What We Learned

One of the pieces of feedback I got when I gave my Ice Breaker speech last week was that my public speaking is already at an advanced level. I attribute that to a combination of experience, of doing two-minute presentations at Twenty First Century Leadership, my community theatre experience, and my experience in MDI presenting the What We Learned segment at the end of Division meetings.

I have been doing What We Learned for about two years as part of my role on the core team as Chief of Staff. This spring I completed as Chief of Staff and stepped down from the core team in order to take on a new role as Team Captain.

By request from the current core team I reprised my performance at last night's Division meeting. The core team had prepared a great meeting and the men who were present gave me a lot of good material to work with for my presentation. I really felt on top of form as I delivered last night.

Yesterday was also my birthday. For anyone who is keeping track, I'm now 45. I've decided to count backwards from now on, so I'm looking forward to turning 44 next year.

At the end of the meeting all the men spontaneously sang Happy Birthday to me. Wow. And they were all in the same key. They sounded like a men's choir. I scanned around the circle to see how many men were present and I counted 44, though there may have been 45.

I like the thought of 45 men singing Happy Birthday to me on my 45th birthday.

Roasted almonds

Was at another Legacy Discovery weekend couple of days ago. How many have I now been part of? Enough to have lost track.

Got home from the event early in the evening on Sunday. Felt like I had missed church, found out about a cell group meeting being held that night at Vern's house, and still had enough energy to get myself out of the house and on my way there.

Grabbed some snacks on the way out. A bowl on the kitchen table, a large round ceramic bowl, full of weird shaped roasted almonds. Or so I thought. My housemates must have gone grocery shopping while I was away. I grabbed a handful and popped them into my mouth as I headed for the door. Munch munch, chew chew, swallow swallow.

It didn't take long to realize that these were not nuts. Nuts have a kind of salty flavor, these did not. They crunched differently than nuts do. They tasted kind of fishy.

Decided to go back into the kitchen for a glass of water to wash down the taste. Then it hit me what these snacks really were. I confirmed my suspicion back in the kitchen when I noticed that the area on the floor were there are normally two bowls was vacant. The two bowls that the cat eats out of. Looked at the kitchen table. Saw two bowls there. One had the dry food to which I had just helped myself. The other was the little bowl with the picture of a cat on it, and contained his wet food. Why these two bowls were on the kitchen table I do not know.

The glass of water didn't help wash away the taste. I got to Vern's house and he offered me a crisp which I accepted. He also offered me ice cream. I declined, he offered again, I accepted. Ate the crisp, ate the ice cream. It helped kill the taste of the cat food. Not for long though. By the time I was on my way home I could feel the after taste again.

I came home and told Jan that those dry roasted almonds on the table had gotten stale.

Ice breaker

I gave my Ice Breaker speech at Toastmasters tonight.

Was I ready for it? No. Was I going to let that stop me? No.

There is something to be said for commitment. There is that quote - Until one is committed, there is hesitancy ... the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

So as long as I keep telling myself that I'm not ready, I'll continue to be not ready and I'll continue putting off doing it.

Once I commit to doing it though, I'll get as ready as I need to be. Part of my hesitancy to commit to doing my Ice Breaker was thinking "where am I going to find the time to prepare it, with everything I've already got going on?" Well - the other day when I wrote my bio for my web site That Warrior Spirit I realized that this bio was my Ice Breaker. I already had the idea for it, all I had to do was develop it and turn it into a 4-6 minute speech, and that wasn't so hard to do.

Now I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked practicing it and learning it well enough to deliver it without looking at my notes. I thought I was stiff in my delivery and I felt more nervous than I thought I would be - but my evaluators didn't see that. They saw that I was calm and confident. If I came across that way to my audience even with the little preparation time that I put into it then I imagine how high I will soar when I really do put the appropriate amount of time into it.

Updated book cover

As I get closer to my publishing target I have updated the book cover and I've launched a new web site to promote the book. Visit www.thatwarriorspirit.com and let me know what you think.

For a limited time I am offering this book at a reduced price through my online store at www.orest-online.com.

Toastmasters

I officially joined Toastmasters this week. I have been going out to meetings as a guest for the past several months. I've gone to meetings at three different clubs. The first club I went to was just starting up; the meetings had low attendance and were poorly run.

The second club met at a location that was closer to home for me. I went to about three of their meetings. I liked the people there and I was starting to feel at home with them. The only problem for me was that they meet on Thursday nights and that's when I have my worship team rehearsals. That meant that I would attend only on those weeks when rehearsal was cancelled (or skip rehearsal, which I don't want to do too often).

Then I heard about a club that meets on Wednesday nights and they meet at a location that is even more closer to home for me. I went to a couple of their meetings and found that I liked the people there too.

On my second turnout I won a white ribbon for my Table Topics speech. My speech was about the role of duct tape in the mating practices of the Twenty First century, as told from the perspective of a Twenty Fifth century archaeologist. Hee hee.

Time to start working on my Ice Breaker speech.

Finished Chapter 4!

Four weeks ago I committed myself to a writing schedule consisting of two sessions of two hours each. (See Feeding My Spirit). My plan at the time was to alternate sessions between Mission: Dawn and That Warrior Spirit.

After holding to that schedule for a couple of weeks, I realized I was about four sessions away from finishing Chapter 4 of That Warrior Spirit. At the pace I was holding to, it would take four weeks to finish.

So I decided to accelerate my plan. I decided to put Mission: Dawn on the back burner yet again, and focus just on That Warrior Spirit. I also decided to finish it in one week by putting four writing sessions into my schedule instead of just two.

That was last week and I had some challenges holding to my self-imposed schedule but I did my best to adapt and by the end of the week I was just one scene away from finishing Chapter 4.

Or so I thought. I had forgotten that there was another partially developed scene that I still needed to finish. That meant that I was really two scenes away from finishing the chapter.

I am happy to say that as of today I have completed those scenes, and Chapter 4 is now done. Finally!

I'm planning to publish those four chapters as Book 1 of a series, so I will next be focusing my writing energies towards completing the second draft, and getting ready to publish and market the book.

GTD revisited

I've never really developed a consistent system or consistent set of habits for practicing GTD (Getting Things Done).

I've experimented with various applications which I've tried to set up as my trusted GTD system but eventually I fall way behind and I stop using it, or I stop trusting it. As a result I have numerous lists of things to do that I have begun to set up in various partially trusted systems.

Still, I'm attracted to the idea of a trusted system that will help me manage my work flow, keep me organized, be fun to use, and function in a way that works for me.

My most recent discovery is Thinking Rock. One thing that I like about it that differentiates it from other applications that I've tried is that it separates the step of Collecting Thoughts from determining Next Actions. One reason I do not keep up with my GTD process is that I sometimes do not know what my Next Action should be. Then things start piling up in my list and I start ignoring it and just doing what I need to do instead of keeping a system up to date.

Thinking Rock is an open source application so it's free to download and use. I like open source software.

Dancing with life

Almost one month has gone by since I committed myself to putting in two writing sessions a week into my schedule. For the first few weeks I was alternating my two sessions a week between writing Mission: Dawn (Tuesday evening session) and That Warrior Spirit (Saturday morning session). I've been working on Chapter 4 for both books.

This week I rebalanced my focus. I estimated that I was four sessions away from finishing Chapter 4 of That Warrior Spirit. At my previous pace that would have taken me four weeks to finish it. Rebalancing meant I decided to focus solely on That Warrior Spirit. That would cut down my time to finish Chapter 4 from four weeks to two weeks. I decided to be even more aggressive than that and target to complete Chapter 4 this week. That meant having four sessions all in one week.

I scheduled in all four writing sessions and put them into my Palm Pilot. As is often the case, life intruded and started messing with my self-imposed schedule. Well life did a pretty darn good job of intruding. Nevertheless, I danced with life and still managed to squeeze in my writing when I could. The result is that I am now one scene away from finishing Chapter 4.

There is still one day left in the week so I still have a shot at meeting my target.

Uncle Orest!

I had dinner today with J and her brother's children. I met them at the diner in IKEA.

When they saw me their faces lit up and they yelled, "Uncle Orest!"

That was the highlight of my day.

Negotiating tactics

There is an adage about negotiating that says, whoever is the first to name a figure loses.

So how does that work when both sides of a negotiation are following the same adage? It seems to me that it would result in a standoff, with both sides avoiding naming any figures.

It also seems to me that the person who follows this strategy would be playing the game of win-lose rather than the game of win-win. Where is the abundance in that?

It seems to me that if I am going to show up in my life as a leader then there are going to be times when I choose to be the one to take the first steps to move things forward to attain my goals. It won't serve me well if I choose to equate that with losing.

Maybe it's time for a new adage.

City dumps

There is a strike on and garbage is piling up in the parks.

I am disappointed that this is happening in my city.

Feeding my spirit

I have had three different Palm Pilot PDA's over the course of years, and my experience with them has been that they die after about two years of use. I rely heavily on my PDA and I take it with me practically everywhere I go. I use it to keep my schedule and my contact list at my fingertips, and I use it to jot down ideas that I come up with while they're still fresh in my mind.

My previous PDA was a Palm TX. Recently I have noticed that its battery won't hold a charge any more. I would plug it in overnight so it would charge and the next day I would turn it on and it would tell me that the battery level was still low. So I have been without a functioning PDA for some three to four weeks - not good!

Last week I bought a "new" old Palm through craigslist. It's a Palm m515 - a step up from the first unit that I had. It's functional, and it was cheap compared to the cost of today's smart phones.

While I was in the process of syncing it for the first time, I came across some notes and scenes that I had written for Mission: Dawn. I looked over some of them and found that I still liked what I had written.

So I've become all fired up about writing my books again. I started Mission: Dawn four years ago and to date I've got three partially written chapters. I started That Warrior Spirit and to date I've got three completed chapters in first draft form.

Writing a book has been a life-long ambition for me. It goes back to my first visit to the public library when I came away from seeing all those books on display and said, "Wow! When I grow up I'm going to write a book!" (See The Written Word ). Well, maybe I'm not done growing up yet - but why let that stop me!

I sometimes find it hard to justify taking the time to work on one of my books when I have a business to run. For me, writing a book (or more) is something that falls into the quadrant of Important But Not Urgent. I have no deadline pressing me to write. However, by not working on it I'm starting to feel like I'm starving my spirit. Having two incomplete books on my list has become one of my tolerances, and I'm starting to feel like it's sapping my energy.

So here is what I am going to do about it. I'm making it one of my SMART goals. Between now and end of September, I'm putting in two writing sessions a week into my schedule, each session up to two hours, and I'll be using those sessions to advance my progress on both books.

Perspective of a year

What a difference in perspective a year and a half can make. A year and a half ago I broke off my four year relationship with J. I felt frustrated and disappointed, and after I left I felt grief and a sense of loss.

Only half a year before the break up we had travelled together to Vancouver and Seattle to attend the Twenty First Century Leadership workshop. We had both taken lots of pictures and shot lots of video and done lots of journaling during that trip, and I had a vision of bringing all that content together to make a travel videologue. I hadn't got a good start at that project when I broke up with her, and a year and a half ago if I looked at any of the images from that trip I felt depressed. They reminded me of failure.

Today I look at those videos and I remember with pleasure and fondness that trip. I am looking at those videos now because I have decided I will make that documentary after all, as a portfolio project for my business if nothing else.

J and I have become friends again. One of the tenets of leadership that 21CL teaches is that as a leader I tell myself the truth. I frequently ask myself, "What am I pretending not to know?" I know what were our relational dynamics that often led to the fights we had. I know that she behaves in certain ways and I know that I have a choice in how I respond. I know that if I respond in the way I would naturally respond, then that leads to the same kind of friction that neither one of us enjoyed in the past. For me to continue to respond in the same way that I used to is to pretend that I don't know what I really do know, about her and about how we relate.

Seeds or bouquet?

I was flipping through a book that Fede showed me, titled Jesus CEO. One chapter caught my attention. It's titled He Prized the Seed Rather than the Bouquet. The chapter begins by asking the reader this question, "Which would you rather have, a bouquet of flowers or a packet of seeds?" Most people would pick the bouquet. I know that it was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the question, until I thought about it a little more.

After reading the chapter I thought it would be a good exercise to bring to one of my men's team meetings. I've asked Fede to think about coming up with an exercise based on this idea to next week's meeting.

What choices are represented by the packet of seeds? For me, the answer is growth. Inviting guests to our team meetings - those are the seeds.

Breaking the Sales Call barrier

I started making sales calls this week. My goal was to make ten sales calls. What am I selling and to whom? For my current promo campaign I am targeting wedding photographers. I am selling partnership. I am offering my services as a video editor to any wedding photographer who would like to offload their post-production work so that they can spend their time behind their camera instead of their computer.

I have collated a list of almost 500 photography businesses in GTA and have identified that 168 of those claim (or once claimed) to do wedding photography. In theory, if I call each of those 168 businesses I should find someone who will want to do business with me, yes?

I used some of the tricks I learned at my weekend with Tony Robbins (see Walking on fire) to get myself in the right frame of mind. Change my physiology to change my state - sit up straight, don't slouch; smile, look up and not down.

The first call I made was a wrong number and the second call went to an answering machine and it didn't sound like a business. I didn't leave a message. What if my whole list was garbage? What if I spent the time calling each of the 168 prospects and they all turn out to be wrong numbers? Discouragement started creeping up on me.

Well forget that. Next!

On call number three, the guy I spoke with said, "Yeah, we might be interested in outsourcing when we get busy." Great! Now what's my next step?

Do I sound like I was a little under-prepared? Yes. But I needed to start building momentum. I needed to start building my sales muscle. That's why my initial goal was to make only 10 calls out of 168. What did I learn? I felt as much hesitation before making call #10 as I did before making call #1. I thought it was supposed to get easier with practice. So far it hasn't.

Maybe I need to continue building my muscle.

Discovering the writing process

I've completed the first three chapters of the novel I started writing last year, That Warrior Spirit. I am way behind the schedule I set for myself last year but I am determined to get back on track. The idea for this book came to me about a year ago; I spent July and August of last year creating the characters and the outline, and started writing it, probably around September.

In my outline I set it to be eight chapters, so after a year I am almost halfway done.

This weekend I started pre-writing for Chapter 4. This is a new word that I discovered and I've adopted it to describe what I've discovered to be one of the steps in my writing process. I have found that even with a comprehensive outline I am still sometimes challenged to sit down and write a scene. It takes me a while to get into the zone, to connect with the characters and connect with the scene. The step of pre-writing is a step in which I write from stream of consciousness. I keep the language very informal. I just sit down, start asking the characters what they do and write down whatever comes up. Almost always during the pre-writing process I land in the zone, where the ideas, the emotions, and the words just start to flow. Very often all I need to do next to write the scene is to change the language of a pre-write; change it from present tense language into past tense language.

I used to call this step a writing blitz but I saw the term pre-writing in a book about writing and decided to adopt it. The step of pre-writing is similar to the exercise I used to do, writing morning pages, when I was going through The Artist's Way.

Walking on fire

I had an intense and incredible experience at the Tony Robbins program this weekend, Unleash the Power Within. The program went from Thursday to Sunday. The highlight of Thursday was the firewalk. It seems counterintuitive that the firewalk would be on the first night - after all, where do you go after you've done the impossible?

I was impressed by Tony Robbins, I expected that he would put in an appearance for an hour or two and that other speakers would fill the remainder of the program. Surely the promoters were just using his name to sell the program, yes? Well, no. Robbins started around two o'clock on Thursday and he kept on going and going and going. He took no breaks (and gave none either!), and kept going for a good eight hours or so. He has an incredible amount of energy and presence.

The bulk of the program on Thursday was used in preparing the 3,000 participants for the firewalk. The top three tools that he used to reinforce the learning were repetition, repetition, and repetition. For most of the afternoon I did not know whether I would do the firewalk or not. I had various reasons for not doing it, but I also could see clearly what was on the other side for me if I did - I saw the rest if my life on the other side.

I thought about the saying, if you want to walk on water you have to get out of the boat. I stood by and watched other people do the walk. I stood by for quite a while then noticed that I was letting lots of people walk past me and do the walk while I just watched. I finally mustered up my courage and moved into line. Soon I was at the front of the line and it was my turn.

It took about five quick steps and it was over. Woo hoo! I did it! I didn't feel any heat at all during my walk. The sensation I felt was like walking on cool ashes. I felt something peel off the bottoms of my feet after I came out of it. Did I sear the skin on my feet? Were the bottoms of my feet all burned and blackened with layers of skin peeling off?

No. It was just leaves and grass that had stuck to my feet before I did the walk, and were now peeling off. My feet were fine, still white. In fact, the day after they felt like I had just had a great foot massage.

I celebrated my triumph with some of the other participants and I texted a few people to brag about what I'd just done and then I headed back to the convention hall to get my shoes and socks. When I got back to the hall, it seemed that I could tell by the look on people's faces who had done the walk and who had not. I was really glad that I was one of the people who did do it.

The Einstein Effect

Sometimes when I play with GIMP late at night I end up having interesting dreams. In this case, I had a vision. Albert Einstein in a Starfleet uniform, a book cover. Maybe this will be the third book in my Mission: Dawn series (I already got other ideas for book two).

Do not leave popcorn unattended in microwave

A few weeks ago I was playing around in GIMP, the open source graphic image manipulator. I read some tutorials on how to make starfields and nebulas. Tonight I read a tutorial on how to make a planet.

I felt like munching on a snack and I'd already had some ice cream so I found a bag of popcorn and put it in the microwave oven. I don't trust the Popcorn setting and I recall from past experience that 2:30 is about the amount of time that it takes. So I punched in 2:30, hit Start, and went back to my laptop to build my first planet.

Two and a half minutes the microwave beeped. I went back to the kitchen and opened the microwave door. Smoky smoky smoky! There was a nice big burn mark on the paper bag. So 2:30 is too long for this brand of popcorn. But it is enough time to make a decent looking planet.

A Grand team meeting

If any team meeting had the potential to be a totally screwed up meeting it was tonight's meeting (see A Grand new journey). I was burned out all last week and didn't tackle planning the meeting until Sunday night - the night before. Kind of late for delegating major parts of the meeting to other men. So I would need to prepare to lead most of it myself. Add to that half the team being busy and not coming, add to that we met at a location where we had never met before, add to that me being late because I didn't leave the house early enough to get to the site on time, add to that there was only one man there when I arrived...

Despite all that, it was a great meeting for the men who did come. In total we were five men - four members plus one first-time guest. I remained focused on my context, purpose, and results, and on delivering value. My purpose was "having great communication in all relationships", and a couple of results I had were "all men including guests are encouraged to participate" and "men are encouraged to be open with each other". With that in mind, I managed to direct a non-purposeful chit-chat session into a spontaneously developed exercise in which men shared things about themselves and then expressed what they learned about the other men.

What I learned - we don't need to have a large number of men present to have a Grand meeting. Also that I am good at being flexible, adapting my agenda on the fly, generally by listening to and trusting my intuition. It does speak to me when I need it. Although this is a strength that is good to have for producing value under dubious circumstances, I have to be careful not to become too cocky, not to use it as a substitute for planning and preparation.

Oh, by the way, I finally had a chance to say "Make it so" tonight.