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.