Do you feel a sense of despair lurking around the corners of our communities? Does Michael Phelps need to swim another lap to turn our conversations back into something positive? Do we need the dollar to rebound and gas prices to drop to lift our sagging spirits?

I don't think so. We just need you, me and a few friends to start planting a few good seeds. But we need to hurry...the weeds are gaining ground.

Last week, we tried a day free from assumptions. Here's a list of more things from which we can liberate our spirits...

• Give up politics. Think how much precious time we spend anticipating the worst from people we will never personally know. We have no idea what our national, or even local, candidates are really like or what motivates them. I do think it's important to be aware and engaged in the process and to arm ourselves with facts before entering the voting booth. That mindful participation is what (most of) our founding fathers were counting on. However, be sure you're part of the process and not part of the frenzy created by media, bloggers (ahem) and advertisers who want to claim your valuable attention ...<< MORE >>

How many times a day do my assumptions trip me up? I'd say enough that it's a wonder I am upright. I make assumptions about ...<< MORE >>

To the people I love and those I don't know who will strongly disagree with this blog, please comment and share your perspectives, too! At this same site, you have learned that I a) don't believe any individual has the corner on the correct perspective and b) believe that through sharing our perspectives, we can build understanding, which is more important to me than agreement. See A New View.

Within moments of hearing John McCain had chosen the governor of Alaska as his running mate, I jumped to my verb of choice—googling! All I could really find were photos of Sarah Palin as a beauty queen contestant and a girls' basketball player. I was stunned.

Now, I will say, I was very disappointed in Barack Obama's pick of Joe—I use lots of words and I'm not sure which are really mine—Biden. I had every hope that Kansas' Gov. Kathleen Sebelius would be in Washington in January. But still, I could see the rationale of adding Biden's foreign policy experience and years of navigating the shark invested waters of our nation's capitol to the Democratic ticket.

When it came to McCain, I was initially just concerned that Mitt Romney might make ...<< MORE >>

Resilience and Stamina are not to be confused. In my presentations, I compare our spirits to those life-size inflatable punching clowns. They take all kinds of abuse in the corners of playrooms everywhere, and they just keep bouncing back up. That is, until they begin to lose air. Then they wither a most dramatic death and find themselves in the corner of the trash bin. Their resilient bounce-backedness is only possible if they contain air.

We, too, require inner resources to maintain our sense of resiliency. Whether we call it stamina or endurance, it is a limited commodity. We must take time to restock and renew. Hopefully, before we're reduced to a withered heap in the corner.

Signs that we're close to empty tanks of stamina include higher levels of anxiety, bitterness, loss of focus and general fatigue. ...<< MORE >>

Whether you lead a Fortune 100 company, a team at work, a committee at your child's school, or have random contact with other members of the human race, there are a few things I would like to say to you. I am worried about the decay of decorum and the lack of leadership and I want you to do something about it!

1. Listen. For more information on this, see the post Hear Ye! Hear Ye!. For now, just take time to truly listen to those around you. If you are too pressed for time to listen without your attention being divided, then say so. Something like "Mimi, I want to give you my undivided attention and I can't right now, is there a time next week when we can visit..." That way, you manage your time and you honor the other individual.

...<< MORE >>

One time, when I was struggling with relationship dynamics understood only by those who are, or have been, 11-year-old girls, my grandmother gave me this advice...

"You'd better put that in a box on a shelf, because it's not doing you any good to think about it."

Being the relentless pursuer of analogies that I am, I have looked at that advice from every angle. ...<< MORE >>

"Friendships are a little like our backyard gardens. We intend to take care of them, but then we wind up putting it off until next week."

That's a quote from one of my favorite tv shows, Boston Legal. In that episode, attorney Jerry Espenson was sharing that insight with fellow attorney Alan Shore. Alan had just come to the realization of how significantly he had neglected his friend Jerry, who is an incredibly intelligent and kindhearted man afflicted with Asperger's Sydrome.

I think Jerry was right.
...<< MORE >>

Did any of you take computer programming circa 1979 to 1981? It would be instruction completely foreign to students today, beginning with the appearance of the computer. The monitor was tiny, even compared to the laptop I'm typing on now. The "desktop" was still part of the furniture and not yet a reference to the appearance of the screen, which was always predictably black...or dark, dark greenish black.

My memory of computer lab is helplessly staring at the word "if" on the monitor, followed by a white cursor blink, blink, blinking in its place, waiting for me to offer a nudge of correct information to send it magically to the next step, which was "then." The "then" always seemed to me a secure, yet unattainable link in the progression of logic...and academic success.

Sometimes, my mind still falls into the rut of exercising those logical demands on life. ...<< MORE >>

Sorry friends, this entry is a little self serving. It is all about me and my quest not to choke anyone, feign an onset of Tourette's syndrome or drink too much wine. You're audience to my meltdown, and if you'd like to join in...please, please feel free.

So. I am experienceing a bit of stress right now. Sandwich generation thing with major concerns for both my parent and my children; angst watching my husband wrestle with career considerations that would have caused anyone else to set themselves on fire weeks ago and that leave a few little questions unresolved like, will he have a job tomorrow or next week; trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up and being cranky at the heat (hello, I know I live in Phoenix, but I will let you complain about the cold in February even if you choose to live in Maine), the traffic, the pollution, the pigeons that poop all over everything around my house (do you know how huge pigeon poop can be and that it doesn't move when you spray a high pressure hose at it until you get really close and then it all splatters back in your face!?) and anything else. Doris Day could make me cranky right now. Well...Doris Day would make me really cranky right now.

What's Mimi, the perpetually perky purveyor of all that is positive, to do in such a mindset?

Be in it.

That's all I can recommend. If you are ever in a similar state of mind to the "Mimi gets pissed off at the world" state, all I can say is, there you are. I don't think we have to feel better or get over it. It passes eventually.

I think the true danger grows when we let ourselves become defined by these mindsets.

When I say "I am bitchy today" (doesn't that make you glad you asked me over for coffee) it states a temporary (thank God) condition as a definition of me. What I feel at the moment or for the day, doesn't define me. In other words, I find it more helpful to think in terms like, "I feel frustrated right now" rather than "I am frustrated." The mood doesn't define me. The mood is just a mood.

I can practice deep breathing, refocusing, praying, meditating, stretching, walking, exercising, drinking less caffeine and wine, drinking more water and green tea, eating dark chocolate in moderation...and each of those things keeps my chin above the waves that feel like they are going to drag me under.

I know I will eventually wash up on some peaceful—maybe even sunny and with a cute cabana boy—shore. And I'll look back and say, "well that was interesting." But today, I'm having trouble being patient with the time I want to pass and the resolutions I want to be delivered. I am attempting to embrace the state that is at the core of much of the human condition—powerlessness. The things that are so heavy on my heart are things that are beyond my influence (good for me for not using the control word!!). They are things that my friends might understand, but might also make them usher me to a therapist.

When I'm in this spot, there is solace in knowing there is one who will get down and wallow in my misery with me, and who will let me fall asleep exhausted from my temper tantrum in His ever lovin' arms. When I am at my best, I know I am Enough. I am Sufficient. Days...weeks...like this remind me that God is always suffiicient, even...and especially...when I'm not.

        

Today, I've been thinking a lot about Jim Collins book "Good to Great."

I have a dear friend whose amazing output professionally is continually sabotaged by an assistant who performs far below standard. I am not sure what job the assistant is equipped for, but it's not the one she has. I'm sure this administrative assistant is a great person, but I have a hard time justifying the perpetuation of inability. I think she must spend a lot of her time miserable, knowing that she doesn't meet some of the minimal requirements of her job. No one likes to feel as if they spend the majority of their day missing the mark professionally.

Observing that led me to reflect on the first job of good leaders, according to Good to Great. Collins says he and his fellow researchers thought the first step great leaders would take in turning around a company would be to deploy great strategy and vision. That wasn't the case. Collins says:

"We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it."

That is a difficult step and a test of true leadership. Collins recounts stories of great leaders who fired family members and made other very hard personnel decisions in the effort to fill the bus with the right people. He says holiday gatherings were probably a bit tense for one CEO who axed several family members..."Sorry I had to fire you. Want another slice of turkey?"

None of us like making those difficult decisions. Whether we're leading an organization, a committee or we're improving our role as CEO of our personal existence, sometimes we just have to do the hard stuff. The longer we put it off, the more difficult it is; the more damage that can be done both to the organization (or in a personal sense...the organism) and to the long-term benefit of the those who need to exit the vehicle.

As a leader, I've only had to fire one person. And I claimed full responsibility for reaching that point, as I made the hire. I opened the bus door to a person who should have been in line at the train station. When I came to that too-late realization, I felt as if I was ruining her life. Her broad circle of friends overlapped mine in several places and I actually had people come up to me to say, "I can't believe you did that. [Insert fake name] is the nicest person!" And she was/is. Really, really nice.

Two years ago (too late to help me through my first firing episode), I read a great article by Suzy Welch that helps me face similar dilemmas. Welch said,

"Every time I find myself in a situation where there appears to be no solution that will make everyone happy, I ask myself three questions: What are the consequences of my decision in 10 minutes? In 10 months? And in 10 years?"

Break it down. Know that for the next 10 minuters or even 10 days, you'll probably feel a bit miserable. Then project 10 weeks out and imagine how you'll feel and how things will change—will you and your organization be more effective? Will you feel less stress and greater hope regarding the changed area? Finally, think of all the progress you can make in 10 months when the seat on the bus is filled with the right person—or even vacant—which is far better than filled by one who would take the bus off course and careening down a ravine where you and its inhabitants would all perish on jagged rocks. Okay...bit-o-drama but truly, some people are so self-involved that they can create that kind of mayhem without any sense of personal responsibility or concern for the organization or its organisms.

This whole, whose on the bus thing totally correlates to our personal lives. Collins noted that as well:

"Adherence to the idea of "first who" might be the closest link between a great company and a great life. For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life."

Amen! Here's to great companies, great lives and the goodness they yield!