by Caroline Leach | Feb 7, 2016 | Change, Work/Life
As if Super Bowl 50 wasn’t enough excitement for one weekend, try two high-school winter formals and a retirement party on one super Saturday night.
All of these events interwoven with seemingly unrelated threads got me thinking. Mainly about the similarities among life’s transitions. And how we have more in common with each other than we think we do.
Whether you’re just starting high school, as my son is. Or finishing high school and contemplating college, as my daughter is. Or celebrating 35 years of service with a company, as a former boss of mine is.
As one phase of life ends, there are misty-eyed memories and fond farewells. Peering into the next phase, there’s the excitement – and trepidation – about what the future holds. And there’s a reminder that the present is precious.
The misty-eyed moment at the retirement party was a heartfelt speech by the honoree, Paul James. True to Maya Angelou, I remember the feeling more than the actual words. But they were about how we’re all shaped and influenced by the special people we choose to surround ourselves with.
Looking around that room in the company of my husband, I saw many wonderful colleagues, past and present. I thought about how much I’ve learned from them and others I’m privileged to work with.
I thought about my daughter gathering earlier in the day for photos with her dressed-up friends by the Malaga Cove Library, laughing and enjoying the moment.
They – and their fellow high-school seniors – have worked so hard. They’ve studied, taken test after test, stepped up to leadership roles, given back to their communities and applied to colleges.
This is their moment to savor their hard work and their friendships. With luck and good grace, there will be a lifetime of moments ahead for them.
And I thought about my son, attending his first formal. The red carpet at the entrance to Wendy and Jason Moskowitz’s home where the ninth graders gathered in advance took on special meaning. It reminded me of these students’ upcoming transition from adolescence to adulthood.
The common thread? There is so much ahead, no matter what stage of life you find yourself in.
As Marina Keegan wrote in her widely read Yale Daily News essay, The Opposite of Loneliness – “we have to remember that we can still do anything.”
There is much to be grateful for today. And much to look forward to tomorrow.
This is shaping up to be an historic year. In our family, our oldest child is heading off to college. Of course, we don’t yet know where that will be. But all will be revealed soon enough. Isn’t that the same for everything in life?
In sports, the Super Bowl turns 50 today and the Olympics are coming this summer. In politics, the citizens of the United States will choose a new president this fall.
In science and technology, we’re seeing accelerating change with driverless cars, drones, artificial intelligence, the connections of everything, and so much more.
As I was thinking about transitions and passages this sunny Sunday, I returned to the site of an earlier transition. It was my daughter’s bridging ceremony from Brownies to Girl Scouts in grade school.
Speaking of special people, she and several of her classmates were led by two incredible troop leaders, Gina Ann and Allyson Rener.
They took the girls on a decade full of amazing outings, from ropes courses and horseback riding to behind-the-scenes tours at storied companies and nonprofits.
The bridging ceremony was no exception. We spent a beautiful day at the South Coast Botanic Garden. As each girl walked over the bridge (pictured above), with a rose in hand, she moved from one phase of Girl Scouts into the next.
And as they near high-school graduation, I’m especially thankful for the wonderful experiences that Gina and Allyson offered these girls who have grown into accomplished young women.
What I feel this weekend is the elusive yet powerful “opposite of loneliness.” It’s what Marina Keegan profoundly articulated before her tragic death a few days after her essay was published.
As uncertain as life can be, I’m exceedingly grateful for the people who touch my life. I’m exceptionally aware of how precious the present is. And I’m happy to be reminded that we’re all linked to each other through generations, years, transitions and passages.
May you find much joy this day and every day, wherever you are on your journey.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 31, 2016 | Careers, Change, Learning
When you’re learning something new, there’s often an expectation that you’ll pick it up easily. That it will be smooth sailing. That you won’t skip a beat.
After all, the world moves faster every day. The competitive landscape is more intense than ever. Time is in short supply. It’s one sprint after another to learn what you need to know. Learning curves can feel like vertical climbs.
But when in your life have you learned something new and performed it perfectly right from the start?
As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the book Outliers: The Story of Success, it takes about 10,000 hours to master a skill.
The hard part is the feeling of incompetence that comes along with learning. Two things happened this week that made me think more about being bad at something new.
First was reading the work of Erika Andersen in an HBR post, which was the subject of my blog post yesterday. She wrote about how to identify the next skills you should learn.
In that was an angle on having to be bad at something before you can be good. The important thing, Andersen says, is to continue on through the bad phase so you can get to the good.
In fact, it’s the subject of her new book coming out this winter called Be Bad First: Get Good at Things Fast to Stay Ready for the Future. Sign me up. The pre-ordered book will download on my Kindle app on March 8.
In a Forbes post that may have inspired the book, she gives great strategies for How to Get Good at Things By Being Bad First. One of them is managing your self talk and being deliberately encouraging in how you speak to yourself.
That brings me to the second thing that happened this week. I’ve been trying different yoga classes, looking for 2 to do consistently each week. In addition to the serenity, stretching and balance benefits, I’m training to do paddle board yoga in the spring and summer.
And I’m moving through being bad into being good. One of my yoga instructors gave me a little smile this week when I at last managed to transition into Warrior II with the correct arm in front.
And my first experience with stand up paddle boarding last fall left me with a patch of broken skin on my thumb from holding the paddle the wrong way. The skin healed, and I figured out a better way to paddle.
Something the teacher in yesterday’s yoga class said made a big impression on me. He advised us not to condemn, judge or demand. If we let go of these mindsets and expectations, we will be calmer and happier.
These could apply to others. They could also apply to ourselves. By letting go of judging ourselves and demanding perfection, we are more free to experiment and learn.
That’s what Andersen is saying too. Most everyone will be bad at something when they first start. But by having faith in your ability to persevere and learn what you need to know, you can get good.
Another great book, What To Do When You’re New by Keith Rollag gives strategies for you to perform new things in front of people who aren’t familiar to you. Focusing on learning and getting better, rather than being good right away, is a great tip.
And his HBR article on being new gives good guidance on asking questions: consider what you want and why, determine whom to ask and if the time is right, ask short to-the-point questions and express thanks.
It’s humbling to recognize what you don’t know and what you need to learn. To try to ask the right questions, even when you don’t know what you don’t know. To take a crack at doing the new task. To learn from and recover from the inevitable mistakes. To start building competence.
This is what I’m doing in my new career role in marketing. This is how I navigate new community leadership roles. And this is how I approach my exercise classes. It’s not easy, but I keep moving forward.
As I learned from my yoga teacher, don’t judge yourself or demand perfection. Be kind to yourself and let yourself experiment. You’ll achieve much more, much faster and much better than you ever thought you could.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 30, 2016 | Change, Learning, Work/Life
With the torrential pace of change in our world, how will you decide what you need to learn this year?
Even if you’re not tackling a new job as I am, every field is changing rapidly. This makes lifelong learning an imperative for all of us.
Richard Bolles had an early inkling of this. While he’s better known as the bestselling author of the annually updated What Color is Your Parachute?, he also wrote The Three Boxes of Life.
In it he argued that we should not think about our lives in a linear fashion of education followed by work followed by retirement.
Instead, he advocated that all 3 boxes of life should be woven through every stage of our lives. This has never been more true than today, nearly four decades after the book was published.
Our education has to continue in parallel with our careers. For those who loved formal schooling, as I did, this is welcome news.
And for those who didn’t, there are many new ways of learning – by online courses, by doing and by observing, to name a few – that can make it more fun and intuitive.
And weaving in elements of retirement with its passion projects, travel and leisure refreshes and inspires us. This is why what we do on weekends is so important.
Thinking about all the things I need to learn in my new role, a Harvard Business Review post by Erika Andersen caught my eye this week.
How to Decide What Skill to Work On Next gives a great framework to focus your learning efforts. Andersen links the framework of Jim Collins‘ hedgehog concept from Good to Great with learning.
Collins found that great organizations have 3 areas of focus:
- What drives their economic engine
- What they can be the best in the world at, and
- What they’re most passionate about.
Linking that with learning, Andersen advocates asking yourself these questions:
- How can you learn and grow in a way that will help your company succeed? What will drive the bottom line?
- Of those areas, which ones could you become excellent at? If you’re good at similar things, those are ideal starting points.
- How passionate are you about those areas? And she shows that passion can be learned by looking at the benefits to learning and how it will create a better future for you.
This is not only a manageable and efficient way of making a personal learning plan, but it’s also inspiring and exciting.
It’s helping me narrow my focus and pick the highest-impact areas in my learning project. And it’s reassuring to know that I don’t have to learn everything, right away.
Like so many things in life, it’s about identifying the highest priority areas, taking initial actions, assessing progress and course correcting. It’s taking steps forward, day after day.
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