time out

Reflection:  How present are you to the everyday gifts of your everyday world? That’s what I asked myself after last week’s activities. And, on reflection, I noticed that every experience brought with it something to savor.

Tuesday’s commitment – facilitating a team retreat – took me on a trek to north-east Saskatchewan – a 3 hour drive each way. I realized as I traveled, what a treat it is to cruise through the spring greening of the crops in the country. The sun in the sky, an interview with Joni Mitchell on the radio, fresh coffee at hand…it was beyond pleasant. The gift of a road trip!

The planning committee for Wednesday’s engagement (an Art of Insight presentation for the Leadership Saskatoon Alumni) went all out to make their guests feel at home. Personal greetings at the door, rose bowls replete with flowers and paint brushes on the tables, tasty nibbles, and a very inclusive welcoming atmosphere! The gift of hospitality!

On Thursday, I joined a group of close friends and colleagues for conversation and dinner. We’ve been meeting a few times a year for a decade to support each other in our lives and businesses. We problem solve, strategize, laugh, cry, and generally lift each other’s spirits. They are GEMS, every one of them. The gift of being known and appreciated warts and all!

Friday, I facilitated another team retreat. The session design was highly interactive. I learned again that when people connect deeply to each other and commit to the focus at hand, more energy is created than consumed. The gift of engagement!

Action:  Here’s this week’s challenge. (more…)

Reflection: So here I am on a bright midsummer morning weeding in the front yard. Down the sidewalk comes a three old youngster on his tricycle with his mom trailing behind.

As they reach our front yard, Junior spots a shiny penny on the sidewalk. He hops off his trike, picks up the penny, and spends the next few minutes in a solitary game of Fetch – tossing the penny, retrieving it, and throwing it again. Eventually, it lands in the lawn. Lost!

No tears – just resignation – as magically, in place of the penny, a ladybug appears. He scoops the ladybug up in his hand and watches it crawl up his finger. With mom’s help, he masters the art of transferring the bug from one hand to another, until it spreads its wings and flies away.

No worries – there’s more to discover. The crows in the birch tree launch a caw fest. The little guy looks up to check things out, and his hat tumbles off his head onto the sidewalk.

Bending over to pick up his hat, he finds an earthworm. Dropping to his hands and knees, nose near the action, he patiently follows the worm’s wriggling progress from one edge of the walk to the other.

At this point, an airplane approaches. Junior jumps up, points it out to his mom and stands with his arm in the air tracing the aircraft’s path until it disappears from sight.

By this time, he has worked up quite a thirst. The little guy begs a sip from the juice box Mom holds at the ready, hops back on his tricycle, and off they go.

Over the course of 15 minutes, they moved a grand total of 15 feet. Not exactly a power stroll or roll! But, an extraordinary example of living and learning – approaching everyday experiences with a sense of curiosity and a spirit of discovery- with what we might call Beginner’s Mind.

Action: We were all beginners … once upon a time. (more…)

Reflection: I’d had a busy couple of weeks with projects, commitments and deadlines on every front. When the calendar cleared last Wednesday, I decided to pause and step away for a mental wealth day. That’s the kind of day when you focus on making a few sizeable deposits in the sanity bank account.

I spent ten minutes in the office, cleared a few urgent messages, put an away message on my phone, and settled in to enjoy the open space.

As the day unfolded, I puttered in the garden, visited on the street with several of the neighbors, lunched in the sun on the back deck, napped in the hammock, chatted by phone with several family members, and simply enjoyed the fish in the pond, the birds in the trees, and the tulips in the flowerbeds.

A greeting card from my sister arrived in the mail that morning and set the tone for the day.  The front cover featured a figure reclining in a hammock under the palm trees with these words: “Nowhere to go and all day to get there….” That became my mantra for the day!

I love that sentiment, it’s such a contrast to what we are more likely to experience in our everyday lives: “Everywhere to go and no time to get there!”

Action: Life doesn’t always lend itself to a mental wealth day. But, it may be possible to create a mental wealth moment or hour. And as you step into that openness of time, try breathing in the possibility that just for now, you have: ‘Nowhere to go and all day to get there!” (more…)

Reflection: Have you ever walked alongside someone whose stride was much longer or shorter than yours? Have you ever partnered on a project with someone whose pace was entirely mismatched to yours? They moved, spoke and concluded everything in a flash – or they ambled, pondered, and decided waaaay toooo sloooowly for your comfort?

If you have, chances are that you know first hand the frustration of trying to keep up or the irritation of needing to slow down.

Our set points vary one from another; and they may shift over time. Life experiences can temper our choices along the way. If we’re paying attention, through trial and error, we learn when we need to give a person or an issue more room, and when the time is ripe to urge to action.

In any given situation or relationship, the ‘right’ pace energizes, while the ‘wrong’ pace exhausts. And, of course, it’s all terribly subjective and situation specific.

When lives are on the line (think fire or medical emergency), a fast paced response is essential. But not everything we face falls in that urgent category – even though much is presented that way.

There’s a leadership style known as ‘Pacesetting’ that invigorates some and frustrates others. Pacesetters are notorious for setting very high performance standards and modeling them for others. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – except that pacesetters tend to be obsessively high on expectations and perilously low on empathy. Without empathy, this kind of leadership may not even register – much less respond to –  the stress that others experience along the way.

Action: So, how do you put these ideas about pace to work? (more…)

Reflection: Comedienne, Phyllis Diller, once remarked, “My idea of exercise is a good brisk sit.” Funny as she was, Phyllis had it wrong. Sitting is not necessarily better for your health. Sure, if you’re on your feet a lot during the day, taking a load off serves to…well, take a load off. It brings a welcome relief to weary feet, knees and back.

But a whole lot of us are not standing. We’re sitting, sitting, sitting. At the computer, behind the wheel, in front of the TV, on bleachers watching others play sports, and around the table at community meetings.

According to recent research cited by the Mayo Clinic, sitting for long periods of time is directly associated with obesity and a set of conditions known as metabolic syndrome – something that leads to higher blood pressure, skewed blood sugar, and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Too much sitting is also associated with upper back and neck pain, and a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Don’t like the sounds of that? Neither do I!

Why does getting a move on matter so much? Apparently the muscle activity used in standing and other kinds of movement helps trigger the breakdown of fats and sugars in the body. Every time you stand or move, you set those processes in motion; and those processes help keep you healthy.

Action: What’s better than sitting? Sitter-itus Interruptus! It looks like this. (more…)

Reflection: Oprah came to town this week. And, although I’m neither a devotee nor an uber-fan, I bought a couple of tickets for the show. I thought it would make a great mother-daughter night out (and it did). And, as a speaker, I was curious to see how she presented herself and what messages she chose to share.

Oprah excelled at creating an intimate connection with a crowd of 13,000 people. And that’s no easy feat! Some of that success springs from sheer familiarity. It also comes from her openness in sharing who she is, the road she’s travelled and what she’s learned along the way. And much is due to her ability to simply be in the moment. Who else would have the moxie or confidence to admit to that many people in that kind of setting that she’d chosen the wrong bra for her outfit of the evening?

Candor aside, one of Oprah’s strongest messages centered around the need for each of us to tune in our purpose in life. She noted that the threads of purpose show themselves early, and surface often. Even as a preschooler, she had plenty to say and the confidence to stand and deliver. Her grandmother observed, “That girl’s got a way with words!” That was her first thread. Others followed.

She got me thinking about the threads of my own life. I, too, was enthralled by words – an early reader who couldn’t get enough of books. I soon wrote my own poems and stories – the pre-courser to books that came later. I loved a platform and a stage – from oratory contests to chairing councils, clubs, and events. And, I lived to create things – hammering together ‘furniture’ from orange crates and peach boxes (yes, they were wooden back then), paint-by-number artwork, gardening, sewing, and on it went.

Looking back, it’s easy to see the parallel threads of communication and creativity. They were there, had I been paying closer attention along the way. At the time, the path forward never really seemed that clear.

Action: Daniel Pink describes three intrinsic motivators as central to our lives:  a sense of purpose, the opportunity for mastery and, a degree of autonomy. Following the lead of the threads of our lives taps into all three.

Here’s an invitation for you to do a little weaving of your own. (more…)

Reflection: How tightly crammed is your daily and weekly schedule? Are there gaps or just glimmers?

For years now, I’ve advocated in favor of white space. Time held free between meetings, commitments, and events that serve as a buffer in a busy life.

Meetings spill over, traffic jams, and a body’s got to eat sometime!

But buffers offer more than just a way to meet physical needs and stay on time. They give us room to breathe, and time to think.

Suppose you’ve just finished a meeting with a few members of your team. There’s merit in pausing to consider the ‘so what’ of the experience:

• What do you need to do next as a result of the exchange?
• What kind of coaching would help someone stay on track or grow in skill?
• What does this new information mean for where you are headed?
• What does it say about how far you’ve come?

In the absence of time to think about these things, in the pressure to race forward to what comes next, we lose our way. We also lose the opportunity to celebrate progress, shift direction, and build capacity.

Action: Place a high value on pausing for reflection. Make and take the time to think.

Block 10 or 15 minute buffers between events. Keep your intention front and center. Encourage others to do the same.

Reap the considerable rewards of a more considerate pace and a more considered experience.

Quote Of The Week: This space intentionally left blank. Jeff Weiner

Resource Of The Week: Today’s message inspired by this article from Jeff Weiner, CEO of Linkedin: The Importance of Scheduling Nothing.

Readers Write: In response to last week’s message, What’s New In Your World, Pause reader DC writes: Thanks for the wonderful link! I have watched it and forwarded to friends and family. They are just so cute. And, yes, if you just could go a quarter turn in your listening skills, you’d clearly understand what they are saying. Have an amazing day, I plan to do so!

Reflection: What do you think? When it comes to work-life conflict and balance, are we making progress or sliding deeper into the morass? Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

To help us determine the results, Ontario researchers, Duxbury and Higgins, have just released their 2012 survey of Canadian employees. It’s the third time in two decades (1991 and 2001) that they have gone to the proverbial well to set benchmarks for how we are doing on the work life frontier.

I can tell you now, if you placed your bet on ‘backsliding’, you are a clear winner. But, of course that means, that Canadian workplaces and employees are the losers. Here are a few highlights from the survey info provided by 25,000 Canadian employees.

• Work demands continue to increase dramatically. The typical employee now spends 50.2 hours in work related activities each week. By gender, 68% of men and 54% of women now work more than 45 hours per week compared to 55% of men and 39% of women in the 2001 survey.
• Work spills into ‘off-hours’. 54% of employees take work home on evenings and weekends where they spend another 7 hours/week on work (much of it email).
• Role overload is common. 40% report high levels of total role overload. The source? 32% report high work role overload and 26% report high family role overload.
• The impact of work life conflict on the workplace includes absenteeism, reduced productivity and increased draws on employee benefits. The personal impact includes loss of sleep, low energy, and less time for selves – notably fewer social and recreation activities.

As you might guess, stress levels are up. 57% report high levels of stress, and 40% report moderate levels of stress. Only a lucky 3% report low levels of stress.

Action: D & H offer these recommendations for organizations. (more…)

Reflection: There’s more than enough confusion to go around these days. Options and opinions abound. It’s easy to be pushed by a persuasive argument, or shoved by a compelling assertion.

In the face of it all, the central questions are really, “How do YOU feel?” and “What do YOU think?” And how best do you tap into your beliefs and choose actions that fit with the values you hold to be important?

The answer is not more input, it’s more insight. And insight is mostly an inside job that involves disengaging from the commotion around us while tapping the core within. Clear head…clear path.

Action: If you don’t yet have a regular mindfulness practice – something that helps you stay aware of what’s going on in your body and your mind – there is still time to develop one. (more…)

Reflection: Have you ever found yourself hoping against all hope, that a great big honking chunk of open time would drop into your lap?

Well the chance of a bonus hour, day or week presenting itself is slim. And so I continue to be intrigued, when people tell me that their lives could be so much better and happier IF they just had more time – time to exercise, time to eat right, time to take a vacation, time to visit with friends, time to get the jump on a project at work or at home.

I’m starting to believe, that it’s more about the choice than it is about the time. You know we’ve all got the same 24 hours. Nothing new there.

Still, every minute of our day we make choices that are either expeditious or auspicious. Expeditious: dispatched with speed and efficiency. Auspicious: conducive to future success. Expeditious and auspicious aren’t always in conflict, but neither do they always lead to the same outcome. In both cases, consequences follow.

You’re late. So you toss your partner a harried ‘See you later’ over your shoulder instead of pausing to exchange a warm embrace and loving kiss. Time diff: 30 seconds.

You’re hungry. You grab a bag of potato chips and flip the lid off the high cal dip, instead of making the extra effort to dig further into the fridge for that bag of ready-to-eat carrots. Time diff: 1 minute (more…)