Intentional Tuesdays

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?  I’m not talking about some in-the-moment decision, like ordering the steak or the quinoas salad.  I’m talking about changing your mind on an important topic or even changing one of your core beliefs.  I asked myself this question…when was the last time that I changed my mind?  The answer was alarming.

I’ll save the deep exploration of my own thinking for the video portion of this post.  Suffice to say, I found it really difficult to come up with examples where I changed my mind on a significant topic. This surprised me, because I see myself as an open-minded person.  If that is true, then why don’t I have a bunch of examples where I changed my mind?  Is it because I’m just on the right side of the argument most of the time?  Wait, don’t answer that.

Let’s talk about the phenomenon of changing our minds.  To keep us on...

Most of us live a significant portion of our lives driven by the philosophy: more is better. We may not even realize that we’re doing this. You can always use more money. There’s always another promotion to achieve. Who doesn’t need more space? Perhaps you are not into the material trappings. If it’s recognition that you crave, you can always have more likes, more shares, more accolades, more admirers. You can always have more friends, more connections. I can give more examples, but I think you get the idea. (See what I did there?)

There are a few problems inherent in the more is better model. For one, this race never ends. As soon as you achieve the next level, there is a new one right there, vying for your time and attention. We’re wired to keep climbing. I am exhausted. How about you? 

Another problem is the corollary to more is better. It’s called less is worse and it’s even more insidious because it operates almost entirely in our...

Recently, a friend came to me to get my thoughts on a dilemma she was facing.  She had just received a really great job offer that would allow her to make a lot more money, offered tremendous career development opportunity, and would shorten her commute, to boot.  “What’s the problem?” I asked?   She said,  “I feel like the work that I do in my current job is really important.  I feel like I’m doing good in the world and I don't want to lose that.”  My friend was experiencing “diverging journeys” and by recognizing this she would be able to stand confidently in her decision about whether to take the new job or stay in her current one. 

Each of us is simultaneously living two distinct journeys.  In their lecture, The Hero’s 2 Journeys, authors and screenwriters Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler describe the inner journey and the outer journey.  The hero’s outer journey is...

In his Masterclass on screenwriting, Aaron Sorkin contrasts writing to painting a fence.  He says that writing requires you to be in a good mood, but your mood doesn’t matter when it comes to painting a fence.  Sorkin's point is that to do our best work, we must be in the right frame of mind.  Mindless work, such as painting a fence, only requires we go through the motions.  Painting fences is my specialty.  

I often find myself choosing to do mindless work when I know that I should be doing something else.   I do this all the time.  In fact, I did it 30 seconds ago while writing this blog post.  I saw an email come in that I knew I could deal with immediately and I shifted my attention to address that, rather than focus on the more challenging task of writing.  I didn’t judge the email to be a higher priority, my subconscious recognized it as an easy opportunity for victory, so I took it.  Of course, this...