Commitment inspired by receiving second chance.
Karl Edwards
Author: Karl Edwards
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Listen In -> Clutter: Friend or Foe? #2: All Those Social Networks
Who ever thought we’d experience such a thing as “friend clutter”?Personal news, corporate offerings, family pictures, and myriad invitations fill our inbox, our friend stream, and our messaging windows.
Contact comes from people we want to hear from and also from many we don’t really care to know so much about.
What’s one to do?In this week’s podcast discussion web developer Jorge Rosas and I discuss all those social networks and the new form of clutter they can create for us.
How many social networks can one person belong to and still participate in any of them in a meaningful way?
How many streams of information can be flashing before one’s eyes before one cannot see any of them? Talk about potential distractions to someone trying to focus on getting work done!
Listen in.
Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.
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Loving Monday: Forgiving Yourself Creates a Way Forward
We are often our own biggest barrier to getting off to a good start each week.I am not referring to our foibles, mistakes, flaws, errors, shortcomings, or crimes.
I am referring to our unwillingness to forgive ourselves for those foibles, mistakes, flaws, errors, shortcomings, and crimes.
Sure, mistakes are costly. No doubt about it.But mistakes can be corrected and serve as a learning opportunity. In other words, there is a future worth pursuing on the other side of most problems we cause.
If we beat up on ourselves for being less than perfect, feel we need to punish ourselves, or—worst of all—attribute negative or derogatory judgments about our characters, then we make it almost impossible to move forward, get going again, or jump back into the game with energy, determination and poise.
The key is to notice whether we focus on the error and its solution, or we focus on ourselves and our deficiencies.
In one case we participate powerfully in the creation of a constructive learning opportunity out of which we can adjust, experiment, and grow. In the other case we spin helplessly in a self-imposed quagmire of self-condemnation, perpetual second-guessing, and plummeting self-esteem.
If you have messed up recently, even if in a big way, the way forward will not be found in beating up on yourself.
The way forward lies in forgiving yourself. Only then will you be free enough inside to shift your focus constructively to the learning, adjusting and changes that will result in a new way forward.
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.
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Quote to Consider: Every Step Matters
“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”Jacob A. Riis
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Listen In -> Clutter: Friend or Foe? #1: Dispelling Myths About Clutter
Would you believe I lost my notes for this blog post in all the clutter on my desk?I hope not. While I definitely fall into the seriously cluttered category, such poetic irony is not my lot this morning. But it did make for a fun lead-in sentence.
Welcome to a fresh discussion on clutter.
Instead of simply declaring war on clutter as the arch enemy of all that is good and effective in the workplace, our special guest, Jorge Rosas, web developer and producer of this podcast, and I will think out loud over the next five weeks about how to figure out what level of clutter works best for you.
The possibilities for creating clutter seem to be growing logarithmically, and in order to stay effective we need to adjust quickly.
Not only do we have messy desks, we have messy computer desk tops. We have technology clutter. We have communication clutter. We have relationship clutter.
The disorienting piles in every category seem to grow out of control before we’ve even learned how to use them.
You’re going to enjoy this series. Clutter need not be our enemy. Nor is it a benign growth.
It’s an open question: is clutter your friend or your foe?
Clutter: Friend or Foe?
Week #1: Dispelling Myths About Clutter
Week #2: All Those Social Networks
Week #3: All Those Tech Tools
Week #4: All Those Communication Options
Week #5: All That Stuff On Your DesktopÂListen in.
Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.
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Loving Monday: Wishing You Were More
Have  you ever thought that you should be more than you are? More experienced, more skilled, more relational, more organized, etc.?
Our hiring practices can lead us to believe that there are ideal people out there somewhere. And we mistakenly conclude that we are not one of them.
We compare diverse, complex individuals against our idealized preferences as laid out in a depersonalized list of job responsibilities, qualifications, and characteristics.
(We’ll leave the disasters and complications that such a process creates for the hiring process for another article.)
For today, though, I want to look at how we inadvertently buy into and compare ourselves with these idealized myths of the omni-competent professional.
Well of course we always come up short against such an unfair and unrealistic comparison.
Many of us react by thinking we should be other than we are… more than we are. We think we are lacking in some regard, deficient, or inadequate.
The result of such thinking is disastrous.
Once we believe that we are not enough or wish that we were more than we are, we begin behaving accordingly. We sabotage our own well-earned giftedness, (more…)
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Quote to Consider: The Discipline of Inspiration
“The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. “Ernest Newman
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Quote to Consider: Ah, What Incredible Potential!
“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible… what wine is so sparkling, so fragrant, so intoxicating, as possibility!”Soren Kierkegaard
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Listen In -> Posture of Strategic Readiness with Van Wray #5: The Anticipated Decisions
Of the universities to which your child is granted admittance, he or she will have to decide one to attend. It’s an important decision, and it cannot be avoided.Except that your child is currently twelve years old.
It is not yet time to make that particular decision.Yet it would be a mistake to ignore or avoid the investigative and preparatory work involved in helping your child make the best decision possible when the time comes.
In this week’s podcast discussion with Van Wray of Amperant Advisors, we look at how to best approach these certain but distant decision points in our businesses.
Certain decision are coming.
We know they are on the way, but we don’t have enough information to make the decision yet. We cannot afford, though, to ignore, forget about, or minimize their importance in the mean time. What do we do?
Listen in.
Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.
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Loving Monday: Too Long in the Idea-Sphere?
An idea cannot be perfected without taking the first practical step.Sure it would be nice to work out all the kinks ahead of time.
Sure it would be nice to commit to the project without risk.
Real is the danger, though, of never taking the first step at all. Very possible, we discover, is missing out on an opportunity because of postponing the first step too long.Ideas can only float around in the idea-sphere so long.
A good idea is only as good as it leaves the idea-sphere, takes concrete form, and becomes a reality.
The problem with reality is that it is messy, problematic, and complicated. It feels like our pristine idea becomes diminished, polluted, or compromised as it takes practical form.
And so we keep working on it. Keeping it in the idea-sphere where we can work through all the messy, problematic complications until it is perfect. Until it is as pristine and beautiful in reality as it is in our dream.
We may keep working on it… forever.
As you begin this week, take one practical, concrete step toward the implementation of one of your ideas.
One step, however messy, problematic or complicated.
One step.
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.