Going for a Black Belt in Life

My cousin had been going through a really rough time for the past couple of years. She had a really demanding job and the love of her life was very sick, in and out of the hospital. Emotionally drained, she realized she needed to take better care of herself, but wasn't sure where to start.

She read an article about the martial arts that, as she put it, "essentially reframed discipline as doing what you need to in order to protect what is most valuable to you". She thought about the things we do every day toward that goal, and decided why not work on earning belts for these life skills. Set a simple goal and achieve it. Then, when you've mastered it (whenever that is), you add another skill or set of skills to master.

For her, what she eventually decided she needed to master was "creative compassion and joyful justice." She decided to do at least 7 kind and compassionate things for herself each day to earn her yellow belt. The examples she gave were "eat healthy food and drink lots of water and tea, walk, spend some time in stillness, spend some time knitting, and spend some time with my sweetie."
And when she realized that she was doing these things without having to think about them or plan them, she awarded herself her yellow belt.

I thought this was a great idea, and thought about how I could apply it in my own life.
Where I often have trouble is watching out for my health. I don't get enough sleep, I eat unhealthy food, I forget to take medicine or vitamins, and spend too much time sitting. So I'm working on my yellow belt in health. I have a set of modest health-related goals I need to achieve each day, and once I've made them a natural part of my daily routine, I can start thinking about the next life skill I want to master.

In the martial arts, a black belt is never the end. Even black belts keep achieving new levels; there's always more to learn. So as my life and circumstances change, I can keep working on the things I need to learn to have a happy and fulfilling life.

If this idea appeals to you, think about what simple thing you'd like to make an everyday habit. What do you want to get your yellow belt in, and what do you need to do to achieve it?

18 Shorter Synonyms for "Actually"

One word that I really use a lot is "actually." In fact, I probably over-use it. At 8 letters, "actually" is quite a long word relative to the amount of meaning it adds to a tweet or text. Inspired by the exercise I did with the word "interesting," I decided to see if there were indeed any good, shorter synonyms for "actually."

Here's what I found on Thesaurus.com. There are a lot of shades of meaning in this list, so every word isn't appropriate for every context. But keeping these synonyms in mind will surely help free up some crucial characters for other words that can't be shortened.

1. in fact
2. really
3. truly
4. surely
5. easily
6. by far
7. clearly
8. indeed
9. plainly
10. rightly
11. simply
12. quite
13. fully
14. totally
15. utterly
16. well
17. wholly
18. verily

Be Awesome

There are a lot of things I'm good at that I don't necessarily enjoy doing. I'm good at running meetings. I can get along with difficult people. I can troubleshoot IIS and a MySQL database connection.

But if you offered me a job managing a group of sysadmins, for instance, I'd turn you down so fast your head would spin. (Unless you offered me a million dollar salary, in which case I'd do the job for a year, then quit.) I don't want to spend every day mostly doing things I dislike. There's no incentive for me to excel, and I would spend most of every day annoyed.

Recently, some of my coworkers invited me to connect on LinkedIn, so I took the opportunity to update my profile to reflect my current job. I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn from recruiters for jobs that I wouldn't consider unless I were truly desperate. For example, javascript programming jobs with a two-hour commute. I decided to fix my profile so I don't get any more of these messages. I like my current job a lot and don't want to be bothered by any proposal that isn't staggeringly attractive (e.g. the aforementioned million dollar salary).

I went through my list of skills and thought about each one: if this were the only thing I did in my job, would I still want to do it? If I couldn't answer yes, I deleted it. I also deleted things that I can do but am not actually very good at (e.g. public speaking). What remained were the things I am good at and that I want to be good at. Plus javascript, which I left in there because a lot of people had already endorsed me for it.

I want to be awesome at these things. I aspire to do them well, and feel a great sense of accomplishment when I do. These are the things I want to learn more about, the crafts I want to hone, the passions I want to discuss with people who have similar interests. I'm at the point in my life and my career now where I can choose to focus on these skills. Paring down this list was a good reminder of where I need to focus.

I don't need to be good at everything. I just want to be awesome at a few things.

Leadership Has Nothing to Do with Job Titles

The other day a coworker posted a link to a really great article, "Why Your Innovation Leadership Training Will Fail."  The author, Henry Doss, explains how the systems and culture of a workplace affect innovation, for good or ill, far more than its leaders do.

I was discussing this article with my husband, and we discussed the concept of "innovation leadership training." He pointed out that this is the kind of training usually given to managers in an organization. "But managers aren't leaders," he said.

That was something that hadn't occurred to me, but he's right. Think about who the leaders are in your workplace. Some of them might be managers, but some of them might be people with no official leadership title. The people who get things moving, who inspire others - they can be anyone, at any level.

And, conversely, there may be managers who are not leaders. For certain organizations, this is fine: managing is a different skill set than leading, and sometimes you just need someone who can handle logistics and politics in that role. But sometimes, if a group that needs a leader lacks one, that can cause problems.

Look around you today and forget about job titles for a minute. Who are the leaders around you? What is being done to nurture their talent for leadership?

You Are the Reason for My Success

This week, I learned that one of the reasons I am successful is that I have been lucky enough to have good friends. Specifically, good women friends.

This past Monday I attended TEDx Columbia SC, an independent local TED event. One of the speakers was Dr. Linda Salane, director of the Leadership Institute at Columbia College. She talked about what's keeping women from being successful in business.

One of the problems she addressed was "what women believe about women." In surveys, women say they'd prefer to work with men instead of other women. We apparently think other women are "over-dramatic back-stabbers."

Sitting in the audience and listening to Dr. Salane, I felt both disturbed and surprised. Sure, I knew there were some awful women out there. Heck, there are awful men, too. But there are plenty of women who are good people, people with whom I'd love to work.

Last day of school, 8th grade

It struck me that maybe I've just been fortunate in my friends. From nursery school through elementary school, high school through college, young adulthood on into motherhood, I have been privileged to call some truly wonderful women my friends. They kept my secrets, shared jokes and smiles and memories. They told me when I was being stupid, but stayed friends with me anyway.

So, to all my friends, thank you. Because you taught me that I can trust other women, and work with other women, I've been successful in my career.

To moms of girls, teach them to be good friends and help them find good friends. You'll be setting them on the path to success.

Trigger Topics at the Dinner Table

Thanksgiving will be here in two days, a day when millions of Americans sit down to dinner with their extended families. Some gatherings will be amiable, some will not.

In an effort to make dinner table conversation more pleasant, I thought it would be useful to think of a couple topics that are triggers for rants or arguments. If I know ahead of time what my trigger topics are, so if the conversation goes in that direction I can either reroute it or step away. Even better, if I share these topics with a couple of family members, they can avoid those subjects as well. And if I know their trigger topics, I can do the same for them.

Conventional wisdom says that you should avoid talking about politics and religion, but those two topics, in general, don't provoke me. The subjects that make me go off on a ranting tangent or expound embarrassingly from my limited knowledge are not what you'd expect.

The topics below are ones I know I tend to either go on and on about at length or else start arguments about. For pleasant holiday dinner conversation, it's best to avoid them. I'll save these for the wine-fueled late-night debates after the kids are in bed.

My Trigger Topics

1. Transportation infrastructure
2. Ronald Reagan
3. Economics

What are some topics that you (or your relatives) should avoid? Current events, or that one family story your mom likes to tell? Post yours in the comments.

Variety or Success

Variety or success: Pick one. As I near the middle of my life, I'm having to come to terms with a lot of the choices I've made. One that occasionally frustrates me is that my success is not commensurate with my potential. But when I think back on what I could have done differently, I realize that, faced with the option of single-minded pursuit or variety, I always chose variety.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to try cheerleading.
That's me on the far left.

One reason I chose to go to Sewanee was that they didn't require me to declare a major until my sophomore year. Looking back now, I do wish I had maybe majored in art, but at the time, I had studied so much art already, I was eager to try all the things I'd never tried before: film history, cheerleading, religious studies, Greek life. I was eventually forced to pare down my activities because there are only so many hours in a day, but I continued that eclectic approach to my studies for the rest of my time on the Mountain, taking electives in choreography and Japanese.

Making an ice cream cone out of feathers wasn't part of
the official curriculum at AIA. This was a project for a
creative club my friends & I started.

When I realized that I needed to go back to school to get a job in the field I was really interested in, I chose the Art Institute of Atlanta over the other available art schools mainly because their new Multimedia degree program let me take classes from several different disciplines: design, video, animation, and web/interactive. I did well enough there that I got a good internship, which turned into a good job. But once I was settled there, true success eluded me because, once again, I couldn't make myself focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else.

I could have taken off on my own to create a start-up, as some of my co-workers did, but that would have meant putting all my time and effort into that one thing. I wanted to keep playing in a band. I wanted to have a boyfriend, and get married. While I do regret some missed opportunities, I don't regret any of the things I did. I don't know that I could have made any other decision and been happy.

My career, such as it is, has been like crossing a stream by hopping from rock to rock. There's no particular goal in mind other than not falling in and drowning, so when one rock seems about to tumble away beneath me, I hop to the next closest one. I figure as long as I'm safely above water, I'm doing all right. And now that I'm carrying a family with me, jumping in and letting myself sink or swim isn't a viable option.

So I'm trying to find peace with the fact that I just don't possess the sort of single-minded drive required for true success. I am grateful for all the wonderful life experiences my pursuit of variety has given me. I need to remember that gratitude, and somehow translate it into happiness and contentment, because at this point in my life, I am who I am, and I don't expect I'm ever going to change.

Aversion Therapy

The other day I read the post "Slightly rewarded (slightly punished)" on Seth Godin's blog. He points out that many bad habits hurt us in such small increments that we don't notice their deleterious effects until a lot of time has passed. By then, it's harder to kick the habit and too late to recover whatever it's cost you. He writes, "One way to change behavior is to keep track of how often these little events occur, because seeing them lined up on the windowsill might be enough to change your mind."

I have a bad habit of playing video games on my iPod when I should be doing other things. I've tried many times to break this habit, but I've never been successful. Seth's article gave me an idea for how to quit.

Starting yesterday, every time I procrastinate by playing games I charge myself a penny a minute. Not much money, I know, but the kicker is what I have to do with the money I'm fining myself. I'm going to make myself donate it to Karl Rove's Super-PAC. Frankly, I would feel better flushing the money down the toilet than giving it to people who are just going to waste it on nasty political ads. And that's what has kept me from picking up the iPad several times in the last couple of days. I think to myself, "If I play Peggle, I have to give more money to Karl Rove." For me, that's quite a deterrent.

So far, I've only fined myself 30 cents. I'm hoping to keep it under a dollar by the end of October.

How I Freed Up a Little Piece of My Mind

Since we're a little more than halfway through 2012, it seems like a good time to revisit my New Year's Resolutions. I have not done a great job of keeping all of them, but I've done better with some than with others.

A shirt and earrings I bought at my favorite local consignment store,
Return Engagement

In particular, I've done really well with resolution #2: To buy only used clothing (excepting shoes and underwear and socks). I've managed to actually do this for six months, with the exception of a white t-shirt I bought recently from White House | Black Market because I couldn't find a good plain white tee in any of the consignment or thrift stores.

I expected that this resolution would help me save money, but what I didn't anticipate was how it would help free up time and mindshare. When a clothing catalog comes in the mail now, I just put it straight into the recycle bin because I know I'm not going to be buying anything in it. I used to spend time flipping through those catalogs even if I knew it was unlikely that I'd buy anything. And then if I liked something, I'd agonize about whether or not to buy it, which meant keeping the catalog around. No longer. Ad circulars and catalogs all go straight to the bin.

I also don't have to think very hard about where to shop if I need something. If I need something for work or a special occasion, I go to Return Engagement or Upscale Resale. If I need jeans or basic casual weekend clothes, it's Goodwill or Salvation Army. I automatically delete any promo emails I get from online retailers and don't waste time browsing through online shopping sites. My resolution has narrowed down the number of choices for me so making a decision takes very little time.

Since I'm not fantasizing about which clothes to buy or which stores I might like to shop in, I've noticed that a little piece of my mind is now free to think about other more important things. Now I wonder what other decisions I can make to help get rid of the mental and physical clutter in my life.

Living Vicariously

Yesterday, I went to a funeral for Brenda Douglas. She was a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and active in the church and the community. Beyond that, she was also an artist and photographer, and had a long career as a court reporter.

In his eulogy, our rector said several times that Brenda "lived her life to the fullest." This is clear from the legacy she left: her family, her art, the good she's done for people around her.  I hope I can claim half as much accomplished in my life when my time comes.

It got me to thinking how easy it is not to live life to the fullest nowadays. It's so simple to sit back and just watch instead. We can live vicariously through TV and movies and immersive video games. People who have given up on accomplishing anything with their own lives can live vicariously through their children, pushing kids into ever more competitive milieus.

I don't want to live vicariously. As long as I am alive and able, I want to experience life for myself, to live each day to the fullest.

Acceptance != Resignation

Denial: Raging against what is. 

Resignation: Giving up hope.

Acceptance: Acknowledging the situation, but not giving in to it. That gorilla knows that he's stuck in the cage for now, but he's still thinking of a way to get out. Open the door, and he'll be gone in a flash. Denial gorilla might not even notice the door is open, he's so busy pulling on the bars. Resignation gorilla doesn't think he can do better; open the door, and he'll stay put.

Notes on Worship Music

While cleaning out the living room, I found an old notepad. It looks like I used the top page to take notes, probably at a seminar on using contemporary music in traditional liturgical churches that I went to about a decade or so ago. That was back when I lived in Columbia and we were first setting up a contemporary music group at St. John's.

The notes are sparse, but they contain some good information. I'm transcribing them here so that their ephemeral wisdom will live on.

Kierkegaard: in worship, God is the audience

liturgy = work of the people

Lewis Lyle: "A Theology of Music"  (rec'd book)

Aim for music that's God-centered, not self-centered

Leading worship, not giving a performance

How to Be Less Creative

Creativity is mostly useless. Here is a short list of the times in a typical day when creativity is helpful:

• Keeping from being bored while doing chores
• Making up stories to tell my boys
• Blogging
• Solving a particularly difficult problem at work

Altogether, that accounts for about 3 hours out of each day. Subtracting the time spent sleeping, that leaves 15 hours per day when I do not need to be creative.

During those hours, creativity is an impediment to the things I need to get done. I need my thinking to be logical and organized. I do not need to be distracted by ideas.

Steps for Becoming Less Creative

There are thousands of books and articles about how to be creative. But how do I switch it off? What if I really just need to be less creative? 

The May Real Simple has an article titled "Can You Get More Creative?" It includes a list, "7 Habits of Highly Creative People." I'm going to turn the list around backwards and see if it contains any useful advice for blunting the creative impulse.

1. Play. Work.
2. Borrow ideas. Dismiss any ideas that aren't your own.
3. Sleep on it. Complete all work by the end of each day.
4. Collect every seed of an idea. Don't study, observe, or learn.
5. Embrace constraints. Rail against constraints.
6. Commune with nature. Avoid nature.
7. Compete. Avoid competition.

Number 4 is the tough one: that's what I mean by needing to turn off my brain. How can I not remember things I see and read? How can I stop putting together all the puzzle pieces rattling around in my head? It happens automatically, it may just be how the human brain is wired.

Perhaps being less creative just takes practice.

My Presentation for Aiken El's Career Week

This week is Career Week at Aiken Elementary. I volunteered to talk about my job, so this morning I went and told two fifth grade classes all about being a web designer.

Here's my presentation in PDF format. If I had it to do over, I would definitely have spent more time on the graphics and I also would have included testing the web site as the final step in building it.

It was also picture day, so one class was late showing up. I killed time by asking the other class what their favorite web sites were. The sites they mentioned were Facebook, some retail sites, and some gaming sites. I was struck by how quiet most of the kids were when asking their questions (either that, or my hearing is going).

After my presentation, I gave the kids a chance to ask questions. Here are some of the questions they asked me:

• "What was the first web site you built?"
• "Do you have to have good grades to be a web designer?"
• "What was the hardest site to build?"
• "What's your favorite site you made?"
• "If you're a freelance designer, how do you get people to give you work?" (I expect this perceptive boy has a bright future.)

Fear vs. Fear

What if all the time and effort you put in turns out to be for nothing?
What if you spend the rest of your life wondering, "What if?"

When presented with an opportunity, you have to fight one of these monsters. Which one do you want to do battle with?