From our newsletter Outside the Lines

Great Work

I’m blogging like a madman on my new Great Work Blog.

I’d encourage you to subscribe - you get a sweet little drop of me in your Inbox five days a week.

You can subscribe here

And here are three of my favourite current articles on the blog

=> Strive for Adequate (Why Excellence is Overrated)

=> Three Ways to Remember Your Great Work

=> Messy’s Not Just Good - It’s Necessary

X marks the spot

You may have noticed, it’s election time.

Obama v McCain - the whole world seems to be watching that one.  Here in Canada, we have our own national election. And in Australia not so long ago, there was a swap in governments … it seems change might be in the air.

I became Canadian so I could vote.  There’s something powerful and definitive about walking into a booth and putting an X next to the name you want to support.

It’s a statement of intent.  It’s a statement of engagement.  It’s also a moment of aspiration:  this vote carries dreams of what I want to be different and want to be the same in my life.

We’re all voting, all the time

Of course, you don’t need to be political to be voting.

Here are five ballots you’re voting on right now.  Imagine your making your choice between these pairs.  How will you cast your vote?

Joy
Indifference

Calm
Busy

Tasks
People

Doing
Being

Brave
Safe

Now vote with your feet

One of my favourite quotes is from Lou Holtz who said, “When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.”

So let me ask you this - if I had to guess how you’d voted just by observing your behaviour, what would I have guessed?  What vote would be the same?  What vote would different?

Making obvious the gap between these deep choices about life and our actual behaviour is a little uncomfortable … and luckily, you can do something about it.

Pick one of those pairs, perhaps the one where you’ve noticed the biggest gap between how you voted and how you behave.

==> What’s one thing you’ll start doing to bring your vote and your behaviour into alignment?

==> One’s one thing you’ll stop doing to bring your vote and your behaviour into alignment?

Don’t take my word for it

Smart people thinking out loud about  voting, choices, making a stand.

“Vote early and vote often.”
- Al Capone, American gangster

“Votes should be weighed, not counted.”
- Friedrich von Schiller, German poet

“Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.”
- Robert Frost, American poet

You can read more Quotations on voting here. And if you have a favourite quote share it in the Comments section.

From our newsletter Outside the Lines

Don’t take my word for it

Smart people thinking out loud about  voting, choices, making a stand.

“Vote early and vote often.”
- Al Capone, American gangster

“Votes should be weighed, not counted.”
- Friedrich von Schiller, German poet

“To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”
- Kofi Annan, Ghanaian statesman

“A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
-Theodore Roosevelt , American president

“Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.”
- Robert Frost, American poet

“Stand, you’ve been sitting much too long, there’s a permanent crease in your right or wrong.”
- Sly Stone, American musician

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
- Emma Goldman, Lithuanian activist

Find time

Lose yourself in a book

Actually taste your lunch

Call a friend

Seek adventures

Visit new places

Visit familiar places and look for what’s news

Step out onto the edge of your own fears

Ask for

What you want

Love

Trouble

Watch The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun

From our newsletter Outside the Lines - The Business Edition

The Great Work Blog

Last month I launched The Great Work Blog, and I’ve been writing short pieces on Great Work five days a week.

Think of this as a form of regular “drip irrigation” to help grow your own Great Work garden, rather than just an occasional newsletter deluge.

In this newsletter I’m featuring five of my favourite pieces so far:

- Five Things to say No to
- You can’t figure it out by figuring it out
- Underwork it for the breakthrough
- The feeling of Great Work
- D’uh!  (this one will make you laugh)

And even better you can subscribe so each post pops into your Inbox. You don’t have to remember to check for updates.

=> Subscribe by email here
=> Subscribe by RSS here

== Five Things to say No to ==

You can’t do Great Work without saying No to a few things.

Here are five places to start.

1. People who drain rather than nourish.
(There’s no room for those that drain your energy.)

2. The belief that everything has to be done excellently.
(”Adequate” is normally just fine.   Needing to do everything excellently is not only impossible but overwhelming.)

3. The idea that doing email is doing work.
(It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself.  Learn to tame the beast.)

4. The feeling that being busy …

=> Read the rest here

== You can’t figure it out by figuring it out ==

The other day I was speaking with my friend, Jen Louden.

Jen’s been a big success is the world of self help, in particular for her work as The Comfort Queen and providing insight for women to build greater comfort into their lives.

For the last little while, she’s been looking at evolving, asking “what’s next?”

And she’s been stuck in every increasing, then decreasing, then increasing, then decreasing, circles in her head.

The problem  is trying to figure out the future is nearly impossible.  We try and extrapolate from the past and that leads either to improbable fantasy or reality +/- 5% which isn’t that exciting.

Jen’s solution?

=> Read the rest here

== Underwork it for the breakthrough ==

Browsing in a magazine store the other day, I picked up one of those generic men’s magazines.  You know the type:  a guy with unnaturally white teeth and a six pack on the cover — together with promises of gadgets, sex tips, and a six-pack of your own — to lure you in.

I picked it up - hey, I have the occasional moments of weakness and wanting to be pumped and ripped and shredded - and flicking through it actually found an insight of some use.

An athletic trainer was talking about how to get unstuck, how to breakthrough when you’ve hit a certain point and can’t go beyond.

His insight was this…

==> Read the rest here

== The feeling of Great Work ==

Just about 24 hours ago, I invited pretty much everyone I know to consider applying to be trainers of the Coaching for Great Work training program.

The truth is, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.  I was hoping to find 10 great people.  And to date I’ve had 60 or people from around the world - Canada, the United States, Australia, Costa Rica, Poland, Argentina, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, the UK - apply to be part of it, often sending me wonderful notes of enthusiasm and support.

I’ve spent much of the day dealing with the influx, answering emails, monitoring comments on the blogs, acknowledging the honour people do me in applying.

And, lying in bed tonight, I’ve finally caught up with how this feels.  How this Great Work for me feels.

I can’t sleep.

I’m filled with doubts - did I launch this too early, can I really deliver this, what was I thinking?

I’m looking for other distractions.  (No kidding, I’ve had this great idea for another cool website).

I’m feeling anxious.

=> You can read the rest here

== D’uh! ==

This one’s a picture and worth a thousand words.

You can see it here

Click on the image below to make it readable (and laughable).

Oh the responsibility of knowing everything in moderation is a great maxim. (Thanks to xkcd.com)

From Gus - The Possibility Hunter

Imagine this:  It’s the last round of your Olympic diving event.  You’re winning.  You’re home crowd is ready for you to complete a clean sweep of your sport for your country – the first in over a century.  Even if your last dive is ugly someone has to do something exceptional – unprecedented even – to beat you.   It is, and they do.

This is exactly what happened to the unfortunate Zhou Luxin.  Australian Matt Micham nailed the highest scoring dive in Olympic history to steal Gold.  (Watch it here)

Ouch.

To make things worse, Zhou Luxin was also the speed-bump in the road of a Chinese clean sweep at the 2007 worlds.  Ouch and ouch.  Could you get back on the horse after such a tumble?

I’m not sure I could, so I very much enjoyed Failure is an Integral Part of Success from the Urban Monk.net.  It provides seven excellent ideas for dealing with failure.  (It also has lots of other interesting stuff so take your time looking around while you’re there)

Watch out for Zhou and his horse diving in London in 2012.   “… I’m still young. I can draw lessons from this competition to help my future life.”

From our newsletter Outside the Lines

Is it OK to be selfish?

I regularly get generous feedback on The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun.

But if there’s one principle that gets an “Um … are you sure?” response, it’s Principle #2: Start Being Intensely Selfish.

So what exactly am I talking about?

Get hungry for the things that truly important

By “selfish” I’m not suggesting that you start excluding everyone and everything for your own purposes.

And I’m certainly not suggesting that “what’s good for me is all that matters.”

But I am saying this:

>> Getting clear on what matters, getting clear on the impact that you want to have, is what enables you to find your Great Work.

Here’s what I’m hungry for

About four years ago, I got clear on what I want, my own big picture:

>> “To infect a billion people with the possibility virus.”

That’s made all the difference in helping me keep on track, headed in roughly the right direction.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still figuring out a good amount of the details of what a good life looks like for me:

How I want to stay healthy, how I want to be a part of my community, even where I want to end up living.

But holding onto that mission statement creates the framework that makes those decisions easier to make.

So what do you want?

Remember, unless you know where you’re headed, you don’t know where you’re going.

So what **are** you hungry for?

> What impact do you want to make on the world?

> What do you want from your relationships?

> What makes you happy?

> What honours you body, your mind, your soul?

> What is your Great Work?

Don’t just take my word for it

Smart folks thinking out loud about being selfish.

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
-William Shakespeare, English writer

“There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usage of man’s life: “Know thyself,” and “Nothing too much”; and upon these all other precepts depend.”
-Plutarch, Greek writer

“Know thyself! A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.”
- Andre Gide, French writer

Read more quotations about selfishness here.

From our newsletter Outside the Lines

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
-William Shakespeare, English writer

“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else.”
-Judy Garland, American entertainer“

“Life is short. Time is fleeting. Realize the Self. Purity of the heart is the gateway to God. Aspire. Renounce. Meditate. Be good; do good. Be kind; be compassionate. Inquire, know Thyself.”
- Swami Sivananda, Indian monk

“Our works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments, Hence, too, the folly of that impossible precept, Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially possible one, know what thou canst work at.”
Thomas Carlyle, Scottish writer

“Resolve to find thyself; and to know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.”
- Matthew Arnold, English writer

“There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usage of man’s life: “Know thyself,” and “Nothing too much”; and upon these all other precepts depend.”
-Plutarch, Greek writer

“Know thyself! A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.”
- Andre Gide, French writer

From Gus - The Possibility Hunter

I have two confessions.

Firstly, when I want the ridiculous– and I usually want the ridiculous so much I’d hold my breath until I bled from the eyeballs to possess it– all I need to do is think the word ‘just’ and any crazy desire feels quite justified.

Try it out for yourself. Repeat after me: I just want to devote the next decade to acquiring cool ninja skills. Hey, Gus, if you want them that much, why not?  It will definitely help you meet girls.

Secondly, my subconscious is smarter than me and I’m regularly suckered by its linguistic voodoo.   (Although I wasn’t fooled on this occasion, you’ll be glad to know, even though I was only 17 at the time.)

What language do you use to fool yourself and others? Check out  Tim Brownson’s The Discomfort Zone.  He will open your eyes to how your language – be it water cooler chat or internal monologue – is tripping you up.

The Discomfort Zone is one of my favourite blogs, so when you’re done with this article, make sure you spend plenty of time checking the rest of it out.

Click on the image below to make it readable (and laughable).

Procrastination’s many synonyms. (Thanks to www.blurburger.com).