Monkey wrenches

I awoke rather abruptly at 3:30 this morning. It wasn’t a bad dream or noise, it was just time to get up. I fought it for nearly an hour, then succumbed to the inevitable, took a shower and had some breakfast.

It will be a double-cup coffee day.

My latest reading assignment lasted for about one page before I was seized with the need to blog. It’s been a while, and so much has happened, I barely know where to begin.

In mid-April I attended a class on how to write, publish and market your first book. It was straight-forward, no-nonsense advice. The convener, Bobbie Christensen, laid it out in a well-organized format. Her biggest piece of advice was to treat writing as you would any business. Approach it as your business, be aware of the bottom line, and throw all that doe-eyed, dreamy artsy fartsy “writing is an art, a calling” out the back door with the trash. A few years back I would have run screaming from the room. But after nearly three years of entrepreneurship, it was more than appealing.

Don’t get me wrong. I am in love with the written word. I have been and can be as doe-eyed and artsy fartsy as they come. I can lose myself for hours in bookstores, just running my hands down the spines of books and imagining the person who wrote it. Occasionally I look back on my past writings, read them as if for the first time and think, “Holy cow, I wrote that!” And more than a few people who have read my various pieces had said, “Christine, you need to write more. You could be published, you’re that good.” And through it all, I have written because I loved it—the craft of it, the muse of it and the joy I felt as I created stories, poems or wrote essays.

I drove home from the class that night in April, my mind just spinning with ideas. I jotted down several book ideas when I arrived home and realized that I would be better off starting with some of the non-fiction topics I had been interested in and been threatening to write for years. The list grew, was re-arranged and evaluated. About a week later I sat down and began to write the first book, “Get Organized, Stay Organized.” Using Bobbie’s advice I will be selling my first book through an existing ‘sales vehicle’ – my organizing classes.

It took six weeks to complete the first draft and then four weeks for me to edit it. I was nervous, so there was a good deal of stopping and starting on the editing process. The second and third edits were complete in less than a week and the book is now waiting for the finishing touches (ISBN number and a photo for ‘About the Author’) before it will be shipped off to the printer.

I will be self-publishing this book. The numbers make sense (it’s far more profitable to self-publish if you can get the sales) and the risks are acceptable.

As soon as I finished the edits I began planning my next book. I plan on starting on that project next Monday, July 14. My goal is to complete three books this year and I think it is do-able, if I stick to a reasonable schedule of writing.

In the middle of all of this writing and editing a monkey wrench was thrown into the mix. Well, actually a couple of monkey wrenches.

First, I decided I had really had enough of employing staff and dealing with all of their issues (emotional, financial, etc.) and decided I could do a limited number of cleanings myself and make far better money than paying someone else to do it and only getting 40% of the cleaning fees. That was monkey wrench #1 – suddenly I was far busier than I had really planned on being. Not only was I cleaning homes, but I had several new organizing clients, was still writing the book and still a breastfeeding mom.

Monkey wrench #2 came on the heels of a phone call from my husband in the third week of May. I was just completing a cleaning when he called to inform me he had been fired. After working for the company for nearly five years, and being miserable in it for around four of them, I was actually quite relieved to hear the news. A week later he announced that he wanted to start a brewery. It seems that the entrepreneurial bug had bitten him as well.

We are still working on the details, on the basic research. What beer recipes to use, whether to be distribution-based or a brewpub, etc. I figure it will be at least a year before we are ready to open for business, but who knows, it might be sooner than that.

In the past three years I have learned to be flexible and keep my mind open to change. At any one time I have at least two main plans in action, and several more waiting in the wings to be activated if the tide swings in that direction. Life coaching is a good example. My studies and plans for opening a business as a life coach are on hold in one sense and very active in another. While I’m not planning on taking on any clients right now, my husband could well be considered my very first and most important client. I have committed myself to helping him in any way I can towards starting and running this brewery. This means that not only will I be handling the business side of it, crunching the numbers, researching the necessary permits and licensing and guiding the business towards success--I will also be working with him daily to motivate him, reassure and center my husband as he starts his very first business.


I hope that I will also be able to continue to write and publish and teach my classes. I have no doubt that life will also intercede at regular intervals to remind us both that we are parents first, life partners second and business owners third.

So what is the point to my telling you all of this?

Change, drastic change, is right around the corner. When you least expect it, perhaps when you are least ready for it, that’s when it appears. I spent too many years of my life fretting over the future, constantly questioning where I was going and how I was going to get there. Nowadays I just live. I dance when the beat changes, I walk barefoot in the rain and I adapt. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring and I have found that I like it that way. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll find myself on Oprah (just like my neighbor Christie suggested) and be able to spread the following message to millions of people struggling to find their way:

Be yourself
Don’t be afraid of change
Believe in yourself
Learn something new every day
Enjoy every possible moment
Speak to your strengths

Life your life, on your terms, in a way that makes you happy -- the rest will follow naturally.

Don't Be Afraid to ASK!!!!

Years ago I worked for a division of Marriott in the customer service department. Our offices sat above a large warehouse and trucks delivered dry and frozen goods to Marriott hotels and other clients (such as Outback Steakhouse) throughout the Bay Area. Vendors were always vying for our attention, and as a result, one day we received a visit from Douwe Egbert and the entire customer service department was taken down to their fancy van to sip coffee and listen to their presentation.

As I sipped my coffee, liberally dosed with creamer and sugar, the representative kept using the term ‘liquid coffee’ over and over. No one said anything and I just sat there confused until about the third or fourth repetition of the phrase. I raised my hand in the middle of his spiel and he stopped and said, “Yes?”

Feeling rather dense I asked, “I’m sorry, but you keep saying ‘liquid coffee’. Coffee in this form IS liquid, so I’m a little confused.”

The rep, bless his soul, looked surprised and rather sheepish. He thanked me for my question and commented that he was very happy I had spoken up. He then explained that he had been using a term that described a process that Douwe Egbert had been a leader in developing. They (Douwe Egbert) distill a condensed extract of coffee, keep it free of air or other agents that cause the bitter aftertaste in coffee, and re-constitute it with water for a fresh tasting coffee, that lasts longer and stores easily. But they were so used to the product, so used to using those suave terms like ‘liquid coffee’ that until I asked my question, this rep had been telling large groups of clients the same thing over and over. How many of them had not bothered to ask for fear of looking stupid?

Later in the day, several of my co-workers came to me and thanked me for asking the question. Each and every one of them admitted that they too had not known what he was talking about, but they had been too embarrassed to ask. It made me wonder just how many of us don’t ask questions, don’t put ourselves out there, for fear of looking ‘dumb’ or ‘asking a stupid question’. How many of us, when given instructions by our boss to do something just nod and then go away and stall on a project, because we don’t know how to do it, but don’t want to appear ignorant by telling the boss we need help?

Like that nice coffee rep, I too experienced an “oh, duh” moment a few years later. As a student of Rockhurst, I was expected to make an end of term presentation in my Theology class. I chose to speak about Joseph Campbell, the author of “The Hero’s Journey” who I had studied in depth a few years prior to the Theology class. I stood up in front of my class and spoke extensively about Campbell and his theories and how they had affected my views on faith and religion.

I finished my speech and I was so pleased with how well I had done, I hadn’t lost my place in my notes or forgotten the different points I wanted to make. That is until someone in the back raised his hand and said, “That was very nice but who is Joseph Campbell?” And right on cue, most of the rest of the class nodded and murmured the same question.

I had assumed, just as the coffee rep had done, that everyone knew about Joseph Campbell. It was a nice wake-up call and it reminded me that you have to lay the groundwork. Introduce a person, speak of their background, define a term, and describe the process it takes to get there. Without groundwork, others have no idea what you do or what you are talking about, and they lose focus on the important part of your message.

I’ve said before in my post “I Get to Be ME” that I was often referred to as the ‘know it all’. And it was at that very job with Marriott that I was labeled such. And while it bothered me to be labeled that way, it mattered far less than my quest for knowledge and willingness to share my knowledge did. I would rather put myself out there and be the ‘know it all’ because I asked or cared enough about my job and my co-workers to share the knowledge than to be the one who sat there quietly and said nothing when I did not understand. Knowledge should be freely given and received on both sides.

Ask and learn. Jump off the cliff and open your eyes to the knowledge, opportunities and life around you. Don’t be afraid, just open your mouth and ASK!

I Get to Be ME

I ran across a quote that struck a nerve in me. David Taylor, author of “The Naked Coach” wrote,

“…that when one is presenting, yes, the audience is thinking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ and ‘How can I apply what the presenter is saying in my life or to help others?’ but, more than these two, they are asking themselves, ‘Does this person really believe what they are saying?’

And when the answer is ‘yes’, then the speaker is not only being more persuasive and having greater impact, they are also simply being themselves.”

I found myself reaching out and tracing those lines and nodding and thinking “Yes, yes, this is exactly the person I want to be!”

Recently I was reading Robert Ringer’s book “Million Dollar Habits” and stopped at the section of the book to answer five questions the book had posed:

• What do I enjoy?
• What am I good at?
• What do I want out of life?
• What’s the price?
• Am I willing to pay the price?

Under the first question I had a long list, two of which were quite relevant to the person I am evolving into today—‘teaching others’ and ‘changing lives for the better’. Under the second question, ‘what am I good at’ I found they repeated themselves, ‘helping others’ and ‘teaching others’. Excellent, I was on the right track.

In each answer I had also listed ‘writing’, which as you have probably noticed I do a fair amount of. And then it hit me—I picked up “The Naked Coach” and read the last sentence again.

“And when the answer is ‘yes’, then the speaker is not only being more persuasive and having greater impact, they are also simply being themselves.”

And I had to smile.

I had to smile because I realized I have now exactly what I always wanted to accomplish—the ability to be me. I get to be me every day. I don’t have to pretend to be anyone else; I get to be me, me, ME!

To put into some kind of perspective how deep a change and relief this is for me, I will need to take you back to a time in my life when ‘being me’ simply didn’t seem acceptable.

In my mid-20’s I worked for a distribution center in the customer service department. I was known as a ‘big mouth’ and a ‘know it all’ because when a question was asked of the group of us in general, I was likely to answer. It wasn’t that I was showing off, or answering a question I didn’t actually know the answer to, I was (in my mind) simply trying to help. I knew the answer, why not share it?

On the nights when I didn’t have my daughter to care for I would go to the local bar to enjoy live music and engage in one of my favorite activities – playing pool. I was good at it, damn good for a girl, and I regularly whipped the guys in singles or playing in doubles. I was relatively well-liked there and always invited to play on doubles teams by those who knew me. The guys would ask me “how’s it going” and I would tell them all about my beloved daughter and the latest funny story about her.

One evening, one of the guys I saw regularly leaned over and said, “Christine, you’re a nice-looking girl, and I can see you are a good person. So I’m going to give you a piece of advice. You would get so many more guys willing to date you if you would just not talk so much.”

He couldn’t have hurt me worse if he had slapped me. It was a firm reminder that who I was, the indomitable me, was simply not accepted.

I spent my childhood and adolescence asking my parents and my teachers, “Why do I need to learn this?” I never got a straight answer other than, “Because I said so.” And because of it, I fought learning the curriculum, fought doing what they tried so hard to make me do. I fought them until the day I left home, a mere month before my seventeenth birthday.

In those first few months of freedom I realized one very important thing…I wanted to LEARN. I saw the other teens my age returning home from school and I was suddenly gripped with such a thirst. I wanted to learn and grow and know and be so much more than I was. I wanted to jump up on top of all of the obstacles and stand upon them victorious.

I wanted to help myself to be that person I dreamed of being, and I wanted to turn around and help others who were standing there dazed or clueless or lost. As much as it would be possible to, I wanted to infect others with a love of learning and growth and change.

It took me years and years to get here, to this place where I am today. Despite my thirst for knowledge and change, I still lost my way—sometimes for weeks or months or even years. And I’m far from done; I’ve truly only just begun.

But I was very pleased to realize that I get to be me now. I get to be me, and I find that it is accepted and it is acknowledged, and I am the lucky one for it. Because now I really can help others, now that I’m comfortably myself at all times.

So now it is your turn. Ask yourself the question, “Am I being myself?”

If you answer “yes”, than congratulations, you are well on your way to changing your life. And if not, then don’t you think that maybe it’s time you got started?

You Don't Know What It's Like

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and cried, “You don’t know what its like to be sixty. You don’t know what its like to be this age and have no education, no money, and no future.”

No, no I don’t know what its like to be sixty. I don’t know what it is like to be sixty and uneducated, with no money and no future.

And God willing and the creek don’t rise, I never will.

But I do know what its like to watch someone throw their life away—one day, week, month, and year at a time. And I’ve spent nearly forty years doing just that and wishing it could be different, wanting so much to stop it from happening, and eventually banging my head against the wall and walking away in despair.

If she were here in front of me I would say, “It isn’t my life or my decisions that count here, it’s yours. What good does it do to cry and moan about the situation you find yourself in or bewail the years when you didn’t get the education, didn’t stay with Mr. Right, or didn’t pay your taxes on time?”

It does no good. None at all.

Look, I know what it is like to make mistakes. I know how it feels to flash back in time and see myself behaving like a horse’s ass and making unbelievably stupid decisions with my life. There are moments when they hit me, a snapshot of memory that makes me wince with regret and embarrassment. My stomach flips, I close my eyes, and wish to hell I didn’t remember things like that.

It is far easier to remember the bad rather than the good. We are so good at etching those painful moments deep into the flesh of our memories, deep into the folds of gray matter. The funny, positive memories don’t seem to have the staying power, the deep hooks to burrow in and stay. They seem so much less retrievable.

But it is what we do next with our memories, our guilt and shame, that matters so much more. We cannot change the past, we can only move forward. We must learn from the past, this is essential. But when those awful memories surface, do you flagellate yourself again, reliving the past in agonizing detail? Or do as I do and close your eyes, let the memory come, and then say…

That was the past.

That was yesterday.

And I live in today.

Let me learn from my mistakes

Let me grow as a person, and

Let me move on and be someone better.

You cannot progress into the person you want to be if you insist on re-living your mistakes over and over. You cannot improve yourself by continually revisiting past transgressions. By wallowing in guilt and despair you hold yourself back from becoming the person you dream of being.

Stop…doing…that.

I mourn for her. I mourn for the person she could have been. For the person she will never be, and for the person she chooses not to be. I mourn for her—and wish things could be different. I am afraid that I understand far better than she does what it means to be where she is now. Because, for her future, for her personally, there will be no change. Because she cannot see anything but this life, and these choices, and this life she has chosen for herself.

You cannot change her.

I can’t change her.

But you can change yourself.

I can change myself.

You just have to believe, really believe—and then take the first step—and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next.

What are you waiting for?

Choice...What Are YOUR Choices?

I read multiple books on multiple subjects at any one time and I make no apologies for it.

This morning I woke at 6:30 a.m., my usual time, weekdays or weekends it doesn’t matter I’m awake before 7 a.m. After a shower I decided to paint my nails (a new development in my ‘pampering me’ stage of life). Of course I needed coffee and a book. So I decided it was high time I began reading Alfred Adler’s “What Life Could Mean To You”.

I’ve barely made it past the introduction and have discovered, to my surprise and delight, that he was a colleague and strong influence on Rudolf Dreikurs, who wrote my favorite parenting book of all time, “Children: The Challenge” in the 1960’s.

Here is a particular passage from the introduction that caught my interest:

“In Adler’s words, ‘No experience is in itself a cause of success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences – the so-called traumas – but instead make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences but are self-determined by the meaning we give to them…As soon as we find and understand the meaning a person ascribes to life, we have the key to the whole personality.’”

When I read something like the passage above, I find myself experiencing such relief—as if I am hearing the voice of a familiar friend.

Why is it that our culture in general seems to hang on to the notion that a trauma, once experienced, changes or damages a person forever beyond all recovery?

Wait a minute; I know the answer to this. We promote the victim persona because it is easier than taking responsibility and saying, “I survived this and guess what, I’m still here!” Instead we haul out that violin and play a dramatic, sad tune about how we were done wrong, or how we will never be the same.

This is not to say that what we experience does not affect us positively or negatively, it most certainly does. But it is what we do next, what we choose to do next that determines how our lives will play out.

Choice.

I get so sick and tired of hearing “That’s just the way I am, I can’t help myself.” My silent response is always the same, “Bullshit.” Perhaps that too is why I shy away from organized religion. The idea of putting your life in someone else’s hands, even if it is a deity, is just so alien to me.

I am in charge of my life.

I am in charge of my future.

I am responsible for my decisions.

Stop for a minute and think on those statements. Ask yourself, “How do I view my life?” If you are letting someone else call the shots in your life, maybe now is a good time to make some changes.

Alfred Adler believed that each person was a capable, self-determining individual. I believe that we choose our paths through our actions and beliefs and shape our lives accordingly. So if on reflection, you determine that your life is not where you want it to be, then it is time to decide to make it different. You are the only one who can.

Paradigm Shifts

I finally purchased, and began to read, Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I haven’t gotten too far, but already he is speaking of an area that I have been very interested in recently. Covey refers to it as a paradigm shift. I have often referred to it as ‘walking a mile in someone else’s shoes’ or said, “Life is not black and white, but merely shades of gray.”

Paradigm shift is far simpler to remember and well to the point.

As I type this, the thought strikes me, “If everyone were able to stop, and see another person’s point of view, we would have far less conflict and strife in the world.” Not a novel or unique thought, but there you have it.

Covey goes on to speak of Thomas Kuhn’s book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” in which Kuhn shows how almost every significant breakthrough in the field of scientific endeavor is first a break with tradition, the old ways of thinking, with old paradigms. This paradigm shift can also be called the “Aha!” experience.

In order to change your life, to build something new, or to turn your world on its ear, a paradigm shift is in order. An integral facet of life coaching is setting aside the old ways, the old view of how you saw your world and your life going and instead open up a new chapter and structure your life in a way that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning and get started.

Paradigm shifts can be easy, quickly made but they can also be very difficult. I spent 17 years working in jobs that I hated before I experienced a paradigm shift and realized just how well suited I would be to entrepreneurship. Why did it take me so long to see it? My first and most deeply lasting model of entrepreneurship was my first husband, who seemed to spend more time trying to shoot himself in the foot than succeed at what he did. It was that image of entrepreneurship that haunted me through the years, prohibiting me from trying something similar until I came to the simple revolutionary realization that I wasn’t him, and that I had the power, common sense and tenacity to succeed.

Another personal paradigm shift was choosing to homeschool my daughter instead of continuing to send her to public high school. For years, my only two ‘choices’ had been public school or private school. Not really a choice since I had no way to afford private school for her. Then I moved to Missouri and discovered that there were people who actually homeschooled their children. What?! My first response was, “Is that legal?”

A few years later, after another miserable and disastrous year in the public school system I would finally remove my eldest daughter from her 9^th grade classes, seven months into the semester. We designed a curriculum for her, which included college-level algebra, women’s history studies, and political science—with plenty of the essays and writing assignments she loved so much. She went on to ‘graduate’ a couple of years later by taking her SAT’s and GED and entered junior college. At 19 going on 20, she is in college and doing well.

My paradigm shift from public school to homeschooling gave us both the opportunity to bond, to spend more time really learning subjects of interest, and lessened the enormous pressure of attending an overcrowded school filled with conflict and roadblocks instead of roads to education. I learned that school didn’t have to be a dirty word filled with fear and pain, and it helped me transition myself fully to ‘lifetime learner’ mode right alongside my teenager.

I could probably write a book about how it helped and what it did for the two of us. But in the end, when her baby sister was born in 2006, my husband and I were both committed to homeschooling this second child from birth. In a few short years I transitioned from feeling inadequate and unable to ‘teach’ my child, to feeling enabled and excited about teaching my little one how to read and write and all of the years beyond. Now that is a paradigm shift!

So now it is your turn.

I want you to first think about a time when you experienced a simple, small mini-paradigm shift. Think of an “a-ha” moment when you saw someone else’s point of view and stood for a moment in their shoes and experienced a piece of what they felt. Got it? Good.

Now for a bigger challenge—take a moment and examine your life. What is working? What isn’t? Be specific. It won’t help if you throw up your hands and say, “Nothing’s working!” And I doubt you would be here at this site if EVERYTHING was working out for you, so identify a facet of your life you need to change or improve.

Got it? Okay good.

I want you to spend the next week thinking about a part of your life that you feel needs improvement or change. Think about your strengths, your abilities, and ask yourself, “How can I look at this differently? How can I make a change that will enable me to be MORE or HAPPIER or SATISFIED?”

I would be interested in hearing about what you identified, what you thought of, or even, how I can help. I welcome your comments below.

Take time today to enable a paradigm shift in your life in whatever area of life you are wrestling with. Trust me, it’s worth your time.

Think BIG

There are times when everything seems to be crowding in and there are no easy answers. Times when you feel pulled in twenty different directions at once, with an ever-increasing list of problems and concerns vying for your undivided attention.

Yesterday was one of those days. At one point I just wanted to bash my head into the wall repeatedly. The phone kept ringing, my toddler was insisting that my lap was the only place she wanted to be, and I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out who was going where for next week’s cleaning schedule for my housecleaning company. And while it didn’t seem like the best use of my time at the moment, I left toddler and ringing phone in the hands of my capable husband and zoomed off to a client’s house for a quality assurance check.

In point of fact, it was the best use of my time that I could have made. Stressed out as I was, when I reached the client’s house and met with the client, reviewed areas of concern and told her I would just fix the missed areas while I was there—as I settled into the cleaning zone for those short few minutes I had time to think. It was time away from phones (I had even mistakenly left my cell phone behind), family distractions, and the siren lure of my Inbox and computer. No emails to check, no calls to take, no one asking me questions or pulling on my leg and whining for attention.

In the space of a few quiet moments—well maybe not that quiet, I did run the vacuum and was dripping from exertion by the time I was done—I realized I was being short-sighted in my business tactics.

Early on, when there was no money, or very little of it, I did it all. I worked all the cleanings by myself. I designed the website, despite no experience in web design. I trained my staff, in spite the fact that I’m no great shakes at training. I have handled purchases, financials, customer relations, sales, recruiting, management, and anything else you can think of.

Some of it I’m excellent at. I know business, what makes clients happy and what doesn’t, how to define my niche, how to provide a service for a reasonable price, and how to keep the books. When I do cleanings, my clients are deliriously happy. But I don’t do cleanings anymore (see references to toddler above) unless the situation demands it and I am lacking in management capability or time to get out there and train.

As I did a quick vacuum and mop at the client’s house today I had time to really think about what I wanted. Did I want a business that was cobbled together, barely efficient, and full of half-trained staff and clients who were running out of patience? Or did I want a business that was a powerhouse of cleaners, with an efficient manager who could do quality checks and training and ensure that the staff was cleaning homes in the manner that the clients both expected and deserved?

Despite having a record month for December I knew that the former option was simply no longer viable or acceptable. I needed to find a manager or fold up the business…it wasn’t fair to my clients or my staff to keep hobbling along. It also wasn’t fair to my spouse, my toddler or me to be so stressed out, so often. If you aren’t good at something, recognize it. If you know you aren’t going to get better, acknowledge it and then adapt.

So I adapted. I decided to cut my income in half and hire a manager. Someone who can train personnel, do quality checks on others, and eventually even help me expand to the Northland (north of Kansas City). My reasoning was that if I have happy clients and well-trained staff, the business can expand exponentially—rewarding my efforts many times over. As I told my mother, “I have to look at the long-term and make a decision NOW on how this business will continue into the future. If I continue to just try and patch things, and if I am continually am distracted by the little stuff, things will never improve and the company will stay small.”

I have learned so much in the past two plus years of running this business. The hardest lesson by far was the one I learned yesterday…think small and you stay small, think big and you will grow big. But along the way, you had better know your limits.