Reflecting on Winter and Transition

I believe it is a cruel irony that, due to the convention of the modern calendar, business planning coincides with the doldrums of winter when some of us experience what is officially known as Seasonal Affective Disorder. As an employee of a changing - and hopefully growing - company, it can be difficult to ride along with the uncertainty and annual "let's try this and hope it sticks" parade while also doing time with the Demons of Winter Blues. Just like the launch of personal resolutions, the business world shoots out of the gate on January 2nd, rushing headlong into a chaotic tango that eventually winds down sometime between January 15th and April 15th into a hybrid of all the hopes for the future and the habits of the past.

There it is – the reality to keep in perspective as I step foot back into the office on Friday. Things will settle a bit. They always do. (And I can only control what I can control.)

In some ways the "new year" is an artificial demarcation of transition. All-in-all, the vast majority of humanity will look the same tomorrow as today. Still, the calendar convention gives us a signal to reflect and recharge. So, let's go with it.

I hope that you have taken the time to reflect on 2008 and all that you have accomplished. I guarantee you did much more than you remember at this moment in time. Go ahead and congratulate yourself. While you're at it, set some intentions for 2009. I'm not necessarily talking about resolutions - just a theme or two. Or maybe a point of view for viewing everything in the coming year. Write all that down and put it in a file to review this same time next year. Then let's meet back here and talk about it. Okay?

Happy New Year!

Photo: stock.xchng | Hanspeter Klasser

Resonating Quotes

This first quote guides much of my personal discovery as well as my work as a brand strategist. You see it at the top of my blog and on the back of my personal card. It was one of those things that just went "bing!" when I first read it.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” Carl Jung

Know who you are, what you value and what you stand for - and always operate from that core. Looking deep inside to know your own heart is the foundation for life's happiness.

I find that in business and much of life people want to measure what you do in hard and fast terms. In our Western society we want hard, scientific proof of nearly everything. But life isn't that exacting.

"Most processes leave out the stuff that no one wants to talk about: magic, intuition and leaps of faith." Michael Bierut, Partner, Pentagram

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind its faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." Albert Einstein

Sometimes just believing is enough. While you can't go around being destructive and disrespectul, you can know that the choices you make are right for you in the moment you make them for your own heart.

I Believe

Recently I was asked to provide a few words of wisdom for a relative. Not one to limit my words (sorry), I ended up writing the following and thought it was worth sharing on my blog.

1. Always look on the bright side of life. Yes, that's a really swell Monty Python song. It's also a good way to turn around a really bad day.
2. More and bigger isn't always better. Sometimes just a little of something great is better than a lot of something mediocre. If you're inclined to read about economics, a book called "Deep Economy" by Bill McKibben does a much better job of discussing this idea than I do.
   
3. "No" can be a positive, good word. Learn to say it and exercise its positive use often.
4. We all have a bright light inside of us and it is our jobs in this lifetime to uncover that light and share it with the world, even if that means with just one other person.
5. It isn't just a bumper sticker...practice random acts of kindness. A little smile and a kind word can go a long, long way. You just never know whose day you'll be changing for the better.
6. Find people you admire and know more than you do and sit at their feet to learn. Do it even if sometimes it is just a little painful.

The Book Shelf - Fiction Read in 2008

I was thinking back over what I've read this past year and landed on a handful of books as worthy of sharing. The list below concentrates on the fiction I picked up in 2008.

• The Book Thief, Markus Züsak - Written from the point of view of Death, this novel reveals the experiences of a fictional little girl living in WWII Germany. Even though it is listed as youth literature, I believe it is sophisticated enough for adults. On a personal level, while reading I thought of my mother who lived in Austria during WWII and was a similar age to Leisel, the star of the novel.
  
• Garden Spells, Sarah Allen Addison - This little novel is a 180° from The Book Thief. It is set in the American South and follows an eccentric and gifted family and their magical garden through a story of self-growth and personal triumph. A quick read, it is fun to escape into.
• Saving Fish From Drowning, Amy Tan - Taking another sharp turn, this girthy novel about a group of travelers in China and Myanmar (Burma), from the author of The Joy Luck Club (one of my favorite films), is told through the point of view of a friend of the group who has passed away. Bibi Chen, the dearly departed, has the ability to know the thoughts of all of her friends and thus illustrates how two people can have completely different interpretations of the same event. Some of the experiences the group had in their comedy of errors made my skin crawl - and made me happy to be in my cozy bed.
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini - I started off the year with this book. I'd heard a lot of mixed reviews of A Thousand Splendid Suns. I felt that I got a glimpse into the lives of women in Afghanistan. I remember staying up into the wee hours of the morning because I would read something that left me feeling sad or angry and decided to read on until I found something more positive. Of course, when I did, I felt good enough to go on. And so the cycle continued. Personally, I didn't find it easy to read from an emotional sense. In the end, I was very happy that I'd persevered.

Binding theme? I would say that my reading took me on psychological journey into the human condition through the minds of very different women, from a little German girl and Afghan women to Southern belles and Chinese American immigrants.

E-Gifts Can Be A Joy

Along with a few more standard (and still very appreciated) emailed holiday greetings, I've received two notable "gifts" via email.

• In the "what a nice thought" category, my brother made a donation to the U.S.O. in my family's name. My immediate thought was "how cool!"
• In the "okay, this guy is hilarious" category, our friend (and client) Ben sent a "duet with Elvis Presley." Thanks Ben! That's the biggest laugh I had all day.

I didn't get a single material thing from these gifts. I did get a warmed heart - and a hearty laugh.

'Tis the Season, Part II: My Attitude Gets a Facelift

It's Tuesday, December 16 now and I've managed to pull myself into the spirit of things. We saw Polar Express at the Indiana State Museum's IMAX theater on Saturday. A friend who was first a client 15 years ago arranged for us to meet there with some other mutual friends. Afterward we went to dinner. The movie was packed with people of all ages yet, even during the quietest moments of the film, not a sound could be heard. Everyone was mesmerized. After dinner, we put up the tree (though we haven't decorated it yet) and on Sunday, my daughter and I donned Santa hats and went out looking for just the right special gifts for some of our dearest family and friends. It's fair to say that I've slid closer to the other end of the Cheer-Humbug scale.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Happy Winter Solstice! Joyful Whatever-You-Choose-to-Celebrate!

Six-Word Memoir

Where's Nila? Seeking. Learning. Creating. Exploring.

My Vistage group, at the suggestion of our awesome leader Mike Donahue, each came in to our meeting with a six-word memoir inspired by the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser. The results were thoroughly enjoyable and very telling.

I introduced my memoir as a sort of Where's Waldo. It's really my version of The Good Life.

What's your six-word memoir?

'Tis The Season for Busy-ness and Shoulds

Warning: If you love the whole holiday/Christmas season, you'll want to skip this one.

Somehow I've come to the point in my life where I dread December. I hate to say it, but it's the truth. Between the stuff I have to do for the kids and the stuff I have to do for work, I have little time left for the stuff I'd like to do to celebrate the holidays, much less the stuff I want and need to do to take care of myself. I used to love putting up the tree, decorating the house, shopping in real brick and mortar stores, baking cookies, going to and throwing parties, and languishing by the fireplace between Christmas and New Year. Now I have to actually put those things on my schedule or they'll be edged out by lessons and doctor appointments and work that has spilled over the long-gone 40 hours a week. In fact, it's possible that I've come to loathe all the expectations that go with that time from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. Sad, huh?

Here it is December 9th and I haven't brought out so much as a Christmas CD, taken down my fall wreath or penned a single card. And, as far as I can tell, the pace of parenting and working isn't going to slow down. All the shoulds are getting in the way of my want tos. Or do I really even want to do those things? Have they simply become shoulds, too?

Last year on New Year's Day, I completely folded in on myself and my family. I threw a fit because I felt like no one would be serious about the one thing I thought would salvage my mood about it all - a ritual we started about 4 years ago where we review the last year and set hopes, dreams and wishes for the coming year. (Unfair of me, by the way, to expect my family to rescue me emotionally.) At that moment, I wished that I could somehow muster the courage (and the cash) to just go out of town for Christmas. And here I sit with the same wish. "Pretty dark, Nila," you might say.

Here's the thing. I'm not even sure I'm qualified to celebrate Christmas anymore. I put up the tree and have the big dinner and put on the Christmas show. And I feel really strange that I play along considering I don't practice anything near Christianity the other 364 days of the year, if I am even doing a good job of pretending this one day. And I'm not going to start pretending all year.

So, am I maintaining this tradition for myself or for the rest of my family, especially the older generation? Is it more important that I follow tradition or that I be honest with myself and the people in my life invested in the tradition for either religious or secular reasons? Or am I just thinking about it all too much?

Don't worry too much. In two weeks, when the lights are twinkling in my house, when I've made rounds to Heidelberg Haus and Klaus', when we've wrapped a few gifts, when I've tasted Joyce's cookies, I'll feel better than I do today.

Tell me, dear reader, where do you fall on the spectrum of holiday cheer? Are you more toward the Cheer or the Bah-Humbug? Any words of wisdom for someone who has slipped to the Grumpy end?

Editor's note: see my update.

Just A Little Happy

When I picked up the kids from school today, my ten-year old son climbed in the car and asked cheerfully, "how was your day, Mom?" No matter how it had been, it was instantly a notch better just because of his genuine question.

Later, my eight-year old daughter said, "so Mom, tell me one happy thing that happened to you today." I had to think for a moment since the last several hours had been a mad dash to get some work done and I was still caught up in my drama. My daughter said, "oh come on, everyone has something happy every day. So what was one of your happy moments?" I laughed. Truth is, that car ride was perhaps the happiest moment of the day, but she was looking for more. I told her I had called my friend Andy that morning and he made me laugh. (He did. I knew he would. That's why I called.) She said, "oh yeah, he does make people happy."

Tonight a client whom I first consider a friend called elated (her word) to tell me we'd gotten a two week reprieve on some ridiculous deadlines. I got the joyful job of calling my coworkers to tell them. I could have waited until the morning, but I so wanted to let Kristen and Judy have one extra night to sleep peacefully. They deserve it, they work so hard at keeping things from flying apart. Hearing their happiness made me happy.

Yet another happy moment was finding a note on my purse when I left for work. "I love you! Have a great day. Steve." Me: happy.

Sometimes it seems that the world conspires to take away all our our happiness. But, in reality, the happy is always there in some way. It's up to us to collect those moments and carry them with us all the time.

The Dalai Lama said, "It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come."

That quote reminds me of my friend Renée telling her kids to "have a happy heart." That phrase makes me smile. Renée always makes me smile.

So here I am reflecting on my day. I have such awesome people in my life (I couldn't get them all in this post) who enable these little moments of happy. A little happy goes a long way.