Personal Growth

Starting Conversations

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Last week we were on vacation in Denali National Park. While the landscape and wildlife were spectacular, what stood out most to me was how easy it was to start a conversation and connect with other people.

Whether it was on the park bus or standing in line somewhere, it was so easy to start up a conversation with people by simply asking a question like:

  • Did you see any wildlife in the park today?
  • How long have you been in Alaska?
  • How long will you be in Alaska?
  • Where are you from?
  • What are you going to see next?

It was equally easy to start conversations with folks based on a sports team, a geographic location, or some other familiar identifier on a person’s clothing. (“Go Packers!” seems to be a good conversation starter with people wearing Green Bay gear.)

It got me wondering why we don’t start conversations with people around us when we’re not on vacation. When I look at my own life, it seems easy to avoid connecting with those around me, even though there are so many of the same conversation starters in everyday life.

Why not start initiating conversations with people around us, even when we’re not on vacation? We might be surprised with you many interesting and friendly people we cross paths with each day.

Dig In

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I was recently practicing bass guitar in preparation for playing on my church’s worship team. There was a specific part of one song that I kept having trouble with.  For some reason, I couldn’t rhythmically understand how a series of note were to be played.  I could hear it when I listened to the song, but I couldn’t make it happen when I actually tried to play it.  It was time to dig in!

First, I wrote out the notes I was to play. Then I played those notes several times in the order they were to be played.  This helped me become familiar with what I was supposed to be playing.  Next, I listened to this section of the song at a much slower speed over and over as I counted out what beats the notes fell on.  Every time I figured out what beat a note fell on, I’d write it down so I could move on to the next note without forgetting what I had just learned.  Once I had determined what beats all the notes fell on, I was able to begin playing along with the song at normal speed.  From here I continued to practice what I learned until it became familiar.

It can be like that for problems we struggling with. Sometimes what we need to do is do a deep dive on what we’re struggling with and give focused energy into figuring it out.  This may involve slowing down, breaking our problem into pieces, addressing each piece separately, and then reassembling these pieces into what will be a solution to our problem.

Think of some problem you’re struggling with or a concept you’re having a hard time grasping. Perhaps you could benefit from devoting some focused attention toward figuring the problem out.

Think of Some Good Reasons

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For the last several years I’ve been in the habit of exercising first thing every morning.  This is a much easier habit in the summer when it’s already light out when I wake up.  In the winter, however, the mornings are dark and rainy, which causes my mind to think of all sorts of reasons to skip the gym and stay in bed.

I never realized how good I am at presenting a compelling argument when I’m half asleep!

Fortunately, I’m even better at looking at all the good reasons to get out of bed and hit the gym, regardless of the conditions outside or how I may be feeling on the inside.

Isn’t it easy to come up with all sorts of seemingly good reasons (let’s call them excuses) to avoid doing what we know would be good for us to do?  It’s almost automatic.  The excuses leap from our minds with little effort.  And, if we listen too closely to them, we find ourselves likewise giving little to no effort toward those activities that could yield significant positive impacts in our lives.

So what can we do to combat the rapidly accumulating list of excuses that we use to hold ourselves back?  There must be a better way, right?  Fortunately, for us, the answer is, “Yes”!

Here’s how I fight excuses, but be warned, it takes work.

When the excuses tart flowing in your mind, realize the excuses for what they are, take control of your thinking, and come up with some good reasons to engage in the activity.

Here are some examples:

Activity that’s good for you that you’d like to do… Excuse not to… Good reason to engage…
Exercise daily It’s too dark, cold, and rainy. If I skip working out today I won’t feel as energetic as I will if I go to the gym.
Reading I’m too tired and I’d rather just watch TV. If I spend 30 minutes a day reading that’s 3.5 hours of reading per week!  I can get a lot of books read by doing that.
Eating healthy I’m too tired to cook.  I’ll just wing by <insert name of fast food restaurant>. If I eat healthy I likely won’t be so tired.  Plus I’ll be improving my health in the weeks, months years ahead!

 

The trajectory of our life and our personal development all starts with our thinking.  So what will you fuel your thinking with: excuses to hold back or good reasons to engage?

Homework For A Divided World

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It seems like much of the world is divided, distrustful, and fearful of one another.  It’s evident on the evening news, in social media, and out in public.  But does it have to be like this?  Is this really the type of world we have to live in?  I don’t think so.

So how do we start to change the culture of our communities, our countries, and our world?

I was at a black history month event on Tuesday evening when I heard someone give their answer to this question.  Simply put, they said, “Get to know someone who is different from you.”  I love this response because it is so simple, yet so significant.

When we earnestly get to know someone different from us, with the motivation to understand them better, we become less fearful and distrustful of them, because we now have a frame of reference.  It’s easy to fear and distrust what we don’t know or have never come in contact with.

Here’s an interesting thought to ponder:  There is probably someone who is fearful of you, because you are different from them.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could alleviate the fear in others simply by being open, welcoming ambassadors of whatever group we represent?

Here’s some life-long homework for all of us:

  1. Get in the habit of regularly interacting with someone who is different from you.
  2. Become a welcoming ambassador for whatever group you represent.

We can either increase fear or distrust in ourselves and others, or we can do our best to decrease these feelings by doing our homework.

The world could use a lot less fear and distrust among its inhabitants.  Let’s all make sure to get our homework done.

Cause It To Happen

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Here in the Pacific Northwest spring has been doing its best to send winter to an early retirement. Daffodils have started blooming and I even mowed my lawn last week!  This false start to spring is getting me excited for the upcoming spring (for real), summer, and fall months. It reminds me that if I have any activities or things I’d like to accomplish this year, I need to take actions to cause them to happen.

I love traveling, hiking, and just getting out and doing things, but I realize that if I don’t put these types of activities on the calendar and cause them to happen, they often won’t. I think it’s like that for most of us.  We have intentions to do X, Y, and Z, but get busy with day-to-day stuff and put off planning those activities that are important to us.  If left unchecked for days, weeks, months, or even years, we realize that we haven’t done any of those activities and all we have to show are unfulfilled intentions.

Last year was a year where I actually committed to getting my intentions on the calendar and making them happen. It was a wonderful year of learning, travel, new experiences, and great memories.  I’m eager to make 2018, and the years ahead, more like 2017.  Years not only filled with great intentions, but years where my intentions are validated with commitments to making them happen.

What intentions do you have for 2018 and the years ahead? Now the really important question:  What are you going to do to cause them to happen?

Bringing Clarity

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“The best way to increase our clarity in a topic is to commit to teaching it to others.”

I currently serve on our church board, and part of that responsibility is to read and interpret our financial statements.  While I have been pretty good at doing this, I’ve noticed that several of our other board members struggle in this area.  So in an effort to bring clarity, I began creating an instruction sheet to help them learn to read the financials.

The process of creating these instructions brought additional clarity to me in a couple of areas where I didn’t understand our financials as well as I thought.  That’s one of the great things about committing to teach:  you have to have a clear understanding of the topic before you can clearly communicate it to others.

Whether it’s creating instructions or verbally explaining a concept, teaching others is a great way to bring clarity to others, as well as ourselves.

Studying Ourselves

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I love the fact that there are so many interesting topics to learn about!  While the list of topics we can take an interested in could easily fill multiple blog posts, I think the most important topic each of us should spend time studying… is ourselves.

If we’re interested in living a fulfilling and satisfying life, we need to regularly spend time understanding how we’re uniquely wired.  This can come through reading about behaviors and habits we’d like to embody, taking (and reflecting on) self-assessments, and journaling.  While this is not a comprehensive list to self-discovery, it is a good starting point.

As you begin learning about yourselves, you start to discover things like:

  • When are you at your best?
  • When are you at your worst?
  • What captures your heart?
  • What were you uniquely created to do?
  • How do your respond to stress?
  • What do you do better than most other people?
  • What should you avoid doing?
  • What are some areas of your character that you need to improve?
  • When do you feel most alive?
  • What drains you?
  • Where in your life are you living below your ability??

The more we understand how we’re created and what makes us tick, the better we can decide how to invest our lives during the years we’re blessed with.  Because it’s challenging to know what to do with something when we don’t understand how it works.

Being First

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Being first doesn’t always mean you’re the fastest.  In fact, I’d argue that sometimes being first means you’re the slowest.

Have you ever been on the leading edge of change?  Whether that’s adopting a new process or perhaps integrating new and unfamiliar tools or software to improve your work, being the one to go first usually results in slower performance as we adopt to the newness before us.  We also have the added challenge that, if we’ve gone first, there usually aren’t experts on our team that we can ask questions of.  When we go first, we are the expert.  Albeit the expert in in training.

I’ve often discovered that while slow-going, being first affords us a unique opportunity to shape how the change we’re embracing will be used and adopted by others.  Being first also puts us in a position assist those who come behind us and offer them a smoother transition than we had.

Personally, I’d rather be involved in shaping change and guiding others who come behind rather than sitting around and waiting until the path is clearly spelled out.  That’s why I like being first.

Pieces of a Puzzle

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I’ve been learning to play the bass guitar for just under a year, and although I’m not very good right now, I’m really enjoying the process.  It’s like putting a puzzle together.

Each new concept I learn about the bass guitar is like an individual piece of a puzzle.  There are so many “pieces” of knowledge needed to successfully make music with a bass guitar.  For several months, I felt like I’ve just been collecting pieces of this bass guitar puzzle.

Lately, the learning process has become much more exciting, because I’m now seeing how some of the pieces of the puzzle I’ve been learning are starting to fit together.   Scales make more sense now because I understand how they are used regarding keys and triads.  Those pieces fit together with the concepts I’ve learned regarding improvising and composing.  It’s fun to see my understanding grow as the picture gets clearer with each piece I acquire.

I think it’s like that with any new experience we undertake.  The process seems to be:

  1. Collect pieces of the puzzle in the form of knowledge and understanding
  2. See how these pieces fit together
  3. The picture becomes more clear
  4. We go back to step 1 and repeat the process

If you’re trying to learn something new and are getting frustrated with the progress, perhaps you should change what you’re looking at.  Instead of looking at the completed picture of what you’re trying to accomplish, why not look at how the pieces of what you have learned fit together to give you a glimpse of where you’re going.  And keep in mind, with every new piece, the picture becomes a little clearer.

Seek Someone Who Has Been There

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Have you ever started a new undertaking and quickly realized, “I’m really not sure what to do first… next… at all”?

I’m glad I’m not the only one!

Whenever we feel like this, I think the best thing we can do is to seek out someone who has already been where we currently want to go, and ask them questions about their experience.

The unknown can be a scary place that keeps us from new experiences or reaching new heights.  However, when we hear someone tell us about how they navigated a path that is currently before us, somehow it seems less mysterious.  We begin to see our own journey take shape.  We’re able to see the steps required, as well as potential pitfalls to be avoided.

If you’re starting down a new and uncertain path, and you’re not sure what the journey looks like, find someone who has already traveled down that road and task them to tell you about their journey.  Not only will you gain valuable insight from their experience; they’ll very likely be eager to share with you what they’ve learned.