When life is slowing down

Thanksgiving I burnt myself: When I took the turkey out of the stove, the aluminum pan folded under the weight of the turkey and the juices splattered all over me. My left knee and foot and, more importantly, my right foot were burnt. The right foot was badly burnt, so bad that 11 days later I'm still limping and the pain is always present. I can't stand for a long time, need my right foot elevated or at least level all day. These minor inconveniences change your life: Suddenly a 5 mile run is an unattainable goal. Getting up in the morning takes 10 minutes more because of the impending pain, you stay longer in the bed, frightfully expecting the pain when you start moving. Little things like walking to coffee shop or entering a mall become major adventures. Everything just becomes a little bit harder, a little bit more arduous.

And, then you slow down. And you make choices: Do I really need to stop at the grocery store? Do I need the second coffee from Starbucks? Do I really need to run to this meeting or can I skip it? And, suddenly, you start to focus better. You take the time to read a book. You watch that movie you always wanted to see. You lay in bed just thinking. 

It's basically the body taking control of your existence. Just like when you have a cold or any injuries: the body has needs and it will take whatever it needs to ensure healing. Makes you think about the body-mind connection and how we are normally controlled by the mind. Just in emergency situations do we allow the body to take charge. 

Ironically, it's good for your mind as well. Too often do we forget to be grateful for what we have. To be able to run 5 miles, to be able to walk around without effort and enjoy the surroundings, to be able to wake up in the morning and jump right into to life - that's an incredible gift. I guess living through these experiences gets us ready for old age: Life will still be grand but things take a bit more time and effort. 

I can't wait. 

Voter Fraud?

No, just my little daughter wearing proudly my 'I voted' sticker. It was very busy at our polling place, good to see the enthusiasm everywhere. My wife said she made her decision right at the polling place. I wonder how many people did the same. Is that the reason why the exit polls are so off?

Tsnuami Tuesday

Coming from Germany, elections took place on Sunday's. You either voted right after church or after your lunch nap. People dressed up to vote. It was an important ritual, almost followed by 90% of the population. Voting made our family feel good. We were part of democracy.

Living in California, voting has become a routine: Ballot initiatives, Propositions, recalls - you name it. Generally, I vote right before I go to work or I rush home to get it done before 8. Voting is a commodity in California. Most of the candidates get 80% approval, ballot initiatives are not that controversial.

Today feels different. Today feels like an important day. Today will decide (or at least set a direction) who will be leading either parties into the general election. So, today I will rush back home arround 4, get my wife and daughter and we will vote together. For once, it feels good to vote for a candidate and not against one.

If I can teach my daughter one thing

My daughter played a few days ago with a New Year's tiara: She put it on herself, on me, on her dolls and, finally, on our dog. Kid have this amazing ability to try new things. A drum can become a house for a doll, a doll house a drum. While I stay within the lines of her coloring books, she couldn't care less about the lines and colors the way she wants to.

As parents we need to find the right balance between being a parent/educator and letting creativity take its course. It's a constant battle but creativity should always win.

Creativity doesn't know limits. Creativity demands experimentation. Creativity demands courage.

Courage to let go of limitations society put on you. Courage to challenge yourself and the rest of the world. Courage to change the world.

I expect nothing less from her.

Crazy

We're painting the house. Well, in typical post-post-modern fashion, we pay for the service and someone else does it. These are the colors we chose: Orange for the majority of the house, blue for the sidings. Every time I evaluate the progress, the lyrics from Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy' come to mind:

Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably

Inspirations

The Watts Towers are an ode to the power of the human spirit.
Quoting Simon Rodia, the builder:

"I had in mind to do something big and I did it."

It's sometimes that easy.

Quote of the day

"Allow yourself to want things, no matter the disappointment. Desire is never the mistake."

Paula McLain, writing in today's NY Times: The Holiday of my dreams was just that.

Thought of the day

When was the last time you did something people say you cannot do?

It's the time of the year to challenge yourself. And hope to experience this pleasure by end of 2008. I'm working on it.

Are you?

Are you still dreaming?

When i grew up, I dreamt of becoming an astronaut. Walking on the moon like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Time passed and I wanted to become an airline pilot. Then a surgeon. A writer.
I became a copywriter (pretty close), marketing (insert title here), media (insert title here). And, here we are.

Matthew Kelly, founder and president of Floyd Consulting, was interviewed on Tom Peters' site about his newest book 'The Dream Manager'.

A few tidbits:

The first time you ask people to list their dreams, they tend to put together a shopping list and a travel book. But, as they begin to live a little bit more and experience some of those dreams, they begin to ask, "What are my legacy dreams? What are my character dreams? What are my spiritual dreams? What are my adventure dreams? What are my creative dreams?" Those are the higher level dreams.

But it's important to recognize that a lot of people have stopped dreaming. And if they've stopped dreaming in their own life, good luck trying to get them to subscribe to a dream that you have for your organization. It's simply unreasonable to expect people to do something for your business that they are not willing to do for their own lives.

(...)

The following quote is fairly depressing.

Before we start the program with a company, we usually get the executive team together, and do a one- or two-day offsite. These people are the best of the best, the brightest in their field, making lots of money, and 70 percent of them have not sat down to think about what their personal dreams are, for a decade, sometimes multiple decades. To see that process begin in a person is staggering.

Because at the end of the day, Erik, everybody has dreams. At the executive level, or the manager level, we spend so much time focused on a vision for our organizations, it's amazing how little time we spend on a vision for our lives.

On how to get back in touch with your dreams.

Sit down and put together a list of 100 dreams. It will be hard work at first, but take a look at the 12 areas: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, psychological, material, professional, financial, creative, adventure, legacy, and character. Essentially, if you come up with eight dreams in each of those areas, you've got your list of 100 dreams.

If you simply write your list of 100 dreams, put it in a drawer, and never look at it ever again, that one experience is life changing.

The next step is to start a conversation with the people in your life about their dreams, whether it's your spouse, your children, or the people you work with. You have to be careful with that. It will freak them out if you spring it on them out of nowhere. To ease into it, try saying, "If there were no limits on time or money, where are seven places you'd love to go in the next seven years?" And then you both make a list and talk about it. See which ones match up and which ones are very different. I think that's an easy way to start that conversation because lots of people dream of traveling. I think it's a great way to ease into the conversation.

Besides the fact that I immediately ordered the book, it also made me start thinking:
What are my physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, psychological, material, professional, financial, creative, adventure, legacy, and character dreams?

My first shot:


Physical


Emotional


Intellectual


Spiritual


Psychological


Material


Professional


Financial


Creative


Adventure


Legacy


Character

Some images might need explantation but, hey, these are my dreams. What are yours?

Labor Day

Inspirational and insightful post by Seth Godin. A few of my favorite passages:

"It's hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own. It's hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that's remarkable. It's hard work to tell your boss that he's being intellectually and emotionally lazy. It's easier to stand by and watch the company fade into oblivion. It's hard work to tell senior management to abandon something that it has been doing for a long time in favor of a new and apparently risky alternative. It's hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the data.

Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your coworkers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is far more conservative than sticking with the status quo."

My father was born 1930. He grew up on a farm in today's Poland and had to flee for greener pastures in the early 40's. He had no formal school education after the age of 12 and had to survive by working on farms, always heading west. After the war, he worked for 20 years in a factory, shredding nasty, rotten clothes to convert them later on into car interiors. During his tenure at the shredding machine, he saw co-workers being sucked into the machine and shredded to bloody pieces. He worked 6 days a week, 12 hours daily.
That was hard work. Getting an evening education on top of this grueling hours and feeding a family of 4 was even harder work.
But, as Seth pointed out, things have changed dramatically.

"Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you've done that, to do it again the next day."

My father was not about risk. Risk had to be avoided at any cost: Take the safe route and continue doing until you retire. Completely understandable, after having lived through WWII and the post-war era in Germany. Taking a risk might mean being shot by the enemy or starving to death.

Today, this attitude leads to layoffs, middle-class misery and mediocrity.
What to do? Ask Tom Peters:

Measure Weirdness!
Cherish Weirdness!
Hire Weirdness!
Stomp out "Normal"!

For now, enjoy the day, have a bbq, relax. Tomorrow, when you're back, change the world. And do it over again next day.