Here’s an idea I’m working on for an upcoming article:
I attended an inspiring workshop last week based on the idea of living an intentional life. Many of us experience everyday life as a series of events that the world does to us. We have no control over the traffic woes, the weather, the state of world affairs, the surly salesperson…these things are out of our control. They are external and they can seriously foul up our day or week or even month. So what do we do about them? The easy thing (and often unconscious action) is to allow them to direct our thinking and behavior. The affects can be souring relationships, declining work performance, increasing isolation from others.

It reminded me of a recent personal experience. I needed to get to a meeting and I was running late. I raced out to my car and drove out of the parking lot when I noticed that my wife didn’t replace my SmartTag (a little box that allows us Northern Virginians to move through area toll booths quickly). I drove back to retrieve it and then drove out of the parking lot again when I realized that I didn’t have my cell phone. I let my wife borrow it while hers is being replaced. By now, I was fuming. You can see from the way this is going that I seem to be blaming my wife for being really late to an important meeting. Yet, there were so many other ways to view this incident at the time.

A more powerful option is to decide to live a life of intentional choices. While we can’t control most, if not all, of the external forces in our life, we can control our reactions to them. We have the ability to make intentional choices that, while not always easy, have the potential for great power in our lives.

During lunch a couple of days ago, a friend asked how I came to be a coach. As I recounted my winding career path since graduating from college, I realized there was one critical milestone in the journey: the birth of my first daughter. Her coming into this world wasn’t quite planned and it forced some replanning of my proposed future, as well as my wife’s future. Yet, in this period of reconsidering what I was all about as an individual and a professional, I asked myself one deeply soulful question that has continued to guide my life: What kind of father do I want to be?

The answers have provided a foundation not only for my personal life, but my professional life. I remember the first week of knowing that I was going to be a dad; I was terrified by all the changes that were going to need to take place…getting a solid job with health insurance (I was in graduate school at the time), finding a good place to live, etc. Then, this experience was further deepened when I started to consider all the changes that I would need to make as a person. At one point, the anxiety of it all was just too much and I started to run (physically) as hard as I could. I ran out of my basement apartment and kept running along street after street, through park after park, until I couldn’t go any farther and fell into the grass. From this exhausted state, I asked myself what kind of father do I want to be and then the answers started to appear.

I wanted my child to know love, to know integrity, to know playfulness, to know commitment, to know that this world is a good place filled with good people, to know that we can love our work. And the way for her to know these things are to see them modeled.

The process of asking myself this question did not end prior to her birth, but continues to guide me today. As my children grow, so do I as a father. Being a dad has provided another powerful layer of purpose to my life. To wrap up, I believe that my children are an incredible influence on me as a man and as a coach.

A great article at the Parentalk Working Parents Naturally Savvy site. The ‘Oxygen Mask’ Principle relates that familiar airplane safety reminder of putting on your own oxygen mask before trying to fasten your child’s mask to taking care of yourself as a parent. So often, we take care of everyone BUT ourselves and in the end, we not only cheat ourselves, but those around us. Sometimes, it’s essential that we’re selfish. Then, we can be fully present when our children, spouses, and other loved ones need us.

What are you going to do this week to get your oxygen?

We all know how the United States basketball team fared at the 2004 Olympics and a similar thing seems to be happening with the U.S. Ryder Cup golf team. Both groups, filled with exceptionally talented individuals and seemingly dominant on paper compared to the competition, provide a stark reminder of one of the pitfalls of team-building. The pursuit to fill a work team with the best individual talent may actually lead to poor results. Instead, first consider the mission of your team (what’s your central purpose for existing as a group) and then build based on the answer. Need a strong marketing focus? Are you weak in bringing new ideas to the table? The best individuals to help with these needs may not be one of the “office all-stars.”

In the movie Miracle, Herb Brooks (played by Kurt Russell) tells his assistant, “I’m not looking for the best players, I’m looking for the right ones.” What he wanted was a team that shined together, not individual all-stars trying to shine on their own. Do you have the right ones on your team?

One of my favorite books is The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. It speaks to me both as a creative individual and as an impactful leader. One of the things that I prefer in books of this type is a mix of insight and suggestions for taking action. The best leadership and personal development books help you use what you’ve learned in new and dynamic ways. In this respect, it is a coaching-centered resource.

The first chapter forms the foundation for the rest of the book and centers on the notion that we perceive all that happens around us in very individual ways and then interpret them accordingly. Reality and truth are then very subjective. Once you understand and accept this notion, you have an incredible capacity to act in fresh and powerful ways. They call it “It’s All Invented” and go on to suggest since we have the ability to create new stories, we might as well create ones that enhance the quality of our lives and the lives of those around us.

So, what stories are you creating right now? Do they involve you as the lead character who lives a life of drudgery, misfortune, bitterness? Hopefully not, but perhaps its just a blah life in which you yearn for more. What if you decided to create a new story today, one that involves passion, excitement, laughter, [go ahead, fill in the blank]?

Remember, it’s all invented so have some fun with it. What do you think?