Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: choices

  • Life is a Casserole… Still a Feast, Just Not Very Pretty

    I begin with an apology to those for whom work and life come easy. To those for whose priorities sort themselves out before any difficult choice needs to be made, this article may seem so much wasted breath.

    We tend to think about the various contexts of life separately. Work, family, friends, politics, sports, religion, hobbies, etc.

    We then proceed to burden ourselves with the task of achieving a mythical ideal of “balance” between them all. As if there existed some ideal slicing of the pie, so to speak, by which we would be appropriately invested in each compartment in such a way that we were neither overwhelmed by any one of them.

    Better than slices of pie, though, is the analogy of the seven-course meal. Each course in its time, each course serving its culinary purpose, each course designed to delight all of the senses. So we think about our various contexts of life. Each should have its time, accomplish its purpose, and result in its benefits.

    Reality, though, rarely (I’m dying to say “never”) works out so neatly. Reality is messy. Reality consists of the unexpected, the complex, much that is broken, and much that does not fit very well.

    Instead of embracing the messiness of reality, we launch on our various heroic quests for the holy grail of “balance.”

    Maybe the casserole would be a yet better analogy for life than the seven-course meal. All the same ingredients are present, but the presentation isn’t as beautiful and the components aren’t artificially kept separate.

    The task of building a meaningful and rewarding life feels differently to me when my goal is to simply concoct the most delicious casserole I can. Instead of chasing some mythical ideal of the perfectly balanced seven-course meal, I am working with who I currently am and with what and whom I currently have in the pantry.

    What have you got in the pantry? Instead of stressing about what’s not there, how about taking stock of what is there. Instead of viewing what is there through the eyes of the seven-course meal and how far short it falls of that ideal, view it through the eyes of the casserole and what delicious combinations can be created by you.

    The gourmet sausage industry did not grow out of trying to figure out what to do with the best cuts of meat.

    Work, family, friends, politics, sports, religion and hobbies don’t need to be artificially isolated from each other and set at odds with each other. We don’t need to argue about whether the main course should be work or family or religion.

    If I can be ok with the harsh reality that casseroles will never look as beautiful, organized or balanced as a meal with courses, then I can relax and enjoy how delightfully yummy it is.

    I have, in essence, traded the unattainable and mythical ideal of balance for the always available if messy reality of flavor.

    Still a feast, just not very pretty.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

  • 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: Choosing to Choose

    loving_mondaySome Mondays we arrive at work to find that we’re behind before we’ve even started.

    If we came brimming with hopes of launching right into our next project, this can feel like quite the set-back. The energetic buoyancy replaced with enervating heaviness.

    After we’ve picked our respective selves up off the ground, this is the precise moment when we need to coach ourselves about choices.

    How we proceed forward is our choice. Will we choose to continue defeated or challenged? Give up or reengage?

    “Remember, self?” It’s a form of reminding ourselves. Reminding ourselves of the power we have as choosers of our attitude, perspective, and next steps. We are then better poised to address the feelings of disorientation, disappointment and frustration resulting from the difficult adjustments at hand.

    We need not function as the unfortunate victims of our circumstances when challenges arise.

    To choose constructively is to affirm and practice our own strength. We demonstrate that we are larger than the surprises that intrude into our day. We choose the interpretation of the facts that works best for us.

    It’s Monday. Whether you arrived floating or deflated the next choice is yours. Seize it.

    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.

  • Quote to Consider: Destiny is a Choice

    quote-to-consider“The tissue of life to be we weave with colors all our own, And in the field of destiny we reap as we have sown.”

    John Greenleaf Whittier

  • Loving Monday: Attitude Rehearsals

    loving_mondayYou want the week to begin well. You get up and prepare with good intentions. “I choose a positive, constructive attitude as I launch this fresh, new Monday morning.”

    But reality is not kind this week. Joe called in “sick”… again. Sarah won’t help a co-worker meet an important deadline. An important client wants to renegotiate your fee. Management unexpectedly slashed your budget mid-year.

    And what began as a positive, constructive approach to the week is rapidly devolving into an dark and ugly—however understandable—reaction to the disheartening choices of others.

    Here’s the deal, though. Attitude is not the same as emotions. We may feel discouraged, frustrated, or angry. Understandable and appropriate in the given examples.

    Attitude, though, is a choice. Attitude is a stance. Attitude is the stance I choose to take regardless of what I am feeling.

    Like any difficult choice, we need to practice and practice and practice embodying the attitude we choose.

    We don’t merely flip a switch in the midst of experiencing a serious setback (more…)

  • Loving Monday: Verdict on a Rainy Day

    loving_mondayI hate the rain.

    Grey skies and rain-drenched highways evoke a spectrum of responses as we roll out of bed to begin another week of work.

    For some, including me, dreariness and traffic jams fill the imagination before we even get out the door.

    For others, thankfulness for the nourishing and cleansing water covering our desert metropolis fills our hearts, and we smile.

    It’s a matter of perspective. Same circumstance. Radically different experiences of it.

    Particularly powerful, though, is to realize that you get to choose what perspective you adopt each morning.

    Given that it’s Monday morning, and we’re trying to get our weeks off to a good start, I’d venture that anything we can do to read refreshment and gratitude into the precipitation would help set the brighter, more constructive tone we want for the busy week ahead.

    How aware are you of the perspective with which you interpret circumstances? Do you even realize that you are making a choice when you interpret circumstance as positive, negative or somewhere in between?

    Try an experiment with me. Next time something out of the ordinary happens: like a change in weather, a deadline change, an irritable client, an absent co-worker. Try noting your initial reaction. Then write down three other possible interpretations of the same set of circumstances.

    Now take another look at your original reaction. The choice is yours, and you are, in fact, making a choice. Will you stay with your original interpretation of the circumstance or will you choose to adjust it?

    The choice is yours. You have more power in how you experience of what happens around you than you think.

    I‘m still not particularly fond of rain, but I choose to be grateful for its gift of life and appreciate the clean skies that will result. My week is off to a much better start.

    What about yours?

  • Quote to Consider: Churchill on Appeasement

    quote-to-consider“Appeasement is throwing someone else to the crocodiles in the hopes of being eaten last.”

    Winston Churchill

  • Loving Monday: Comic Book Superhero?

    loving_mondayIt’s the last week of school for the kids. Nothing is normal.

    My high school senior needs to be at school at a different time for a different purpose every day this week. My middle school senior—yes two graduations this year—still needs to be dropped off at the crack of dawn.

    Am I supposed to be effective at work with all this stopping and starting, coming and going, switching between contexts and roles like a comic book super hero?

    We all wear a variety of hats and assume a range of identities for the many roles we play at work, home, in our faith communities, and in our various social networks. But the willingness, agility and poise to make these sudden shifts are not always as simple as they seem to be for the comic book superheroes.

    But is the real life superhero, the one for whom their instant, often sacrificial choices saved the day in the end? Or is the real life hero the person simply willing to make an instant, often sacrificial choice?

    What validates the decisions we make in the midst of our complicated schedules, competing priorities, and unexpected demands, is not that the complicated becomes straightforward or the competing become ordered or the unexpected becomes regular. What validates our decisions is that we step to the plate and make them.

    We don’t get to know ahead of time the outcome of all we choose. But such uncertainty doesn’t release us from still having to make the choice. Choose and choose again. And as soon as we see a choice not working out as we intended, adjust and choose again.

    And so my schedule is undergoing its biannual massive shift around the school schedule. Life might be easier and my work might be more effective if such were not my situation. But my reality involves change, so I must face the change and adjust accordingly. Maybe not with the agility of a comic book superhero, but to the extent that I face the facts and deal with them… a hero nonetheless.

  • 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. A New Weekly Feature.

    Getting out of bed on Mondays, is your dominate feeling one of anticipation or dread?

    Do you feel like you’re being drawn into the new week or being dragged into it?

    Today we begin a new weekly series entitled, Loving Monday. Let’s start the week off together with a brief encouragement to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and make it a good week for ourselves.

    Whatever our circumstances, we have choices for how and whether we will engage. By accepting ownership of those choices, we can experience a rich sense of accomplishment in the midst of our complex, if not difficult, lives.

    Let’s encourage each other to step into each Monday determined to greet the week with anticipation, resolve and a good sense of humor.

    Together, I am confident we will look forward to loving Monday!

    On your side,

    – Karl