Today, I was delighted to be featured as a guest blogger on Advanced Riskology. Prior to the post, I got to suggest a few words for my byline, and after some debate I decided I would be bold enough to claim that I was "of" Chase Your Unicorn. Well, that seems harmless enough...so why the debate?
On the upside, this particular phrasing, I believed, was quite choice as it would make my written endeavors sound substantiated. To say we are "of" an entity implies that the power to grant association lies above us - thus the world (i.e. the readers of my guest post) will assign some credence to what I say.
On the downside, if you can read a calendar, you can tell that it's been awhile since my last post. 407 days, to be exact. And here I am, taking people who I'm trying to convince of my legitimacy, and directing them to a webpage that reveals I've taken a hiatus from self-imposed responsibility. I imagine most personal branding experts would advise against this.
So, why would I do this? If you read the guest post, you'll understand that I've been trying to increase my adventure tolerance. Part of that exercise - the simpler and more fun part - fits the modern view of adventure. Go new places! Meet new people! Eat new types of grilled cheese!
But there's a dark side: to tap into the full value of adventure means I'm going to have to confront situations I actively avoid. These aren't just things which, if given the opportunity, I'd choose not to do. These are the things I go out of my way to not deal with. Taking sidestreets so I won't run into that friend who lives on the main road, whose call I still haven't returned after two months. Shrugging off the topic of "that unicorn blog you started", so I don't have to acknowledge that a giraffe could have grown and delivered a baby in the time since I last wrote.
I'll say it again: these are things I go out of my way to not deal with. I'm investing time and energy for the pleasure of enjoying long, chronic, inconvenient anxiety. And I've convinced myself this is a great idea.
Sounds like an addiction, doesn't it?
I am addicted, situationally. Addicted to evasion. It's draining, and it leads to disappointment and humiliation in personal relationships, work responsibilities, or athletics. Then I end up investing even more energy in trying to stitch up the now worsened problem, or in explaining it away until a future date when it will be even harrier.
There's plenty of talk about energy conservation in the external world: "If we aren't careful with our resources now, we're going to pollute our earth, we're going to run out, and we're not going to be able to fix it." But if we look hard, the same may be true internally as well.
So tell me:
What's robbing your resource bank, and when are you going to confront it?
What adventure will that make you free to pursue?
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Friday, April 1, 2011
Balance: need not always be 50/50
Of the many perks my travel-heavy job affords - airline miles, a bounty of free meals, uber-polite treatment at Starwood hotels - one of my favorites is the chance to recruit on university campuses. I've observed that when job recruiters descend on college quadrangles, the universe reacts as follows:
This one can inspire a bevy of creative answers...some of them real. "My manager agreed to let me come in late on Tuesdays so I can attend hot yoga." "I give myself a mental break and don't work during lunch." "I use an internet blocker that won't let me on facebook at the office, so I get everything done faster."
Techniques may vary, but there is only one true answer to this question, and credit for it goes to Jack Welch: "There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences."
Yes. I must constantly manage my descisions to most effectively get the outcome I desire. And if I really want to achieve what I'm after - to "catch my unicorn" - let's face it, that means I have to make decisions that do NOT leave me in a state of equilibrium. So how can I - how can YOU - undergo conditioning that will prepare us for those choices?
Sacrifice. Force yourself to leave a gap somewhere in your desires, to feel an asymmetry. Your brain will crave a way to fill the void. Provide it with a different stimulant - instead of focusing energy on the void, focus it on a different task. Find empowerment in realizing what that energy can serve.
Risk. Mental, physical, emotional. If you're not teetering on the edge every now and then, you're taking up too much space.
Love. Hopefully you've loved enough to know why it's the ultimate manifestation non-equilibrium...which makes it the best practice grounds for investing yourself in what you desire, without knowing what the outcome will be. Ever been told to honor and lift those around you...only 50% of the time? Funny, me neither.
EKG machines reveal the pulse by which we live. When they're perfectly balanced, we're dead. What has your readout looked like lately?
Exercise
Think of a decision you made today. Any size will do. Then answer the simple questions below (yes, they are simple).
My example decision: choosing what to eat for breakfast
1. What criteria did you use to make this decision? What did this enable that would get you closer to the outcome you desired?
Ex: My criteria was to eat something that was quick and mainly carbohydrates. This would enable me to get to the gym faster, so that I could have a longer, higher quality workout, which would lead me closer to the outcome of qualifying for Boston.
2. What this decision a sacrifice or risk? How did it contribute to (or detract from) your balance?
Ex. I sacrificed the chance to sit down for a warm meal and read, which I enjoy very much. I make this sacrifice at least six days per week, and while 6/7 is not 50/50, I gain balance through building physical and mental strength via exercise. And what do you know - that's good balance for a runner to have.
Did you chase your unicorn? If not, how will you practice imbalance so that you do?
- Kinkos and the local dry cleaners see a spike in revenue
- For a few hours, we (the recruiters) each experience a cushy boost in self-worth as aspiring professionals passionately describe how much they want to be us* (*NB: high likelihood that perceived level of admiration is greater than actual)
- Q: "How did you get interested in consulting?"
- A: "Well, I started my career as the captain of a shrimp boat, so as you can see it was a natural progression from there."
- Q: "Can you describe the types of clients you've worked with?"\
- A: "Shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan-fried, deep fried, stir fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp...that's about it."
This one can inspire a bevy of creative answers...some of them real. "My manager agreed to let me come in late on Tuesdays so I can attend hot yoga." "I give myself a mental break and don't work during lunch." "I use an internet blocker that won't let me on facebook at the office, so I get everything done faster."
Techniques may vary, but there is only one true answer to this question, and credit for it goes to Jack Welch: "There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences."
Yes. I must constantly manage my descisions to most effectively get the outcome I desire. And if I really want to achieve what I'm after - to "catch my unicorn" - let's face it, that means I have to make decisions that do NOT leave me in a state of equilibrium. So how can I - how can YOU - undergo conditioning that will prepare us for those choices?
Sacrifice. Force yourself to leave a gap somewhere in your desires, to feel an asymmetry. Your brain will crave a way to fill the void. Provide it with a different stimulant - instead of focusing energy on the void, focus it on a different task. Find empowerment in realizing what that energy can serve.
Risk. Mental, physical, emotional. If you're not teetering on the edge every now and then, you're taking up too much space.
Love. Hopefully you've loved enough to know why it's the ultimate manifestation non-equilibrium...which makes it the best practice grounds for investing yourself in what you desire, without knowing what the outcome will be. Ever been told to honor and lift those around you...only 50% of the time? Funny, me neither.
EKG machines reveal the pulse by which we live. When they're perfectly balanced, we're dead. What has your readout looked like lately?
Exercise
Think of a decision you made today. Any size will do. Then answer the simple questions below (yes, they are simple).
My example decision: choosing what to eat for breakfast
1. What criteria did you use to make this decision? What did this enable that would get you closer to the outcome you desired?
Ex: My criteria was to eat something that was quick and mainly carbohydrates. This would enable me to get to the gym faster, so that I could have a longer, higher quality workout, which would lead me closer to the outcome of qualifying for Boston.
2. What this decision a sacrifice or risk? How did it contribute to (or detract from) your balance?
Ex. I sacrificed the chance to sit down for a warm meal and read, which I enjoy very much. I make this sacrifice at least six days per week, and while 6/7 is not 50/50, I gain balance through building physical and mental strength via exercise. And what do you know - that's good balance for a runner to have.
Did you chase your unicorn? If not, how will you practice imbalance so that you do?
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Rage against the [time] machine
A few weeks into my quest for a Boston qualifying time, I've become fascinated with the very concept itself: time. Some of our daily decisions are more obviously a matter of minutes and seconds: I choose to drive instead of walk the fifteen miles to work; I choose to send an email because carrier pigeons have gone out of fashion. I choose to not write my weekly blog post because I am performing the very important task of online shopping.
Yes, these are clearly questions concerning time. Yet the universe also asks us to make decisions that are less obviously, but no less profoundly, a choice of what we do with our twenty-four precious daily hours. In these first few weeks of unicorn chasing, I've become acutely aware of where my hours are going - or more specifically, how I have spent more than two decades passively wasting them.
This fixation was born just before my training, when I started to plan how I would factor long runs into my travel-heavy line of work. Do morning workouts combined with hitting the highway by 6:45am each day automatically uncobble by yellow brick road to success? No, but only if I can crush one double-crossing devil: the snooze button. When the alarm cruelly invades my slumber with its shrill, taunting laughter, the snooze button coos like a siren. "Come with me," it whispers, "back to Yankee Stadium, you're about to hit the game-winner!" It's not until you've heard this line repeated every five minutes for half an hour that you realize you've struck out - Snooze is a fraud. He doesn't care about you or your chimerical baseball career. All he wants is to trap you in a hypnoidal purgatory, where you are neither convinced you should wake up nor settled enough to cuddle back into the deep, wistful slumber you so desire. If it has gotten this far, Snooze wins, and man loses.
So, I ask myself, how do I defeat him from the start, and keep this very real threat away from my pursuit? One of the first steps in chasing your unicorn: seek out the advice of others who've caught theirs.
Among the several athletically well-endowed people I get to work with is a 25-year-old Ironman named Josh. Josh trained for and completed his Ironman during his first year of working the same job I currently hold - who better to turn to for advice?
As soon as we sat down together for a wisdom spoon-feeding session, before I mentioned any of my qualms or questions, Josh spoke: "The first thing I decided to do was stop using snooze. It's a complete waste of ten minutes. If you go to bed early enough, you won't have any problems. Stop wasting time on facebook." Well then.
Josh went on to talk about his more novel strategies - including waking up to eat an energy gel at 4am, then going back to sleep for 30 minutes to digest before a 2 hour bike ride - but the snooze stuck with me most. How hard could it me? Go to bed early (by avoiding TV/internet pit falls and cooking meals ahead of time), have your workout clothes laid out, sleep the amount you want, then wake up and go. Boom.
So I did it. And you know, it wasn't that hard to adopt. Why? Because when that alarm goes off, I get to make a choice: do I want five more minutes of sleep today, or do I want to run the Boston Marathon? Sometimes I might very well answer the former - I am no idyllic model - but most days, that choice may as well not have a first option.
Drill #2: Where in your life will you stop passively wasting time?
This week, pick a day and keep track of how you spend each five minute chunk.
-Staring into the fridge in search of lunch: 5 minutes
-Selecting the day's outfit: 10 minutes
-Buying slippers online when you should be posting your blog: ...maybe that's just me
Reflect on your list and find a combination of tweaks that saves you 30 minutes per day. That's enough for a brisk walk, reading a couple chapters in a book, making pancakes for your roommate (read: brownie points), or whatever else you "don't have enough time" to do. [By the way, this is never, ever an excuse. We all have the same emount of time, and someone else who is busier than you accomplishes more because he/she makes good decisions about what to spend time on.]
Friends, do not squander time. That is the stuff life is made of.
Yes, these are clearly questions concerning time. Yet the universe also asks us to make decisions that are less obviously, but no less profoundly, a choice of what we do with our twenty-four precious daily hours. In these first few weeks of unicorn chasing, I've become acutely aware of where my hours are going - or more specifically, how I have spent more than two decades passively wasting them.
This fixation was born just before my training, when I started to plan how I would factor long runs into my travel-heavy line of work. Do morning workouts combined with hitting the highway by 6:45am each day automatically uncobble by yellow brick road to success? No, but only if I can crush one double-crossing devil: the snooze button. When the alarm cruelly invades my slumber with its shrill, taunting laughter, the snooze button coos like a siren. "Come with me," it whispers, "back to Yankee Stadium, you're about to hit the game-winner!" It's not until you've heard this line repeated every five minutes for half an hour that you realize you've struck out - Snooze is a fraud. He doesn't care about you or your chimerical baseball career. All he wants is to trap you in a hypnoidal purgatory, where you are neither convinced you should wake up nor settled enough to cuddle back into the deep, wistful slumber you so desire. If it has gotten this far, Snooze wins, and man loses.
So, I ask myself, how do I defeat him from the start, and keep this very real threat away from my pursuit? One of the first steps in chasing your unicorn: seek out the advice of others who've caught theirs.
Among the several athletically well-endowed people I get to work with is a 25-year-old Ironman named Josh. Josh trained for and completed his Ironman during his first year of working the same job I currently hold - who better to turn to for advice?
As soon as we sat down together for a wisdom spoon-feeding session, before I mentioned any of my qualms or questions, Josh spoke: "The first thing I decided to do was stop using snooze. It's a complete waste of ten minutes. If you go to bed early enough, you won't have any problems. Stop wasting time on facebook." Well then.
Josh went on to talk about his more novel strategies - including waking up to eat an energy gel at 4am, then going back to sleep for 30 minutes to digest before a 2 hour bike ride - but the snooze stuck with me most. How hard could it me? Go to bed early (by avoiding TV/internet pit falls and cooking meals ahead of time), have your workout clothes laid out, sleep the amount you want, then wake up and go. Boom.
So I did it. And you know, it wasn't that hard to adopt. Why? Because when that alarm goes off, I get to make a choice: do I want five more minutes of sleep today, or do I want to run the Boston Marathon? Sometimes I might very well answer the former - I am no idyllic model - but most days, that choice may as well not have a first option.
Drill #2: Where in your life will you stop passively wasting time?
This week, pick a day and keep track of how you spend each five minute chunk.
-Staring into the fridge in search of lunch: 5 minutes
-Selecting the day's outfit: 10 minutes
-Buying slippers online when you should be posting your blog: ...maybe that's just me
Reflect on your list and find a combination of tweaks that saves you 30 minutes per day. That's enough for a brisk walk, reading a couple chapters in a book, making pancakes for your roommate (read: brownie points), or whatever else you "don't have enough time" to do. [By the way, this is never, ever an excuse. We all have the same emount of time, and someone else who is busier than you accomplishes more because he/she makes good decisions about what to spend time on.]
Friends, do not squander time. That is the stuff life is made of.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
"Go then, seek your victory"
I was seven. And I was convinced unicorns were real.
Call me naive, but I disagree. My belief was based on sound seven-year-old logic:
Point A: horses exist.
Point B: rhinoceros exist.
Point C: both are mammals. Connect the dots.
In ways like this, when I was young it seemed imagination and practicality were not mutually exclusive. Then middle school introduced a fissure between them - that was okay, I could teeny-bop back and forth at will. High school widened it to a crevasse - thank goodness for growth spurts that would let me stretch across. Then in college the divide resembled a crater - imagination was so separate from the hard-coded rigors of daily life, I needed a spring break road trip to traverse the gap. And now, in the full swing of a career...say, is anyone using that decommissioned space shuttle?
Imagination is still there, somewhere. So, why am I pursuing it less and less? And why do I see so many around me abandoning the chase as well?
I decide that in order to change this, I need a goal. A goal outside the known quantities of my comfortable reality. Something that, according to today's wisdom, seems just a bit too blissfully imaginary. Something like...unicorns.
My goal: to qualify for and finish the Boston Marathon. And I'm starting today (in fact, already did - first training session was this morning).
Now, let's be frank. I am not starting from a square one that's so wide, it's actually a rectangle, because I'm so dismally out of shape I need a double-wide seat. No, I've been running for eight years and have completed (sometimes shuffled through) four marathons. But up to now, I haven't managed to crack the mental barrier between me and a Boston Qualifying time. Reasons include the following:
- I don't have enough time
- If I did have enough time, I should spend it working
- My mom has an irrational fear that I'll die from running marathons
- I don't have enough energy
- Cupcakes are not running fuel
This is today's wisdom, and to anyone who's professionally driven and enjoys a good pastry, it holds water. But, after reading a recent post by the immutably-opinionated Ramit Sethi, I felt my reasons threatened. These reasons, he argued, are not reasonable at all. They are assumptions. Everyday, I unconsciously make dozens of decisions that allow them to chain me down. And it sure is hard to catch a unicorn when one is in shackles (though Chuck Norris could probably do it...but that's another post).
There is only way to win, and with my manifesto, I declare my intent to do it: FIGHT. I will test my "reasons" to expose my assumptions, crush them, unchain myself, and chase my unicorn.
So it is that today, I begin my training - my boot camp to strengthen for the fight and complete the chase. And I'm going to write about it. Strategy lessons, surprise ambushes, weapons training, face-offs lost and won. On May 21, I will go into battle - at the start line of the Fargo Marathon, where I will attempt to run 26.2 miles in under 3 hours, 40 minutes, and qualify for the Boston Marathon.
I hope you're not kicking back with your Munchos just yet. Because, I want you to chase your unicorn too. Each time I write, I'll end by turning the day's topic into a drill for you to act on. You can ponder your answer silently (eh), write it down in a journal (better), post it as a comment here (awesome), or do any of the above and link this page to your blog/facebook/twitter for others to see (exemplary - and you get my thanks!). But what's must crucial is that we both TAKE ACTION. Start here:
Drill #1: What's your unicorn? What are your reasons for not chasing it?
Today, pay special attention to your untested assumptions. Pick one, and test it. Were you right?
[My example -
Assumption: "Cupcakes are not running fuel"
Test: Eat a cupcake, then go running.
Result: Simple carbs = quick, tasty energy, no adverse side effects. But in the interest of general health, use sparingly. ]
This unicorn chaser wants you to find delight and meaning in her posts. Thus, I look forward to having my inbox flooded with your feedback on content, structure, length, and the like. Catch me at ChaseYourUnicorn@gmail.com
Call me naive, but I disagree. My belief was based on sound seven-year-old logic:
Point A: horses exist.
Point B: rhinoceros exist.
Point C: both are mammals. Connect the dots.
In ways like this, when I was young it seemed imagination and practicality were not mutually exclusive. Then middle school introduced a fissure between them - that was okay, I could teeny-bop back and forth at will. High school widened it to a crevasse - thank goodness for growth spurts that would let me stretch across. Then in college the divide resembled a crater - imagination was so separate from the hard-coded rigors of daily life, I needed a spring break road trip to traverse the gap. And now, in the full swing of a career...say, is anyone using that decommissioned space shuttle?
Imagination is still there, somewhere. So, why am I pursuing it less and less? And why do I see so many around me abandoning the chase as well?
I decide that in order to change this, I need a goal. A goal outside the known quantities of my comfortable reality. Something that, according to today's wisdom, seems just a bit too blissfully imaginary. Something like...unicorns.
Now, let's be frank. I am not starting from a square one that's so wide, it's actually a rectangle, because I'm so dismally out of shape I need a double-wide seat. No, I've been running for eight years and have completed (sometimes shuffled through) four marathons. But up to now, I haven't managed to crack the mental barrier between me and a Boston Qualifying time. Reasons include the following:
- I don't have enough time
- If I did have enough time, I should spend it working
- My mom has an irrational fear that I'll die from running marathons
- I don't have enough energy
- Cupcakes are not running fuel
This is today's wisdom, and to anyone who's professionally driven and enjoys a good pastry, it holds water. But, after reading a recent post by the immutably-opinionated Ramit Sethi, I felt my reasons threatened. These reasons, he argued, are not reasonable at all. They are assumptions. Everyday, I unconsciously make dozens of decisions that allow them to chain me down. And it sure is hard to catch a unicorn when one is in shackles (though Chuck Norris could probably do it...but that's another post).
There is only way to win, and with my manifesto, I declare my intent to do it: FIGHT. I will test my "reasons" to expose my assumptions, crush them, unchain myself, and chase my unicorn.
So it is that today, I begin my training - my boot camp to strengthen for the fight and complete the chase. And I'm going to write about it. Strategy lessons, surprise ambushes, weapons training, face-offs lost and won. On May 21, I will go into battle - at the start line of the Fargo Marathon, where I will attempt to run 26.2 miles in under 3 hours, 40 minutes, and qualify for the Boston Marathon.
I hope you're not kicking back with your Munchos just yet. Because, I want you to chase your unicorn too. Each time I write, I'll end by turning the day's topic into a drill for you to act on. You can ponder your answer silently (eh), write it down in a journal (better), post it as a comment here (awesome), or do any of the above and link this page to your blog/facebook/twitter for others to see (exemplary - and you get my thanks!). But what's must crucial is that we both TAKE ACTION. Start here:
Drill #1: What's your unicorn? What are your reasons for not chasing it?
Today, pay special attention to your untested assumptions. Pick one, and test it. Were you right?
[My example -
Assumption: "Cupcakes are not running fuel"
Test: Eat a cupcake, then go running.
Result: Simple carbs = quick, tasty energy, no adverse side effects. But in the interest of general health, use sparingly. ]
This unicorn chaser wants you to find delight and meaning in her posts. Thus, I look forward to having my inbox flooded with your feedback on content, structure, length, and the like. Catch me at ChaseYourUnicorn@gmail.com
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