Make Time For Quiet

I don't know about you, but as a creative professional I need a certain amount of time alone. Personal time. Quiet time. Time to think, reflect, ponder, and dream. Time to recharge. My best creative ideas come from this space.

Too often we spend our days in overdrive, constantly shaking and re-shaking the snow globe in our minds. We don't give ourselves enough time to let our flurry of thoughts settle.

But if we slow down and let things get quiet, an amazing thing happens...we feel peaceful. Inspiration comes. Because peace, contentment, and joy are our natural state. It is innate. We were born that way. It is only when we allow the noise of life to crowd out the signal do we get disconnected and anxious.

So how do we achieve that natural state?

Step 1: We choose to make time for quiet. Heck, we schedule everything from morning commute time, to meetings, to gym workouts, to when we eat dinner. We can schedule quiet time the same way.

Step 2: Tune out or turn off needless distractions. Even background music. Close your browser. Log off of Facebook. Power down your phone. Lose the adult pacifiers and get present. There is nothing so important that won't still be there an hour from now.

Step 3: Breath deep. Close your eyes if possible. Even 2 minutes doing this at your desk works wonders.

Step 4: Learn to enjoy silence. I am amazed when I see people driving to work at 7:00 a.m. and talking on the phone. Are we that uncomfortable being alone with ourselves that we can't go 15 minutes without a device glued to our ear? And don't even get me started about people using phones at the movie theater.

Silence is the playground of genius. Make time for it.

Fortune Friday: "You will win success in whatever calling you adopt."

Do what you love and the money will follow.

How many times have we heard that or something similar? Success pundits and self-help gurus are fond of linking passion and success. Partially because it is often true. More so because their followers desperately want to believe it.

But how much credence do we give to callings? And how exactly is a calling different than passion, a job, or a career? In an interview for Fast Company, Timothy Butler, business psychologist and co-director of the the MBA career development programs at the Harvard Business School, provides a great definition:

"There are three words that tend to be used interchangeably—and shouldn't be. They are "vocation," "career," and "job." Vocation is the most profound of the three, and it has to do with your calling. It's what you're doing in life that makes a difference for you, that builds meaning for you, that you can look back on in your later years to see the impact you've made on the world. A calling is something you have to listen for. You don't hear it once and then immediately recognize it. You've got to attune yourself to the message."

I love the implication that we can bring meaning to whatever job we choose. Your calling can be reflected in any career path if your core values are addressed and honored.

The dictionary defines adopt as: take up or start to use or follow an idea, method, or course of action. When we consciously choose to adopt a calling, we actively bring meaning and impact to whatever job, task, or project we are involved with. And in that regard, we can win success in whatever calling we adopt.

To your good fortune!

Stop And Smell The Pine Trees

Busy, busy, busy. Seems everyone nowadays is busier than ever. Constantly running around, shuttling kids here and there, tweeting this, posting that. A distracted life that, if we're not careful, can end up resembling what Shakespeare penned, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

I was almost that selfsame idiot this past weekend during an overnight camp out up American Fork Canyon. Our local Boy Scout troop had decided to go to a favorite campsite appropriately named Butch Cassidy's Hideout. Not because Butch Cassidy ever actually stayed there (to my knowledge), but due to the three-courses-high remains of an ill-fated log cabin. More of a wind break than an actual structure. It is a beautiful locale straight out of an REI catalog, and also where my then 13-year old son broke his elbow while rock climbing. But that is a story for another day.

Friday night we parked, packed our gear up a short 100 yard incline, and set up camp. We ate chili dogs and burnt Jiffy Pop popcorn. The weather was perfect. And except for a slight chill around 4:00 a.m. and the chattering of boys into the wee hours of the night, we had a perfectly blissful time.

Then I became an idiot.

I woke up thinking about all the things I needed to do that Saturday. I thought about freelance projects that were due the next week. I thought about errands and chores and to-dos.

All while rolling up my sleeping bag and stowing my tent. While hauling my gear down the hill to my car—knowing I would need to make two trips and hoping to "get a jump on things" before the others awoke.

I reached the road. And the serene morning quiet, the kind you can only find in the mountains, was shattered by the deafening roar of a jacked-up Ford F-350 Diesel barreling down the canyon. And I thought to myself, dang man what's the hurry?

Then it hit me. I saw it. I was just like the guy in the ridiculous, over-sized truck. Only my roar was inside my head. My deafening thoughts barreling through my synapses.

Instantly my head cleared. I paused and looked up at the stunning rock formations, some still snow-capped, just catching the first glints of morning sunlight. I heard the rushing water of the canyon stream, birds chirping in the trees. I inhaled deeply through my nose and smelled the dew and the pine sap. My mind was no longer busy.

I suddenly had all the time in the world.

Fortune Friday: "If you can shape it in your mind, you will find it in your life."

 To quote Napoleon Hill: "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

If the world ever learned to truly believe this, we would see the end of poverty, hunger, workplace discontent, broken relationships, and a host of other ills. But we don't believe it. We doubt, we hesitate, we second-guess ourselves. We second-guess the other person.

But even worse, we allow ourselves to get distracted. We let petty, mindless diversions intrude on our time for quiet introspection. We get distracted by work, sports brackets, favorite vices, and household chores. We overpower the still small voice of inspiration with pointless TV shows, constant Tweeting and angry music.

The remedy is embracing the quiet. We need to carve out time to reflect. Time to shape and mold our vision for our lives. Dr. Wayne Dyer often says, "You do not attract into your life what you want. You attract what you are."

What are you shaping in your mind? Who are you becoming?

To your good fortune!

Managing Expectations

One of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself as a working professional is learning how to manage client expectations. Because few things cause as much grief, heartache, and lost productivity to your workday as a disappointed client on the rampage.

Disappointment can be defined as expectations unfulfilled. The client thinks it is one way, you think it is another. And often it is the fault of an ill-prepared amateur who either over-promised or under-delivered.

So how do you guard against these potential scenarios? They say the best defense is a good offense. You start by being a pro yourself. Be great at what you do. Be punctual. Deliver what you promise, when you promised it. Communicate terms clearly and give status updates regularly. Nothing incites panic into a client faster than not knowing.

My brother-in-law of jokes with his sales clients by saying, "You can have it cheap, fast, or great. Pick two."

Cheap + Fast = Junk
Fast + Great = Expensive
Great + Cheap = Slow, slow, slow

While most customers would prefer all three, by allowing them to choose the terms of the agreement, you let them manage their own expectations. And if there are ever any discrepancies, you can simply refer them back to (their own) agreement.

This method may not be right for your situation, but if you focus on creating clearer, up-front client agreements and managing expectations you will both be amazed at how much smoother projects will go.

Fortune Friday: "You have at your command the wisdom of the ages."

My first thought when I read this was 'Yah, it's called the internet.'

Done. Easiest blog post ever.

But as I thought on it more and more over the coming days—I typically write about the previous Friday's fortune—something deeper and more affirming, on two levels, came to me.

Level 1:

I have access to all the varying degrees of wisdom I have garnered from all of my personal ages—every age of my life. I knew certain things at age 6. I knew different things age 14, and 21, and 35.

At each age I added something new to the melting pot of my life. A few more nuggets of truth, a few more dashes of wisdom. Now, at age 44, I have at my command all the combined wisdom of my ages.

Level 2:

I believe we are all eternal, spiritual beings that have existed since the beginning of time and will continue to exist forever and ever. And as such, we have access to all the threads of wisdom that are woven into the fabric of the universe.

I know that sounds heady to some, but I believe that everything that ever was, is, and will be, was divinely organized and thoughtfully planned. And prudence, judgement, and wisdom were employed in their creation. A spiritual blueprint, so to speak, for bringing the unknown into the known.

And if we connect to that source, and align our intentions with it, then we really can command the wisdom of the ages.

To your good fortune!

What Is Courage?

 This past Sunday, I attended a class at my church. During the course of the lesson, the principle of courage was discussed. And as I sat there looking at the word, I had a cool "A-ha" moment. Thanks goes out to Mrs. Needham, my eleventh grade French teacher, for this insight.

Courage. Cour-age.

In my high school French class, we not only learned nouns, verbs, and conjugation, but also the Latin roots for the words we were learning. As I looked at the letters, my mind made this connection: Coeur is the French word for 'heart.'

Courage. Cour-age. Coeur Age. Heart Age.

When people talk about courage, it is usually in terms of bravery and resilience in the face of danger or opposition.

But what if it is more simple than that?

What if courage is simply our heart maturing with age?

When we are young, our hearts are new and untested and childish—our hearts are immature, so to speak. We don't always see the big picture. And as a result we sometimes make poor decisions.

But a courageous person could simply be someone whose heart is older and tested and more "grown up". It has matured over time. It has been around the block enough times to start seeing things for what they really are. Our heart may have been through the wringer enough times that we finally have the guts to stand up for what is important to us. To choose better. We're past worrying about what other people think. We stand up for our lives—and take action.

That's real courage.

Maybe high school French wasn't a waste of time after all.