Maintenance

Maintenance is something a lot of people don’t like to think about. It is boring and requires both work and intention. Ordinary people expect things to function well without any maintenance. They stretch how far their vehicle’s engine can run without an oil change. They avoid regular medical check ups because perhaps they just would rather not know if anything is wrong with them. The same mindset leaves relationships to stale over time and that will lead to dysfunction. Great teammates understand that maintenance is boring and perhaps time consuming but its always worth it in the end. Entropy is a real law of the universe and we must never cease to work against it regardless of how boring or difficult it becomes. There are few things as sad as something lost simply because it wasn’t properly maintained.

The most common lie

What we allow people to see is almost always different than what we really are. This is because appearance matters much more to us than our integrity. I imagine that the most common lie we tell is our response to some question asking how we are doing. We are always ok. Why? Culture doesn’t reward vulnerability. We learn at an early age that “How are you?” is simply a rhetorical question used as a greeting and not an actual inquiry. Don’t believe me? Just try answering that question honestly and watch the response of the polite person that really just said the thing they though they were supposed to ask you. Great teams are countercultural in how they treat vulnerable moments. They are intentional to be a place of incremental development and not a place of pretentious greetings that only wish to confirm that everything is fine. Its ok to not be ok. Of course its not ok to stay that way but real people have struggles, injuries and hurts that should be safe to talk about when someone asks.

Cranked up to 11

Fear is an emotional response to perceived danger. It causes us to either fight or flee. Fear can keep us safe when leveraged appropriately. When fear is not handled well it can cause us to act as if we have lost our sobriety. Being of a sober mind means seeing things as they are. Fear limits that view. When we are afraid every threat is cranked up to an eleven on a scale of one to ten. Little deals can turn into big deals. Mice turn into monsters. This is helpful in cases of actual self preservation but most things in this world are not as scary as our fearful mind would make them seem. Facing our fears is a common way to overcome them because it allows us to re-categorize a threat into something we can handle. How many conversations or opportunities do we miss everyday because we saw a level three threat as an eleven? What if the opposite of a fearful mind is a sober one? Perhaps we courage is sometimes just seeing clearly.

Look who’s back

It has been a while since I last had a blog post. There has been some crazy times with many challenges and it seemed time to take a break from the daily posts that had been going on for nearly seven years. Sometimes breaks are good to allow space for new opportunities. I often forget about the impact that growth can have. Like it or not growth is change and change…well changes things. Maybe that is why growth seems so aversive at times. We want to grow without the change. Thats like expecting a child to grow without getting any new clothes to fit him. Growth is expensive like that. Growth requires a lot of new and new can be unfamiliar and scary. In the end growth is good once the new clothes fit well. Not sure how this blog will go in this new stage of growth but I hope it helps motivate you to find a way to grow as a teammate.

Challenges at the Summit

Success doesn’t always feel like we imagine it while we are pursuing it. Success has its own set of problems that are discovered beyond the pursuit of success. The reality is often that the trials of the pursuit prepares us for the challenges that will come with success. The mind set that believes that all the team’s problems will be solved through reaching some sort of summit likely has never enjoyed the view of from any peak. Those teams don’t know about the lack of oxygen or the loneliness that comes from climbing higher. Success that is sustainable is reserved only for those prepared to meet the challenges that come from any achievement.