Play To Your Strengths

A few weeks ago I ever-so-casually mentioned a guy named Marcus Buckingham and penchant for people focusing on their strengths rather than their flaws or weaknesses. Anyone who has read a single word in this space can probably understand my enthusiasm for this idea and for his cause. And since my first mention of him, I’ve taken some time to explore his web site and get a better idea of where this chap is coming from. The conclusion: he’s pretty damn brilliant.

He has a lot of great points, many of which you can get a glimpse of in the dozen-or-so video clips located at the bottom left hand corner of the Resources page on his site. He talks about leadership, managers, engaging workers, etc. My favorite clip is Brits vs. Americans not only because of its accuracy, but because he’s a Brit. And like most Brits, he has an abundantly intelligent sense of humor. “When I first came to the United State, I was sent to Lincoln, Nebraska for my (pause) sins.”

Have I read even a single word in any of his books? No. I’m still dissecting and committing to memory The 8^th Habit, which I’ve mentioned before. (And for those of you who have written me asking me to “teach” it here as a way of reinforcing my own learning of it, I will take you up on it, so get ready.) But I do keep up with Mr. Buckingham in FastCompany, a rag you should definitely check out if you have any desire to look at work as something to enjoy rather than as a millstone around your neck.

Check him out on your lunch break this week. You’ll like what you hear.

The Lowdown On The Northwest

I think the whole “it’s rainy and gray here all the time” thing is a conspiracy the Seattle locals thought up jut to keep everyone from moving here. And I should have listened to my friend Kevin long ago when he lived here. “Konold,” he’d say, “I Really think you’d dig Seattle big time. You should come visit me.” I never took him up on it and I am now thoroughly kicking myself in the ass for it.

And Canada has been sandbagging, dear readers. Sure they try to dazzle us with Mounties in bright red uniforms; they talk up a storm about a social health care system, they trumpet NAFTA and CAFTA up and down the news headlines and even try to win the World Series ever now and then. But the one thing they hardly ever mention, and the one thing that only a handful of people can successfully locate on a map, is Vancouver. I can’t say I blame the canucks, either. I mean, if I had access to that gem-of-a-city, I wouldn’t tell anyone and I sure as hell wouldn’t invite people too often, no matter how many tourist dollars they’d bring in their pockets.

I could go on and on about the majestic scenery; the friendliness and openness of everyone we met; the exciting things that were at our disposal; and how clean everything was; but I would not come even remotely close to doing it justice.

Just go there, alright!? Your next vacation should be to the Pacific Northwest; primarily Seattle and Vancouver.

I did not expect this trip to be as spiritual as it has. It has reinforced the idea of being open to whatever comes my way and trying to balance that with a plan that isn't too hell-bent on staying a course. The Buddhist meditation and Reiki (which I may get into more later) were transformative. So was the chance to add persepctive to my examination of life by stepping two time zones to the left of it. (Your left, my right.) Time to get back to, well, nothing. This vacation ends tomorrow, kids. If it weren't for that glaring fact, I wouldn't even know what day it is.

Holy $%&# - I Can Meditate

I have never been good at meditation. My mind simply won’t shut off. The whole “clear your mind” thing? You might as well ask O.J. to fess up.

Yeah, I said it.

So you can imagine my response when, while we were staying with Brighid’s friends outside Vancouver, our hostess asked if I would like to try a one-hour sitting meditation at 5:00 A.M. the first morning I was there. My instinct was to decline gracefully. Why waste both our time? I already knew what would happen – I’d sit down, try to focus on nothing, have a mind full of information and movie quotes, grow frustrated and just get one step closer to the Looney Bin.

And yet, I agreed to try it because, well, why not?

When 5:00 A.M. arrived yesterday and we joined our hostess for the meditation session, I was in no mood to make good on my promise to try. I think I uttered something profane but it’s no use guessing at a fog now. And as I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat on a tiny floor-level chair; I crossed my legs, closed my eyes and prayed to both God and Buddah that this would be over soon.

Longest… Hour… Of… My… Life.

But damn was it cool! I never successfully cleared my mind, but there were times during that hour that I felt a tremendous sense of calm, peace and tranquility. I also felt tension, heat and a desire to vomit, but I think that was a visceral reaction from my body to voluntarily staying still for such an extended period of time.

I hardly moved an inch, dear friends. I think I adjusted my legs slightly to accommodate blood flow and alleviate touches of pain, but other than that, I was like stone and triumphantly made it through the exercise and really felt a lot better for it.

Did I achieve enlightenment? Hell no. For me, the peace and benefit of meditation comes afterward; from knowing that I did it. It seldom comes in the actual doing of it.

Throughout the session, we were being taught to focus on the nostrils and upper-lip area of the face. I tried to, but it always felt as though that condensed area of my face was about six inches in front of the rest of my face; or off to one of the sides. That’s about as good as I can explain it but apparently, it’s a huge step in the world of mediation.

Next up may be some Reiki (pronounced RAY-kee). One step at a time, though, eh?

Careful What You Ask For

The beautiful, albeit incredibly scary, thing about this experiment of mine is that I really have to trust my gut. It told me, even as early as two years ago, the job had to go and that I was meant for other things. I didn’t fully listen, however, because it wasn’t practical and I think that’s where I made a huge mistake.

I’m not denouncing practicality in any way. I’m a very practical person and anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me will quickly observe my grasp of pragmatism and how it serves me. But it is possible, as with just about anything, to go too far. So far, in fact; that I forgot to listen to my innate wisdom. I forgot to trust.

I have been learning to trust and what’s more, I have been learning to openly voice the life lesson of trust. I find it difficult to trust anything I can’t immediately deduce, control or understand with my five senses. But as I learn to open myself more and to live with a higher level of trust, solutions to problems and responses to my actions seem to arrive in their own time.

Where am I going with this? Good question.

Today I met with my spiritual director and told him the results of the 3 Days of Silence he posed to me. I elaborated on the time I spent reflecting on the talents, skills and strengths that naturally flow from me; and that the biggest conundrum I face is that I have many, many, many talents that, on paper, do not relate in any way. I mean, what the hell am I suppose to do with the fact that I’m eerily comfortable at the front of a room of 50 people, can analyze numbers and data to death, am organized to a fault, and have a creative streak that has mutated into a life of its own? In short, I’m as much right-brained as I am left-brained and I have no idea what to do with it.

My spiritual director apparently thinks I am a perfect candidate to help start a community center on the Northwest side of Chicago with the Northwest Neighborhood Federation; a group that recently received $200,000 from the state to establish such a resource. Their intention is to not only effectively use all of that scratch in eight months, but to use it towards programs such as ESL, GED, community schooling, political activism, the arts and issues of community concern for the Latino and Polish populations of the Northwest Side.

It’s all very preliminary right now and to tell the truth, this priest received word of this only hours before we met – it all just came together. But it’s a dream he has had for years and it sounds like the kind of area I am interested in, and I just happened to leave my job for such an opportunity, and I just happened to be meeting with him regularly after just happening to be going to a certain Mass…. You see where I am going with this.

It seems Steve Jobs was right. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward.” I am trying not to focus on this too much because I do not want my hopes to get too out of control and I want to enjoy this upcoming vacation as much as possible and take one day at a time.

But hot damn this would be freggin’ awesome to tackle!

I’m off on vacation for the next few weeks in the Pacific Northwest. (I never understood that label because it’s not like there is an Atlantic Northwest that everyone is dying to get to, is there?) Nonetheless, there’s nothing like being unemployed and taking off for a while, eh? I will do my best to keep things up to date here but will probably only manage to jot some notes and drafts to round out later. I hope to have some good stuff for you. This whole “explore life” thing is pretty nifty. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

Buy Low, Sell High

“I have no experience but I'm a big fan of money. I like it, I use it, I have a little. I keep it in a jar on top of my refrigerator. I'd like to put more in that jar. That’s where you come in.” – Adam Sandler, The Wedding Singer.

My exploration of interests and possibilities yesterday took me into the financial realm with some time on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. I had a nice perch from which to watch the activity of the corn pit, and with deer-in-the-headlight eyes, I witnessed grown adults buying and selling this commodity using demonstrative gestures that until now, I have only seen among my Italian family.

For the Pop Culture pros out there: I found myself reminded of Cameron mocking traders and their hand signals in Ferris Buller’s Day Off. I even came Really close to launching into a parody of it myself but refrained for fear of accidentally trading with someone and not knowing it.

The moments before the opening bell were similar to the festivities before a sporting event. It is probably the best way to handle the fact that high-energy competition was only minutes away, but it absolutely could not start until the bell sounded. In the meantime, they fraternized in a way that I have never seen in a group of people who were about to start work.

Then the bell rang promptly at 9:30 and it all changed. A massive outpouring of energy, vocal and physical, seemed to shoot out of some invisible cannon. It seized the room and created a controlled chaos in which people were not afraid to throw their bodies around, take advantage of a deal and better their position for the day.

The room also became devoid of any courtesy or politeness once the horses were out of the gate, but that’s to be expected. When things can change direction and go North or South at any given moment, there isn’t time to say, “Excuse me,” as you try to get to where you are going. You either find a way to weave around the roadblock or just physically move it out of the way. I guess it depends on your body type and your comfort level with risk.

I found it hard to concentrate on anything for longer than 20 seconds. Part of that was due to the fact that the perimeter of the entire room, which is the size of a high school gymnasium but with considerably higher ceilings, was lined by a band of electronic boards full of information about the commodities being traded, the other markets and world news in general. For a data junkie like me, this was a fix like I had never seen before, and I found myself growing frustrated by my inability to decipher it.

Note: You can have all the data and information in the world, but if you can’t make heads or tails of it, it’s completely useless. And a huge part of utilizing something like that is knowing how to cut out that which you don’t need, cull what you do, and do something with it.

I really love the kind of crazed intensity that I saw, but I’m afraid daily exposure to it would make it commonplace. However, from what I am told, the fervor is often balanced out by huge moments of inactivity and boredom. Not to mention the market is only open from 9:30 to 1:15 so it’s kind of a small window in which that can happen.

Since I now have a feel for what goes on, I may go back and check it out again. No way to tell if it will sway me towards or away from pursuing it but it certainly will give me some new hand gestures to use at family gatherings.

Palm Sunday

As a congratulations gift for my daring leap in to the unknown, my loving girlfriend bought me sessions with hand analyst, Roberta Coker.

From Roberta’s web site: “Five months before you were born, your fingerprints are permanently formed. In that, they identify your Life Purpose – who you cam here to be, what you came here to do, the path of your greatest fulfillment. They also tell us your Life Lesson – the work you came here to get done, the challenges that you came here to face, the core issues and foundational fears that keep you from achieving your Life purpose!”

Brighid signed up for this last year and learned quite a bit about herself and has recently been reviewing her sessions and it’s really freaky how much more relevant they are now as they were then.

In order to get the process started I had to send Roberta prints of my palms and fingertips. It was in interesting, awkward and near-messy experience with water soluble back ink, a mini roller and sheets of printer paper. But in the end I had some pretty damn fine hand prints and a lot of laughs to go along with them.

We are due to set up our first session soon wherein I will learn all sorts of things about myself that will no doubt spark some fear in me; fear of doing things that I know in my core are the right things for me to do and learn in this life. More to come on this, I promise.

Human Being vs. Human Doing

Remember that 3 day mini-retreat I told you about a few posts back? Yeah, well I finally got around to it. I bought a brand new notebook; made sure my pen had plenty of ink, turned off my sources of input and connection for 72 hours and tried to just be with myself.

Barring some minor interruptions, I am happy to announce a difficult success! The first two days drove me absolutely batty. It was very easy to shun responsibilities to anyone and anything outside of my front door. Hell, it was most welcome. But when I was forced to just sit in my house surrounded by a gargantuan pile of laundry, a desk so covered in paper and mail it was a fire hazard, and floors that were in profound need of cleaning, it was hard not to jump in to a mode of “doing” and clean the hell out of my house. On top of that, this experiment in fear coincided with Katrina and not keeping up with something That monumental almost had me break out in a rash.

It took much restraint not to peek in on the news and to not tend to the mile-long task list of life; the things that I have always wanted to get to “when I had time.” I mean, I had 72 hours at my disposal. But that would have totally defeated the purpose and kept me from writing 40 pages worth of mental ramblings, reflections, and “a-ha” moments.

The process really did not become fun until the third day, and I suspect much of that has to do with my decision to start the day with 7:00 AM Mass at the local church. That whole experience sort of set the tone for the day. In fact, at the end of the day, when I knew it was all over, I partly wanted there to be 2 more days tacked on to see where I would go from there.

It was a great experience and I can honestly say I am not directly closer to finding my next calling in life, but rather in a better state of being open to finding it in whatever way I need to. It helped re-focus my energy on the idea of this being a fun adventure that very few get, or allow themselves, to take. It didn’t do much to diminish the fear but it certainly added to excitement, hope and eagerness.

I hope to be able to devote more time to this space now that the play is over. One of my next stops is to a web site hosted by a man who is starting a Strength Revolution – forget focusing on what we all lack or “need improvement on” in the workplace. Let’s focus and enhance our strengths; those things at which we are naturally good, excited about and eager to do in the day. Sounds like a great idea to me.