Fortune Friday: "A man's best possession is a sympathetic wife."

For our purposes here, since not everyone reading this is a man and not everyone is married, feel free to substitute woman, and/or partner, and/or friend.

I looked up the word sympathetic in the dictionary. While the first definition was somewhat benign, what struck me more was the list of synonyms:

Compassionate, caring, concerned, understanding, comforting, sensitive, understanding, encouraging, considerate, kind, tenderhearted, pleasant, agreeable, friendly.

With someone like that at your back, there is nothing in the world you couldn't do, be, or achieve. It'd be like your own personal cheerleading squad. Go! Fight! Win! Our world could really benefit from more spouses and partners like this. Unfortunately, too many individuals and families are on the receiving end of the opposite.

I was also intrigued by one of the secondary definitions for sympathetic: showing approval of or favor toward an idea or action.

To me, that implies a degree of trust and possibly risk tolerance. If we show favor towards action, what we are in effect saying is, "I trust you. I believe in you. I don't know how this will turn out, but I will support it anyway."

To have a person like that in your corner would be a treasure of infinite worth. And if you are fortunate enough to have someone in your life like that, let them know how much you appreciate them. Often.

To your good fortune!

Let Go of Your Story

Each one of us has a story about who we are and the role we play in our world. It is a story that we a familiar with. We have it memorized. We can recall it in an instant. And we share it with everybody.

But more important, it is the story we tell ourselves over and over and over. And soon enough it becomes our not-so-secret identity.

The problem is these stories are usually negative. We rarely focus on our positive traits. Do any of these sound familiar to you?

I'm the good child who doesn't make waves.
I'm the family black sheep.
I'm the cute one, not the smart one.
I'm lazy.
I'm the people pleaser.
I'm the stalwart employee.

The thing is, these stories are false. They're not true. They are just comfortable lies that we feed ourselves to keep our delicate ego from getting hurt. We use them to stay inside of fear, to shield ourselves from the risk of failure, rejection, and embarrassment. We tell ourselves, sometimes subconsciously, "Stick to the story. Don't deviate from what is expected of you. Everyone else needs you to be and remain as you are." And if by chance we do try something new or daring or outside our normal scope, and then fail, then we have a convenient excuse to make ourselves feel better.

If I tell myself the story that I am a procrastinator and then procrastinate, then I get to say, "See? I'm a procrastinator. That's what procrastinators do," and I'm off the hook.

Stupid is as stupid does, right?

Our story can become an endless loop that keeps us in inaction, broken dreams, and missed opportunities if we let it.

But here's the catch: We can let go of our story, any story, whenever we want. And start a new one. We can choose a new path. We can take new actions. We can rewrite our story at will, as often as we like. We can say, "The old me would put things off. I was funny that way. The new me doesn't. See, I'm writing this blog post right now instead of just thinking about it."

Joseph Campbell said, "We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."

We can rewrite our personal story any time we want. What is your new story going to be?

Fortune Friday: "Life is a daring adventure."

Here is a disclaimer before I continue: This is not my fortune from this week's lunch. It actually belongs to a loud, twenty-something girl sitting in the booth full of women office workers next to me. I found it so funny I had to comment on it. I will write about my actual fortune next week.

Girl: "'Life is a daring adventure'. Seriously? I hate it when a fortune is not a fortune. This is dumb. This is a statement, not a fortune. I want something, like, ominous."

Her exact words. I kid you not.

"I want something, like, ominous."

I find it fascinating how often we humans are not content with the average, the day-to-day, the pleasantly understated. Instead we're on a never-ending quest for bigger, better, faster, stronger. Something else. Something more. Always more. Something linguistic analyst Lyndon Duke referred to as the "curse of exceptionality."

A simple fortune is not enough. Oh no, it needs to be ominous, mysterious, foreboding. The irony with this, and all, fortunes is they are as deep and "ominous" as we choose to interpret them. Personally I think "Life is a daring adventure" is laced with all different levels of meaning.

Because in the end, life really is all in the way we choose to see it.

To your good fortune!

Pushing Past The Point of Despair

Almost every time I sit down to do some creative project—a logo design, a hand-drawn illustration, a painting, a piece of literary fiction—I come to what I like to call The Point of Despair. When my inner critic pipes up. You know what I'm talking about. You've heard the voice as well:

"This is pointless."
"I've ruined it."
"This isn't turning out like I'd imagined."

The Point of Despair is the creative equivalent to "hitting the wall," a moment common to marathon runners, where they physically, emotionally, and mentally "run out of gas" around mile 20. Movie writers call this pivotal plot device the "All Is Lost" moment.

So what do you do when you come to The Point of Despair?

You silence the voices by keeping your feet moving. I love this quote by Vincent Van Gogh:

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." –Vincent Van Gogh

It's really that simple. You push through The Point of Despair by continuous, repeated action. Even if all you can do is take tiny baby steps, then take them. One after another. One more step.

One more hatch mark.
One more chord.
One more line of code.
One more brushstroke.
One more pushup.
One more sales call.
One more letter on the keyboard.

Personally, I've found that if I just keep at it, if I put in the time and just keep noodling, eventually I summit the crest of The Point of Despair. I see sunny skies on the horizon. I look down at my artwork and I say, "You know, that actually looks pretty good!"

Before I set out on the 50-mile hike with my son's Boy Scouts troop, my artist friend Will Terry gave me some good advice (he's an avid outdoorsman by the way): "Slow and steady wins the race. Just like the tortoise and the hare. It's better to move slowly and not stop, than to try and go fast and take a lot of breaks. Breaks will kill you."

Stopping and starting, particularly huge sprints with long rests, can be detrimental to creative projects. It can be really difficult to get going again after a really long layoff.

Breaks will kill you. That's why they're called BREAKS.

No matter how ominous The Point of Despair looks, if you keep your feet moving you will come out on the other side. I promise.

Fortune Friday: "Consolidate rather than expand business projects in the near future."

A surefire way to drive any business or creative endeavor into the ground is by trying to be everything to everybody. We see this all the time in big corporations, as they gobble up and acquire wide varieties of smaller companies and start-ups in an effort to bolster their product offering to the world. "Hey look at us! We not only sell shampoo, but we also sell dog food, greeting cards, and microwave pizzas."

One time I asked a client who their target audience was. They replied, "Everyone." Ugh.

Lack of market focus and deviation from core competency are a death knell for a company. Better to be exceptional at one or two things to a select group, than to be mediocre at a dozen things to the world at large.

As I grow older I find my time increasingly fragmented. Between spouse, children, home, job, church, side projects, and free time, lots of things are vying for my time. Instead of expanding, I feel drawn towards simplifying and focusing. I feel the pull of consolidating my life.

I'd rather excel at a few things than be so-so at everything.

To your good fortune!

Life Is Short, Roll The Dice

Life is short. Deep down we know this. But often, we live as though we have all the time in the world. Because it feels safe. Thinking about the shortness of life, or dare I say even death, is scary. It is uncomfortable. It makes us feel uneasy.

I turn 45 years old this year. So for me the reality is that, in all likelihood, I have fewer days ahead of me than I do behind me. Time-wise I am on the downward slope. With the clock ticking.

I came across a quote today by artist-writer-speaker Auston Kleon. He says:

"Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use—do the work you want to see done." –Auston Kleon

Brilliant. So simple, so succinct.

We need to quit second-guessing ourselves. Quit trying to anticipate the market. Quit trying to get it all right in advance. Just do something. Anything. Pursue your dreams. Go for the life you want. Because there are no guarantees and we don't know how many days we have left.

Life is short. Roll the dice.

Fortune Friday: "Sell your ideas. They are totally acceptable."

Honestly I am not sure if this fortune begs discussing the virtues of commercializing our creativity versus keeping personal projects private, or whether or not we believe in our ideas, or what. But I do think it is a good followup to my discussion on overcoming self doubt.

Whenever I have an idea for a creative project or business idea, my typically next move is to start shooting holes in it. A sort of mental risk management. If you're anything like me, you're attracted to the sure thing. I love knowing all my ducks are in a row. It feels safer that way, right?

And again, if you're anything like me, your next step is to ask all your family and friends and coworkers what they think of your idea. More holes.

Before you know it, your grand idea looks like Bonnie and Clyde's 1934 Ford sedan after the police worked it over with their Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR).

Nothing left to do but throw it on the scrap heap and start over.

We've all done this, right? Be honest.

But the truth is our focus group is too small. We cut our ideas short before we let them gain any traction in the real world. Because chances are, if we think an idea is cool or noteworthy, the odds are in our favor that there are hundreds, or thousands, or perhaps even millions, of people out there who think it is cool too.

Don't kill off your dreams prematurely because you haven't yet figured out the logistics of making it happen. Focus on why you're doing it, not what, when and how. Those things will work themselves out naturally and you move along.

Follow your ideas. They're good ideas. Somebody somewhere will accept them—even if you don't initially.

To your good fortune!