Self Valuation

Each of us values ourselves - how we look at ourselves and judge how we're doing day to day - differently.

For some it's our contribution to others, sometimes it's our job (or even more specifically our salary or title), sometimes it's the car we drive, or house we live in. These days no doubt, someone looks at the number of Facebook friends, or Twitter followers and that determines their view of their own self-worth. It can be how we perform our role - mother, father, manager, doctor - and how many accolades we receive from others. Perhaps it's our time-served, or our commitment to another person or ideal. It can be our moral standards, our adherence to ideals we think are important or quite blandly, how much money or stuff we have.

It's likely a combination of a few of these and other things..

Who cares..?

Well, you do. And that's pretty important. If "I" as an individual haven't ever thought through how I value myself, then I'm likely on a bit of a roller-coaster in this area, and that can't be easy or fun.

My suggestion to you - each of 'you' - is that you take a moment and have an honest quiet think about this. Come to grips with your answer and understand there isn't a right or wrong answer here. Decide if you like the answer you come up with, and then with that understanding, protect that area a little. Invest in actions that will drive out success for it. Feed and nurture it and don't let yourself feel victimized by circumstance or others and see your own image of yourself reduced in value.

At the end of the day, you are your own primary investment. Don't undersell yourself.

On the Road

It's been a bit of a blur lately. Multiple hotels in a week, new airlines and strange cities.

Been there done that...or exciting new opportunities to stretch our minds, see new sights and have new experiences...? We each get to decide I imagine, for while we may not "control" our reactions, we are responsible for them.

Sometime we forget that, and elect to be victimized by our situations. Force Majuere aside, (my first reference for lawyers) we should acknowledge that we own our reactions, and while we might not be able to manage that, that doesn't negate our responsibility of ownership.

For what it's worth, I marveled at the views, and elected to enjoy the new brothers and sisters I met. It was a wondrous week.

Crazy Animals

There's a polar bear in a zoo near me and it's nuts. You can tell because it does the same lap, the same path over and over in it's enclosure. It even wags it's head the same way on every circuit. This is a tremendous shame and effectively removes the sense of wonder and awe you ought to feel when seeing one of nature's greatest creations in the flesh. Polar bears shouldn't make you feel pity.

The bear in question is suffering from a lack of stimulation in it's environment and this affliction is not restricted sadly to those in literal cages.

It can strike any of us. I know working in a home office I've certainly had my fair share of stir crazy over the years.

I think this is understandable though and in a sense we are in better shape than our friend the bear, for we understand the condition and can hopefully preclude it's onset.

Our human spirit requires some degree of dynamic. Look at our history. When we are left to our own devices in a static situation what do we do ? We kill and try to dominate one another. We display territoriality and indulge in all kinds of political activities, positive and harmful. As a species we are about growing - our knowledge, our experience and contribution.

Now let's get a little intimate.

The key to avoid going truly around the bend is to understand ourselves well enough to see when we start to exhibit signs of needing some new stimulation. Note I said need, not want. I might like some changes well before I actually need them to be in place. That's usually a sign of good judgment more so than a critical path item. When I need change I may be well down the path of already being deep in a rut, and have no vision as to how to get out of it. Then I need it. We can provide help to those around us that we see others in those situations - recommending a proverbial and literal change of scenery. But it's ourselves we ought to be aware of to avoid the outcome in the first place.

Ask yourself, "What am I bringing into my environment to stimulate a new way of looking at things, or to change my behavior?", "What have I approached differently (on purpose) to help me see new perspectives?" or even "Can I do the same task in a different way, and end up with different results - and what's the implication of that ?".

Each of us owns our own sense of sanity, and being smarter than the average bear we ought to be able to help ourselves to avoid being in a cage- even one of our own design.

Your Business Tongue

We all grow up (in a working sense) in one industry or another. There is some job somewhere in our impressionable young lives that imprints upon us, and becomes 'what we know'. It's not the first job - cutting grass, babysitting, camp counselor stuff, but rather where we first had to work in a real commercial environment. Where we are first treated as a fellow adult, and given the benefit of the doubt for having some common sense, professionalism and capabilities that are valuable. (clearly, that doesn't happen to everyone, and you know who you are) When we mature in a work sense it has the effect of stamping us - defining our psyche and helping us establish who we are in a workplace vision of ourselves. All well and good if this idea I'm writing about was personal psychology, but I think there's more to it than that.

This first (proper) job imprints upon us it's business model, major players and customer needs - it evolves to become "our industry". By default when we go looking for the next place to work to pursue career advancement or take account of some physical move, we remain in 'our industry' as that's where our skills and contacts reside. Later in life - days or years - we find ourselves doing other things outside of our industry, and realize that there's a whole new set of variables, customer desires and competitor pressures. There's probably a new business model that needs to be learned, and hopefully, there's some advantages that you can bring from your previous experience to this new role - allowing some form of innovation in a great or small sense from what you knew and applied in that other context. You may love the new environment, but whether it fits or not, you will miss the original industry - it's your business tongue - the one you can easily speak, move within and understand the dynamics of almost intrinsically. Sometime we go back, and sometimes we elect to continue to leverage what we learned before, and simply value the experience.

That last bit - experience - is the key I think. After-all, none of us is anymore than the sum of our experiences and its what makes us individuals and interestingly unique. My own character traits, exposed over my experience is what has defined who I am - what each of us are. So look at your experience and specifically your business tongue and ask yourself - What can you bring to your current situation from what you grew up as a worker knowing ? Your personal uniqueness makes this a value that you are probably pretty singularly able to offer.

When the World Changed

Sometimes the key indicators of changes are easy to see and sometimes they aren’t. This wasn’t always so. Before our connected world, before we all carried mobile telephony constantly, and when our Facebook status didn’t derive our mood, we lived in a world where change seemed to happen as a series small or very large earthquakes. It would be still for some extended period, then something major would happen and it would alter our world. These days the ground shakes almost constantly beneath us, and we’ve almost ceased to notice the movement and motion it creates.

My first memory of an earth-changing moment happened when I was very young, and I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon’s surface. Indeed it was one small step for man, and a giant leap for mankind. With that simple act, we moved without doubt beyond our own world, and opened a new frontier. It was a seminal moment for our race – something the new iWhatever doesn’t necessarily rate highly against, but we treat the same way it seems.

We saw a small but significant passing this week in my country indicative that another change was now to be properly relegated to the history books – our last World War One veteran passed away at the ripe old age of 110. There is no one left that can offer their perspectives and tales of what happened, it’s stories from dead people now.

We can celebrate their long life and the situations they’d have seen, but I’m not sure we can ever again appreciate what a universe-rocking event that person perceived and saw themselves participating in. My own grandfather was deployed during this ‘great war’ as it was then known, and it represented conflict on a scale never before seen. Virtually the entire planet was trying to annihilate one another. It had the potential of being an extinction level event was the common view at the time. It brought to everyday life horrors hitherto unseen – and now commonly available at the Cineplex sadly. It struck me on reading this news that big change happened less frequently, and was more dramatic then. It also made me think of those that served, and the role they’d have played in this change, and made me wonder what they would have thought of it – both then and in hindsight. Like many involved in any conflict, my own grandfather didn’t speak of what he saw, did or thought, so I’ll never know. I can say with some certainty that he would be uncomfortable with the excitement level about change that we enable today.

He saw the real thing, so the fuss made over a new gadget, celebrity comment or minor business development would be incomprehensible to him. He wouldn't fathom how these ‘rustlings’ represented change worth acknowledging – or perhaps he’d see it for what it is – the small noises that fill the calm between the storms.

From Extraordinary to Mundane

I’m flying across the Atlantic as I write this and it struck me that I don’t know how many times I’ve done this over the years. Many. This is the 4^th time so far this year. The undertaking itself is impressive still, but also routine in a fashion. The experience has become normal for me, it’s just what happens sometimes. For many it’s extraordinary, and I run into people on an almost a daily basis that have never done it.

It’s a shame when we don’t notice the adjustment, that movement from something ceasing to be spectacular and special and don’t acknowledge it. There remain many things I’d like to do that I’d consider to be extraordinary still, but experience and age has even dulled the shine off of some of these.

Someone like Graham Greene who had a fantastic eye for the human condition would appreciate the melancholy created from having achieved much of what you want. He’d have served it with warmer irony than I’m able to muster as well. Were this story his, this text would be found floating in the swells from where the wreckage washed ashore.