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Sucked Into The Vortex

by Walt | Nov 30, 2023 | Success | 1 Comment

It’s December, and you’re being pulled into the vortex of time. The maelstrom is all around you! Can you feel it?

After Halloween, the year just seems to accelerate. After Thanksgiving, the days move forward at warp speed. The commitments and the demands and the lists and the expectations and the projects that need to be done – have to get done – before the end of the year seem to mount logarithmically. And then there are the card lists and the gift lists and the shopping and the school concerts and the holiday parties….

In many professions, there are the added pressures of pulling in the receivables and closing the deals by year’s end.

What to do?

Wrong question.

The question is what not to do.

The way out of the vortex – the only way – is the simplest and the hardest thing of all. The only way out is to say “no.”

Saying “no” is not news and it’s not rocket science. All of the leadership and success books will tell you that it is fundamental to your sanity and, paradoxically, a key to your productivity and goal achievement.

Jack Canfield in his book The Success Principles recommends creating a “stop-doing” or “don’t do” list. (My favorite list!)

I invited a colleague to a program I was hosting. Her response: “Thank you. But I ‘don’t do’ evening commitments.” (Those are pretty clear boundaries, I thought!)

But, why is saying “no” so hard?

Well, most of us are conditioned from very early on that “no” is not the “right” answer. As time goes on, you also begin to layer on your own assumptions – whether true or not – about what others expect of you.

Sometimes, I suspect, saying “yes” is just a habit. (I said yes to a commitment recently without even stopping to realize I would be out of the country during the time I’d committed!)

And yes, isn’t there a healthy dose of narcissistic self-importance that loves to believe that somehow your presence is essential or that you are the only one who can do something?

So as the vortex swirls, I’m working on saying “no” more often.

I’ve started by asking myself whether a project or an invitation is one that I “should” do or accept rather than one I “want” to do or accept. I’m working at eliminating the “shoulds.”

(Note to self: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.)

Saying no to the non-essential allows you to be more fully present in what is most important. By doing less, you can pay closer attention to what is essential. And as The Little Prince reminds us, “what is essential is invisible to the eye.” It takes time to see.

The Carmelite monk William McNamara writes, “We are not really practical, and we shall get nowhere, we shall never find life, life will escape us, unless we learn not to always be bustling about – unless we learn to be still, to let things happen around us, to wait, listen, receive, contemplate.”

“One final word on the subject of time,” McNamara says:

“I suggest that we stop doing half the work that presently consumes us. Then let us attend to the remaining half wholeheartedly, with contemplative vision and creative love. I stake the authenticity of our lives and the effectiveness of our work on this radical shift.”

I described the vortex to a colleague as a giant flushing toilet bowl.

Not a great place to end up.

About That Attitude

by Walt | Nov 23, 2023 | Success | 2 Comments

What you focus on expands.

When you focus on what is working well in your life, more of what’s working shows up. When you focus on opportunities, you see more opportunities. (When you focus on what’s problematic… you’ll definitely find a lot more of that!)

Focus sets your frame.

You know this to be true: Think of the last time you shopped for a car. You had your eye on a particular make and model. Maybe you even took it for a test drive. And then… you saw that car EVERYWHERE! Almost as if everyone on the planet had decided to own the very car you’d been thinking about. But, of course, the only thing that had changed was your focus.

When you set your focus on something, you are much more likely to see it.

Gratitude has that power. When you focus on what you are grateful for… more wonderful things pour into your life… more to be grateful for shows up.

So, as we enter into this holiday season, even with all of its stresses and strains, experiment with keeping a “gratitude journal:” Every day, write down three things that you are grateful for… they can be ordinary or extraordinary; anything at all; they can be the same three things as yesterday; or new things: your health, your family, your friends, a new client, a new business opportunity.

You will be astounded by the power of an “attitude of gratitude.”

And I am grateful for you.

Never Too Late

by Walt | Nov 16, 2023 | Success | 4 Comments

Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

No quote has troubled me more over the years than this one from Saint-Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars. Its clear message is that the passage of time eclipses the deepest yearnings of our hearts.

I think Saint-Exupery is wrong. I think we always yearn. I think our dreams always burn within us. The problem is that we don’t act.

My mentor, Galen Rowell, once wrote, “One of the most shocking realizations of adult life is that most of us are not fulfilling the closest-held dreams of our youth. Instead of pursuing dreams that were once integral parts of our personalities, we end up in one way or another fulfilling someone else’s idea about who and what we should be, usually at the expense of our creative urges.”

It is this realization that discourages, that breeds bitterness. It is this realization that dulls the spirit, that frustrates the soul.

But this realization that we are off course need not harden; it can be harnessed; it can propel us to fulfill what we know to be our heart’s deepest desire. With Wisdom, we can use it to drive us forward.

Time is a thief. But it need not steal those hopes and aspirations that form the core of who we were always meant to be. Our dreams define us. It is our essential Purpose to achieve them.

One of the most common themes I hear after talks I give on holding fast to dreams is this: I’m too old; it’s too late.

That’s bullshit.

Too Old, Too Late is a story told to mask fear, to hide insecurity, to explain resistance, and to excuse inaction.

History is replete with geniuses and giants in business, industry, art, entertainment, and athletics who were not “young” when they started out, whose talents and passions were ignited and came to fruition over the long arc of their lives. Here are but a few examples: Beverly Sills who eked out a singing career until age 40 when she became an operatic star; Colonel Sanders who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 60s; Charles Darwin who toiled with his research and didn’t publish his first book on evolution until age 50; David Oreck who didn’t get started in his now world-famous business until he was 40; Grandma Moses who painted in her 70s; Julia Child who did not appear on television until she was 50; Rodney Dangerfield who only finally made it as a comic in his 40s; Bahadur Sherchan who holds the record as the oldest man to climb Mt. Everest at age 77; and Sister Madonna Budner who still competes in Ironman triathlons at age 81.

There will always be other priorities, other responsibilities, and other things that “require” our attention. We are endlessly capable of explaining to ourselves why now is not the “right” time to listen to the still small voice that calls to us in the night, that echoes in the recesses of our hearts.

But what do we tell ourselves at the end of our lives?

How old will you be if you don’t start now?

Our resolves may flag. Our spirits may falter. But the clay of our lives does not harden. It is always ours to form.

Always.

Dreams deferred are dreams denied. Do what you’ve always dreamed of doing.

Do it now.

That Lying Lizard

by Walt | Nov 9, 2023 | Success | 6 Comments

“It’s steeper near the top,” Seth Godin writes in his chapter on Resistance.

This is not always true. I’ve crested many a summit ridge after a steep and arduous ascent to find a short, gentle walk to the top.

But I think I know what Godin means. So often, the deeper we move into a big project, whether it be a work-related start-up, a creative endeavor, an athletic goal, or a high mountain summit, the scarier it gets. This is especially true if we have a lot of skin in the game, a lot at risk, a lot on the line, our livelihood at stake. And if we have “burned the boats” and foreclosed a means of escape, sheer terror can set in.

The truth is this: the greater the fear, the higher the resistance; the starker the terror, the greater the temptation to turn around, give up, and go back.

The English theologian Thomas Fuller said, “The darkest hour is just before the dawn.” Fuller wasn’t a climber. But he knew what he was talking about. Up high in the mountains, it is the darkest hour. And the coldest one too! It’s that hour when the feet feel like cement blocks; the hands like meat hanging on a hook. Fatigue is high. Morale is low.

It’s that hour when I am most vulnerable. When the warmth of my tent beckons, when thoughts of my sleeping bag call to me. It is that hour when I most feel the fear.

It is our lizard brain, as Godin calls it, that fuels that fear. Our lizard brain says: Abandon the fight; engage the flight; take the easy way out.

I wish I had a simple solution for this. But I don’t. I fight the lizard on every project, every run, every summit morning. The lizard always wants me to turn back. It always wants comfort. It always wants safety. It never wants change.

The only advice that I can offer is this: hold fast to the vision of success, hold fast to the vision of the dream. Take one step at a time. Don’t look down. Don’t look back.

Often the first step is the hardest. As momentum builds, our adrenaline kicks in and carries us through.

But deep in those projects that take weeks, months, or years, it is easy to get lost and disoriented, disheartened and discouraged. In the darkness of those pre-dawn hours, the lizard screams. It’s then that we need faith in ourselves. And a partner or coach who encourages and empowers us; and fellow travelers on the Journey to cheer us on.

Susan Jeffers says feel the fear and do it anyway. Tony Robbins says that the difference between success and failure can be just 2mm, perhaps a hundredth of a second.

Don’t stop. Push through. Stay the course.

The lizard brain says turn back: back to comfort, back to safety, back to what you know. The lizard brain says it will always be cold, it will always be dark.

The lizard lies.

The dawn always comes.

And oh the summit is so good.

Darkness My Old Friend

by Walt | Nov 2, 2023 | Success | 2 Comments

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

— Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

We’ll turn the clocks back in just a few days.

The shadows here in New England will begin to fall by mid-afternoon.

I’ll rail against it.

Some find the dark cozy and embracing. They relish the long evenings in front of the fire. They embrace the dark.

I hate it.

I love the Alaska Range in the summer: the long endless days and the midnight sun. I’d jump from a bridge if I lived there in the winter.

Of course, many folks have taken care of this by moving to places like Southern California, or Belize. And there are many more who embrace the changing seasons with greater equanimity than I.

But the seasons of change can be another matter altogether.

Most all of us get used to our routines. Constancy is safe. Secure.

We like predictability.

Anything that disrupts the status quo is, well, disruptive.

We fight change. I do. Yet change is really the only constant. It is the rhythm of things. High tide and low; ’til death do us part, or sooner; daytime and night; in sickness and in health; drought and flood; in good times and in bad; carry days and rest days; generativity and the dark night of the soul.

The legendary Jim Rohn taught so eloquently on the seasons of life: The seasons always come, Rohn said. “You cannot change the seasons but you can change yourself.”

Winters always come. And there are all kinds of them, Rohn said. “There are economic winters, when the financial wolves are at the door; there are physical winters, when our health is shot; there are personal winters when our heart is smashed to pieces.”

Use winter to get stronger, wiser, better. Get ready for the Spring, Rohn said. It always follows winter.

“Opportunity follows difficulty.” Take advantage of the Spring. Till the earth. Plant.

In the Summer, nourish and protect. “Every garden must be defended in the summer,” Rohn taught. The garden of values – social, political, marital commercial- the garden of ideas, the garden of all that is good. Be on watch over your garden in the summer.

Reap what you have sown in the fall. Take responsibility for what you did not sow, for what you did not protect. But celebrate the harvest. “Learn to welcome the fall without apology or complaint,” Rohn said.

Embrace the seasons of our lives. Know them. Use them.

Why do we fight so what is so?

To be with change, to be in its flow; to experience the shifting sands with open hands and open hearts. To have the courage to accept and say: “and this too.” Cherish this challenge. It is all we really have.

The seeds of new life blow on the cold winds of November. Winter will come. But so will Spring. It is the rhythm of things.

To live fully, deeply into each season of our lives: this is what we are called to do.

Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends

into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out

to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing as we must, how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be? I don’t say it’s easy, but what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black and the sweets of the year be doomed.

— Mary Oliver

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Want some support through a season of change? Let’s talk. Email me: walt@summit-success.com

And stop by for a visit at: https://summit-success.com/