Arminda Lindsay

Being On Purpose

Mistakes Matter

By

Mistakes Matter

Whether you see your work as a game or as a serious business will determine whether you are a winner or a sore loser. And how you perceive yourself (winner or loser) will determine your relationship to mistakes (your own and/or your employees’).

Let’s break that down.

Playing for a Living

When we approach our work with a gaming mentality, we are open to the possibility of fun and adventure and of not knowing. We are open to different strategies and to feedback. And we are in it to win.

In this playful mindset, mistakes are a welcome learning opportunity for growth and they are shared openly with our teammates so everyone benefits and we are that much closer to our next victory.

Let’s Get Serious

When we believe that everything is serious, we lose sight of what’s happening right in front of us for the larger looming goal of not losing. We have tunnel vision and seriousness and resentment toward the slightest perceived diversion of co-workers’ attitudes.

In this serious mindset, mistakes are not tolerated — at all — and are punishable by shame and guilt and ridicule and public display for the lesson they provide everyone else to buckle down and get serious. This is serious business: making money and getting clients and beating the competition.

Playing to Win? or Not to Lose?

Winners play to win and celebrate the mistakes made along the way as a place from which to build up the entire team (internal customers) and serve the external customers even more profoundly.

Sore losers play to not lose and punish the mistakes made along the way, creating a culture of shame, which drastically minimizes production of the entire team, which then negatively impacts the external customer and diminishes your ability to serve.

If your team is playing not to lose it’s because you created a culture that does not celebrate mistakes and that’s no way to lead a team to victory.

There’s plenty of time left to play!

Huddle Up!!!

Experiments 101

By

Experiments 101

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.

Crazy Good

By

crazy good

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!

Choose Fun

By

Choose Fun

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.

Pizza Power

By

Pizza Power

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.

  • They served me by honoring my request for clean gloves.
  • They heard my dairy issue and provided a custom sauce option for me.
  • They recognized my dietary difference & offered toppings that might be useful for my needs.
  • They saw me as a person and complimented something unique in me.
  • They included me in their process to show me they respect what differentiates me.

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.

  • Serve your clients.
  • Give knowledge, time, a call, recommendations, observations, something extra, with no expectation of a sale.
  • Hear their stories.
  • Ask what would be useful for THEM and not for you.
  • See them as unique and with unique qualities, strengths, and needs.
  • Include them in your conversations and respect them as a valuable part of your organization.

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.

Snail Mail

By

snailmail

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.

Charlotte’s Web

By

CharlottesWeb

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.

Drawing Skills

By

Screen Shot 2015-09-07 at 9.37.42 AM

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:

  • letting go of a fear that’s been holding you captive
  • having a conversation you’ve been avoiding
  • getting back to something you used to love but somewhere along the way forgot to keep loving it
  • planting the seed of a new possibility
  • exploring an option that didn’t exist today
  • sharing a talent
  • smiling from your inside out
  • not caring what anyone else thinks
  • going on an impromptu adventure
  • staying out late to star gaze
  • writing a poem
  • calling a friend
  • speaking your truth

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?

Procrastinator as Protagonist

By

Procastinator as Protagonist

You aren’t a procrastinator.

Procrastination isn’t a “thing.”

Procrastination is nothing more than a story you’ve made up (or believed someone else’s story) about yourself to explain your reason for not doing something you just don’t want to do.

If something keeps getting pushed to tomorrow’s To-Do List, that’s simply an opportunity for you to slow down and gather more information.

Ask yourself:

Why am I not completing this task, project or assignment?

Answer yourself honestly.

You will uncover the reason behind your procrastination story and that reason may look like this:

it’s not fun
it’s tedious
it’s too big
it’s not my responsibility
it’s hard
it’s complicated

Or any number of reasons I’ve left off this incomplete list.

Next ask:

How can I love this project?
How can I have fun with it?
How can I change my story about this task?

When we slow ourselves down long enough to truly look at what’s not being done we see we are not the problem. Our relationship with our story about ourselves is the problem.

Rewrite your story so that the protagonist is the conquerer of tasks and not the other way around.

Happy endings are a choice.

But only every time.

Phantom Fears

By

PhantomFearSaturday morning cartoons were the routine at my house. We happily jumped out of bed early to help ourselves to bowl after bowl of cold cereal while we sat for hours, eyes glued to the television, until Mom made us turn off the tv and go outside to play.

Scooby Doo, Where Are You! was a family favorite. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, allow me to give you the major plot outline of every single episode:

Four friends and a dog named Scooby Doo drive around in a van and solve mysteries that always turn out to be not so mysterious when they arrive at their big reveal in the concluding scene.

Thinking back on the many episodes I watched, there was a regularly-occurring scary creature: a phantom, who would especially terrify the gang. I vividly remember experiencing fright every single time at the sight of that phantom lurking in the dark recesses of the (usually) abandoned building the friends were investigating.

And every single time it turned out the phantom wasn’t a phantom at all because phantoms, as it turns out, aren’t real; they’re imagined. There was always a logical (and not at all mysterious) explanation for whatever phantom appeared to be lurking in the dark.

Our fears are just like those cartoon phantoms: entirely made up. Our phantoms can assume a wide variety of forms:

  • Fear over what another person thinks
    Fear of a conversation
    Fear of trying something new
    Fear of appearing different
    Fear of sharing an opinion
    Fear of failure
    Fear of success
    Fear of perceived risk
    Fear of a new computer system
    Fear of asking for what you want
    Fear of submitting a proposal
    Fear of following up
    Fear of being overlooked
    Fear of (insert your own)

Our mystery can be very un-mysterious because the mystery to be solved isn’t why your phantom is lurking, but whether you imagined it in the first place.

What if instead of further convincing yourself the phantom fear is real, poses a real threat and prevents you from going into your dark and scary place, you flip on the light and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do I absolutely know the phantom is real?
2. How do I feel when I believe the phantom is real?
3. Who would I be without that phantom in my life?

Then be number three.

allarminda.com | 2024