Abso-effing-lutely
If what you’re doing isn’t working
After all. It is a new year. So much this. [via Seth Godin]:
If what you’re doing isn’t working
Perhaps it’s time to do something else.
Not a new job, or a new city, but perhaps a different story.
A story about possibility and sufficiency. A story about connection and trust. A story about for and with, instead of at or to.
But if that story isn’t getting you where you need to go, then what’s it for?
It’s entirely possible that the story we tell ourselves all day every day is true and accurate and useful, the very best representation of the world as it actually is.
It’s possible, but vanishingly unlikely.
If you can’t solo bootstrap it, get some help to install a new story. It’s worth it.
Photo by Reuben Juarez on Unsplash
Here we go again
Seth Godin is my Monday morning hero:
“Here we go again”
We all say that to ourselves.
The question is: when do you say it?
Do you say it when you’re being rejected, failing, stuck, panicked, overwhelmed or alone?
Or do you say it when you’re engaged, winning, changing things and in the groove?
Because the more you rehearse this feeling, the more it’s going to happen.
We get what we expect.
And we expect what we get.
The easiest way to change this cycle is to alter the scale we play in. If you keep failing at the big stuff, it’s worth honing the habit of succeeding at the small stuff first. And if you’re finding yourself in a rut, a cycle of failure, walk away from that series of projects and find a new field to plant your seeds in.
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
Conserve the sound
Conserve the sound is an online museum for vanishing and endangered sounds. The sound of a dial telephone, a walkman, a analog typewriter, a pay phone, a 56k modem, a view master toy or even a cell phone keypad are partially already gone or are about to disappear from our daily life.
Check it out HERE>>
Leader or manager? There is a big difference
Leaders inspire people, while managers have people who do work for them. Here’s how to figure out which you are, and how you can change. READ MORE >>
via FastCompany.com
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
You WILL have unhappy customers
Words of wisdom, and advise, from the always brilliant Bernadette Jiwa of The Story of Telling:
The unhappy customer lays his story at our feet, and we hastily pick it up, place it on our shoulders and carry it around with us. Yes, sometimes our products or services fall short, sometimes we get it wrong even when we’re doing our best.
Take responsibility for your mistakes and fix the things you can fix—while remembering there are some things you have no way of making good. You are not obliged to own the weight of your customer’s circumstances or worldview. You have an obligation to get back on track for the other ninety-nine customers you hope to serve and delight. Some of the greatest lessons unhappy customers can teach us are not about improving systems, processes and logistics, which in the end are easily fixed. The important learnings are about ourselves, and our resilience and determination to do good work and make a difference to the people we get the chance to serve again tomorrow and the day after that.
Photo by Don Agnello on Unsplash
In order that people may be happy
In 1851 John Ruskin* said:
In order that people may be happy at work, these three things are needed:
They must be fit for it, they must not do too much of it, and they must have a sense of success in it.
*John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist.