Courage of Conviction

I wrote an article about washing my cell phone. Yes, it’s true - I wasn’t careful, didn’t check the pockets of my shorts and ended up with a clean, but unworkable phone. In times like these, there are plenty of lessons to be learned from such mistakes. In fact, events like this give us a moment to ask some questions of ourselves. Here’s a sample of the questions this event caused me to ask:

I tell you this story for a couple of reasons - first when you go through an unpleasant experience, what’s the silver lining? What are you learning from the experience? What do you have control over?

Second - make an assessment - ie. ask yourself questions - How bad do I need a phone? Can things wait until a later time without chaos happening?

I wrote a post about being flexible.  Being flexible is so very important to so many parts of life - not just business.  Being stiff, or rigid, is the equivalent to death.  Dead things have no flexibility - they snap.  Things that are full of life bend - the palm tree is a great example.  Here’s some more questions from the posting:

What do you do with this extra time that you now have?  Do you travel back to the office?  Do you pull out a laptop and answer some e-mails?  Do you pull out a book to do some reading?  Do you networking with someone nearby?  Do you work on something you have been procrastinating?

All of these are great options.  However, unless you plan ahead of time, you’ll never know what the best use of that extra time will be.  Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about planning what to do with extra time ahead of time.

I didn’t see McCain’s speech, but I heard enough snipits and read enough about it to feel comfortable enough to comment.  What I take away from it was that Sen. McCain is in self-absorbed dream world.  McCain’s speech covered just about every issue there is, and that’s the problem.  It highlights one of the things I don’t like about John McCain - no vision.  A vision is not a checked off task list, which is what McCain gave.  In that sense, his speech was similar to so many State of the Union addresses - not a state of the union, rather a list of goodies the President wants.

A vision is what Reagan gave when we he talked about America being a shining city on a hill and his talk about the winning the Cold War.  A vision is what Kennedy spoke about when he talked about putting a man on moon.  A vision is what FDR spoke about in defeating the Axis and the freedom from fear.  These are visions about freedom and human expansion.

My biggest pet peeve about McCain is that the man is all about himself.  He’s always been about himself as an elected politician.  This speech exemplifies this.  Again no vision for the country.  Not even a vision for the GOP, which is hopelessly rudderless at the moment.  McCain has no interest in providing a vision for the GOP - he stated so when he said that he would be running against Congress and Bush.  He cares nothing about providing coattails to those who should naturally be willing to work with him.

His notion that partisanship is a bad thing is probably the most troubling aspect of his speech.  An efficient government that would allow him to do whatever it is that he wanted to do is a bad government.  The most efficient government there is, is a dictatorship.  I’ve always said that I support a gridlocked government - it means that the people cannot get screwed over any more than they are right now.

As far as I’m concerned, this speech continues to show me that a McCain presidency would be scary prospect.

I wrote a post on my EADD blog about taking time off from work - whether you are the owner or not.  Here’s a small sample of questions people should be asking themselves:

If you have your own business, take a moment and answer this question - why did you start your business?  Was it because you got tired of being told what to do?  You wanted more freedom?  I’m sure for many of you, those reasons were a part of the equation.

If you work for someone else, you can ask yourself a similar question - why did I go to work for the company I work for?  I’ll bet that one of the reasons has to do with having more freedom in some form.

Ok, so here’s the deal - we entrepreneurs need to take time off in order to be refreshed, renewed, and re-charged.  Without taking time away, even the most creative entrepreneur becomes stale.  Without time off and away from the business, even the hardest working person becomes prone to accidents and mistakes.

Take time right now to determine when you will take some time off, even if it’s only a day.  Spend time with your family, take a small trip, or just take a day and go to the park and read.

I wrote a post on the idea of an optimist vs. a pessimist. Here’s the beginning:

Oscar Wilde once defined a pessimist as “one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.”

I suppose, based on that definition, you could define an optimist as one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses neither.

What does this have to do with your business or job? Everything. Every day we are confronted with options - do we delegate or just do the job ourselves? Do we organize our space or invest time in marketing? Do we do what is urgent or what is important?

How do you make your decisions? Are you the type of person who looks at a glass with water filled to the halfway mark and says that the glass is half-empty or half-full. Or are you someone who says that both of those answers are wrong - the glass is always full, it’s just a matter of what it’s full of.