A Proper Wilderness

I had a lot of fun writing this post for Corporate Idealist; so much in fact I thought I'd cross-post it here to kick off the year. To see the original post, visit http://www.corporateidealist.com/2009/07/a-proper-wilderness/

I’m an unrepentant Bear Grylls fan. His show on Discovery Channel, “Man vs. Wild,” always inspires and encourages me. Most of us will never encounter the challenges and outright risks and dangers Grylls does, but this weekend’s show got me thinking about how we may not be so far apart after all. He used the phrase, “a proper wilderness,” and that feels like a great metaphor for so many people striking out to find their new best careers and goals.

Grylls served three years with a special forces unit of the British army. One can really only officially be on active duty in the army for so many years before one has to start thinking about other things; particular if one has broken one’s back in three places during service! But what if what you do, what you love, what you were meant to pursue and prove and teach, is the very thing you feel required to depart?

Today’s economy and the dramatic shifts in the work place have required many of us to take a step back and start thinking about how to answer this question. If you find yourself required to make a change, don’t be too hasty to assume that all of what you loved about what you used to do is now out of reach. Spend some time in self-analysis, identifying not only your hard skills but your favorite pursuits and activities. Think not only about yourself as an individual, but about your skills on a team, and within an organization.

Grylls left the special forces, and one might think he would never skin a rattlesnake barehanded and eat it raw for a living again; yet here he is, still doing what he does better than anyone, and doing that in which he finds the most personal and professional satisfaction. (He earns a nice paycheck as well. Coincidence? Probably not!)

Give yourself a taste of something new and off-the-charts innovative this week, but bring your favorite existing skills. You might just find yourself rethinking what is and is not possible for your own next adventure.

The Dream is Always the Same

As Tom Cruise famously quipped, "The dream is always the same."

I'm on campus at Davidson College. It's a beautiful late fall afternoon with slanted gold light. There's that sweet smell of some blooming evergreen shrub and the soft sliding sound of insect legs rubbing together. I belong there.

Then I have a moment of panicked recognition. I'm about to not belong there. I'm in my senior year, all the tests are taken, profs are packing up classrooms for the summer, and my dorm is being emptied. No one is kicking me out exactly. But it's over.

I become intensely aware that this summer I will not go home and come back. I will just go home. (Dream editor's note: Apparently my subconscious is not concerned with seasonal continuity; I think the opening of the dream in autumn must be a metaphor for something drawing to a close.)

Now I am awash in all that I have taken for granted: the friends, the freedom, the opportunities, the culture of intellectual investigation and honorable debate. My mind races to bargain my way out.........what if I do this, what if I say that, how can I make this not be real. I belong here! This is my life. This is where everything makes sense, where everything has a purpose.

This is where I make sense.

But because the dream is always the same, it always ends the same way. I stand on campus with underclassmen milling around with their backpacks, and see that they are oblivious to my reality. They have one more year, or two or three. My heart feels like a stone in my chest. I know I can't come back, but I don't know where I am going or how I will cope with the fact I can never return, not really. I can come back to this physical place, but this Place is no more.

Like a play the curtain of my mind draws shut. I wake up, knowing full well I will relive this moment over and over again for the rest of my life. I focus on bittersweet gratitude, squeeze my eyes open and closed, and pull myself up.

Photo credit by Muffet: http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/281377918/

Reflections

This week I started a wonderful new job working with some phenomenally talented people, managing a complex, statewide, volunteer-driven policy initiative. It would probably fill up my heart and soul no matter the timing, but I’m back on the job after two years of time away from the office. Its significance at this point in my life is big.

It’s always advised to “take some time between jobs,” but often this means a couple of weeks. These past two years have been a great luxury, and helped me sort out the goals and objectives I want most to achieve in my work. In a sense, I have been working during the time away from the office, but the project was myself. The whole process got me thinking about two types of reflection.

There is the looking at the past, and analyzing and evaulating the decisions and results; there is also what we see of ourselves in other people around us. They may be clients or colleagues, but those closest to us eventually have a significant impact on our sense of self, and our ability to bring our dreams from thoughts to realities. The length of time I had away from my own old patterns made it impossible for me to deny the changes I needed to make. While it is surely easier to wish others would change, in the end it is always us who needs to alter what is happening in our own lives.

If you are struggling with needing to make a change, you might not need the extensive time I took to get there. You might just need encouragement and validation! Below are some questions that may help you get there more quickly:

Where do you see your reflection? In evaluation by others, in your own ability to steer your professional ship, in the kinds of clients you attract, in your paycheck, in your relationships with your co-workers? When you pinpoint your most common reflection, does it ring true, or do you want to see yourself somewhere else?

What one change could you make within yourself to see more of the person you want to be?

This post first appeared on www.corporateidealist.com on August 14, 2009. Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21314760@N00/1285407742/

Where We Are

Lots of my peers are wrestling with relocating their lives. There is frequent talk of "making a change," and often this manifests itself in a laundry list of other places they and their families could live.

Looking for better schools for children; more variety in dining; more diversity in neighborhood; a change in commute; a change in climate; a new house; a more challenging job. The list is familiar and endless.

Pawing the ground at middle age is hardly new territory. The stereotype of the midlife crisis is not positive to say the least; but there is a strange degree of beauty in the moment. I like to believe that change is always available, that what we lose little by little is the will to make it. Midlife wrestling with where we are and where we want to go has an air of Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night."

Where it can get ugly is usually two fold for me. One, we repress our real feelings and needs for so long that when our conscience can't manage anymore the backlash is a destructive taking of all our unmet needs we've left untended for years. Two, there is a lack of clarity about what it is that is really unsatisfactory.

Is it REALLY that you don't have enough of this, that, or the other thing in the place where you are, physically? Or is it that you don't have enough in that other place where you are. You know, your life. Note to self: You take your life with you when you go.

Photo credit Charlie Dave: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charliedave/1508777627/

How You Look, How You Feel

For whatever reasons, I’ve never had big problems with how I look. I’m like everyone else in that some days there are some things I’d like to change, but overall my appearance has never troubled me greatly.

What has troubled me on and off for years, and lately more on, is how I feel.

I decided yesterday to take the challenge of a blogger on A Better West Virginia and to use social media to help inspire myself and to keep me accountable for making some meaningful change in how I feel through a new focus on fitness. http://marketinggenius.blogspot.com/2009/06/fitter-west-virginia.html

Not long ago there was a television campaign by the Church of the Latter Day Saints; it featured images of people in a community, all of whom looked pulled together and well. But through the magic of television the ad was able to show the people’s insides as well as their outsides. Some people were dealing depression, some domestic violence, some alcohol abuse, some profound grief, some chronic pain, some eating disorders. All of these struggles were invisible, but were wreaking havoc on quality of life.

I have not felt particularly great since having a baby, and by that I mean physically great. My heart is full, and I am so thrilled to have my daughter in my life. But the way my physical life has changed is starting to effect my psychological life as well. I won’t go into the details, but let’s just say this kid is trying to kill me and some days might be gaining ground on that goal. I’m really ready to stop waiting for this to “get better” on its own and to start doing something to make it better.

I’m not sure yet exactly how this is going to go, but part of it is to stop living in my own head all the time and start putting it out there, what needs to change and documenting progress.

For some strange reason, I think I feel better already.

An Unexpected Place

I have a couple of friends who are obsessed with American Idol this season, especially the charisma and talent of one Adam Lambert.

I don’t “do” Idol. I’ve become so creeped out by celebrity culture I just can’t go there. But I have taken a look at Mr. Lambert’s performances on YouTube, and he does seem to have a certain something that breaks through even the manufactured drama of Simon Cowell. (I thought this interpretation of Tears 4 Fears’ “Mad World” was hypnotic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djn3ItxukbE Give a listen…..)

In their ongoing conversion efforts, my friends sent me a post from an Idol fan board. I think this excerpt speaks for itself. Sometimes a life changing contact can come from the most unexpected place.

"For me, it’s almost like in addition to adoring his musical abilities and the 'person' (however limited our view of that is) he portrays, he kind of took me to a place I hadn't been in a long time - one where I was in touch with my real feelings for the first time in ages. Music hasn't moved me in a long time, but his has taken me out of numbness and for this I owe him a debt of gratitude. It’s like he somehow busted through a dam in my heart, and now the floodwaters of good feeling are coming out. This sounds like a cliche, but it’s true. And how, exactly, would one NOT become a wee bit obsessed with someone, real or in Adam's case fairly 'imaginary' that did something so important? Not important to anyone else, but massive in my little life!

But more than that, he is a kind of symbol for me, he inspires me to great depths and I know not why. There is something so singularly unique about him that makes ME feel brave to be MY OWN singular, unique person. There is no greater gift that someone can give than that.”

Convince Me

Last week, a member of the WV Congressional delegation publicly announced that she was “not convinced” that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide are leading to global climate change.

Huh.

This was one of the stranger public statements I’d seen from a member of Congress in a long time, and that’s saying something. I’ve been unable to shake how incredibly irritated I am by this “not convinced” claim. It is so anti-intellectual and insulting to her constituency and frankly, to the rest of the world.

Climate change is no longer something we can just say we believe or don’t believe. It’s crazy to me in the face of all of the best science and the wide variety of studies and interpretations from hundreds of professionals the world over to uphold your personal doubt as a reason for opposing policy change. Anyone can see, it’s not doubt, it’s fear and denial. And no plan.

An honest approach to the situation would be to acknowledge that the policy changes required by pollution will, in the short run, pose threats to the old economy. I could get behind a press release acknowledging that reality. But to forestall real issues with claims of needing to be “convinced” is just ridiculous. It’s a fine example of not pursing truth at the highest level.

We need to talk about the profound truth of what we are doing to our world, as well as the profound truth of how long undoing it will take and what the very real consequences of those changes will be on many people. Anyone willing to have that conversation is a real leader. Anyone diverting attention onto false debates is only out for themselves.