Integrate!

 If you're like me, you're frustrated. There's too much work and too little laughter in your days. There are never enough hugs. Times are tough, and you suspect they will stay that way for the foreseeable future. So what will you do? I know. Hibernation is a great idea, but it doesn't work for human beings. Pretending you're fine works for a while, but eventually even you realize that faking it isn't helping you make it. And you've tried wallowing, but it's not really you. So hit the reset button. That's frustrating, too. I know. For one thing, often the reset button is actually a hole into which you have to insert a push pin or paper clip. And then you have to wait. And isn't that just so very 2020? Photo by    Linus Strandholm   on   Scopio And yet, over and over again, you'll hit a moment when you are sad or angry or distracted. And the right answer is to push reset. Don't try to get better yet. Try to get back to neutral. Get up and m...

I am writing this from a desk on the top floor of Massey College , looking out over the courtyard on a beautiful sunny morning. It is a scene from every movie about scholars in long gowns thinking deep thoughts. It is a dream from a long, long time ago.  And it's an alarm. It's time to wake up. In 1990, I defended my doctoral thesis. One of the examiners was then the Master of Massey College. And it wasn't until today, wondering why I was reluctant to go to the dining room for breakfast, that I realized I had made a choice. I wasn't here because I needed a bed close to my training. I was here to remember, to revisit the spectacular debacle that was my thesis defense and see it with new eyes. I'm not sure why it has taken more than 20 years for me to know, absolutely, that Yeats, the poet we were discussing on the day in late summer 1990, would have been baffled by the conversation. I was young and fiery and I had written a beautiful, complex study of how beauty ...

Someone asked me this week, "how do you teach a kid to let go of a failure and move on." You can't get there from here. As long as you are thinking about failure, you are holding onto it. Even if the voice in your head is chanting "Let it go." We're not built that way. Our brains are built to let go of things we are not accessing, not giving any attention. As soon as we give something our attention, we make it easier to access. You make your fears and your failures stronger when you give them your attention. Even if you're telling yourself "just let it go." "Let it go" is impossible advice. It's like telling kids to "sit still and listen." Many kids listen by moving. They can't listen if they sit still and they can't sit still if they are listening. One of the secrets to leadership is to give people instructions they can follow. In this case, the instruction is not to "let go." It's "bu...

"But in jazz music, there’s no escaping what came before you. Each new player does their best to understand the contributions made by others before them and to expand, reinterpret or say something new with that knowledge in hand. History is vital to jazz music." Chris Ferguson, SteelCity Jazzfest Full disclosure: I take some credit for this quotation because I raised the guy who wrote it.  And I am very proud that I raised someone who is immune to the opportunism and amnesia that plague both our businesses and our self-help movements.  Every day I see Facebook memes that suggest dumping anyone who does not seem to be immediately useful to you. They do this in the name of owning your energy and developing personal power.  It's nonsense. Power comes from congruence and congruence comes from owning your situation. Some of your situation is the history you carry within you, the accumulation of events and beliefs that your past has given you. Some of these are old news...

I recently gathered some of my best friends and closest associates and asked them to bring as a gift a story of persistence. Persistence is not one of the sexier virtues, and it's one of the hardest to define. What's the difference between doing the same thing and expecting a different result (insanity!) and sticking to your plan long enough for it to work? Are you crazy if you keep hoping for something that isn't happening or are you unfocused if you abandon your goal because you don't get instant success? Here's what my fairy godmothers and godfathers offered me as gifts of persistence: Sometimes life is like knitting: you have to trust the pattern because the early results don't look anything like the end results. If there is work that matters at the top, you take whatever time you need to climb 98 stairs while recovering from pneumonia. You earn your peace with hard, sweaty work. It takes humour and courage to keep trying. Structure and support coun...