Very very productive day.
Sometimes I have to take a step back and acknowledge that I have trained thousands of people in the last few months, completely reinvented my approach to innovation, launched a small business and picked myself up and out of stress and into productivity again.
It's never as bad as you think, well actually it is as bad as you think. And that's the point! What you think becomes feelings.
When I see intensity and people on fire coming towards me now I try to think "how can I be the eye of their storm?" or "how can I listen without buying into their intensity?"
If I were to count the number of people I actually interacted with today alone it boggles my mind. The key here is to remember that while heavily electronic, these interactions are people and I am a person.
Being mindful of that and purposeful with how one engages electronically and the way you think while doing so, completely changes the experience.
It has to be authentic, it has to be what you really mean and how you really feel.
So if you're not feeling like you can add value to an exchange - stop, step back, put some space up.
Im finding that the people I interact with who are constantly on fire, are creating 80% of the fire themselves. If that fire is chronic, and that person is always stressed, it's an indicator that they are in need of some change. And - I don't have to fix it, don't have to feed it, be hooked by it or in most circumstances even acknowledge it.
Learn your strengths, apply them, practice them, focus on them and enjoy them. Find people who are strong in areas you are not and form a tribe.
Work as a team and with shared purpose.
This is the most beautiful and engaging experience outside of family and community and even then there are days when achieving something as a tribe - oh man, it feels so damned good!
But all of this starts with how you show up and the thoughts you bring into the picture.
It is not easy to recognize that you are not your thoughts.
It is not easy to call yourself out on a thought that's triggering an emotion and spiraling your whole day out of control.
But with practice ... it gets easier. It gets better.
Grasping at positive thoughts when you don't feel positive doesn't always help. Sometimes how you are feeling takes some space and some attention. Feelings that come before the thoughts are a totally different ball game.
What I find very interesting about being purpose driven is that now feelings sometimes come first and then Im asking myself how I can use my brain as a tool to pursue and understand what I am feeling.
Learning to trust those feelings shifts something to more of the core of my body and connects me from my chest (I don't know how to explain this).
All I can say is that I have been aware of times when Im acting from a tightness at the back of my neck or where Im acting from what feels to be an entirely cerebral place.
But even as I do web design or coding right now there seems to be something coming up from my chest through my head and out my hands. It's not perfect - it doesn't happen all day, every day - but it's happening more and more.
When something creative comes up that way or even an exchange between people I feel .... hmm - a little more alive?!?! I guess that's the way to put it. Looking forward to connecting with audiences this way. I feel a lot of awesome experiences coming.
Will say one thing. Even though Im spending a lot of time on Twitter, it's generally with a hand full of people I enjoy and genuinely enjoy interacting with. It's less people on social media that turned out to be more meaningful for me.
I never look at my twitter timeline and don't care to. It's like I feel a desire to interact with particular people and I just go with it. All the rest felt too much like work. I thought about it like work. And I thought about it a lot.
Im a hot air balloon in the sky with basket that fits a tribe. This tribe is so well diversified now. Some are not even on social media, some are local and some are in other countries but we connect almost daily and we are on very similar quests.
That tribe can ebb and flow but keeping a core tribe small and close is enough for me <3
I trust, as an altruist at heart that what we do impacts millions of people for the better. And I don't need to measure that in all areas, I don't need to see it, I don't need to know it - I just trust it - I feel it.
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