Our Creative Thoughts

It was raining, it was pouring.  Yep, even the old man was snoring.  It was the perfect day for some office Spring cleaning.

With the phone silent, clients happy, projects completed (for the moment, anyway), I opened the storage door in my office and reached for the first box.

Boom! Thunder cracked, lightning struck and my day dramatically swung into a new realm as I…(cue wavy lines in front of my face)…entered a time warp. 

The thunder, lightning, wavy lines and time warp were all imaginary, of course.

You see, the very first folder I pulled out of the box was my history file.  It had all of the various workbooks, notes and newspaper clippings from the early 90s when I began this passionate process I now, lovingly, call work.

As the storm outdoors pelted the window with its incessant drops, I had an internal storm.  A brainstorm.  Why not share what’s in here with you?

So, over the next several months, I will use this space to do just that.  I’ll begin at the beginning and introduce you to the material and some of the people who assisted me on my journey.  I hope you can find some practical information to use right away.  Moreover, please feel free to share with your friends and colleagues.

Let’s get started.

If you have been in a session with me, you probably have heard the story of how I came to this work in a rather convoluted way.

In the late 80s, after selling my national newspaper business to a firm in Phoenix, I bummed around for a bit looking for that just right next best thing. 

To make a long story short, one thing led to the next and I met up with Dr. Dennis Deaton, a fellow who, at that moment, was a time management seminar leader.  I had never experienced a workshop like his and was very interested in his topic and how he shared it.  Over time, we became acquainted on a more personal level.

After experiencing two or three of his sessions, it dawned on me that perhaps many of my business colleagues and friends would love to attend his programs.  With that in mind, I began Applied Performance with the goal of marketing him and others in the training field.

I put together a large group from my network to attend his program in San Jose.  A few weeks before show time, he called and told me he couldn’t make the session.  He had garnered a very large contract that would keep him more home based.  However, he had an idea.

His idea was for me to do it.  “I’ll send you my material, Robert, slides and all.  You’ll do very well.”  I heard the words, but belief seemed light years away.

After a great deal of reflection and even quicker study, I decided to give it a shot.  The rest is history.

His program, similar to Stephen Covey’s work (that I was also unfamiliar with), was titled Life Management.  It was time management on steroids.  It was a penetrating look inside oneself with one of the key solutions to a better life being “reflect on your life and get organized to set and accomplish your goals.”

If you were motivated to take an even deeper dive, he pointed participants to numerous books by a long list of authors.  Their content ranged from building your brain to understanding stress.  My library is still filled with these dog-eared, highlighted tomes.

This balanced life concept was featured in my book The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable.  If you’ve read it, you know that Gwen Kelly, one of the key characters, struggles with life balance and has a few epiphanies along the way.

From page one to the bibliography, Dennis’s stories and lessons, with their layered messages, was life changing for me.  They reinforced my thinking as well as gave me a new foundation.  I not only learned novel concepts, but also discovered, from head to toe, why I believed and behaved the way I did.  Very powerful stuff, at least for me at that point in my life.

Over time, as I shared the seminar content, I finally found my own voice around the material.  With professional apologies, the following is a blend of Dennis’s great thoughts with a dollop of my thinking mixed in a personal leadership soup of sorts.

Our first stop: Control.

Once we began to break down the myths surrounding control and the pain it creates in the workplace, it was clear that the program was about taking responsibility.

The first myth busted was that we control other people.  The second to be shattered was that we control events.  The third murdered myth was that we control our circumstances.

Nonsense, I learned.  All of those elements are outside of the self.  We can influence but not control.

“We have no power to make others do, think, or feel anything that they believe does not satisfy them,” wrote Dr. William Glasser in his book Control Theory.

So, what do we control?  The truth of the matter is that through our thoughts, the only things over which we have absolute control are our choices and subsequent actions.  Joe Vanderson, another key character in The Offsite discovers that truth the hard way.

People are not victims of circumstance or events.  We are each self-determining.  Everyday, through our thoughts, choices and actions, we decide whether we will cower, cope or create.

Success or failure.  We decide.  It’s a state of mind.

Chew on that.  Let the above sink in.  If you are struggling (and many of us are these days), don’t cower under the covers or settle for just getting through the day.  Create what you want.  Now.  Today!

Next up?  The Civil War in our minds.