Lessons Learned from the Blog Challenge

Tomorrow is the finish line for the 30 day blog challenge (#blog30), organized by Jeanette Cates and Connie Ragen Green. This is the second one I’ve done in 2010.

I used this new blog, The Reasonista, for this challenge. The standard was that all posts were to be on the same blog.

Just for this June 2010 challenge, I’ve written more than 5000 words. That’s enough to make a book.

This project has helped me crystallize my thinking, with more to come.

Lessons from the blog challenge.

• Fit your blog into a larger business plan. How can the blog contribute to your larger business goals? Will it help you build a mailing list, or your online authority?
• Make the decision. It might seem daunting when you think about it, but if you think you can, you can.
• Feel for the focus. The direction of your writing and your blog will change over time. You will adjust as you go along, like the course corrections that the pilots make during an airline flight.
• Think in terms of campaigns or promotional themes. This will help you bring your posts together to build around a main subject, and generate more ideas.

This much writing has also helped me get better and write faster, both beneficial goals that will be useful in this and many other projects.

Now, on to the next…

Flip the Coins on Purpose

It’s often said, there are two sides to every coin.

And it’s so true, you cannot have one side of the coin without the other.

Flipping a coin has been a decision-making tool probably since coins were invented (and they go back at least as far as Roman times, perhaps longer).

Leaving decisions to chance (albeit with 50-50 odds) may not always give us the outcome we really want.

So…turn them over on purpose.

This is a technique to use the content on one side to inspire the creative thinking to decide what’s on the other. Then, choosing to flip to that side on purpose.

For example, the mind does not take in the concept of negative. Mind is a creator. It uses the mental picture we maintain to create from. So the phrase, “I don’t want to be sick” produces a mental image of sickness.

But that same statement, when we hear ourselves, can be used to create, on purpose, a mental image of health. “I’m in vibrant health” would be just one affirmation. The mind can work with this picture, too.

If you read papers, news reports (especially the business and sports pages) or blogs of all kinds, you’ll find these stories, where people chose to focus on a picture of their own selection, their ideal imagined future.

They turned their own coins, using one side to inspire the other.

The outcome is no gamble when you flip a coin over by choice.

Deciding to Write

Some people have their favorite mechanisms to help them write. I have mine as well.

If the words aren’t coming, or the ideas won’t jell, then some physical activity helps. It can be as short as a walk down to the end of the block and back. Just enough to get the juices stirring.

Walking seems to energize the brain cells, and gives my body something to do to help the mind focus.

My drinks tend to be Diet Coke, coffee, or water. If I want something sweet, an ice cream bar.

Yet I know these are crutches. The real “on” switch is making the decision. That’s when it really comes together.

Sit down at the computer, or with paper and pencil, and just do it.

Editing comes later.  This is an inner secret of many prolific writers. Separate the flow side from the editing side of the writing process.

I respect the people who schedule their writing time – often in the morning – and they will start to write even if they don’t feel that they have anything to say.

Of course they do, they just have to turn on the switch to let the flow come forth.

Deciding to write works for everyone. It’s as simple as the decision. Practice makes it easier.

The Confidence of Hindsight

Yesterday I wrote about the transition phase between the new and the established, childhood and adulthood, so to speak, about change and moving on.

There is an important middle phase, which we call adolescence when we’re talking about our physical growth. This is less frequently explored than the new and established phases, a less comfortable, transitory world.

In adolescence, we are often feeling our way, and learning which inner voice to listen to – the voice of our emerging self and wisdom, or the one that’s an echo of old habits or other people’s viewpoints.

From the standpoint of 2010, and the story told in My Father’s House, I can say I’m glad I followed my own compass when it came to my relationship with my father in his last years.

My Father’s House – Part 2

Continued from Part 1

When we were young, my sisters and I sometimes sat with him when he burned the insulation off short ends of scrap wire, cleaning it up to sell the copper. The fire burned in bright, strange colors, blue, green and pink. Time, then, moved slower and the parent-child boundary was not so unyielding. Around the fire we could ask him almost anything about the nature of life and the universe. He gave answers illustrated with his experiences and deep thought. That was a long time ago, long before I became aware of the world as a metaphor, before I knew what it was like to have a conversation with anyone called a spiritual teacher, or could recognize wisdom when I heard it.

The nature of the universe is change, my teachers said, and I believed that was true. Now I feel its reality and know that belief is a poor cousin to experience. This new experience, watching a parent age, is a little more complicated than navigating the new menu at the local Coney where I eat breakfast on weekends.

When you get into “middle age,” you begin to feel your place in the universe, like literally standing on a giant wheel, slow and massive, turning almost imperceptibly. Glance over one shoulder, see youth snapping up behind. Ahead stand older people where the wheel is moving up and up, fading into a misty unknown.

No, I wouldn’t want to go back to an earlier time, even if I could. Still, sometimes, I wish the Coney would bring back the old breakfast specials, and autumn nights would bring back fires in a pile of scrap wire.

By the time I get to Coldwater, only 20 miles more to go. Farmland stretches for miles around here. Somebody’s just made their last hay of the summer and baled it in rectangular bales. I look twice. Those bales are uncommon now, old fashioned. Nowadays you see the round ones. They’re less work and they can be stored outdoors.

Down the road the irony zinged me. I notice I’ve gotten used to seeing the round ones.

Soon I’m coming around the corner and I’m on my father’s road. The top of his house is easy to see, a landmark above the full grown corn, but black stains streak the siding in places. He liked building, not maintaining.

I get there first, thankful I’m the early one. I have his time to myself before the others come. I knock on the door, remind myself to breathe, then walk in, to meet the old and new in contrast, and be at peace.

Sometimes we do learn to appreciate the good things before they’re gone.

–

Looking back at those days, from the standpoint of years gone by, I’m glad I made the effort, and listened to my own voice when it came to my father’s last years.

You can enjoy the time you have, and know that when things change, you did right by yourself and others.

In the end it does come down to what you believe. If you think there’s something more, are you trying hold on to things that have run their course and want to move on, or trying to force them to stay put?

Can a child in any sense (human, business or organization) stay that way forever, or must it my nature move on to another level, even if the path is rocky and uncertain?

The answer seems inevitable.

Allow for Surprise – Detroit

I have a friend who surprises me.

Every so often, something thorny happens. If I just wait, his better nature comes through.

It might take days, or longer, but I’ve learned to remain detached from the outcome, and I believe this helps the situation resolve itself peacefully.

Detachment creates space for his heart of gold to shine from behind the protective crust.

Something like that happened in Detroit not too long ago, at a Tigers game vs. Cleveland If you are a baseball fan, you surely heard of it.

Pitcher Armando Galarraga pitched a perfect game, only the 21st in the 200-year history of baseball. But it won’t go down in the record books because an umpire made a bad call: He called a runner safe, who was clearly out.

In baseball, except for home runs, there are no “instant replays” or reversed calls. On the official records, this game was not perfect.

This turn of events disappointed many people, needless to say. But the players, fans, pitcher and umpire took the high road, and that made news. The ump apologized. Media and fans gave full marks for taking that responsibility. The pitcher gracefully accepted. Not the outcome everyone might have liked, but the best under the circumstances.

Nice to have Detroit make news for something positive, for taking the high road.

Almost everyone has a better nature underneath. Taking a breath, thinking and choosing a response, go a long way. A step back with detachment creates a space where that shiny side can come through, where the unexpected can appear.

Dec-ide

Sixty-six years ago today, the Allied forces came ashore at Normandy. It was no secret that this would happen, as a necessary next step in the progress of World War II.

The Allies couldn’t win if they didn’t make the effort, and the Axis couldn’t win if they didn’t repel the attack.

The question was not whether to invade — it was when, where and how.

The decision that sent these soldiers ashore was on the shoulders of one man, General Dwight Eisenhower. He had to weigh the complex issues, sort out and balance the pieces, and decide when to decide.

The more I learn about the events leading up to D-Day, the more interesting they are to me. It’s interesting that Eisenhower waited to the very last minute to give the final order, to make the decision to go.

Everything was in place – thousands of soldiers, ships, planes – the people and resources that would be at risk, heading into the jaws of the Nazi war machine.

All the factors had to balance. And to be wrong, catastrophic. Once the switch was flipped, everything had to be committed, 100 percent. Turning back was not an option.

We all have things we have to decide, many with no set path or track to follow. The excitement and the anxiety both arise from heading off into the unknown, with no guarantee of success.

If you are an entrepreneur, you like this feeling, or learn to manage it.

The word breaks like this: dec-ide. Words that end in “ide” have to do with endings: homicide, suicide, patricide. Fortunately, most of our decisions are not about violence.

Nevertheless, to make a decision does mean to “kill off” the other choices, to select one, from the panorama. At least for the time being.

Commitment is necessary. More decisions will be in the pipeline, further on, as you move forward.

Most of the decisions we have to make don’t have so much riding on them, as the order to invade the French coast. But some are very important.

Some decisions will change your life, whether you know that at the time or not.

Decisions are vital to forward motion. Those who “sit on the fence” go nowhere. You may win, you may lose. But sitting still is not a decision, especially in our current times of flux and change.

Sooner or later, the time comes to decide.

The Pack Leader Mindset

We always had big dogs at home, but once my dad discovered Rottweilers, he wouldn’t have any other breed. The bigger his dogs were the better. And he also admired his Rotties because of their reputation as being “bad boys” in the dog world.

“If you’re afraid, they’ll know it,” my dad always said. When dealing with dogs, you have to be calm and confident.

I say that Rotties are smart and they know it. You have to be firm with them, because they will challenge you.

If you’re going to have Rottweilers, you must know you are the boss, so that they will know you are the boss. This is not about harshness, but clarity of focus.

On the path of an entrepreneur, some days I feel a lot like I’m dealing with my dad’s Rottweilers. The daily need to make decisions brings habits of thought (productive and unproductive) out of the woodwork.

I have to ask: Is it me, or some habit, running the show?

We believe that we are thinkers, making decisions through reasoning and conscious thought. We live in this identity, only to find our careful, rational decisions being challenged by the emotional, instinctual part of our nature, perhaps even to the extent where the unruly “animal” side of ourselves threatens to dominate our reasoning mind.

I never thought of applying what I know about dogs as a lesson to help make business decisions or control unruly habits, until I saw “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” on the National Geographic channel.

So many of the things Cesar says sound like they came from philosophical teachings: projecting energy consciously, maintaining focus, living in the now, and practicing mindset. He could be a teacher of meditation, yoga, or many other techniques.

“I rehabilitate dogs. I train people,” he says.

Cesar’s clients are dog owners anxious for solutions to their pets’ behavior issues. Some of the dogs are so dangerous – “red zone” cases – that the dogs will have to be put down if the behavior cannot be improved. Cesar teaches humans to become pack leaders in their households, and practice calm, assertive energy so that they communicate effectively with their dogs, which creates major improvements in the dogs’ behavior.

Hmmm. Pack leader.

Two Rotties named Tiger and Roxy got my attention in an early episode. Cesar says that Rottweilers are the gladiators of the dog world, born to challenge. These two were only puppies, but were already heading for the red zone because their humans did not know how to control them. When the humans learned to be calm and assertive, and Tiger got the job of carrying small items in a doggie backpack, their behavior changed for the better.

Cesar instructs dog owners to practice their pack leader mindset with their dogs, along with exercise, discipline and affection – in that order. Through these techniques, he rebalances the animal energies in his clients’ households, and shows the humans how to maintain this harmonious state. Some of Cesar’s human clients report that their self-esteem improves by practicing the calm, assertive energy with their dogs every day.

Become centered in who you are — Sounds just like a necessary quality for business success. Knowing your goals and balancing the reasoning, emotional and intuitive aspects of oneself to move forward – and breaking new paths in the snow.

Just what pack leaders do every day.