Month: November 2020

I made a mistake at work. It went on my permanent record. It happened because there was a tiger in my office.

Or at least, my brain thought there was a tiger. What really happened is that I misunderstood something. I thought our team needed to do one thing, but in truth, we were supposed to do something else. But that’s not what caused the trouble for me.

Trouble came when I let myself believe and behave as if that mistake was as dangerous to me as a tiger.

Our brains don’t differentiate between a tiger that can kill us and a social faux pas that could get us tossed off our social island. For most of our history, the two things amounted to the same result. Death.

So when I goofed up, I got scared. I treated a paper tiger as if it were a real tiger and overreacted. Not good. I got called out on my actions. Deserved.

When at work, I remind myself – these issues are paper tigers. They can’t kill me, but jumping out a window to escape them, just might.

I wrote that lesson down years ago. This week I was in a meeting and someone IM’d me “Paper Tigers!”

This weekend I reflected on Lesson 15 – Don’t Hide It & Lesson 25 – Paper Tigers.

I felt my blood pressure come down, I talked for hours to people I love about things that have nothing to do with tigers or policies.

I remembered that each of us is capable, resilient and that we have everything we need here and now, in this one minute we’re inhabiting.

I wish you all good fortune and prosperity. I wish you a pair of scissors. I wish you the tools you need to discern a paper tiger from the real thing.

And That? Is All I’ve Got For You Today.

How are you today? It’s been an emotional weekend for all of us. Back in December of 2019, when I laid out the plan for this year’s blogs, I knew this Monday was going to be tough on a lot of us, tough on half of us. I knew I’d be blogging after a tense election, but I sure never imagined the scale of the emotions and the whole sorry mish-mash that was 2020.

So how are you today?

If you are one of my fellow Americans, I feel ya.

We are entering a new phase of the election cycle.

Those of us on the upside of this bare-knuckle fist-fight of an election aren’t off the hook. We don’t get to gloat. We don’t get to wag fingers and act like children. There is one truth that we all know: this government, by design, doesn’t allow any party to have its own way, all the time. So it behooves us to swing the door wide and to make it easy for everyone to shoulder their way back to the table.

Those of us who voted for the candidate that lost are struggling to get our minds around that. I have been on the losing end of many of these. I voted for Ross Pierrot. I voted for a lot of other guys who lost. After an election during which I backed runner up, there’s always that sense that something just went wrong. There’s the sense that we just need to check a few more things, that surely, this isn’t the way it ends.

It’s really hard to swallow. And then… out walks the other guy and all his followers and they’re saying stuff like “put aside your differences, work across the aisle.” They say – “It’s time to come together.”

Ouch. It really stings. It’s like ripping off a band-aid, like not getting the job, like not bringing the project over the finish line on time. You’re not healed yet, you want one more try, but it’s over. It feels unfinished and unrealistic. Maybe you recount all the ballots in Florida. Maybe you recount Michigan. You’re the one still sitting at the table, trying to see if the deck had fifty-two cards in it.

I’ve sat in my chair, arms folded, aggravated and disappointed, and listened to many politicians ask me to put aside my differences.

I didn’t want to.

I still had my own mind. There are 70 million Americans out there who still have their own minds today. The election didn’t change that, and that’s OK.

Come together.

Come together is the thing that we do in America which is as unique and rare as a planet with water, oxygen, and carbon life forms. Come together is the thing that sets us apart.

Come together is America showing the world how it’s done. We don’t take to the streets with guns. We don’t divide our nation into warring factions. We don’t behave like there’s no due process.

It doesn’t mean we’re all singing around a campfire, but it does mean that we respect our system of government and we believe in the dream that is America.

We use the systems handed down to us by our founding fathers – a group of mismatched, imperfect, and fallible individuals. Those imperfect beings managed by some miracle to be greater than the sum of their parts. They created this wacky and brilliant electoral college. They created three branches of government. They ceded the power of elections to the states so that no one group could ever rig an election. They penned the constitution. They? Were magic.

Turns out it wasn’t a one shot deal.

Together, we are always greater than each of us alone.

So this is it.

There’s the election – the bare facts of what happened; the situation we find ourselves in.

And there are your thoughts about the election.

These are not the same thing.

The election happened. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It just is.

There are dozens of thoughts you can have about it.

You get to pick some out, find one that helps. When I’m on the dust-kickin’, downtrodden side of the game, I like to think “Well, it’s just four years and they can’t wreck the whole thing in four years.”

That’s the beauty of our country. Because no matter who sits in the people’s house, they can’t wreck the whole thing in four years. It’s never happened. They can’t even wreck it in eight years. It’s a belief that we take on faith. Sometimes, it’s just a prayer.

If we think our democracy is in trouble, we’ll act like it is – and then? Well, it really will be.

If we believe that due process, checks and balances, and the resiliency of the country as a whole will prevail, we’ll act like we have rational options and faith in the future. And then? All those things will continue to be true.

If we believe our opponents are less than us, less honorable, less intelligent, less “right”, then we won’t honor them, and we will be dishonorable, we won’t consult them and we will miss what they have to contribute. We’ll act as if we’re always right, and that’s never right.

If we believe that we can not, should not and must not be divided, then we will create unity.

So this is it.

The situation is – we had a big election.

We get to decide what that means.

And that? Is it.

Apparently, there were a lot of people on the video call, but I couldn’t tell.  The little bar across the top showed a series of grey boxes with pairs of letters in them.  There were only three people I could see.   The whole thing was freakin’ me out.

I’d spent days preparing for the presentation.   I’d practiced over and over.  The problem was, my talk felt identical to the version I’d done by myself, except now I was expecting feedback.   There wasn’t going to be any.  I was swimming alone.

Now, I’m not sayin’ it was a bad experience. I had a great time. I hope I helped someone. I’m just surprised at how much I wanted feedback. When I was in the office every day and I had a chance to give a presentation like this, feedback wasn’t a big deal. Now that I’m basically isolated in my house for days at a time? A whole new ball game right there.

My brother had mentioned this facet of our new normal to me during a phone call, but I’d not really understood.  He said performing live music on Facebook wasn’t the same.   

“Uh-huh,” I said.  I flipped a page in a catalog.

“There’s no relationship with the audience,” he said.  He sounded bummed.

“Huh,”  I offered, opening a cabinet.  Were there any crackers in the house?

“It’s better than nothing,” he finished. “But it’s not the same.  There’s no feedback.”

I shook a box of Triscuits.  It was suspiciously light. “What?” I asked.

People need interaction with people.   We need feedback when we’re sharing information, taking risks, putting our art, or our ideas out there.   When we feel vulnerable, a friendly face means everything.  A smile, a gesture, heck, just knowing that anyone is paying attention is absolute gold right now.

When we first left the office and went home, I knew how much communication from leadership meant to me.  I was craving it.  So I decided to dress every day for work, to show up on camera, to have a daily team meeting so that everyone could see that our team hadn’t changed.  I wanted to be reliable, available.

Each day, we all get on the call for fifteen minutes, turn on our cameras, and see each other.  During the summer, our team started to see these daily meetings as inconvenient.  Several people wanted to stop them.  Last month, after seven months of holding firm, I asked if they wanted to change the schedule.  Nobody said yes.  Why? Who knows.  For myself, I  know that it matters to me to see my teammates.  I started out doing it for them.  Now, I’m grateful they do it for me.

So people – turn on your cameras. It’s not about you.  You might have no make-up on, maybe that ombre hair color is really four inches of gray roots, or you’ve found that a man-bun is working out for you at home.  You lost your zoom shirt. You’re working in the laundry room. 

It doesn’t matter. 

We’re not turning on our cameras so that the world can see us stylin’ seven months into a pandemic.  We’re turning on our cameras because someone on the call might be struggling with depression and need to see a friendly face.  We’re rocking the virtual backgrounds and facing our dislike of seeing our sorry-ass faces so that we can show up and give a smile to a person trying to collaborate with us. 

Turn on your camera.

Speak up in meetings.

Send a note afterward.

It’s not about you.

It’s about showing up for each other and not letting friends swim alone.

And that? Is just an easy thing to do.

If you’re suffering from overwhelm and would like to work with me, sign up for a free consultation. Let’s see if I can help. Schedule that here.

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