Last week I wrote about just because you said you wanted something at one point in your life doesn’t mean that you need to keep doing that thing or retain that thing. The world has changed. You have changed.

That said, you may have goals and dreams and big aspirations that haven’t changed. And you may have things that need to get done to reach those big goals and dreams.

You need to do them.

And you need to do other things too.

I’m there with you. 

I find the other things that are important and keep me focused and feed my dopamine levels as I gamify how much I can get done.

Meanwhile, the things that are needle-movers for the goal sit.

And sit.

And sit.

And then comes the justifying and ration-of-lies-ing that we step into. The other stuff is SOOOO important. 

What about the goals? Did they stop being important?

You didn’t change them up. You just found other things to do before moving towards...

I just ordered lunch.

It arrived without incident.

Seeing it in front of me, everything shifted. That’s NOT what I wanted at all. 

Something shifted for me this time.

I didn’t eat it because I had ordered it.

I didn’t finish it because I paid for it and had to get every last piece of value out of what I had paid for.

I didn’t dive right in because I had committed to it and therefore needed to follow through with some sense of obligation.

No, I took a couple of bites, decided I had had enough, and put the rest away.

This WEDNESDAYS WITH WAYNE Blog post isn’t about food. It’s about decision making.

I got the value from my meal at the time I placed my order. 

When I purchase anything, when I open a new book, when I start a new project, when I’ve joined a new group, I give myself permission to pursue it to the fullest or to simply back away because it’s a mismatch. 

Alignment with...

Change is in the air! Isn’t it great to see the new life that bursts through in the Springtime?! Trees have buds and flowers. Bees are back out. Birds are busy. And in town, things seem to be a little more bustling, too. 

There’s a different sense about the world, as well, right? 

You can feel it.

You can sense it, smell it, and feel the change happening.

And for the most part, we all think that’s pretty glorious.

(Some of us who have the seasonal pollen battle are mixed about how “glorious” this time of year is.) What’s true is that this time of year, the same way Autumn brought us the changing leaves and yielded to winter that gave us rain and snow (in most of North America, anyway), and that’s now offering up to us the Springtime changes we’re seeing all around us. 

What’s ironic is that as much as we look forward to the natural changes that we see outside of ourselves, we seldom look to the...

Look up and away from whatever you’re reading this on. 

See what’s out there? 

Outside of you are forces that attempt to impact you. 

There are people, noises, weather conditions, smells, and so much more.

Notice that I said that they attempt to impact (or influence) you? 

You’ve got voices of authority clamoring to be heard. And everything else. It’s all sensory noise.

None of it – NONE OF IT – needs to affect your plans for becoming your next amazing iteration of yourself, as leader or friend or partner or explorer or philanthropist or whatever role you put yourself in. Nothing outside of yourself needs to affect your trajectory unless you deliberately call it in to support you in your quest.

And the quest could be simply to have a quieter future. That’s cool, too. Nothing outside of you needs to affect your path unless you deliberately call it in to support you on your path.

Some key...

Occasionally, my private client calls fuel some thoughts that I can pass along in this format. When a new client, who is a high-level professional woman dealing in contracts in the millions of dollars, was wrestling with the reasons she felt distracted, pulled in all directions, and couldn’t find any possible way to work on building herself, it sounded like she had been obligating herself into martyrdom. 

“I’m a giver,” she exclaimed, as if that was a reason to rush headlong into burnout. 

I stopped her. Somewhere in her past she had been rewarded for being the good girl who would make sure everyone else was okay and then see what might be left over for her. 

“STOP!” I demanded. 

She was surprised. Her stories had always carried her to the land of excuses, and she’d been celebrated as the heroine of her treacherous journey. 

Not today. Not… to… day!!!

“You are...

Put one hand in the air.

Raise the other arm and put that hand in the air too.

Sway side to side.

Now scream, Aaaaarrrrgghhhhhhhh

If there’s a fire in the building, that won’t get you too far. But it could start a new dance craze!

I used to have a sign at my desk (when I work in the Corporate world) that said, “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute a crisis on mine.” That was my way of controlling the last minute deadline-driven dramatic cries for either attention or help. I wouldn’t put a sign up like that now. It’s kind of mean and honestly, I ended up helping people who had gotten themselves into jams. 

I think the distinction between crisis and drama is important. Occasionally events arise that are beyond our control. Occasionally those things require immediate, decisive action. Those times are rare though. 

If they’re not, then you’re likely creating drama and calling it a crisis....

If you learned to drive, you know that when you first approached the car as an early teen, it looked easy. And as you learned about speed and braking distance while building your proprioceptive capacity (you learned how big the car was so you could stay away from other cars and obstacles), you began integrating new skills.

It was fun. 

It was almost like a game. The more you learned, the more skills you had at your disposal. You “leveled up” your game and you became one with the car. You knew the sounds and vibrations. You knew the buttons and knobs.

You knew.

You knew because you learned. You deliberately put yourself in a position to learn and grow. Sometimes you failed along the way. And you kept going anyway.

When I was learning to drive, I ran over a gigantic rock in the roadway, something that had slid down from the hillside. I thought we had clearance. The undercarriage wasn’t so happy. Neither was my mom. And, I...

Who’s to blame for this?

That question presupposes that someone or something outside of yourself can be held accountable when, if you’re posing a question about blame, you’re likely part of the problem.

A “gotcha” culture exists in organizations and families and never, ever has that kind of culture served anyone except the person at the top. 

If you’re accountable to yourself and your team, you’ll ask questions of yourself first. “What conditions did I allow/tolerate for this result to exist?”

The cat knocks over a precious item: “F’ing cat!!!” or… “What conditions did I allow/tolerate for this result to exist?” (Actually, if you have a cat, it’s probably both of those reactions.)

A team member blows a sale with a potentially huge client. 

Fire the team member? Train them?

Again, the question is, “What conditions did I allow/tolerate for this...

I’d be driving along, thinking about something, and without realizing it, I would reach down and change the station on the receiver. 

I’d catch myself – I liked that song, why did I change the station?

On longer trips it’d happen again. And again. What was going on?

My subconscious was at work. I’d change the station when I couldn’t tolerate the thoughts I was having. All those “should haves,” the shame and guilt thoughts, the replaying of times I could have stood up for myself or someone else, but didn’t. I couldn’t tolerate it, so I’d change the station.

And now that I’m conscious of my subconscious processes, I lean into them. It’s rare now, but if I do find myself wanting to change the station, I’ll examine my thoughts. Do I need to sort something out? Do I need to make something right? Or do I need to let go of the past and recognize that the lesson is part of...

Graceful, elegant, smooth writing comes from the fountain pen. Not when I was younger, though. I got blobs of ink, I tore the paper, and I ended up with inky blue fingers. 

What makes a fountain pen work differently than any other pen is that, among other things, a lighter touch is necessary. Graceful strokes don’t come from the hand or wrist. They come from controlling the arm. 

And that’s something, isn’t it? I mean, as an analogy for a lot of life lessons, we’re often so focused on the thing that seems to have the power. And when we give that thing more power, we often mess up the very outcome we were after.

When we relax, we create a flow that isn’t readily apparent. This is a difficult paradox for those who need control: You need to yield in order to have control. Much like the power found in the martial art of Aikido, yielding gives you the ability to control. 

Flow comes from letting go of the...