I never wanted to wear a tie.

In an article featured on the Diversity Inc. magazine website, fellow Johnson Graduate School of Management MBA, Mark Bertolini, talks about what's really important in business, and dare I say, in life. He discusses his path to the CEO role. He talks about dropping out of college and then going back to get an MBA and what it takes to truly be valuable to people--a deep curiosity about them and an interest in giving first, and then in receiving. Mr. Bertolini's major lesson, to honor what you're good at an interested in is spot on.

Ms. Nikki, Ego Tripping

Kahlil Gibran, On Self Knowledge

On Self-Knowledge
Kahlil Gibran
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.


And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.


Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.

Mountain Dreamers, Prophets and Professors

To support an earlier post, I thought I would post a video of a video with the text of Oriah Mountain Dreamer's poem, The Invitation. Good stuff...



PS She is not, as the video alludes to, an Indian healer. She is a self-identified White woman from Canada. And.we.love.her.

PPS More on Khalil Gibran's The Prophet and poetry from Ms. Nikki in separate posts.

Short and Sweet

I am going to Nepal. In May. O - M - G. I am trekking in/on/around Annapurna I am not a trekker, I do not know the appropriate preposition.

I need to go to the gym. Now.

Be Impeccable With Your Word

As part of this 90 day challenge I am doing, I am tasked with living the mantra with which we begin and end each of our coaching calls. The full mantra, taken from Don Miguel Ruiz's seminal work, The Four Agreements, reads as follows --

Be impeccable with your word
Don't make assumptions
Don't take anything personally
Always do your best

In addition to living the mantra, we are tasked with writing several experts whose work/lives inspire us a handwritten letter of gratitude. I chose to write to some therapists, some coaches, but also to some extraordinary writers. In my chosen field, writing is core to the work I intend to do within the space of my expertise. It would follow that I'd select as inspirational guides and people after whom I'd like to model my own writing, writers and teachers like Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Kahlil Gibran, and Nikki Giovanni, people whose healing, enduring words have been translated to several languages, circulated around the globe and gifted to people repeatedly because of their sheer power.

I take so seriously the power of the written word, that I often suffer from paralysis when writing emails or when trying to craft a critical essay. In these letters of gratitude, however, the words came easily and quickly. Gratitude, genuine gratitude is one of the most natural things to express.

I took this approach when writing to Ms. Giovanni. I communicated how I am consistently moved by her poetry, how my mother was also a fan and how grateful I am that she had the audacity to share herself with us. Simple, to the point. Just like her reply - "Michelle, thank you for your kind words and for the memory of your mother. Nikki."

Tell your truth, but not the whole truth

I had an amazing conversation with a man this Monday evening about the importance of being authentic in the workplace. His work focuses solely on helping organizations figure out their HR and Diversity and Inclusion strategies but what we both agreed on is how much bigger than HR and Diversity, work-life (meaning your life at work) is. In the her book, Don't Bring It to Work, Sylvia Lafair offers makes a very astute observation that who we are in the workplace is a direct reflection of who we are period. The folks we have or are working with (super achievers, complainers, hermits, etc.) are 'products of their environments. I encourage you to read this book as it offers insights into how to recognize something, fairly counter-intuitive - that what we see is actually what we get. Even with our attempts to mask our true-selves, we still manifest some version of our 'outside of work' self.

Do what you love. No excuses.

What stands between us and our ability to do the thing we love? Is it fear? Lack of conviction that we are good enough? The possibility of poverty or worse yet social or professional isolation? It is likely some combination of these three things, among a host of other reasons. And while these concerns are valid, they are not necessarily a foregone conclusion.

We are as likely to fail doing something we don't enjoy as we are doing something that brings us great personal satisfaction. Our passions are gifted to us and meant to be tended, like spiritual gardens. They are things which give us illogical bursts of energy on no sleep, and sustain us past the point of rationality when all else points to 'stop.' Passion is the fuel of meaningful contribution. Without it, what we contribute will always be some diminished version of what we are capable of giving. What we do is only a shade of what can accomplish. Passion is the differentiator between those who are merely accomplished and those who are undeniably extraordinary at what they do. It is the measure of a life examined and pursued and the lack of it forms a chasm which only the truly brave and relentlessly authentic may cross.

The following video (from 2 years ago, but still relevant) makes a very strong case for doing what what you love. The language is rough in a few spots but the sentiment is spot on.

Bridges

Last night, I had the great fortune of hosting two of my closest girlfriends at my apartment. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been a night of good dinner, good wine, and even better conversation -- and it was, it just happened amongst boxes, piles of paper and long-forgotten dry-cleaning. Most important was the fact that it was actually an intervention. I had called these women over to help me climb out of 'my bag' as my grandmother might say.

This 'bag' was and is a psychic space that I find myself in after the death of my mother and the dissolution of (what I thought was) a very serious relationship. After months of walking around boxes and stacking and re-stacking mail on the 'other' side of the bed, I had had enough. I had moved in almost 6 months ago and the living room (where I used to host all manner of delicious and engaging events) looked like I had just arrived yesterday. My bookshelves, although fully unpacked, were teeming with tchotchkes and unread volumes begging to be let go. My desk's vertical filing system had been woefully neglected and I was breeding dust-bunnies around the baseboards. Needless to say, a cluttered space reflects a cluttered mind. I needed help, and quickly.

The funny thing about grief is that it's just numbing enough to make you think you're functioning. You're getting up, you're going to work, the bills get paid, the laundry gets done, but you are numb really. The little things that seem normal or even enjoyable in some regard begin to slip, like coking for yourself, "I'll just order pizza again," or things that are never reasonable become reasonable in your mind "I'll sort through the last 8 issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education this weekend, in my free time." There is no basis in reality that you cannot or should not have pizza for dinner 3 times a week (at least not topped with sausage and pepperoni - no wonder your blood pressure is high!) You can't believe that it will take you longer than 30 minutes to get through approximately 800 pages of musings and articles on the world of academe. You are young, you are smart, you have been to school -- for a loooooong time -- you have run races, and done fasts. You are indestructible and 'on it' -- until you realize you are not. Well you might be, but you are also human, and you are broken and you are standing at the shore of very choppy waters trying to cross over into the place that is more familiar to you, the land of 'Get-it-togetherville."

Enter the bridge, or in this case, the bridges. They arrived relatively promptly (by our sister standards at least), bearing the requisite libations and offering hugs full of, "Don't worry, we're here and we'll get this done." I ushered them up the stairs into the mess. There had been no parties, no dinners, no casual get-togethers in 6 months. No socializing, no nothing. But here they were, my girls. Years of friendship, gallons of tears and reels of funny moments danced between us as they laid themselves down over my cluttered space and mind and mapped out the next 6 months of how I was going to 'deal'. First, we talked about their recent and impending nuptials over full glasses of Montepulciano and plates of Pad Thai. But then we finished our meal and got back to the task at hand. One opened another bottle of wine, the other went to my whiteboard and immediately started to identify what would be short and long term tasks. We covered wellness first ("How are you?" and "How is your family?" "Are you getting enough sleep? Of course you aren't.") When they were sufficiently convinced that I was just sad, not suicidal and that a little organization and a few words of encouragement were what I needed most, we could get back to things like, "Do you need two Mardi Gras masks? Really?"

I won't bore you with more details of the night, but two things are worth highlighting. 1) My mess was not nearly as big or insurmountable as I thought it was and 2) It took my girlfriends, responding to my clarion call to lovingly, and objectively to tell me "No, this is not ANYTHING like that hoarder show. Girl have you SEEN that show??" and remind me that grief is a process and a journey that no matter how smart or determined I am, I cannot accelerate. It simply cannot be done. This is what the sturdy, beautifully made, majestic bridges told me as they laid themselves down over my life. So with that, as we organized the Chronicles for recycling, hung up all the cardigans, and finished the wine, I started to cross over the choppy water, thankful that I didn't have to swim.

Work Hard, Play Hard

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.”

---James Michener, Novelist

Just Do Your Job

I just ended a conference call where I asked the question, "How much should I write in my blogposts?" You might ask, why would I ask anyone, as a blogger, how much I should write. I'd argue that the question is more, "How should I write?" The question is borne out of my concern, as a writer first, that I start in the intuitively 'correct' part of the story and share the appropriate amount of information in order to engage people.

The response to my question was, "Why are you asking that question?" Well I could have responded authentically to say that I am busy and may not have time to write epic posts about authenticity and living purposefully, both of which I fully intend to do at some point. I could have said that I want to know if it's enough to shout out some other less fearful writer/blogger's ideas without having 1,000 words to say on the topic. I could tell the truth - that I doubt myself and rather than trust that I will write what needs to be written, authentically, I'd like someone to just tell me what to do. Sigh, the journey will be long. Rather than wallow in my own analysis paralysis and 'self-talk', here's a video that I will be watching on repeat until I have internalized that I have to just start. Suspend judgment, breathe deeply, trust my instinct for authenticity and write.