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Why Right Is Wrong

by Walt | Apr 16, 2015 | Success | 0 Comments

Mistakes, wrong turns, blind alleys: they are part of the adventure.

I thought about this as I paddled on into the driving rain…and darkening sky.

Hours earlier we had ventured out onto the Killarney Lakes in kayaks. Even with a map in hand, the exit from one lake to another – the route to our pick-up destination – was ‘discreet’ and difficult to find. Two or three times we missed it… paddling windward into blind cul-de-sacs, only to turn around and try again…and again.

What started out as lighthearted fun turned into a bit of an epic… as adventures sometimes do. But it was difficult to feel too sorry for ourselves wandering around as we were in the magnificence of the National Park, surrounded by mossy forests and dramatic hillsides. We were beat for sure by the time we were done. But the wrong turns had allowed us to see more and experience more and enjoy more of this incomparable beauty.

Would that we could take this perspective into other areas of our lives! We (you can read this as ‘I’ or ‘you’ or ‘someone else not me’) often get pissed off when we make mistakes that take us off our intended course, that require extra time, that take us down paths that don’t appear to lead us to our destinations straightaway. They seem to ‘cost’ us; they appear unnecessary; we consider them ‘wasteful.’

But maybe they’re just part of the adventure. Maybe they allow us a fuller experience of this wondrous journey of our lives. Maybe we might discover something new along the way… if only we might see it differently.

‘Mistakes,’ ‘and wrong turns’ led to the discovery of penicillin, the invention of the pacemaker, and the ubiquitous post-it note… to name just a few life-altering ‘ah-has’ down what might have appeared to be blind alleys.

Maybe the delay at the airport will lead to a chance meeting with your next business partner or boss. Maybe the wrong turn will lead you to the site of your new home. Maybe getting stuck in traffic will give you that rare chance to connect with your daughter, listen to a beautiful piece of music, or just be still.

Maybe these things that look like errors or wastes are really opportunities.

Yes, let’s go with that frame this week.

In A Foxhole

by Walt | Apr 9, 2015 | Leadership, Success | 0 Comments

I didn’t see it at first. A small pin; on his left lapel; almost invisible on his dark blue suit.

“Bronze Star; Vietnam,” he said.

We were at a networking event of lawyers.

“That must have been terribly hard,” my wife Ann said empathetically.

“No… no it really wasn’t,” he said. “I realized very early on that I could be cold and miserable in a foxhole; or that I could be cold and happy. I decided to be happy. It’s a choice, you know.”

I do know…. At least that’s what I believe; it’s what I teach; it’s what I endeavor to practice.

But I’ve never had to do it in a foxhole.

We all have our stories; our tales of woe; the circumstances we suffer; the dramas we endure. I hear them from my clients. I’ve told more than my fair share to my own coaches. Of course, what we focus on expands. But, not only that, these stories dampen and imprison us. They keep us small. And they shroud us from the very happiness that is but a choice away.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist interned in the Nazi death camps; his entire family slaughtered, his life’s work destroyed. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl said that our greatest gift – the greatest gift of our humanity – is the power to choose how we will be, regardless of the circumstances.

The power, in every moment, to choose how we will be.

If in a foxhole, if in a death camp, then most certainly in our businesses and our lives.

The Beavers Are Busy. Are You?

by Walt | Apr 2, 2015 | Success | 1 Comment

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. — Isaiah 43:19

I’ve noticed the beavers at work along the river these past few mornings.

It seems that spring came in the northern hemisphere last week. A good thing. It’s been a long and malingering winter.

Some winters are like that.

Winter, for many, means hardship. Storms and brutal cold; grey skies, short days and long, dark nights; shoveling snow, icy roads and heating bills that seem to never end.

Things tend to lay dormant in the winter. Many in the animal kingdom hide out and hibernate.

In the people kingdom too.

Then the spring comes. New life, new energy, new hope. A reprieve; a new beginning.

And so it is in all our lives.

What we do in the springtime of our lives matters. How we till the soil; what we plant; where we plant it; how much we care.

What we build; how we build it.

The summer will surely come. And then the harvest time. It always does.

That harvest, what we reap, will depend on these very moments in our lives: What we sow in the here and now will dictate the seasons yet to come.

In our businesses and careers;
In our networks and relationships;
In our marriages and partnerships and families;
In our health and fitness;
In our financial lives;
In the service of others.

It’s easy to be complacent in the spring, what with the weight of winter finally lifted off. But spring is a time for focus; the time to re-charge, to re-double our efforts. The seeds that we plant, the investments that we make, the care and the attention that we bring to the spring in our lives will yield a thousand fold in the soft glow of our autumn time.

Of course, the seasons of our lives don’t always correspond with Mother Nature. I surely have experienced some desperate winters in the midst of spring; and brutal heat that killed the seeds long after harvest time had come.

But the spring of the year is a good time to remind ourselves of the never-ending rhythm of things; that even in the darkest of nights, the light will return. And that when it does, we have an opportunity to begin again; to create anew; to make our lives the masterpieces they’ve always been meant to be.

Jim Rohn said, “You cannot change the seasons; but you can change yourself.”

In every moment – in every spring – we get to choose.

Wherever you are, whatever the season for you, let’s begin again.

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This is an encore of a post first published on March 28, 2014.

Your Feelings Don’t Really Matter

by Walt | Mar 26, 2015 | Leadership, Success | 1 Comment

I had just finished speaking to a university audience on leadership and goal achievement, and had stayed on afterwards to chat with the students.

“I know exactly what I want,” my young listener proclaimed.

Looking earnest, he furled his brow. “It’s just that I don’t always feel very motivated.”

“I don’t really give a fuck what you feel,” I replied with an equal amount of furling and earnestness.

“If you know exactly what you want… and you want it badly enough, then you’ll show up every day and do what needs to be done whether you feel like it or not.”

He flinched, only slightly, as I jabbed my finger in the air for extra dramatic import: “Motivation is vastly overrated.”

And it is.

I rarely feel motivated to run, or go the the gym, or put on over mitts to go out into the arctic cold to climb. There’s not a whole lot of motivation going on when I think about driving three hours to a ski area or hoisting the kayaks onto the roof of a car. I almost never feel motivated to write. In fact, I’ve put off writing this blog until the very last moment possible, perhaps just to dramatically punctuate my own perpetual lack of motivation!

You see, motivation is flighty. It’s not dependable. It comes… and it goes. Sometimes it shows up; more often than not, it doesn’t. Even when it comes to stuff we like or want.

What’s important is the knowing. Knowing what you want. Knowing what you like. Knowing where it is you want to go. And why.

When you’re clear about your destination, when you know your outcome, then all you need to do is act. You’re pulled forward by the vision of what you will achieve. How you feel from moment to moment is irrelevant. In fact, your transitory ‘feelings’ usually just end up getting in the way.

I know how much I value my fitness and vitality over time when I run. And so I run. Whether I feel like it or not.

I know how much I love the creative process of writing and the sense of satisfaction I have when the words I have written have an impact on someone I have never even met. So I write. Whether I feel like it or not.

Get clear on what you really, really want.

Then get going. And stay at it.

In the meantime, it doesn’t really much matter how you feel.

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This is an encore of a post first published on March 20, 2104.

The B.S. Question

by Walt | Mar 19, 2015 | Success | 0 Comments

If there is one question that comes up more frequently than any other in the course of getting started with a new coaching client, it’s this one: “How do I do that?” As in, how do I start my own firm or launch a new product or transition into a new career?

The question is almost always a b.s. question.

Because here’s what true. People who come to me for coaching – frequently lawyers who want to make more money or create more clients or start their own businesses or transition into different careers – are highly educated peak performers. When I ask them to reflect back over the course of their lives, I ask them a different question: “Has there ever been a time in your life when you have wanted to achieve something – really, really, really wanted to achieve something – and you haven’t been able to achieve it?” And every single time I ask that question, without exception, the answer is: “Never.”

That’s because the folks who come to my door are achievers; they bust through obstacles; they wrestle things to the ground; they make stuff happen… when they want to.

But here’s what often happens in mid-career, in mid-life… especially when we’ve been “successful” at something for a long, long time… especially when we think about the effort it takes to change: We become afraid… and then we ask a different question: “How do I do that?”

And, really, who can fault you for staying stuck if you’re trying – really trying – to figure something out; if you’re earnestly (cue hand wringing) grappling with “how to” do something. It sounds perfectly reasonable, completely understandable (you certainly don’t want to make a “wrong” move!) … until you recognize that anything you’ve every really wanted to do, you’ve figured out how to make happen; that you never really asked the “how to question;” you’ve just done it.

The only question then – the only relevant question – is do you want what you say you want? Do you really, really want it? If you do, we’ll figure out the how. I promise you.

That other question: pure b.s.