Tag Archives: experience

Create experiences

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This is something I’ve thought a bit about over the years. As time passes, and I’m looking ahead at retirement, I think about the time I have left with family and friends. I wonder how do I create experiences rather than just reminiscing? When we meet up, are we doing something together or are we reflecting and sharing stories of the past?

This isn’t to say reminiscing isn’t enjoyable, but simply identifying that this shouldn’t be what we do every time we get together. Are we doing something active? Are we doing something novel? Are we creating opportunities to experience something new? Are we designing our time together or just letting time pass.?

It’s easy to live a life of ‘rinse and repeat’, going through the day-to-day routine and taking both people and time for granted… ‘they will always be there’… ‘there will always be more time’. There is comfort in those beliefs, but also caution. Are we just going through the motions of life with little emotion? Or are we creating experiences that will give us future reasons to reminisce the next time we meet?

Ability and Agility

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I love this quote, shared in a video on LinkedIn:

“It used to be about ability. And now, in a changing world, I think what we should be looking for is agility. I want to know how quickly do you change your mind? How fast are you to admit you’re wrong? Because what that means is you’re not just going to be reacting to a pandemic or to AI, you’re actually going to be anticipating those problems and seeing around corners, and then leading change as opposed to being a victim of it.” ~Adam Grant

It’s more than just anticipating problems, it’s about being agile, understanding challenges, and addressing them while they are small. It’s about understanding your strengths, and the strengths of your team… as well as weaknesses.

It’s about Agile Ability, which is why I titled this ‘Ability AND Agility’, rather than ‘Ability VERSUS Agility’. We need to embrace our failures and learn from them, recognize problems early, even predict them and be preemptive. This is so different than a culture of accountability and blame.

The desired student, employee, partner, colleague of the future will learn what they need to on the job. They’ll be exceptional because of their agility and willingness to learn, not just because of what they came to the table already knowing.

Fishing with friends

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I got to go fishing with a couple different friends in the last few weeks. The first time we caught some trout and it was a blast. The second time, with a different friend, he caught a small catfish and I didn’t catch anything… This was also a wonderful day.

No one wants to spend a day fishing and not catch anything… that’s not the goal. But going fishing with friends isn’t just about fishing, it’s about doing something with a friend. It’s about having an experience and not just hanging out and reminiscing about past experiences. It’s all about the experience!

Yes, that experience might be more memorable if you hook a big one, but it’s not the fish that matters, it’s quality time with a friend that really matters.

Unselfish Giving

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I have a family member who isn’t a doctor but has volunteered to go help doctors provide surgeries in a rural part of a poor country, where the locals can’t afford or don’t have access to some of these lifesaving procedures. It will be a very rewarding experience, but it’s also something that won’t feel like a vacation. It will be challenging, especially during triage when some patients will be turned away. Still, I know that this will be a very rewarding experience for her.

That’s the amazing thing about unselfish giving. The reward is worth the sacrifice. Unselfish giving is innately rewarding. On the other hand selfish giving comes with an expectation of reward: Accolades, attention, recognition, appreciation. These things might also come with unselfish giving, but they aren’t expected. And for an unselfish giver, there is no false modesty in receiving recognition, in fact there might even be embarrassment.

The difference between unselfish and selfish giving is in the external expectations. Selfish giving needs the external reward and unselfish giving only requires internal rewards. Both can get the external rewards, however when the selfish giver doesn’t get them, they feel cheated and less joyful, whereas the unselfish giver can receive no external rewards or attention and be equally if not more joyful for not having to face the unwanted attention.

Ironically whether a kindness is given for selfish or unselfish reasons, a good is still being done. And recognition is probably deserved either way. It’s only when the recognition isn’t received that the true value of giving unselfishly really shows up.

In the end, I believe that unselfish giving is inherently more rewarding, more joyful, and more fulfilling. But motives are not that important as long as good is being done… and so if someone wants praise for doing something good, well, do the unselfish thing and give it to them.

Being vs Doing

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I was listening to a guided meditation, and it mentioned that how we live in the world is more focused on doing rather than being.

This made me think about the multitude of tasks we do on autopilot, and how we aren’t always fully present when we do them. It made me think about my work day and how much of it is spent focused on tasks, and not at all on the experience.

Doing is an external experience focused on productivity and achievement. Being is intrinsic, it emphasizes awareness, mindfulness, and the value of life. Doing is all about chasing goals and getting stuff done, it’s what moves us ahead and lets us make things happen. But being… That’s about soaking in the moment, really living it up, and savoring life’s journey as it happens.

This isn’t an either/or thing, but I feel like we, I feel like I, could benefit from being more… More present, more aware, more in the moment. Whole days can go by where I’m task oriented, focused on what needs to be done, and not aware or appreciative of my experience. It’s really about valuing the life we have as it unfolds, rather than just checking off boxes of tasks and achievements mindlessly.

If we are too busy only doing, are we allowing ourselves the opportunity to value and appreciate this wonderful life we are living? Are we living at all, or just moving from task to task, like mindless robots. I laugh a lot more when I’m being and not just doing. I connect with people more meaningfully. I find joy in the tasks that I do. Being is an awareness that sits above the things we do, and it changes a life of activity for the sake of activity, to one where we can find meaning, and joy, throughout our day, and on days yet to come.

A thousand faces

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Way back in the 1970’s my parents bought me a doll for Christmas. His name was Hugo: Man of 1000 faces. Here’s a video of him.

He was creepy, but it was fun putting disguises on him, and he really looked different depending on what you added to his face.

We are more subtle. We too have thousands of faces, we just don’t wear them externally. We hold within us past experiences that shape and mold us. We react to events, experiences, and even conversations based on our exposure to related interactions, challenges, and hardships. We are clearly rational with some responses and blindly irrational with others.

We have the patience of Job with respect to a challenging situation, and yet for a small, almost insignificant other issue we snap in anger when things don’t go as they should. We demand control in some situations and easily go with the flow in other situations. And while there may be no external reason or rationale for why we treat these situations differently, there are internal, learned reasons why we react so uniquely.

Two people go through the same hardship and one has a trauma response while the other builds resilience and confidence.

We don’t experience events equally. For one person the response to a crisis is intellectual, for another it’s intuitive, and still another an uncontrollable, visceral body response.

We see ourselves as one person but we are many. We think we respond consistently to different events but we are nuanced and actually have many faces we project. This isn’t schizophrenia, it’s life. It’s the 1,000 faces we wear. It’s the framing we have built around the past experiences we’ve had, which are totally different than everyone else, even if the experiences were similar, even for siblings who share the same events in there lives.

Maybe that’s why this creepy doll, Hugo, was so much fun to play with. He embodied the physical representation of who we really are.

Delight in the moment

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It’s 6:17 and I just got off of a Stair Master. When I am at a gym with cardio equipment I don’t have at home, I like to use it. I was contemplating heading out to the beach to see the sunrise at 6:21, but it would be a rush to get to a good viewpoint from here just in time.

Then in my head I saw the sunrise I took a picture of yesterday. Then I saw an image of the sunset I took the day before. Beautiful. Serene. Majestic.

Running from here to capture the moment today would not have been the same. It would have felt like an effort, and the moment would have been more about documenting that I saw it again, rather than appreciating it.

Tomorrow I’ll plan to be at the water, coffee in hand. I will not lift my camera as I have on previous mornings, instead I’ll just enjoy the moment. Un-rushed, appreciative, and listening to the waves crash.

You can rush to an event, but you can’t rush a feeling you are seeking. You can race to a meeting, and be present, but you also have to be aware of your presence.

I missed the sunrise this morning, but if I rushed to see it, it would not have added value to the memories of sunrises I already hold in my mind. There is the idea of watching the sunset, there is the actual viewing of it, and there is the experience it evokes. Today would have been all about the first two… and so I really didn’t miss all that much.

Tomorrow I’ll delight in the moment.

Now back to my workout.

Embarrassment is the cost of entry

I love this quote,

“Embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren’t willing to look like a foolish beginner, you’ll never become a graceful master.” ~ Ed Latimore

How many times have I not tried because in trying I might look bad? How many times have I hesitated to learn, because I would look foolish in my attempt? How many times have I let the fear of embarrassment get in the way of beginning something new?

Probably more often than I’d like to admit.

This was especially true as a kid. This is especially true of many kids today.

How about you?

Always improving

I had a conversation with a good friend yesterday. He has a renovation going on and is quite involved in the process. He lamented about how busy he is and said something interesting to me. To summarize:

‘I don’t mind being busy, it just gets exhausting always doing things a little beyond what you are comfortable with.’

That’s a really interesting point. We live in a world where very few people, athletes for example, hone their skills and spend a tremendous amount of time doing only what they are good at. Most people are good at something and spend hours doing something else, scrambling to make time for the thing(s) they enjoy doing.

They love the design process, but spend most of their time building. They love building but spend most of their time ordering supplies and managing people. The love managing people but spend hours managing paper or digital files and documents. Beyond these examples, they spend time learning new, more challenging tasks and implementing them with beginner eyes, while not doing the things they know they can do well.

I understood my friend’s point and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to focus on the part of your job you are really good at for a while and not always be working on new challenging skills?’ Then we both had a chuckle realizing that we’d feel like we’d be standing still if we didn’t push ourselves. But that’s the impetus to ask the question,

Where does the push to always be improving come from?

Is it intrinsic? Is it organizational? Is it cultural? Are there places where jobs have not magnified in complexity and people are given the time they need to mostly do the things they love doing, and not just a lot of what they have to do? That doesn’t mean they stop improving, just that the things they improve on are things they really want to be doing. The idea of constantly improving is both appealing and exhausting. I think the key to making it feel good is to find reasons to celebrate achievements, to recognize gains, and to appreciate the journey… because there are always ways to improve… always more that can be done… always things to learn.

Tiny little boxes

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the over examined life isn’t worth living either. 

Isn’t it interesting how two people can look at the same experience and see it completely differently? How is it that 2 prisoners of war with similar experiences can come out of the ordeal and one has PTSD while the other emerges strong and resilient?

I think some people let past experiences spill into their everyday life, while others compartmentalize their past into tiny little boxes. Some people tie their identity to things that make them feel like they are not in control, that things happen to them, that they must continue to endure what has already happened. The past is as in front of them as it is behind them.

Other people see past events in a metaphorical rear view window… there when you are looking at it, but the memories in the reflection seem distant. And the mirror is somewhere in your peripheral vision when you aren’t looking, and easy to forget to pay attention to, unless there is a reason to look back.

A loss of someone you love can haunt you, or it can provoke feelings of love and fond memories. A loss of limb can leave one person devastated with respect to what they can no longer do, and another person is left thankful for what they still can do. Both of these are painful things to endure. But the frame around the experiences can be very different. Two people and one experience. One frames the experiences into tiny little boxes, the other lets the past experience spill into new experiences.

Do we get to decide? Or are we wired a certain way? Maybe a bit of both.

Does our upbringing influence our ability to cope? Certainly! Trauma transcends generations, and growing up in a psychologically unhealthy environment will impact one’s ability to cope. Tiny boxes aren’t built in stressful environments, and it’s hard to ignore the rear view mirror when you are constantly reminded that objects there are much closer than they appear.

But there is always an opportunity to wrap things up in tiny little boxes… still there, still available, just not spilled out into the present when the memories don’t enrich the current moment. Because when we spend too much time looking in the rear view mirror, it’s hard to see the road ahead.