being human

[This from Anne Jackson's website -- guest blogger Seth Godin.]

Why is it so difficult to be human?

What does it mean to be human anyway?

A key part of being a real person – a human being – is showing up, especially when it’s difficult, particularly when it’s frightening to do so.

Showing up counts for a lot. Why? Because it’s scarce.

Someone who will comfort you on the phone in the middle of the night, then throw on a bathrobe and drive to your house. That’s precious.

Someone who tells you the truth.

Someone who exposes herself, is present, connected and willing to let you hurt them.

These are the things we seek out as people, and yet we rarely find them. And yet we are rarely willing to be this person.

We built institutions, organizations and religions to make it easy to avoid being this person. The rules and principles and jobs and buildings and code words and admonitions… they all exist to protect us from the truths we’re afraid of and from the interactions we’d rather not have.

They organize us, and organization is a wonderful way to be protected.

We go to work and we hide. We hide behind the religion of our brand or our team or our Dunder-Mifflin employee manual. We go to a foreign country and we play tourist, because actually going there is too difficult, too risky, to exposed.

Showing up counts for a lot.

When we show up, we connect, we make change, we are transparent, and yes, we’re human.

Caring hurts sometimes, and that’s inconvenient.

The good news is that more than ever, value accrues to those that show up, those that make a difference, those that do work that matters.

The good news is that digging deep and fighting that voice that begs us to shut up instead of show up really pays off now, in more ways than we can count.

Faith in yourself, in your friends, in your colleagues and most of all, faith in your ability to impact our future is the best strategy I know.

—-

Seth Godin’s new book LINCHPIN comes out today. It’s about art and gifts and connection and making a difference. And you should really read it because it’s really great

new ventures

Since I can remember, my grandpa's office was a make-shift playground. After hours and on the weekends, I would sit in his big leather chair and open the top drawer to find an assortment of pens and highlighters that would soon be used to scribble my thoughts on neon post it notes. I attribute my obsession for office supplies to growing up around his fully stocked office.

He had the corner office for years at his company until he and his two partners decided to join each other in a shared office upstairs overlooking the shop. While I preferred the corner office, the joint loft provided new toys to play with, like drafting tables with lights that would illuminate the blue prints scattered across the room.

I loved being able to have the vantage point from the glass wall of their loft looking over the shop. There was something inspiring about the work that happened from their chairs that was somehow translated to the work happening below.

I would always go down to the shop and get a glass bottle of Coke from the old vending machine. My uncle and father's offices were out there and it was always an adventure to weave in and out of sheet metal sparks to the plumbing sparks where I'd find dad and uncle Chris working on, yet another, side project after hours.

Between the smell of grease and sweat of that shop and the scent of burned coffee and stale air in the office, I became passionate about business. And I'm not sure I realized how much that impacted me until this past month ...

It began with an email from my grandfather late one evening that said the gentleman who had bought his company had been found dead at his home.

I'm not sure why it shook me as much as it did, but I do know it caused me to reevaluate a few things. And in my first week of self-employment, the first of many risks I will surely take as a business woman myself, the step back couldn't have been more timely.

As I gather my own drawer of pens, post it notes, clients and work that I am passionate about, I need to remember that there are more important things in life than ... work. And I'll be the first to admit that concept doesn't come easy for me.

I have a lot going on in the coming months that could cause me to make hasty decisions about the foundation of my business. If I've learned anything from my grandpa's office and his colleagues death, it's that a company will provide an endless supply of distractions ... and it's my job to make sure they don't interfere with life and the stuff that really matters.

napping

I was fully prepared to write a blog about how difficult it is to be a 20-something.

Seemingly so many pressures. Countless decisions to be made that may or may not lead us in the right trajectory to be successful 30-somethings. Not to mention feeling like everyone else around us is getting all these opportunities to do what we could only hope to do at some point in our careers.

It's exhausting. And ultimately discouraging if you think about it for too long. But after a few conversations this weekend, I feel more hopeful about the future of my friend's careers. No, not mine, but certainly other people's. And while I hold up hope for them, it may bode me well to follow the advice below for my own internal quarter life crisis:

We are the strivingest people who have ever lived. We are ambitious, time-starved, competitive, distracted. We move at full velocity, yet constantly fear we are not doing enough. Though we live longer than any humans before
us, our lives feel shorter, restless, breathless...

Dear ones, EASE UP. Pump the brakes. Take a step back. Seriously. Take two steps back. Turn off all your electronics and surrender over all your aspirations and do absolutely nothing for a spell. I know, I know – we all need to save the world. But trust me: The world will still need saving tomorrow. In the meantime, you’re going
to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in somebody else) if you don’t calm the hell down.

So go take a walk. Or don’t. Consider actually exhaling. Find a body of water and float. Hit a tennis ball against a wall. Tell your colleagues that you’re off meditating (people take meditation seriously, so you’ll be absolved from guilt) and then actually, secretly, nap.

My radical suggestion? Cease participation, if only for one day this year – if only to make sure that we don’t lose forever the rare and vanishing human talent of appreciating ease. Elizabeth Gilbert

I'll admit that my natural response would be, "There are plenty of people in this world taking naps. I, on the other hand, have work to do. You with me?" But lately, I'm kind-of feeling (and hoping) she's right. Would it KILL me to calm the hell down? I mean, really. Would it kill any of us 20-somethings to just exhale for a second and realize we're doing ok ... honestly. We aren't failures.

Maybe we could try and enjoy what we've got now ... because something tells me our idea of "making it" may not be a walk in the park either.

So. Here's to naps and actually breathing ... you know ... the inhaling AND exhaling kind.

imagination station

I've felt a lot of anxiety over this "first post" of the new year (and 300th post of my blogging existence). There seems to be so much pressure to write something profound given the circumstances, but I think what I've come to is this ...

I've lost the imaginative spirit I once had as a child and I'd like to reclaim it.

We can all agree that proper schooling and societal pressures have caused most of us to forgo colored pencils and opt for spread sheets and mahogany desks. Even some of the bohemians out there feel that their creativity has become stifled by clients who can't seem to catch the vision.

None of this really occurred to me until I watched Avatar.

I know. I know. Another post on movies ... in particular one of the most talked about films of 2009. But hear me out.

As I sat in the theater I found myself, on multiple occasions, completely lost in the world James Cameron and his technologically inclined friends created. I wanted to be there. And for a few moments I was so captivated that I actually thought that world existed.

When I snapped out of it, I was pretty irritated. Not just because I had to face a reality void of floating jelly fish things and surfaces that light up at the touch, but because I haven't (even in the depths of my imagination) come close to an imaginary life like that since I was in grade school. And let's be honest ... even then I usually dreamed of castles, motes and cool dresses.

Even worse, my imagination a few years ago of the life I'd have today was nothing more than a block buster rom-com script in which I would (hopefully) play the leading lady.

I mean, really? Is that honestly the best I could do with a brain capable of so much more? Let me tell you, my life is so much cooler than any Meg Ryan script I dreamed of years ago. So why haven't I unleashed my imagination to the possibilities of what the next few years may look like?

I realized after my Avatar experience, that there is something kind-of deep happening here.
1. I feel guilty for dreaming of too great of a life (or having too great of a life, for that matter) because so many others don't.
2. I don't really believe those things are meant for someone like me ...
3. Even if I let myself go crazy and "dream" ... it doesn't go much farther than the best of what has already been done.

I'm tired of only imagining a life of greater possibility within the confines of what already exists. What if the life I want to create for myself ... a life that lets me be the truest of who I am ... hasn't been created yet? What if it's my job to dream it up ... to imagine it? And to create a space for others to join with me in the process of creating a future full of possibilities that go beyond the genius of Apple's products, Google's workspace and even James Cameron's Avatar ...

I'm a little rusty at this, so it'll definitely take practice, but I'm thinking 2010 will be full of possibilities for me that I've never considered. And even if they don't come into fruition ... I'll at least have a happy place that will keep me hopeful until something does!