Divide and conquer? Or unite and heal?

This was their answer.

The success of less

Sabrina: "Do you want a view from the house?" 

Linus Larrabee: "Uh, sure." 

Sabrina: "Which one?" 

Linus Larrabee: "Uh, all of them." 

Sabrina: "More isn't always better Linus. Sometimes it's just more."

 
The story goes that Steven Wright started in stand-up like everyone starts in stand-up - screaming. Comedy clubs are notoriously loud. Hello, the laughing. To get attention, to be heard, you had to get loud.

Steven thought, "....nah." And changed tactics.

He spoke softly, lethargically, slowly, even a smidge mumbly. No one could hear him. Not in all the chaos. Not until the chaos hushed.

Instead of talking louder than everyone else, he made everyone else quiet down. Instead of competing with the noise, he got rid of the noise. Instead of being more, he was less.

And it worked. If you want to hear Steven Wright deliver a joke, you can't unless you shut up and listen.

That's the story. I have no idea where I heard it or when. My brother and I grew up as Steven Wright fans, listening to his infamous deadpan delivery on a cassette tape we wore out in spots. Then someone stole it.

"When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child...eventually." Steven Wright

Maybe my brother told me the story. Maybe he made it up.

Steven, if you're out there, just go with it. 

The Life and Times of a Logo. And how it taught me hope.

Logos aren't bad. They're just drawn that way.

Mine was only an internal image. Placed there by a designer friend of mine. Fed by my own spoiled greed. Wanted for the sake of want. Like domesticating a tiger with a diamond collar. Because I can. Because I wish. Because it would be fun to pat and publicize.

But I didn't want to feed it or be fed to it.

The logo was for branding. To burn a mark into the hide of my devious future career plans (are there any other kind?). It would be my pet, since my landlord won't let me have one.

After months of working either with an illustrator or to find an illustrator, I still had nothing but doodles in my head and scratches on my paper. I couldn't get what was in my mind's eye out of my mind's eye and into a jpeg.

I only draw stick people. Sick stick people. It's a gift.

One day, after venting my frustration over the phone to my mother, she responded with, "I've just drawn something. Can I mail it to you?"

I suggested a snapshot sent via text (it's faster) but, otherwise, it was on its way.

What I didn't expect was something I'd actually like. She's brilliantly talented, but not as an illustrator. She raises fruits and vegetables, bees and children. She cooks like Mozart played. She does not draw.

She sent this:

And I loved it.

She took her idea and sent it to my brother to flesh it out.

He sent this:

And my love grew.

I took his drawing to some designer friends of mine for their thoughts.

They sent this:

And the love was eternal.

After all my frustration, dead ends, angst, and the occasional grabbing of a curl attached to my head and yanking bluntly, the answer came from a source I wouldn't have even considered: my Mom. Who isn't an illustrator. Who put the wheels in motion. After drawing out a sketch. On a scrap piece of paper. In roughly 90 seconds or less.

Hope, when it comes, may approach from the one direction you aren't looking.

Are you playing the game of your life from the corner of the field?

So...you're stuck on third base. So. What. Who said the best of life - the wins, the cheers, the applause - was all for first base? Or the pitcher's mound? Or home plate?

All that rowdy noise in the stands could be for you. Right where you are. Right there on third base. And all right now.

I tackled this topic for the LightQuest blog this month, if you want to check it out. Guess what I found? I'm on third base, too. But I'm about to play one hell of a game. So, if you're interested, let's play ball. 

Do you know your worth?

How much does our environment affect our self-worth? Maybe more than we care to admit.

Okay, I'll own this. More than I care to admit.

But what if we could stay focused on our goals, our missions, even our dreams, while still being ignored, criticized, or even vilified? Possible?

Abso-freakin'-lutely. 

But how?

This month's Thought Particles (a business newsletter I write each month for LightQuest Media) conquers this very topic. And conquers it with a fedora, bright red lipstick, and a serious case of self-worth.

Find out how you can, too.

The lipstick is optional.

When putting your best foot forward, watch where you step.

Gene said everything always works out in the end. I wondered what was this elusive end and where was it hiding.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

"You think about it." He shifted in his office chair, settling into the squeak of it, with that all-is-right-with-the-world expression I've come to expect on his face. "Doesn't it usually all work out in the end?"

A few days later I dropped a jar of apple sauce smashing it into a million microscopic pieces, one of which I found by stepping on it and shoving it into my foot. Hours of limping later, the glass worked out in the end.

He was on to something. 

Will a little Bibi go a long way?

There's little in this world more beautiful than a man with purpose walking into a room. Trust me on this. I study walks. It's creepy, for sure, but I do.

I'm not talking about power. It's certainly not about arrogance. It isn't even about the actual body motion - the length of his steps or swing of his arms. It's about certainty. Always certainty. Whether the crowd goes wild in support or repugnance.

If you want to find good examples of leadership, first watch the walk.

Benjamin Netanyahu entered Congress today with just such a walk. You couldn't say the man has a stroll or stride, swagger or saunter. It doesn't matter in the least. He walked in with a clearly defined purpose: to defend western civilization against a real threat.

It was Churchill time. A calling out of the stark reality and a call for action while action can still be taken.

I'm not a doomsayer. And I'm no political mastermind. But if you want a glimpse into our future, push play.

Born To Be Wildly Discontent

How stuck in a funk are you? Really stuck? Partially stuck? Are your shoes making that sucking noise at each step?

Here's my idea of a lifeline. It's this month's blog over at LightQuest Media. Just a snippet to see if you'd like to read the rest:

"...I was quizzing him about identity, like what happens when we lose ours.  What about those moments we are lost for direction, lost for purpose?  What about those moments we wake up and no longer recognize ourselves?  Our lives?  Our dreams?  I asked him if he had ever experienced that and, after a solid minute of silence where I assumed he was remembering the name of that great shrink he met once at a dinner party, who, as luck would have it, had a patient slot open, (he) answered with a definitive 'every time I’m about to make a big change.'
...(D)ripping wisdom with the same rhythm his glass dripped condensation, (he) laid out the problem."

Let me know if it worked. If not, I suggest we open a bottle of wine, get comfortable in the mud, and pretend this is a spa day. 

Silent as the Grave: why life is better than death, even when it's not

It's been over 20 years since the day I should have died. I don't have it marked on a calendar or anything. I don't even commemorate the day with a fresh bouquet of dead roses, my way of playing a twisted joke on myself.

Instead, when it rolls around, I just remember. Like magic.

The story is long and far too complex to describe. Let's just say I was alive, then I was seconds away from being not. I was dying from pneumonia, drowning from the inside out. And when my last breath decided not to come, my stubborn mother chose to stubbornly refuse. She yanked my body, literally, back into life.

And there you have it.

I'm alive.

It's a funny thought - this living past your due date thing - that creeps in ever so often, usually when life isn't all that swell. In all honestly, had I expired that day at the fresh-faced age of 15, I would have been spared lots of heartache and disappointments, like $4 gasoline and watching all six seasons of Lost only to still be confused at the end.

Then there's the whole 2008 elections I wouldn't have minded missing. The Janet Jackson Super Bowl snafu. One Indiana Jones movie too many. Celebrities on Twitter. Kanye West on stage. Bruce Jenner on estrogen.

You get it.

Life is often beautiful. But that doesn't mean it can't also be grotesque. Light with dark chocolate swirled in. Blissful but traumatic. Stunning but repulsive. It contains serious, unrelenting, often unbearable black holes. And, like it or not, we're often required to leap into those holes with a perfectly executed forward dive in the pike position.

That's life. The beautifully mundane and desperately disturbing. 

Years ago, I read a book by Jerry Sittser about his life after a drunk driver killed his mother, wife, and daughter. He and his other three children survived. Afterward, people would tell him that God had a plan, God knew, God still answered prayer. But God hadn't answered Jerry's. And now Jerry needed to know why.

The book, When God Doesn't Answer Prayer, delved into unanswered prayer with an honesty I needed at that moment. This moment, too. He was confused, hurt, battling with trust, and he didn't sugarcoat it because he's a Christian. God hadn't fulfilled His part of the contract and Jerry needed answers.

The "go to" Christian responses weren't cutting it.

I got that. I really did. They don't do anything for me, either.

It's possible there are Christians out there who really don't struggle with trust and faith. In each situation, no matter the circumstances, they face it with courage and peace. They never waver, never throw things, never get angry with God.

I want to meet these people. But not here. On earth, they'll only annoy me. Find me once we're in heaven, though, and let's chat.

That perfectly coiffed, perfectly taciturn martyr isn't me. I question. I seek. I investigate. Add to that the fact I'm a passionate person, God help me, and many times He doesn't. In fact, God may allow unanswered prayer and repetitive struggles in my life just to see me wind myself up so He can watch me go.

I've wondered if He'd stop if I started breaking stuff. But, geez, I hate cleaning up the mess after.

Living with unanswered prayer - those times of treading water in the black holes - has no easy answers. None. Jerry didn't really find any either, although he also wrote A Grace Disguised: How The Soul Grows Through Loss, which eludes to some kind of resolution.

He explained that the answers weren't easy. Or quick. Or even all that clear, other than to believe God was still sovereign and still trustworthy even when silent. 

What Jerry did find - I'm not convinced but not yet ruling it out either - is that all pain, loss, disappointment, sorrow, God can and will redeem. Somehow. Even the black hole we're swimming in, God will redeem that, too, like making it into an indoor, lighted pool with a bubbling hot tub.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not that Christian with the sunshine disposition no matter the circumstances. I'm a yeller. I'm a fighter. I'm Jacob, with the broken hip and all. So don't think I've figured it out with a few simple keystrokes. This is a life journey, my friends. One I never really win. I only have cycles with longer spells of wearing dry clothes than others.

I'm not a conqueror. I'm a sojourner. And I keep freakin' sojourning in the same spot.

Jerry is still working it out and so am I. His newest book, released in 2012, is called A Grace Revealed: How God Redeems the Story of Your Life. I ordered it today. And, funny little fact or not, when I went to purchase the book, Amazon asked me if I wanted to "redeem" my award points to get the book for free.

Why, yes. Thank you. I'll take that redemption. 

10 Ways to Fix 50 Shades

Don't talk problems. Talk solutions.

What a nifty little piece of business advice I keep hearing. So I'm applying it to 50 Shades of Grey.

The truth is, there are too many problems with this story for me to succinctly blog about it. Besides, researching this topic is bad for my complexion. A girl should really only loathe one thing at a time and currently my loathing is completely involved with ISIS.

So, let's talk solutions.

For 50 Shades, I've diagnosed more problems with and/or caused by this story than I have time to address. So I've narrowed down the solutions to the most loathsome 10:

1. Have the two main characters pick up trash along the highway. Not only is it far more productive than their current pastime, it still offers chances for them to incur the physical harm they so love.

2. Get E L James and her husband into couples' counseling. They can afford it now.

3. Replace all references of "inner goddess" in the book with "imaginary smurf."

4. Have Anastasia Steele ride in an elevator with a woman sporting a black eye, busted lip, and broken nose from her abusive husband.

5. Instead of being rich and physically attractive, make Christian Grey a working class mechanic with acne and a creepy back bedroom.

6.  Sell every copy of 50 Shades of Grey with a free copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy so they can tell a talented writer from a bored woman having a mid-life crisis.

7. Invite E L James to a support group for abused and battered women before she writes one more book.

8. Since sex can apparently sell anything, even bad sex, put the 50 Shade franchise to work funding the burdensome welfare system and save the taxpayer billions.

9. Give Anastasia more self worth. And a strong right cross.

10. Write a love story the polar opposite of this one and make a movie that inspires, loves, respects, and protects. (That one has already been done. Old-Fashioned opens on Valentine's Day.)

There are other areas of concern to pursue in this story, but I've simply got to get back to ISIS.

If truth is relative...

...then fried Snickers bars won't make you fat. Bernie Madoff faithfully invested $50 billion dollars. Milli Vanilli sang every word of "Blame It On The Rain." If you like your health insurance, you can keep it. Lance Armstrong always says "no" to drugs. There is no waste in government spending. Bill Clinton has always been faithful. Ditto Tiger Woods. Ditto again John Edwards. Smoking never causes cancer. Pinto beans are easily digestible. And Brian Williams has no reason to apologize.

If truth is relative.

Do. Then know. It's not a chicken or egg thing.

© Kmitu | Dreamstime Stock Photos

You learn how to wash dried egg yoke off a plate by washing dried egg yoke off a plate.

So I'm no Plato. But Plato was no Socrates. Wrap your mind around that one.

It's difficult to grasp, this concept of "doing," until there's a dirty dish in your hand. Then, as if having an out of body experience because you're too bored to be in your body, you realize you've devised a well run system of washing dishes without a single executed strategy. Or survey. Or flow chart.

You wash dishes like a gangsta. And there isn't a single milk ring at the bottom of a glass to tell you otherwise.

If given the option, most of us would skip the stuck on grease and go straight to the streamlined system. Who wouldn't opt to start with greatness instead of evolve there? Who doesn't want to arrive at Park Place without passing Go?

That isn't always the option, however. In fact, it rarely is. Maybe even never. All greatness takes work, takes doing that thing, practicing that thing, revising, reconfiguring, restructuring that thing, all while doing whatever that thing is some more. Winston Churchill once said, "Difficulties mastered are opportunities won." I wonder how many times he rewrote that? I wonder how many times I'll rewrite this? At present, we're hitting around nine.

In the world of marketing, the term "expert in your field" is tossed around like bangs in need of a trim. Every marketer wants to make you an expert and every you wants to be one.

But are you sure?

Years ago, while attending a national dance competition (as a spectator only), a fellow dancer from my class leaned over during a professional couple's spotlight performance and irritably remarked, "Why can't I do that? I want to dance like him!"

I asked him, "Are you sure? Because he's been dancing since grade school. Dancing is his job. He practices everyday with his partner. You can dance like him eventually, but you'll have to live like him to do it."  

He opted for no.

Knowledge may come by studying. But expertise comes by doing. Like my dish washing skills.

Every morning, I face down that drying egg yoke. And every day, I know exactly how to handle it. It took a few years, a few discoveries, like the miracle of presoak. There were dark days when I switched from over easy to scrambled. But I came back. I fried again. I faced the gall of that grip on my china, and I picked up my scrub brush.

I did the dishes. And now I know how.

How ridiculous people help us love the annoying ones

© Digimist523 | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Usually, I have the gym sauna all to myself. But not always.

There was the woman last month sprawled on her back across the lower bench. After 15 minutes and no movement, I assumed she was dead, but it turned out she was only taking a 175-degree nap. Then there was the blonde from a few weeks back. She walked in and out again in roughly 48 seconds.

If you can't stand the heat....

Otherwise, I tend to hit the sauna at the non-peak hours, apparently, because I've come to think of it as my hiding place. No one would think to look for me in there. And, even if they did, the stifling heat would deter them from coming in to get me.

Recently, while racing to the sauna where I could sweat in peace and relieve stress from my day, I walked in on a woman in dress mode and shouting her apologies before I'd hardly realized what the shouting was about.

Not knowing what else to do, I took a seat in the corner and focused on the ceiling.

I never got her name, mostly because she didn't stop talking long enough for me to ask. Instead, while switching from one layer of clothing to another in a series so complex I couldn't keep up, she told me about her home in Chicago, her mother with dementia, her views on public decency, and her pastor's sermon she could repeat in graphic detail about God's plan for sex.

After I got over the shock and embarrassment, I found it quite educational.

In between tying her splashy moo moo over a satiny slip of some kind and lacing up her all purpose sneakers, she recanted conversations she's had with a centenarian she visits after church on Sundays. She told me about the house where her mother has lived for 44 years. She tsk tsked through a conversation she'd had recently with a few young women who needed set straight.

When necessary, she would tuck a layer of fabric around her right breast, which mysteriously could never get enough fabric.

I came to the sauna to be alone. I came because it's where I'm always alone. After a day where someone had managed to press one of only three buttons I actually possess (my political buttons are totally separate from this total and are, therefore, exempt from all rules whether real or implied), all I wanted was to be away from all humans currently on planet earth, as well as any soon-to-visit alien species in this galaxy or beyond.

People are stressful. People are difficult. I didn't want to be around people.

As this woman talked - and tucked - I couldn't help but laugh. And be shocked. And laugh again because she amused me so greatly. She was charming and real, odd but personal, and if I didn't want to like people at that moment, God shouldn't have put me in a sauna with her.

When she left, wheeling her suitcase of various attire stuffed inside, she threw a blessing in my direction and then suggested I take a turn in the hot tub while fully attired in my workout clothes.

Once alone again, I thought about people. Yeah. Them. People.

I thought and I surmised and I scrunched my face and then I sweated through the scrunching and I considered all the ways people are terrible sometimes.

But, then again, sometimes I am, too.

People can be rude and inconsiderate, obnoxious and just seriously annoying, and that's not even getting into the deeper, darker layers of humanity where we turn cruel and even evil.

People suck. But, as my sauna friend showed me, sometimes, they also shine in the most unexpected of places. And for that reason alone, I left the sauna.

Why shutting up may save the world

The world is plagued with problems. Talking may be the worst.

I've been reminded of this lately, like when my renters promised to pay for the carpet they damaged and then boot scootin boogied out without a dime. Or when a certain President in a certain country delivered a State of the Union speech with promises everyone has certainly heard before.

Yes we have. 

Talk is cheap, they say. And they say it a lot. We seem to think talk is the answer to all that ails us. Take kidnapped girls in Nigeria, for example. Last year a hashtage was the only way to save them. Celebrities, politicians, everyone galloped into Twitter to save the day. This year, we don't talk about them much. It might be because, last we heard, they were sold into sex slavery to Islamic terrorists. 

Maybe talk isn't cheap at all. In many cases, it's unimaginably costly.

In business, especially advertising, talk is constant. And repetitive. There's often greater commitment to the number of times a thing is said more than the relevance of the thing said. I see this often. Whenever a client or individual approaches me for content marketing advice, the first two questions I can count on hearing is:

- What sites should I be on?
- How often should I be posting?

The "what" of that post comes later, if at all. And, to me, that's the only question that really matters. But, heck. What do I know? Analytic charts just don't excite me as, apparently, they should. I don't care if 10,000 people heard nothing. I care that one heard something.

In all this talk, the poetry of action is getting lost. It's hard to accept how far we've committed to "meetings" and "committees" and "discussion" and "brainstorming" as our value base until our toilet gets clogged. When plumbers start talking at our pipes instead of clearing them, I'll be going up to the spirit in the sky.

We need less talk. More doing. Less blabber. More brawn. Less discussion. More motion. And on that note, I'll shut up.

Resistance is NOT futile

Originally posted at LightQuestMedia.com/blog

In 1963, a loaf of bread was 22 cents. Buy a pound of chicken for 29 cents and, with your loaf, you could feed your entire family for less than the cost of one small burger on the McDonald’s dollar menu of today. In fact, these were the days when a dollar could actually take you places, right after you spent it buying three gallons of gasoline.

It was a different world. A world with different rules.

In 1963, rotary phones went to push button dial. We learned French cuisine with Julia Child. And everybody, absolutely everyone, had Peter, Paul and Mary’s song about a dragon stuck in their head.

It was a different world. A world with different rules.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream that year. He told us about it for 17-minutes while standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Our 35 President had dreams, too, but they ended in November when a gun went off in Dealey Plaza.

It was a different world. A world with different rules.

While Leslie Gore insisted you didn’t own her and the Beatles finally arrived in America, there was a woman in Dallas, Texas who chose that year as the year she had had enough.

She was a business woman. A sales woman. A lady with a head for entrepreneurship and the flawless skin to prove it. And in 1963, she quit.

“Most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try.” – Mary Kay Ash 

Like a salmon. Exactly like a salmon. 

 

Mary Kay Ash lived in a world where women in the workplace were more anomaly than normality. The female gender was rushing into work, but rushing with 60 percent less pay than men.

Even in 1963, the year of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, the year of evolution, the year “equality” became a dinner table discussion, Mary Kay found herself once again passed up for a promotion in favor of a man, a man she had trained, a man now earning twice her salary.

It was the last time, the very last time, she would play by anyone else’s rules.

Instead, she retired. At age 45, she walked out and decided to reshuffle the deck.

“You can have anything in this world you want, if you want it badly enough and you’re willing to pay the price.” – Mary Kay Ash 

 

New player. New game. New rules. 

Inside Mary Kay’s head was 25 years of direct-selling business experience. She had made an art form out of hosting home parties and selling housewares. Her skills were so remarkable, in fact, she had been hired away from her employer Stanley Home Products in 1952 to work for World Gifts.

And, yet, promotion after promotion passed her by.

When she left World Gifts over a decade later, she decided to put all those years of experience, all those lessons, all those business ideas and selling ideas and techniques down on paper. She made two lists: the good business practices she had witnessed in companies and the business practices that needed changed.

She had intended to write a book. Instead, she launched a global cosmetics company.

“No” isn’t the final word. 

 

Mary Kay knew business could be different, women could be successful, a company could make their customers feel important, and you could do it all by incorporating the Golden Rule. She knew this to be true. Her world, however revolutionary it was in 1963, was still telling her “no.” She didn’t accept that as the final answer. She rebelled. She took her savings of $5,000 and said, in essence, ‘watch me prove you wrong.’

And, to this day, Mary Kay, Inc. does. Every year. To the tune of $3.5 billion in wholesale sales worldwide.

“For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” – Mary Kay Ash

It’s called ‘herd mentality’ for a reason.  

 

The world in 2015 may be as revolutionary as revolutions come. Protests are becoming commonplace. World leaders are marching in the streets. And, yes, you can feed your entire nontraditional family on the dollar menu at McDonald’s.

Still, even in today’s progressive world, if you have a dream, a new idea, an unconventional method to your madness, then you have obstacles. Different is never easily made the norm. Even when different is better, faster, more streamlined, more economical, or just makes more common sense. If what you dream to do or to be is against the tide, then expect a current. And get prepared to practice your breaststroke.

Quitting is only one of many options. 

 

Here’s the good news: salmon do eventually reach their destination and so did Mary Kay. Her resistance paid off. Her ideas were validated, her work rewarded. Then, instead of a promotion with a salary, she became a CEO and one of histories most successful and recognizable female entrepreneurs.

Not bad for a day’s work.

Celebrating Labor Day in January

Not that this will ever benefit me in life, but, when possible, I like to rock me some knee pads.