Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Category: Loving Monday

  • Loving Monday: Bouncing Back Stronger

    The unexpected can knock us for a loop. We’re ready to make a great week for ourselves, and then, Wham!… out of nowhere and before we know what happened we find ourselves reeling.

    A deadline change, additional workload, a missing co-worker, technology down, office politics. The unexpected can take many forms.

    How do we bounce back when we get the wind knocked out of us?

    As important as it is to your busy schedule to get moving as soon as possible, to jump right back into your original plans as if nothing had happened would actually result in a bigger setback.

    Your best bet is to give yourself some space. Some space simply to acknowledge that you’ve been thrown for a loop. Take a walk. Get some air. Kick the tires of your car. Express the maddening frustration of going from the gravity-defying launch of a great week to the quicksand engulfing suffocation of yet another setback.

    Validating and venting the emotion will enable you to more quickly release it. Instead of squashing the feelings that are about to sabotage your week, you find a safe way to express them. (Who cares what the passing motorists think as they pass you waving your arms wildly and ranting to the air on your walk around the block.)

    Take a few deep breaths as you return to your office, and you’ll be in a much stronger position to make the necessary adjustments occasioned by whatever unexpected event interrupted your morning.

    You’ve got an important contribution to make this week. We need you to show up fully engaged. For your sake and ours, let’s find ways to build your repertoire of tools for bouncing back stronger.

    On  your side,

    – Karl

  • Loving Monday: Try Another Perspective

    The best way to survive a baffling co-worker is to spend a day in their shoes.

    You may come out of the experience positively appreciating them!

    Okay, let’s not get carried away. Difficult people can make work a nightmare. Instead of dreading them, avoiding them or continuing to battle them, what if you tried to see the world through their eyes?

    We’re not saying, excuse their rudeness, laziness, or politicking. We’re suggesting that by understanding someone else’s perspective, you will better be able to engage them creatively and constructively, if not even collaboratively.

    You create for yourself the opportunity to become an expert in what makes someone else tick.

    Since it’s you who wants to “love Mondays,” so to speak, it’s you who needs alternatives to the status quo. Alternatives that you can implement whether or not others participate or respond as you might prefer.

    So try a day in someone else’s shoes and let me know how it goes.

    On your side,

    – Karl

  • Loving Monday: Duty is Not a Four-Letter Word

    Somewhere along the line, “duty” became a four-letter word. A “bad” word. A negative word.

    Somewhere along the line we associated duty with responsibilities that no one would take on unless forced.

    I‘d like to suggest that “duty” and “privilege” are two sides of the same coin. I’d go so far as to promise that an attitude revolution is waiting for you if you can see your obligations as gifts. Gifts for which the most appropriate response is dedicated engagement.

    To commit to a duty is a promise to complete something out of dedicated engagement.

    Somewhere along the line, though, we lose the “dedicated engagement” part of the equation and end up with only the dry “promise.”

    “I get to” gets reduced to “I have to.” And so our experience is diminished into something no better than a coerced chore.

    In fact, though, we commit to tasks of value. We need a way to remind ourselves of the gift, the privilege, and the value underlying our promise to fulfill a particular duty.

    We need a way to engage with complicated, difficult or nasty components of our commitments that draws on our original rationale for making the commitment in the first place.

    An attitude revolution is waiting for you. Duty may be a four-letter word after all. G – I – F – T.

  • Loving Monday: A Pause to Remember

    I find it intriguing that our means to extend honor is to pause from work.

    Today, we celebrate the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Worthy of honor and remembrance he certainly is. He rose to meet the challenges of his time, and we will be forever in his debt.

    As a nation, we extend a working holiday to commemorate these most significant of contributions and causes.

    We pause from our frenetic busyness and the incessant pursuit of wealth to remember who we are and from where we came. We dare not forget at what great price and by which great principles we enjoy our current well-being, security and opportunities.

    When we forget the path down which we came, we will lose the bearings that would guide us forward.

  • Loving Monday: Jury Duty

    I have jury duty this week. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the jury duty system in Los Angeles, we are placed “on call” for one week. We call in every evening to find out whether we’re expected to be present the next day. The entire week may pass without a request, in which case one’s obligation is fulfilled.

    Having said that, though, no plans can be made during the week because there is no way to know whether the next day might be the one you are summoned.

    On the whole, the system works reasonably well. I’d rather be on call than sitting in a jury room every day.

    On the other hand, I can’t make any plans!

    My challenge this week involves incorporating a extra element of flexibility into my attitude.

    I could feel put out and resentful. I could become overwhelmed by the sudden shifts. I could feel like my life is on hold and not make progress on important projects. This strange sort of week could throw me for quite a loop.

    But if I choose to be flexible. If I choose projects that can be put on hold temporarily. If I let people know my situation, then a sudden absence cannot wreak as much havoc.

    I have quite a bit of room for choices, even if I don’t know what I’ll be doing tomorrow. As long as I recognize that those choices are mine and make them, then this week of public service need not be the negative intrusion that I often mistake it for.

  • Loving Monday: First Monday of 2009

    With a mix of dread and anticipation many of us start back at work today.

    We are thankful to have work to go back to. Some don’t.

    At the same time, though, we catch ourselves associating our vacations with when life gets to be lived and our work with when life stops and making ends meet begins again.

    This first Monday of 2009 let’s choose to live fully while making ends meet. This first work week of the year let’s begin a practice of working with excellence, relating with authenticity, and choosing to show up fully.

    Every day matters, but Monday is when we have an opportunity to reframe a new week. Today, we get to reframe a new year.

    What might excellence, authenticity and showing up fully look like for you this week? This year?

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

  • Loving Monday: Making This Monday Your Own

    What’s not to love about a Monday that falls between holidays?

    The preceding week was interrupted by a holiday. The current week is about to be interrupted by a holiday.

    Unfortunately, many companies have decided to close for some or all of these two weeks surrounding the holidays. Without being consulted, some of us have had our incomes as well as our schedules interrupted.

    Whether you are at work or not, it is crucial that you make this Monday your own. With your regular structure truncated or eliminated altogether, this Monday choose something that benefits you.

    If at work, clean off a messy workspace, reorganize chaotic files, or catch-up on important reading.

    If at home, enjoy a special activity with loved ones, take on a home improvement project, or catch up on important reading. (Okay, so I like to read!)

    When change is out of your control, exercise control where you can. Make choices that take advantage of the interrupted work week. This is your Monday too!

  • Loving Monday: Reinterpreting Random Circumstances

    As a Southern Californian I’ve never been particularly fond of rainstorms. Yes, like the one pouring unrelentingly outside my window right now.

    Dark, cold, wet and annoying. It’s not without effort that I let it bode ill for my day. Traffic will be horrible, my briefcase will prove less than waterproof, everything will be a hassle, and, to top it off, my vanity will take a sucker punch given it’s a guaranteed nasty hair day.

    Of course, circumstances, however irksome, don’t really bode anything at all. It is I who impute meaning to them.

    What if I chose to give the rain a positive meaning? Rain as life-giving sustenance for all that struggles to survive in this desert. Rain as scrubber of the skies washing away much that pollutes.

    There are many circumstance in our lives that affect our attitude, our mood, and our abilities to keep a healthy perspective. Can you tell the difference between those with no inherent value, either positive or negative, and those that do? Can you identify when you are the one imputing negative meaning?

    Try an experiment with me. The next time you encounter a random circumstance that you find yourself about to interpret negatively, try finding a positive interpretation and use that instead. It could make the difference in how you experience this week at work!

    On your side,

    – Karl

  • Loving Monday: Seize The Day!

    I am reminded of an old movie favorite, The Dead Poets Society, and its inspirational story of how a group of boys on the cusp of adulthood each came to grips differently with the challenging phrase, “Carpe diem.” Seize the day!

    So much of what we are building in our careers is for the future. Secure retirements, buying a home, starting our own business, working our way up the corporate ladder, building a family, etc.

    These goals are good things.

    Most of the time.

    Sometimes, though, we forget to live today in our quest to secure the future.

    We can overlook this moment for the sake of the next moment. We miss the flowers at our feet reaching for the stars.

    Now don’t get me wrong. I believe the capacity to plan ahead and work toward longer term goals is a necessary and valuable skill.

    But the “future” is nothing more than a “present” we hope to enjoy on some other day.

    That is unless we have lost our capacity to live in the present by that time. We risk not recognizing the fulfillment of the dream in our midst if our eyes are fixed so far out on the horizon.

    In the spirit of “carpe diem”, let’s seize this Monday for its own sake! Let’s seize the day for life. Let’s seize the day for hard work, meaningful work, collaborative work, productive work.

    Lend a helping hand, extend an overdue compliment, confront an unacceptable situation, rearrange an unworkable workspace, reconnect with an old associate, or simply go outside and get some fresh air.

    Seize the day!

    – Karl Edwards

  • Loving Monday: Missing Important Routines

    I’m shutting down after an unusual day and just now realizing I missed my Monday morning routine… writing about Loving Monday!

    How’s that for irony?!

    Maybe the topic this week should be routines. Routines that facilitate regular, important activities versus routines that stifle, quench creativity and merely fill space.

    The distinction comes when deciding when to “violate” a routine in some manner. Or, in this case, deciding how to interpret being distracted into inadvertently missing a routine.

    Negligence or freedom? It could be either.

    Key to being able to welcome the unexpected, confront crisis, and respond to what cannot be anticipated is being able to operate out of freedom. Freedom to choose routine. Freedom to vary routine. Freedom to abandon routine.

    Are your routines blessings that facilitate consistent attention to what you value most? Or are your routines chains that bind your time and energies from attending to what you want?

    Two very different sorts of work weeks result. It’s the difference between loving Monday or dreading it.

    Would you share a routine of yours you value highly.