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.

I wrote a post on the subject of freedom vs. security. This subject goes way beyond politics. Every day we make decisions that are towards freedom or security, or atleast what we think is security.

Here’s a different way of thinking about freedom and security:

It’s easy to choose security - it’s familiar, it’s stable, and it’s predictable - i.e. we gain a sense of control.

The choice of freedom on the other hand is unpredictable. It may come out as assisting an employee towards their dream job or career - knowing full well that you’ll “lose” a great employee if you do that. But imagine how happy that employee will be for the duration they remain under your employ. What’s the ripple effect of that on your customers?

Grassrootspa.com posted Tony Phyrillas’ article about meeting with John Perzel to talk over his legislation for adding 10,000 police officers to the state. At the end of the article Tony asked Perzel about the pay raise. Of course he’s unrepentant. At the very end, Perzel also stated that “He also believes he will return to his former post as Speaker of the House next January.”

Well, that about set me off. In fact, it’s not just me. There’s some very lively debate over on the grassrootspa discussion board about this. It’s actually generating other blog posting, like Alabama in Between, where my comments were quoted.

And since they were my comments, I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up (although I encourage you to read all the comments - it’s a lively and healthy debate).

I wrote a post on managing conflict.  When it comes down to it, regardless of the obstacle, what matters is how we look at the situation.  Do we respond with an emotional reaction, or do we see the experience as a learning opportunity?

This past week, I was presented with a conflict.  My initial reaction was one of anger - a very normal response.  I was not happy about the situation.  I wanted to publicly confront an individual about a situation.

Then I decided that being angry wasn’t going to solve anything (and would probably make the situation worse), so I decided I would determine what I could learn from the situation.

What I learned first was a reminder that I cannot control other people - either in what they do or how they think.

Read the rest here.

Yesterday when I saw that we were in a near full moon, I knew that it didn’t bode well for conservatives.  Tonight’s results confirm that.  As I’ve stated before, election night is usually pretty depressing for me - my favorites usually don’t win.  At any rate, tonight the establishment triumphed within the GOP.  I imagined many conservatives who would have voted for conservative candidates went over to the Dems to vote in their presidential primary - thus our conservative candidates lost votes to the establishment Republicans.  My own opinion of this whole thing is that it does more damage to the GOP in the long run.  Now we are stuck with all these establishment Republicans.  Who would do more damage a Dem president or a whole bunch of establishment Republicans?  A better question - Is there really any difference?

And again, I’m left wondering, how do we end up with all these crappy candidates?

And tonight’s results again confirm to me why I’m not a Republican anymore.  I’ve never been happier to be a registered Independent.  I already know who I’m voting for in most of these races, and in most cases, it’s not anyone listed on the ballot.  This will be the first election in which I’ll be writing in names for over half of the positions on the ballot.

I can already hear the criticism - “Gee Matt, by voting that way, it’s actually a vote for ____.” That’s where I disagree.  That’s how people like Arlen Specter get elected - we supposedly have to settle for these people.  I quit settling for candidates many years ago.  A vote for who I believe in is a vote for who I believe in.  It’s a vote that says I’m tired of crappy candidates and I’m not going to legitimize their selection by choosing between two bad choices.  I won’t vote for the lesser of two evils - it’s still a choice for moving in the wrong direction, it’s just a matter of how fast you’re getting there.

Here’s my test for voting - Who can I vote for and be able to look at myself in the mirror and not be ashamed of myself because I voted for a certain candidate.  I’ll tell you this much, there are plenty of candidates who I could vote for because they are the lesser of two evils - but then I’d be ashamed to look in the mirror at myself.  And frankly, that’s far more important than any argument for party unity, or any fear tactics, or “lesser of two evil” arguments.

Recently, I wrote a post on the idea of change and status quo.  The deeper issue is control - what is control?  What do we have control over?  How do we use this?  How does control affect entrepreneurs?  All great questions.

Here’s a short part of the post:

It’s been said that the only thing that stays the same is change.  Yet how often do we attempt to hold on to something?  Why is it that we attempt to keep things the same?

The simple answer is control.  As human beings, most of us are obsessed with control - especially us entrepreneurs.  We will do whatever we can to prevent change and hold onto the status quo in order to have control of a situation or our lives.

Read the rest here.