solutions

Snail Mail

September 21, 2015 By Arminda

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.

Smash it With a Hammer!

August 10, 2015 By Arminda

Do you have a problem (a struggle, an issue, a frustration, a situation)?

Pick one.

Now let’s play a game with your problem.

Let’s turn your problem into a solution.

Ohhhh, maybe that’s more like a magic trick than a game! That sounds like even more fun! Grab your magic wand!

Step One

Call the “problem” a “challenge.”

Why would this simple switch be such a big deal?

Because our language creates how we see the world and how we see the world becomes our world.

Step Two

Remember the Disney movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids? We’re going to proclaim We Shrunk the Challenge! (If for no other reason than it’s funny to say shrunk out loud and I can’t say it without laughing. Go ahead. Try it.)

And laughing is an important next step for us to now look down on the challenge. See yourself as exponentially larger than the challenge. Laugh at its smallness. Mock its insignificance. Shrink your challenge down to a diminutive size. You are monstrous in comparison.

Step Three

Now that you’re laughing and relaxed and visualizing the teeny tiny little challenge running scared, the final step is to overwhelm the challenge with your solutions.

SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER!

That challenge has nothing on you. You are the one with a higher and larger vantage point. You wield laughter and ideas and a relaxed approach. The challenge is not serious; something that small can’t possibly be serious.

Besides, serious is so un-fun. And you’re at your best when you’re having fun, laughing and enjoying yourself. That’s when your ideas really start to flow.

You are creativity, itself.

You love this challenge for allowing you the opportunity to show off your remarkable resourcefulness.

Keep laughing.

Keep being bigger than your challenges.

Keep creating solutions from that place of relaxed fun and broader perspective.

Keep smashing your challenges with a hammer.

Do that. And then do more.

Enjoy the process of solution creating.

“It’s brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, I tell you! Genius, I say!” — Yzma

Solutions

January 26, 2015 By Arminda

Have you ever been lost in the woods? (Or in the Disney World parking lot?) I certainly have. And it was a scary feeling not knowing which way to go. In fact, the not knowing had a paralyzing effect on me and I didn’t go anywhere; I just stood rooted to the spot where I was standing, waiting for a sign (or Tinker Bell) to show me the way.

Not surprisingly that sign never appeared.

And there really never is just one way to get anywhere.

Hover above and zoom out from where you’re standing and you’ll quickly see multiple routes leading you in any number of directions.

How many options do you have?

43 in any given circumstance.

Is that a scientifically-proven fact, Arminda?

Absolutely not. But it’s been working for me for years.

Whenever I’m lost, literally or metaphorically, I tell myself there are 43 solutions to every problem, so don’t stop after you’ve only looked at the first three.

Zoom out. Get creative. Explore a different possibility. Test a new way of being, seeing, operating and believing.

There is never just one way