Being On Purpose
What if there was a different option to pass/fail? Let’s EXPERIMENT with what we do every day instead of succumbing to the personal low of failing if something doesn’t turn out the way we want or expect.
I reference the Ladder of Consciousness during this video, so be sure and watch that other Ask Arminda if you’re unfamiliar with it!
Who else remembers grade school science class worksheets?
HYPOTHESIS: _______________________________________
TEST 1: _____________________________________________
TEST 2: _____________________________________________
TEST 3: _____________________________________________
CONCLUSION: ______________________________________
Those test lines were always a minimum; you could keep adding as many additional lines as you needed. And the whole thing was fun and a game and exciting because you didn’t know what would happen (like that time I grabbed the iron stand after the open flame had just been diminished)! As long as you made a prediction and then ran your tests and learned something and reported it, your grade was inconsequential.
What if we turn today or the presentation or the project or the conversation or the training program or the new job into a great big experiment instead of a pass/fail option?
Because experiments never fail; they’re just opportunities for learning and data collection.
I can’t get enough of Steve Chandler. I read all of his books. I listen to all of his audio programs. I participate in his live events. I pay him to coach me.
Steve just published a new book: Crazy Good.
This book is — as its title suggests — crazy good!
Chandler is a master of simplification. His is a gift for seeing patterns that most of us use as crutches and excuses for the why we behave the way we do (and oftentimes why we don’t actively participate in our lives at all) and then he shows us that another — better — option exists.
But only every time.
Seeing these distinctions leads us to choice. When we choose something different we place ourselves on the path to a crazy good life, not just a life lived to get through it all.
Be a joy-giver in your own life and read this book; you’ll be crazy glad you did!
It’s always a choice.
Nothing is serious and boring unless and until we choose to make it serious.
Everyone around you notices how serious you are and they don’t prefer it.
Laugh.
Enjoy your world.
Insert fun back into your experiences.
Yes, even (and especially) your work experiences.
Choose now.
Choose fun.
I’m writing to you from Chicago, Illinois, where pizza is a pretty big deal.
I love pizza.
Dairy, however, does not love me, and this teeny little barrier often prevents me from eating a traditional pizza with cheese on top.
On rare occasions I find a pizza place with vegan cheese as an option and on those occasions I am always in the mood for a slice.
Blaze Fast Fire’d Pizza on E Ontario Street in Chicago is just such an establishment, where building custom pizzas is what they do best.
Their process is simple: pick your sauce, cheese, and toppings and watch it bake.
My turn: I asked my server if she would please put on a pair of clean gloves before handling my pizza dough. With a genuine smile she happily obliged.
Regarding the sauce, everything I saw had cheese floating on top and when I told her I cannot have any dairy she immediately whisked my round of dough to the opposite end of the line where a separate cheese-free container of sauce was waiting.
After the vegan cheese was applied I selected several additional toppings to complete my custom pie.
While my pizza baked in the flames, the cashier was nothing but kindness and complimented me on my eyes and thanked me for coming in tonight.
The young man in charge of removing my pizza from the oven and slicing it before putting it in the box called me over to his workstation to show me the pizza cutter he used was one they reserve for pizzas with the vegan cheese so as not to contaminate with cheese and/or meat from the other pizzas.
As I left with my pizza box in-hand, all three of those young people thanked me again for coming.
The system those employees used demonstrates exactly the way for any business, regardless of industry, to increase sales: don’t sell, serve.
Don’t focus on a number. Don’t see potential dollar signs above your clients’ heads. Don’t rush to convince them what they need, according to you. Don’t focus on your budget. And don’t wait for the phone to ring.
Do not try to sell them a pizza.
Just love them for being in front of you and notice how pretty their eyes look to you.
Your tip jar will always overflow.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you’ve just collected your mail for the day.
As you pull the assorted envelopes and papers out of your box, you pause briefly to flip through the stack. Your eyes light on a colorful envelope with a handwritten address and your heart rate slightly increases with anticipation because you recognize that writing; it’s from someone you love. Memories of shared experiences with that person flood your brain and everything else in your world now ceases to exist until you’ve opened that envelope and read its contents word for word.
We tend to approach our work in the same way we get the mail: haphazardly and rushed. Somedays we barely have time to collect the post at all. When we do, we cram our arms full of the papers, fliers and envelopes spilling out of the box, casually flipping through them to see if anything stands out.
What if every project is a handwritten letter from someone you love and not a stuffed box of junk mail?
Slow down.
When we slow down we see the details that being in a hurry overlooks. Seeing details enables us to create solutions, to simplify processes, and to be an owner of that process, rather than a victim of a system.
There is plenty of time to accomplish all you wish to accomplish.
When was the last time you received a hand-written note or letter from someone? When did you last write and mail one to someone else?
Write a love note and snail mail it.
See the details in your projects and simplify your systems.
Give yourself and someone you love the gift of slowing down.
Meet Charlotte.
She lives in my herb garden. Directly behind Charlotte to your left is my mint and to your right, the rosemary. Charlotte cares nothing for my herbs. She’s much more interested in the garden fence between which she constructed her large web. A common yellow garden spider (Argiope aurantia), Charlotte is completely harmless to humans and unrelenting in her efforts to live fully each day.
I check in on her every morning. I have a chat with her, acknowledge her latest catches, express astonishment at her ingenuity, speed and cleaning of her dinner plate.
Notice that fancy vertical zig zag running through the center of Charlotte’s web? Every single night before she sleeps, Charlotte eats that center zig zag portion of her web and weaves a new zig zag center, strong and reinforced, ready for her next day’s unknown adventures.
Charlotte believes in the power of reinvention.
She isn’t wasting any of her precious time missing yesterday’s web.
She chooses daily to come from an even stronger core.
She is ferocious in protecting her center and is relentless in her efforts to make it better.
The center of Charlotte’s web is her epicenter for growth.
Charlotte is remarkable.
She’s not messing around. She’s living out loud.
Need me to weave the metaphor for you into the web?
Nah. You’ve got this.
Channel your inner remarkable.
If you’re like most of us, you’ve experienced moments (or vast spans) of your life when you believe you struggled with time management. Maybe it was during your university years or when you wanted to write that novel.
Let’s dispel the myth of time, all of it.
Isn’t the knowing of a child the most beautiful thing you ever experienced?
I love remembering my own sense of knowing during those years when I knew what I knew. And what I didn’t know, I imagined until it felt more real than what I knew.
Do you remember knowing you were amazing? At drawing, perhaps? Or riding horses. Or reading out loud with just the right inflections. Or hopping on one foot longer than anyone else. Or climbing trees. Or tap dancing. Or writing stories. Or molding clay. Or blocking all the goals. Or organizing clubs. Or giving recitations. Or calming a fussy child. Or performing tricks on your bike. Or knowing the alphabet backwards.
Do you remember when life got too serious for childhood games and make-believe?
What if tomorrow when you wake up you could be anything you want?
What if you could draw “a picture of a house that was so good, [you] had to hide it so nobody would steal it”?
What if that picture of that house was the remembering of amazing:
What if you play a game today and engage with your thoughts and your to-do list as if you were a child again.
What are the “a lot of things” you can create when you come from that place of knowing you’re amazing?
When you feel yourself slowing down and losing momentum on your way toward something’s completion or execution, what do you do? Is there a “trick” you can pull out of your bag to get yourself back in action?