Things Meant to Fix Us Are Things That Don’t Break

Hearts are there when you need them.

When you are feeling down and need to reset your mind and perspective, what do you do? Do you go out in nature, cook, garden, sew? What is it that frees your mind and helps you keep going? For me, it is riding my bike. Hiking, running, and other forms of exercise can do it as well, but getting on my bike and taking off with the wind in my hair just frees my soul.

But what happens when your “thing” hurts you instead of helps you? It’s devastating. I got on my bike this weekend, really needing some soul time. Up until I mounted my bike, the previous 48 hours had been emotionally draining and difficult. I knew getting on my bike would really help – just enjoying the spring weather and burning off the angst. Then it happened. Twelve miles into an easy ride, it felt like a knife was sticking into my knee. This was the same sensation I had just before I tore my quad and was benched for ten weeks last spring. I muscled through until I knew that I had to stop and ask for a ride home. I couldn’t risk that severe of an injury again. I couldn’t lose my fix.

As I walked my bike down the road, I remembered the glorious day off I had on my calendar for the next day–a ski trip with a dear friend. I’ve been waiting for this ski day for more than two years — and a rare Monday off work, as well. I felt another stab of pain, and though in denial, I knew at that moment I couldn’t go skiing. The tears began to fall. I spotted a lonely intersection on the frontage road up ahead and thought it looked like a good place to wait for my rescue. As I walked, I asked God some serious questions. Why? Why after such  hard days did my “fix” need be taken from me, too? Why?

When I got to the intersection I found two hearts made with rocks — a little heart surrounded by a big heart. I sat by the hearts and cried.

The little heart was me, feeling small, broken, and stuck on the side of the road. And the big heart? Gifts from God –big enough to surround my life–surround it with people who would scrape me and my bike off the pavement. People who would give up their afternoon to listen to me. People who are more than happy to change ski plans just to be with me. People who give me a hug and just know without asking.

Funny how the hearts are always there when you need them. Funny how the “things” we think “fix” us aren’t actually the things that fix us at all.

Asking the Right Questions…Off to the Future We Go!

These five questions have been on a sticky note on my desktop for the last 6 years. I look at them every day. They are about the dream and not about the fear.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” —Albert Einstein

Dreams create energy. Fear destroys. We see this in business, at home, at school, and in every aspect of our lives. I’ve noticed a pattern of this throughout my own life and in the observations of the world around me.  I didn’t know how to articulate it until I heard of the book Breaking the Rules by Kurt Wright.

Kurt explains that most of the time, especially in business, we are focused on fixing a problem. And we have endless meetings about what is going wrong, which is the opposite of what we should be doing. To energize a team and create a system of effortless high performance we must start by asking the right questions.  High performance also comes with believing that it is possible…dreaming.

If you read my post on Editing Epiphanies, you know I love questions. They changed my life. So when Kurt armed me with another set of questions, I was so excited!

I started working at my current job about six years ago. My hire was nothing short of miraculous. I am grateful every day I step in the office. It was a hire that I attribute to me walking into the interview believing–really believing–I had value. Believing you have value after some devastating failures isn’t that easy to do, but I mustered that up thanks to another book  and one really good sermon (future post). My attitude was convincing enough for them to hire me, but it was only convincing because I truly believed it. I wasn’t pretending. I focused on what was right with me, not what was wrong. I focused on my strengths and experiences, which had value, whether the world and I had once perceived those experiences as failures. I walked in figuring I had nothing to lose.

When I was hired, it cleared my mind and my perspective. If that attitude got me hired, where could that attitude take me in the company? I wasn’t looking back.  I armed myself with my natural way of being — a dreamer. Fear didn’t have to drive me. If this company was willing to give me a chance, I wasn’t going to play it safe. They wanted my best. They wanted the person they interviewed–the person with strength and value. And my best has always come from dreaming big.

Thanks to Kurt Wright I was also armed with a new way of asking questions. Every situation and project I was presented with gave me an opportunity to ask these questions. And miraculous things happened. As a project manager, these questions are the only way to go. They get teams thinking about what could be, not what we are fixing.  Anything is possible. And these questions work anywhere. They work at church, at home…even on the international space station, if you were there.

The Right Questions

What’s right?

What makes it right?

What would be ideally right?

What’s not quite right yet?

What resources can I find to make it right?

When we start talking about what is right, it builds creative energy that allows the dreaming to begin. Try it. You won’t be disappointed. Take the risks. Know that  analyzing, dissecting, and theorizing , though sometimes necessary, can become an enemy of doing phenomenal things.

I think this is why I hate performance review time, but love the goal setting time of year. I am not interested in analyzing the past. I am interested in designing the future. So won’t you come with me? The future is waiting….let’s go!

Editing Epiphanies

1990s.  Floppy disks. Software sales. A communication explosion….and an exploding red pen that changed my life forever.

Writing has always been a love of mine. I love writing stories. I love writing poetry. I love writing a piece of informative prose that is so tight an atom couldn’t slip through it.

And the key to all good writing? Editing. I learned this lesson at 21 when I was hired for my first job out of college at a startup medical software company. I was blessed with a mentor who taught me more in three years about editing then I knew existed.  You see, I thought editing was all about making sure everything was spelled right, the sentences sounded good, the transitions were sharp, the ideas were well supported, and it was formatted correctly. Turns out, that is not editing. That, my friends, is proofreading.

And, I discovered I was (still am) a terrible proofreader. Thankfully, after years of retraining my red pen, I discovered I was a great editor.

So, if editing isn’t all those things above, what is it? Editing boils down to this–stepping back and asking questions. Editing is strategic. Editing is confidence. Editing is questioning everything that is said, why it is said, and who you are saying it to.

I remember the first piece of work I edited at my first company.  I thought it was pretty golden. I sent it to my managing editor and it came back a bloody red mess. I loathed that red pen. I remember feeling like a loser. How could I have thought my work was good?

Looking closer at her comments, I discovered she had done just a little proofreading, but the majority of her edits fixed much deeper problems. That’s because she had asked: Why are we saying this? What’s missing that the audience would want to know? She even questioned the science and the details provided by doctors – fancy pants doctors! ( I told you editing was about confidence.) Whole paragraphs that I had carefully crafted were removed with one swipe of her red pen. It was information that was simply unnecessary.

I was amazed by the comments. These were unlike comments I’d ever received from any English teacher. I was used to setting the curve in English classes. Who was this crazy lady with the evil red pen?

I set out to learn how to edit my own work in the same way. I tried to approach each piece of patient advice I reviewed by putting myself in the reader’s shoes.

• Does the information make sense to me/parent/patient?
• Do I know how to take care of my sick child based on this? Is it helpful?
• What is missing?
• Is the science still correct when I simplified the language?
• Is the science wrong in the first place?

Then came an even more important lesson. I got back comments from my mentor like, “Consider breaking this into two documents on….” or “Maybe we should also write a document on  …..”  Now that was really big picture editing. There was a drive to continually consider and reconsider if what we were producing was the right thing at all. Wow! Who was I to be able to change everything? Turns out that is exactly who I was.