Genuine Insights

When to Be a Bad Girl

I have always been the girl who breaks the rules and makes up her own as she goes through life. I was recently reminded why this is truly a best practice for anyone who wants to challenge the status quo, push boundaries, or just plain change the scenery in her life.

Many of us adhere to all kinds of self-inflicted rules born of fear of “getting out of line” or the even the bigger fear of “getting in trouble.” Change doesn’t happen when fear is in the driver seat. Innovation doesn’t happen when you color inside the lines. Passion doesn’t flourish when you restrain yourself from exploration, experimentation, and curiosity along the edges of your life. We compromise, bend over backwards, stay in the lanes, and actually create all kinds of limitations for ourselves that ultimately keep us from our full potential for happiness.

I have to admit that there have been times when I have operated from this hesitant place, holding back out of fear that my “unruliness” will be disruptive or harmful. Yet each time I have done this—giving up my power and capability in favor of silence, safety, and conformity—I have discovered that while things may feel more secure and predictable, they also become uninspiring. As you know, a boring life is a deadly life.

It’s only when I am breaking a few dishes and stirring things up that I feel entirely alive. Going against the grain and challenging the perceptions of people around me makes me feel closer to and surer of my values. I feel reinvigorated and recommitted to what I believe, and excited all over again about my own potential.

A few rules for breaking the rules:

Breaking the rules doesn’t mean breaking the law—just to be clear! The rules I am encouraging you to break are the self-limiting rules you have defined for yourself based on fear, low self worth, or insecurity. These are the silent rules we hold onto throughout our lives, which are many times based on false truths or mistaken impressions and have no valid reason to exist. For example: The “Don’t speak out and interrupt others in a meeting” kind of rule. Or “Never say anything that might hurt someone.” Or what about the rule that says if I wasn’t invited I should not attend the event. I would even argue against the “Family should always come first” rule. I know this last example is a hard pill to swallow, but many of us have really messed up families and putting their insanity first is never a smart thing to do. These self-restricting personal rules represent harmful limitations to your personal growth and satisfaction and need to be broken and dismissed.

Speak up. Interrupt others if you have to, crash an event or two and don’t guilt yourself out for breaking up with unhealthy family members. In fact, break any one of those dumb rules that get in the way of your passions, dreams, or causes.

I am tired of seeing amazing people stay in their lanes and would love to see more risk, fewer boundaries. I would also like to see more of us let go of trying to control every encounter and intention we have and trade it for relentless determination and unwavering commitment to ourselves and to unknown outcomes.

Live a little. Be a bad girl. Let the rule breaking begin!

Posted May 14, 2013 Tagged under: uncategorized

Rise Up!

What I love most about the spring isn’t Opening Day of baseball season or more daylight after a long winter. It’s the intoxicating smell of change the season brings to each of us every year. It’s strange, but I am seized with the desire to create, curate and change directions. And although starting something new or taking something in a completely new direction can be daunting on a good day, there is no better time for you to dare to activate your ideas because most of the planet is in creation mode.

Every time you see a sign of spring—from a flowering bulb bursting from the ground into bloom to a pile of little kids scrambling around on a ball field—make a point of acting upon your own possibilities for renewal with your business, projects, relationships, or creative endeavors.

What parts of your life are begging for renewal? And how—on a practical level—do you go about initiating this kind of change?

Innovative Café Time
From an entrepreneurial perspective, one way to get you started on this path is to fill your schedule with phone dates, hikes, museum jaunts, or café time with other interesting, successful, innovative entrepreneurs who you have been admiring from afar. I have seen many a venture start from a tea date of genius. Don’t think of this time as “social”—think of it as a boost, like a shot of B12, to stimulate your thinking and get your energies flowing in sync with growth and renewal of the season.

Organizational Idea Retreat
For folks within large organizations, create a list of the most inspiring people across the organization and reach out via text, IM, email, or phone to schedule “an idea retreat. “ These are ideation sessions—off the record and intended only to give voice to new concepts, recommendations for change, or new directions to explore. Encourage colleagues to take that muzzle off and spring forward with ideas during these curated idea-sharing meetings. In an ideal world, the meeting would be “recorded” graphically by a visual artist. Nothing is a more inspirational reminder of the energy and excitement of collaborative ideation retreat than that.

Go Solo
If you are a quiet soul who would rather curl up and die then participate in an idea retreat, consider taking your imagination out for a walk. Change up your weekly routine and carve out time for your imagination to play, paint, doodle, explore, and experiment. Every good idea is born from the imagination and we sometimes neglect this beautiful space within our minds. Feed it this season, nurture it and be sure your creative sensibilities lead the journey.

Happy Spring, Tribe!

Posted Apr 17, 2013 Tagged under: creativity, entrepreneurship, ideas and innovation

How to Listen with Your Heart

Nature provides us with the ability to hear with our ears, and our minds help us to do something with what we hear—that’s the difference between hearing and listening. There’s another level of listening that goes beyond that process, though. I call it listening from the heart.

Throughout our daily lives, lessons appear to us in a multitude of forms and many of us miss out because we don’t know how to listen from the heart. This type of listening calls on your intuition, and asks you to be an observer and student of your environment, relationships, and experiences. It requires an interesting mix of focus and giving yourself over to whatever is happening, and the result is subtle but powerful kind of self-discovery and personal growth.

I recently decided to experiment by spending more time in this state of observation rather than in my usual activation mode, and the impact on my personal development and growth has been remarkable. Not only am I enjoying new insights about my own life and work I also am experiencing resurgence in my creative sensibilities.

In fact, the quieter I get, the more I listen. And the more I listen, the more I learn. And of course, the more I learn, the more I create and the richer my perspectives and ideas become. It’s as if the teacher in me has decided to enjoy being a student of life again and it all started by listening from my heart instead of my rational mind. Here’s how it works:

Start with empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. When you begin to actively listen to others and the world around you from a state of empathy your own self-awareness and knowledge increases. This direct connection with the heart is a much better listening approach than the rational mindful approach, which usually comes from a place of judgment.

Allow yourself to listen to your experiences with no motive. Instead of leading with your existing impressions or a sense of how something impacts you, try instead to listen from the other person’s perspective. With time, this empathetic approach expands your ability to listen from the heart and will transform the way you take in information.

Learn to be quiet in conversation
Conversation sometimes feels like a tennis match, the back and forth, and the way you look ahead to your next move in order to stay ahead. Next time you find yourself in one of these athletic conversations, try putting your ego in your back pocket and be quiet. Don’t jump to engage at every turn; let the other person lead and determine the course and rhythm of the conversation. When you learn to be comfortable in silence in a conversation, you will see how different your takeaway becomes and your connection to the person deepens.

Listening to others from the heart doesn’t only mean listening to words; it means listening to their energy, emotions, and body language. It’s a kind of heart-to-heart listening that elevates the experience of conversation.

Spend time with animals
I recently spent a day with an amazing horse whisperer named John Duperry and his two beautiful horses, Merlot and Hunter and learned more about listening from the heart than from any other experience or book I have read.

Animals are master heart-listeners and can read your emotions and feelings more than humans can. Spend enough time with animals with this in mind and you’ll get better at listening from the heart in spite of yourself! Think about your own pets, of course, but also consider volunteering at an animal shelter, pet-sitting for a neighbor, or even visiting a farm to engage with other kinds of animals. Let them teach you.

Meditate
There is a great deal of wisdom that already exists inside each of us that we can access through mediation. Think of meditation as ongoing training for listening from the heart. Use the quiet time to still the mind and fuel your spiritual gifts. Self-discovery, intellectual advancement, and the ability to grow your innate genius can be enhanced by meditation.

Allow your heart to reveal your true nature
One’s true self is raw, fragile, and filled with vulnerability yet most of us hide that self behind big egos, trying to protect ourselves from ourselves in a way. While this self-preservation is understandable, it’s not sustainable over the long haul.

I was reminded of this fact just this morning when a wise taxi driver told me “Never fight nature.” At first I thought he was referring to the rain outside but he continued to share that in life we must embrace our true selves and accept our natures.

Teachers are not always scholarly old men with white beards and pocket protectors. Sometimes our greatest teachers come in small packages, like the hummingbird that comes to my kitchen window, slowing down his flutter as if to say, “Put down that sponge and enjoy my dance.”

I hope this has inspired you to quiet your mind and listen with your heart; you can’t know what you’ve been missing until you give this a try!

Posted Mar 6, 2013 Tagged under: inspiration, motivation, reflection, self-awareness

Going Small

At some point in our lives, perhaps after having built up some momentum in our careers or experiencing some success, many of us become focused on going big with everything we touch and do in life. Somehow wanting more of what has turned out well for us becomes a “bigger is better” and “failure is not an option” approach that is typically fueled with unmanageable amounts of adrenaline and blind hope that just isn’t sustainable over time and eventually catches up with you in deadly ways.

I don’t know when it became okay to neglect ourselves for the sake of achievement but it seems to be an increasing trend I just have to address. The increase in suicides among some of our modern day geniuses, the increase in chronic illnesses and the overall poor health among so many trailblazers, game-changing entrepreneurs and and leaders in a variety of fields is sobering.

Many of these industry “rock stars” as well as some of you reading this may be quietly suffering from depression, anxiety disorders, chronic pain, and weak immune systems and do not address the fragility of your health because your ego may be in the driver’s seat and is driving your life right to its grave for the sake of achievement, money, or fame.

Relentlessly chasing goals, results, and aspirations and raising the bar with every
milestone met is one thing. Doing it irresponsibly within unthinkable timeframes is just stupid and actually brings you closer to your own mortality.

I so wish someone would have shared this golden nugget of advice with me years ago but instead I had to learn the hard way. Through battles with shingles, anxiety, sleepless nights, and monthly colds that would knock me out for a week, as I got older, each time I suffered more physically from overdoing it. And what is astonishing is that I was enjoying my over-stimulated lifestyle and was producing extraordinary results in the work I was doing but physically my body could not keep up and I would crash hard and fall ill with increasing regularity.

Take a reflective second right now and ask yourself:
Is my approach towards work and life a healthy approach? And if I could change, enhance or “hack” my approach to how I live and work, what needs tending to immediately?

Now act upon that area of weakness and or neglect and give it some attention as a mother tends to a new born with great care, patience and with delicate love. This may translate into finally heading to see your primary, scheduling sessions with your acupuncturist, finding a nutritionist, seeing a marriage counselor and or finally talking with a therapist.

It has only been in the last 7 months, since slowing down and moving to northern California that I have come to realize there is another way to tackle life, goals and work and that is to choose to go small.

What do I mean by going small?

Going small means taking the incremental approach towards success instead of moving from vision and venture in big leaps and bounds. Think of the old adage: “slow and steady wins the race.” This isn’t only a more effective approach for work but also with sustaining your health while doing and creating what you love. Consider the going small approach as a healthier alternative towards producing amazing results while not having to crash at the end of it all.

Going small also means exercising patience versus what Stephen Press field calls the amateur approach that is impatient. Going small means making time for the negative realities in your life and addressing them instead of wishing, praying or “affirming” them away. I am all for positive thinking but many of us use it as an excuse not take the necessary actionable steps towards what may be hard change needed to finally get healthy.

Going small means embracing an approach in which you focus you energy in a targeted way with potency instead of continuing to overdue it at many things. Less is indeed more in the going small model and the impact is powerful. Think of it as a drop of water in your pond of life and watch how the ripples impact and touch every aspect of your being.

Going small also means listening to your body more, spending more quiet time and learning that big egos don’t necessary lead to big happiness. The small approach is an egoless approach. It’s a reflective, quiet approach towards life and is filled with great moments of self-awareness and care. The small approach isn’t glamorous and isn’t led from the head and is lead from the chambers of the heart. It’s also a creative approach, which doesn’t tackle projects for measureable gains but for heartfelt impact.

This Feb as we celebrate those we love I encourage you to love yourself a bit more for as we all know, life is short and while we are blessed with life we should not waste it away in a frenzy quest for tomorrow for all that really matters is the miracle of now.

Posted Feb 12, 2013 Tagged under: uncategorized

Martin Luther King Jr. - I Have a Dream Speech

Enjoy one of the most revered orations and writings in the English language and here’s to our continual effort to end social ills around the world.

Posted Jan 20, 2013 Tagged under: uncategorized