Slow Down, Grow More

You have an idea. It’s a great idea. You gather materials and carry it out. It doesn’t work. You give up. What made you think that would work, anyway?

Slow motion water burst from 3dverstas

Wait. Act fast, fail fast, criticize fast. All that speed doesn’t allow you to learn a damn thing. Cutting your losses doesn’t teach you anything except how to cut.

There is a huge benefit to doing things slowly. We live in a super-fast culture, but it’s the same culture that doesn’t like mistakes, that encourages blamestorming as a fair shot in competition. What’s the benefit of slowing down?

Slow motion water burst by 3dadverstas

You can anticipate. Slowing down let’s you think before you act. You can think through the next several steps to see if they are what you want, if those steps move you to the result. If they don’t, you can choose another plan.

Slowing down saves time. Anticipating helps you plan more than one step ahead, create a Plan B, and discover options. All that saves time. Saving time reduces anxiety and possibly money. All because you slowed down.

Practice helps you get it right. Slowing down allows you to practice your steps before you have to do them. Practicing anything, from a piano concerto to a speech, makes you better at it. “Winging it” will just result in making your mistakes public. Slow down. Practice. Then when you do it, it will work, and you will know how come it worked. That allows you to do it again–the right way.

Slowing down slows time down. When time slows down, you see more and you understand more. The more you understand, the more you learn, the more you can use what you know.

Excellence takes time. No one was born an expert. You are not the exception. When you do things step by step you can see mistakes, often before you make them. You have more time to do each step, if you aren’t racing. John Wheeler, the physicist, said, “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.” Take advantage of time.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, trainer and life coach. She understands the value of slow.

More on “Authentic” Behavior

The other day I felt that being authentic wasn’t enough for being a friend. And that’s true. But there is more truth to discover.

Your authenticity doestn’t guarantee love and admiration from your friends, just because you are being authentic. The word “authentic” has taken on a sort of mythic proportion of human endeavor. We strive to be “authentic” and somehow, in our own competitive minds, “authentic” begins to sound like “perfect.” It’s not.

Your authenticity means that you are true to yourself, that when you screw up, you know it to be a screw up, but one made because of your mistake, not out of meanness, or subterfuge. (Unless, of course, that is your authenticity–meanness and subterfuge.) You apologize, you are sorry, but you do not go about “fixing” yourself to be better. Authentic is living in the room with yourself and accepting it all–good, indifferent, not so good.

Your authenticity is simply that–bare bones you. No making stuff up to polish your image, no trying desperately to be someone you can’t be. Authenticity has its downside–you won’t make everyone happy, you won’t solve everyone’s problems. Because authentic you is just that–the real you with flaws, failures, and hopes.

You won’t make everyone happy, but you can learn to be happy with who you are. It is enough.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer.

No Decisions Based on Fear

About the time I left the corporate world, I had to make some big decisions. How to run my business. What my core principles would be. I decided to use the same principles I use for my personal life. When you own the business, it looks a lot like you anyway.

Some of the values were easy to choose: Be honest. Be fair. Ask before you spend the client’s money. Don’t jump to conclusions. Listen.

Then came the giant one: no fear. Do not make business decisions out of fear. Don’t make any decision out of fear.

It’s hard to keep that one. I had made business decisions based in fear for a long time–fear of my boss, fear of not meeting the team goals, fear of the competition, fear of getting fired. And it was that fear that made me a lousy corporate employee. So, on my own, I decided–no fear.

There are plenty of things to be afraid of when you own your business–not making a profit, getting underbid, outperformed and over cautious. But fear was the big “Aha!” in my business life.

A decision based on fear is frequently loaded with other weak motives. Revenge, neediness, lack of control. If you take fear off the table, you get a different picture.

“What if my competition underbids me?” Became “How much do I need to earn to make a fair profit and do the job well?” If it costs me $10,000 to do the job, and I underbid on purpose and then get the job for $8,000, I am not getting an $8,000 job, I’m losing $2,000. That’s fear.

“I hate Client X, she’s always blaming me for her own mistakes.” I can choose
to work with Client X and be clear on responsibilities or I can pass on the job. But if I continue to let her blame me for her own mistakes, I’m letting fear make my decisions. At the end of the job, she’ll either blame me anyway or I won’t respect myself for taking on blame that isn’t mine.

Fear undermines us. It justifies bad behavior. It is the road to the collapse of self-respect. I can’t live my life without fear, but there are a million great reasons to make decisions and always one lousy one–I did it because I was scared.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. (c) 2009 All rights reserved. Image:fantom.xp.com

“Them” v. “Us”

Being on vacation gives you time to muse. Musing is good. It is the mental equivalent of listening to 12-minutes of guitar noodling by the Grateful Dead.

So, while waiting at the bank, I got to thinking on the topic of “them” v. “us.” Artists v. crafters, artists who sell v. artists who don’t, or a topic I heard at a recent art class, the fact that the class had no men, and the inevitable feeling of “just us girls who understand.”

This need for duality in our culture fascinates me. We seem to enjoy the dividing line. It’s ‘them’ or ‘us,’ you are either ‘deaf’ or ‘hearing,’ ‘cancer survivor,’ or ‘cancer free.’ Or even, when we get right down to it, particularly in Washington, D.C, ‘patriot,’ or ‘terrorist.’ There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground in this way of thinking.

What makes that odd, is that over the last 10 years or so, our culture seems to be gravitating there. We like labels. And once we put on the label, we have to make the other label not as good, worthwhile, or, better yet, bad.

We not only categorize people, but we use the categories to give people a value rank. Cat owners have the perspective of “Dog people are not as ‘worthwhile’ as cat people.” (Or any one of a million labels we give ourselves). And once we have a label everyone else gets lumped into the “other” group. We are really shortchanging ourselves.

It would be great if we could all leave our boxing ring corners and come out and play in the middle, shrugging off differences. Talking about differences–including sex, religion, race, and politics is a good thing. Even better is listening. It won’t hurt to hear what someone else thinks. It might be a clue how to communicate with them instead of a way to gather information to shun them.

As a culture, we may be too competitive to do that. When we are competitive, we need to be hierarchical. “That person is better. He could [choose however many work] beat me up, make more money than I do, have a bigger house, get a better job.]” And from that, being higher up the food chain makes us feel better about ourselves.

There are few people, who believe, as I do, that having a support position is what we are here for. I often say that my life isn’t about me. I find myself an observer, not wanting to be either “this” or “that.” I want to try out many things, sample ideas and positions, and not have to choose one and defend it to the death.

This kind of dualistic thinking only gives us two options–right and wrong. And that’s just not enough. There are many opinions, beliefs, ideas that are not right or wrong. They just are. And that’s where I am, too. Anyone want to join me? It’s awfully quiet and the space is empty.

–Quinn McDonald thinks a lot about how people interact and why it works and doesn’t work. She is a writer and artist. See her work at QuinnCreative.com Images: turbosquid.com (c) 2007-9. All rights reserved.

Skidding into a New Culture

In September of 2006, I was sitting in a mah-jongg group when the conversation turned to the real-estate market. I said I didn’t understand how lending companies thought it was a good idea to give interest-only loans. They were based on the idea that housing prices would continue to rise, and that, in my opinion, couldn’t happen indefinitely.

Mah-jongg tiles

Another woman in the group clacked down a tile and said, “That’s why you aren’t a banker or loan office; you don’t understand those things.” I might add that this woman was bright and was in a powerful career.

Now, of course, it turns out that a lot more people had no idea how the market would sustain itself. The economy is in horrible shape. And now, before it becomes old hat, it’s time for me to point at something else that’s not working, that will have to change before the country gets it’s act together.

Competition doesn’t work. It doesn’t make people stronger. It doesn’t create better teams. Now, before you start lighting the torches and picking up the pitchforks, let me explain.

There was a time when competition was a simple pitting of a skill or product. At that time, the point of competition was to make the best of yourself and show it. The winner honored victory by pointing to the fact that a lot of talent showed up, and a good game was the best result. Winners were gracious in victory.

Slowly, this changed. Competition has come to mean more than winning, it has come to mean someone else has to lose. And not just lose, but be a “loser”— a term that has come into our vocabulary to mean a failure, rather than someone who didn’t win a game. Winning meant that any means to win was fair—doping, cheating, lying, it was all grist for the competition mill. If you weren’t “Number One,” you weren’t anybody.

To prove our own worth, we bought enormous houses with space we didn’t need, a bigger car than our neighbors, until a tank of an SUV, the Hummer, was a sign that you not only had $50,000 to spend on a car, but you didn’t care about how much gas you used. No one actually needs to drive a Hummer. It became some sort of twisted  proof you weren’t a loser.

Companies vied against each other in ways that made winning more important than anything else. CEOs received bonuses that most of us in the common ruck won’t earn in a year. They deserved it because they were winners.

And now the winning is over. We all lost. Our culture lost, our society lost. Sure, there are still some super rich people who don’t care about anyone below their level of achievement, but the dream is over. 100,000 Americans lost their jobs last week. It’s time to wake up.

I’d like to suggest that it’s time to put away the competition–the fighting for the bigger piece of the pie. It’s time to admit we made a big mess, and go back to knowing our neighbors, sharing what we have and working together. Riding public transportation is a good way to get to know the people who live in your neighborhood. Giving them a ride is a good way to know them, too.

Buying in quantity and sharing is a valuable way to save money. It requires knowing and trusting people, instead of pitting yourself against them.

Pull your money from the huge, global banks that still are spending millions on decorating their offices, and use small local banks, who invest in your neighborhood.

Get to know who is good at home repair and ask them to help you while you help in their garden. Or create a baby-sitting or carpool group.

Our coming together as a healthy culture will begin when we admit that we need each other. We can’t make it to the top alone. Now, while so many of us are on a leveled playing field, might be a smart time to give up believing we are “Number One” and create a new community of awareness, sharing and helping each other.

And if I’m wrong,  the worse that can happen is that you’ll have a lot of friends when the economy comes back. At best, this belief will build a new economy of ideas and learning, of sharing and building things of value. And our heroes and celebrities will be people who contribute to that culture, rather than people who are famous for their ability to stay in the public eye because of marriage, divorce, and clothing.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach who runs workshops in communications. She owns QuinnCreative.

Competitive What?

Competition can keep quality high and people engaged in their work, but too much competition can kill creativity. When the goal of competition is winning, and when one party not only has to win, but enjoy the other side’s loss, competition becomes bullying.

I’ve seen some ugly competition in my life. Managers pitting employees against each other for a raise, a better office, or an emotional boost. What started as a friendly game ends up as a cut-throat attack, ending with anger, bitterness, or a new job.

Yesterday, I saw the ultimate irony–competitive yoga. No kidding. The competition involved the difficulty of poses and how long you could hold them. Yoga, or at least the yoga I take, is diametrically opposed to competition. It is a way to bring energy into yourself, to release stress, to challenge only yourself to achieve small victories that also feel physically good.

What’s next–taking steroids to win the yoga competition? I think the whole competitive sports push has gone too far. And I’m saying it right before the Super Bowl, too. Here’s an idea–divide sports into two competitions–those for people who take drugs and steroids and a competition for those who don’t. That will let the pumped up, champing at the bit players have their day, and the lower-key athletes who want to pit their challenges largely around their own skills and drills have a place to compete against others like them.

And for heaven’s sake, if you are interested in competitive yoga, stay away from my mat. I’m meditating, and that, at least for now, is not yet competitive.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2008 All rights reserved. Image: http://www.yogatherapycenter.org