Ordinary Life, Extraordinary Living

Rest and Renewal

I realized this week that work never seems to end if the laptop is open. A little meditation, a little yoga, and two fairy cards later (with titles of "Kick Up Your Heels" and "Peace of Mind,") led me to the following conclusion:

I need to get off the grid.

It's time for both renewing my spirit (with nothing to do with work and everything to do with joyful adventure) and resting my mind (the kind of stillness that allows for two-hour naps in the afternoon.) I'm giving myself permission (this happens when you are the boss) to shut down the email, stay off Twitter, and close up shop for the holidays.

I'll see you after the New Year. Until then, be well.

Photo by Daveybot.

The Real Value of Christmas Cards

Have Christmas cards become obsolete? With e-cards that provide a multimedia experience and scrapbooking services that allow for customized slide shows, sending a card through the mail seems almost quaint.

Since my college days, I've considered that Christmas cards were an excuse to reflect on the last year and catch up with friends who I had not talked to in a long time. Back then, before PCs (yes, I am THAT old,) my cards were scribbled with long-hand descriptions of how I was feeling after finals week, my hopes for the future and whether we would have a white Christmas. It took hours to write my cards.

When PCs came along, I wrote a Christmas letter once and added a line or two to each copy.

Photo by WordRidden

I started getting lazy a few years ago, after I created an e-card to send to my ezine distribution list. Hitting send was so much easier than digging for correct addresses and buying stamps and cards. Only my college friends, the ones who had sent cards through numerous address changes and faithfully provided school photos of their kids, warranted a card through snail mail. My list had gotten noticeably smaller.

Now, with tools like Facebook and LinkedIn, I know a lot more about my friends--things like whether they have changed jobs and how they enjoyed that trip to Italy. In fact, if I'm following someone on Twitter, I probably know a lot more than I'd want to know in a Christmas letter, including what they are reading, their views on politics, and whether they got a good night's sleep over the last week. I'm caught up more than I want to be.

Still, I wanted to send Christmas cards this year. I wrote my Christmas letter and added some photos, stuffed envelopes, placed stamps and return labels, and found sheets of paper scribbled with addresses that I knew to be still good.

What I realized is that writing cards gave me the sense of re-connecting to each person, to think about their situation in life and to express a little love, long distance. With boxes of different styles of cards, I could pick out just the right one for each person. The sparkly green one with "fa la la!" on the front for my girly girlfriends and the Snoopy and Woodstock one for my brothers and the traditional Happy Holidays for an older retired friend.

I sent a lot more cards than in previous years. It felt good. 

This holiday season seems to be geared to going back to the basics--connecting with loved ones, appreciating what we have instead of what we don't have, and being grateful for the small things in life. 

Are you sending cards this year? And if so, what are you noticing about the experience?

Photo by Adam Buteux

What Pears and Rod Blagojevich Have In Common

I cut up two pears, expecting to mix them with cottage cheese for a light lunch. From the outside, they both looked to be a day or two past their prime, with brown spots dotting the yellow skin.

When I sliced into the first pear, it was as I expected--white flesh at the center, with a few bruised areas towards the outer skin, easily excised before dumping into a bowl of cottage cheese.

The second pear surprised me. It had rotted from the inside. Almost none of it was salvageable, save for a sliver closest to the outer skin. Instead of tender fruit, the core had disintegrated into a mealy mass.

It got me wondering if people are the same way. As a coach, I'd like to think that our bruises are on the surface and the core of each person is not just salvageable, but intact and whole.

However, when I read about the disgraced Illinois governor, I couldn't help think that something was really wrong inside to have displayed such hubris, almost delusional behavior. Has Blagojevich rotted from the inside?

Photo credit: matthewveenker

Change Your Music, Change Your Mind

Ever notice that the only happy people at the airport are the ones with iPods?

Recently, I was at O'Hare, waiting to board a flight home to Denver.  The flight was delayed by two hours, which meant I would be sleeping in my own bed sometime after 1am.

I had the foresight before departing on my trip to load up on a few of my favorite Christmas CDs, including A Charlie Brown Christmas and James Taylor at Christmas.

I immediately noticed my mood lift with the first sounds of Go Tell It On the Mountain. Things didn't seem so bad. I didn't feel as tired. I was grateful I was going home at all, after an intense day of client work.

I noticed the deadened faces of my fellow travelers. The only people who seemed alive were those with earbuds connecting them to their favorite music.

I'm not just imagining things. Fellow blogger and Twitterer, Stephanie West-Allen (twitter name @idealawg), points me to this presentation about Music and the Mind and the Wall Street Journal provides some additional facts and figures of the physical and mental benefits of listening to music.

The Wall Street Journal also reported on the tie-in between Christmas music, community-building, and our mood (for buying and other activities.) What caught my eye was this quote:

"The average 14-year old will hear more music in a year than his great grandfather would have in a lifetime. Virtually every song ever recorded in the history of the world is available on the Internet somewhere. Thanks to intrepid musical explorers, even rare, indigenous and pre-industrial music is now available...So although we listen alone, we are listening to more music and more diverse...And on the social side, the growth of peer-to-peer (P2P) and other file-sharing communities has restored the communal, human joy of sharing and discovering music we like with others of similar mind and taste."

I was delighted when things indeed came full circle in my listening adventures. This morning, another fellow blogger and Twitterer, Stevie Knight (twitter name @stevieknight) shared a song just right for sparking the beginning of a great day:

We are living in a remarkable age, with more control over creating the experience we want than ever before, and the tools to easily share those experiences with others. Yes, we are living through the worst recession in decades. And like the song says, this is your life.

What music helps you change your mind, mood and outlook?  What music do you share with others?

Spreading Gratitude Through Twitter and Blogs

I'm still trying to figure out how I want to use Twitter, a micro-blogging service that's getting press and becoming more mainstream. One of the fun uses: organizing a conversation around a specific topic, with a bunch of people you may or may not know ("followers" in Twitter language.)

In the blogging world, people have referred to this as a meme. Never quite understood this to the depth that I wanted to. But I think I started a meme today, when I provided this "tweet":

"I'm grateful for: lunch with sis and mom, middle of workday. Homemade "jook," Chinese rice porridge, acquired taste. And you? #gratefulfor"

If you aren't familiar with Twitter, each tweet can be no more than 140 characters. It pays to be concise.

You'll notice "#gratefufor" at the end of the tweet. That's called a "hashtag," a searchable identifier to find more tweets on a specific topic. Read more about hashtags here and here.

Well, probably more than you want to know. To participate on the conversation on Twitter, get an account if you don't already have one (it's free, like most social media tools these days), fill in the "what are you doing?" box with what you are grateful for, and be sure to add the hashtag, #gratefulfor, somewhere in the message.

If you want to get my updates on Twitter ("tweets"), search on my Twitter name, carolross, and click on Follow Me, underneath my photo. You'll see a list of my tweets, which so far, has been sporadic, with a "dipping my toe in the water" feel to it. Now I know how new bloggers feel.

If you'd rather skip the Twitter route, post the six things you are grateful for here or on your own blog. To start off, six things I'm grateful for, right now:

1. A sunny, blue sky day in Colorado.
2. Being home after traveling the last two weeks.
3. A husband and two teenage sons who I adore, testosterone and all.
4. Getting a large Bhakti chai at the local coffee shop for free, after completing my frequent buyer card.
5. Time to reflect, think deeply, and generate new ideas.
6. Filling up my gas tank for $20.

I think the protocol with memes is to tap other bloggers to do the same exercise--six things you are grateful for, right here, right now. I'm tapping Mitchell Ashley, Stephanie West-Allen, Simon Young, Paul Merrill, Deb Cooperman, and Marissa Bracke. 

Oprah and A Whole New Mind

I was happy to see that Dan Pink is still talking about A Whole New Mind, most recently with Oprah on her Soul Series webcast.

While I've seen Pink speak several times and have interviewed him twice, I'm always interested to see how he responds to new questions. Oprah had her own take when she asked him whether he believes in a higher being and the existence of a soul. Tune in here to find out his answer.

What I've noticed over the years since the book came out (I first read it in 2005) is that it has moved from readers who are into innovation and Malcolm Gladwell books to readers with more mainstream tastes. Does it get any more mainstream than Oprah? 

And really, that's a good thing. The more the right-brain competencies are valued and appreciated, the more that we all have to draw from. Go, Dan, go.

Gratefulness in Full Color

Here's a video that I really love, sent to me by a friend. I hope you love it as much as I do.  Many thanks to Marissa for helping me figure out how to embed a YouTube video in a blog post. (Yes, I really was an engineer at one time!) What does gratefulness look like for you?