BLIND AMBITION

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I spent much of 2019 working towards goals that I didn’t have clarity on. Each week I would write my goal list and each week I would dismally fail at that list. This year I have a new approach. Each week I am picking a new goal and making that my focus for the week. So far I have added dry January, a daily writing practice and now - week three - I am focussing on daily meditation.

Each week I figure out the best time in the week (or day) to do the action for my goal. I investigate how to best incorporate the activity into my life. At the end of the week I examine if it’s working and whether I keep doing it. Whether I try something different? Or decide it needs to come off the list.

So far I have kept them all. But it’s early days. 

There are 53 weeks in 2020. The overachiever in me is totally delighted by that. One more week means one more goal.

I love my overachiever self; she helps me get a lot of stuff across the finish-line. But I am learning that every day does not need to be a performance. Most of my life was spent this way. Come out conquering and firing on all cylinders, leave nothing left un-said or un-done. No stone un-turned. 

I’ve been on a journey away from this; away from the need to be busy. Away from the need to do #allthethings in an attempt to win at life. Ambition, it turns out, is rather a shallow objective. It’s rather meaningless to get to the top of the mountain if you don’t have the equipment, don’t enjoy the journey and - once you get there - don’t know why you climbed it in the first place.

My quest of late has been to dig a little deeper than mere ambition. Because, let’s face it, it can be as blind as it is shallow. 

Pushing yourself is fine until you stop to ask yourself, why am I doing this? What’s the point? What’s the point of my obsession with doing a handstand in yoga? To attempt to somehow win yoga? To look around the room and high-five myself that I am one of the few people who can do it? To get a good picture for my social feed?

Do you know your why for everything you claim to be important? For everything your overachiever puts on your list?

By the end of the year I will have investigated 53 goals. Some will not make the grade under closer inspection. Some goals will be elimination goals as I learn the art of not-doing. 

I have a new sense of what it means to be an overachiever. Let’s see where I get on the handstand. I’ll instagram it. So you know I won yoga!

HAPPY

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One of my favorite things to do each week is to pick the cover photo for this newsletter. I search a term that seems relevant to my message and then burrow deep into google images. This week I started by searching 'happy' which delivered a visual assault of yellow. Yellow smiley faces, yellow minions and random stock photos of people with outstretched arms.

Yellow is the color of happiness. Well, according to the internet and the odd clinical study.

I once asked someone how much yellow was too much yellow? At the time I had a yellow SUV and I wanted to know if yellow rain-boots was too much of a look. They convinced me it was. I still think I could have pulled it off.

As 2020 approaches I'm asking myself what I want from the 366 days that rapidly approach. Yes, it's a leap year people!

I'm asking myself what is important? And I realize I also need to investigate what isn't important.

I have always cared about happiness but happiness isn't always yellow. It can come in a lot of colors. It can look a lot of different ways. 

Now I want the yellow rain-boots. I am not interested in playing it safe. We can get so focussed on our goals that we forget about what we can eliminate. What we want to do is just as important as what we don't want to do.

So Happy New Year. May you achieve all you desire and may you eliminate all you don't.

PLAY

PhotoCredit: James Nares

The latest carpool karaoke has dropped. And it does not disappoint. Billie Eilish plays ukulele, raps a little Justin Bieber and shares a little of her journey as a music artist. 

Her mega-success Ocean Eyes was not only recorded when she was 13 but was written, produced and recorded in her bedroom. With her brother. 

A beautiful lesson in simplicity, raw talent and parental support. Billie comments that her mother never imposed a bedtime as long as she and her brother were making music. James Cordon cheekily asks "yeah, but what about when you were just mucking around?"

"Making Music is mucking around" Eilish replies in a wonderful reference to the creative power of play. She notes that some of the songs on her first album wouldn't otherwise exist.

It's so easy to take life seriously, to make things work rather than find the play. Maybe we can all learn to embrace our inner 13 year old and muck around a little?

IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME...

PhotoCredit: The Forest, Riccardo Bozzi

Ahhhh the holidays. Nothing says peace on earth like perpetual sales and an inbox full of adver-mail. Everyone from Chewy.com (pet supplies) to Barneys (luxury everything) professing they can solve your holiday-buying needs. Buy now for 10% off (even though you know there will be a bigger discount towards the new year). Buy today to guarantee delivery by December 24th.

I mean who leaves their shopping this late? I did mine...ahem...days ago!

Let’s face it, no one is going to lose an eye if their gift is late. So here are a few gift ideas for those of you who proactively procrastinated on your gift buying. Some might arrive in time for holiday gifting, some might not. Frankly I hope they don’t. These are all my personal favorite items that I know you will love. Gifts for the most important person in your life. YOU!

Away Suitcases: These are the perfect suitcase and their customer service recently sealed the deal for me. They will replace a case without question when the airline plays hackysack with it and breaks it. A color for every travel-individuality AND they have cool stickers you can personalize your case with.

Diptyque Candles: Possibly my favorite gift to give. They do fabulous holiday fragrances but for my money the winners are the best-sellers: Amber; Rose; and Baies (who knew blackcurrant leaves smelt so good). Insider tip: they will give you a small mini candle if you go into one of their standalone stores in the month of your birthday!

RGJ The Oil: I’m obsessed with this fragrance oil. Rachel Grant Jackson has been working on her fragrance blends for years now and they do not disappoint. Oil NO.1 and Oil NO.2 (she went all out on the names) are both stunners. I own them both and can’t decide which I prefer. Guaranteed to get a “you smell great” from anyone you hug over the holidays.

Hanuman Heart Mala: Mala’s are a great gift for anyone interested in getting a little more intentional. And as an added bonus they look damn cool. Who doesn't want to be enlightened AND fabulous? I love the four different styles of mens-mala’s and they have a great range of beautiful bracelet's. This solved most of my gift-giving needs this year, everyone gets a mala!

Sans [ceuticals]: This company is amazing. Everything they do is spectacular but their Activator 7 moisturizing oil is a standout. I gave this to everyone on my list last year. It’s the ultimate “anyone” gift; my husband loves it as do my product-snob friends. It smells great, it works and it’s versatile: great for face, hair or body.

The Forest: This stunningly designed children’s book is described as “a lyrical book about the adventure of life”. I love to give beautiful children’s books to friends and this one is at the top of my list. It is as visually beautiful as it is profound and inspiring.

KEEP THROW MAYBE

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The holidays are the arch-enemy of productivity. There are so many superfluous, guilt-laden events and activities we easily get sucked into spending our time (and calories) on. On top of that, the end of the year is a veritable devil-on-the-shoulder; nagging you for what you haven't achieved for the year. 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find an ounce of reality for what you really have the time and energy for.

One of my favorite systems for this is an adaptation of the ‘keep, throw, maybe’ approach. The system pre-dates Marie Kondo’s joy sparking and comes from a US reality show called Clean Sweep. From 2002 - 2005 this show sparked much joy for this neat freak; blitzing America’s junk-drawers, cupboards and rooms while teaching the gospel of organization.

The genius of Keep, Throw, Maybe is it’s simplicity. Any overwhelming pile can be organized with a quick categorization of each item as: a definite keep; a definite throw; and a decide-later maybe pile. The trick is to categorize lightening fast, speeding up the process but also to get out of your conscious “I can justify anything” mind.

Then put the maybe’s through a slightly more deliberate process, do you really need it or just have a hard time saying goodbye? The former category you then re-incorporate back in your life, the latter you put in the back of a cupboard and look at again in six months to see if you have missed any of your maybe pile at all.

It’s a system you might want to use in the New Year for your house. I also like to use it for my to-do list. Let’s blitz that overly-ambitious and stressful list. Let’s get spark a little reality against those wishful ideas of sending holiday cards, baking for our neighbours (does anyone do that anymore) or finishing those 3 projects that have eluded you all year.

Keep, Throw, Maybe your to-do list. Go through the list and divide it into three categories without thinking. Cross off and forget about the THROW stuff, don’t give it a second thought. Prioritize the KEEP stuff and get that cranked out this week. Put your head down, skip a holiday party and be an overachiever on that culled list. Then, once you have done that, go back to your MAYBE list and reassess what you have time for.

If it waited all year, it will wait a couple more weeks. If it really needs to be done, you are better off starting it fresh in 2020.

The holidays are a time for love, celebration and family. I know that combination can be a hot-mess. Can you find ways to go a little easy on yourself? A little decluttering goes a long way.

HIGH GEAR

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When I was growing up in New Zealand we only had two TV channels. It’s hard to even comprehend that now. We were pretty starved for content and quickly became obsessed with the good shows that were available. All the Looney Tunes shows fell into that category.

Road Runner was a favorite of mine. Always able to outsmart and outrun Wile E. Coyote. You almost felt sorry for Wile; so many great ideas and such inept execution. He never had a chance. I watched, not because I thought he might finally succeed but, to see how he would fail.

So, in the chaos of this last month of the year, my challenge for you is this. How can you start something now that will carry you forward into the New Year with one of your goals in process? Get ahead of the stuff that feels like it’s holding you back. Move forward into 2020 knowing you are already winning.

So, in the chaos of this last month of the year, my challenge for you is this. How can you start something now that will carry you forward into the New Year with one of your goals in process? Get ahead of the stuff that feels like it’s holding you back. Move forward into 2020 knowing you are already winning.

TWO BECOME ONE

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I find myself very drawn to the concept of NonDualism. It’s a concept that is very hard to summarize. Which makes sense as I think about it. NonDuality asks us to let go of what we know to be ‘right’. Do we see the table, the chair and the bowl or do we see the Matrix? To me, it’s an invitation to remain open to the nothing-of-it-all.

I like that idea of nothing. Yoga has taught me to be open to the possibility that things are not as I see them. My reading on how the brain works also teaches me to be wary of what my senses tell me is right. I am learning to be an empty vessel. I am learning not create stories and pictures of an imagined world. I am learning that maybe LA drivers are not assholes, even when they sure drive that way. Then again, maybe they just are.

We so often race to non-emptiness in a situation. In our world of infinite information we leap to conclusions and leap to knowing. We want to fill the gaps with the concrete of an answer. We miss sitting in the emptiness, we miss asking what’s not there. 

Stephen Cope talks about this in his book The Great Work Of Your Life. He speaks of the power of being in the paradox of two discordant realities held at the same time. Instead of one option being right, what if neither are right? He asks, quoting Jungian analyst Marion Woodman, “what if there is a third possibility that could transcend and unite the two?”

I recently heard the same question posed in the Netflix documentary The Creative Mind. Neuroscientist David Eagleman explores how our brains optimize for the creative process. It’s brilliant; one of the most interesting and approachable explorations of the creative process I have seen. 

Eagleman explains that our brains are energy efficient so will naturally follow the path of least resistance. We are wired to be reductionist. We are wired to fill the emptiness with concrete.

Challenging yourself to not race to a conclusion is hard work. We know that to be creative and different we need to push ourselves out of the box. Meanwhile our brains would prefer we stayed in the box. It’s easier and it’s less work.

The opportunity is to be different to everyone else. To resist the natural path of our brain. To sit in the nothing, the emptiness, the paradox of two discordant realities. To allow yourself time for that third possibility to be revealed. To allow two obvious options to become one extraordinary idea.

BLINDED BY SCIENCE

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I am fascinated by the process inherent in science. It's so organized and yet so chaotic. On the one hand you have neat arrays of test-tubes, the beautiful clarity of the periodic table and sexy white lab coats. On the other hand you have the repetition of experiments gone wrong and the drama of funding crises. And those lab coats don't stay white for long.

From my non-linear perspective science is inherently squiggly. Full to bursting with possibility, intuition, failure and doubt: the great stories in the science field are epic quests that find glory only after considerable failure.

And Marie Curie's story is no exception. In fact it's exceptional. A pioneer in the field of radioactivity, she discovered two new chemical elements: polonium and radium. She also carried out the first research into the treatment of tumors with radiation.

She was the first woman ever awarded a Nobel prize. She was awarded a second Nobel prize in 1911. She is the only woman to be honored with two Nobel prizes. She is the only person awarded a Nobel prize in two different scientific fields (Physics then Chemistry).

She was doubted by her peers. She was initially not recognized for her work. She struggled to get financing for her research. Even when the work was laborious, prolonged and, as it would later be discovered, deadly. At every step, she was undeterred from her instincts. 

But wait, there's more.

Marie Curie later worked near battlefields with her daughter, Irène Curie, using radiology medical units to X-ray wounded soldiers in WW1. These units supported the medical treatment over approximately 1 million soldiers over the course of the war. Irène Joliot-Curie, was subsequently awarded a Nobel prize in 1935 for her discovery of artificial radioactivity.

Marie Curie accomplished most of her work solo after her husband was killed when he was run down by a carriage. I mean you can’t make this stuff up. She suffered adversity throughout her life. Her curiosity and immense capability immunized her from the notion of defeat. Her love of science was a greater force than the weight of any obstacle.

She captured the power of curiosity so perfectly saying, "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

I love stories like this. Fear is no match for a curious mind. Defeat is not possible when you are relentless in pursuit of your life's mission. 

MISSING THE POINT

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I didn’t intend to write about Rumpelstiltskin today, but I loved this image and so I re-read the story. I had forgotten the ending. The once-poor miller’s daughter, who is now Queen, manages to wiggle out of her original deal by discovering Rumpelstiltskin’s name. She uses her messengers to search the kingdom for it. Smart use of resources! One of the messengers happens upon Rumpelstiltskin singing his name to himself and duly reports it back to the Queen. 

It’s one of the few stories I can remember where the female truly conquers being a victim. She was first potentially trapped by her father and then potentially trapped by a weirdo with an even weirder name. She escaped both times.

As an adult reading this story I want to know what happened afterwards. Was she a better Queen because she dodged all those bullets? Did the messenger get appropriately rewarded? How old was the King? Did they have a happy marriage? Did she forgive her father? 

I never thought about these things as a kid. I was far more interested in the romance of the fairy tales I read. Oh, she married the King! They lived happily ever after! Gosh, that candy house sure sounded yummy. 

I completely missed the point. I was so much more interested in the fantasy and my perspective altered my comprehension.

Now, as I think about perspective, I wonder where else I am missing the point?

Sometimes it’s purely that we can’t see the bigger picture. This can be the case with things like time spent on social media or sleep. We don’t calculate the impact. The totality of the hours in a year we spend scrolling other people’s lives is somewhat hidden. The impact on our health from the hours of sleep we skip is a future problem, not today’s concern.

I learnt a lot about perspective when I went to Antarctica in 2018. Just stepping foot on the ice was an exercise in perspective; the vastness of the white on white landscape making me feel beyond insignificant. Only to then see, up close, the fragility of our environment. The truth of the significance of my actions was suddenly in technicolor.

On returning I made a personal pledge to implement one change to be a more responsible consumer. My focus was single-use containers. I decided not to order delivery food services or use disposable coffee cups or water bottles. Cool, but meanwhile I order delivery-everything-else and don’t think about the packaging or, frankly, what I really need. It’s too easy just to click the delivery button. I think I might be missing the point. 

I have stopped patting myself on the back. It’s time I get perspective.

I’m as wired to convenience in my life as I was once wired for fantasy and romance. My actions would suggest convenience is my higher value. How can I recalibrate my actions to prioritize conscious consumption?

It’s an observation, not a judgment. But it’s one of those Simon Cowell telling you that your audition was rubbish observations. There is a judgment and it’s valid. 

It’s good to keep ourselves in check, especially where back-patting is involved. Check our perspective and be sure we are not caught up in a fantasy about our efforts. Take a good look in the Mirror Mirror On The Wall every now and then and see where we might be missing the point?

BACKGROUND PROCESSING

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I have a deep love for productivity systems. It seems like a weird thing to be passionate about but I also love organizing cupboards. So I guess I am just weird.

I am always trying out new ways to organize and plan. I change my systems frequently, always keen to see what works and what doesn’t. Also I think in part to keep myself entertained. As someone who craves change, staying grounded in weekly planning is somewhat of a necessary evil. 

Despite frequent system overhauls there are two things that have stayed firmly entrenched. One is my Sunday planning sessions where I map out my week - I will write about that in a subsequent blog. I know, you just can’t wait can you? And the other is proactive procrastination, my term, where I start work on something and then actively ignore it for a period of time. Some might say I take a few liberties with the latter part of the equation.

Proactive procrastination seems to allow my unconscious mind to do some of the work for me. Whenever I return to the task it’s almost like the problem answers itself. Much like going for a walk when you are stuck on something or how you always seems to have your best ideas in the shower. By leaving a task it seems there is some magic that happens in the downtime.

Norman Mailer talked about giving your unconscious assignments as if it was your partner. I’ve always referred to it as background processing. Much like a computer. I feel our brains have immense capacity to do work even when we are not actively, well, working.

John Bargh is a social psychologist who studies the unconscious. His book “Before We Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do” is a brilliant exploration of the power of the “other” side of the brain. I can’t recommend it highly enough. He too uses the term background processing - yes, I felt immense validation - and he adds that it’s an adaptive quality.  Our brain uses 20 percent of the energy we consume while we are awake so it is literally inefficient resource utility to consciously think more than we need to. So we brilliant humans have found a workaround.

Our brains, in fact, work better when we use both our conscious and unconscious mind. Actively working on something and then intentionally stepping away from it is a genius move. So much so that Bargh references Frederick Meyer’s definition of a genius as “someone who makes more and better use of their subliminal thought processes than the rest of us”.

Bargh’s overall treatise is that the true power comes when your conscious and unconscious mind work together. He suggests you always first prepare the subject through extensive conscious thought, then allow your unconscious mind to do it’s magic. AKA proactive procrastination. 

The one note of caution is that our unconscious is wide awake all night. So we want to be careful what we feed our minds with before going to sleep. Bargh advises that your unconscious loves a plan so it’s less likely to pester you about an important assignment if you put a plan together before you go to bed. It also possibly explains a lot if you are more of a three-glasses-of-wine-and-some-netflix-binging-before-bed type of person. If you tend to wake up in a panic about things in the middle of the night, try creating a plan for your week - or your day - before you hit the latest season of Schitt's Creek.

Set and forget...well, maybe don’t forget! That might end in some very intense dreams.

POWER MOVES

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After years of doing yoga I still can’t step through from downward dog into a lunge. It’s not the simplest of moves but it’s pretty fundamental to any yoga practice. For the longest time I berated myself about it, mostly frustrated but also very judgmental of what I couldn’t do. And it’s not just on the yoga mat, it’s incredibly easy to let life become a constant audit of what you can’t do.

The topic of superpowers came up in a number of different contexts last week. It clearly had to be my topic this week. Superpowers are those things that you can do effortlessly; the things that come so easily they are almost a gift. The things you do better than most other people.

These are the things we don’t see so easily. We don’t audit our superpowers: we tend to neglect them and second guess them. We overlook our brilliance; it’s so much easier to focus on where we are failing or falling short.

Which is a little odd when you think about it. You would think our ego wouldn’t be able to help itself but crow about what we are awesome at. For some reason this doesn’t happen, we get far too busy cataloging all our failures. Cataloging the shortcomings. 

What’s tricky about most superpowers is that we seemingly don’t have to work hard to achieve the result. It’s literally like we were bitten by a spider and woke up the next morning able to climb up walls. “I don’t know how I do it, I just can” is what we often tell ourselves. Which is bullshit. We can do it because we have spent years mastering the skill. We have 10,000 hours many times over.

We make the mistake of thinking that because it’s easy for us it must be easy for everyone. That’s a big mistake. We all need to know how to bust out our power moves. We need to know what makes us indispensable. And not place a limitation on it or judge what we are (or are not) good at.

And, for that matter, it’s also a mistake to not see other people’s superpowers. The most effective leadership and management is supporting people to be great at what they are great at. Expecting someone to be a rockstar when they are not musically inclined is an exercise in futility. Expecting someone to suddenly become a numbers person when they have no aptitude or training is unfair to them and ultimately unfair to you and your team. In sport they call that a hospital pass: literally setting someone up to fail.

See your superpowers and the superpowers of others. Celebrate them and spend less time worrying about your apparent weaknesses. Trust me. No one else is looking at what you can’t do.

DUCKS IN A ROW

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I love a good plan. I live by my systems and it makes me really happy when everything runs like clockwork. Like really, oddly, happy. Some might even call me a control freak, which is probably fair. For me it’s the little things that keep everything in good order: my Sunday planning, evening email catch-ups and quiet space in the morning to get my focussed tasks done. A well oiled-machine that sometimes feels held together by a few commitments that I do not compromise on.

One of my commitments is doing this newsletter. Draft it Sunday, send it Monday. Like clockwork. Until it wasn’t. Last week I sent it out on Tuesday. A day late. A perfect record ruined just like that.

Or was it?

It’s easy in these moments to admit defeat. Give up on something you have otherwise been doing really well at. Whether it’s a diet, a meditation practice, a financial goal, a project or a fitness program. One day, you broke the chain, you blew it. You are starting again. From. The. Beginning.

Most of us know it’s really hard to start running again if you stop mid-run. That time you thought it would be a good idea to pause and catch your breath on that really steep hill. The hill suddenly getting 10X steeper after those three recovery breaths.

We have all felt the pain of having to start back up again.

Starting back up can be hard. It’s never advisable to stop. Continuity is a win you can always count on; it shows you have discipline and it enables you to hone your skills. My darling friend told me my blogs just keep getting better - clearly I will keep her on the “friends of Claudia” payroll. They are getting better because I write them each week without fail. She’s a writer, she knows the power of the discipline of continued practice.

But sometimes, for whatever reason, you do stop. You pause to take a breath. You knew you made a mistake the minute you did it. Now it’s done, there is no taking it back. No DeLorean to take you back in time to that point of potential perfection. Now what?

Discipline doesn’t need to mean obsession or compulsion. Missing a day doesn’t matter. Eating a hamburger doesn’t matter. Pausing doesn’t have to matter. Sometimes it can even help you. Done that, learnt from that, now back to my regular programming. Back to my practice. Back to getting my newsletter out each Monday, I missed one - no big deal.

What is a big deal is beating yourself up about it. When we allow ourselves a discourse with our inner critic; that’s the exact point we put ourselves on a path to failure. The point where we create defeating stories about not being good enough. When we question why we even tried in the first place.

Thinking you need to be perfect creates a direct path to failure. A slip-up is just a slip-up unless you make it a failure. You can get going again. That glorious record is still there. You get to decide that. Don’t make yourself powerless in the face of a mere moment in time.

MEASURE TWICE CUT ONCE

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I’ve finally read Yvon Chouinard’s book Let My People Go Surfing. The book chronicles the development of one of the most enviable ‘conscious’ businesses in the world, the outdoor equipment and clothing company Patagonia. As a staunch environmentalist and reluctant (but very successful) businessman, Chouinard’s perspective is refreshing and eminently practical.

The bulk of the book speaks to the philosophies that underpin the operation of Patagonia. Obviously most lessons and reflections are directly applicable to a physical goods business but I always find many lessons cross industries. In fact Chouinard even specifically mentions the utility of borrowing ideas from other disciplines.

One point that really resonated with me was a reference to the old adage “measure twice and cut once”. It’s a lesson in caution. You get many chances to measure the fabric or wood but there is no taking it back once you’ve cut into your material.

Chouinard takes it further. He espouses doing the work right the first time, taking care with what he produces to eliminate obvious and avoidable errors.

Which got me thinking, when is caution smart and when is it counter-productive? I appreciate his point about attending to small things to make sure they are done right but this gets tricky when you add time pressure or other issues to the mix. Most business is happening at a speed where measuring twice feels like a luxury.

I recently belabored a point in a deal that we seemed to be overlooking. It sucked, I felt like a total wrench in the machine. But I have seen a decision under pressure lead to weeks of work too many times to let it happen under my watch anymore. What really sucks is making the wrong decision and having to deal with the aftermath.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...more haste less speed...be the tortoise and not the hare...a stitch in time saves nine. It’s easy to wax poetic but the real question is when should you actively slow a process down and risk a timeline?

Today the more likely caution is "slow down to speed up". It’s worth the investment of time to pause. It’s also the reason you have advisors and board directors, and use them, as it can be hard to find the time (or the inclination) to pause for our own benefit.

I think Chouinard’s point is to be sure you are ok with the costs of speed. Because there is always a cost. He talks about eroding consumers trust by not attending to the small things. In my world I worry about being so oriented to push code that you deliver beyond buggy software. Or negotiating a deal that comes back to bite you.

If we paused over everything we wouldn't be in business for long. My takeaway is to know what is important to you, your company and your strategy. Then you can start throwing wrenches in the machine. Or finding moments to pause and measure twice.

STATUS

I love testing new products and services but on the whole I am pretty loyal. So I stick with the brands I love while also dabbling in alternatives. Flying is one of the most interesting and controversial tests of loyalty.

Everyone has an opinion about which airline is best and everyone - especially business travelers - will tell you their opinion. In great detail. When you are traveling long-haul for business it's often the little details that add up to a big impact. And it's often the little things that can overcome a big thing too.

As someone who travels to New Zealand frequently I have status on Air New Zealand and they treat me well. When it comes to US travel the ballgame changes dramatically as I have never managed to stick with one airline.

I’m always searching. United was the obvious choice - they are a Star Alliance partner of Air New Zealand, but they always ended up making that so much harder than it needed to be. So I started trying other airlines. I like JetBlue and American is starting to do some great things - so I mostly fly with them.

But my curiosity got the better of me and I recently tested Alaska Airlines. I clearly got unlucky after a mechanical issue left me with a 6.5 hour delay, I get it - it happens. It wasn't so much the big delay, it was all the little things they got entirely wrong in the process. A little pebble in your shoes can quickly cause a big blister.

I prefer to treat things with positivity so I sent them a very detailed response to their customer survey. I told them about the little things. I mistakenly thought they might actually want to hear from their customers when they asked for our opinion.

Silly me.

You know my perspective - every problem is an opportunity in disguise. If I ever have an issue with Air New Zealand, they always work through it and come up with a solution. The problems become an opportunity for them to improve their service and frankly to enhance my trust in them.

The same goes for any issue you encounter. Whether the customer has status or doesn’t - you have a chance when something goes wrong to make it right and deepen your relationship with that person or organization. Yes, take care of your good customers but take equal care of your smaller customers.

Little customers can become big customers just like little problems can become big problems. Why limit yourself?

And your customer might be your boss, your landlord or even your kid. When something goes wrong, you have an opportunity to own that issue and use the failure as a way to deepen your relationship.

The companies, and the people, that will win in the future will be those that care. Those that take the time to understand the human experience and cater their product or service to human needs. Customer service should be at the centre of all you do.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

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When the book Eat Pray Love was released I was gifted the book by multiple people. Elizabeth Gilbert is now a celebrated author and Ted Talk-er but was then a new author, taking the world by storm. A number of people saw me in the book, maybe they saw that adventure was something I needed in my life. Maybe they saw that I was a gypsy soul in a business-person’s body. Maybe they saw the writer in me.

At the time, I was mildly offended. The story really didn’t resonate with me. Her writing didn’t resonate with me. I didn’t get the connection that others were so clearly seeing.

They were right. I was wrong. Almost a year to the day after it was published I had my own Eat Pray Love. She went around the world to find love; I went to Boulder, Colorado. Mark and I will celebrate 12 years of love, friendship and marriage this year. Our story would be called “This Is Not What I Ordered”. Falling head over heels with a sculptor from Texas with two grown boys was not something I expected to be on the menu.

Eat Pray Love is a love story wrapped in adventure. Elizabeth Gilbert travels to Bali, India and Italy on a journey of discovery. It is an undeniably beautiful story of finding your way to thrive after your world falls apart. It’s a story about how she learnt to be ok and, without getting to corny, about learning to love herself. I think that’s what my friends were trying to tell me.

In this lesser known Ted Talk, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about another kind of love. She talks about your happy place, your home, that thing you do that grounds you and the place where success and failure don’t exist. 

At the peak of her success with Eat Pray Love she felt like the old failing diner waitress of her past. The diner waitress that suffered rejection after rejection for six years solid. I have noticed the same curious thing about success; it doesn’t feel that successful. It can feel like pressure, burden and expectation. Success and failure, Gilbert notes, both catapult you out of your comfort zone - they are both disorienting.

She needed a refuge; not so much a place to hide but a place to find balance. A place that you love more than your ego. Perhaps a place where your ego is silenced. Gilbert calls it finding 'Home'.

Home is that thing you love most. For my husband it’s making art. For me it’s working in or with companies, despite my gypsy soul. Home is that place where the noises go away. Where the volume on your inner dialogue is turned down. Where the labour is more important than the fruits it might bare.

We work so hard for the success and we work even harder to avoid failure. What I think Elizabeth Gilbert cracks open in this brief seven minutes of insight is a way to just work hard for the sake of the work. “Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life” as the saying goes. Maybe it should be ”love what you do and you can never fail”?

WHAT'S LEFT?

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There are 106 days left in 2019.

Need I say more? Well, I’m gonna.

There are in fact only 95 days left until December 20th. So in all reality there are less than 100 days left for you to achieve your goals for the year.

The optimist in me wants to tell you there is still time. The realist in me knows that there is not that much time.

When we start each year we get a boost of inspiration. We feel the possibility of who we might be in that year. Whether you write it down or not, whether you call them New Year’s Resolutions or not, you planted seeds at the start of the year. There was a voice inside you that said “this year will be different”. This is the year I will [insert glorious achievement here].

I dare you to write that goal down, do it now, commit it to paper. If you have multiple goals, even better, write them all down.

With 100 days left you have two options. Take urgent and immediate action or rip that piece of paper to shreds. You heard me: it’s do or die time.

Urgent and Immediate action looks like any one of (and preferably all of) the following:

• Set two hours aside every morning to work on that project. You can choose evening but I promise you that you will make up excuses as the end of the day rolls around;

• Write two actions for each goal that you can (and will) complete this week;

• Write a complete list of all actions you think you need to do to accomplish that goal and schedule them for the remaining 13 weeks in the year;

• Unschedule one day a week to work on that project (this will not work as well if you are working on a diet, exercise or wellness pursuit);

• Call a friend and ask them to be your accountability buddy that you can check in with each week; and

• Write your goal on your bathroom mirror (a recent trick that was shared with me that I think is brilliant: try and avoid that each morning).

Each week is a new beginning just as every morning can be a new beginning. The inspiration to be a better version of yourself doesn’t just have to come at the start of the new year. It is available all year long, well, for another 106 days at least.

BRICK WALLING IT

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No news is good news. If I haven’t heard from someone in a while I know all is going well. Then boom, I get an email or a text. Shit got real, life happened, it’s brick wall time. And just when I think I have heard it all: the issues get gnarlier and the brick walls more impassable.

As I have said before, I look for the opportunity in every problem...but no entrepreneur wants to hear that when they have been knocked back in the mud.

The first thing I do is break the problem into pieces. The smaller the better. The worst thing you can do is make an issue bigger than it really is by bundling all the component parts into one big, insolvable ball.

The second thing I do, which sometimes needs to be the first thing I do, is to get perspective on the problem. It’s very easy to feel like a blip in the radar is a fatal blow. I told my husband VERY early in our relationship that “calm down” is about the worst thing you can ever say to someone. He now asks if I want a cup of tea. Obviously I’m not going to suggest either of those to an entrepreneur who has just learned their funding round has collapsed or one of their employees is stealing from them. No joke. But it’s critical to step back from the situation and assess the gravity of the problem. Knee jerk reactions are for bears, mountain lions and snakes. In those moments you should react. Business issues require a non-emotional response.

The third thing I do is walk through the available resources to deal with each of the issues? This is a great time to tap into your network. Think about who might have experienced similar issues; who might have seen these issues play out in other companies; and who might be able to help you through it. This could be anyone from your lawyer to your mentor to a fellow entrepreneur or business person. I like to think broadly when it comes to experience: the commonality across businesses when you get down to the basics is extraordinary. Every business has had IP issues, employee issues, scale issues, legal issues and personal fatigue issues. ‘A problem shared is a problem halved’, true story. It will take a little time but mining your contacts for help will give you invaluable insight into ways you can approach the issue.

The final step is creating your actions steps. I know, I am obsessed with actions but by getting productive on the issue you will put the solution in motion. Against every one of the smaller problem pieces you identified, create one or two actions. Then carve out time in your week to getting that stuff moving. The worst thing you can do with a problem is sweep it into that messy corner of your office where it will fester.

Making time is critical. You don’t want to over-invest in the issue - it will distract you from your business - but you also don’t want to under-resource it. I would create a couple of pockets of time a week to sit down, assess what is in process, see what other actions you need to take and do anything you need to do to solve the problem. Then put it away and get back to your business. Even if it’s a funding crisis; spending all your time chasing investors and re-hashing your pitch deck can be frenetic, distractive and wasted work. Your goal in all of this is to keep the true goal-post in focus. That goal is your business.

The problems will come and go. The size of your problems are just an indication of the size of your business. As you and your business grow, the question is not whether you have problems but how you solve them.

NAVIGATING THE FUSTERCLUCK

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One of the biggest frustrations I get asked for help with is navigating office politics. It’s really not my area of expertise, I have always been a little too “call it like I see it”. My general advice is not to get sucked into a game you can’t win; like all politics, you can quickly end up in over your head.

Enter my old buddy Wegs. Full name Jim Wegerbauer but we are all invited to call him Wegs (rhymes with eggs). Wegs is a great human being. I met Wegs back in my Victors & Spoils days, he was vulnerable and transparent way before Brene Brown made that OK.

His new podcast is pure Wegs, I couldn’t get my headphones fast enough. He calls his podcast ‘snackable insights to help you navigate the topsy/turvy world of creativity’. While his experience is deep in adland it has so much relevance for anyone navigating the topsy/turvy world period.

Even better, he dedicates the first two episodes of Navigating the Fustercluck (how great is that title) to the tricky issue of Office Politics. My favorite nugget is his reference to a piece of George Bernard Shaw wisdom “never wrestle a pig in the mud, the pig likes it”. Wegs cautions about getting in the dirt with your office nemesis, commenting “you will just get dirty”.

There is so much wisdom jam-packed into this fabulous resource and the best part is that his content is mostly short. Wegs powers through topics from Happiness and Certainty to Office Politics and Collaboration, all in under 15 minutes.

Check him out here

FIND YOUR FOCUS

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There are a million little things we manage to distract ourselves with. Some days we even justify those things as priorities. Like spending hours on email knowing your inbox is not your priority but really it’s filled with other people’s priorities. Social media is a fan-favorite non priority distraction and of course the necessary time you spent online tracking down a specific pair of shoes you really don’t need.

Then there are the things that seem like priorities but they really are not. Watching three hours of Ted Talks that you call ‘research’ but you know you should really be working on the paper that is due. Reading books about sleep when you just should go to bed earlier. Or re-writing your company pitch deck for the 7th time when your time would be so much better spent doing just-about-anything-else.

Some days, and some tasks, just seem hard. There are days when the last thing I want to do is focus on a priority task. I’m tired, I’m hungry, the house is a mess, I need another coffee, my email is stacking up and my team needs me for a million other things. It’s like there is temptation in distraction. It’s like I want to do all the wrong things; anything but that task that is looming in technicolor in front of me. That task I know is a priority but I just can’t get to it.

I so get it. You know what you are supposed to be working on but for some reason you can’t get started. You have cleared the time; you are in a quiet zone; you have turned off all the distractions - but you still struggle to get started. I used to find this with writing and then I discovered binaural beat videos on YouTube which are the ultimate hack to get you through the labyrinth of distraction.

Binaural Beat Therapy is music that plays a specific frequency that your brain adjusts to sync with. Through this use of frequencies the music is actually capable of changing your mood. I am not going to pretend I understand the science but the internet tells me that binaural beats are an ‘auditory illusion’ that ‘promote optimal brainwave states’. AKA listening to them produces a specific response from your body.

Research on binaural beats suggests they improve the production of the hormones cortisol, DHEA, and melatonin in your body. The release of these chemicals, among others is the mood-altering part of the binaural beat magic. This article in Psychology Todayexplains how binaural beats can aid sleep and the reduction of anxiety.

I’m literally listening to one right now as I write. After a full day of writing and working I was hitting a wall. A late night conference call last night was catching up with me. My inner three year old was telling me to do anything but persevere with my blog writing.

Now when I feel this way I to immediately go to YouTube and hit play on one of the videos. And this blog just poured out of me. I told you, magic!

I have compiled a few of my favorites on my YouTube channel - check them out here. There is a one hour one which is great for a very specific task and then a number of three-hour ones which I love for focussed productivity.

See if they work for you. YouTube will helpfully suggest a number of other ones for you too, so make sure to browse and find the one that works for you.

Now go get on those priority tasks!