Seeking your inner superhero

Have you ever thought about what you would change if you were truly a superhero?  

Yesterday evening I saw the following on Twitter from Streetlights94:

If I had gotten my way and become Wonder Woman I would have been able to prevent bad hair today, stop the oil spill, and conquered idiocy.

I loved this tweet.  It got me thinking about what I would do if I could get my way and be my own superhero.  Here are the first 5 things that occurred to me:

1. It would never occur to people to drink bottled water except in the case of emergencies.  In fact, bottled water would stay in the superhero supply warehouse until said emergencies.  
2. Vending machines would dispense string cheese.  And Baby Bell cheese.  
3. You know those "health" indicators in video games?  We would all have one floating above our heads letting the innocent people around us know if we were hungry, grumpy or having a less-than-smart day.  In return, we would get a little understanding, a little space and maybe a little snack.
4. Workplaces would have pets, like office mascots.  Maybe in every department.    
5. Women's magazines would not market to self-doubt or perceived weaknesses, and they would not benchmark us against each other.

Now it's your turn.  Picture yourself in a cape, kick-ass boots, tights if it works for you and a cool superhero mask.  Off the top of your head, what 5 things would be different about the world?  I challenge you to use your imagination!

-Andrea

Change is in the air...

Last week I wrote about the little identity crisis going on with this blog.  I've decided to split the content and do some renovation.

I'm going to continue posting insights and observations about life, relationships and the general human condition here at Sweeping Up The Moments.  The blog will remain at this location for now, but a move is in the works.  Blogger has been a good temporary home, but it's kind of like renting a room in someone else's house: you get the urge to paint and change it up, and eventually you get tired of your name being listed care/of those who own the digs.  In other words, Sweeping Up The Moments is getting its own house, complete with new furnishings and housewarming parties (you're all invited, by the way).

My business-related content will be moved to a blog under The Lewicki Agency, my professional site that will come online soon. The Lewicki Agency house was all ready to go but before the power was switched on, I decided to do some last-minute demolition and reconstruction.  It's going to be a blast over there, and I encourage you all to stop by and get a goodie bag during the grand opening.

So, in summary, stay tuned and remember you're invited to a housewarming and a grand opening.  Make sure to wear your party shoes!

-Andrea

Do you think you're smart enough to do it wrong?

Do you ever worry about failure, about not doing it right?  The humans among us naturally worry about such things.  But what would happen if you tried something fully intending to fail?

Earlier this month I read a post on World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne where he challenged his readers to a bad poetry contest.  Initially I thought it was simply interesting because unless you are a poet and you know it, anybody could jot down a couple of lines of awkward and unnatural prose.

Later that afternoon I thought the contest was brilliant.  Why?  Because we all have an understanding of what "bad" means.  Our vocabulary for describing what's wrong is stronger than the vocabulary we use to identify what's right.  We're well-trained at finding out why something doesn't work.  It is not unusual or far-fetched for us to know more about what we don't like than what we do.

So consider this: if you think you know what "bad poetry" looks like, try writing some.  Somewhere in your mental archives you have a list of rules that bad poetry violates.  You know what not to do.  So write some poetry where you don't do those things.  Just try it.

It's surprising how creative you have to be to write something that is intentionally bad and cringe-worthy. Even more surprising?  It's a little fun.  That's right.  Fun.  As in loosened up and relaxed and playful.

And that's where the beauty lies.  By trying to intentionally fail, you have to address your individual assumptions about what failure looks like.  Thinking a certain way is not at all the same as acting a certain way, and when you try to put your assumptions about failure into action, suddenly the assumptions don't feel so absolute.

What are some other examples where you claim to know what "bad" looks like, what defines failure?  Think about your resume, the proposal you've been meaning to write, the idea you've been wanting to pitch to your boss if you could only figure out how.

If you were going to do these things intending to do them wrong, what would that look like?  What are the criteria you came up with for making those judgements?  Now flip them around.  Congratulations, you are now your own how-to guru!

-Andrea

Do I use the knife or the fork?

  

I write for different purposes and therein lies the intersection where I find myself staring at light that is not yet green.

Sweeping Up The Moments is where I capture insights and moments that might otherwise slip by quietly.  In my very first post I set out the four things I want to achieve in my life:

1. To have loved well
2. To have been loved well
3. To have lived a meaningful and intentional life
4. To have never stopped learning

I am also embarking on a new professional adventure, an adventure I am designing for myself, taking a big step away from traditional corporate culture and developing a management consulting practice that looks and feels different from the mainstream consulting industry.  Writing is involved here, too.  It is a fundamental part of connecting, evaluating and shaping the work I want to do. Articles I write in this adventure are meant to evoke reflection, to ask questions.  There are white papers and e-books and so much more in the future for this adventure.

Up to now, I dipped my toes a little into each pool and tried to mix them together. There are dozens of draft posts behind the scenes of a more focused, business-related nature that I've been reluctant to post here because, frankly, this is not where the intended audience visits.  There are dozens of other draft posts that go much deeper in the content I've started here that I've also hesitated to post, concerned about the overall balance should I choose to keep it all in one place.  I've found successful examples where other people have successfully merged business and personal into what they offer.  There are also success stories of people who separate these elements.  

I don't think a split can ever be completely distinct and I want my personality and "humanness" to come through no matter where I write.  I also think that one box dilutes the purpose and effectiveness of both efforts.

Ultimately, I know I can decide what will work best for me and run with it.  I can go with the fork, picking it all up at the same time.  Or I can go with the knife, performing surgery and creating two pieces where one existed before.  

Or maybe there's an option I haven't even thought of yet.

-Andrea

Giving up can be worthwhile

Week 2 of 21.5.800.  419/800 words.

What stuff do you hoard?  What do you cling to, reluctant to let go even the stuff is of little importance in your everyday life?  When is the last time you made use of that stuff?

This morning I put action behind a decision I made a couple of weeks ago.  I had decided to give up some of my infrequent hobbies, reducing the amount of stuff I have to store and manage, reducing the burden of unfinished things that call for my attention now and again.  

I have knitted and crocheted on and off every since I learned as a little girl.  Every time I took up the hobby again, I wanted a fresh start, something new and exciting to justify learning a new technique, buying more equipment, or adding to my stockpile of yarn.  By now I have quite a lot of yarn.  Too much, considering I start a project every other year or so and my interest is never held long enough to complete a project.  

So, I found a local group on Meetup.com that knits soft hats for cancer patients.  They are very active and they have a solid group of dedicated members.  I immediately contacted their organizer and offered her my entire stash of yarn.  Not only did she happily accept, but it turns out my collection is perfect for their work because it is super soft and doesn't cause itching.  Their most prolific knitter makes 50 hats a month. She will knit through my stockpile in no time at all!  And best of all, she will be putting my hoard of yarn to far better use.  Through giving up my neglected stuff, I enabled someone else's compassion.

Bottom Line: We often hold on to stuff that could be put to better and immediate use by another group or person.  These things we collect and then neglect are actually resources.  Giving them up frees us from the energy spent to keep them while they gather dust.  Letting go of them means they can finally be put to use.

It's a lesson that applies not only to the things we collect at home, but also to the way we run our businesses.  What do you have out in your warehouse collecting dust?  What about in those long-forgotten storage closets? Maybe you've outgrown it, maybe it's residual from a business you got out of a long time ago.  Give it up, because letting it sit there unused and unnoticed is just another form of waste.

-Andrea

Well-Fed Friday (Kicking #FF up a notch)

728 words in this post brings me to 968 words.  Time for yoga!

What's a typical Friday like for you?  Antsy anticipation until you get to shut down the computer and start the weekend?  A little nagging pit of your to-do list in your stomach trying to call attention to what remains unfinished for the week?

First, a bit of personal backstory.  Then, what I'm doing different and why it matters more in the long run.

When I had a traditional desk job in a big company, Friday was my catch up day.  While most people raced through the day to be able to leave early, I locked myself in my office and stayed late, taking advantage of the quiet period in the afternoon when the phone stopped ringing, emails slowed to a trickle, and people stopped visiting my office. In that one day, I believed I would kick ass and make the harried rest of the week worthwhile.

I hit the easy items first, the ones that needed little nudges to keep them moving.  I sent reminders, left voice mail, scheduled meetings.  My burst in uninterrupted productivity meant my coworkers would start the next week even further behind.  Sure, I would suffer the consequences, but I reveled in my momentary feeling of accomplishment.

By lunch time,  I was tackling back burner projects.  It took time to equilibrate with each one, to figure out where I was and what action I planned to take.  I realized I forgot to follow up or I didn't hand off when I needed to.  At this point my day began to derail.  I had kept too much in my court and had become the bottleneck.  I was so far behind!  Anxiety and hopelessness infiltrated my early afternoon.

Then, without fail, the phone would ring around 2:30 pm.  It was the Friday Afternoon Crisis, the thing that would occupy the next several hours because someone needed a miracle delivered.  Desperate customers who need a product delivered Saturday, requiring time to expand and geography to shrink.  Senior managers needing urgent analysis for a presentation next week that they found out about two weeks ago.  Taking charge because no one knows what else to do and Coworker A is on vacation and Coworker B already left for the day and stopped answering his phone.

Miracle delivered or crisis postponed, the presence of my coworkers evaporated by 5:00 pm.  The cleaning crew and I had the building to ourselves.  The stacks of paper on my desk were useless now, the day was too far gone.  I filed it all away again, leaving a trail of sticky notes like bread crumbs for the following Friday.  My desk cleaned, I turned back to my computer for a few last emails.  6:30 pm.  7:00 pm.  7:30 pm.  Sometimes 8:00 pm.  My car was the last one in the parking lot as I headed into a weekend defeated and sapped of motivation.

The only ass that got kicked on those Fridays was mine.

Cut to the present.  I have noticed that even in a state of non-traditional employment, my expectations are not different.  I still look to Friday to deliver miracles I couldn't put together during the week.  My feelings of defeat have not changed because although my venue has changed, my behavior has not.

Last Friday, I decided I'm done with that old and busted behavior.  The new hotness is what I call Well-Fed Fridays.  There are logistics issues with inviting you all over and cooking you big meals to show appreciation.  So instead, I give you my attention on Well-Fed Friday. I'm giving my Fridays over to appreciating the contributions of others and making sure I tell them about it. Examples:

• Writing recommendations for people on LinkedIn
• Contributing to discussions on LinkedIn  
• Commenting on blogs & sharing them with other people
• Sending meaningful direct messages on Twitter
• Picking some Twitter followers and looking at their tweets, their blog if they have one, finding out what they are all about 

Last week I tried it out a little.  Feelings of defeat and depleted motivation were replaced with warmth and connectedness.   Can't wait to find out what a full day of this feels like!

-Andrea

Delivering Happiness: A Review

This post represents 240/800 words today as part of the 21.5.800 project. Thanks for reading!

I'll be honest and say that I didn't know what to expect when I signed up to review* Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.  By the time I had finished reading, I was pleasantly surprised.  There were lessons learned from mistakes and failure.  There were insights that made me stop and reflect on my own career.  There were surprises and revelations of unexpected good consequence.  Best of all, there were moving passages about shared success and collective victory.

Tony tells the stories of his early searches for profits with refreshing honesty and humility.  While I would have liked more depth in the first part of the book and more effort to tie the sections together, the real meat is what Tony took away from those formative business endeavors (even from childhood) and how they shaped his perspective leading up to Zappos.

The story of Zappos as told by Tony is one of people, of the importance of relationships not only within the tight culture of Zappos, but also externally with vendors, customers, the general public.  Tony has shown that it is possible to be successful and care about people, to be inclusive rather than exclusive, to share rather than hoard.  It's an example we can all benefit from.

Overall, it's a quick read and I would recommend taking the time to do so.  Looking forward to hearing more about the next chapter for Zappos and for Tony Hsieh.

-Andrea

*For full disclosure: I received a free, advance copy of the book with the understanding that I would provide an honest review here on my blog.  Statements in this post reflect my own personal opinions and I have not received compensation as to the nature of these opinions.  

A good challenge...

It's great when a challenge comes along that comes two activities I want to spend more time doing: yoga and writing.  Thanks to Bindu Wiles, I will be writing 800 words a day and doing yoga 5 times a week for three weeks.  The project is called 21.5.800.  Yesterday when I signed up, I joined 62 other people that had joined.  This morning there were over 100.  The project kicks off on Tuesday, June 8th.

Want to add your name to the participant list? Click here!

-Andrea