Monthly Archives: April 2020

Connecting, Connection, Leadership, Life Experiences

We Are All In This Together – Right? Right!

We’re In This Together

This has been a rallying cry for me since we stepped into Shelter-In-Place here in Montana and agreed to support the flattening of the curve. 

During this time period, though distant, I have felt close with various parts of the country, geographically scattered members of my family, friends and community as well as other countries around the globe facing this Pandemic.

At times it has been scary and for sure filled with uncertainty and questions.  It seems like each step of the journey has introduced new information, new elements that have tossed me into a cycle of change and transition.

However, the rallying cry, ‘we are in this together’ – kept me aligned strong and committed.

Now there is a new crack that has challenged my belief about being in this together.

Re-opening has started. 

This process of re-opening seems incredibly chaotic and disjointed.  I don’t see or feel the we are all in this together anymore!

Each state has is doing it’s own thing and there seems to be all sorts expert opinions that offer very differing perspectives on what is best or safest.

I believe here the biggest driver may economics and I get that this is a very serious concern.  Our economy is based on businesses small and large operating. People being able to spend and sell. 

There are also some mentions of why this may even be a healthy choice – though much like alternative medicine when it comes to health issues – these ideas are not the standard nor considered evidence-based.

The problem – we don’t have a great deal of evidence around a Pandemic and may be not enough data collected to know this virus.

So it’s all a bit of guess work.

Blown Away: AKA My oh Sh%T Moment!

Seriously this so reminds me of the day I discovered the treatment for my cancer wasn’t working. My doctor and medical team, informed me they didn’t have other options. I probably had 3 to 6 months to live. 

I was blown AWAY.  I was certain that as experts and leaders they were going to get me through this health crisis. In that moment, I got that was not the case. I discovered that really my medical team at that point was in it with me if I understood and traveled the road where I believed I was most certainly dying.

Oddly I as I moved out beyond the medical model I discovered many other ‘experts’ with differing strategies to offer me.  Some of which were possibly going to prolong my current life expectations. 

This is when the conflict really surfaced! 

These experts were not very friendly and did not agree. I did not experience being in this together! The next few years of my journey around my health were riddled with uncertainty and conflict. 

I did call my various ‘experts’, my team.  However, I would not say we were cohesive. I discovered some of these experts were very helpful in encouraging me to pull the diverse expertise and wisdom into my decision-making.  These ‘experts’ also provided me a language and a way to tap into my own resources and make simple decisions out of complex data and differing perspectives that supported me day-to-day in living my full life – not just a cancer storyline.

I am very grateful for those people.

I am so grateful that I rode the wave of conflict and uncertainty. That I stayed curious and as a result I think creative.

Back To Today

I am looking back now, thinking this is again a time to rally around diverse perspectives, conflict and find ways to make simple decisions that support my life, my family, my business and my community moving forward.

A want the rally cry to be we are in this together – however, I can only find that ground when I am willing to embrace the conflict.  Not make those different wrong but try to find the threads that can weave the fabric together.

I do believe it is possible.  I have seen, felt and lived through this type of crisis.  I want to be a lighthouse that shines a beacon for that possibility.  I am here and I am still with you – even if our navigational feedback is presenting a different path. Even in the uncharted and and potentially dangerous terrain each person, business, state and country is taking, I do still believe we are in this together!

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Marketing Meltdown

I had a marketing meltdown yesterday.

I agreed to get on a call with sales and marketing expert who had FB ads figured out. Truth is I should have known better. But I said yes – I would jump on and listen.

What I didn’t fully realize was this was not a training as much an enrolling call. Thirty minutes into the dialogue I was so frustrated and thinking this expert is not getting me. Again I didn’t follow the nudge. Instead I stayed on and figured this was his process and I was sure there would be some value I’d get out of being patient.

Forty-five minutes into the call and he was making his mentoring offer. I honestly did not have one piece of original value proposition – that I understood to be new or different than any other marketing/sales idea I have heard before. All I got was a two month mentor option that was going to cost me $9800.00 and was promised to change my marketing life. Sadly at that point I was not happy.

This is when he asked what we thought. I answered.

Now, if I could do this all over I would have made a different call earlier. I may have opted for the tel-advertising approach. Stop him early and ask if this is just a sales call. Or I could have used the communication model and checked out my story and tried to clarify what and how this call was going to go. But I didn’t do that.

I was triggered. I actually thought I did an okay job of sharing what I had found difficult about the call and what didn’t work. Which I had interpreted as his request for what I thought of the call. However, I think my unhappiness and the fact that I was disappointed that I was not getting any new understanding of what made his proposition different – wasn’t what he was expecting from his request.

We were now caught in conflict and sadly I was more reactive at that point than responsive. I will say in his final explanation of his expertise and clarity in saying that I did not understand him and he would never consider working with me – he provided the best clarity of his unique position. I did try at that moment to reflect back that I was finally getting what I thought was the intention of the call and that the new information was interesting. My regret was that I had not spoken up sooner.

I also regret that I had not listened to my internal guidance earlier. I don’t like situations like that and yet I put myself right in it. He was just doing what he was actually intending to support me in learning how to do, I think. He wanted me to feel on the call that he was the path to getting the answer and support I needed – I would have to hire him. He referred to this as using emotional mirroring and fractal marketing to get client to believe there is an answer and you must have me to be able to get it.

Okay but let me share what I heard with that statement – emotional mirroring is a technique used in cults and brainwashing. That is a trigger right there for me.

Long and short I got off the phone and was angry, sad and incredibly frustrated that I had been totally responsible for putting myself into the situation!

I also was in a bit of despair that maybe I just am not cut out to be in marketing and sales AND my business does demand I do marketing and sales.

I know it’s hard right now because there is so much noice online and I do tend to believe right now being service is more important than the success of my marketing or sales. Still I would like to believe there is a backbone and heart path to being of service and selling.

If you have the answer – your answer- and you want to share it with me. Well give me a call. I know you may be a little concerned after this post – but I am willing to try again and hopefully this time if things aren’t going well I will speak up earlier!

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Thoughts From My Quarantine

As I sit here working form my computer on some editing before the next Zoom call – ZuZu, my miniature AussieDoodle, is racing back in forth in front of the office door – tossing one of my gloves up into the air. She makes sure the glove is easily sighted by me and then runs to to the other side of the room. Back and forth she goes. Totally entertaining and also committed to finding a partner in her play!

My dogs are in so many ways my sanity these days. Really their world has not changed other than they have much more of me around! Mine has!

So many structures have been cracked. We humans are no longer separate – this Covid-19 pandemic is traveling across all the borders and points of separation.

So much death and destruction. Yet outside spring is still coming. My dogs are still wanting to play and go for walks. The horses are not nervous or showing signs of something to fear and flee. I have moments during these days of physical separating of reaching and connecting like never before. I have to listen deeper and feel deeper to find that place of connection.

What was normal just a few weeks ago – isn’t anymore. I don’t think that normal is ever coming back and honestly that might be a really good thing.

I am sad about the loss of life that is happening. I am anxious, maybe more than a little nervous about losing the shell of security I had with my bank accounts, retirement funds and monthly emails tracking my invested funds. I am angry that big businesses are bailed out and hospitals don’t have supplies.

The landscape for us two-legged beings is not so pretty in this moment. But there are bright spots. Moments and signs that small groups of people and communities are weaving together the fabric of our planet earth by doing what is natural. Reaching out, helping out, asking for help, pausing, separating as requested – yet not disconnecting.

Yes – opening windows and sharing music. Taking hoarded supplies of mask and dropping them at the hospital door. Sticking a teddy in the window for small children to see and have some joy. There are businesses dropping everything to do something they don’t even know how to do – but are finding a way.

My heart beats stronger when I read stories about people not just trying to survive but finding a new way to thrive – beyond the armor, control and shells that have been built to devide us.

I want a new normal. I don’t want to go back to what was – where heartbeats got lost and people were so busy doing what was deemed so important that play, pleasure and connection were lost except maybe at times on weekends – or after business hours. I don’t want to go back to nationalism and wars between people.

I know we’d have to stay in quarantine a long time for all those structures to fall away and I don’t want that either. This time of physical distance has taught me we are so much more connected than we ever imagined. We are so much more alike than we are different and our differences just may be what we need to find a way through this. If we could just not get so caught in right/wrong.

I truly believe this virus if offering us a shared purpose. I don’t see it as a war against the virus. More like a damn good reason to work together. Learning from each other. Learning from mistakes, Learning from ideas different than our own. Recognizing ourselves within the larger natural planet. Being human and humble.

I do hear much more now. I feel much more – sensations and waves of emotional energy that I simply can’t cut off from by getting busy.

I am discovering what is most important to me. There are experiences I miss and know I that have too often taken for granted.

I was never a hugger. But I do look forward to walking through town and giving people hugs. I look forward to spending my money right here supporting a strong community. I look forward to writing at WILD and listening to all the variety of conversations happening. I look forward to going to a play, live music, pond skiing and sitting in one of our local brew spots, restaurants or bakeries!

I look forward to doing all that and remembering not to run through each day but breath into it – much like I am doing now. I want to expand and include what I am learning now – going forward.

We are better together and even better when we are the humble humans part of larger web of nature!

Zuzu is still playing – time to take her call to play!! Enought thoughts and words for today!