Living With Chaos: You Have Agency

Time to read: 48 seconds. I timed it.

Welcome to week 2 of Living with Chaos. If you are enjoying this series, please share it with your people. They can join here.

The second part of the You Have No Control lecture is that you have agency, ownership and responsibility. For everything. Your health, relationships, career, attitude, feelings, choices. It looks like this:

  • You don't control if your teen does her homework. You have agency over how you relate to your teen.
  • You control aging (yours or someone else's). You have responsibility for how you care for yourself and your attitude as you age.
  • You don't have control over a layoff. You have ownership over how you respond and what you do next.

So how does this relate to chaos? There is so much about national politics, your career, your family etc that you don't control. However, you have all the agency to decide what you will and won't do, how you speak to others, and the ways you do or don't give power to the chaos of human life.

For the next 3 weeks, I'll share one strategy a week for dealing with chaos. More to come!

 

Living With Chaos: Good News! You Have No Control

Time to read: 36 seconds

It's awesome vintage!

Welcome to week 1 of Living with Chaos. I'm going to keep this multi-week series brief, to the point, and immediately useful. Your life is full (cue the chaos) so I want the return-on-investment of your time to read this newsletter to be high. Please share it with your friends and family and anyone who experiences chaos and wants to thrive. They can join here.

And now we begin.

Anyone who comes within 2 feet of me gets this lecture.

You Have No Control.

None. Nada. Nope. No Control. Is that clear?

Consider this: aging, getting sick, people you love getting sick, death, layoffs, who your children turn out to be, the weather, other people's behavior, etc etc etc. Despite your best efforts, you have zero control over these things.

This is great news! Once you really get that you have no control, you are free! The weight comes off your shoulder. You can stop trying to force outcomes or make people respond the way you want. You save so much effort and energy to use for things that are actually fun.

Next week, I'll tell you what you do have. Stay tuned.

If you love this newsletter, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.

 

How To Live In Chaos: Control vs. Agency

Time to read: 16 seconds

Every photo will be vintage. It's pretty and fun.

You didn't hear from me this morning. I was planning and thinking and feeling about what to write when 11:00 CT came and went. Sometimes, it's hard to figure out what to say. I let it go until I knew what I wanted to say.

Clients have been telling me about chaos: changing leadership, health scares, challenges with children, corporate restructuring, and the impact of political decisions on their lives and businesses.

So, I am doing a series on chaos…How to think about it. How to live with it. How to thrive in it.

If you know anyone who is struggling in chaos…personal, professional, or political, please share it with them. They can sign up here.

We start next week.

 

Lessons I Live By #6

Time to read: 16 seconds

More vintage!

Today is short: Happiness is counter-cultural. Satisfaction is revolutionary.

Think for a moment of all the complaining you heard today. Perhaps your own complaining :-). People complain constantly about their jobs, the service, traffic, food, family, fill in the blank, and people complain about it.

What if instead, you found reasons to be satisfied? Grateful? Even happy?

Sometimes being fulfilled and happy feels like a salmon swimming upstream.

Try it. It feels good to swim upstream.

If you love this newsletter, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.

 

Lessons I Live By #5. Stop Overthinking!

Time to read: 47 seconds

Gorgeous copper MCM dish

Are you the person who spends hours perfecting a slide deck or obsesses over the wording in every email to get it Just Right? Today's lesson is for you.

Stop overthinking.

The way I think about it is develop an action-orientation. Move faster. Hit send. Pick up the phone.

(A caveat: some things require thoughtfulness and time. Writing most emails is not one of them. And if an email is that sensitive, then it's better to call.)

A couple of weeks ago, I used the word tenant instead of tenet in this newsletter. I so appreciate the emails I received to correct the mistake. And despite the mistake, the earth kept spinning. With his newsletter, I have a rule that I write, read/edit once and hit send. If it took me hours each week to produce this, I would stop from the stress and time suck.

If you're ruminating and overthinking, you probably already know what you want to do. You are just afraid to do it. (What if you make a mistake? What if someone is offended? What if your words come out wrong?)

Trust yourself. If something goes sideways, you have the skills to clean it up.

Just hit send.

If you love this newsletter, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.

 

Lessons I Live By #4. No Such Thing As Win-Lose

Time to read: a few short seconds

1960s Bambi and Faline. Some of you won't care (like my husband. Someone of you will love them!)

Once upon a time, back in my corporate days, our main competitor had a major win in the market. I observed to one of my colleagues that this was bad news. "They win, we lose," right?

She said actually, a win for our competitor was good news for us because it meant there was a pathway and market for our similar products. Ah, that is what win-win looks like.

In life and work, your only options are win-win and lose-lose. Win-lose is a fallacy based on scarcity and fear. Win-lose implies there isn't enough to go around, and puts you in constant competition with your colleagues, friends, and neighbors. The fact is that someone else's success means success (however you define it) is available to you, too.

A rising tide raises all ships. Look for ways to raise the tide and find a win-win. It's good for you, and good for everyone else, too.

If you love this newsletter, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.

 

Lessons I Live By. #3

Time to read: 36 seconds

Happy winter in the US!

Today's lesson: Nothing is urgent.

For years, I behaved as if everything, every day was urgent. Homework! Cooking dinner! Scheduling! Planning! Coaching! I drove myself and my family crazy.

The truth is, I was uncomfortable with uncertainty and lose ends. I operated as if urgency ensured everything would get done. I believed it was possible to force life to be certain if I just tried hard enough.

This lesson took me a long time to learn, and I'm still learning. Nothing is urgent. (OK. A broken arm is urgent. A natural disaster is urgent.) In daily life, very little is urgent. However many things are important. We often sacrifice the truly important under the falsehood of urgency.

Homework is not urgent. Your email is not urgent. Your relationship with your children and employees is important. I found that I confused the two and focused on the wrong things. Take a good look at what is actually important in your life and figure out how to focus on that. Drop the urgency.

Your life and work will get a lot easier!

If you love this newsletter, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.