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IN THIS ISSUE
- Fast Focus: Craziness, The Synopsis
- Simple Gifts: The Jump Start Guide to Press Releases
- Open for Business: When Your Crazy Boss Is You
- The Bedside Table: Transform the Craziness Within
- Grow Your Business (Seattle Live Event)
- Quick Links: Guide to Recommended Products
- Copyright | Getting On and Off the List
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1. FAST FOCUS: Drop the Rope
Self-employment can feel remarkably like an endless game of tug-of-war. There's always something crazy going on, something going wrong, something to struggle with. What is not always quite so obvious is that the tug-of-war starts with the crazy-maker that you work for, yourself.
I find that fact oddly liberating. When I understand that craziness starts between my ears, I can stop thrashing around trying to change things outside of me. If nothing else, I can sit back and watch the movie, knowing that it originated in the warped projector of my own mind. Something like relief shows up when I realize that crazy-making starts with me. Imagine -- all that power -- mine! It's hard to play victim when I realize that I'm the source of the thunder and lightning in my life's storms.
As soon as I begin to notice how enrolled I've become in my problems, I find it hard to take them quite so seriously. As soon as I notice that I'm holding onto one end of a rope in the game of tug-of-war, it's hard to pretend that I can't just let go.
By the way, letting go doesn't mean that I stop being a crazy-maker. Craziness will show up again and again. Eventually, I'll realize that it's not a problem, it's just a sign that I'm tugging on the rope again.
Whether you're self-employed or not, odds are that the chief crazy-maker in your life lives in your head and won't go away anytime soon. That being the case, take time this week to get to know how your own personal crazy-maker operates. Thank it for showing you that you're playing tug-of-war again, and see how easy it can be to drop the rope.
3. OPEN FOR BUSINESS: When Your Crazy Boss Is You
At one time or another, most of us work for a crazy person. Crazy-weird, crazy-psycho, or crazy-ha-ha, just about everyone has a story about a boss whose particular brand of insanity made work a living hell.
How do I define a crazy boss? While there are thousands of ways in which bosses can be crazy, perhaps they can all be summed up as a refusal to accept or consider the realities of the work place.
Crazy bosses try to control the uncontrollable by creating tortuous protocols to micromanage future projects in response to past problems.
Crazy bosses misuse human and material resources, pressing for greater and greater returns while depleting the assets from which those returns flow.
Crazy bosses are always looking for someone else to blame. The buck never stops with a crazy boss, it stops when the crazy boss has found a scapegoat.
Crazy bosses are liberal with praise and rewards when they are in a good mood and they're hypercritical, oversensitive, and uncommunicative when they're under pressure.
Crazy bosses don't know when to stop. They press on past the point of diminishing returns.
Crazy bosses are unpredictable. The only thing you can reliably expect from a crazy boss is more craziness.
I know a lot about crazy bosses because I am one. In fact, I'm here to tell you that there's nothing like self-employment to bring one face to face with the prototypical Crazy Boss.
That may seem like bad news, but it's really just a fact of life. When I think back over my lifetime of working for others as well as for myself, the pivotal source of craziness at any given moment has always been between my own ears.
I'm not claiming that outside people, places, and things, do not present challenges. I am reporting that I've never found an outside circumstance that did not accurately reflect my inner state. My old feline friend, Boodle-Anne, was well aware of this. If I stomped into my office in the grip of a particularly evil mood, Boodle backed away. She knew I would project the problem I was creating on everything around me, including her, until I stopped.
Boodle would never believe that my problem originated in a client or a vendor. She never wondered about my checking account balance or the state of my hormones. She had a direct experience of Molly-as-Crazy-Boss and knew enough to get out of the way.
These days, I'm happy to report that I can get out of the way, too. Not always, not instantly. But more and more often I can notice that I'm insane and I can laugh at the drama and trauma I raise around me. In my worst moments I can't help but finding the humor in my complaints, and in my best moments I can't find my complaints.
This column isn't long enough to go into all the ways I've learned to defuse the Crazy Boss within (though you'll find solid resources in The Bedside Table, below). It will have served its purpose if it evokes a knowing smile, a momentary spark of recognition. After all, it's not being crazy that hurts, it's pretending that I'm not.
Self-employment is a gift. It forces me to get cozy with the Crazy Boss within, with the fears, projections, and resentments that shape my reality and determine my responses. Thanks to self-employment, I can cozy up to the exact ways I make myself nuts and begin to make peace with the fact that wherever I go, there I am.
4. THE BEDSIDE TABLE: Transform the Craziness Within
"The Seven Languages of Transformation," Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. Use this book as a self-guided workshop in meeting and disarming the Crazy Boss within. In fact, it works quite nicely with external craziness, too. Learn to mine your complaints and hidden commitments for clues to effective action. This work is a cornerstone of my Authentic Promotion(tm) telecourse. Highly recommended.
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"Loving What Is," Byron Katie. I took Byron Katie's book to the ski slopes last week, where it only took me four days of intensive practice to shift my internal crazy talk. Hey, I never said I was a fast learner. I will say that Byron Katie's Work works.
"The Work" is a radical (in the sense that it goes to the root) process of inquiry that unravels the mares' nests that we make of our experience so we can be free and whole. "The Work" is a way to be with and dismantle the thoughts that cause us suffering so that we can be free to act with grace, love, and power.
How does this apply to business? Have you ever had a thought about business that made you suffer? I thought so. Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that your own thinking is the biggest obstacle to your success? You are going to love this work!
I love the audio tape (link below) because there is something about Katie's voice that cuts through the chatter in my mind: Order tape.
After I finished the tapes I ordered the book because I wanted to highlight key portions (easier than searching tapes for a specific passage). Order book.
"Authentic Happiness," Martin Seligman. One of the chief proponents of "positive psychology," Seligman shows how you can "raise your happiness set point."
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Seligman wrote the excellent book "Learned Optimism," which I've recommended many times before. His work is both popular and scholarly, a valuable combo. "Learned Optimism" has solid guidance for people who have struggled with blue moods and depression or anyone who feels that their outlook and prospects have been limited by a "glass half full" approach to life. Learn more here.
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5. Grow Your Business (Seattle Live Event)
This is not my event and I am not compensated for promoting it -- and it is a heckuva good deal for building your business. This is your last week to register.
Learn proven strategies for attracting clients from Master Certified Coach C.J. Hayden, author of "Get Clients Now." Sponsored by the Puget Sound Chapter of the International Coach Federation and open to the public, this special one-day event is probably the best business-building bargain you'll find all year.
February 8, 2003, 9:30 am – 4:00 pm. Registration begins at 8:30. Museum of History and Industry, 2700 24th Ave. E, Seattle. Directions at http://www.seattlehistory.org
- Discover new ways to attract your ideal clients
- Create a first draft customized action plan for your business
- Network with other client-based business professionals
For more information or to register visit http://www.pugetsoundcoaches.org or call/e-mail: 360.491.2727, mailto:coacholivia@attbi.com
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