Questions

Recently I took a trip that included a stop at one of my “alma maters”, Radford University. Over twenty years ago, I spent two years there doing graduate work in Industrial /Organizational Psychology.

The fun part of the visit was walking around campus. It seems a bit smaller and it has changed so much - but so have I. I was flooded by the memories of great people and good times.

More important, I started thinking, “if I could meet the young man I was for coffee, what questions could I answer for him?” Certainly, I tell him to take more risks and don’t play it so conservatively. And, geez, have more fun.

Then I started thinking, “What if today, I could have lunch with the man I will become 20 years from now? What advice would he give me?”

Would he tell me that it was worth all the effort? Would he tell me to take more time to enjoy it all? What advise could he give me about my two step-sons?

If you could go back 20 years, what advice would you give yourself?

I'm lucky...

Yes, it's Valentine’s Day, And while some people seem a bit jaded by the whole thing, I think it's a great time to tell my wife how much I love her.

You see, I'm really lucky. This is my second marriage (second time was a charm for me) and I could not ask for more.

Now, being a Corporate Shrink, I'm usually give advice about business related issues. But today, I'm turning my attention to affairs of the heart. And the best advice I've ever read about great relationships comes from Mark Goulston, MD.

His Blog (http://www.markgoulston.com/blog/) ran a great piece on relationships.

Here it is:

1. Go to bed at the same time. Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn't wait to go to bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.

2. Cultivate common interests. After the passion settles down, it's common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don't minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.

3. Walk hand in hand or side by side. Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand in hand or side by side. They know it's more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.

4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode. If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can't resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.

5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong. If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work. Our skin has a memory of "good touch" (loved), "bad touch" (abused) and "no touch" (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the "good touch," which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.

7. Say "I love you" and "Have a good day" every morning. This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.

8. Say "Good night" every night, regardless of how you feel. This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.

9. Do a "weather" check during the day. Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you're more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.

10. Be proud to be seen with your partner. Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact -- hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

Happy couples have different habits than unhappy couples. A habit is a discrete behavior that you do automatically and that takes little effort to maintain. It takes 21 days of daily repetition of a new a behavior to become a habit. So select one of the behaviors in the list above to do for 21 days and voila, it will become a habit...and make you happier as a couple. And if you fall off the wagon, don't despair, just apologize to your partner, ask their forgiveness and recommit yourself to getting back in the habit.

(c) 2008 Mark Goulston

Happiness

Happiness is not a matter of fortune or worldly possessions. It is a mental attitude. It comes from appreciating what we have, instead of being miserable about what we don't have. It's so simple, yet so hard for the human mind to comprehend. - Anonymous Quote

At Carnegie Mellon University, there was an exercise for Professors to imagine that they were going to die. What would they say if they knew it was their "Last Lecture"? For Randy Pausch, a 47-Year-Old Professor, it was not an exercise. It is his reality because he is dying of Pancreatic Cancer. In the video below, he gives his “Last Lecture”. If you have not seen this, I urge you to take the time to watch.

Randy Pausch original lecture (approximately 107 min.):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5700431505846055184&pr=goog-sl

Link to his website at Carnegie Mellon University:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

Second Chances

We're given second chances every day of our life. We don't usually take them, but they're there for the taking. - Andrew M. Greeley

Recently, I saw someone I admire get a second chance. A friend of mine had some problems, the kind of problems that give us all nightmares. He was heading down a path of personal destruction. He made some mistakes and some bad choices.

But he turned himself around. He looked at himself, what he was doing with his life and decided to make his life better. He gave himself a second chance.

It was not easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is easy. There were setbacks and he had to take responsibility for his actions and his life. But he did it. Now, he smiles again, he’s funny and fun to be around.

Consequently, other people have given him a second chance. And that’s really what’s important.

The lesson: Give yourself a second chance first.

Practice...

I recently read a great article in Wine Spectator entitled 10,000 Hours by Matt Kramer. Essentially, the article talks about expertise. According to Daniel Levitin, cognitive psychologist and author of This Is Your Brain on Music, it takes approximately 10,000 hours to achieve expertise in any field.

“In study after study of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years.”

Kramer goes on to talk about 10,000 hours in the context of wine expertise. He concludes that real experts “not only put in the time, they put in their hearts.” And perhaps that is the true mark of an expert. Practice and Passion.

Passion is what drives people to be great. Practice is what builds expertise. If you truly love what you do and commit yourself to disciplined practice, there is nothing that can truly deny you from achieving expertise.

What Passion do you intend to Practice?

Changes...

Change seems to be the only constant in life. After 20 years with the same employer, I’ve struck out on my own. Change is sometimes thrust upon us. Other times, change is necessary if we’re going to grow and move ahead. In my case, it was a bit of both.

After being with the same employer for so long, I needed a new challenge. Rather than look for another job (while it was safe and initially appealing), I wanted the challenge of building and growing my own business. I wanted to feel excited about a new venture. It’s often been said that, on our death bed, we don’t regret what we have done so much as we regret what we did not try. I did not want to look back at my life and think “Man, I should have started my own company…”

I’ve had the honor of coaching a number of individuals in my career. At some level, each individual had issues with the fear of trying something new. So, when it came time to really DO this, I found myself feeling the same kind of fear. But here’s the thing I found myself saying – feel the fear and do it anyway.

That’s the lesson I’ve taken from this…

See our company website at www.wrightoneconsulting.com