Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Category: Loving Monday

  • Loving Monday: Remembering The Truth About You

    loving_mondayFor too many people these days, Monday morning does not begin a new week at work. Monday begins a new week of looking for work.

    Having a bad job can wear one down, but having no job can wear one out.

    The experience of repeated rejections is difficult not to make personal and internalize.

    We lose confidence. We lose energy. We begin to think that we might be the problem and not the economy.

    It is in this situation that Monday becomes a weekly opportunity to pause and remind ourselves of the truth. The truth about ourselves, our skills, our capabilities and our character. The truth about the job market. 12% unemployment is unparalleled in our working lives. This is no ordinary cyclical recession that we can wait out.

    The title of the column, “Loving Monday,” almost sounds like someone is mocking our pain. How can we love beginning another week of hustling ourselves to a working world that has curled up into a fetal position in the corner until some undisclosed future time when it feels safe to make commitments again?

    The truth, though, is that you are a valuable professional. You bring a marvelous set of skills, perspectives, experiences, personality, attitude, and competencies.

    Regardless of the economic reality by which so many businesses find themselves constrained, you have value. Enormous value.

    This fact is the truth that needs to be reengaged each Monday morning as you launch another strenuous week of telephone calls, letters, emails, coffees, lunches, networking efforts, and interviews.

    While always tiring, while sometimes discouraging, while occasionally depressing, our continued job hunting efforts nonetheless give credence to the larger truth. The truth that we have value.

    If you need a more personal reminder of the deeper truth of your value, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Today is Your Life

    loving_mondayToday is your life. Sometimes with all our plans for the future and our baggage from the past, we forget that today is our life too.

    As we return to work today, our lives intersect with that work. Our lives include that work, become a part of that work and/or that work becomes a part of our lives.

    The question becomes, can we discern when we have suspended our lives in order to go to work? Do we consider everything we do part of our lives except our work?

    When we get off of work we can go back to living.

    The problem here is that we spend too much time at work to survive holding such a frame of reference for very long. Putting our lives on hold eight to ten plus hours a day in order to make someone else rich gets old real quickly. More than merely getting old, such a practice eats away at our dignity, confidence and ability to value ourselves appropriately.

    The key is finding ways to make a meaningful contribution at work. Even in the most distasteful, boring, or demeaning work you can choose to make some aspect of your efforts a meaningful contribution.

    The contribution can be an increase in quality, attention to details, going the extra mile for a customer, consistent follow-through, clear communication, heading off problems before they arise, or an extra level of coordination on a project.

    The point being that you are choosing to make your work a meaningful part of your life, and you are doing something to make it happen.

    Today is your life. Now go out and live it! Even at work… Especially at work!

    On  your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Holiday Distraction Coming

    loving_mondayAs much as we love our jobs we seldom begrudge a long holiday weekend.

    A shortened work week opens up a couple of possible scenarios for the week ahead.

    One is that we are absent in mind and spirit even while our bodies are present. We’re not off until Thursday, but the anticipation and the preparations fill our minds until we have to admit we have very little space left for the work-related tasks.

    The other scenario is that we are trying to squeeze a full week’s worth of effort into three days. The output requirements haven’t changed but the time frame within which to work has.

    In one case we are finding ourselves quite unproductive. In the other case, we are attempting to be hyper-productive. In both cases, we are distracted by the coming holiday weekend.

    Instead of continuing on as if this were a normal three days like any other, we become distracted by the schedule change. Both are forms of distraction. Neither are lethal, but you aren’t functioning at your best either.

    In one case the distraction removes all pressure. You’ve simply begun your holiday weekend already here on Monday. In the other case the distraction imposes enormous pressure. You somehow need to do everything in practically half the time. In both cases you are underperforming as a result.

    What would probably serve you better is a happy medium of looking forward to the coming long weekend with the awareness that certain adjustments will be required given the loss of two days.

    You can’t think clearly or get much done when you’re either daydreaming about turkey and stuffing or stressed out by the volume of work ahead. Ironically, if you can calm down and focus on what adjustments need to be made this week, you’ll be able to identify your priorities and make the decisions necessary to make good use of the three days available without spoiling the welcome break of the holiday ahead.

    Hoping this Thanksgiving is a good distraction for you in every way possible.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Too Cheesy?

    loving_mondayLoving Monday has been the title of this column for several years now. Today it sounds a little cheesy to me.

    Sometimes when work is particularly difficult, diminishing or distressing, words of encouragement can ring hollow. So much rah rah cheerleading for the team suffering a lop-sided and humiliating loss. The sentiment is nice, but it’s not going to affect the outcome of the game.

    Go ahead and get it off your chest: “It’s easy for you to say, ‘Choose a can-do attitude!’ (Can you hear the exclamation point in the inspirational speaker’s voice?!), but I am the one having to live with the boss from hell who just cut my budget for the third time this year.”

    I hear you. I have long been an advocate for a constitutional amendment banning cheese in consultant speeches and supervisor pep talks. Offering nice sentiments that won’t affect the outcome are worse than useless.

    On the other hand… (You didn’t really think I was going to leave it there, did you?)

    On the other hand, the by-line at the bottom of this column reads, “Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves.”

    In this column we are talking about intention and choices. I am encouraging us to intend good for our work efforts and to be specific about that intention. I am encouraging us to match that clear intention with choices that will turn that intention into action.

    Far from being cheesy, we are reminding each other that how we show up at work affects our work just as much as (if not more than) the crazy things that are happening around us. We are checking in with how authentically we show up and how fully we engage.

    Whether we are going into well-ordered and effective workplaces or crazy-making and soul-crushing ones, we can love Mondays because we becoming people who know how to connect our intention with our choices and bring our full selves to the task at hand.

    Now that’s something to cheer about!

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    If you would like to discuss your situation with Karl, click here for a free 30-minute consultation.
    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: You Are a Gift

    loving_mondayYou are a gift.

    This is one of the most important truths of work and life.

    If you don’t believe this one simple fact, you’re swimming upstream when there’s a current available to carry you.

    There is no one quite like you, and we need you.

    Do you believe that? Do you believe that this morning?

    You bring the gift of who you are to the workplace today. Your character, your skills, your cleverness, your passion, your insights, your experience, and the list goes on.

    This is no superficial pep talk. This belief (or disbelief) is a game changer.

    It can’t be faked. It can’t be bought. It can’t be wished into being.

    People who believe they are a gift behave differently. Their confidence is not a performance. Their confidence is a reflection of their inner calm.

    When you already believe at a deep level in the value you bring to the table, then you don’t have to expend any effort to prove it. You are freed up to be present in the moment with the people and issues at hand.

    You are not wondering if you should speak up in order to be seen as an active participant. You are not deciding how to modulate your voice in order to sound knowledgeable. You are not jockeying for a seat next to the manager. You are not interrupting others, criticizing others, or belittling others in order to appear powerful.

    You are free. Free to pay attention to the matters at hand. Free from having to establish to yourself what you already know at a deep deep level.

    To be a gift does not mean that you are everything. To be a gift does not mean you are perfect or the best.

    Because the gift is you. To be a gift is to be yourself. To believe you are a gift is to believe that you need to show up at work today. The real you. All of you. Nothing held back.

    I wish I worked with you. Because I know a real gift will be present and I want to be a part of the experience. The gift of you.

    You are a gift.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Not the “Yes” But the “No”

    loving_mondayWe come into work with a multitude of projects, deadlines, people and tasks competing for our attention. In order to say, “Yes” to the one thing we are going to tackle next, we need to be able to say, “No” to everything else.

    Therein lies the trouble for most of us.

    Not the “Yes,” but the “No.”

    The difficulty arises because all the “No’s” will eventually need to become “Yes’s.”

    It would be easy to say “No” to bad things, wasteful things, useless things, ineffective things, destructive things. The challenge, though, is that in order to focus on one good thing, we need to say “No” to many other good things. Things to which we eventually will need to say “Yes.”

    Once we succeed in selecting the priority that will receive our undivided attention, the battle does not stop there. We find our minds continually justifying our decision to the voices of the “rejected” (i.e. postponed) options.

    All this thinking and rethinking is enough to drive a person crazy.

    I am one of those people who tends to rethink and over-think decisions that I’ve made. Interestingly enough, all the extra processing is not doing me any good. Instead of resulting in better decisions or timely adjustments in my decisions, the extra thinking is merely a stress-inducing and time-consuming distraction.

    Focus is the skill by which we not only learn to concentrate on one thing, but learn to tune out everything else.

    The ability to set other important matters aside in order to give one’s full attention to the matter at hand is no mean achievement and does not come naturally to most of us.

    Helpful to me has been to remind myself that I am saying “No” to so many things in order to get to them sooner. But I will never get to them if I am battling myself all the time. Therefore I clear my desk of everything else in order to have a better chance of eventually addressing everything else.

    We need to stop battling ourselves. We need to learn how to focus and push.

    Try clearing your desk of everything except the one item on which you’ve decided to focus. Use the uncluttered space as a training tool to help you concentrate. One thing on your mind… one thing on the desk.

    When finished pull out the next thing.

    Watch as all those “No’s” transform into “Yes’s… one by one.

    How do you deal with the competing voices calling for your attention? Leave a comment. Give me a call.

    I’m on your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Whose Opinion Matters Most

    loving_mondayHaunted by your co-worker’s recent withering and hurtful jibe at you?

    Callously insulted, we want to rise above the name-calling and ignore the petty blasts of the immature. Yet we struggle against the sneaky suspicion that there might be a kernel of truth to the slam.

    Why we give others’ opinions so much weight is probably a mystery for the ages. (Or at least for your therapist.)

    What matters most, though, is our opinion of ourselves.

    When we are overly disturbed or hurt by the jibe of another, it is usually because the words tap into something we believe about ourselves.

    While we can avoid negative people to a certain degree, a more effective way forward is to root and establish a healthy estimation of ourselves.

    When we are grounded in an accurate assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses, the words of others hold less power when they suggest something different.

    When we are secure in our strengths, then any accusations to the contrary roll more easily off our backs.

    When we are aware of our weaknesses, then hearing them echoed by others is nothing more than a restatement of reality. While never fun to come face to face with one’s less developed aspects, the twin stings of insult and injury are removed.

    Being comfortable in your own skin is no mean achievement. But it is worth the effort. Instead of your state of mind being controlled by others, your opinion of yourself rules the day.

    You can begin this week sincerely believing that there’s no one you’d rather go to work with today than you.

    If you’d like some help getting a clear, grounded assessment of yourself, give me a call today or sign up for a free 30-minute consultation.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Shortcut to an Awful Day… A Crappy Attitude

    loving_mondayThe best case for an attitude adjustment is your own well-being.

    Sure I could go on and on about what practical wonders a good attitude will do for the team, your clients, and your boss.

    Except to do so would be essentially invalidating how frustrated, put upon, and undervalued you actually feel today.

    If you’re going to make a case for acting in any way contrary to how you’re feeling, then the case worth examining is the one related to your own happiness and effectiveness.

    If you want to have a crappy day, then let your attitude sink, wallow and fester. As accurate a reflection of your emotional state as such an indulgence might be, you’re the primary person who suffers.

    The others will simply avoid you. They have a method for reducing the impact you can have on them.

    You, though, have to be with you wherever you go. A fact of life and reality check that you should keep in mind next time you’re thinking of brandishing your mood like a weapon. The only person who has to experience all that darkness, stress and pain every single time is you.

    So do yourself a favor. Choose an attitude that helps you deal with the feelings instead of merely express them. Choose an attitude that confronts the frustration with creative alternatives instead of merely reciting the obvious injustice of it all. Choose an attitude that helps you get some perspective, reframe complexities, and experiment with constructive initiatives.

    Choose an attitude that serves your well-being.

    If you don’t, more than any harm or vengeance you feel your crappy attitude would be deservedly exacting on others, you’ll mostly be harming yourself.

    You’re smarter than that!

    On your side, (even if sometimes you aren’t)

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Empowered By Identifying The Lies

    loving_mondayWe all believe certain lies. Even lies we know to be lies. Even lies that undermine our well-being. We believe them in spite of ourselves.

    Don’t ask me why. It would probably take years of therapy to uncover why we might internalize as true something so blatantly false.

    One set of lies has to do with the negative names we call ourselves. “I’m a loser.” “I don’t have what it takes.” These non-specific, unverifiable conclusions we draw about ourselves hover as accusing judgments, sabotaging our ability to see much less consider options in which we may thrive.

    Another set of lies has to do with imaginary rules that then become obstacles to us. “You have to earn your stripes first.” “That’s now how it works.” “Who do you think you are?” Before you even begin a conversation, act on an idea, or move toward a dream, you talk yourself out of it because you somehow are not qualified or are not approaching it “correctly” and therefore doomed.

    Whether or not you choose to explore with your therapist why you believe these lies, I want to suggest that you’ve achieved a major feat of self-empowerment merely by identifying them.

    Merely by calling them out for what they are—lies—we disarm much of their power over us.

    For example, it will serve me better to identify that I am afraid of being criticized for my decisions than to bluster and pretend to be more confident that I am. In the first case, I can go ahead and make the best decision possible. In the second case, I end up making lousy decisions because all my attention is diverted to appearing more confident than I am.

    Calling out a lie might go something like this, “That’s a lie! I don’t know why I act as if it were true, but doing so is keeping me from doing what I feel is best. I’m going to take a step toward what I want anyway.”

    Oversimplified to be sure, but what’s the point here? Instead of unconsciously behaving as if the lie were a truth and pretending to know better (an energy consuming process of self-deception), we choose to consciously call out the lie and our mysterious buy-in to it (an energy freeing process of honest self-awareness) so that our behavior can be a deliberate, intentional, and personal choice. Now that’s empowerment!

    What lies do you find yourself believing in spite of yourself? Experiment with identifying those lies and calling them out. I believe you will discover you have a bit more internal space to make better decisions, make more timely decisions, and make more satisfying decisions.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Loving Monday: Focusing on Distractions

    loving_mondayI’m sitting next to a gentleman this morning who is preparing for the LSAT.

    The exam isn’t for another three months, but he is hard at work. He is laser focused on his preparations with an intensity that I envy.

    I, of course, interrupted him in spite of his concentration, and discovered that he is passionate about the law and deeply motivated to do whatever it takes to get into the field. He finds the competition intimidating but not overwhelming.

    Two things stand out. He knows what he wants. He is focusing his energy and efforts on getting what he wants.

    Both of these things relate to him and not to the others against whom he is forced to compete. He is focused on his efforts, not on the quantity or quality of the others.

    I reflect on my own dreams and aspirations as I think about this gentleman’s.

    Am I focused on what I want and what I am doing to get what I want? Or am I looking at the crowded field of competitors in whose company I try to distinguish myself?

    I’m currently reading a pre-release version of a book by Alan Fine (for which I will be writing a separate review), that speaks articulately about the importance of focus.

    It’s interesting how other people, events, circumstances, stories, internalized beliefs, social myths, personal moods, economic factors, etc. etc. demand our attention and in the process shift, distract, and otherwise distort our ability to focus where we would like.

    What has your attention this morning as you begin this new week? Can you articulate one particular thing? Are you inundated by a multitude of issues, problems and changing circumstances?

    In the midst of your complex reality, how might you sift and sort, discern and triage, and ultimately choose one line of action on which to focus?

    The gentleman next to me—for whatever he is not getting done this morning—is hard at work studying for his upcoming exam. And for that alone, I both admire him and have stopped interrupting him so that he can get back to achieving what he intends.

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.