I'm the boss of me

Did you know that you lose most of what you learn from training within a week?

I didn't. I don't know I completely believe it either (depending heavily on the content and quality of the training), but in an effort not to lose the benefit of my Seven Habit of Highly Effective People (SHHEP) I thought I'd document some of my efforts here. I have a 'contract' with one of my classmates to follow up weekly but truthfully...as someone who is a known performance-oriented person I will not fail in front of my contractee and will only admit to carefully scripted failure if forced.

(Um, the fact that shortens down to sheep is not lost on me)

Alrighty, so this week is about circle of influence versus circle of concern. Those things which I can directly influence versus those things that might effect me but I have no control over. As an example, my flight being late is in my circle of concern (affects me but I cannot make it be on time) versus my decision of what to do with the time I've 'gained' because of the late flight (e.g., drink, make friends with co-passengers, read).

Things in my circle of control:

• How I spend my time - right now, I spend too much time on FB. I could be spending that time one things that will benefit me like reading, writing, spending time with actual friends not virtual friends, sleeping more, working out more).
• What I put in my mouth - seems now that I've reached my goal weight and reset a new one that I'm not totally buying into new goal weight. The key here is I need to decide if current weight is satisfactory, or if I want the lower weight. Because, if I don't really want the lower weight, I am mentally beating me up for my eating habits unnecessarily. So, in the meantime I'm being less careful about my calories...which leads to the next thing...
• Degree to which I work out - last week with having to be into the office earlier my morning workouts dropped off. And, because I wasn't going to bed earlier to make up for the earlier hours, by the time I got home I was too tired. But the thing is, working out is finally to the point where it feels good and I want to get back to it (course, massive fail this morning because I didn't set my alarm and by 9am when I woke up it's just too hot to go run).
• How clean I keep my stuff - the house being clean is a regular point of contention in my household. But, I played a little game with myself a few weeks back and just picked up my stuff. I decided, I can't really complain at PC if my stuff was laying around - so to be able to make the point that PC needed to pick up more while making sure my kettle wasn't black, I picked up only my things. I'm a little embarrassed to tell you how much cleaner the house was. Um, yes, I am guilty of being a slob.
• How I perform at work - ok, this is a tough one. I don't like my job. I don't like the bureaucracy of the organization and I think it leads to inefficiency. I don't think high performance leads to improved chance of promotion (because there are no promotions available) or raises (raises are based on tenure). Further, I seem to be praised regularly for doing nearly nothing so I'm not terribly motivated to perform more when I'm already seemingly well appreciated. All that being said, as a professional. I am not behaving well. I can blame it on my environment. But in truth, I know better. If I was a boss, I'd expect better. So, less FB at work, less socializing at work, and less fanning the flames. More doing the things that they send me a paycheck for. And you know what, even if I don't get promoted or raise for it, I can feel less fear that I'm going to be reprimanded for performance reasons every time my phone rings and every time an email pops up and I can STOP FEELING GUILTY.

And, lastly. Stop trying to influence others' behaviors.

Did you hear that?

This week I had an opportunity to take the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I can't tell you how thrilled I was to get picked to get to attend for work. Granted there's a large chance I won't ever have a chance to use it with them...but...well, I've got nothing...it does in fact suck for them and their resources.

Anyway, one of the skills I'm practicing is this empathetic listening. I gotta admit. Empathy isn't a strong point of mine. I'm very guy like in the sense that I hear the problem, listen, and then move into fix it mode. In fact, I often find it hard to be listened to empathetically because I don't want someone to 'hear that I'm frustrated', I want to hear what the solution is.

This approach hasn't worked well with PC and his job troubles - to the point he often won't discuss work with me because he knows it will lead to me asking what he plans to fix it, accept it, or find a way out. Which to me is the most logical set of responses.

Basically, the skill is about listening and reflecting back the emotion that you hear in an effort to let the person feel heard and understood. I've been using it for the last few days with some limited success. The hardest things for me are to 1) not move into solutions and 2) not give examples of similar experiences unless asked.

I'm finding it even harder as I watch the person I love engage in behaviors that scream "BURNOUT!!" and not be able to help him prioritize. When I watch him perform tasks that are important to others but that do not align to what is important to him or us it is frustrating. I want to share with him the skills and lessons I've learned in the last week...but instead I sit and try very hard to empathetically listen.

You can put a bow on it

I had a friend confide in me last night about what she thinks is 'a little crush'. Someone she describes as a good friend, who makes her laugh and whom she can lean on, and whom she might have seen a picture his, um, apparatus because he sent it to her on a bet. Someone she talks to more than daily, sees quite regularly, and actually took it pretty hard when she found out he has a girlfriend of convenience in his hometown.

Which is all fine and dandy, except she's married. And, not to the crush.

I tried very hard to listen without judgement, to provide advice as to why this might be happening, and to be the friend she clearly needs to talk this all through. But, the more I listen, the more I know she's rationalizing and I worry that I'm giving her the feeling of approval (as opposed to neutrality).

I know I don't know what's going on in her marriage. From the outside they've always been amazing together.

And, I'm not judging. I know that sometimes relationships don't work. I believe that sometime you can accidentally fall in love. I think that sometimes you just know.

But in this case I think she's playing with fire.

You can dress it up and put a bow on it, but if you can't tell your husband about it and have to start implementing passwords, it's cheating.

Small world

I have a love hate relationship with conferences.

I love attending them, I hate submitting to them. I like presenting, I hate doing the work to prepare to present.

I also noticed that I often find myself feeling very alone while surrounded by 1000+ of my closest collegues.  I never seem to be on anyone's 'must check to see if they're attending list' or their 'must make sure to invite her to dinner with the group' list. I'm also pretty much never asked to collaborate or sit on panels without first instigating the idea myself and doing all the work to get other to agree to speak.

At the same time, I seem to have a great skill in being able to wander to various sessions, parties, happy hours, etc and strike up random conversation. It makes me question that perhaps I'm that person that seems to talk to everyone, but that everyone internally cringes when they see they are headed to conversation with the annoying person.

I spend a good deal of my time being concerned with why my classmates, or surrounding years, never ask me to collaborate or meet for drinks. Every once in a while, I recall that I don't actually like most of the people in my program. With the exception of Shorty, and a few others, I actually wonder how long until I can get away or how they got into the program in the first place.

I had a lot of thought about why it is that I've been attending this particular conference every year for 7 odd years, and why it continues to happen. About the same time I came to a decision, I was sitting in a session when one of the discussants made a related point. The discussant made the point that when people arrive to these conferences, many are overwhelmed and feel alone (really? I thought it was just me) As a result, many people that attend cling to those that they know (i.e., classmates). And, as a result of the clingage - no one really meets anyone else outside of that group.

Now, this is usually about the point I wonder why no one wants to cling with me...but this time I came to the realization, if I don't like them...and they may or may not like me...and the discussant recommends making a goal of meeting 3 new people per conference...then that's what I should be doing.

As many brilliant ideas go, it came along the second to last session on the last day of the conference.

Drat.

Not one to let go of a good idea, I did what networking people have probably been doing for hundreds of years. I took the business cards I had gotten from people that wanted a copy of my poster paper, emailed them individually, tried to add a little something about what we'd talked about, and then suggested that we keep in touch or consider a collaboration in the future. After that seemed to have gone well, and I got a coincidental reminder about updates from LinkedIn, I decided to 'stalk' not only the poster people but those cards I'd gotten throughout the conference as I talked to randoms.

Here's the weirdest part.

As I typed them into the system to link to them...I discovered that a handful of the 'randoms' I'd met had connections with a good number of other people I knew. Not just others I knew from the same program or a similar place, but really weird unexpected people in common. For example, one person was linked with someone from an old internship, first grad school, second grad school, classmate of old boyfriend in another state, and the head hunter I used when I was laid off from consluting.

In the end, I had a handful of new contacts in very diverse organizations, far flung states, and some potential collaborators. One potential collaborator even offered to let me use measures designed by her organization for free to conduct accademic research.

If only I wanted to do academic research.

Freudian?

Here's some interesting psycho-Freudian fodder.

I have an incredable ability to remember dreams. Sometimes that's good. Other times it just makes me wonder what the hell is going on in my head.

Dream scene:

I'm addressing envelopes and having to choose which of the envelopes to mail first. As is true in my real life, I never have enough stamps and have to determine which envelopes are most important.

A weird kind of ranking system that I go through every time I do Christmas cards.

So, I finish addressing the envelopes, and toss them in the mail. Only to realize, the 'envelopes' are really wedding invitations. I go on with what I'm doing, and mention off-handedly to random 'dream friend' that I'd sent out some of my wedding invitations.

Dream Friend says: "Oh, when did you get engaged?"

I then realize, Wait I'm not engaged!

OMG, how do I know PC will propose before the wedding date in the invitations? And, what if whoever I sent the invitations to tells PC that I'd already invited them to our wedding before he even asked? And, worse yet - I can't remember which people's invitations I'd already mailed...and how does one call those people up and be like "Um, yeah - just ignore those invitations..."

End dream because it's freaking stressing me out.

To my credit, I'd just sent out like 4 big mailing packages for my side business...so it might have made me think of postage. But, there just feels like something Freudian going on...