Let’s imagine together.
Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine all the people living life in peace.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.
I hope today you’ll join us. Its International Day of Happiness!
How will you celebrate?
Think about it this way:
What if…. you called someone you have not spoken to for a long time to find out how they are?
history.com
“Whoever goes to the White House will bring along many others with their personal baggage.” This was a recent post on Twitter.
There was no claim to who would win the election or who they would bring with them. Just a less than 140-characters of information, to think about.
I thought about how this most vital job, of President of the United States, is a great place to analyze the model of how businesses, small and large are so similar. Also, the fact that we all bring baggage from our own history into the work place.
The whole concept of “office politics” is about positioning yourself to be in the right place, at the right time. It’s about favoritism and gossip, to act out back biting and betrayal, to create hurt, fear, or hopes and possibilities.
It’s about the baggage from the past and how it plays into the present time.
So, Twitter person was correct.
Everyone will bring some old baggage into the White House. The question is, how much baggage? And what will they do with it?
Yes, we live in a fast paced world. Yes, we are often at tipping points of stress. Yes, we can do better.
“We are all in it together and no one wins unless we all do.” This mantra sounds good, however, for most of us it sounds naïve. Sometimes the world seems to be spinning out of control and the issues are too big and a single individual, a mere speck in the universe, is too small to make a dent in the issues.
The trinity of today’s extremes are:
Poverty
Climate
Violence
As I listened to the speakers at the Clinton Global initiative I was bouncing between hope, anger and depression.
Hope won.
The quality of your life, personally and professionally, is based on how you make decisions.
There is the old way and the new way: hint, the new way is actually older than the old way. The indigenous cultures all knew and still know that everything is connected. Somewhere along the way as we became “sophisticated intellectuals” and “rugged individualists” the idea of inter-connection became old-fashioned.
Take business decisions.
Most companies use a variation of the Gap Analysis. First you are supposed to look at where you are; then where you envision you want to be; and finally create a plan to get from here to there. Simple. It’s like: think, vision, execute.
However, there is a missing piece.
I hear this plaintive cry from executives and middle managers all the time. I hear it from superintendents to elementary school teachers for at least ten months out of the year.
Getting along is what we all want. Right? So, why does it seem almost impossible to get through even a few days without feeling that blood boiling moment of “Not THAT again!” or “Can’t they just zip it?”
I would like to boil this down to some basics for you to think about.
Relationships are hard work.
You can’t learn how to be your best you by reading something that gives you 5 quick tips for happiness.
It’s just not that simple.
Charles sat down and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He looked at the fifteen others in the room and could not decide if he was relieved or simply embarrassed.
Finally John broke the silence by saying quietly, “We really are all truly sorry. Thank you for your honesty and openness.”
That was it.
The moment Charles had been hoping for since he was a little kid. All he wanted was someone to say “I’m sorry.” And now he had fifteen women and men who told him they were sorry for the barbs and taunts and put downs. One by one they had looked at him and said they were sorry.
Charles had just finished telling the story of his life.
There is an old saying, “Technology changes, people don’t.”
It’s kind of depressing to think that with all the good stuff at our finger tips, we are not much different from Neanderthal man and woman.
Well, maybe we dress better.
As social beings, everything we do is interactive and contextual. And yes, technology has changed much of our behavior and much of our behavior dictates what is next in technology.
What hasn’t changed is that our interactive behaviors create different kinds of experiences, and that is where we really need to think about what kind of experience do we want to create, at home and at work.
The excellent book, “An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, explores the essence of relating in the modern workplace.
Last weekend we trekked to Manhattan for the season premiere of ALIVE: 55+ and Kicking.
And what a day it was.
Just being in the presence of the executive producer, Vy Higginsen would have been enough. However, the day brought so much that I simply want to stand up and applaud the entire cast and the brilliance of an idea so needed in our world today.
Vi took the microphone before the start of the show and in her vivacious manner said, “The first 50 years of life are for learning, and the next 50 are for living.” And off we went on a musical holiday of song and story about, well just about all of us. It was about dreams gone astray, dreams fulfilled, happy days, hurtful days, and how to get up and get going, no matter what.
I will be interviewing Vy for my book “GUTSY BREAKTHROUGH STORIES” so here is just a snap shot of this mover and shaker. She is an award winning author, playwright, radio and TV personality. She is full of firsts: first woman on New York prime-time radio, first female executive in advertising, and founder of the Mama Foundation for the Arts in Harlem.
There was a curious incident during a recent basketball game between the students of two high schools in Massachusetts.
Is it because of Donald Trump?
Or is it just that somewhere on the planet Pandora, that beautiful gal from Ancient Greece, once again opened the mysterious box she was told never to open.
And all hell broke loose.
Pandora opened the box hoping to see gowns of silk and bracelets of gold. Instead out of the box poured all the evils of the world. In the shape of ugly creatures (thugs, if you will). What poured out was disease, poverty, jealousy, anger, corruption, lying, stealing, bigotry, polarization, mean-spiritedness, contamination, war, pestilence, affairs, physical and sexual abuse, gun and knife fights, partisanship and whatever else you can think of that resides in the realm of humankind that we prefer to, either avoid, deny or attack without thought of consequences.
Back to the high school basketball night. The kids at one of the schools with high intensity began shouting at the all-boys Catholic school that it was a “sausage fest.” Yes, you know what they were talking about.
I sat through the Golden Globe Awards hoping to see and hear something that would stay with me emotionally. With all the sixth grade humor about butt holes, alcohol and sexual innuendos I was able to multitask and get some work done on my new book, “Every Word Counts.”
I kept thinking “When did we lose the elegance of wanting to elevate and help people grow?”
Toward the end of this fluffy and superficial evening I was just about to give up and turn off the tube. And then Jim Carrey came on looking majestic with a super cool beard. It was clear he has done some good personal work when he talked about “being Jim Carrey who has won two Golden Globes and falling asleep thinking about becoming the Jim Carrey who will win three Golden Globes hoping will complete him.”
It was done so simply, so subtly that I wondered who got the message behind the message. It is also what we discuss with business leaders. No matter how many awards you win, no matter how well recognized you are, no matter how much money you have, you cannot fill the deeper place inside you with outer trappings.
I said a silent “thank you” to Mr. Carrey.