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Lullaby

I sang a song for my daughter while she laid in her crib. It’s a sweet song about all kinds of people asking the listener to stop making fun of them. I really got into it and was bellowing out the chorus – “Don’t laugh at meeeeeeeeee…”

She started crying during the last verse, sort of that uncontrollable cry that happens when your sadness just won’t stay inside anymore.

I asked her why she was crying. I was hoping it was the song.

“I miss my mommy,” she said.

I asked her where it hurt and she pointed to her stomach, pleased that I asked the question.

“What will make it better?” I asked.

“If mama come tuck me in when she gets home,” she said.

“Okay. I can tell her to do that,” I said.

And she forced herself to stop crying.

She’ll be asleep when mama walks in and kisses her. She’s a deep sleeper. Nothing wakes her up. But just the thought of mama touching her in her sleep was enough to make the stomach ache go away.

I wonder if it really hurts that badly or she’s just making it up in her mind. I wonder if she’s playing me a little bit.

And I wonder if the song, in its universal language, brought those tears out and, having been confused with the suddenness of it all, she grappled onto the thing that always soothes her pain.

Mama.

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The Obvious But Overlooked Reason We Don’t Really Know Each Other

Guitarist from a Semi-Famous Jam Band I Met On a Plane

On the plane ride home from the east coast, I sat next to a guitarist in a pretty well-known jam band. He’s engaged to be married, has played all the big venues in the Bay Area, loves chocolate wafer cookies (“the most underrated snack”), always travels with his guitar in the overhead bin, and drinks lots of orange juice, no ice, even when his fiance orders wine.

That’s about all I know.

Thanks to my naps, our respective devices, and my kids, the two of us probably talked for no more than 15 minutes total, including the pleasantries necessary to slip into the aisle to go to the bathroom.

Considering the flight is 5 hours, that’s not much time and yet I get this feeling that if I asked him, he would have put me on his guest list. Also, when I got home, I sought out his band on Spotify and had a 48-hour binge on his music. Now I’m a fan. For the rest of my life, if someone mentions his band, I’ll say “Great band, cool guitarist.” And I really only knew him for 15 minutes.

Hmm…

5 hours of sitting next to each other and 15 minutes of talking…

Apparently, when it comes to building rapport and trust, proximity is more important than words.

The great choreographers of Marketing and Branding know this. The schmoozy champions of Sales & Networking know this. The savvy psychologists of Romance and Relationships know this.

Spend some time with someone and the walls go down, an opportunity manifests, and an alliance is probable.

This becomes a revolutionary idea when you consider the impact. We, as in everybody in the entire world, are most likely to become close to whoever we’re sitting next to or living next to or going to school with or working with…

It’s not some complex chemistry thing. It’s nearness that makes it possible for us to care. If someone else had sat down next to me, I’d be closer to them and not to the jam-band guy.

I almost wish it was more complicated or cosmic than that, but it’s not, so when you feel like you don’t know (or maybe even don’t like) someone, go share some space with them. You don’t need the right words, you don’t need some step-by-step guide. Just enter the space they’re in and sit there.

You just might get on their guest list.

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The Heroic Duty of Pain

School drop-off was hard today. My little pre-schooler was having a mini panic attack on the way to the reading room. She did that jagged breathing and crying thing that kids do and she wouldn’t let go when I hugged her goodbye. I swear I could feel her anxiety passing out of her tiny heart and into mine.

And then on the way to the car, I checked the news and saw Death and Justice in the same sentence and Hatred in the footnotes and my chest opened up a little bit more so that my heart was in real danger. I thought of the fear and pain that’s spreading like wildfire in our country and it made it hard to drive home.

It hurts. It hurts deep down and I’m trying to figure out the virtue in all of this: what’s helpful about caring so much when it’s debilitating?

I’ve searched for an answer and this is what I’ve found:

Emotions make us more rational (not less). They slam on the brakes, tap our Intellect on the shoulder and say, “Hey! Chill out a second. There’s other shit going on, here.”

And we should be smart enough to listen.

If Intellect is the great professor scribbling out equations on the whiteboard, then Emotion is the disheveled guidance counselor charging out of her office with her hands waving to remind us all what’s really important — staying intact.

And not in some bullshit way that looks good on the surface…

Rather, in doing the deep work, which is often as simple as slowing down and feeling bad.

Although it doesn’t seem like it, feeling bad and experiencing pain is part of the solution; it’s just a little further back in the process than the part we all prefer.

Emotion, and Pain in particular, points us to the things that keep us whole.

We will be much better off when we realize it’s okay to lose ourselves in pain. Just don’t slip down another level into that freezing cold mist of Numbness. I’ve been there before, I’ve gone down too deep; I don’t want to go there again.

Always seek Pain over Numbness.

Pain is better than Numbness because something comes after Pain. With Numbness, there is no beginning or end, or so it seems that way when you’re standing in the middle of it. It’s like a fog that bleaches the landscape so you can’t see the contours of anything anymore.

At least with Pain, you’re headed somewhere.

This is helpful to remember — to seek Pain instead of Numbness — when your heart is breaking and you feel the coolness on your back… like I do now.

The Pain will save you. Go to it like a light. Once you step into it, it will do the rest. It will wrap itself around you, like a guidance counselor, like a papa hugging his daughter goodbye, always treasuring your open heart and dutifully carrying you away from the fog.

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The Forgotten Step to Being Free

Raise your hand if you have too much on your plate.

Okay, time to delegate. The first step is figuring out what to unload. We all usually make it to this step and then get stuck. We know what we want to get rid of but we keep holding onto it and then perseverate on why we’re stuck.

If this is you, I have a solution that’s counterintuitive: Go back a step.

Delegate the task of figuring out *how* to delegate what you want to unload. You can easily do this by inviting someone into your dilemma and asking them how they might solve your problem.

For example, if you want to have someone manage your calendar, just show them your calendar in all its chaos and let them react to it. Let someone else see the pile before you ask them to move it. Instead of trying to come up with the perfect thing to say, tell the person you’re having a problem with that you don’t know what to say. They’ll take it from there.

This works without fail.

We usually bring people into the equation one step too late, which is why they never come to our rescue. Go back a step and let go earlier. Allow someone to witness you knee-deep in the muck and remain open to the possibility that they may have a better idea than you as to how to pull you out.

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Apologies – Weakness Or Strength?

“I’m sorry.”

This is something you’ll never hear on a debate stage or in a board room. We’ve cast it out as a sign of weakness when, indeed, it’s the opposite.

People who apologize are showing they are courageous and intelligent because they’re choosing knowledge, connection, and growth over their own ego. When you apologize, it means you’ve discovered that there’s another way, a better way, a helpful, alternative perspective that you’ve overlooked or didn’t realize.

None of us know everything so why do we talk, argue, and comment as if we do?

When walking down a path in the woods, if we come to a bear, we turn back and come up with a new plan. It’s just common sense but, for some reason, we throw out this simple logic when it comes to our personal or political point of view.

And it’s no wonder we do this because our path is lined with cheerleaders who are our friends and allies. They are cheering us on to be right above all else, to keep going down our path because it’s their path too, and they believe their cheering is love, even if it means we get eaten by the bear.

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How To Go On a Treasure Hunt In The Middle Of Your Workday

With all the rain, I let my lawn get out of hand. It’s up to my hips. Some weeds are as thick as an index finger. There’s this vicious cycle that keeps me from mowing it: weekdays are hard because I have to work and then I want to relax. And my weekends, riddled with kid activities, always pull me away from the house in the daylight hours.

But this is getting ridiculous. My dog can’t even find his throw-toy anymore.

So, I head down my steps to go to the hardware store (they seem to have the answers to everything!). That’s when I hear an industrial leaf blower in the distance. To my right, down the street, I see a white pickup truck with a lawnmower in the back.

Hmmm…

I put my keys back in my pocket and take off down the block in a jog.

200 feet up the road, across the street, through a gate, around the pool, and on the patio of an apartment complex, I find the leaf blower. It’s on the back of a man with noise-canceling headphones and a Metallica T-shirt.

I do my best to wave him down in the most non-threatening way possible. I’ve found bending down slightly, tilting my head, smiling, and raising my eyebrows in inflection works quite well.

He stops the leaf blower and we’re standing in silence by a pool that I’ve never stood next to. There’s something refreshing about it, like detouring off the main road after years of the same commute. My lawn, my house, and my life seem far away.

I make my pitch. He’s friendly about it and follows me back to my property to wade through my jungle-yard. He gives me a quote, tells me his name, and schedules me in. After a handshake, he trots back to the complex and I’m standing on my deck watching the gate close.

It’s Wednesday. I should be working, but the detour got to me. I’m off-trail and it feels good. I walk over and step into the weeds, not quite sure what I’m looking for, but delighted when I see it, down there at my feet.

I reach into the thatch and pull out a soft, faded, leathery brown basketball.

“I’ve been looking for you,” I say.

I laugh at how I got here, standing in the weeds, in the middle of some unexpected treasure hunt, where Isaac the heavy-metal-thrashing leaf blower is my enchanted wizard and a worn-out basketball is my pot of gold.

The lone cloud in the sky moves off the sun, warming up me. Seems obvious what’s next.

Time for some hoops.

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Making Your Job Even Better

Oftentimes we have to see all other possibilities before we accept what we have.

It happens a lot. I will work with a client to generate alternative career ideas. We’ll talk for a few hours, we’ll do assessments to come up with lists of hundreds of job possibilities, We’ll conduct informational interviews, we’ll read books, we’ll create ideal job descriptions… all the good stuff to break down walls and let the light in.

And then, upon crossing off the last item on our list, the client will start thinking about the job they already have. It’s like seeing a loved one at the airport after a long trip. And that loved one’s hair may be a bit longer and they may have different clothes but there is plenty that is familiar and the good parts are so much more obvious.

As with partners and friends, our jobs become part of our routine and we can lose sight of what makes them so great for us. But with a courageous departure and some distance, you get your Homecoming, and it becomes so much easier to understand what you have and what you can do to make it even better.

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Two Ways to be an Entrepreneur

There is a metaphor people use to illustrate the non-stop action and exhilaration of starting up and running a venture: it’s like building a race car while you’re driving it down the freeway.

A client of mine one-upped this image and likened entrepreneurship to jumping off of a cliff and building an airplane on the way down.

As an entrepreneur and coach of entrepreneurs, I can say both are accurate. Entrepreneurship requires boldness, ingenuity, courage, and deep, unyielding faith in yourself because people will be looking at you like you’re freefalling when you know you’re flying (or about to be).

You know you’re an entrepreneur when people don’t quite get what you’re doing because that means you’re on to something new.

However, as exciting as these images are, starting a venture doesn’t have to be this way. You can, contrary to popular belief, build the car or the plane on the ground. To those that find this idea appealing: the best way to keep the ground under your feet is to not jump in the first place.

Start building while you already have a job. Or do some consulting on the side or walk dogs or sell real estate or whatever.

You see, that freefall, that need for speed, is usually due to the fear of running out of money (something investors call “runway,” appropriately enough). If you keep the money coming in, you stretch out your runway.

For this reason, you should never resent that “other job” you have to do. It’s your runway builder and it’s making your dream possible. A day job is like an investor who is relentlessly happy to dole out cash for you with no questions asked. Believe me, this is hard to find!

So, if you thrive under pressure, jump off the cliff with your sheet metal and rivet gun, but if you prefer to build with patience, create your own investment partner and take all the time you need.

We’ll wait.

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The Most Important Hours In Your Week

I’ve yet to be invited to give a commencement speech to a graduating class… but if I did I’d give this advice, above all:

Set aside 4 hours a week that you will, under no circumstances, overwrite with some other activity, even work, even play, even your very favorite thing to do. If at all possible, build those 4 hours into your work schedule, your vocation. And guard those 4 hours as if your life depends on it.

Because it does.

Those 4 hours, whether on one day or spread across several, are the secret to survival. Those 4 hours make the other 108 waking hours of the week bearable no matter what the world throws at you, no matter if you like, love, or loathe the life you’re in.

Those are your alchemy hours.

It is the sacred time where you manufacture hope and inspiration, where you map out the next best thing and walk the line of dreams and reality, a professor of whimsy, a scholar of the sudsy division between land and sea. This is the time when you check in about what you’re doing and work on the tattered blueprints of your next invention.

So please protect those hours. Protecting them now is so much easier than trying to find them later underneath all of the beautiful things you’re going to fill your life with.

As long as you have those hours to stoke a fire and look to the horizon, you have eternity in your grasp. You can withstand the hard sun. You can become the sand or the moon.

You will be the envy of angels, for, in this commitment to giving your gifts fully, you shall truly be alive.

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When Our Little Fires Become a Single Blaze

I’m tired of fighting. I wish I didn’t have to fight.

I wish I could live in my little corner of the world and create love and books and resumes and be a dad and a husband and a neighbor and nothing else. I don’t want much but I’ve come to notice that so many other people want it all and if I don’t stand on my ground with both feet every day, they will gladly take it from me.

Worse still. I may be tired but people around me are dying and the ones with the blood on their hands are wearing suits with little flag pins, slashing lives with pen and paper, perfecting their lightning, and calling it work when, in fact, it’s violence.

And I can’t reach them, not with phone calls nor letters nor dollar bills. I don’t have enough of any of these to earn attention.

So I wake up every day tired — tired when I look up, tired when I listen in, and the only hope I can muster is that the little friction I create on the ground will generate some light and heat for the day to allow people I never meet to see things differently and to care about keeping others warm.

And on good days, I have moments where I believe that our little fires on the ground, wrapping around the earth, will become a single blaze that will outshine the sorcerors’ blinding light coming down past the stares of our indifferent gods.