I love legal pads. Yes, the bulky, yellow pads of paper which, in the age of smartphones and tablets, seem pretty unsexy and old fashioned. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology too. But technology is only a tool, and it is not the best tool for everything.
There are still things for which plain old pen and paper are best. Here are three of them which will help you crush it in business and in life.
In every life, there is a cord of tension stretched between our ideals and our reality, between where we would like to be and where we are right now. Learning to embrace this tension is what this post is about.
We really hate tension as human beings and love to complain about it every chance we get. Starting a business is harder than we thought it would be; parenting is more challenging than we ever imagined; entrepreneurship is lonelier than we anticipated; writing the book is taking so much longer than we hoped. We zero in on these hardships like a scientist with a microscope and completely forget to enjoy the process and learn the lessons tucked away deep within.
This past weekend, Claudia and I dropped our son, Jude, off at his grandparents and we took off to the little coastal town of Newport, Rhode Island. We were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary and had a great time unplugging and spending time together in a new place.
We’ve learned in the middle of the hustle and bustle of life and entrepreneurship, it’s so important to continue to invest in our relationship. If we’re not careful, that can get crowded out with the seemingly more urgent things.
I’m reading an interesting book right now by Kevin Lehman on parenting titled Bringing Up Kids Without Tearing Them Down. Through years of counseling parents, Lehman has found that every person, by default, parents just as they were parented – unless they learn how and decide to change.
He points out that our default mode is so powerful that many parents find themselves saying and doing the exact things they said they would never say and do to their children. And they hate themselves for it.
Recently, I had a great conversation with a friend. Afterward, I was telling Claudia how refreshing it was to be around this person. As she and I talked, we identified three key characteristics that made my friend so refreshing and fun to be around.
It’s worth mentioning, these characteristics go beyond personality and therefore anyone can develop these three traits and become a better friend, spouse, parent, boss, entrepreneur, and the list goes on and on.
The other evening Michael and I sat in our kitchen and colored. We had two 99 cent coloring books and a box of 24 crayons.
There was something wonderfully freeing about the limiting pre-drawn pictures of happy puppies and kittens and only having 24 colors to choose from. It let our minds relax and become creative with what we had.
Limitations can be tricky. From the outside, they look like an overweight jockey on a race horse, slowing us down. We feel woefully limited by our limitations. But, I would argue that we do our best work and are the happiest with strict limitations.
In life, one of our most valuable assets is our social network. A strong social network not only fulfills and enriches our lives, but it fuels health and success in many different areas. When we’re faced with a challenge or things just get busy, it’s so easy to neglect those closest to us. But research shows how isolating ourselves from family and friends leads to almost certain failure.
I know for me, when things get busy at work, it can be so easy to hunker down and hide away in my office all day. My tendency is to spend less time with my family, be quick to turn down meeting a friend for lunch, or just not take the time to get to know new people.
For years, I struggled to let go of past hurts. Somewhere along the line they all got backed up in the deep of me and I shouldered them right into all my tomorrows like a packhorse. I was a collector of hurts, a really good one.
I tried to let go, but what I thought I had laid down and worked through, kept spinning right back. I had boomerang struggles and every day was not a new life as this post is titled, but a re-play of the same life.
I’ve long heard the concept of “fail early, fail often.” And, while I understood it in theory, I struggled to see its real, practical benefit. This all changed when I realized that failure gives us knowledge and skills which cannot be gained any other way.
In his book, The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor tells of a study where 90 people went through a software training program. Of the 90 people, half of them were given instructions on how to avoid all errors, while the other half was intentionally guided into errors and needed to figure out solutions on their own.
Most of us spend all our whole adult lives on the same ride. Around and around we go.
We drink our coffee the same way, use the same deodorant, listen to the same type of music, and choose the same color clothing we always have. We eat the same basic meals, talk to the same people and wash our clothes with the same smelling detergent.
We live in the same basic area we always have, drive the same way on the same roads, and look out our windows at the same houses.
On a normal day 4 years ago, my husband Michael and I realized we weren’t living the life we wanted to live. We were living a boring life! So, on a hot weekend in July, we started a new life.
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