Pressure versus important

# Chapter 156

There are so many things you feel pressure to work on, but only a few which are really important. Digging down to those important ones is your task every day. It is where you will receive the largest payoff and you will thank me later. Knowing what is the primary lever of your success is not always an easy thing to discern, but like most of us, there is a 20% of actions and decisions and focus that will produce 80% of the results that you are seeking. The other 80% of what you do, is the part that threatens to overwhelm all the important stuff every day and it is your duty and responsibility to reel those in every day.

These that need to be reeled in are likely the noisy squeaky incessant parts of your job, the dings, bells and whistles of your computer telling you that you have another email or slack message or iMessage or WhatsApp notification and etc etc. Its happening to me as I sit here and write these words down on this page. It was happening before I began writing this chapter, I was getting sucked down into the email rabbit hole and I had to pull out quickly and decide that every single one of those unread and unanswered emails could wait until I got the difficult and important 275 written today. Your situation won’t be precisely like mine, but it will be similar enough to feel very eerily the same. Nor do I have to be the one that resolves all the noisy squeaky incessant parts that keep showing up in the course of the day. Others can do much of that, and often it can just be ignored if you have strength of character to ignore them.

Play days

# Chapter 155

Its a winter storm day that I am writing this chapter. That means we aren’t going anywhere, we aren’t leaving the house if we can help it and we aren’t even going outside if it can be avoided. The kids will likely take a run or two outside, but us “mature” folks are far too worried about falling to take such risks. And I think that we lose more than we protect with that approach even though I get it and know that falling is no fun as you get older. I don’t enjoy it either, but you need some play time regardless of your age and that is the real point there. Having fun days, snow days, winter storm days, whatever kind of days, so that you can have some fun and leisure.

I am luxuriating in the warm house, dry and toasty and comfortable, but contemplating going out and having a run and slide in the ice and snow outside. That could easily be a decision I come to regret, but sitting inside watching it all day is an intolerable thought that should make each of us shudder. At the very least sit on the front porch and breath the icy air and viscerally feel the weather, instead of cocooning inside all the day.

Time to go play!

Long history people

# Chapter 154

Great work and great friends and a fun ride equals a really good day. You need more of those and so do I. Super energizing and special are what days like this are in both the experience and the remembering. Having a long history with the same people makes this far more possible. Because you have more memories and shared experiences with them and shared interests and life cycles. Your kids grew up together, your wives like each other, you do things together, you have similar parental issues and stages of life with their elder care, you have the same struggles and similar problems and face the same challenges. Spending time with these folks is time well spent.

But having a long history with the same people requires a great deal of work, a great great deal of work. If you have some of these long histories with people then you know what I mean. IF you lived overseas for 27 plus years like we did, then it is even more critical and more difficult to have these long histories with people. Proximity is the primary challenge if you live overseas and the people you are having a long history with live across the ocean. Scheduling is the primary challenge if you live near your long history people, because they are busy busy people and you are a busy busy person and you will have to face the challenge of your busy busy calendar. And you will have face the challenge of their busy calendar. In my opinion, this is the biggest hurdle to long histories with the same people.

Communications

# Chapter 153

Communication is all turned upside down and not in the way that you expect that statement to unpack. Last night I was sitting here at my dad’s table in rural Georgia, writing letters to our two Compassion International children. One is in Honduras and one is in the Philippines and they both are far far away from any electronics or computers etc. But we communicate over the course of the year, they send me letters and the Compassion Staff upload them eventually and email them to me. The point here is that me and these children are sending communication back and forth in spite of the distance and isolation we may be living in.

At the same sitting of the table, I get a letter from the lawyers in London, that they have yet to receive my official documents that were signed and had been witnessed and sent to them over a month ago!! Someone somewhere for some reason decided that I had to send the lawyers physical papers via the post office, and that this proved or informed something better, more certainly, more something, than me sending electronic letters with pictures! to small children in remote locations. That is just so wrong on every count that it is infuriating. And I have another letter waiting for me to read with more demands - but I decided to write you instead - and rant a little bit.

Contentment

# Chapter 152

The contentment of the moment is usually in correlation to how little you compare yourself to others, and how little you focus on what you perceive that you are missing. Thus contentment is difficult and rare for most folks, because the most deadly design on comparison ever developed is used by people all day - Facebook or its simulacrums. I have read that there are thousands of engineers working every day to keep your attention on Facebook and to keep you either dissatisfied or angry. This they have determined to be the best way to keep you on their program and that makes them money. Why in the world we all are addicted to a program designed to keep us all unhappy through constant comparison is really easy to understand - we want to be the person with the best pic, the best meal, the best story, the best . . . instead of just being content.

What we perceive we are missing is fairly nuanced as well. This one is rooted in the stories we tell ourselves about what we deserve or what we think we need. Neither are objectively true. You need far less than you imagine and you deserve nothing. But of course we don’t want to hear that, and so we imagine that new(er) car we need, that sofa we deserve, that big(er) house we need, the expensive restaurant meal we deserve, that RV we need, that relationship we deserve, that boat we need, those positions we deserve, etc, etc. Contentment can’t be found or experienced in any of these things or events or situations described above. Contentment is outside of this stuff and inside of you when you understand that none of these temporary things can determine who you are and why you matter.

Preparing to be misunderstood

# Chapter 151

Would you like me to give you $50? This is what I could have sworn I heard the lady say to me in the drive-through at Dunkin’ Donuts. Of course she did not say that, and truthfully, I still cannot tell you precisely what she said, but when you don’t hear what you expect to hear it’s pretty hard to understand. I don’t know if you ever have these experiences, but they happen to me regularly. When you hear something that you don’t expect to hear, or something that seems out of context, it’s very difficult to hear it well. Which goes to show that much of our “listening” is nothing more, than the same 1 million trite phrases that we hear and expect to hear all the time.

Real conversation doesn’t happen that way. Granted, communication in the drive-through, it’s not communication or a conversation, it’s just simply a give-and-take, but even that has expected norms of what will be heard and in which order. For example, after I give my order, usually the person will either repeat my order back to me to make sure that they got it correct, or they will tell me how much I owe them, or they will simply tell me to drive around. They will not ask me if I want to get $50!

At least one leadership lesson here is that, if you are planning or intend to say the unexpected, then be prepared to be misunderstood.

Expertise

# Chapter 150

People expect you to be the expert. And you actually may well be, but the chances are, that you aren’t. I mean people expect you to be the expert in EVERYTHING! And you aren’t. Neither am I. I woke up this morning and had 13 text messages from a good friend. He was wanting me to help him make a decision about his next computer purchase. Now I have a doctorate in leadership, and 60 years experience in living, but I have no education nor expertise in computers other than using them hard for decades. But people still expect you to know everything, so I usually give them my opinion and preference and frame it as such, because while I do have an opinion and preference that does not make me an expert! You aren’t an expert either! My dad expects me to be an expert on everything because of my scholastic degree, but the world of knowledge is far far too large for any one person to know everything. In fact if you can become an expert on one tiny sliver of knowledge, then you have accomplished a great deal.

A doctorate in any subject just means that you know the most about the least tiny thing in the whole world. Not at all that you know everything about anything. And any Dr worth his or her weight in lead keeps learning constantly because the knowledge that they learned in their pursuit of knowing the most about the least tiny thing in the whole world, keeps expanding! The real experts are the ones who keep learning and the ones who know that they don’t know everything.

beyond our comfort zone, but not into the damage zone.

# Chapter 149

You do what you can. We all end up here at some point. The take away is that you don’t want to ever use this as an excuse for less. That is what it seems to become too often and you don’t want that and I don’t want that. You do what you can, every parent and grandparent feels this intensely, but drawing the boundaries is really difficult. You do what you can, until the point of exhaustion? Bankruptcy? Mental limits? These are not the boundaries that will bring health and life to the world, your world, our world. I think you do what you can, means that you are quick to step up and offer help and mean it. And I think we need to be willing to go beyond our comfort zone, but not into the damage zone. You get it? People need help and we can give it, but not until the point where it causes us damage and then we need help, that would move the cycle in the wrong direction.

So you have to decide to fully engage being uncomfortable with how much is required or expected of you, while not incurring damage. This is critical because if you help to the point of hurting yourself, you will not be able to help the next person, and there is always a next person. This is when helping hurts in a non-sustainable fashion and you need to stop. The other thing here, is that helping others can hurt if you are helping them in ways that prevent them from growing and developing and being responsible for themselves. But that is enough for today. You and me, we will do what we can.

Creating abundance for others

# Chapter 148

Some days are all about creating abundance for others. And I survived just fine. This is not my forte, but it is my wife’s favorite thing in the world to do and if I want this wife, then I have to continue to find ways to accomplish this. And since I DO want this wife, then yeah. It feels like my life is being invaded but it is not, it just feels that way. Eventually they will all go home or away and you will have your space back and you can snuggle up with a fire in the fireplace and quiet in the homestead.

Creating abundance for others isn’t 24/7 and you can manage this. Heck you may even discover that you like it or love it as does my wife. My preferred change the world action is giving resources to help folks move forward, not having them in my living space and then the clean up! My hands still smelled like bleach even though I washed them over and over after that cleanup yesterday. On the other hand, I found more pleasure than I thought I would in the clean floors, doorways, carpets, walls and bath. Sometimes you need an additional reason to deep clean and you will like the results, but probably not the getting there.

But all this talk about what you and I like or don’t is not the point. The point is that creating abundance for others is the most basic leadership task you can do and we need to do it all the time. Let it drive the schedule and the calendar and plans, then watch your life grow in unexpected and expected ways.

You can choose to not fear your fears

# Chapter 147

Its ok to be afraid. That means that what you are worried about is important. Important stuff is worthy of our concern and worry and fear. But fear is a difficult animal, it can be the animal that takes over our lives and exerts undue control and causes us more problems, than the value it can bring. Fear is your friend as long as you don’t let it get out of control. There are lots of danger warnings out there about worry taking over your life, so I am not going to get bogged down into those right now.

The point here this morning is that the important stuff is worthy of focus and concern and worry and sometimes fear. It is important after all! That means it is major and that it has large consequences. Failure affects a lot of people and perhaps in really big ways. Get into it completely, because this is significant stuff and success or failure makes a big difference. You can totally see this through, and you can choose not to fear your fears. Their purpose is not to scare you as much as they are there to communicate how important this moment it, how big this opportunity is, how much this project is worth, and how much you need to be all there and bear down on this moment. I remember hearing the phrase that we “have nothing to fear but fear itself” or something along those lines, and that is so not true. Fear is the symptom of something big and you have to pay attention.

Where things are going

# Chapter 146

All of the innovation happens at the edges. This is true of your life, your relationships, technology, culture, music, politics, education, etc etc. This is where things start to get interesting and exciting. This is where the status quo is no longer going to function adequately in your life and you are ready for the change that is coming, where you are ready to really start living. This is what we are referring to when we say, “living on the edge”. And this is a good thing, even though we act like “the edge” is a gangplank and you are on the precipice of being forced off the end and drowning in the deep blue sea of the unknown. Think of “the edge” as the cutting edge, the most innovative edge of development and change and style and culture and fashion and those things that may or may not be important to you.

I like to be on the cutting edge of leadership and development and change in culture, but I couldn’t care less about TV or ripped jeans, movies or movements, social media or games. Yet you have to recognize that these categories have overlap and your can’t avoid them completely. Social media for instance, impacts some leadership and development and culture change elements. And leadership and development impact social media as well, there is crossover for better or worse and you just have to live with that fact.

But back to the primary point, innovation happens at the edges, not in the middle, not in the mainstream, not in the core. You have to pay attention to what is going on in the margins and perceive where that will go and take us next. I am not suggesting we follow the fads that endlessly sweep the world, but rather that we anticipate the seismic shifts that are coming our way, and participate accordingly.

You can

# Chapter 145

You can initiate the kind of life you want, and that Christ expects and wants for us, rather than respond to what the world pushes on you. There are those of you who hate my “can-do-ism” and you think it smacks of humanism, which it could. But your helpless-I-can-do-nothing-good rhetoric is ostrich diving ignorance. Of course you can make a decision about what happens today. You already have and will again. Then why can’t you decide to do good and and make a difference? Then why can’t you help others and be selfless? Ok ok perhaps we can’t be perfectly selfless, but I can be selfless enough to give gigantic help to others along the way. This I know to be so, because I already have thousands of times. I have drawers and drawers full of thank you notes from those I have helped and those who have experienced this from me. And if I can do this, then anybody can do this!

I recognize my selfishness and self-centeredness and know that I am perfectly capable of doing great harm to others. But just because I can and sometimes have, doesn’t prevent me from choosing the other side and doing good and helping. You can take the initiative and choose. Again you already have and will again today, so make it count now. Balance out some of those terrible choices you made in your youth and stupidity, with some excellent ones now that will change the world for a better place. You can do this, and yeah yeah its can-do-ism again, but you know I am right so get to it!

The worst you can imagine

# Chapter 144

When the worse you can imagine never comes to pass. All that mental energy lost and wasted as you worried over a cataclysmic event that never came about. Maybe your wife is right after all, and you are like, way too worried and fearful. Sounds like your dad is rubbing off on you, he who can imagine every possible impossible negative, has infected you with the same disease! Stop it. See the GAINS, stop living in the GAP! Clearly I need a great deal more practice and reminders to stay out of the gap. Practice gratefulness, practice thankfulness, see more not less, see your blessings, see your possibilities, live in the gain! You have come so far, don’t stop now. Don’t start living in the gap between today and the ideal, that will rob you of all that you can have today.

And now that the meeting is past and the world didn’t fall apart, you can spend just a few minutes thinking about what your proper response would be . . . what if it all had gone to hell in a hand basket? How would this morning actually be any different? Hmmmm, what a question! In fact you would have done the only thing that any of us can do - keep going, find another way, create another solution and keep going! There aren’t many options and your imagination is robbing you of far too much, so change the way that you can use it. Imagine all the ways that you could have proactively gotten ahead of this challenge and resolved it before it could ever have become a problem. Imagine all the ways that God has had your back for four decades and He isn’t gonna stop now. Imagine all that could be when you stop allowing the GAP to interfere with what could be!

The mental power of GAP thinking

# Chapter 143

The GAP sneaks up on you and keeps you there if you let it. I have an appointment today and it could be a really negative appointment with lots of implications. That is pure conjecture at this point since I haven’t had the meeting yet, but my statement shows the GAP. The negative that I am thinking about without any real substance. The meet could just as well be about a great new opportunity or some new clients, or about some challenges the other party is having and looking for feedback. Or a million other things. But the GAP is sneaky and seems to always bring the worse possible outcome to mind over and over and thereby taking over your mental posture for the entire day. All the GAINS are lost in the waves and waves of the GAP.

Actually that is not the truth as I sit here and think about it. The GAINS are still there, but I can’t see them or perceive them as I am consumed with the GAP possibilities. What a terrible waste in every sense. While the meeting may be negative today, we are already committed to turning whatever happens into a GAIN so why fret and worry and conjecture and imagine all these negatives? This is one of the poorest patterns in my life, and perhaps you face it too, or a different version of the GAP sneaking into your mind all the time, the point is to stop that nonsense. You are strong enough to find a GAIN out of whatever happens today, so losing all this traction to GAP thinking is diminishing the wonders of your GAIN. Stop it!

The loss of rhythm

# Chapter 142

Out of sync days happen, no matter how hard you work to avoid them. Today is one of those days for me. My wife’s Christmas-birthday gift is the disruptor of the day, but yours is what yours is, you don’t have to have a birthday-christmas gift disrupt your day. My wife wanted for her combined Christmas gift and birthday gift (there are 18 days between the two) all the carpets in the house professionally cleaned. Sounds easy enough right? Well you can’t believe that really??

Honestly, think about it, you have to move all the furniture off the carpets in order to have them professionally cleaned. That alone was two solid full days of labor for me. Then the cleaning guys gets here and he is more talkative than a parrot on steroids, and while I enjoy conversation with new folks, I really just need him to clean the carpets and let me get on with the work of putting everything back together and in its place, which I imagine will be another two full days of work before it is all completed. How much did it cost you ask? Irrelevant. The four days lost to work were far more costly than the actual service!! Totally a disruptor to my day today, as he continues to steam vacuum my stairwells. Worse yet, I can’t tell a damn bit of difference to the carpets. Not one single difference. Yet Brenda swears she can, and that is all that matters.

There were many other upsides though, GAINS if you please. Number one was how much junk I was able to get rid of as we packed and consolidated and moved all the furniture and everything else in the house basically. Way over my allotted garbage allowance for the week! Woohoo! Number two was cleaning. As we moved everything, lots got cleaned that may have never been cleaned ever. Disrupting? Definitely as I writing this at 11:15 am rather than 7:00 am. Upsides? Sure. Downsides? Sure. But I am still writing this as you see.

Changing up the pace

# Chapter 141

Quiet patient rainy day equals a great deal of work done. I need so many more days like this one. A long slow steady plodding success of a day after a great night’s sleep and all my points checked off. I was mentally keeping myself in the GAIN all day, but I don’t know if that really helped get all that stuff done or not because it was physical instead of mental work, and being in the GAIN clearly shows up in all my mental work, not sure yet if that applies to physical work or not. Anyhoo I got it done and I plan and hope to do it again today, but with some added pieces like church and lunch with Jake. These two days constitutes a “break” for me, no electronics, no email, no phone, no mental work allowed, but I getting a lot of cleaning done as I work and stuff all the furniture into the unfinished parts of the house so that we can have a massive carpet cleaning tomorrow!

I think that everyone needs days, or a couple of days like this one regularly in their lives. The results can be tired muscles and a refreshed mind. A different pace and different goal than what you usually have in your day. A change of speed and class of work or activity. This change up will create mental and emotional space in your heart and mind so that you can think differently about all that you are thinking about. That is quite a mouthful and even more a big idea. You need different speeds to get different results. Change it up!

The beautiful blank slate

# Chapter 140

Its a new day, a blank slate and what are you going to paint this day as, or with, or with whom? This is true of every day, but I was inspired this day, because of special factors. Yet this is really true every day. Perhaps we don’t feel it very often because we wake up and charge hard into the day with little thought but lots of energy because there are so many things that are pressing us and we experience so much pressure to get them started and done? Or perhaps it just seems to take too much energy to sit for a moment and contemplate the new fresh blank start/slate that we have been given yet once again to create something beautiful and amazing and generous? Perhaps you are in pain and hurting so much that you can’t see or focus on the start given you this day? I don’t know the reasons we fail to capitalize on this gift so often, it just seems clear that I fail to do so and I am looking around at the world we live in and I am thinking you fail to do so regularly as well.

It is a new beginning and we can start something entirely new, or we can change directions from where we were heading. Those are two very very powerful ideas right there. New or change, take your pick! Or off you are already firing on a bunch of excellent cylinders there, just keep trucking along the path you have already chosen! There is only opportunity here, no pressure to do one or the other. Opportunity is a possibility, a choice, something new, a do-over, a new creation. Make the most of it!

Grumpy old men

# Chapter 139

The gap or the gain, you can change your viewpoint today and change your life today. Actually you likely will need to change your viewpoint multiple times every day, because that is how often we get in the gap, and we seem to just keep going back to it over and over. I have never met someone who stays out of the gap all the time. In fact I was working on these precise matters even before the book came across my desk because who wants to be around a grumpy old man all the time?? Huh? Well exactly no one wants that. Heck even I don’t want to be with me when I am in the gap. More accurately I really don’t like myself when I am in the gap. And I especially don’t like the way I treat those I love the most when I am in the gap. So yeah, this has to happen over and over and its a process that you want to get superb at accomplishing over and over and not getting frustrated that you aren’t perfect and always in the gain zone.

No one ever is. Even the very best of us have to adjust their thinking and perspective every once in a while. I know this because I am married to the very best, and even Brenda can see the gap instead of the gain. Especially when she is dealing with health issues, like her broken foot that she has right now. She expects that extension of her leg to instantly heal, that is her ideal, and we all know that so ain’t gonna happen . . . yep the gap. If it can happen to Brenda then it certainly is gonna happen to my grumpy old butt over and over. Success then is this: just keep moving from the gap to the gain. You will live 10 years longer and much happier than if you don’t.

The ideal

# Chapter 138

Which end are you measuring? Most of us are measuring the wrong end. Wait, what are the ends? The ends are the start, the beginning - the ideal, the perfect planet alignment of performance. It could look like this:

Start ————————————————————————————————————— Ideal

And the subject could be your job, your hobby, your passion, your children, your marriage, your second/third language, your spiritual walk, your bucket list, or whatever. Most things in life have a start and an ideal end. Two important things here, few of us ever hit that ideal end, and the ideal end is usually arbitrary - someone decides what that ideal is or isn’t or should be. This changes everything, because if you are measuring at the wrong end that someone randomly decided was the ideal, then you are doomed. Yeah I am that little kid again at his first piano recital and the ideal is Mozart???? Sure there is gonna be a big gap, and a lot of unhappiness and discontentment because we are definitely measuring the wrong end. Yet we are definitely aiming toward the right end.

The ideal gives us a direction, a goal, motivation, inspiration, whatever, but it is not what we measure when we are measuring progress, growth, or productivity. If we are measuring, then you only measure one direction - from the start to wherever you are right now. This is a measurement you can bank on. And see how far you have come, and see all the progress you have made, see all the gains that have been garnered and gathered. Sure keep moving. The ideal is still there, and you can make more progress, but don’t measure that direction.

(These ideas spawn from Ben Hardy’s book the Gap and the Gain)

The gain

# Chapter 137

Measuring the gain is the right way. The gain is the distance from where you STARTED to where you are now. The gap is the distance from the ideal to where you are now. Looking at two opposite ends of the same gig. Makes a really big deal in how you see the world and how you see you. This will light up the possibilities in all areas for you if you can see the gain rather than the gap. Most of us struggle with the gap multiple times every day. It is how most humans seem to be wired. Seeing the gain changes everything. It allows you to be so grateful and appreciative and humble, that new possibilities spring up all over the place. It’s like you can see differently. And you really are I guess, you are seeing how far you have come and that will give you confidence to go even further in whatever you are pursuing, rather than fixating on how much further there is yet to go toward some form of an ideal that you have stuck in your brain.

Measuring the gain is always a win. Because you have made way more progress than it feels like you have on any given day. Most gains occur so incrementally that you can’t really see them or measure them when they are happening. This is so extra true when you are in intense language study. When we studying Russian Language at Rostov State University in southern Russia many years ago, it seemed that we were making no progress whatsoever. This is primarily our daily experience because we were looking ahead toward an ideal goal, rather than looking backwards, to our starting point, where frankly the dogs lying in the street understood more Russian than did we.

We were looking the wrong way. Turn around and see how far you have come, and then you can move forward with confidence.