Move Your Desk

Have you ever driven through the night to Wyoming and sat at the entrance of Devil's Tower to welcome in the dawn?

I did. That was three years ago. The trip where I got to see the Badlands again and notice that they looked completely different than I had remembered. But, Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore looked about the same.

Road trips are an important part of my life. Though we flew a lot when I was a young girl, my parents always made sure that there was time each year for a road trip.

Some years we went just a few hours a way for a few days, but most of the time we'd pack up and head out of town for a few weeks - traveling from east to west, from mid-west to east (often through Canada), and from west to east. And, everywhere in between.

This past year I went on a big road trip across the country, and several shorter trips within that trip. It spanned over a year.

Kolob Canyon, City of Rocks, Warm Springs Nevada, Yellowstone, White Sands, Lake Powell, Sun Valley, Brian's Head, Nebo Loop, The Grand Tetons, Squaw Peak, Liberty Jail in Missouri, Bedford Indiana (Limestone quarries), and the massive forest that is the east coast. Just a few adventures along the journey.

I chose to learn quite a few lessons from this experience. This episode captures some of them. Of course, I remembered more after I finished my ramble.

Part of me feels like I need to edit this further because it's over an hour. But, lately I've been asked to continue saying more in less time. So, I finally just allowed myself to bring this to you in it's long form.

Listen or not, I hope you take time for a road trip sometime in the next few months. If you live in the city, go through the country. If you live in the country, I hope you try out the city. We need to experience both right now. There's too much confusion and judgement going on from sources that don't have boots on the ground, yet have a lot to say about what they think is going on.

I'm back home, but wishing that I was out on the next adventure. The road trip changed me, and that's exactly why I will go again.

“I MAY NOT HAVE GONE WHERE I INTENDED TO GO, BUT I THINK I HAVE ENDED UP WHERE I INTENDED TO BE.” – DOUGLAS ADAMS

#podcast #moveyourdesk #kolobcanyon #cityofrocks #therockies #yellowstone #lakepowell #Brianshead #sunvalley #twinfalls #mtharrison #wasatchfront #neboloop #warmsprings #whitesands

Have you been there? In that place where your very identity is unclear to others and more importantly, not clear to you?

It's a weird place. A messy place. A place of self-doubt, questioning reality, and wondering what went wrong.

Ah, well. It happens sometimes.

Life throws you some curve balls and instead of using your wisdom and capabilities to move forward, you stand in stunned silence wondering what is happening and how you could be caught off guard in this way.

I let some thoughts flow today. Didn't plan for it or anything. No small bullet points on a piece of paper to reference. Just rumination, reflection, and realizing some things.

It's part of a painful process of figuring out the next level of personal growth. Part of it I chose for reasons. Part of it is placed upon me by external factors out of my control.

Either way, I've promised myself that I will continue to share as I go through the journey vs. waiting for successful outcomes.

It's worth it for me to go through this phase of experience, but the question is for how long?

Tune in to go on the journey with me.

Available through the Move Your Desk podcast - on all major podcast services.

#podcast #identitycrisis #personalvalue #perception #moveyourdesk #workperformance #performanceimprovement

Sometimes fortune cookies do contain the right message for a particular moment in time.

Periodically, I post fortune cookie messages on social media. Typically a day or two after a Panda Express excursion.

One of my brother's noticed my post and told me about his experience with a fortune cookie message that propelled him forward. And, it is now part of the decision making he and his wife make whenever they are holding back from taking a leap into the unknown.

Tune in to listen to Craig Clark share his adventures during the pandemic. Their family packed up all their belongings, hit the road, and met with unintended detours that lead to new plans, He noticed increased awareness of the possibilities that come when you keep moving and allow yourself to take a big step into the unknown.

Bossing can be a tough business since it's dealing with all the humans.

Sometimes bosses are so good at delegating you wonder if they are pulling their weight.

However, there's another group of bosses that truly suffer as they fully engage in their responsibility to make sure the team performs the work... unwittingly taking on responsibilities that need to be taken on by the team for workload balancing and/or allowing for the personal development of other employees.

I've been this kind of boss at points on my journey and I've stepped into new awareness of where some of the propensity to over-reach and overwork comes from for me. Part of this awareness came from reading one of the Ken Blanchard "One Minute Manager" series books.

In "The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey," Ken Blanchard (with William Oncken Jr. and Ken Burrows) use the concept of monkeys jumping on your back to illustrate how some bosses reduce the performance of their division or team because they absorb the work in small work interactions.

It is a compelling behavior to pay attention to toward improving your personal and team results.

I hope you take a listen. It's time to manage the monkeys.

Mindset is important to upgrading your work performance. So is time planning, and habits, and... all the things.

But, what if there is a tool that will help you improve your decision-making and execution of all those great ideas you plan to do.

It involves straining your brain just enough to start re-wiring it one step at a time using the insights from the world of neuroplasticity.

John Kennedy came up with an elegant solution to help military personnel, athletes, business creators, neurodivergent students, and those struggling with brain trauma, depression, or just plain want to improve personal and work performance.

It involves training the brain, combat style. He first created this approach for a low performing military platoon. They didn't stay low performing for long.

John Kennedy shares this story, and more insights about the brain, habits, and robust stimulation in this episode. And, stay tuned for future brain training sessions where John takes us through live combat brain training. You are welcome to join again if you have joined our sessions in the past.

The industrial revolution brought great advancements in standards, processes, and production. You could work on an assembly line hour by hour and achieve great efficiency and productivity targets, as long as your machine cooperated.

Assembly line work was different than the craftsmanship required to create a unique piece of furniture. But, both created value in their own special way.

Today our world continues as a mixture of assembly lines and craftsmanship because products from both forms of creation meet our needs.

I've worked in situations where I was a mass producer of widgets (or boxes filled with breaded zucchini) and others where I got to share my insights and hone my crafts.

Most people I know, whether in white collar or blue collar identified work, must bring their knowledge, experiences, and insights to their work. Not just their bodies ability to perform mechanical movements.

It's ok to be a mass producer or a craftsman, but recognize the difference in yourself, those you lead, and those you work alongside. There is a difference in how the work gets done, especially for the person having to think through it.

Your ability, insights, thinking approaches, and experiences are valuable. They are also one of a kind. No one can replace what you offer.

So, it's worth paying attention to whether or not you are viewed as an interchangeable human on the job. Maybe that's the job. And, maybe you are fine with that right now.

But, maybe you are not. And, you get to inform, educate, or leave the people that pay you for what you do.

Either way, it's worth remembering that others are just like you. Not interchangeable. Not the same. Not a body to fill a space, or treat like an interchangeable part.

Seth Godin has been sharing the message for years that the days of industrial revolution approaches are diminishing. It's time for us to start (or keep) sharing what we are uniquely positioned to offer the world while allowing others to do the same.

For many years, I discounted several mental health tools.

Hypnosis was one of them.

One of my first experiences was watching volunteers get hypnotized on a stage at The Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. You know, that big pink hotel?

Fast forward a few years, and I found hypnotherapy was a way to gain personal awareness and to re-frame the stories of the mind.

In this episode, I share some of my experiences with hypnotherapy. I've tried it through a downloadable app, through YouTube, and through virtual sessions with a hypnotherapist.

It's different than I thought. I'm glad I've tried it and turn to it at times where I'd like to explore some of my beliefs.

It can help you offer up your best work, reach back to heal a thought that you've carried with you for a long time, or just want to experiment. I encourage you to give it a try.

You don't have to go on a stage. You don't need to sit and close your eyes in the office of someone you don't know. It's available to you right now wherever you are.

May is Mental Health Awareness month.

But, I did not realize this when I had a conversation with Rebecca Jacklin LMSW this past week.

It's something that is an important part of offering up our best work, but often underestimated.

Mental health awareness is on the rise, and I am grateful to take pause to talk about it in a few episodes of this podcast.

Rebecca Jacklin shares her journey to becoming a therapist and insights from her life and work. In our college days, we both had a chance to work at the same drug and alcohol treatment center at a county jail. I had totally forgotten, but she was the Rebecca that replaced me when I went off to Washington, DC. Small world and I'm glad that we've gotten to re-connect.

Rebecca Jacklin shares the spiritual nudges, the work experiences, what to consider when finding a therapist, and how she feels about all the humans.

I truly enjoyed hearing from her and can't wait to have another conversation with her to learn more.

Do you have regrets?

A few years ago, I felt like I didn't have that many regrets.

But, as time goes on I have gained new awareness that I do have regrets. And, I've learned from some and not from others.

So, what to do about the nagging regrets that still hold fast to the heart and mind?

I've always thought I could learn from the past toward improving the future, but reading Daniel Pink's recent book release gave me pause to think about how to reflect on my regrets in specific ways depending upon the type of regret. And, yes, there are different kinds of regrets.

Though I go over a few insights about the "if only" regrets nd the "at least" regrets, the four core regrets, and ways to move forward, I'd still encourage you to read the book for further insights.

For me it helped to pause, write down my own regrets, and engage in the exercise of re-framing a few of them.

Some regrets are more important to address than others. But, knowing how to compassionately take a look at your regrets and leveraging the lessons to move forward can be part of offering up your best work.

Sometimes projects don't go as planned. Unless you create the same product or service over and over, it often doesn't go as planned because there are just so many factors constantly at work.

But, even if you do create a repetitive solution, surprises enter the path that aren't the kind of surprise that delights a client or customer.

Juan Carlos, an experienced professional that is seeking professional development in project management, asked me a question about how I dealt with project recovery plans during my career.

For some reason, I had one specific project come to mind because I learned so much in the process of dealing with the difficulties of the project AND quite a few gaps beyond the project that needed to be addressed.

This was more of a reflection exercise than getting into specific details, but I can see how acknowledging the problems, committing to work on them, and then rolling up my sleeves and getting to work ultimately helped the project, the program, the contract, and my future self prepare to handle larger work challenges going forward.

I also recognized how important it was to point fingers only long enough to identify who or where a problem might be and get very quickly to "let's work this together." I've often found in that exercise, that some of those fingers get quickly bent back to point at me.