The Blessing of “No”

It’s funny. Humans don’t like to be told “No,” but often when we hear it, we consider it a personal challenge.

If there is something I really want, I will go after it until I get it, even if I’m initially rejected. Books have been written about this sheer tenacity. Grit. Perseverance. Stubbornness.

I don’t see “No” as “No.” I see it as “Not yet, Mary, you still have some work to do.” So I do the work, and I try again. And again. And again, until I get a “Yes.” And when I look back on the lean years when I didn’t have what I wanted, I don’t see them as years spent in rejection. I see them as years spent busting my ass so that the next time I asked, the answer would be “Yes.”

Eventually, if you don’t give up your dreams and desires, the answer will be “Yes.” But most people can’t hang in there long enough to get that “Yes.” It takes a lot of work.

Say you’re driving to work, or an interview, or a concert, or a gathering, and you want to be on time. Suddenly you hit a detour, and you realize that you can only go left, right, or back in the direction you came. You know you’re never going to make it on time now. Do you say,

“Screw it, might as well just sit here at this roadblock for the day.”

Or,

“Day’s ruined, might as well go home and go back to bed.”

Of course not. You find a different way to get to your destination. Why should our journey in life be any different?

This is not to say that we are not kept waiting. Oh boy, are we kept waiting, days, weeks, months, YEARS at a time. And when I’m waiting for my “Yes,” I have a small poem I refer to. This has been taped on my kitchen wall for years since I saw it in my local church bulletin.

The Blessing of “No”

I asked God to take away my pride.

God said “No.” It is not for me to take away, but for you to give up.

I asked God to make my handicapped child whole.

God said “No.” Her spirit is whole, her body only temporary.

I asked God to grant me patience.

God said “No.” Patience is a by-product of tribulations; it isn’t granted, it is earned.

I asked God to give me happiness.

God said “No.” I give you blessings, happiness is up to you.

I asked God to spare me pain.

God said “No.” Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares and brings you closer to me.

I asked God to make my spirit grow.

God said “No.” You must grow on your own, but I will prune you to make you more fruitful.

I asked for all things so that I might enjoy life.

God said “No.” I will give you life so that you may enjoy all things.

I asked God to love others, as much as He loves me.

God said, “Ah, you finally have the idea.”

In Praise of Work

Next week’s blog posts will all be “Top Five” lists. In preparation, here is my “Top Five Things In Praise of Work.”

5. Getting Ready. I love getting ready for work. Putting on lingerie and earrings, choosing an outfit and dabbing on red lipstick and spraying on the perfume that suits my mood for the day. It’s lovely being a woman.

4. Coffee and its haunting aroma.

3. Quiet offices in which to wear my outfits and sip my coffee. I love sitting in the quiet faculty offices of teaching campuses, sipping my coffee and hearing the muffled quiet hum of the hallways.

2. Colleagues. Brief professional dalliances in the hallways, stolen laughs between classes, dashed-off emails to check-in.

1. Work. Because how privileged am I to live in a country that allows me to do what I love, to reside in a body that has the strength to propel me through a work day, and a profession that humbles me on a daily basis.

Value your ability to work. Here’s Hozier’s video “Work Song” which has nothing to do with work, but it’s super sexy. Have a weekend to brag about.

Quality-Driven

Personal discovery:

When you do work that you love with enthusiasm, it will not seem difficult or monotonous. The passion you have for your work will energize your body and you will spring out of bed on less sleep than you previously believed you needed. You’ll be able to do twice the amount of work without getting tired, because energy recharges your body.

Enthusiasm sells. It sells you, it sells your product. How to feel enthusiastic in a job that doesn’t make you feel enthusiastic?

Do something outside of work that lights you up inside. Andrew Carnegie attributed every promotion he ever got while he was a salaried worker to the things he did with his time off that he was not paid to do. Take a weekend job at a store with products you love, take a Master Class at night instead of binging on Netflix, volunteer for a cause that stirs your inner fire. That is where greatness lies.

If you have a job that you don’t feel enthusiastic about, find something about it you love, and do that better than anyone else. Or find a part of the job, or office, or building that seems to lack attention, and pay attention to it. The common denominator of every successful person lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that others didn’t like to do.

Success is not achieved by following the rules of men before you, or by natural likes and dislikes. If you want to be extraordinary, you must resort to extraordinary measures. Regardless of what you are now, you can get where you want to be by paying the price.

What is the price?

Time. We live in a very impatient society, where get-rich quick schemes give the perception that success can be achieved from one’s couch. But we must be willing to fail.

This is not an easy thing. Our school system is one in which students get a “C” when they are wrong only 22% of the time. This teaches us not to put ourselves in situations where we might fail. This ultimately leads to conservative thinking.

But remember this: a successful person was once a failure who was almost always failing, hundreds and thousands of times.

All it takes is one success.

(Adapted from my private teaching, coaching and research. Information through personal inquiry to email only)

Climate-Driven

As you know, I get in trouble once in a while on social media. Sometimes I stir things up on purpose due to boredom, and sometimes it’s an actual topic that I am emotionally invested in. Certain statements catch more fire than others, like the following:

Tiger Woods is washed-up.

Tom Brady is starting to look like an extra-terrestrial.

Fitness models look healthier in their “Before” pictures than in their “After” pictures.

I like gluten.

Intermittent fasting is easy and effective.

Working from home sucks the big one.

That last statement caught me a lot of heat on LinkedIn last year. I was responding to (what seemed to me) a ridiculous article that extolled the mystical qualities of remote work. The author posted some contrived statistic like “98% of respondents state that they are happier and more productive working from home,” and went on to say that office work might be a thing of the past, because people love to stay home.

Yeah, right. On what freaking planet, I asked? There is no way, I posted, that professional people would prefer to sit around in their pajamas staring at a screen while doing laundry as opposed to having intellectual conversation, flirting innocently with the hot office manager, and sipping coffee in the break room.

And this coming from an introvert.

Most people still don’t understand the definition of the word “introvert.” They hear “introvert” and think unfriendly, brooding, sullen. The Unabomber. We introverts are used to this stereotype, and while I have finally reached the age where I no longer care if I am misunderstood, let me say this:

I have always always always liked going into work. I like everything about the professional work day. The traffic and the commute, the hustle-and-bustle, the quick stops for coffee, the business suits, the meetings, the heels, the office camaraderie, the gossip, the innocent flirting, the Out Of The House thing. I like being Out Of The House, and so do the working professionals I know.

So I did my own survey. I interviewed, emailed and spoke personally to twenty executives and professionals, and not ONE PERSON I spoke to preferred working in their home. Not one. Some didn’t mind it temporarily because there was no choice, and on rainy and snowy days were glad they didn’t have to drive or walk in it. But when it came to office environment, they missed it.

And I said so, on LinkedIn.

Then hell-fire rained down on me. For days. I defended myself accordingly, and never left my position, which was:

This survey is horseshit. No way people like working like this. Who could possibly like working like this????

Here were some of their defenses:

I don’t have to pay for childcare.

I’m so happy to not have to do that commute!

I save money on office clothes!

No dealing with toxic bosses and colleagues.

I can get more done at home.

I save gas and miles on my car!

I can take breaks when I want.

Ad nauseum.

Eventually it went away, but dang, were people pissed at me. Fine, I might have suggested at some point that only young children should get to be wrapped in blankies at home. The rest of us, I added, adults, have to go out into the big scary world and deal with life face-to-face.

You can imagine how well that comment fared. I got some death threats on that one.

In the past few weeks, I have received no less than a dozen articles, blogs and emails about the fact that employees are reporting episodes of depression from working at home. Turns out they want to go back to the office.

Well well well. How the tables do turn. Boy, do I hate being right all of the time.

This was just sent to me on Linked In:

Now what?

Working from home is a tricky transition!

At first, it’s super exciting. You’re stoked because you can wear pajamas all day. Woohoo!

But most people find that it gets old pretty quick.

It’s because working from home can be really lonely. 

It’s nice not having to get dressed and go to the office. But it can also really hinder your productivity and leave you in a slump.

And studies show that working from home can lead to depression and social anxiety. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Being a digital nomad and location independent sounds like an amazing adventure. You can take that freedom and travel the world!

The thing is, humans are deeply interconnected creatures. We crave community and connection. It’s literally woven into our DNA.

Well, shit. I said that last year and got death threats, and this chick posts it on LinkedIn, and gets 15k likes.

I demand a recount.

Product-Driven

(This week’s blog posts will be devoted to the theme of work, including topics such as work choices, work ethic, work environment, and work pride)

My first job at the age of sixteen was at Wendy’s. I like to say that I quit, but theoretically, I got fired. They were trying to get rid of me. You know that guy who never really broke up with you, but treated you like crap until you broke up with him? It was like that.

I was borderline incompetent from the get-go. I started at the front counter, but during busy shifts I would get nervous at the register and not be able to remember how to punch in the order of the condiments. Something about mayonnaise and pickles…

I eventually got bumped to the drive-through. When that went bad, I got bumped again. Pretty soon I was just making burgers for the orders, but again, the condiment order thing. On the day that I left and never went back, I was washing lettuce.

I was Hot-and-Juicy for five days.

When I didn’t show up the next day, the nice but beleaguered manager called me to ask for his uniform back, like I had some deep burning desire to wear an ugly red hat and a polyester apron. I have never worn polyester since, and never again worked in any job that required me to dress thematically.

And while I love to watch cooking movies, eat in nice restaurants and concoct fun delicious recipes in my kitchen, I don’t like being on the other end of the restaurant table. To me the food industry is just, yuk. The preparation of food, cleaning up food, smelling food, smelling like food, touching food, serving food.

I’m truly grateful for people who have the stomach for it, because it enables me to go to classy restaurants to eat free-range chicken while sipping a cold glass of California chardonnay. Aside from that, not my thang.

So after my father sternly lectured me about the addictive qualities of quitting and then forced me to apologize to the Wendy’s manager for wasting his time, I embraced my inner intellectual, the real me, and got a job as an amateur reporter for the local paper. I loved it, but it didn’t pay much (the written word rarely does), so I picked up some shifts at the local farm market right off the Atlantic City Expressway.

I loved this summer job. This was the aspect of food I loved. Fresh plump cool produce, fine cheeses, artisan crackers, smoked meats, charcuterie, fresh-baked bread, Brie, homemade pies, warm homemade donuts, freshly-squeezed juices. I sold beautiful hanging flower baskets and potted herb plants, and for the first time as a Jersey girl realized how much out-of-state visitors covet Jersey produce. People would leave the market with their purchases, so happy and content to bring their beautiful offerings to the shore that their eyes would be filled with tears.

“Thank you,” they would say, “for being here and having such beautiful products.”

I took great pride in being one of three members of that work crew.

Throughout my early teenage years and into my early twenties, I had a few more disastrous dabbles in the restaurant industry that never really panned out, a brief sweaty jaunt into the world of blueberry farm packing, and several jobs in high-end retail. And this is going to sound pretentious, but there’s no other way to put it:

We all come to grips with our strengths and fallibilities, and by my early twenties, it was glaringly apparent that my strengths did not lend themselves to the service or manual labor industries. And once I began teaching and writing, that sealed it. I was an intellectual, and that was the way it was going to stay.

I look back on those years of crappy waitressing jobs, smelly restaurants, dusty blueberry crates with hidden spiders, and mind-numbingly boring shifts spent folding sweaters, and one thing remains true about me:

If I don’t believe in the product, I can’t sell it. Passion is what fuels my work, and passion is what has kept me in the field of education for 35 years. I step into the classroom now with the same exuberance I had when I was twenty.

It’s all about the product.

Paper Walls

This is one of my favorite anecdotes from a leadership conference I attended:

There was this Mutual Omaha show called “Wild Kingdom.” In one episode they were trying to catch and relocate zebras. They set up a corral and tried different ways to herd the zebras into the corral, from land and air, but nothing worked. The zebras were always too smart and too stubborn and would veer away at the last minute. They couldn’t catch them, even though it was for the zebras’ own good.

Then Marlin and Jim got an idea to make the opening of the corral much larger, like a funnel. They ran a line of rope, about chest high, from one edge of the opening out about 300 feet or so. They did the same with the other side, so now the rope formed a large funnel opening. Then they draped paper over the ropes, making a paper wall.

Then they got back into their helicopter and started herding the zebras toward the corral. At the moment of truth, the herd of zebra was heading toward the corral and turning into the wall of paper. Now, the zebras could have run through the rope with ease, but they hesitated, turned slightly, and went into the corral. The guys jumped out and closed the corral. Got ‘em!

Why didn’t the zebras run through the rope? After all, the wall was only paper.

Because they didn’t know it was paper. They probably didn’t know what it was. They didn’t trample it because they didn’t know they could run through it.

Take this week to ask yourself: what are your paper walls? Confronting a colleague or a spouse? Speaking up in class? Asking for a raise? Whatever they are, just remember:

You can run through them with ease. They’re not real.

(Attribution: Bill Hoogterp)

That Was a Twelve…That Was a Twelve…

There are two ways to describe the playoff holes of last Sunday’s FedEx Cup golf tournament.

One way is to say that it was like watching a slow-motion bludgeoning. Like Jim Nantz says in the movie, “Tin Cup,”:

“I don’t know what I’m feeling, this is the most painful thing I’ve ever seen.”

By the fourth playoff hole of the FedEx, I had to turn it off. I just didn’t have the internal mettle for it, and being a Bryson fan, I grew tired of Cantlay’s unflappable demeanor and Cyborg-like personality. No matter what Bryson did, Cantlay rallied. I still lack the emotional distance from that spectacle to even write clearly about it, and I feel shame that I deserted Bryson in his time of need.

Another way to describe it is to say it was like watching two gladiators beat the hell out of each other in the ring, knowing only one would crawl out. I’m not begrudging Cantlay his win, he deserved it. He just wasn’t my choice. And say what you want about Bryson, but his brilliant play and “imposing, thundering force” helped define him, at least in my mind, within an elite golfer’s category he had as of yet to belong.

He’s there now.

Throughout this past week, I have thought over and over about those playoff holes, and how impressive (albeit painful) it was to watch. As my readers, you know I love to write about success, adversity, hard work, positive thinking, and overall life force. And by now if you don’t know that life is complicated, and that it will beat the ever-living shit out of you until you are crawling on the ground begging for just “one freaking break, just one, for once, CAN I CATCH A GODDAMN BREAK FOR ONCE?” then you ain’t living right. If this has never happened to you, you are either too young to have experienced it yet, or you have not put yourself out there, over and over and over, time and time again, like Bryson did, pulling out that driver and blasting for the green.

Bryson knew he had to go balls out if he wanted even a prayer of defeating Cantlay the Cyborg.

Please enjoy this video and share it with your children, or your athletes, or your students, or your spouse. It’s been a long tough year, remind people you love that champions keep on fighting until they get it right. And enjoy your long weekend, because summer is over. Time for recalibration.

Until then? Go for your twelve. Take out that driver, blast it down the fairway. Don’t lay up like Cantlay. Because even though he walked away with that cup, the legend that is now Bryson DeChambeau will resonate in viewers’s minds forever. I have already forgotten Cantlay’s performance. To me, it was dull. Safe. Let him have his win.

Bryson went for it, for all of us. We should be grateful. And remember: choose your weaponry carefully. It will define you.

(Video is in parts, watch through to the end)

I Summon Thee, Karen

A mouse ran across my living room floor yesterday.

Now while I am not afraid of mice, their metaphorical symbolism horrifies me. That of uncleanliness and exposed food, neither of which are representative of my household. So the sight of this mouse, who by the way seemed unperturbed by my presence, had to be representative of something else.

But what?

I immediately called the extermination company that regularly treats my house and grounds (and which also regularly charges me exorbitant amounts of money for said treatments). It is important to note that my former small personal extermination company, a company I liked and which always sent the same nice young man over who pet my dog and knew my sons’ names by heart, was bought out by a bigger company.

Now instead of getting cute little yellow cards that say, “Hi Mary, we’ll be out on the fifth for your Powderpost Beetle Treatment!” I simply get a bill that says, “Yeah, Mrs. Oves, we were there, but you weren’t. Of course we did the treatment. You’re just going to have to trust us that we were there, since there’s no proof. That’ll be $500.00.”

Hmmph.

So now I have this impersonal company sending me huge bills for treatments I have neither been informed of nor have seen completed with my own eyes.

And I still have rodents crawling across my floor.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a woman my age becomes a “Karen.” Hand to God, I could feel Karen’s essence flowing through me during that phone call. I let the operator have it. I feel some remorse but not much. Here’s a sample:

I have lived in this house for 25 years, and I haven’t had a mouse since we have moved in. I get regular treatments and I pay my bills on time, and it seems ironic that ever since you bought out that smaller company, service has been less than efficient. From now on, if my house is getting treated, I want to see the worker with my own eyes, or I’m not paying the bill. And tell your CEO from me that if he can’t run his company efficiently, he shouldn’t be taking on more business. I am so disappointed. And if any crickets get into my house this fall, there will be hell to pay.

I am deathly deathly deathly afraid of crickets. If I hear a cricket chirp in my walls, my blood freezes in my veins. I’m not joking. I once wrote a blog about it, so it’s somewhere in my archives. It is one of my only irrational fears, so I depend on my exterminators to spray whatever they want outside my house to deter these prehistoric black hellions from entering my domicile.

Women turn into “Karens” because of injustice. Ineptitude. Laziness. Unfairness. It has been a week of Karen-ing for me. Here are some of my phone call rants:

A strange late charge on a credit card payment that wasn’t late:

“What is your name again? Betsy? Listen Betsy, you know and I know that this credit card payment was not late. You’re just mad because I paid it in full and you’re not getting the interest from me. You have two choices: you can take that late fee off, or I’m cutting up your store credit card. What’s it gonna be?”

The electric company’s refusal to discuss my electric bill because even after four years of failed attempts, I have still not been able to get them to change the account into my name rather than my late husband’s:

“I understand that you can’t talk to me about the bill because I am not the account holder. You’ve been telling me that for four years. But unless you have a Ouija board and some pretty strong-smelling salts, you’re not going to be able to talk to the account holder. How about this? I just won’t pay it (pause while customer care assistant speaks). OHHHH, I see, so I’m allowed to PAY the bill, but I’m not allowed to TALK to you about the bill. How fiscally convenient for you. Listen, you have the proper documents, I’ve done what you’ve asked, are you going to switch it over by tomorrow, or should I get my lawyer involved?”

Hidden fees on the family phone bill:

“I’m not paying that, so I guess I’ll just switch to flip phones. Put me through to the person who handles that. Oh, you’re going to take that fee off? How nice of you.”

It went on and on all week. Comcast tried to overbill me, medical insurance tried to not cover my son’s Urgent care visit, even DIRECTV tried to sneak an NFL Sunday ticket package onto my bill. Over and over and over, I had to conjure Karen:

I already paid this, but nice try.

I’m fully covered, but nice try.

No one watches that much football here anymore. TAKE IT THE HELL OFF MY BILL. Oh, and nice try.

I mean, what choice do I have? What choice does any woman have, when faced with people or companies that treat us like dummies? What would anyone prefer I do? Take it up the yin-yang? Pay inflated and unnecessary bills? Agree to services I don’t want?

Uh-uh.

Say what you want about being a Karen, but she helped me win every single one of those battles. I am 7-0 for the week.

But I’m never getting that haircut.

W1NNING

By the time you read this, my two-hour Monday presentation to a dozen high school administrators will be over. But at the time of this writing, thoughts of it consume me.

In the world of presentations, this one is not monumental. It’s not like I’m appearing before Congress. It’s just a small passionate workshop for an educational consultation company about effective teaching practices.

A normal person would prep for a few hours, maybe make up some index cards, do a couple of run-throughs. Do their best, and not stress out about it.

It’ll go fine, a normal person would say. Not the end of the world. Take the day off. You work too hard. You’ve already won, just by trying. Relax, enjoy. Stop taking everything so seriously.

Here’s to abnormalcy.

According to the book W1NNING by Tim Grover, when an individual strives for excellence in career, his head is always filled with a minefield of ideas and warnings and questions…and winning detonates them all at once.

Whether you are an elite athlete, the CEO of a company, a student who dreams of career success, or even just your average Joe (or Josephine) read W1NNING by Tim Grover. If you are obsessed with succeeding and improving, read it. I only read a few pages of W1NNING at a time, and they course through me like a shot of adrenalin. Grover’s words are so familiar and so powerful in my life, that I ingest them slowly and over time. If you are happy and content in your life, and desire no more than what you already have, Grover’s words will sound manic, and maybe bonkers. But if you want something so bad that the image burns you while you’re asleep, this book is up your alley.

Thoughts of winning keep fighting even when you’re asleep, preparing for the threat of imagined battles that haven’t happened yet. They might happen. They might not.

As the days lead up to the presentation, things that could go wrong fill my head. Much like an athlete who wants to perfect that shot, that move, that stroke, I want this presentation perfect. Seamless. I want it to resonate in my audience’s memory, to permeate their school year. I want them to tell my supervisors that it was the best presentation on teaching practices they have ever attended. That they’d like me to come back, and speak again.

(Note post-presentation: It was not perfect. It was not seamless. It did not resonate. It was not a disaster. It was mediocre. But I learned, man oh man, did I learn what not to do)

Thoughts of the presentation fill my head, even when I sleep. When I wake, I’m still exhausted, and when my eyes pop open, my mind crawls right back to thoughts of that presentation.

You go to bed tired and wake up tired because there’s a raging onslaught of chaos in your head, and there’s no nap that can erase that. The minute you wake up, you’re fighting again. Your mind is so overrun with conflict that you can’t even remember going to sleep (42).

People who see me ask me if I’m far away, because I seem distracted. I am. I’d love to relax, trust me. I try. But as I try to find peace and serenity, instead I am enmeshed in a wild mental war zone with smoke and explosions and screaming. Every time I diffuse a doubt or a fear about the presentation, another approaches.

When I begin to feel confident about tone and approach during my introduction, I begin to stress over research and feedback during group work. When I conquer that, I worry about overall timing and pace.

You’re fighting fires everywhere, and as soon as you extinguish one, another bursts into flames.

Winning loves that battle.

How much can you take? How far can I push you? Are you having fun yet?

Great video to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVTlpgigdBU

Your mental battlefield is the command center of every decision you make. If you decide something is a problem, then it’s going to be a problem. Before a game or a meeting, you can think of all the ways you could screw up, or you can mentally walk through the details you’ll need to make it all work.

Winning doesn’t visit you in your dreams…it sees you in your nightmares.

Thoughts of doubt are fine, as long as they are a blueprint for improvement. Did I get this right? Can I do better? I know what to do, I need to make that happen. And they move in on those bombs, inspecting them from every angle, until they can extract and defuse them.

Forty-eight hours from now this presentation will be a thing of my past, but that won’t mean it’s over. It will simply be yet another diffused mine on the battlefield of my life that I will learn from, even if it goes as well as I’d like it to. And once it’s over, something else will take its place. A lesson to teach, a meeting to attend, a talk, a workout.

Have I done everything I can?