When I was first learning to ski the slalom course, I sat in the boat watching people who could run the course thinking “How hard could that be?” I learned to get up on a slalom ski at age 15. Just doing that felt like a huge accomplishment. I would get up, celebrate that I […]
Originally Posted July 22, 2016 The conversation started as she walked in looking haggard and weary. “I’m so drained, today I can’t be the leader I want to be.” She continued, by saying “I feel like a bitch asking for help –but there is no way I can do all of this by myself.” Unknowingly, […]
When I was learning to ride my bike as a child, the huge moment came the day my Dad took off the training wheels. I would finally get to be like the other big kids! In my kid brain, I thought it would be a simple matter of getting on and doing what I had done so many times before, only like a grown up. Not even close.
It took many falls and skinned knees until the moment of cheating occurred. I would get on, try to pedal and before the other foot could make the circle, the bike would fall over. I became acutely aware of just how much those training wheels had held me up.
In my conversation with Warwick Schiller last week, he described how he is now solving most problems with horses – or problem horses – with presence.
“I’m really starting think that the present part is the most important part. Because what used to happen was…you know I was a horse trainer for a long time. I don’t train horses for the public anymore, so I’m not really a horse trainer anymore. But what used to happen was people would bring you a horse that has problems and you fix those problems. But what I realize now is that a lot of those problems come from us not being present around them. I know it sounds like it can’t be that simple, but it is that simple.”
We are two months into a whole new world. I have questions.
First, what are we to call this whole new world? I don’t like “COVID-19”. It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of BC – AD. The Pandemic Era doesn’t work for me either. While the virus has precipitated this whole new world, I would rather focus on the opportunity it presents than the danger. So I’m going to call it the Great Reinvention.
This week, Jeopardy had a question about a famous copywriter in Final Jeopardy. When putting words together makes you famous enough to be on Jeopardy, it’s tells you copywriting is a true profession.
Copywriting has been on my mind for a lot of reasons in the last few weeks. I’m working on a couple of new projects that require a lot of email communication. After some awkward exchanges thanks to me shooting off a cryptic note, I have had to pause and realize that taking a moment to read what I wrote before hitting send would save me time. Tons of time.
Here we are now, a couple of weeks into the year-long month of April. While it feels like we’ve be at this forever, what I’m really appreciating at the moment is the clarity. So much of the busy-ness I had allowed to creep into my life was just noise. Without it, I’m able to really […]
Originally Posted: September 11, 2016“I’m going to do it all – and I’m going to do it perfectly.” While few say that out loud, their actions say it for them. Know anyone who thinks (and acts) that way? I see it all the time, whether in a small business – where doing it all seems a necessity – to teams in giant corporations. The very same people who treat money as a scarce resource are willing to spend their energy doing tasks that provid […]
Just because the world has changed doesn’t mean we have changed. Learning to work from home over twenty years ago pulled back the curtain on my inner world unlike almost anything since. After leaving my job at a downtown bank, in an instant, my commute went from traffic and tall buildings to the living room. Every morning, I showed up in my living room office, ready to impress the boss with how hard I was working. Except the boss wasn’t there. He lived two time zones […]
In what feels like a single moment, the world has completely changed. The slow fires of a virus started spreading months ago. By now, we’ve all been impacted in some way. My world also changed in February 28 when my Dad, surrounded by his four children and wife Jane, left the plane of this Earth. […]