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Grow & Scale A Business That Will Set You Free
Doctor No
What is essential is invisible to the eye.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
I have a confession to make: I loved the old James Bond movies.
Dr. No was the first. The inimitable Sean Connery played Bond. Julius No was the villain, Dr. No.
But these days, I tend to think that anyone with doctoral level skills in “No” ought to play the hero.
I gave a workshop recently on productivity and work- life balance.
As I was preparing for the workshop, I saw a colleague of mine, Sandy, at a conference.
Sandy called out to me across the hallway, “Walt, I hear you’re giving the seminar on life balance.”
“Yes,” I said. “Are you coming?”
Breathlessly (because Sandy always breathless and in a hurry), Sandy replied, “No, can’t, have no time.”
We both chuckled about how ridiculous that sounded. But as ridiculous as it may have been, it is, for most of us, not only irony but truth.
We have no time to get balanced because we’re so out of balance. And breathless.
Saying “no” might help.
But that’s super challenging. You want to please others and be seen as affable. If you get asked to contribute in some way to a church or school or community event, your knee-jerk reaction is to say yes. And if you dare to say no, it’s not without some chagrin and guilt.
Parents are particularly prone to “yes.” We’re hard-wired to want the best for our kids. We’re hard-wired to want to see them happy. Most of the time, in our minds, the “best,” or what we think will make them “happy,” is to say “yes” to whatever the request is. Even when saying “no” may be the “right” response.
Helping professionals are especially at risk. We get paid to come to the rescue. And coming to the rescue feeds our sense of self-worth. The more we say yes, the more meaning and significance we feel. Even when saying “yes” places us at risk for divorce, depression, and burn-out.
Not only that, saying lots of yeses and staying busy is, for many, a badge of honor.
You gotta be busy. Because being busy is to be important, we think. To be busy is to have worth, we think.
The problem, of course, is that by continually saying yes, we become stretched too thin, over-extended. Depleted. Worth-less.
I really like the Pareto Principal. It’s also called the 80/20 rule.
Tim Ferriss in his provocative book The 4-Hour Work Week, says, “When I came across Pareto’s work one late evening, I had been slaving away with 15-hour days seven days per week, feeling completely overwhelmed and generally helpless.”
Overwhelmed and helpless ring any bells? I know that I am susceptible to this!
“Faced with certain burnout or giving Pareto’s ideas a trial run, I opted for the latter,” Ferriss says. “The next morning, I began a dissection of my business and personal life through the lenses of two questions:
1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?”
What are the 20% of the customers or clients that give you 80% of the headaches? Get rid of them. What is the 20% of your work that gives you 80% of your joy? Focus on it.
Who are the 20% of people who produce 80% of your happiness, who support and encourage you? Who are the 20% who cause the 80% of your angst?
You get the idea.
You know you take on too much.
Especially during the holidays.
Say no more often. Say yes only to what is essential. Say yes to what brings you joy.
Wasted Is Good
There is a lost art. An essential art.
An art that unlocks the door to the deepest parts of yourself.
It’s called: wasting time.
Anathema, I know. Especially from a time management and productivity expert!
Yet, without wasting time prodigiously, you will always be caught in the slipstream of life, without ever savoring its deep joy.
Our dominant cultural message is: stay busy, do more, drive harder.
But at what cost?
It seems that “we have lost the habit of unprofitable pleasure,” writes the Carmelite mystic William McNamara. “We shall get nowhere, we shall never find life, life will escape us, unless we learn not to be always bustling about – unless we learn to be still, to let things happen around us, to wait, listen, receive, contemplate.”
You will never connect with the real treasure; you will never know the true value; you will never taste the bountiful goodness that surrounds you every moment your life; unless you recover and practice this lost art.
The holidays are here again. The slipstream will become a vortex.
Unless you deliberately plan to waste some time.
What do you think?
Will you give it a try?
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Tired of the vortex? Ready to create something new? Let’s connect. Email me: walt@summit-success.com
And, stop by for a visit at: https://summit-success.com/
Hello Darkness My Old Friend
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 this past week.
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/
About Your Costume
What are you gonna be for Halloween? Who are you going to dress up as?
Masks and costumes. Parties and planning. Fervor, festivities and fever pitch.
Bigger than Christmas is seems.
What is it about Halloween that so excites, that so sparks the imagination?
Yes, fun for sure. The chance to let loose, hide out, switch it up. The possibility of being someone new, something new, someone different from who you are in the hum-drum of each day.
And the truth is that a lot of folks are worn down by the hum-drum of each they. The want new, better, different. Just not the same. For god’s sake, not the same.
So, who do you want to be?
More important: Who are you already… really?
Are you your job? Your role in a relationship? Your hobby, pursuit, passion?
I am an executive coach, high altitude mountaineer, blue-water sailor, adventure photographer, husband, father, business owner… .
But is that who I am… really?
- If you have a job and lose that job… who are you?
- If you have a marriage and the marriage unravels, who are you?
- If you have kids and they grow up and move away, who are you?
- If you’re an athlete and you’re injured, who are you?
- Who are you when your friend betrays you? When your parent dies? When your business fails?
- Who are you in the face of success, failure and change?
Who are you… really?
Your identity. The very core of who you are. What a struggle that can be. Especially for success and achievement junkies… I know a few… They’re the folks who come to coaching… (As for myself, on advice of counsel, I can neither admit nor deny any of the heretofore!)
When you’re not doing, achieving, accomplishing… who are you?
(Yeah, I hate that question.)
Ann and I traveled to Nepal earlier this year… a completely different culture… a completely different pace… If stress and adrenaline are your fuel, you won’t find much there. And without that fuel, we ask, … who are we?
The Buddhists teach: Nothing to do, nothing to be, nothing to have.
Really. WTF? What then?
One of my very favorite stories from the Torah is when Moses comes upon the burning bush. God speaks to Moses from the bush, telling Moses what he needs to be about. Moses, looking for a bit of borrowed cred, asks God for God’s name. God says, “I am who I am.” Tell those Israelites that “I am” sent you.
Maybe there’s a clue here. Maybe when you define yourself with a title, give yourself a label, tie an object to who you think you are, you make yourself small, you limit your (divine) potential.
Maybe, at the end of it all, one more billable hour booked, one more product sold, one more article published, one more email sent, one more race run, one more mountain climbed, won’t really matter.
Maybe it’s ok just to be.
And damn, what an interesting (and unusual) costume that might be!
Happy Halloween.
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When you’re ready to reclaim the you that’s really you, let’s talk. Email me: walt@walthampton.com
And stop by for a visit: https://summit-success.com/
Either Love It or Leave It
You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out. –Steve Jobs
I have a client – articulate, driven, highly educated and talented – whose business is failing.
Because she doesn’t love it.
I have a friend who is having a devil of a time landing a job in a field in which he has worked for years – and excelled.
Because he doesn’t love it.
Love for what you do is the only thing that sets you apart.
Love for what you do is the only thing that will sustain you.
Benjamin Bloom (of Head Start fame), while he was a professor at the University of Chicago, did a study of 120 outstanding scholars, artists, and athletes. He was trying to figure out what made them tick; and even more important, what common factors contributed to their greatness.
He controlled for intelligence; he controlled for family background. He discovered that geography didn’t matter; that race didn’t matter; that socio-economic advantage didn’t matter; and that it didn’t matter whether these folks were ‘naturally smart.’ The only thing – the one common denominator – that distinguished these folks was extraordinary drive.
And the only thing that fuels extraordinary drive… is passion.
A love for the ‘game.’
A love so keen that it propels you out of bed in the morning and sets the day on fire.
A love so strong that you can take the heat, endure the pain, keep the faith, go the distance.
There are lots and lots of sales people, countless Internet marketers, a bazillion coaches, more lawyers than real people, doctors out the ying yang. A nearly inexhaustible selection of authors and artists and plumbers and HR managers and executives and electricians.
Your ‘job,’ your position, is not unique.
But you are.
Over the long haul, you can never compete on price, credentials, ‘novelty,’ flashy ads or noise.
Because at that level, everyone looks the same. Your voice disappears in the landscape.
All noise; and no signal.
But when you’re on fire, you stand out.
When you’re filled with passion, there is no one else who looks like you. No one else who can possibly compete.
When you claim your own authentic voice, there is no competition.
None at all. Your success is guaranteed.
Your energy signature is yours alone. It carries the day.
Here’s the truth: Just because you’re good at something, or have done something for a long time, doesn’t mean you should keep on doing it.
Dale Carnegie once said, “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”
And you can’t possibly have fun unless you’re really feelin’ the love.
Steve Jobs said, “[T]he only way to do great work is to love what you do…. Don’t settle”
You are called to do great work.
Find that love.
Don’t ever settle.
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When you’re ready to step into that work you’ll really love, let’s talk. Email me: walt@walthampton.com
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