.  When we’re on track to follow our passions, we’re more engaged, and the very best of us tends to slip out in spite of our natural tendencies to filter.  We can’t help ourselves.  It’s impossible to bite our tongues.

It also takes confidence; the feeling we project when we know our area of expertise really well.  When we’re self-assured we reap affirmation from those around us, which gives us the fuel to push the envelope, to go deeper.

We need an awareness of the instinct to alter our persona for our audience and call ourselves out.  There will always be situations where we decide, rightfully so, to proceed with caution, but asking the question each time takes the behavior from involuntary to intentional.  

There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t write at least one e-mail or blog post I question. Did I take too much initiative?  Did I get too close to a tender spot?  Did I elaborate excessively?  Have I put a little too much of myself in this message?  More and more I’m taking the risk and hitting the send key.  I’m sometimes apprehensive when I see a response in my inbox.  How will people react to more of me?  But it seems every time I open up, I’m rewarded with replies that say things like “thanks for this . . . exactly what I was looking for”. 

In sketching class, we’re told to draw what we see, not what we think we see.  Looking at a sculpture from a really challenging line of sight, where limbs are foreshortened and key elements we know are supposed to be in play are invisible to the eye, puts that capability to the test. But I find when I really make the effort to capture what I see; the end result is proportioned correctly and looks real. It truly is my best work.   The same holds true for opening up and being myself.  I am my best self when I stop thinking about how others might want or judge me to be, and just put myself out there.  The result is the best me possible.

The great thing is that in my aloneness, I have found the way to make what I touch uniquely mine.  I’m following my dreams.  I’m beginning to market them to the world.  I’m taking brave steps to truly be myself even when I’m not alone, and it’s improving the quality of my work and relationships.  I’m making it personal. 

I’m also making myself happy - happy enough to know that I don’t need a partner to complete me, but a partner to be with me. How will I know when I’ve met the right man?  He’ll be at the convergence of shared interests, physical attraction and that beautiful and undeniable feeling of peace that says I can just be me.

   

Chasm

Expectations can be powerful deterrents to what we really want our lives to look like.  An expectation is defined as "a mental image of something expected, often compared to its reality”.  When expectations align with reality, all is right with the world, but often they don’t.  When the two don’t match up, what do we do?  When it’s an expectation I have of myself, I almost always keep forging ahead until I get what I want.  Admittedly, this is not always the right approach, as I have spent a fair amount of time in front of closed doors attempting to beat them down.  But the real conundrum is contending with expectations I have of others, especially my children.

My oldest son, at 16, believes that he is not what I expected him to be as a person, and while he is adamant that he is not going to change, he imagines this somehow disappoints me and he feels the need to apologize.  Is this what expectations do?  Do they leave us apologizing for who we are?

Before I respond to him, I need to get clear on what I expect. 

As a wrath-filled teenager myself, besieged and insecure, I expected there to be conflict between my children and I as they move through adolescence.   He is doing what he is supposed to be doing at this age:  Testing the boundaries, demanding more freedom, taking risks, caught in that awkward space where he so badly wants the adult privileges but little of the responsibility.  He’s forming his own opinions, speaking his own mind, and getting pleasure from the shock value that creates.  But the mistake he’s making is in thinking that in all cases, as a 16 year-old, he can act on his beliefs when they are contrary to mine. 

I think the person who is not meeting my expectations in this situation is me.  I expected to be able to handle what he dishes out. I expected problems I could solve, of the temporary kind; that would be wrapped up in some prescribed period of time.   I expected to be able to find impactful consequences, impart them and have the lesson be learned.  

I didn’t expect such brash defiance, open practice of behaviors of which he knows I disapprove, with the evidence strewn haphazardly about as if there is no regard for the possibility that it could be uncovered.  I didn’t expect desires with the potential to permanently close doors or take him down a path I can’t fathom.  I didn’t expect a ferocious need to express creativity in ways I can’t comprehend.  I didn’t expect to disagree so vehemently with some of his views.  I didn’t expect such a great divide between what I want for him and what he wants for himself.  I didn’t expect to not understand. 

Is he what I expected my oldest child to be?  No.  He is so much more than that. 

He is passionate about causes he believes in, a fiercely loyal friend and brother, a talented writer teeming with creative ideas, a budding leader, an outspoken advocate for justice, a confident speaker, an introspective artist, a compassionate and generous soul.

I need to find the right words. I need to say them a million different times and ways:   The words that convey to him how much I love him for who he is. The words that say the rules aren’t in place because I want to change him, but because I want to protect him. He needs to be able to somehow hear the message that he doesn’t have to understand me and I don’t have to understand him.  We both need to be respectful of each other’s beliefs, but at this stage in his life, where we diverge; there is no other option for him but to yield to me.

This is by far the heaviest anchor I will ever lift:  The one that allows me to move through the letting go.  Where does the strength come from in these really difficult times? 

This is not what I expected.