Be a Kid Like Kid President

“I’m not in the party, I am the party.”

I found this Kid President video the other day, and in between his giggling and dancing, he made some more great points.  (See Putting a Frame Around my Life for the reason why I love Kid President).

“When you were a kid, did you say I want to be boring and mean when I grow up…?  What?!”

It’s a simple question, but meaningful one.  No child wants to be boring, mean, or just plain mediocre.  Just ask them.  They think big – they want to be astronauts, star athletes, or pursue multifaceted careers like doctor/racecar driver/professional hug-giver.

And yes, life is much more complex and challenging than kids often realize.  But maybe we over-complicate it more than we need.  What if we thought of every day as an opportunity to fulfill the dreams of our childhood?  What if this moment, this one right now, was a chance to honor the goals we had when we were still children?  What if this was the day to work on your career goal of doctor/racecar driver/professional hug-giver?  I think if we did, it would manifest as KP’s three words of wisdom:

Be More Awesome.

So for today at least, I’m going to try to be the adult that my 10-year-old self thought I could be.  And maybe I can’t be Indiana Jones (my personal career goal as a kid), but I can try to embody the courage, resourcefulness, and badassness that he represented to me.  And I think that will make today better than if I just go through the motions and am boring.

Put Down the Phone and Open the Window

This morning when I woke up the sun was shining…which isn’t a guarantee in Chicago in the spring.  We’ve had all kinds of crazy weather the past month (and way too many rainy mornings.

So the sun is shining and I think to myself, “Let’s go to the Brothers K coffeehouse and knock out work for a few hours.  Now, the sun is shining, but it might be chilly enough to throw on a sweatshirt.  I’m going to find out what the temperature is.”

At that point, I reached for my “smart” phone to check on a weather app.  But I had to stop myself.  I was standing two feet from the window and I wanted to find out what the weather was like outside.  Why didn’t I just open the %&$# window!?

Too often we’re throwing technology in between us and the real world.  Like when we (and by we I mean me) can’t just have an experience , we have to take a picture of it.  Or when we text someone instead of calling or visiting and hearing their voice.  Using technology can help, but I want to avoid making my reliance on it an unthinking habit.  What was going to be more helpful to me this morning: a number on a phone screen, or the actual feel of the sun and the wind?

So I opened the window, found out that it felt like a chilly morning but that it was going to get warmer, dressed appropriately, and rode my bike over here.

Is technology helping you experience life, or becoming a filter that prevents you from having contact with the real world?

I Like Watching my Friends Have Bad Days

Sometimes, I find it valuable to be around people I care about when they’re having a bad day.

And no, I’m not an asshole and it’s not a sick form of schadenfreude.  I mean, I try to help them if I can, but I also find it a useful learning experience.  Let me explain:

When I watch someone have a bad day, I find myself thinking, “Wow, some sucky things are happening to you today. But it will be OK. These things aren’t important in the long run, and you’ll get past them. I’ll do what I can to help you get past them. In a week, heck, in a day, you won’t even think about this stuff anymore. And don’t worry, I care about you, and there’s a lot of other people that care about you.”

This is easy for me to think because I’m not the one having a bad day. I have the separation between me and the bad day.

So why is this a good learning experience?

Because sometimes the person is me. I’m the one having the bad day. And so, when I have enough presence of mind, I put myself in the place of a friend who has a little distance. And I say to myself.

“Wow, some sucky things are happening to you today. But it will be OK. These things aren’t important in the long run, and you’ll get past them. I’ll do what I can to help you get past them. In a week, heck, in a day, you won’t even think about this stuff anymore. And don’t worry, I care about you, and there’s a lot of other people that care about you.”

Does it always help? No. But it helps sometimes.   Its a chance to interrupt the pattern in my mind that’s trapped in negativity.  I give myself a fighting chance to pull myself out of the immediate moment where I think everything is going wrong.  It can bring a little piece of mind right then; and happily in a week I rarely remember the particular events of that bad day.

No More Mister Nice Guy

OK, so unrequited love (or even unrequited like) isn’t a new thing. Heck, Shakespeare was writing about it 400 years ago (and much more eloquently than me). But I’ve developed a hard-earned understanding that for me un-returned affection actually has nothing to do with the other person; it’s really an internal thing. I’ve got a really good track record of putting more of myself into  relationships than I got back. And now I’m willing to accept that it’s not the other person’s fault – it’s 100% my responsibility.

Over the years this has often manifested as me being the really good guy who’s totally there for her and who doesn’t make a romantic move (a la most John Hughes movies – think of Duckie). Heck, I say “over the years” like it hasn’t happened in the recent past…or the last few weeks. It’s a hard habit to break. And even when I’ve been in a relationship I’ve often taken on the baggage of the other person without getting the same support back. You might call it being a nice guy – but there’s a thin line between “nice guy” and “sucker”.

But if the ball really is in my court, then I can make a change. It’s my job to stand up for myself. And lately, I’ve gotten much better at that. It’s not that I don’t want to be nice anymore, I just don’t want to be the door mat. Sure, in the movies the object of affection eventually realizes that the guy they’ve been treating poorly (or just overlooking) really is the man of their dreams. But that’s not how the real world works. And if I have to spend a lot of energy trying to convince someone that I’m awesome, it’s probably not a good start to a relationship…

Ironically, I don’t feel that being authentic with how I feel has made me less nice. In fact, now I can be confident that for a woman who  puts in the same effort and emotion, I’m willing and able to be as nice and kind/compassionate/generous as the day is long. But I’m done with pushing down my feelings and needs just to make the other person’s life simpler. It hasn’t been an easy transition (just ask my friends C and C; I whine to them constantly), but it’s one that has made me happier.

And as I do this with my romantic relationships, it’s bled over into more clarity and integrity in the other parts of my life. Or maybe being authentic in the other parts of my life has influenced my romantic journey. Either way, if you have been like me in the past, I hope that you can stand up for your intentions and know that you don’t have to bend yourself to someone else’s expectations in order to find happiness.  Life is too friggin’ short for that.

Quarterly Review for Me, Inc.

How often do you sit down and try to do an honest assessment of your life; where you’ve been, where you are, where you’re going?  How often to you examine the different areas where you put time and energy; your career, your relationships, personal development, health, spiritual journey, etc.?

I’ve gotten in the habit of trying to look at this at least once a quarter.  I took the idea from companies that have quarterly review meetings and earnings reports.  It doesn’t work as well for companies because it leads to way too much focus on short-term goals and they end up losing sight of their long-term goals.  But for me, it works great, because the short-term is really where I have the most opportunities to make changes as an individual (I can’t delegate something to a committee…although that would be hilarious.  “I’d like a new job!  Let’s give that to the careers sub-committee and see what they come up with.”).

The first quarter of 2013 is a few days from being done.  Every quarter I look at the 4 areas of my personal life: physical (health and whatnot), emotional (happiness and relationships), mental (learning and development), and spiritual (peace of mind and purpose).  And then I have five quarterly goals that are more actionable steps towards the above, like “exercise a certain amount”, “take a vacation” or “get a girlfriend”.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of my analysis.  But I will say it’s really helpful.  Some things went really well, and some didn’t.  And when things didn’t go as I wanted them, sometimes it was out of my control.  But not always.  And looking back, I can see some changes I want to make.  A few highlights:

• I traveled a lot for work, and ran a lot of great training presentations.  That was exciting and fun.  But I over-extended myself and got sick; and was emotionally spent so I became super-cranky (not fun for me or the people around me).  So now I know as I travel more for the rest of the year to be honest about what I can and can’t do.
• I really want to become a great mambo dancer, and because I was traveling and putting my focus in other areas, I didn’t practice.  And it was cold here in Chicago so I often stayed at home instead of going out to practice.  That’s OK, but I know I want to refocus in Q2.
• We made some great strides at Ajax, but there’s still more that I can do. So I’ve decided to re-align where I’m focusing my time and work on more business development to move the process along faster.
• The elusive 199 is just that…elusive.  I’ve let my eating habits slip a bit, but still come in at a fighting 206.  So there’s some opportunity to get better there.
• And the whole girlfriend thing.  Well, I’m dating a lot, but maybe I can take the pressure off of myself and just have fun.  And then I won’t get frustrated when I date flakes…

I know that the process sounds a bit stiff, but it’s anything but.  The saying goes “Know Thyself”… but it doesn’t just happen; you have to spend the energy to do just that.

Miss Communication

On the professional side of my life, I spend a lot of time talking about/thinking about/training people on the changes that technology has brought to communication. It used to be that if you wanted to talk to someone you had to write a letter, give them a call, or actually go find them. But with cell phones, social media, and texting, the communication landscape has altered fundamentally. It’s easier to communicate, and in some ways, that has made communication cheaper.

This often comes up when looking at how the “Millennial” generation communicates in business environments, but I realized this week it’s also affecting my dating life.  Lately, I’ve gotten incredibly frustrated by how some women communicate – or more accurately, by how they don’t communicate. It’s happened more often than once that responses to calls, texts, and Facebook messages will show up late or not at all. Or someone will use the wrong medium to convey a message – the whole “breaking up over text message” thing.

In some ways, there has always been a history of intentional miscommunication in dating. A woman might give a guy a wrong number when he asks for it. A guy might not choose to call back. So it’s not like the process has always been perfect.  Common courtesy has always been uncommon, but these days it feels like it’s become completely extinct.  But that’s a blanket statement, and I know that there’s more going on here.

I’m thinking that I have to adjust my approach, or at least my expectations, when communicating. If I look at the age range of my dating partners, I’m actually in the generation in which all of the changes in communication are playing out.  See, I’m 36, and I typically date women between the ages of 28-40 We’re the bridge between my parent’s generation and the kids just getting out of college – and those two groups are really different. Unfortunately, evolution is lumpy, so some of us (me) would rather pick up the phone and have a conversation and others prefer the light touch of a Tweet.

I have an opinion about which is the right way to communicate, but that’s for another time. What I need to remember right now is to be less judgmental in how others choose to communicate. And in the meantime, I’ll still have to try to decipher whether she’s really not into me or just bad at responding to texts…

How Writing Blog Articles and Dating Are the Same

If you know what you are looking to create, is it better to wait until the perfect situation presents itself, or should you dive in and have a lot of activity?

I’ve been thinking about that with dating – should I wait until I meet the perfect woman and “Dreamweaver” starts playing a la Wayne’s World? Or do I dive in and go on dates with women who don’t (at firts blush)grab my soul from the very beginning?

I was actually thinking the same with writing.  When I’m writing posts, should I wait until I’m inspired by the perfect topic, the words flow like honey, and I hit just the right balance of resonance and meaning? Should I take an article and revise and rewrite until it’s awesome?  Or should I keep writing and putting the work out there?

If I write 1 article a week and 25% are great, and 2% are brilliant, I’ll have written 13 great articles and 1 brilliant one by the end of the year. And I never know which ones will be great and brilliant before I post them (ironically, my favorites always get lackluster responses).  So it’s a numbers game.  Keep writing – and hopefully I’ll get better with time and stumble into some great articles, maybe even that magic one that goes viral someday.  And in the meantime, I’ll write a bunch of other articles that will have been OK, but just as important in the process.

So now that I think about it, I should go on some more dates…