A dear friend just sent along this poem, “Fairy Tales” by Chester Swor.  I share it in honor of those who lost their lives this week in Boston. In honor of those who have lost someone dear.  In honor of those who ran toward the danger to touch someone, help someone, save someone.  In honor of all those who have touched, helped and saved me when I needed it.  This is for you.

“Fairy Tales” by Chester Swor

It seems wherever I go
People come into my life or go out of it
Touching me where I feel
Then leaving me only a memory
Like the Gossamer fairy tales of children –
Easily forgotten
And I wasn’t through knowing them.

How do I know
Who I am seeing for the last time?
How do you halt your life to gather and keep all
Those around you that you’ve ever known?
And how do you keep fairy tales from losing their magic?

So come
Brush against the walls of my life
And stay long enough for us to know each other
Even though we’ll have to part sometime
And we both know
The longer you stay
The more I’ll want you when you are gone.

But come anyway
For fairy tales are the happiest stories we read
And great books are made of little chapters.

Dear Uncommon Readers,
I am so excited to be hosting Tama Kieves on April 24th for “Inspired and Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life’s Work!” and, by way of introduction and to provide a bit of background on who she is and how she created her own Inspired, Unstoppable and Wild Success…here is an excerpt from Tama’s latest book:

Book excerpt by Tama Kieves

At the most dramatic turning point of my life, I left my career as an overworked attorney to follow my soul’s haunting desire to become a writer. I had graduated with honors from Harvard Law School and worked in the litigation department of a huge, elite law firm. While there, I traded my life for societal slaps on the back, more money, and more grinding work assignments. I made partnership track. But I was desperate to be free, exhausted in my good, safe job, dying of meaninglessness, suffocating the life out of my creative soul. Finally, a friend asked me a vital question:

“If you’re this successful doing work you don’t love,

what could you do with work you do love?”

 I decided to answer that question with my life. I left the practice of law to undergo the art, practice, and baptism of listening to myself in this lifetime. I wrote about this amazing journey of transition in my first book, This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love.

A bit about the new book: “Inspired & Unstoppable”
This book is about wildly succeeding in your life’s work: taking what you came here to do to the next level. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t want to just “follow my bliss.” I wanted to follow my bliss, say to a bank, or to a bestseller list, or to some kind of explosive expression in the world. It had never been my dream to leave my law practice to end up as an incompetent entrepreneur or a starving artist. But I also didn’t leave one falsely successful life, only to turn myself into a sock puppet again, swallow my spirit, and “get with the program” so I could “make it in the big time.”

I was going for the holy grail of wild success, the deluxe spirit package, passion, sweetness, and inspired prosperity. I wanted creative independence and security, worldly fanfare and peace of mind and the experience that abundance came from doing the work I came to do, the way I came to do it. The only problem was, I could name my desires until the cows came home—and kicked back with Netflix, cud, and apple martinis—but I wasn’t sure how to create this “everything comes together” life.

Yes, I’d practiced law and maybe I should have known how to project business goals in the “real world.” But, truth is, I have a poet-philosopher’s heart and tend to process life in metaphors and fires-in-the-belly, more than data and numbers. While I’m ambitious and logical, I’m also part rebel, gypsy, and lightning-bolt bearer. That means, for instance, that when well-meaning folks suggested conventional means like business plans, I tried not to start speaking in tongues or bite them.

Still, I craved commercial success, recognition, and reach, so I turned to marketing advice, success books and popular titles in the business, self-help, and motivational world. But the more I read, the more disillusioned I felt. I had finally found a dream that gave me life—but everything I read about succeeding in it felt soul-numbing. I just knew I had the mojo, but “the getting it out there,” the pipelines to income and opportunities, seemed to be governed by a mechanical, harsh, or clannishly linear world. It didn’t matter if I had twelve thousand diamonds; the jewelers wore blindfolds. Everything made it clear that real success required what I didn’t have, and without a “mind meld” with Anthony Robbins, Donald Trump or, say, “The Terminator” would never have.

Like so many of us, I didn’t realize that I already possessed an inspired way to succeed. It hadn’t dawned on me yet that the electricity that inspires our dreams also inspires the means.

But this is the truth I know now: taking what you love into the world has little to do with conventional techniques, established reality, or the formulas of the marketplace. Following your true desire or calling is an initiation of soul. It’s a rite of passage. It’s a whole new game board with exciting new rules. Bring your diamonds. (Read on for more from Tama…)

I hate to break it to you but there is no one sure recipe for how to be successful.

There are actually hundreds of thousands  – perhaps millions – of ways to become successful.  And each and every one depends on you.

Your definition of success, your willingness to work hard, your willingness to trust, your willingness to dream, your willingness to let go, to love, to hope, to change and to take action.

It’s not about “able”.  We’re all able.  It’s about willingness.  It’s about being open.  It’s about letting go and trying a new approach.  It’s about being you and being real.  And this is the hardest part.

We are wired for safety, security, status, certainty and status quo.  We can’t sell the house, we can’t move the kids out of school, we can’t speak up against senior management, we can’t lose our benefits.

Yes.  You can.  But are you willing?  Are you willing to define success – YOUR version success – and take stock of where you are against it?  Are you willing to relax and play with possibility?  Are you willing to consider – really consider – that this is not the best you can do, the most you can be, that this is not all there is?

I hope so.  Come play.  I have some possibilities.

One fabulous opportunity to play is coming up later this month.  The Center for Meaningful Work is hosting Tama Kieves – best-selling author, inspirational speaker and career coach – for a workshop that will move you to action.  Join us!

We’ve all heard that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I can’t think of a more appropriate saying to sum up how so many people come to regard their work and life.

We do well in first grade to get into second grade.  Must pass grades in 7th to get to 8th.  Do well on our SATs to get into a good college so we can get a good job with good benefits.  Scrabble around the corporate ladder to get a bigger office, better salary, nicer title.  And then wake up and realize we are in hell.

It’s the moment we realize that our goals to:

1. Increase sales by 20%
2. Expand into 30% more territory and
3. Cut expenses by 15%

actually translate to:

1. Be 20% more dreadful
2. Ignore family 18% more
3. Decrease soul by 22%*

It’s the moment you realize that “this isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing”.

It’s the moment you realize “I should have been a helicopter pilot”.

This moment can be a galling, pit of your stomach realization that you took a “right” turn when you should have hung a left.  It can cause a deep, sinking feeling of resignation with a sad back up chorus of altos singing “Why bother now?  It’s too late”.

But it’s not.  There’s still time. And the consequences of not trying are really quite damning…

“Definition of Hell: The last day you have on Earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” – Anonymous

Don’t let this happen to you.  Suffer less.  Soar more.

And join us at the Center for Meaningful Work on April 24th to enjoy an energizing, inspiring, mojo-inducing workshop with bestselling author and career coach, Tama Kieves.

*Hat tip to DAK

Have you heard of crab mentality?  The analogy comes from the apparent habit of crabs in a bucket to hinder the escape of any one crab.  Alone in a bucket, any one crab can make his or her getaway but in a bucket full of crabs they grab at one another and pull the potential escapee back down.

If you’re like me – and the many folks I’ve mentioned this analogy to – your reaction may be along the lines of “YES! That’s exactly what happens!”.  And you may not be referring to your own personal experience with crabs in a bucket but instead, alas, of your own work and life experience.

Like crabs – or any living thing – we are wired for survival.  I don’t believe crabs – crabby as they have a reputation to be – are necessarily plotting to thwart a colleague’s success. From a crab’s perspective, survival is “out” and back where she belongs. Alone in a bucket she’ll grab on to any crab hold to make it over the lid.  In a bucket full of crabs, she’ll do the same – even if it happens to be the shapely leg of a fellow crab.  Dashed hopes for all involved.

Lessons from the crab bucket:
1. To get out of a bucket, you may have to have the tenacity to shake off more than a few fellow crabs.
2. When a fellow crab is making an escape, resist the urge to grab and pull – it helps no one and can have disastrous consequences.
3. Consider that we tend to measure and value ourselves in relation to our fellow crabs.  There are other buckets out there.  Better yet, there is a big blue free sea.  Consider that the biggest obstacle to your own escape, just might the value you place on you.

Tips for Escaping Buckets

• Awareness of the bucket is the first step.  Take stock of your work and life.  Good bucket? Or no?
• Evaluate your current vs ideal relationship to the bucket
• Establish a goal
• Option 1: Celebrate and nurture a good bucket
• Option 2: Plan your escape
• Option 3: Commit to helping others escape if the bucket is not their bag
• Commit to your goal with a clear vision of success
• Execute your plan with milestones, support and expert advice
• Follow through, don’t peek back into the bucket, head forward
• Pass it on

Mix high stress levels with low resilience and add a handful of the following ingredients to taste:
misaligned expectations
lack of feedback
blocked progress
boring tasks
inability to set and defend boundaries
lack of communication
uninspired purpose
lack of confidence

Shake vigorously and place in a dysfunctional culture to allow the mixture to rise.

For those of you looking for the drink.  Please see below:

Original Recipe

From Joe Scialom’s private papers, and published in Beachbum Berry Remixed by Jeff Berry, 2010

• 1 oz gin
• 1 oz brandy
• 1/2 oz Rose’s Lime Juice Cordial
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
• 4 oz ginger beer (chilled)

Shake everything, except ginger beer, with ice. Stir in ginger beer and pour into a double old-fashioned glass. Garnish with orange slice and sprig of mint.

We’ve heard of managing up, across and down (If you haven’t, here’s a nice philosophy describing each).  But what about managing “in”?

Working well with others requires us to understand others’ world view and make connections between our goals and theirs.  It requires us to communicate effectively and   engage productively – minimizing conflicts and leveraging strengths.  These are the fundamentals of managing up, down and across.

What if we applied those concepts more concertedly to ourselves?  For those of us who have endured work environments that have left us feeling worn down, keyed up and shot through, the concept of managing in may provide some relief.

There’s the science researcher with a nagging feeling that he’s not in the right job. The life coach who feels a little too coach-y.  The human resources executive who seems more suited to finance and operations.  The COO who can’t let go of the little stuff.  And the executive assistant who is diminished daily by disrespect.

In each of these cases, there’s friction.  Whether internal, external or both, each of these professionals are in conflict, stressed or bored and therefore not in a position to do their best – for the company, or themselves.

Managing in involves the following skills:

1. Objectively acknowledging your own world view: What circumstances are you facing right now? What’s working and what’s not?  Does it seem temporary or permanent? What expectations do you have that are not being met? What are you tolerating?  What’s in your way?  Giving voice to what you’re experiencing helps you gain perspective and think rationally about what’s missing and what should be preserved.

2. Making connections and getting aligned: What do you want? Are your own actions, behaviors and choices getting you closer to the goal? What other choices do you have?  Being clear about what you DO want as opposed to railing against what you DON’T want puts us in a more effective frame of mind for positive change.  Choices open the door to possibility – and often relief – allowing us to see a way through, over or around the brick wall (instead of banging our head against it).

3. Minimize internal conflicts: What are your typical “triggers”?  These can be things like being interrupted, disrespect, inconsistency, laziness, aggression and others.  Is your environment trigger happy? Are you adept at managing your reactions?  Do you end up compromise yourself or your values?  Do you know where the end of your rope is?  Understanding and managing the deeply rooted personal needs we have for things like respect, being understood, taking responsibility and the like, helps us choose better environments and gives us the courage to articulate our needs in any given situation.

4. Leverage strengths: When do you feel “on fire”, “absorbed”, “consumed” in an activity?  What do you most love to contribute to a project?  What are the natural strengths you possess?  These are qualities that your family, friends and colleagues remark on, the skills or abilities that you can’t help but put forth.  Whether it’s detail orientation, an insatiable curiosity, being a great listener or a penchant for competition – knowing and actively applying these talents brings out not only the best in ourselves but others as well.

These are the fundamentals of managing “in”.  Knowing who you are, where you are, where you want to go and what you can do about it.  In the new economy, where imagination, innovation, entrepreneurship, technological advancement and rapid fire constant change is the theme of the day, it is more important than ever to manage ourselves.  Indeed, at the end of the day, the only thing we’ve got a modicum of control over is ourselves.

Whether it’s a work related objective or a personal aspiration, our goals can provide great motivation at the outset. But soon we find our energy flagging. Why is that?
Based on recent developments in brain research and neuroscience, we have more answers but if you’re in a hurry to get back on track, here are three tips you can use right away:

1. The Why Behind the Why: Write down your goal and then take 10 minutes to write down all the benefits you will gain from achieving that goal. Often our goals represent larger, more impactful aspirations and getting in touch with those can provide added motivation for getting them done.

2. Constructive Venting: List three things that are draining your energy from achieving your goal. Take one of them and write down what you feel about that “drainer”: what expectations aren’t being met? What are you tolerating as a result of the drainer? What values are being compromised? Are you beating yourself up with “shoulds” or other guilt. Once you’ve finished unpacking your energy drained, ask yourself what you **really want**. Research shows that “venting” actually helps us transition from “stuck mode” to “solution mode”.

3. Options and Actions: Take 5 minutes to brainstorm all the options you have for breaking through what’s holding you back and for making progress toward your goal (write down every option you can think of – including things like changing or tossing out the goal). Show the list to a friend and have them make additional suggestions. Review the list and pick the ONE option that you have the most energy around and turn it into an action: what will you do, with whom, by when. Research shows that making specific movements forward – even if they are small movements – gives us more motivation to keep going.

This particular set of tips is being used successfully by HR professionals in employee relations conversations, by trainers in helping participants to assimilate new behaviors and by educators in tapping into student motivations.  They are just a sliver of the great value that comes from the Motivation Factor® Methodology – a comprehensive but terrifically practical framework for getting and staying motivated.  Learn more here!