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Entries for the 'Loving Monday' Category

Loving Monday: One Monkey at a Time

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

loving_mondayWe all know the feeling.

The feeling of the monkey on our back.

It’s not a good feeling. That one annoying chore yet to be completed. The difficult phone call yet to be made. That perpetually postponed decision still to be made.

I just got rid of one of the monkeys on my back.

It feels great.

I didn’t get rid of them all. Just one. And still I feel lighter. Buoyant might be overstating it, but there’s a smile on my face nonetheless.

One monkey. Try it.

Try taking care of just one monkey that’s been hanging on your back. Get rid of it. Do your part and give it to someone else.

You’ll start your week lighter. You’ll start your week with a satisfying win.

Got monkeys on your back? We all do.

The key is taking on one monkey at a time.

Just one.

Which one will you choose?

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: Create Your Own Fresh Start

Monday, August 6th, 2012

loving_mondaySometimes you just need a fresh start.

Where’s the reboot button for that problematic project? Who’s hiding the eraser for that series of unfortunate mistakes?

This Monday, why don’t you and I create our own fresh starts?

No, the problems on the project aren’t going to disappear. No, there aren’t any erasers to make mistakes go away.

But it is always possible to start over. To begin again. Begin anew.

Begin anew on a small scale. Approach this week with a different attitude or from a different perspective. Shift your approach or your responses.

Begin anew on a large scale. Admit to the team that you were wrong. Let go of a cherished strategy. Go back to the drawing board.

A fresh start doesn’t ignore the problems and stumbles to date, but learns from them. The difference I’m suggesting lies in making a perspective shift.

As the new week begins, do you perceive yourself going back into the fog, the mire, the problems and difficulties? Or do you perceive yourself choosing to create a new beginning in spite of the fog, mire, problems and difficulties?

The shift in perspective will shift how you choose to deal with all that bedevils you.

When life gets extra complicated, messy, and/or difficult, one strategy worth considering is to create a fresh start for yourself.

Let me know if you’d like some help.

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: Committed to Finding The Very Best Ideas

Monday, July 23rd, 2012

loving_mondayWhere do you look to find the best ideas?

Not merely good ideas. But the very best ideas.

Ideas for improvement. Ideas for new products. Ideas for organizing differently. Ideas for fixing problems.

Do you gather the senior management? Do you hire expert consultants? Do you read and research extensively?

What if, on your way into the office this morning, you walked past a treasure trove of the best ideas you could ever hope to find?

What if the knowledge, experience, and creativity to generate the very best ideas were already working at your firm?

Some of you already know where I’m heading with this.

How many of us, when searching for the best ideas imaginable, look confidently and expectantly to those below us on the organizational chart?

Some leaders experience any superior expertise on their staff teams negatively. They believe, mistakenly, that in order to justify their leadership position they (more…)


Loving Monday: Addressing One Problem… Today

Monday, July 16th, 2012

loving_monday

The great thing about Monday morning is that we get to begin our week any way we choose.

We can choose our attitudes, we can choose our priorities, we can choose what will get our attention and what we will avoid.

Problems, more often than not, fall into the category of what we choose to avoid.

I‘d like to suggest that for this Monday morning, we each select a problem we will address.

Very few of us love problems or look forward to confronting them. Problems, though, exist no matter what we might feel about them.

The opportunity we have here on Monday morning is to begin the week differently.

What is one difficult issue, recurring problem, or awkward relationship that you have been avoiding?

Have been avoiding up until now, that is.

While addressing a problem may be an unpleasant, awkward, and difficult experience, at least you got it over with. You are now on the road to building a different way forward.

As long as the problem is avoided, though, it is still hanging over your head, lurking in the shadows, laying like an unexploded land mine upon which you or someone else will eventually step.

It’s your choice, of course. Would you rather do the difficult work of diffusing the bomb or the difficult work of recovering from its explosion?

This Monday, let’s try diffusing one difficult issue so we can spend the rest of the week building a constructive way forward.

What issue will you choose?

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: Celebrating Vacation Season

Monday, July 9th, 2012

loving_mondaySummer Monday. It’s vacation season. 

Extra coordination for you. People taking off for weeks at a time. Others taking a day here and a day there.

Distracted minds on the floor. Dreaming of upcoming excursions. Making plans. Working out the practical details.

Vacation season is to be expected. However complicated or frustrating in its details, it returns every year sure as the sunrise.

Some supervisors resist and fight vacation season. They experience vacation requests as rude and annoying interruptions in an otherwise smooth running schedule.

As a result they routinely deny vacation requests. The impose onerous preparation prerequisites for being away to avoid any impact on the rest of the team.

Other supervisors celebrate vacation season. Their staff are about to get some much-needed rest and renewal. The outcome of which will be new energy, reengaged spirits and enhanced motivation.

One group of employees returns refreshed and engaged. The other group returns bitter and self-protective.

As complicated and frustrating as coordinating these summer months of vacation season may be, those leaders who welcome and accommodate the season will get to the other side in much better shape than those who resist and fight it.

Summer Monday. Who’s missing on your team?

Try celebrating their vacation instead of resenting it. You’ll be better off, they’ll be better off, and I promise you the bottom line will be better off too.

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: The Future Cannot be Postponed

Monday, June 18th, 2012

loving_mondayAspirations are fuel to the soul.

Aspirations reframe our current circumstances into terms that tap into our dreams and hopes for the future.

Aspirations, though, have to touch ground somewhere.

That somewhere is Monday morning.

That somewhere is in the choices I make today.

Aspirations may be fulfilled in the future, but they always require engagement in the present.

My point in this post is just this: The future cannot be postponed.

All futures, if they are ever to take form, involve taking action today. Action postponed is future postponed.

When it comes to our aspirations, though, we are dealing with matters of the spirit and heart. We are dealing with deep desires and ambitious hopes.

We are dealing with all that makes us come alive and willing to work day after day and year after year in order to realize.

Hence the urgency to live some portion of that dream today. To choose to take one step—however small or however far away from the goal it may feel—today.

Maybe it’s a telephone call to make. Maybe it’s a essay to write. Maybe it’s a skill to learn. Maybe it’s a character trait to adjust. Maybe it’s a desktop to clear. Maybe it’s a problem to confront. Maybe it’s a mistake to correct. Maybe it’s a helping hand to extend.

Just as long as it happens today. Something, one thing, anything, today.

The future cannot be postponed. It will be here before you know it.

What about your aspirations? Let’s make sure by taking a practical step today.

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: Popcorn and Perspective

Monday, June 11th, 2012

loving_mondayOur important issues always feel big. That’s as it should be.

Sometimes they feel bigger than everything and everyone else. That might become a problem.

Yes, it is awful when someone burns the popcorn, and the entire office smells horrible, and you can barely keep from gagging much less get your work done.

No, uncovering the mystery of who is the negligent and insensitive popcorn burner is is not something to interrupt a manager’s meeting with.

I begin with a smaller and possibly silly example to point at that issues get their importance relative to the issues around them.

Perspective derives from proximity.

This photo of the person holding the sun is an exaggerated example in the other direction.

From where we stand, the person is obviously bigger than the ball of light in his hands.

Our problems, challenges and opportunities are always big because they are ours. (Let’s give ourselves that much.)

But can we also walk over to another vantage point and look at the issue from that perspective?

The perspective of a busy co-worker, the perspective of our supervisor, the perspective of a tight budget, the perspective of the worried client, the perspective of a competing project, etc., etc.

The ability to walk over to a variety of vantage points and look at an issue from different angles is key to keeping our issue in perspective.

We don’t have to make our issue smaller in order to make room for the others, but we may need adjust how, when and with whom we approach it.

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: The Inspiration of Friends

Monday, June 4th, 2012

loving_mondayI am lucky. I have great friends.

I am experiencing the inspiration of friends today.

Friends can be a lot of good things. Friends can be support. Friends can be courage. Friends can be acceptance. Friends can be play.

Here’s the deal when it comes to a friend being an inspiration.

They do not tell you what you need to do, but you go away wanting to do something. They do not tell you what to think, but you go away thinking more… and more honestly. They don’t draw conclusions or provide answers, but raise issues and pose questions.

What is going on, then?

A good friend knows you and leaves room for you to show up as yourself.

A good friend is confident that when you show up as yourself, good things are going to happen. No… great things are going to happen.

The inspiration of friends has the effect of you and I believing in ourselves as much as they do.

The inspiration of friends has the effect of freeing us to act more boldly on our convictions, our decisions, and/or our hunches.

Excuse me now. I have been inspired by a friend, and there are some things I need to do right away!

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: Smiling Out Loud

Monday, May 21st, 2012

loving_mondayToday calls for a good laugh.

I don’t know what it is. I’m in an inexplicably good mood, and I want to joke around with everyone in the vicinity.

Best is when I get to laugh at myself. An idiosyncrasy, a silly mistake, some aspect of showing up completely human when the workplace expected a machine. When I can laugh at myself it frees others to let down their guards and laugh too.

The only way to make sure the important things stay important is to remind ourselves that they are not THAT important.

Humor is my secret perspective-restoring weapon.

It seems like more of a secret than it really is, because it is so counter-intuitive. Most people can’t even imagine cracking a smile in a tough situation much less poking fun at it.

Humor is my favorite and most effective tool for keeping a cool and sharp head when things get crazy busy, far too intense, or reactions spiral out of proportion to what’s actually going on.

And of course, a good laugh is refreshing. Like a cup of cold water on a hot day, smiling out loud throws an surprising and exhilarating splash of joy into our faces.

Startled, we join in the lightness of the moment, appreciate that we’re all human and on the same team, and then get back to work.

Yes, today calls for a good laugh. And so do a good many more.

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: Mustering Energy When The Tanks Feel Empty

Monday, May 14th, 2012

loving_mondayWe all have Mondays—even seasons of Mondays—when we aren’t sure whether we can muster the energy to face a new week.

(I’m not in a position to speak to the darkest seasons of depression or chronic anxiety. The best gift you can give yourself if such pervasive darkness or fear handicaps your life is to seek a professional counselor or therapist.)

Here are a few suggestions that I find helpful when I struggle to stay in the game.

Build in some personal achievement benefits to your job. Learn a new skill. You might learn a bit of html so that you can communicate better with your IT department. You might learn how to read a financial statement so that you can better understand how your performance affects the bottom line.

Set a secret objective. In addition to reaching your sales goals, increase the caliber of client you’re seeking. Besides solving the disgruntled customer’s problem, try sending them away thrilled and thanking you like you’re a hero.

Do something refreshingly kind. Treat everyone to ice cream or  a bottle of specialty soda. Offer to complete an unpleasant chore for a struggling co-worker.

Contribute to building a healthier office culture. Write an article for the company newsletter. (Or start a company newsletter!) Publicly and personally thank co-workers for a job well done. Communicate and coordinate work flow changes more quickly and more often.

The main characteristic of all these tips is that they get your mind off of your foul mood and onto your interests, aspirations, co-workers and office culture. In each of these small actions you experience that you are worthwhile, have something valuable to offer, and that your choices make a difference.

If you had a hard time getting going today, try one new thing tomorrow. Experiment. Discover what helps shift your focus, fosters a different attitude, or offers a fresh perspective to you. 

Instead of waiting for a massive mood change, try making a small action change.

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.