A Fresh Start

Have you ever felt like you needed a fresh start, but been afraid of exactly what that might mean or look like?  Have you been concerned about what might need to be left behind along the way?  Have you just been too afraid to let go of what was familiar, even if it was totally not what you wanted in your life because the familiar is at least comfortable?

I feel your pain.  And I’m going to suggest, finding a way to get a fresh start doesn’t have to mean flushing all of the other good things in your life.  It just means being clear in your expectations and being willing to do the work.

This week I have been at a writer’s retreat.  I’ve been working on several writing projects, including this blog, for several years and have not really been making much progress.  I knew I needed a fresh start.  What I didn’t want was to feel like a failure for not having done more.  

I was terribly afraid that this retreat would feel that way.  I was going to be there along with people who had been at previous camps and had already published.  I still had published nothing.  I knew that part of the discussion would be around what we were writing and how to make it better.  Frankly, outside of school work the only original thing I had been working on was my blog, and even that I had only been working on haphazardly.

If there was a situation perfectly designed to make me feel like a failure, this was it.

But I paid the money, I started putting one of my ideas into an outline, and I went!

Boy am I glad I did.

Now, it is possible that other conferences and retreats might have been designed differently, but the organizers and participants in this one were all very helpful, encouraging and sympathetic to the real life concerns that have plagued me.

They offered real, immediately useful strategies for overcoming some of the problems that I encounter.

They offered encouragement and useful critique around my writing and were genuinely concerned with my improvement.

They also offered real friendship and support.

A complete tanking of my life choices up to this moment in time?  Nope.  A fresh start?  ABSOLUTELY.

If you are feeling like there are some projects or processes that you have started that just don’t seem to be working out well, don’t throw them out, lock-stock-and-barrel.  Instead, if they are truly important to you, find someone (or several someones) who you believe will tell you the truth in a helpful and encouraging way.  Find a way to get a fresh start on something, and see if it doesn’t help other things in your life feel refreshed as well.

Leadership is a Dance

I wrote this down in one of my notebooks a while back, and I wanted to spend some more time with it, so here goes.

Leadership is a dance, a voluntary sharing of a moment and a desired outcome of improvement of the human condition.

When the leader and follow share expectations, they work together. And if the time comes that they no longer share expectations, they separate, much like a couple at the beginning and ending of a song on the dance floor.

Leadership is active, passionate following of an ideal that other may or may not recognize. It is about being willing to open others’ perception of the ideal and recognizing that they may or may not choose to follow the ideal as well.

I have been pondering that short piece now for almost three months. I’ve been trying to challenge it, to pull it apart, to reject it, to find something about it that I can say, “No, that’s too sentimental, too formulaic, too contrived, too romanticized.” But the truth is, I really can’t.

I Think for me this really grew out of two concepts that are not all that sexy at this moment in time. One of them is the childhood skating game of crack the whip, and the other is critical role of followership in the modern world.

Crack the whip is a game where kids grab hands while skating (I did this in Minnesota Ice skating) and you start going as fast as possible until the kid at the end is thrown off. Typically you have to turn because skating ponds are not usually very big, and the sideways forces that accompany the turns become greater than the strength of the child to hold on. To me this was the foundation of what I referred to as the ice skating model of leadership years ago (which was subsequently bashed by one of my professors). The idea was that both leader and follower are moving along, holding onto each other, passing energy back and forth, until finally one of them has to let go and move on.

Followership is another fascinating subject for me. Without followers, as Derek Sivers says in his TED talk, a lone nut is just a lone nut. But when someone follows that lone nut, then we have a leader and a movement. The role of the follower is fascinating, but in a world that glorifies the leader, followers can be relegated to a very inferior status.

But without followers, leaders are just all nuts.

I have been privileged to have some wonderful leaders in my life. Many, in fact. And with all of them, I have found times when, if only for a season, I had to let go and follow someone else. Sometimes the relationships have been longer, and sometimes they are the kind of relationships that move in parallel and come back together frequently. But through it all, it has been clear, that this thing we call leadership and followership is a relationship. And as such it is a fragile, beautiful thing.

Go Forth and Conquer

The Three “C” Words of my Life Mantra

Years ago, I watched Dune. I remember the moment when Pieter DeVries downed the Saphoo, the drink that was supposed to speed up mental processing, and recited a little mantra to help focus his mind. I also remember Paul using the Litany against fear as a kind of mantra to focus him at a time when he was very afraid and needed to get through the challenge he was facing.

At the time, I felt as if I was watching something magical, something supernaturally powerful. I wondered if I were to memorize and repeat words at times of stress and difficulty, could I touch otherwise untapped reservoirs of strength and power for my own life?

I began to look for my own set of magic words. Prayers suggested by others were tried, but they never seemed to work as well as I had hoped. I joined some fraternal organizations, and they also had some words in the form of pledges or promises, and they worked for a time, but never seemed exactly perfect.

In time, I began to form my own short, simple mantra that summarized what I was looking for in my life, what I often felt was missing, and what I believed could make the difference in my world. And I have to admit, as I have used them now for quite some time, this mantra has become very useful.

CALM

The first word in my mantra is calm. In most of my life, I have felt like I am being swept along a raging river and that at any moment I may be absolutely lost. When I find myself in new places, even when I know that I have proven myself ready to be there, I feel as if I am on the edge of losing control of everything. In these moments, the most precious thing I need is a sense of calm.

There are a multitude of examples throughout history that show us the value of calm in the face of crazy serious challenges. The ill fated Apollo 13 mission and Sully’s water landing on the Hudson are two that spring to mind. (Yes both were made into movies starring Tom Hanks, but that is beside the point.) The point is, in both situations, all the individuals involved were well trained and remained calm in the face of a terrifying situation. All the training in the world wouldn’t have done a lick of good if they hadn’t remained calm in the moment it was required.

CONFIDENT

The second word in my mantra is confident. So often, what I want to feel along with a sense of calm is the confidence that I know what I am doing. And yet frequently what I feel is anything but. I don’t feel like I know enough, that I am smart enough, wise enough experienced enough or prepared enough to rise to a situation that is in front of me. Instead, I find myself retreating and letting others take charge, often running me and those with me in circles at best, and at worst, at break neck speeds in exactly the wrong directions.

In those moments, finding a sliver of confidence to add to a sense of calm often becomes all I need to take charge, to take a stand, and to start leading and working in directions that yield positive, growth oriented actions.

CENTERED

The final word reminds me not to allow others to determine what is truly important, especially if they are pulling me away from the things that are most important and critical in my life. My values, my significant relationships, my aspirations, these things must remain in the center of the things that I pursue on a daily basis. Particularly when I am in crisis, if I allow my focus to drift off center, I am likely to accomplish things only to learn that they led me in the wrong directions.

Calm, Confident and Centered. This then is my mantra. It has helped me immensely of late, so I share it here now. I pray it will be useful to you.

Go forth and conquer!