You Versus You - Who's Winning?

"We miss life's greatest opportunities not because of our inability to negotiate with others, but because we can't negotiate with ourselves."  - Erica Ariel Fox

At the recent 20th anniversary of the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit, those words from Session Five Speaker Erica Ariel Fox cut through me like a fine ginsu knife.

Ms. Fox started her talk with those words and while I did hear and retain many other great points from her talk, those words reverberated in my heart since that day.

Being the typical type-A personality who has recently discovered many of her deeply introverted characteristics, understanding and managing myself has been (and continues to be) the greatest challenge of my life. Even as a wife, mom, entrepreneur and public servant, managing my own heart/will and subsequent actions is my greatest feat every single day.

I often look at my "performance gap," which Fox described as the distance between what you ideally want to do when you living your best life versus what you actually do in real life. And while I mind that gap pretty closely, it is indeed still a gap. Here are three actions I find helpful in closing my game and winning the battle of you versus you:

Solitude

I absolutely crave and need solitude. Daily. Each day, I start the day in a raggedy yet comfortable green chair in my family room. Whether it's reading or praying or just being still - and it's really all three - I do not start many days without my "me" time. Solitude is my best place to hear from God. It is the time I hear myself as well. I tap into my deepest desires each day in the quiet. I reflect on the good, bad and everything in between in the wee hours of the morning when no one else is moving. I have also scheduled "me" time away from my house. When I was writing my first fiction book, I went away for a night to a hotel to finish it. Being alone really stimulates good and ways for me to look closely at who I am versus who I want to be.

Wise Counsel

Not a day goes by that I do not seek out wise counsel from a variety of sources.  From my posse of fellow elected women officials to my very best social worker friend from college, I look for opportunities to hear from others about how I'm doing. I also have a personal board of directors. This unpaid but richly compensated group serve as a sounding board for my ideas, dreams, frustrations and battles. There are baby boomers and millenials. Spanish speaking folks and black folks. Gays and straights and of course, men and women. This very diverse and eclectic group has a cornucopia of knowledge between them. Yet, they all know me well and I know each of them well. That mutual trust and confidence gives me the ability share my heart and expect theirs in their words and deeds.

Own It 

The buck stops with me. I own my every move. Right or wrong, I take responsibility. That gives me the freedom to truly go for all I desire because in the end, it's all on me. This is especially true in my dealings with others.  Even as self-aware as I am, it is very easy to look at others as I maneuver through life.  A client. A spouse. A child. Another parent. People do impact our lives and our ability to get where we want to go. No denying that. However, our own responsibility trumps all others. We own our actions and reactions. We own our feelings and behaviors. And until we truly embrace that ownership, we will find ourselves with a larger gap between the life we want and the life we have.

While the battle rages, I can honestly say, the "me I want to be" wins more often than the shadow me. And by making space to be with me, seeking wise counsel and owning my journey - I am certain I'll continue to negotiate well with me. And win.

Get Ready For 2013

What does a piano lesson, a question on LinkedIn, a random Facebook forward and a small baptist college in Elgin, IL have in common? They were all vehicles for the brain trust that came together as a "super" tribe for Relationships Matter Now on Saturday Dec 8, 2012.

Super tribe because this group of people spent  1/2 that December Saturday - two of them remotely via Skype - thinking about the future of Relationships Matter Now, LLC, strategic planning for 2013 and beyond.

I share this story for two reasons... one to encourage you to gather like minded people around your 'cause' for the coming year and to remind you to have a plan for that cause.

Whatever it is you want to do, whatever you need to accomplish  - it will not happen with you alone. It must be aided by the relationships in your life and what better time to rally folks than in a reflecting exercise on where you are and where you want to go.

That's what we did that cold Saturday morning. Three in one room and two online. Technology challenged but we stayed to course and hammered out some clear cut things that Relationships Matter Now can do to jump start 2013.

Not only is there a basic framework for the founder to follow but there is built in accountability because 4 other people know what needs to happen as well. There are specific deliverables, dates to regroup and road map to get started immediately.

Relationships Matter Now is ready for 2013! Are you? Is your business? your career? If you cannot say yes to all these things - I'm gonna need you to do the following:

Reflect

Take a moment to reflect on the past year. What was good? What was not good? What could have been better? What could have been worse? Who helped? Who hindered? Grab a journal and write it down. Grab a tribe member and get their feedback. You (like many of us) are too close to it. You need some outside perspective. Reflect alone and reflect in a group or with a partner but please take the time to reflect on 2012. You cannot move forward well without at least reviewing what's happened and why.

Record

As you think ahead - record what you feel, what you want to feel. Record what you envision happening. Write down the people who can help make it happen. Write down a few scenarios on how you can get it to happen. Share these recordings with your tribe -perhaps your "super" tribe - those closest to you and who have the most interest in what you are doing. Don't share this with just anyone - these thoughts, actions, plans are precious and only need to be shared with your inner circle. Recording them is step one and sharing is another step but both are essential to getting you ready for 2013.

So what are you waiting for? Get going!

Embracing A Tough Reality

Love this image of embrace - it captures me

This past week, a  good friend  updated her Facebook status with the following:

"Always the lesson, never the miracle”

Those words pierced my heart because I could relate. Can't you?  How many times have we asked, “can't I just get this one break?”

If so,  then you must be like the many of us whose lives are built to face and overcome complexity.  It is just a fact that while some people may have what appears to be a much easier and less complex road to what they want, there are those of us whose path is just a little more tough for achievement.

Now I don't want to sound as if this is a pity party or “woe is me” line of thinking, but after much thought and self-reflecting this week after reading that post,  I've come to embrace this tough reality.

And tough it is.

Who doesn't want the "Easy Street" in life? Isn't that why we take our chance and play the lottery hoping that we will hit the jackpot and all will be well.  But then you hear the statistics of the people who hit the lottery–the depression, anxiety and bankruptcy. How does that happen? They all can't just be idiots. Nor do I think there is some "big curse on easy money". My theory, is that they are running from and fighting their reality instead of embracing it.

Let me tell you a quick story about a recent issue, that really accelerated my acceptance of this thought in my life:

Since July, I have had limited use of my right arm. Thankfully, we've identified the problem and it will be corrected surgically before the end of this month.  The interesting thing about this whole situation with my arm is that there were 12 long weeks of not knowing what was going on and all was revealed in an afternoon with a diagnostic test.  So why did I have to go through all that, when the same diagnostic test after the first visit  would have made the problem clear and I'd be practically recovered now vs facing surgery? I don't know the answer to that question but I don't let it bug me either, because I've reflected on each week in the journey with my arm. There is a rich story that will be told when this is all over and perhaps, THAT is the answer to my question.

In my down time, mostly afforded to me because of a bum right arm, I started to reflect on my life as a whole and found that it was full of rich stories, none of them easy or without complexity, yet all triumphant, fulfilling and challenging for uniquely this person I've become.  What freedom in that moment!  What perspective!

And do you believe that very next “complex issue” I was faced with was suddenly transformed into an intricate puzzle that I had to put my brain around to solve versus “here we go again..." And the action to move forward came a bit more quickly than normal.

Then I got to thinking, what if others who share this same path embraced it rather than fighting it? What if we all could stop and reflect on our lives and use it to grow us? I am certain our relationships with others would benefit from this.

Mine have already.