Time to Ask

Do you pay attention to recurring themes in your life? The other day I heard a Bible verse shared on a radio station and in the days that followed that verse kept coming back to me as I lived my life, as I interacted with clients and friends, and as I traveled around the internet. The verse? A well known, Matthew 7:7 (and I’m also including verse 8):

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

A familiar set of verses, yes? You may be more familiar with another translation like the NIV or NKJV or KJV, but I’m partial to the NLT, which is what this is. I’ve discussed this set of verses before including about today’s topic, the asking part. I love questions. I think part of the reason I’ve learned to love them is because the better you get at asking questions, the more you get out of life. The more willing you are to ask questions, the more willing you are to be curious, the more willing you are to learn, the less likely you will be to be surprised by something unexpected down the road and more prepared you can be which means you’ll spend less time redoing things or even failing.

But asking isn’t just about clarification, details or making sure you have the full story (all of which are super important), it’s about being willing to explain and ask for what you need to live your best life, or at least try to. Generosity and giving are both super important to keeping us humble and connected to others, but we can’t expect that others will always just “know” when we need something or have it magically appear. God gave us voices so that we can ask when we have a need or when we see a need. And the thing is, it’s so simple to ask someone for clarification or to ask someone if they’re done with something or to ask for what you need. It doesn’t hurt to ask, but it can definitely do damage if you don’t speak up and ask.

So we’ve established the importance of asking. But the biggest thing this set of verses doesn’t speak to, as you probably noticed, is the time factor. There are two sides to the time factor: when you ask and when you receive, and the time factor is the other aspect of asking that I’ve been seeing repeatedly show up in my life. The part that we’re not going to talk about today is that yes, it says that if we ask we’ll receive, but it doesn’t say when we will receive if we ask. The other part is about when you ask your questions. The timing of your question matters as much as when the answer is going to show up. Because it’s great to ask questions, but when you ask questions in the 11th hour or after the fact you’re not completely defeating the purpose of asking, but you’re definitely taking away a lot of the power of asking and making it less of the tool or resource that it is. And when you ask your question late it’s a lot harder for others to give your question the proper thought or research to come up with good answers or resources or the support that you’re asking for. The sooner you ask the less stress you experience debating over it and the more likely others will be able to assist in fulfilling your request or getting you detailed answers in a timely fashion.

The bottom line today is this: don’t be afraid to ask and ask sooner rather than later. It will help keep your familial relationships healthier, you’ll experience less stress, you’ll have better work relationships and you’re always more likely to receive if you ask. What have you asked for recently?

Fighting Victory Fires that Did Not Have to Exist

If you know me, you know I like words. I love reading and writing them, and while I don’t love talking personally, I definitely agree that life would not be the same without the ability to talk. This week of course there has been an increase in talk about the election (hard to believe it can increase on top of what it already was), but an important topic that you may have heard as part of the discussions is about who can and who can’t vote. This is something that has changed over the years since the Constitution was written, and the way the type of government we have here in the USA is set up voting is an integral part of how people get elected to be in government. I do hope that if you are able to vote you have or will vote in the election because voting shows that you care about the direction the country is headed and you want to have a say.

In one of the emails this week discussing the general topic of voting one of the things that Spurthi Kontham said caught my attention from a victories perspective: “Nowhere in our Constitution are we explicitly granted voting rights. This was a deliberate choice by the framers of the Constitution. Instead, over the last 233 years, we’ve made painstaking progress to guarantee that the opportunity to vote cannot be denied on the basis of race or sex.” The phrase “cannot be denied” is one of those fancy phrases that basically means that you’re trying to work upstream instead of going with the flow. It’s so much harder to move upstream than it is downstream, and putting in all that extra effort means that you’re putting valuable resources towards the extra effort instead of using it for other things.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to fight for people to have voting rights, in this modern day and age I would think it should be easier to vote, I’m saying that it’s a lot more work to right a wrong, as the saying goes, which is exactly where we pick up the conversation with the topic of victories. It’s much easier to consult a map before you get lost than after. It’s much easier to do your research on products before you buy them than deal with hours of customer service issues and wasted money later. It’s much easier to grow a relationship than it is to repair a broken one. It’s much easier to succeed when you have good habits instilled in you rather than trying to fight bad habits you’ve had for years. It’s much easier to train a pet with love from their birth than try to instill trust and confidence in them and your relationship after years of neglect or abuse. It’s much easier to start off with a wide road than try to widen it after homes and businesses have been built. It’s much easier to build a sturdy quality dam than plug a hole (or many holes) in one that wasn’t built with the right materials and quality craftsmanship.

I think you get the idea, that if you really don’t want to do twice the work (or more than!) it’s so much easier and better and causes less stress if you start off right, than if you’re trying to catch up, redo, plug holes or put out fires. So as silly as it may seem to talk about “gaining voting rights” vs working so that voting rights “cannot be denied”, there’s really a big difference in the amount of work that is put in both in the beginning and for years to come. How do you approach your victories? Are you constantly trying to catch up or fix issues or do you put in the work to increase your chances of success with your victories from the start?

Compromising to Achieve Victories

The other day a potential client reached out with a proposal I hadn’t heard before in my many years of working in their specific niche. While we didn’t end up working together the conversation as a whole reminded me of something that we used to try a lot more and with motives that were purer than they seem to be now: compromise. I’m not talking about the “compromise” that corporate execs use to try to sneak in what they really want under the radar and at less-than-fair rates. I’m talking about the compromise where, to use a phrase we haven’t used in a while, everyone wins!

How does compromise work? Most people enter into a negotiation/sales/purchasing/engagement type conversation with top shelf whiskey desires for themselves to gain from the interaction while wanting to have to sacrifice way less than what top shelf whiskey should set them back. They know what top shelf whiskey costs, but they would prefer to not end up with that cost at the end. So the two people have a choice: do they find common ground where everyone can walk away feeling like their relationship is headed in a positive direction or does the event leave more of a negative sentiment in their minds? Which brings us to compromise: you get really good whiskey (or whatever your version of a decent success is) and the other person is equally happy that they got something out of the event even though it wasn’t a top-tier exchange. Which is the difference between trading resources (i.e. time for money, food for money etc.): a goal for everyone being equally happy with the results.

So what does this have to do with victories? One way to get more victories accomplished, to feel better about the ones that we do accomplish, to accomplish our victories quicker and smoother, and to give others a chance to have some victories too is to try to compromise more often. If you’re not accomplishing victories or not as many as you’d like, maybe it’s because you’re expecting something along the lines of Mt. Everest getting flat just so you don’t have to climb it to accomplish the victory. So what are you prepared to give or bend on in your victory journey? It’s not going so far as to say that we’re turning to Plan B, but that Plan A isn’t so rigid that you can’t go with the flow or give and take or be a bit more flexible to get you to the next stage of the journey in a better way that might also be good for someone else. And if someone’s trying to accomplish their own victory, be open minded to hearing them out and seeing how you can work with them in a way that’s good for both of you.

Reality Reflection: Explanations Matter

Often with my business clients I talk about the importance of context and details because frequently it’s those things that make or break a sale or mean your marketing will be successful or a complete waste of resources. In the rest of the world, yes, the context and details matter, but often what impacts us more is about the explanation that is or isn’t given as to why something does/doesn’t work, does/doesn’t matter, does/doesn’t happen, is/isn’t necessary, or we should or shouldn’t care about something.

For example my partner is a big baseball fan and the other day the recording of his game started 4 innings in and neither of us could understand why it would start recording late. Historically sometimes games aren’t taped the whole way through because they go into extra innings which happen after the recording time was set to end, but we couldn’t remember this ever happening and it was frustrating. As I was thinking about it after the fact I remembered that there were a bunch of other games on before that game and thought about the possibility of what if one of those games went to extra innings and the game he wanted to watch wasn’t available on the network until then? As it turns out, that is exactly what had happened, and it made a whole lot more sense and we felt a lot better about why those first innings were missing.

Explanations aren’t necessarily about justifying things, although sometimes we do try to give explanations to help people understand why we made the decisions we did or why we thought it was the right thing to do even if it wasn’t. The real goal of giving an explanation to something is for the person we’re talking with to have a better chance of understanding the why’s and what’s behind something. It also creates an opportunity for something to be said in a way that someone can understand that they might not have picked up on with our initial statement. For example: Why do people get a babysitter for a family-friendly wedding? Because kids aren’t able to last as long as adults do at events nor stay up as late as weddings usually go. Why do people make lists before they go to the grocery store? So they make sure to get everything they need so they don’t have to shop every day and have time to do other things or don’t have to spend the time/money on gas and travel. Why are instructions given on diets? Because it’s been proven that they work when they’re done in a certain order or follow a certain structure, and not following those instructions means you’re not as likely to be successful with the weight loss or other goals you may have. And often even people ask for something to be done in a certain way because it’s the way that makes it easiest for them to pick up the project and move forward with it rather than being overwhelmed by it or feel like they have to start over.

Don’t be afraid to ask for an explanation or give an explanation to help things run smoother and easier in your life and the lives of others. It may turn out that your explanation is what changes things from a scary or overwhelming or sketchy situation to one that has great potential and improves the relationship between you and the other person or people. Your explanation also may open up the opportunity for someone else to share their perspective and you both can learn something from the experience. And while you can write a book for the explanation, there’s nothing wrong with sharing your reasoning in a few short and sweet sentences.

Talk It Over

Recently in conversations and emails there’s been one topic that’s been prevalent: community. Some people have been sharing about what’s going on in their life and the challenges or celebrations they’re having, and other people are struggling to gather community together like they used to be able to do. Yes, some of that has to do with the pandemic, all the changes we’ve gone through over the past few years and all the challenges we’ve had to face, but not all of it because as you know mental health has been an issue for much longer, as has our willingness to be divided rather than work together.

Unfortunately all too often we keep the racing thoughts in our heads to ourselves thinking that no one else will relate or care or no one else has the same experience that we did. And sometimes you would be right: that the person who sees the message wouldn’t be able to personally relate. But that shouldn’t matter, because few people live identical lives with identical experiences. Listening and sharing aren’t about living, they’re about being there for each other and being willing to support, encourage, and comfort each other, and sometimes even be the voice of reason when it’s time to make a change or get help.

If we can’t or aren’t willing to listen or share, we’re going to have a challenging time building or being part of a thriving community. Community only happens when we consider our role in the bigger picture and are able to accept that while we can have many of our wants and needs met, sometimes we have to be willing to give a little (or a lot) so that others have the same support of their wants and needs too.

Which brings us to our victory journeys. They won’t all be smooth sailing, so when we hit those rocky patches we have a choice to make: do we ride it out and hope our plan is good enough to get us where we want to go, or do we reach out and talk it out with someone else? We’re not talking about crying wolf of course, but about opening our victory journey to a team of people who we trust and who will support us and can give us feedback when we need it, even if that feedback is just a reminder that we’re on the right path and should just ride out the storm, or an ear, even if the “result” of the conversation is that you feel better that someone knows what’s going on and you’re not so alone. What recent conversations have you had with people that either helped you or them on a victory journey?

Who is Talking about What?

Recently in conversations I’ve been having there’s been a phrase that I’ve had to use, one that can also be applied to conversations I’ve been overhearing while out and about: we’re having two different conversations. For example, my partner and I had talked about having quinoa as part of dinner one night in the near future and after I went food shopping I brought up the dinner conversation again and said that lettuce had been on sale so we would be having more salads in the coming days, and he started talking about the quinoa salad he had wanted, and I said “hold on, we’re having two different conversations,” and went on to clarify again that yes, I understood the type of salad he was talking about and that he could have that, but that I also was able to purchase lettuce so therefore we would be having lots of traditional salads as well.

When the ‘two different conversations’ issue happens sometimes it’s because we’re in a rush, we’ve thought things through in our heads or we’re so excited about what we have to say and we don’t do a good job of communicating it to others. But sometimes it happens because we (or someone else) aren’t really listening or paying attention like we should be and we’re only getting part of the conversation, or we’re so stuck on what we had thought that we’re not hearing the newest information. Either way, it’s clear someone is in a big rush or not paying attention during communications like we should be.

It’s so much harder to achieve victories, especially those that others are involved in when we’re having two different conversations, and there are a couple of things we can learn from this. Yes, the moment you both realize that you’re having two conversations can be funny and can help lighten the mood if things are stressful. Second, recognizing that you’re having two different conversations can help you get refocused as a team or even individually to really making progress on your victories. Third, it can provide an opportunity to discuss communication issues you may be having, especially issues that happen too consistently and aren’t being addressed or fixed. Finally, this conversation can reinforce the importance of slowing down and taking your time to do a good job communicating, because our communications are a very essential part of creating victories.

Don’t let a lack of listening or a choice of rushing mean that you aren’t able to complete your victories, you aren’t able to get the support you need to complete your victories, or you aren’t able to really celebrate your victories because people aren’t hearing what you’ve done. What aspects of your communications do you need to clear up and improve on?

Communicate to Honor God

If there’s one topic I talk about frequently on all my blogs and in all my newsletters it’s the many dimensions and aspects of communication. Why? Because it’s what really makes or breaks us as a world these days with all the digital advances and internet connections. Hundreds of years ago you might wait weeks or months to get a mail reply from someone or for a courier to deliver a message to you, but these days you can get a response almost immediately. So when essential communications break down such that messages aren’t delivered or responded to or the response is insufficient or the response provides intentionally inaccurate information, we’re at risk for this very essential backbone of our lives to fail.

And who has the ability to by and large keep things running smoothly? Those who communicate (aka us). It’s up to each of us to give our best and most honest efforts to communicating, to keep the conversation going by replying to questions in a reasonable amount of time, to understand that our provision of information or lack thereof will have an impact on someone else, to hold others accountable for their communications, and maybe most important: to follow through on what we say we will do.

If you spend time reading the Bible you know that things seemed, in many ways, so much simpler back then than they do these days. And in many ways they did have a lot less to worry about, certainly fewer people who were exposed to their communications or they were expected to communicate with. And yet, Jesus spends time in Matthew 5 emphasizing the importance of both honest and straightforward communications: “”Just say a simple, ‘Yes, I will,’ or ‘No, I won’t.'”” Matthew 5:37a

You probably know that I love a good 400 page book as much as I do a short blog post like this recent and relevant one from Seth Godin. If it takes many words to get your point across well (or tell a good story), that’s fine. But if you don’t need to write pages to answer a question, don’t. It comes down to God calling us to do our very best with the gift of communication, respecting the power that we have through it, and encouraging others to do the same because our world needs healing, teamwork and peace, not hate, lies, or discord. Could your communication use some improving?

A Question of Confidence

I was working with a family the other day and one of the children brought home a report from one of those standardized tests that they have to take (and many of us don’t have fond memories of when we took them ourselves), and from what we could figure out the child tested above average for their age/grade. This wasn’t a surprise to me, because I know how smart the child is regardless of how young they are. But they were very surprised (and excited!) to find they were above average.

It got me thinking about how much we doubt ourselves, and how much of a slippery slope doubt can be. Mental health has been an increasingly public conversation in recent years, something I’m very thankful for because I believe that there’s only a small section of the population of the world that has not or won’t go through a period of mental struggle. Whether you face it as a teen, after a divorce, when you’re facing domestic violence, when you come back from war and are struggling to adjust and deal with PTSD (not to mention any physical challenges), after your spouse of 40 years dies, when your kids face a drug addiction, when you lose a job you’ve had for years, or maybe there isn’t anything you can directly connect the mental struggle to, but at one or more points in our life most of us face it.

While I do believe it’s important to believe in yourself and to be confident in yourself, I also know that there’s an incredible difference that can be made with a helping hand, kind word or friend to sit next to. How does a bright child doubt their smarts? Because people aren’t telling them how great they’re doing or how proud of them they are for all the hard work they’re doing. The same slippery slope appears at work and in relationships when there’s no communication, no encouragement, no support, no positive reinforcement.

When was the last time you told someone how proud of them you are, and exactly why you’re proud of them? When was the last time you thanked someone for being as smart/brave/creative/sweet/considerate/patient/organized as they are? Whether you make the opportunity today to thank or support a veteran for their service on this Veteran’s Day, I hope that you’ll make the effort to let someone else know that you recognize the victories they’ve created and how awesome they are.

Simple, Clear Victories

This week the world lost someone who taught many people what it means to be a leader as well as someone who truly cares about the other people in the world: Colin Powell. Throughout his years on earth he lived the difficult lessons, learned about failure and success, practiced what it meant to be a good human, and learned a lot about creating victories. Colin Powell said something that I think shines a light on some of the reasons why we aren’t always as successful at our victory journeys as we would like to be:

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.”

First, even when victory journeys have many layers, it doesn’t mean you have to choose the most complicated route or make things as difficult as possible for you and others who may be involved. It’s great to have all these apps and tools and resources, but sometimes all you need is a pen and paper, or hammer and nails. And sometimes you just need to make the decision that while you could add in all these other aspects, that simple is better and it’s more important to get something done than to try to gain as many points by doing as many things as possible on the journey.

Second, the words you choose matter. While a victory journey is yours and yours alone to dream up and complete, there are often people who are essential to how successfully you’re going to complete the journey, and sometimes the more people you can get on board, the more likely you will be successful. So while it’s great to be able to have a conversation with someone using all the buzzwords and jargon, it’s almost more important that you are able to explain what’s going on and where you’re hoping to get using simple terms that don’t reduce the impact of what you’re working on but do make it easier to understand and desire to support.

So as you work on your victories this week and as we finish off this month and year, I encourage you to consider the simple side of things and how simplifying can help you accomplish your victories quicker and with more ease.

Reality Reflection: Perspective

Perspective has to be one of my favorite topics to think and talk about because it never ceases to amaze me the different things that people can see even from essentially the same experiences. Occasionally perspective can be expanded or changed individually, for example if you’re out in nature all alone and experience something that you haven’t experienced before or you’re able to work through things in your head and heart finally. But most often perspective shifts and grows through our experiences and discussions with each other.

Yes, sometimes that means a negative perspective shift because others continue to reinforce the negative experiences you’ve had in a situation and you don’t have the opportunity to have an honest and open discussion with them about their perspective and actions. This week my attention was captured by a headline about Dr. Sanjay Gupta sitting down to have a conversation with Joe Rogan on all things health and pandemic. They’re known for their frequently opposing views of the situation, and yet they both chose to sit down and have a public discussion. It’s a discussion that happened largely for the people who listen to Joe, but really was just about two people sitting down and having an honest and open discussion without defaulting to hate or running away or refusal to listen.

So while we can each have some perspective breakthroughs when we’re alone and not influenced by anything other than God, nature and our own minds and hearts, most breakthroughs come when we’re exposed to others and their thoughts, experiences and research. You might have a breakthrough when you’re searching the internet and trying to find answers in articles and videos. You might have a breakthrough scrolling through your social media feed. You might have a breakthrough hearing the same reasons from a 6th person on a topic (I had shared my reasoning with my partner on a topic several times recently but when he heard the same reasoning from someone he worked with for whatever reason it finally clicked for him and he understood what I had been saying too).

I know that sometimes it seems scary to think about what might be beyond the knowledge and perspectives that we have, but there’s not a monster waiting to scare us around every corner. Not everyone is going to be angry, not everyone is going to hurt us, not everyone is going to reject us. Sure, those things will be true for some people we meet, but I have faith that if we’re just a little more open and a little more willing to see life and life experiences from the perspectives of other people we’ll have a healthier, more peaceful world where more people can thrive and more solutions can be found and implemented.