Seeds of Success

I know you’ve been anxiously awaiting an update on my visit to the dentist. Okay, you haven’t been… in fact, you forgot about it didn’t you? One friend remembered and actually laughed at me about it “Nah nah nah nah nah… you have to go to the dentist today.” (You know who you are, Liz!).

[Don’t know why I dread going to the dentist? Read an entry from last week’s blog to get the scoop.]

So this morning I drove to Falmouth for my 8:10 dental appointment.

I won’t go in to all the gory dental details but I did want to share that I got major praise in my Waterpik efforts. Yup! The hygienist took a peek at my teeth and told me she was going to have to really look for the gunk to put on her little scientific slide.

Then when she put the slide under the microscope she couldn’t see hardly any bacteria. Yippee!!

I told her that I’d been faithfully Waterpiking every day. I told her that I’d timed the entire routine so that I knew it only took 5:24 minutes to set up, use, and clean up afterwards. She thought this was a good piece of information she could share with other patients.

Focus on the pleasure not the pain was the point in last week’s blog entry. After a week of Waterpiking my teeth, I’m still focusing on the pleasure. And the results have been worth it. My smile is brighter, my breath is better, and I think it makes me look thinner, too.

Are you still trying to overlook the pain or have you started focusing on the pleasure? Give pleasure a try and let me know what happens.

I’m just going to say it… my dance skills are pathetic… at best. I have no rhythm and when I get out on the dance floor I keep losing the beat. Well, that’s not true… I never found it to begin with.

This morning a friend shared a video about the Evolution of Dance. This 6-minute video chronicles the evolution of dance from Elvis to the Village People to the Chicken Dance.

I must say… after watching this video, I don’t feel so bad about my own lack of skill.

I hope this video makes you laugh and smile. I hope it brings back memories, too. My particular favorite was the Brady Bunch dance. If you are a fan of the show, you’ll have no problem picking it out.

Enjoy!

–Donna

Last week Mike Harris, a good friend of mine, performed his Mike Harris & Friends (a one-man show) program at a church in Saco, Maine.

He borrowed my digital recorder so that he’d be able to create an audio CD of this show. Our goal was to have a great CD he could sell during the Tellabration event he’s emceeing on November 18th.

Now, I’m more of a techie than Mike is, and the software to download and edit the audio files in on my computer. So when I let him borrow my recorder I knew that I’d be the one doing the editing. I scheduled time yesterday to tackle this project.

Initially I thought the sound quality would be good enough to create the CD. However once I started editing the sound files, I began to doubt whether or not it would be good enough.

Realizing that I have perfectionist tendencies, though, I kept working on it. I’m so glad that I did. It’s been several months since I’ve worked on audio files so the refresher was wonderful. When I started yesterday morning I was a bit overwhelmed, confused, and wondering what I’d gotten myself in to. By the time I finished though, I was once again feeling like a master at the controls.

Today Mike and I met for lunch. I gave him a CD that had the potential to be a finished copy. I also gave him CDs with the raw audio files that had not been edited (just in case if he wanted to experiment with them). I warned him that the sound quality wasn’t the best, but was the best I could make it.

A few minutes ago I got an e-mail from Mike. He agreed that the sound quality wasn’t good enough to make this collection of humorous stories into a CD he could offer for sale.

But rather than express disappointment or frustration he wrote: “I think this CD is good for my own educational purposes, and maybe good enough to send out if somebody wants a demo.”

I love that Mike found value in this not quite perfect situation. Rather than moan and complain he found a use for this recording of his stories.

When you work on a project or are involved in a situation that provides less than hoped for results, do you discount it as worthless? A waste of time?

I hope not. There is value in everything you do. Sometimes you need to look beyond the results and study the process to find it. Sometimes you need to look at the learning and not the letdown.

What did you do today that was valuable?

Last spring on a mini-roadtrip from the southern coast of Maine to northern Vermont I listened to an audio book titled Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers by Lois P. Frankel.

The book identifies common mistakes and offers advice to help women get ahead in their careers. For the record, Frankel doesn’t have a problem with being nice. But she does have a problem with women who act like girls and then get upset when they aren’t treated like women.

One of the key points in this book is that women are all too often called “girls” rather than “women”. And that’s the problem!

Just think about it. What images, thoughts and impressions come to mind when you think of girls? Do you think strong and capable? Do you think intelligent and courageous? Do you think independent and decisive? Probably not.

The other night as I watched the TV show Survivor I realized how common it is for both men and women to call men men and women girls–especially when talking about a group of women. This episode consisted of clips that showed the highlights of the season thus far. All too often I heard talk of the girls doing this and the men doing that.

Why is it that men are called men but women are called girls?

Does it matter? What do you think?

I welcome your comments.

Today’s entry may fall in the TMI or “too much information” category. My apologies in advance. But it’s a concept I’ve been pondering lately as I rake leaves, climb on that dratted treadmill, and sort through piles of papers in an attempt to find my desk.

The concept is: Focus on the pleasure not the pain.

The other day I looked at my calendar and realized I have a dentist appointment next week. Talk about pain! Yikes! The last time I went one of my teeth was super sensitive to the cleaning process. I ended up having a crown put on that tooth. Double and triple ouch!

I focused on the pain.

Of course now I don’t have to contort my face to protect that tooth when I’m eating something hot or cold. I think that’s nice… pleasurable even.

One complaint… okay lecture… I get every time I go to the dentist is that I need to be more diligent in my flossing practices. Have you ever been told that? UGH! Flossing is high on my Richter scale of ickiness.

At every visit my hygienist scrapes some gunk from between my teeth, puts it on a little glass slide and then puts it under the microscope. Of course this microscope is hooked up to a big screen, high definition TV… she wants to make sure that I don’t miss seeing the creepy things living in between my teeth.

[I did warn you that this was a TMI post, right? Want to jump to a cute comic strip? Check out Hagen’s Cartoons.]

So I’m watching these itty-bitty wormy things swimming in my mouth (some wormy things are good for you) and listening to her tell me all the medical problems they can cause:

• heart disease
• diabetes
• blood infections
• suppressed immune system
• low birth-weight babies

After the first two lectures all I heard was “blah, blah, blah.”

I want to tell her, “I know. I know. But I’m just not gonna floss. It grosses me out.”

The other day when I thought about that upcoming dental visit I thought, “I should find that Waterpik I bought a few years ago and use it. Let’s see if it really makes a difference. Hmmm… I wonder where I put it.”

When I first bought the Waterpik I actually used it. For a few days. Then it got to be too much of a hassle. I skipped one day… then two. Then I forgot it existed.

I looked for it under the bathroom sink. I pulled out the towels, moved the hair care products that I never use but I couldn’t find that Waterpik. I checked the downstairs bathroom. No luck.

Just when I had convinced myself that I’d tossed the thing out, I found it. Apparently, it’s been sitting on the bathroom counter for years. I don’t even see if anymore when I’m cleaning.

I washed it off and used it. The whole time I used it I thought of the time I was wasting and the mess I was surely making.

But when I finished I ran my tongue over my teeth. Mmmmm… my teeth felt good. I smiled at myself in the mirror. They looked good… shinier… happier…

That’s when I realized that I was spending too much time focused on the pain and not enough time focusing on the pleasure.

Let’s break it down…

The pain is the time to set up and use the Waterpik, and clean up the sink afterwards. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not so bad.

The pleasure, however, is so much better. The pleasure is clean-feeling teeth, a brighter smile, healthier mouth, a healthier body. And of course, a dental visit without getting yelled at. Seems like the pleasure definitely outweighs the pain.

So my challenge is to focus on the pleasure. The long term benefits of flossing (okay, using a Waterpik) far outweigh the five minutes (I timed it) it takes to perform this task.

What activity (health, relationships, professional, etc.) have you been avoiding because you’ve focused on the pain rather than the pleasure?

I’m changing my perspective and so far it’s working. It will probably work for you, too.

“I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

Have you ever done or been caught doing something silly/stupid with someone else? To preserve your diginity you pinky swear: “I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

Well, I’m telling. It’s just too good a story to pass up and my husband doesn’t read my blog anyway so he’ll never know. So don’t tell, okay? Pinkie swear?

Here’s the story…

Yesterday we attended the house-warming open house for a good friend of ours. The printed directions included a photo of Mike and Wendy’s new home.

As Gerry and I were driving up Mike’s street, I held the directions out and said, “Here’s a photo of the house.”

Gerry glanced at it and we continued up the street. The house numbers indicated we were getting closer. Then we saw a line of cars on the side of the street.

“That must be it,” Gerry said.

He pulled in to the driveway.

Luckily, before he turned off the car, I said, “What are you doing? This isn’t the house.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“It’s the next one. With all the cars in front of it.” Then I said, “I thought you were pulling in to this driveway so that you could park on the street in front of that other car.”

OOPS!

So we backed out of Mike’s neighbor’s driveway and parked on the side of the street.

As we walked up the driveway to Mike and Wendy’s home, Gerry told me the reason he thought the other house was Mike’s was because the picture I’d shown him on the directions was white. Too late it occurred to him that the directions had been printed on our black and white laser printer.

We laughed together as we walked in to the garage. Gerry knew that I’d be quick to share this funny mix-up with our friends.

I stepped up to the door and pressed the doorbell.

OOPS! It wasn’t a doorbell. It was the garage door opener. Gerry laughed as I quickly pressed the button again to put the door back up.

I glanced over my shoulder at him. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell!”

And we didn’t.

When we left their home Gerry commented that we had parked closer than he thought. I pointed out that the dark blue Subaru he was looking at wasn’t our dark blue Subaru.

OOPS!

Many times when we do stupid or silly things like this we feel embarrassed. I know I did when I pushed the button for the garage door.

But if we never share life’s little OOPSies with others they don’t get to laugh at our expense.

We visited Gerry’s Mom and brother after we left Mike and Wendy’s house. We told the story of the driveway and the doorbell. We all laughed. I’m so glad we told.

Whether I need to bawl and vent or laugh and sing out, I call you. Thanks–you fit my every mood. ~From the Every Day Thoughts “Friends” calendar for October 21.

How embarrassing… It wasn’t even my idea… sorry neighbors!

My story started at about 4 a.m. A coworker asked me what I think of our new used vehicle–a Subaru Outback. I told him I haven’t had a chance to drive it yet.

“What?” he said. “Why not?”

“I haven’t had time,” was my response.

So as I was driving home at 6:15 this morning, I thought, “Hmmmm… everyone’s sleeping, I’ll just take the Subaru out for a spin.”

You see, I’m a bit nervous about driving it. It’s a 5-speed manual transmission. I know how to drive a standard shift car, but it’s been several years. I really don’t want witnesses to me sputtering up the street.

Taking it out for a spin on at dawn on a Saturday morning would be perfect!

I got home, brought my lunch bag into the house and snuck back outside.

“Hee hee,” I thought. “Gerry will never know I took the car out for a drive. I’m so clever!”

The car was locked–something Gerry’s always done even when the car is sitting in our driveway.

I put my key in the lock and turned it.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Lights started flashing, the horn kept honking. I tried to lock and unlock the door again but still the alarm continued.

I ran back to the house (which of course I had locked behind me), forced my key into the door and ran into the kitchen to retrieve Gerry’s set of keys. Just as I plucked his ring of keys off the table the morning went silent.

“What happened?” Gerry asked from behind me.

Well, I wasn’t quite ready to laugh about this yet, so I grumbled a response about the spare key that he had made up for the car and how it apparently doesn’t disable the alarm. Then I sarcastically wished him and our neighbors a Happy Saturday morning.

UGH! I felt/feel so bad for setting off our car’s alarm. I didn’t even know it had one! Oops!

Oh well… it’s a beautiful Saturday morning here in Maine. They’ll appreciate getting an early start to their day. Right?

I’m so excited for my friend Candy!

Candy is a great motivational speaker and a good friend. She makes me laugh, cry, and push myself just a little bit more to achieve the things I want in life. I think I do the same for her.

Last week we met for breakfast (my favorite meal of the day) and talked about life, business, dreams, and more. As usual the discussion turned to her website–rather it turned to her continued lack of one.

A website is so beneficial for a professional speaker. After all, it’s great to tell people (potential clients) that you’re a speaker but unless you always carry printed brochures, the contact may end there. But if you can direct them to your website, well, they can learn about your programs, your education/experience, your past clients, and more.

So anyway… Candy and I were talking about one of her programs on the topic of change. We talked about the difference between change that is externally generated (things that happen to you) and change that is internally generated (things you want to happen to you).

She made the statement that if you want to create long-term change in your life, you just have to start with something small today… and do something small each day until the change has occurred.

The conversation drifted off onto a tangent as conversations do.

It was later in the day that I realized that Candy needed to do something to help herself achieve professional success. She needed to get a website up and running.

Now for you non-techies out there, don’t panic. Candy isn’t a techie either. But she has a good friend (me!) who offered to take care of the technical stuff and serve as her webmaster. All she needed to do was provide information on her programs, background, and stuff like that. I’d take care of the rest.

But one of the things holding Candy back was that she couldn’t decide on a domain name for her site. The domain name is the address (www._____________.com or .net etc.) that you type in your web browser.

So I sent Candy an e-mail and challenged her to make this decision. Just pick a name. I suggested she use her name or her business name. Then I waited. It took a couple of days but she finally responded with her answer. Sweet!

Yesterday I did the legwork to register her domain name and set up a web site hosting account. In another day or two she will have a website that she can use to promote her professional speaking business.

Isn’t that exciting? All it took was for her to make a decision and I’m doing the rest!

What decisions do you need to make? Is there something someone is just itching to start working on for you, but they can’t get started until you make a decision?

Your decision doesn’t have to be perfect. But until you make a decision you can’t evaluate whether or not it was the best decision. If Candy decides to change her domain name at a later date, it will be easy enough to do.

But until you start with a decision, you can’t take the next step. And the next step is what I find so exciting!

Imagine working your butt off to help someone complete a project. Imagine running in to an obstacle that you can’t resolve on your own. Imagine telling the project “owner” of the problem and hearing “Oh, well” as a response.

Wouldn’t that response make you think the project wasn’t important? Wouldn’t it make you wonder why you were spending so much time and energy on it when it didn’t seem worthy of the project owner’s time?

The above situation happened to a friend of mine recently. Let me tell you, it really ticked her off. The problem, it seems, was that the project owner didn’t do all that she needed to do before handing the task off to my friend. So when my friend started to work on it, it wasn’t ready. So now she not only had to do her part of the project, but she also had to redo (or in some cases do) things that the project owner should have already completed.

“Oh, well.”

“Oh, well” is such a passionless expression. It even seems defeatist. It’s like you’re expecting things to go wrong and “oh, well, what can you do?”

When I think about it, it seem ironic that “oh, well” has a lackluster meaning to me. Because “well” means good, acceptable, satisfactory. Yet oftentimes when I hear people say “oh, well” they don’t mean those things at all!

So when something go awry, show some emotion. I don’t mean get angry or vulgar, but at least say something that suggests you care–especially if the problem occurred because you messed up.

The expression I frequently use is: “Oh, crap!”

Depending upon the vocal inflections when saying these words, the meaning can be very different. It can sound self-deprecating as in “Oh, crap, I’m such an idiot.” It can sound humorous as in “Oh, crap! Look at the mess I made.” It can even sound worrysome as in “Oh, crap, I really screwed up this time.”

I think that if my friend had heard “Oh, crap!” instead of “Oh, well” her response would have been different. She probably would have laughed or commiserated. She probably would have willingly offered to do what was necessary to complete the task. Instead she felt overworked, underappreciated, and just plain aggravated.

So what’s my point? As I type this at 6:33 a.m. I’m not sure. But I think it is to remind you that if you don’t take and express an interest in the results of the things you’re working on (whether physically, spiritually, financially, careerally, etc.) why should someone else? If something matters to you it will matter to others. If it doesn’t matter to you, then why should others bother to help you?

When life disappoints you or obstacles block your path, don’t shrug your shoulders and say, “Oh, well”; instead, flex your muscles and say, “Oh, crap!” Then get to work and solve the problem.

I’ve heard many speakers and business marketing experts say “A confused mind says “No!”

Personal experience suggests this to be true. If I feel overwhelmed with choices, I won’t pick anything. It happens to me when shopping for clothes, makeup (which I still don’t wear because there are sooooo many choices, and breakfast cereal.

I don’t want to pick the wrong thing, so I go without.

So I believe that the a confused mind does say “No.”

I also believe that a confused mind says “Yes”…

Huh?

I think a confused mind says “yes” to wrong things!

If you aren’t sure what you want to do for a job, you’ll do any job.

If you aren’t sure what type of person you want to spend you’re life with, you’ll spend time with anyone who’ll spend time with you.

If you aren’t sure what you want to accomplish in life (regarding health, wealth, spirtuality, etc.) you won’t make the time or develop the resources to get you what you want.

Unfortunately, sometimes we only know what we don’t want, rather than what we do want. Is this true for you?

I’m not sure what the answer is… it’s something I’m still working on myself. But I have to admit, that I find myself saying “yes” to things that I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do. But since I don’t have anything else planned, I think “why not?”

Answering that “why not?” question is something to ponder and blog about another day.

Are you confused? Are you saying “yes” when you should be saying “no”? Are you saying “no” when it may be time to just take a chance and try something? Anything?