The Different Meanings of Winning

The Cannes Film Festival is a great place to meet and greet just about every mover and shaker in the film industry that you can imagine. For four days I tumbled about with the rest of the throngs, looking to connect with new people, get good story ideas and basically lift myself off the carpet to see the Big Picture for a long weekend.

It was inspiring.

Films in the competition were voted on; other films were shown in hopes buyers would come to distribute them. Like any trade show, it was a 24/7 event. You saw more people at 2 a.m., walking about the place, than you normally do at mid-day on the streets of most hometowns.

Winning a competition has different meanings for different people. For some, simply being there was a win of a lifetime (I count myself in that category). For others, they wanted to win the Golden Palm award so their stakes were set higher. For others they simply wanted to win a few new business cards and enjoy seeing old friends.

When I think of competition, such as the Olympic Games in London this summer, there are different degrees of winning there as well. Bryan Clay, who is  most likely competing in the Olympic decatholon this July, just penned a book called REDEMPTION. It just arrived in the mail today, but from what I see, winning to him means enjoying his family life.

I love that.

I too would like to win at the Olympics this year. But a different kind of win: as a blogger. If you are so inclined, please visit this 30 second video and click on the blue bar “unterstützen” (German for “support”) to help me make my way to an Olympic dream as a citizen journalist bringing positive stories to the world.

The Thrill of the Chase

Erica Chase, the talented young singer-songwriter (“We Can Fly”) was an English major at Pitzer College in Claremont, California when she met multiplatinum producer, Dana Strum (Slaughter bassist) . Through connections her father’s business partner made in Las Vegas, Erica met Dana on February 1, 2006. That date will forever burn in her memory, not only because of the amazingness of the moment, but because of what happened the very next day. Riding on her bicycle on the way to meet a friend for lunch, she was slammed up against a truck windshield, flying through the air and onto the ground. She awoke in a helicopter with a mask over her face.

“I will never forget that day for as long as I live,” she told me in a recent phone interview. While she had dabbled in songwriting as a high school jock growing up sandwiched between two brothers, she hadn’t realized how much her dream to become a rock star outweighed her upper-middle class upbringing of doing the smart thing such as becoming an educator. “I was on my way to Seattle to become a teacher,” she revealed. But after her accident, from which she miraculously walked away with minor injuries, she realized how short life could be. It was time to take the bull by the horns and live out the secret dream she truly harbored.

What fascinated me most about our conversation was the feeling she had when she met Dana Strum. “I knew something big was about to happen,” Erica said. She didn’t know what that was, but she knew she was on the edge of something indescribable. It was a heavy energy that can be equated to the onset of depression, a significant weightiness that one simply cannot ignore. The very next day, as she was flown to the hospital, she knew she couldn’t live without music. “It was my wake-up call.”

The life of a rock star is an irregular one, not necessarily what one thinks of when one thinks of slow living. But late nights and loads of travel don’t phase this twenty-something artist. One of her big dreams now is to do a multiple city tour via bus.

When I asked whether she was worried she might burn out, she revealed an inner truth that I share. Like myself, who simply cannot live without writing, she cannot live without music. It is so deeply entrenched in her soul that to live any other way would mean certain death. In true power of slow style, she is living her life on purpose. It took a severe knock-down to put her on the right track, but luckily she chose to listen to the message right away. As a result, we get to profit from her stellar Sheryl Crowe-meets-Beatles sound. Now that’s a track we like to hear!

 

What is Time Abundance and How Can I Have it?

What is time abundance? It is a mindset, like anything else. When we live with confidence and trust that we have more than enough time to fulfill our ultimate purpose, we are living in a time-abundant state. Consider the alternative: time starvation. Most of us live there most of the time.

Imagine a world in which having time meant success.

My Friday gift to you is my hour-long chat about slow living with UK-based Career Coach Ros Toynbee. She asks questions such as what is time abundance and how can I have it?

If you don’t have an hour, take a listen for even ten minutes. May it uplift you as you enter your weekend!

Minding the Gap in Mobile Workforce Productivity

By the year 2016 it is estimated that 43 percent of all US workers will work from home. That’s good news for the morning commute. But what about workplace productivity? Will we become even more isolated without all that watercooler chat?

Human beings are social animals. We need each other. So if it’s via Skype instead of via Starbucks at lunch, I’m wondering if we’ll build other types of home-based communities to fulfill that need. What about the National Association for the At-Home Worker? NAAHW! Or is that a ‘yes’?

Cisco’s stats speak for themselves. Enjoy!

The Mobile Workforce

 

Because Work is a Part of Life

In 2009 Smith College, a quaint liberal arts women’s college nestled on the edge of the Berkshire Mountains in Western Massachusetts, recognized the need for students to understand the intersection between work and life by founding the Center for Work and Life. As an alumna of the college, I was thrilled to learn that such a renowned institution would provide guidance on such  practical subjects as how to write emails to your professor, how to cook healthy (and affordable meals) and how to change a tire (and look good doing it).

It seems the College has experienced a rebirth of sorts. It has recognized that, while building our brains, we also need to comprehend the more pragmatic sides to life. In the eyes of the Center’s director, Jessica Bacal, there is a thing called work-life balance.

Jessica invited me to chat with students about the Power of Slow in late March. I was astounded at their hunger to learn that it’s really alright not to do everything at once. I was equally amazed that they thought they had to.

When I saw their relieved faces, I realized the Slow message is necessary for everyone. Whether in China, Korea, Australia or India, people of all ages are responding to its message to slow down. We are indeed on a slippery slope. All of us. And the good news is we’re in this together, which means it will take all of us to move beyond our hectic pace to a collective understanding of what the heck we’re all doing here anyway.

We weren’t born to race. We were born to help each other. So let’s start together by sending the message that it is alright to go at your custom speed.

And that message, dear reader, starts with you. Invite someone to walk a little slower today. Then tell me about it. We can all learn from each other as we tread this road called life.

Would You Want to Live Forever?

It’s just not the subject of science-fiction movies, but also a topic that Mark Wexler explores in his new documentary “How to Live Forever (Results May Vary)”. For three years of his life, he travels around asking people mostly 80 and above “If you could live another five hundred years, would you want to?” While the title may seem a tad quirky, his reporting is not. He tracks down the world’s oldest people such as the chain-smoking, marathon-running centuguarian named Buster along with commentary from such notable characters as  Jack LaLanne, Ray Bradbury, Ray Kurzweil, Pico Iyer and Phyllis Diller. Wexler presents a riveting collection of stories and insights that challenge our notions of youth and aging with comic poignancy.

Admittedly, I found the cryonic tanks, a type of subzero casket in which people can purchase space in the hopes of being revitalized as science and technology advance, to be rather eery.

Most of the people-on-the-street interviews revealed a majority desire to live life to the fullest without filling our personal bank account of time over the top by five hundred more years.

“Life is more precious that way,” was the sentiment among many of those who were interviewed.

Indeed, our time is precious. But how can we live out that time in the best way we can? It seems several similar characteristics of those who lived 100+ years emerged:

• take things as they come
• don’t sweat the small stuff
• if you have to sweat the big stuff, know that this too shall pass
• good living means you do what’s in your heart, not trying to overplease others to make yourself shine

I was inspired by Wexler’s work. You can get a copy here. Would you want to live another 500 years?

Instant America

Instant gratification, high-speed Internet access, speed dating. Now, now, yesterday!

We live in a culture of speed. This infographic proves it. Yet we get more accomplished (the real reason for why we want to go so fast) if we slow down.

How will you slow down today?

On Following Your Dreams

Kevin Clash, a young African-American puppeteer growing up in the 1970s, didn’t let the obstacles of poverty stand in the way of his dream to work with Jim Henson. His passion for bringing characters to life can be seen in everything he does. You may not know Kevin’s name, but you do know the embodiment of him: Elmo.

In a new documentary about Kevin’s life, Being Elmo is a moving tribute to the human spirit. As we the viewers watch Kevin’s journey unfold, we are able to relate to the obstacles that life affords us all. In Kevin’s case, he didn’t listen to the naysayers. He had one vision: to work on Sesame Street. Lucky for us, his dream came true. But also at a personal cost.

Meeting the demands of being Elmo is not always easy, and Kevin spent most of his time away from his family to make millions of other kids happy. At one point in the documentary, we are shown a scene from his daughter’s Sweet 16 birthday party. He gets several celebrities to wish his daughter, Shannon, a happy birthday on film. We watch as he sheds a tear or two and we are confronted with his sense of loss at the years he wasn’t there for her. For a brief moment in time, we are invited into the fantasy world of puppetry and the sacrifice of being in such demand. It is an incredibly moving film that the entire family can enjoy. I highly recommend it!

Making Sense of MAD MEN

Right before Christmas I stumbled upon MAD MEN at the grocery store. No, Don Draper wasn’t casually smoking Lucky Strikes in the produce section, and Pete Campbell wasn’t chasing women down the frozen food aisle. It was a gift box of Season One DVDs. I grabbed it on an impulse, making a mental mark on my husband’s wish list. Giving in to my old speedaholic tendencies, I didn’t notice that the DVDs weren’t actually in the box, something I was supposed to pick up at the information desk after the purchase. Fast forward to early January when I discovered the faux pas just as my husband and I settled in to watch the very first episode. Luckily, there were only two boxes left at the store so by power of deduction, we were able to match the ‘missing’ DVDs with my set. Another night passed before we reconvened for another viewing attempt.

And we’ve been savoring every episode ever since. After just three shows I ordered the next season online. We were hooked. And we didn’t know why.

I mean honestly. I went to Smith College, alma mater to Gloria Steinem, the godmother of the feminist movement. Why on Earth would I like a show that exhibits sexism, racism and homophobia like none other?

To explain the attraction, fellow Psychology Today blogger Dr. Stephanie Newman just came out with her new release MAD MEN on the Couch: Analyzing the Minds of Men and Women of the Hit TV Show. From her perspective as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, Dr. Newman dissects every one of the main characters in a Freudian context. It’s amusing, if not revealing, that we appreciate watching people act badly.

It satisfies our inner bad boy or bad girl. We actually enjoy watching Betty Draper dismiss her daughter for possibly dropping the dry cleaning on the floor (and not minding that she’s actually wearing the plastic covering from it over her head). For 42 minutes, we’re allowed to be less than perfect parents, colleagues and lovers. We may be nauseated by all the alcohol and tobacco consumption, but we watch anyway because inside we’re collectively saying “I’m so glad that’s not me.”

It’s a bit like reality TV. We find pleasure in viewing others’ antics for the sake of our own entertainment. MAD MEN on the Couch may be repetitive in its driving home how much Don Draper misses his prostitute mother who died in childbirth, but it also explains a lot about the character himself. Why else would he self-sabotage if he didn’t think he deserved it?

We engage in self-harm on a subconscious level because we somehow think that we shouldn’t be rewarded, that our bad sides acted out and it’s our punishment. We see this in virtually every episode of MAD MEN too.

I embraced the book primarily because I wanted to understand why Peggy, the secretary turned junior copywriter, gets ahead professionally while Joan, the bombshell office manager, does not. They both sleep around. They both are seriously surpressed as women in the early 1960s and they both obviously possess higher than average intelligence. However, while Joan buys in to the role of nurturing maternal figure, Peggy does not. She shuns that societal expectation well before there were even role models to follow. She establishes herself in a man’s world by becoming a lot like them: harsh, critical and independent ~ without all the substance abuse to hide behind.

If you’re a fan of the show (and have seen most of the shows up to Season Four), I highly recommend giving MAD MEN on the Couch a read. You may not agree with everything the author writes, but then again, that might give you even more reason to read it!

 

Has Our Can-Do Spirit Gotten Us Canned?

In an effort to suspend judgement here, I must admit we’re a nation of ‘doing too much’. Perhaps it’s simply in our cultural DNA to don the can-do spirit like we would a Hoodie. But Daniel Pink raises a great question about that in a recent blog post. Just because we can-do doesn’t mean we should.

There. I said it. Should. It’s a word I try to avoid, but it’s times like these that require drastic measures. It seems as if our can-do spirit has us duped.

Really what Daniel’s saying is there are a lot of things we want to do; but that doesn’t necessarily lead us down the road to infinite happiness. We’re still human beings with all the frailities attached to it. We like to take short cuts and feel good about it in the process.

Like diet experts, he says, personal productivity gurus have mushroomed out of the ground in the last few years because no one seems to be crying “Halt — in the name of my sanity!” He explores the most powerful one-word sentence in the English language.

No.

Say it with me now ~ “No. Nope. Uh-uh.”

But is saying ‘no’ to ourselves, our wants, our could-do-ness, really all that fun? Really it’s not. Like cheese fries over cottage cheese, we are faced with choices that may not be as fun, but are ultimately better for us.

Take unplugging for a weekend as an example. Can you really feel whole by not turning on your smartphone first thing in the morning to see what you might have missed at night? It requires a whole skill set of discipline and mindfulness that you might not possess.

As my friend recently inquired, where do we get the willpower?

That’s where support systems (and, yes, personal productivity gurus) come in. We might need to set a process in place in which external reminders grab our attention when we swerve off the path of slow.

I’m not saying you should. But you could.

Will you?