The best way to do anything.

In one of my rare moments of clarity, this thought flashed across my mind:

“The simplest way to do anything is to stop not doing it.”

It may seem kind of “duh”, but if you stop for a moment and take stock of all the places you want to be, the things you want to do, the people you want to meet, the communication you wish your company had with its customers, and then take a moment and really contemplate the attitude and automatic responses you have in your mind about not doing these things, and then begin to change the “no’s” into “yes’s”, I bet you’ll get pretty darn far.

Try it with something small.

Figure out what happiness you’re not bringing toward yourself, and stop not doing it.

Let me know how it goes.

Often, we keep ourselves from trying new things, going out on a limb, or putting ourselves out there by focusing on the worst possible outcome.

“Oh, I could never ask him out, what if he says no and laughs at me?”

“We aren’t ready to have a Twitter account for our business, what if people say bad things about our products?”

“I can’t meet with the Dalai Lama because China would get pissed off.”

The thing of it is that we can’t predict the future.  Our minds close us off to new experiences (by predicting disaster) in order to keep things as they are, but things are always changing.

Therefore, if we can’t predict the future anyway, why not try flipping the script a little to keep things in perspective.

Next time, just as an exercise, try asking yourself “What’s the best that could happen?”  What could be the best possible outcome for asking out that guy, or creating that facebook page for your business, or meeting with whomever, or going to that party, or taking that chance.

Everything is always changing.  If you think of things in a positive way instead of a negative way, who knows what could happen. Do a reward analysis, not just a risk one!

I’ve noticed many blog posts lately about Millennials/GenY/etc in the workplace and their ’sense of entitlement’ or ‘not wanting to pay their dues’, and it’s a bit confusing to me.

I am not a Gen-Y-er (though being born in 1979, I’m not technically a GenX-er either), but I’m not sure what value is brought by expecting talented people (they are talented, that’s why they got hired, right) to immediate suffer through menial tasks that do not allow them any responsibility, encourage them to contribute, or include them as part of the team.  What kind of lesson does that teach? It seems like needless discouragement to me.

I would say that if you have a Gen-Y-er on your team, a better strategy would be to include them in meetings, allow them to offer suggestions (even if you may think they’re dumb questions, it is your job to help them refine their thinking to come to a more workable idea), and generally value their contribution.  If you meet all these needs, then you create an atmosphere where they want to get you coffee to show appreciation, rather than it being a chore to be resented.

Also, do this with everyone.

When we are quick to judge others, people or companies that may not be communicating honestly, that may be scared of having people gossip, or spread untruths, or being perceived inaccurately, we are creating an ‘me vs them’ space for ourselves, which is fear-based and can make us feel very constricted and small in our definition of ‘ourselves’.

Today (whenever you may be reading this), try to remember that each of us, as individuals, employees, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and lovers, strangers and enemies are doing the best we can at this moment.  We all want to love and be loved, to be understood, to be happy.  We each struggle to get past our fears and our thoughts in order to achieve this goal.

Even you.

Even me.

We’re all in this together.

[inspired by Teresa Basich's wonderful manifesto, and the first decent conversation I've had with my father in  years.]

On the journey I’ve been on the last month, it’s been particularly interesting to become more acutely aware of some of the assumptions I’d accepted as gospel for so long.

One of the big ones is based around not giving myself permission to try things.  So many aspects of my life had been left untouched based on my being unable to see beyond what I assumed was the size of the first step.

“I should travel more!” I thought, “but I don’t have a passport and in order to get a passport I’d have to get a passport photo and to do that I’d need to remember to go to a photo place,” and on and on.  And so things would not get completed.

In Buddhism, there is the concept of the ’second arrow,’ which means that we frequently add a layer of judgment to our activities and choices, which causes us to suffer, keeps us in our heads and restricts our ability to connect with our true selves.

I was doing this, and it was keeping me stuck in one place.

But what I’m starting to realize is, there are smaller steps that are more manageable, if I take them without judgment of the past or possible negative outcomes of the future. There are low-risk activities I can do to bring myself closer to my goals.  Taking even the tiniest of steps in a direction and it can make a world of difference, and so tiny becomes the perfect size rather than a bad thing to be judged.

So whether it’s getting your passport, figuring out what you want in a romantic relationship, lowering your carbon footprint, interacting with your customers, making diplomatic overtures to a ‘terrorist state’, reconnecting with an estranged family member… figure out what you CAN do, and do it.  Don’t judge yourself because you think you could be doing more, or that it seems like it doesn’t matter or make a difference. And if you do find yourself judging, do your best not to judge that part.  You are only human, and it’s in our reptilian brain’s nature to judge ‘this is good’ ‘this is bad’.

It really does.

P.S. the Japanese have a name for this process when used in business: Kaizen