Category: Philosophy

How Will You Measure Your Life? The Art of Managing Yourself

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

This morning I was fortunate enough to wake up at 5:06am, an hour before my baby wakes up, and I had a rare hour to myself to read, write, and meditate. I picked up an HBR series called “On Managing Yourself” and meandered through Clayton Christensen’s essay, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” These are some of his insights that stuck with me, from how to spend your time, to why management is such a critical art in both your personal and professional life.

For me, mornings have been different for the last two years, first because of the fatigue of pregnancy (where waking up early was a rarity) and then because of the newness and immediacy of motherhood. I haven’t had time to write like I used to.

Instead, my mornings now look like this: my little one and I rise around 6am, and we spend the first two hours of the day feeding, changing, playing, nursing, getting dressed, getting food prepped, and walking to daycare. It’s a shift of no small measure. It’s time for me to be present with my kid, and moreover: it’s a time when he needs me to be there, continuously, in service to his needs.

So waking up before he did was a pleasant surprise, and I can’t express the gratitude I have for being able to read slowly and uninterrupted. Here’s what I learned this morning about creating your life and managing yourself:

1. Create a strategy for your life.

We create strategies for our businesses and our work, but we rarely create strategies for our own lives. As a result, our personal relationships and overall happiness suffer, because we forget to invest in things like relationships, spending time with family, cultivating a strong connection with our spouse, and enjoying our children or side projects. Managing yourself and your time is as valuable as the work that you do in your career.
“Keep the purpose of your life front and center as you decide how to spent your time, talents, and energy.” — Clayton Christensen

2. We consistently allocate resources ineffectively. First, by over-allocating time and resources to our careers, and second, by under-allocating to our other pursuits.

“When people who have a high need for achievement have an extra half-hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments,” he writes. And because our careers are the easiest place to measure our output, it’s easy to spend most of our time, effort, and energy on our careers. But is this wise, and is this truly what we want? “Raising a great kid,” doesn’t have an easy metric, and probably never will. But it might be something that you want to spend time on. Knowing that it’s harder to allocate time to things that aren’t as easy to measure output-wise can help us re-center our attention across all of the things that matter to us.

3. Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well.

If you’re managing other people, or even yourself, your job is extremely important. You don’t just manage the time people spend at work, you also shape the way people leave work at the end of the day, and how they are when they head home.

If you’ve been a shitty manager, you may have people leave work frustrated, disappointed, or discouraged, and that’s who they are when they head home to their families. What if you could manage to leave people inspired, accomplished, and satisfied, and they went home feeling full, grounded, and creative?

In my own business, it reminds me that I’m not just hiring someone to “get things done.” I’m hiring for relationships, for deeply satisfying work, and for joy. The people I’m working with now on Startup Pregnant are deeply intuitive, thoughtful, and mindful. They bring me joy to work with them, and, it’s my hope that I inspire them as well.

And in your own life, if you treat it like a business, reflect: how are you managing yourself and your time? Are you treating your life like the valuable asset and creation it is?

4. Consulting and coaching aren’t about providing specific solutions; they’re about guiding people through a process that helps them find the solution on their own.

“When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly,” Christensen writes. “Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models […] and they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.”

The most profound leaders all share this wise insight: that coaching and providing insight to others isn’t about telling them what to do. It’s about cultivating deep listening practices and guiding people towards a way to access insights within their own wisdom. What I’ve been reading lately — Krista Tippet’s On Being Wise, to Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, and to the deep listening practices from Thich Naht Hanh — are all influencing the models I’ve built in my private Mastermind accelerator. In our small group, where confidentiality and conversation are paramount, our monthly Deep Dive practices  are not about giving advice to each other, but about constructive, effective deep listening practices to guide people into better understanding themselves and the puzzles they’re working on.

5. “Just this once” is the most dangerous justification, and is probably why people end up cheating, being dishonest, and going to jail.

The simplest justification to yourself is that you’ll only do something once. If you follow this to it’s logical end, you’ll regret where you end up.

6. Humility comes from high self-esteem, not low self-esteem.

Having a high sense of self-esteem and a high regard for others were the traits that Christensen found were most in line with the most humble people they knew. “They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were.” People who feel good about themselves are not boastful or self-deprecating. They are satisfied and eager to connect with others, and to help others grow as well.

In his work with the highest achievers at places like Harvard, he found that people could develop and grow to a point where they felt they no longer had mentors or people to look up to. This, however, was important to learn from. “If your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited,” he writes. Instead, stay humble, stay eager, and remember that you can learn from everyone.

7. Know how you measure your life

“Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you’ve achieve; worry about the individuals you’ve helped to become better people.” — Christensen

As he gets older, Christensen says that his projects or accomplishments matter less and less, but the individual lives he’s touched are what matters most. I’m inspired to bring this into my life, and remember that now, the only thing I have is the people in front of me in this moment, and the attention and love I can bring into today.

And as I finish typing this, my baby is knocking on the crib, reminding me that it’s time to put my book down, set my phone aside, and go help him up out of the crib and into his day. Spending time with him might not get more writing done, and it might not help me check off more from my To-Do list for work, but it will be part of the whole life that I’m living, and I’m grateful to spend time with him. And I’m grateful that this morning, I woke up early enough to write again. In reflecting on my self-management, I wonder, is it time to start rising early again to make more space for writing?

An Answer For Everything

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

There’s an answer for everything. Every choice, every decision, every reason for being.

When you feel the impulse to dance, or wiggle, or scream, or wring your hands in frustration.

When you think you don’t want to go to a meeting, when you hate getting on the subway, when you want to quit working with a client, or a job.

“Because I want to,” is a perfectly acceptable reason.

Beyond acceptable. It is, at the root, one of the only reasons.

“Because I want to.”

“Because I don’t want to.”

It’s an answer for everything.

Take up SPACE

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Take up space.

Take up space with your body. With your gestures, with your height, with your size. If you’re petite, take up space. If you’re tall, take up space. Fill the room with the weight of your body, and then expand again with the weight of your soul.

Take up space with your voice. Lift it high and let it sink low. Take up space with your expressions, with your sounds, with the ability to use your voice.

Too often I see people shrinking, crouching, and cowering. They soften their voice, make their expressions delicate and demure, they speak passively and apologetically.

Do not apologize.

Do not shrink.

Fill the page with your words. With your ideas. With your sound.

Let your laughter fill a room. Paint the edges of the areas around you with your body. Use your body in new shapes that you haven’t tried on before. Yowl, squeak, whine, stamp, thud, creak, and wail in ways that are new to you.

You have this body, this voice, this ability, right now. Why not try it?

Because you are here, right now, for a moment.

Take up space.

With your body.
With your voice.
With your expressions.
With your words.
With your sounds.
With your ideas.
With your projects.
With yourself.

Are You Chasing Productivity At The Expense of Your Soul?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

pexels-photo-large - coffee

I’m struggling with two competing challenges: being present and mindful, while also chasing the ego-driven aims of “success” and “productivity.” Is there a middle ground?

I reached out to my dear friend Mathias Jakobsen, author and creator of Think Clearly, to dissect this competing pull between these two desires. This is the conversation.

Two Competing Challenges: Present vs Future

Sarah: I’m struggling with two competing challenges. It seems there are two challenges affront, ahead of me, right here. I tackle them daily, I deal with them on the regular. They are sworn opposites, or at least, I have not figured out how to accompany them both.

On the left we have Present. Present is my desire to be here, to be present, to be grounded. To touch base with myself, to write, to surrender, to meditate. To dwell in the taste of the now and know that even if I were to do nothing for the rest of my life, the sweetness of being where I am and who I am would be treasure enough.

Present is my desire to be here, to be present, to be grounded. I want to pause and taste the riches of the living, and feel what’s happening right now.

Present is the call that masks itself as adventures and oceans and beaches: to escape, not as escape from reality, but to escape the endless thrust and chase of the ‘productive’ world, the ‘ego’ world, and to sink into being. I want to pause and taste the riches of the living, and feel what’s happening right now. Present reminds me of itself in the call to meditate, to practice yoga, to commune with friends, to taste food fully.

Present is the call to transcend the ego, to transcend the mind.

On the right we have Future. We might also call it Ego or Productivity. Productivity wants me to plan, to build, to dream, to DO. I must do to be worthy; I must create more. Productivity is the siren call of success; the ladder of ascendence.

You are never enough, because you are always climbing.

Our companies and corporations and economies are built on Productivity. We must chase the next goal, the next metric, the next objective, the next project. We champion growth above all else.

The humans at the center of this Productivity Machine are exhausted. They are also — although they don’t know it — expendable, just another part to the machine that doesn’t matter in it’s uniqueness. We can find another human to dispose of and use up.

I work and live in a world that idolizes Productivity. Productivity is all about the future: dreaming of what could be, what can be, and what will be. It manifests as if only, and when, and how. The American Dream is built upon this reality: you can have more things, you can have a bigger house, a bigger backyard, a better job. We are slow to realize that the thing being sold is a dream, and what we’re all really doing is running, running, running in place. We have our arms outstretched, unaware that we are on a treadmill. The focus on the future has left us lost of the present.

How do we wake up from the monotonous strum beat of the future, banging it’s dream so loudly in our faces? How do we let the worries and anxieties, most of which are all born by dreaming in the future and worrying about how to change from where we are to where we want to be — how do we let them go? How do we work within them, or embrace them, without them overtaking us? Is that even possible?

 

Mathias: First, let’s look at this idea of present vs future. This one actually seems rather straightforward to me.

I agree with you on the present-stuff — even though it is extremely hard for me to really taste food when trying to entertain my nine-month old Uma, get some extra food for my 27-month old Noah, wipe up something from the floor, and also have a conversation with my wife.

But it’s practice in headwinds and uphill.

As for the future and productivity and ego stuff I also agree with your analysis. We live in a world dominated by this. But the problem is not that it’s dreams and future. The problem is that we implicitly think that only by making these dreams come true can we feel whole and complete and successful and happy.

The problem is that we implicitly think that only by making these dreams come true can we feel whole and complete and successful and happy.

But here’s my hack: dreaming about the future can also be done very consciously in the present. By dreaming very precisely and without bounds it can be immensely pleasurable to imagine the future. The focus then, is on the dream itself and there is no fear of not being able to manifest this future since the maximum pleasure that can be derived from it is already done in fantasy.

The mistake is the implicit belief that these dreams are only valuable when turned it into goals and plans and actualized.

 

Sarah: Mmm, yes. Dreams aren’t invaluable in and of themselves. It’s when you lose sight of the present, and the process, that the dreams can become unwieldy. Relying on the achievement of a dream, only once actualized, to make us happy, is dangerous.

Mathias: Exactly right. That doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t actualize our dreams. I’m hugely proud of some of my big dreams that I have made happen.

But I am not deriving joy from the new reality as much as how I have grown in myself along the way. And even if a different future had materialized then I could still have grown in the pursuit and thus found capacity to enjoy the present.

Goals and plans and dreams. It’s amusement. It’s fun. It’s like LEGO. You don’t build with it to make a house you can keep. But you also don’t just put bricks together at random since that’s not particularly interesting (except as one particular experiment maybe once or twice). You build a house to see if you can build a better house today than when you built yesterday. Maybe today better is a bigger house. Or better is taller. Or better is smaller. Or better is more elegant. And you succeed in your pursuit or you don’t.

But it’s just LEGO and tonight you break it apart and tomorrow you build another one. And when you’re satisfied with your houses you begin building cars or planes or something else. But the cars and the planes and the house don’t matter. They only serve to make the building process more fun by giving direction. But building is always in the present.

 

Sarah: Right, the building is again, about the process and the journey. This makes so much sense to me. We lose sight of the purpose of dreaming about the future when we completely let go of the present. But we do not need to forgo dreams and plans, because they can inform who we are and how we behave in the present.

How do you translate this into the working world? What do you do about organizations that are organized around achievement? How do you address the urgency of achievement, the need for more productivity?

Mathias: [In my work], I’m not sure what we are building exactly but I find plenty of pockets to just enjoy the building process and I try to let others enjoy it too. Some do. Others keep being frustrated because they feel that others are getting in the way. But I’m not participating in the war on either side.

As for the kids and future, I think I just look further ahead where there is more clarity and less worries about the mid term. I enjoy little goals in the short term — amusement — ego boosting entertainment. Long term I see this time with kids as a time to try and not accomplish that much in the sense of external achievements, but to build up myself and my character and my spine.

That’s also why I don’t get too worried about my job performance and the conflicts and tensions. They affect me, of course, but when Noah throws up in the middle of the night I know that this is the real growth opportunity. When Uma is sick. This is where I need to be. How to deal with this situation with joy. This is where my wife and I can grow together. This is where we have conflict. Conflict and blame and issues. And then we must solve and dissolve and heal and grow stronger.

This is the real deal. Uphill. Headwinds. Training for the soul. Coffee and coca-cola gets me through a lot of things :-)

But I know we are loving more.

It’s a thrill. It’s for real. I love when I can still be fully present and open and loving and giving with Noah or Uma or Pernille in the midst of craziness. And I forgive myself the many times I can’t. It’s life!

I’m more tired and more alive than ever in my life.

That’s all for now.

What about you?

What does this conversation stir up for you ?What are your take-aways? What will you begin doing? Stop doing? Keep doing but perhaps in a different way?

Mathias Jakobsen is a Learning Designer at Hyper Island and the creator of Think Clearly — a newsletter that helps you get unstuck. He loves notebooks, bakes bread and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, son and daughter.

Saying vs. Doing

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow your own advice.
— Sam Harris.

I struggle with writing essays that sound too much like advice, because I know inevitably as soon as I tell you the ten tricks for getting into bed early, I’ll suffer bouts of insomnia, wake up at odd hours, and suffer from erratic sleep patterns myself.

Knowing what to do and doing it are two separate things entirely.

Having knowledge and possessing wisdom are different: knowledge is knowing what to do; wisdom is being able to do it.

Most months I struggle just to put one practice into play. In March, it was staying in a consistent meditation practice. I completed ten meditation sessions of my thirty days, and that was enough.

In April, I focused on exercise again. I exercised four times per week, and meditation, my previously diligent practice, slipped quickly to the wayside; I completed three sessions in the entire month of April.

So it is.

The only thing I know how to do is to keep working on myself. I am the best place to apply what I know, and my ongoing experiments are the best teacher. I listen and learn from others, without taking their outside messages too seriously. We are all our own best teachers.

It is easy for me to know what to do. It would be easy for me to tell you what to do, as though that were the thing you needed most to make change.

What is hard is doing what we know we want to do.

With love,

Sarah

The Power of Saying Things Out Loud

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

The power of saying what you want out loud continues to astound me.

It was January 1, this year. I was setting goals. I outlined what I wanted to do this quarter — take singing lessons, finish the first draft of my book, a few more things.

Being in New York has been challenging at times. It’s a new environment, and all my close friends from San Francisco aren’t here. I knew the transition would mean setting up a new community, digging in and getting to know people, but I was up for it.

After a year, however, I confided in my husband that I wanted a little bit more: I wanted a New York bestie. I want a friend friend. You know, someone you confide in, giggle with, laugh with. Someone who can see you being stupid and doesn’t immediately write you off, but thinks, yup, this is all just part of it. Kind of like family. But my family and friends were all back on the West Coast.

I wanted that person here.

So I added it to my January wish list, unabashedly. “Find a New York bestie.”

In my mind, I thought that it might take a while to do. I immediately put up ideas in my mind of how these things happen: we’d have to friend-date for a while, find the right chemistry, weed through a bunch of people, etc. I planned on going to tons of events to meet new people, because, well, higher numbers, higher odds, right? It sounded somewhat exhausting for an introverted writer who likes being home alone. But still, I wrote it down in my notebook:

Find a New York bestie.

A few days later, my good friend comes by my work office just after New Years. We chat about how I’m doing at my new job, and I tell him about my goals list — somehow forgetting that I’d recently written out, “Find a bestie.”

“Goals? Cool! Can I see them?”

“Sure!” I respond. I share my money goals, my learning goals, the fact that I want to write a book…

“Hey, that’s a goal?” He asked, reading over my shoulder, pointing at my friend request.

“Oh! Yes,” I said sheepishly. (Argh, I think. I forgot I wrote THAT down.)

“I’ll be your New York Bestie,” he said instantly.

My eyes lit up. I hadn’t anticipated this.

Like five-year olds on a kindergarten playground at recess, the pact was made. We’d be watching out for each other.

48 hours from start to finish.

Seriously, write down your dreams. Say your dreams out loud.

Using your voice is very powerful.

I’m almost finished with my book, Use Your Voice. To stay notified of early releases and when it’s being published, sign up to stay on my newsletter list below.

Go Your Own Way

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

“Squeezing your business (or career, or relationship, or lifestyle) into someone else’s plan hurts, and it denies your own self-leadership.” — Tara Gentile, Quiet Power Strategy

There are a lot of plans and products out there that sell you a process or a formula. It seems so sexy, doesn’t it? A prescription-ready answer for building your business, life, or idea?

There’s a reason that the word “how” is one of the top-performing headlines in the copywriting world.

How … to build a business
How … to start your own startup
How … to write headlines that get results.
How … to get clear skin, fast.
How … a certain entrepreneur built their multi-million dollar business from the ground up.

Take a look at what you click on today. How many headlines start with the word “how”?

Why the word “how”? Because we want desperately to have a result that we see others getting. So we want to know how they did it.

Be careful.

You’re charting your own path. You are a unique set of skills, circumstances, relationships, and desires that aren’t the same as someone else’s. Copying someone else’s process or language might sound silly on you.

Knowing how is so tantalizing.

But is it you?

Mediocrity is Deadening. Be Different, Be Daring, Be Unusual.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

When the world asks you for typical, do one better.

When you’re surrounded by people who do only as much as they have to, you’ll feel pulled to do the same.

Mediocrity is a pull towards the middle. Averages pull brightness down.

Standards might bring the lowest up to passing, but they’ll also be a strong pull towards bringing the best down.

Fitting in and being well-liked is about being the same. It’s about not standing out, not being different, not challenging the way things are.

Bend the systems. Break the rules. Exceed expectations, and then blow their minds again. Better yet, remove expectations by doing something completely unexpected. Be willing to be a bit unusual, and disliked.

Yearn for more. Find your limits, and test them. Then learn some more. Never stop learning. Be bold, be different, be daring.

Why do the same thing that’s already been done?

Why be mediocre?

Making space: holding the container open, empty, and ready.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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Cleaning out sometimes feels a bit like a death.

Whenever I pack up bags to give away, it feels as though I’m going through old remnants of my past self, closets of things that represent who I used to be, and parting ways.

Lately I’ve been cleaning out everything: getting rid of extra toiletries, clothes, miscellaneous things, even most of my books, in an effort to minimize and make space.  Sometimes giving things away feels ceremonious and I’m glad to be letting go of things. I joyously depart from practices that no longer serve me.

Other times, it’s downright painful to leave a city you love behind and jump off the edge into unknown territory and build your next life.

Change can be painful, emotional, and difficult to embrace.

Christina Rasmussen, an author I stumbled across last year and who I have come to adore, started a similar conversation about letting go. She pointed out how these shifts happen across not just our physical lives, but our digital, connected, and spiritual lives:

“During the last couple of weeks I have been unfollowing some people I admired years ago. It is not that I no longer admire them; I am just looking for another place for my eyes to land. Facebook can be both a horizon and a wall. When you start seeing the wall, you know what you need to do.”

I couldn’t agree more. It is more than fine to unfollow. Unfollow to make space for your own brain to think; slow down to cherish your own heartbeat; let unread books become donations to people who will read them. And in the digital world, while the work people are doing may be beautiful and wonderful — it might not be the vibration that you need in your life anymore.

Even when cutting feels aggressive, by doing so, you make space for new beautiful souls to wander into your life. And better yet, you make new space for the same two souls to mature independently and for you to meet again in the future, on another level, with a new relationship.

By nature of existence, we both accumulate and eliminate.

Growth comes with death. Each year, living things cycle through similar processes. We all grow, evolve, shift, and change. What you love and need one year is not the same as the next.

Just as Kate Northrup writes about deadheading as a growth practice, making space is about removing what’s dead in your life so new growth can flourish. It is through this cutting, this elimination, this space-making, that we make room for us to grow beyond our container.

To expand.

Creating your own weekly review: Robert Cooper on finding ways to be exceptional.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Living up to your potential sounds pretty fancy. It’s something we all want, right? Live up to your potential. Maximize your potential. Be all that you can be. 

But how, exactly, do you do it? How does an intangible life objective become manifest into your daily routine? For Robert Cooper, author of The Other 90%: How to unlock your vast untapped potential for leadership and life, accessing our own hidden intelligence and achieving our potential lies in better understanding neuroscience and trusting our brains in order to unlock our full capacity.

What did you do last week?

What did you do last week? What did you do yesterday?

A friend of mine was chatting with me recently, and he confessed that he’d get to the end of his day and he would forget what it was that he had done during the day. He’d look at his to-do list and realize, “Oh, right—I did some account desk settings, some client help, answered emails, built my next list…”—but when prompted with a question, he couldn’t remember. Nothing stood out.

Our brains are designed to help keep us safe and warm—comfortable and secure. Cooper describes how this part of our brain works:

“A powerful part of the brain, the amygdala, wants the world to run on routine, not change. Located within the limbic system, an ancient area of the mind that deals with the way you perceive and respond to the world, the amygdala relentlessly urges us to favor the familiar and routine. It craves control and safety, which at times can be vital.”

The amygdala serves as the center of our brain to keep us safe and secure. When deciding between doing something new and something familiar, we’ll be steered to the familiar. This is helpful in many ways—but in terms of growing beyond your comfort zone, not so much.

“The amygdala’s instincts, which have evolved over thousands of years, tend to spill over into every aspect of life and promote a perpetual reluctance to embrace anything that involves risk, change, or growth.”

And here’s the kicker:

[tweetable hashtag=”—Robert Cooper via @sarahkpeck”]”Unless you choose to consciously override this brain tendency, you’re consigned to repeating the past.”[/tweetable]

After understanding how our brains operate to keep us safe, he devised a simple mechanism to “overcome our natural resistance to growth.” By regularly asking two questions—whether it’s by taping them to our bathroom mirror; scheduling a meeting with ourselves weekly, or having a journaling practice—we can begin to override the amygdala’s tendency to keep us safe and secure.

He recommends asking yourself two questions:

[tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck”]What did you do last week that was exceptional?[/tweetable]

[tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck”]What can you do next week that no one expects of you?[/tweetable]

Defining exceptional:

Exceptional might be loving more; it might a tender moment. It might be resting more, or doing less. What is exceptional for you—taking your child to school and holding his hand and listening to his stories—might be different for the next person.

For me, this week, I’ll follow up with my clients and prospects and touch base with people just to let them know I’m thinking of. This week, I’ll plan a brand-new webinar and teach myself a new software program to run more online classes. And this week, I’ll do week 6 of The Artist’s Way, a project still in fruition for me. Those are the exceptions to my week. Those are the pieces that are somehow difficult for me, and that will make this week above and beyond last week.

Breaking down ‘exceptional’ into weekly increments—noticing what’s different from one week to the next; understanding how a little bit more, or a little bit different this week can be the work that matters—is both tangible and do-able, and keeps you on track.

That way, when fifty-two weeks add up to a year as they always seem to do, you can look back and think, wow. That year was great.

[tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck”]What will you do this week that’s exceptional?[/tweetable]