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Tag: Creativity

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Attract!

Imagine you’re in a great mood and you walk into a room where there is someone in a terrible mood and someone else in a great mood. Who will you more likely want to spend time with?  Most likely the other person in a great mood. Right? What about the opposite? What if you walk into the same room but you’re in a terrible mood. Now, who will you spend time with? Misery loves company, right?

Now put yourself in the room with someone else walking in. If you’re in a great mood and so are they, they will more likely gravitate to you. The same is true if you’re in a terrible mood and so are they. Someone in a great mood doesn’t want to be brought down by a person who’s in a terrible mood. And a person in a terrible mood will just be irritated by someone in a great mood.

Now, replace “mood” with something more enduring like attitude or energy or vision. Run the same scenarios. People of like attitude, energy level, and/or vision will tend to gravitate to each other.

In his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell says law number 9 is “The Law of Magnetism: Who you Are is Who you Attract”  We tend to attract people who are like us. Look at your group of friends. If you’re a leader who has selected your own team, check out the “personality” of your team. Can you see it? Hopefully, you have complementary skill sets but there is a commonality isn’t there?

How It Works

Our behavior, how we act, is the outward expression of our attitudes and beliefs. Remember the Results Pyramid from my last post? Our beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our surroundings and about other people come out, intentionally or not, in how we behave. That behavior is observable by others. Sometimes the behavior is as simple as a facial expression or body language. When people observe your behavior, they decide, again, consciously or unconsciously, whether or not it’s “attractive.” Are they drawn to it or repelled by it? Like the person entering the room, they will be drawn to what most closely matches them.

Now, I have a question for you. How do you feel about your current life situation? Are you satisfied and happy? Great! I hope that continues and increases for you. If you’re not, the question is, What needs to change? Based upon the “Law of Magnetism” the answer is, you need to change. In business, we say, “Your system is perfectly designed to generate the results you’re getting.” And, most of us have heard the popular definition of insanity, “doing the same thing and expecting different results.” In this case, you are the system. You’re getting the results you’re designed to get … sort of.

I Am Who I Am … ?

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. We have grains of character that do not change. Ever heard those sayings?  Have you ever heard of a butterfly? A Frog? Metamorphosis? It means “a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one.” A change in the nature of a person if you condense it for our discussion. You can learn new tricks, change your spots, even the grains of your character.

How? Remember when we talked about hope? I said hope is our prescriptive imagination for less tangible things, including character. Our behavior creates results including attracting people and circumstances. Our behaviors (the collection of which comprise our character) come from beliefs which we have as a result of our experiences according to the “Results Pyramid.” I would take it a step further and say that our beliefs come from how we think about our experiences both bad and good whether real or imagined.

How we think, what we think about are important. The good news is that you can choose what you think about. You can choose what to imagine. Do you want to attract a different kind of people? Do you want to attract different kinds of circumstances? Start by imagining yourself as the kind of person to whom those people and circumstances would be drawn. Dwell on that image of yourself long enough and intentionally enough and in enough detail and it will begin to affect your beliefs which will alter your behavior and, in turn, your results.

Changing how you imagine yourself is the beginning of changing who you are and ultimately who and what you attract.

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Hope!

Does the world seem a bit strange these days? There is a lot going on that many people my age and older say seems unusual even for politics and world events. Depending on your political, religious, or cultural leaning, you may be excited or discouraged by what you see happening around you. Now zoom in. Look at your more immediate circumstances. How are things going there? How do you feel about the direction your circumstances are headed? I’m asking because of something I know about our imaginations.

Last week I talked about Imagine and imagination. It’s that amazing ability to visit places and create things in your mind. Creativity, I said, is born out of prescriptive imagination. Creativity is how you take a new thing you’ve imagined from your mind and make it real. That works most easily for concrete things like bridges, and buildings, artwork, and cakes. But what about less tangible things like character and relationships, career path, and health?

The Results Pyramid

No. This is not a mystical Egyptian religion. It comes from two books called The Oz Principle and Change the Culture, Change the Game. The idea is that results (at the top of the pyramid) come from Actions  (the next section on the pyramid just below results). That’s a “captain obvious” statement. You have to take action to get results. But the next idea is that Actions come from Beliefs. For example, if you believe your boss doesn’t care about the quality of your work, you will act a certain way. On the other hand, if you believe your boss is very demanding about quality, you’ll act differently.

The base of the pyramid is Experiences. Experiences are how we form our Beliefs. If your boss never checks your work and never comments on it then you will believe s/he doesn’t care about the quality. On the other hand, if they frequently check your work and provide feedback you will form a different belief.

So, the “Results Pyramid” says that Experiences lead to Beliefs which lead to Actions which lead to Results. If we try to change results by just changing our actions, we often fail because we haven’t addressed the underlying beliefs.

Imagination Again

Now try a little experiment with me. Replace the “Experiences” in the Results Pyramid with “Imagination.” Imagined experiences can be as powerful in affecting our beliefs as real experiences depending on how strongly imagined they are. Now, here’s what I know about our imaginations when it comes to unknown future outcomes and expectations. For a lot of reasons, we tend to default to imagine the worst possible outcome. Another word for that is worry, or, as I like to call it, faith in the worst possible outcome.

Now follow the results pyramid and you can see how a negative imagination can lead to a belief in the worst outcome (worry). That worry will play into the actions you take. When that happens the results are often a self-fulfilling prophecy of what you imagined.

Another Kind of Imagination

Hope! Hope is positive imagination. It is prescriptive imagination for things that are not as concrete. Here’s how the Apostle Paul described it in the New Testament book of Romans, “… hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” The way Paul talks about hope in this passage it has almost the same definition as imagination.

Hope is not just wishful thinking. Hope is when we intentionally form a positive outcome in our imagination and focus on it like it’s an experience. Belief, then, takes on the role of creativity by dictating the actions that are more likely to bring about the outcome we had hoped for. Leaders, for example, may call this vision.

Negative, worry-filled, hopeless people tend to spiral in that direction. Positive, hopeful people tend to produce much better results. It’s up to you how you use your imagination. Choose Hope!

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Imagine!

What is your favorite word? You have over a million to choose from if you consider the total number of English words. If your list is limited to the most commonly used words, then your choices slim down to around 170,000. Each individual uses only between 20,000 and 30,000 words so your favorite probably comes from your version of that list.  The most commonly used word in the English language is the word “the.” I’ve used it 5 times in this paragraph. It’s not my favorite but it’s very useful.

I have a good friend whose favorite word is “Imagine.” He has a wood carving of the word prominently displayed in his work area. Imagine is a good word and it’s moving up my list of favorites lately. Imagine is what we do with our imagination.

Not Just For Kids

Sometimes we associate things like imagination and wonder with children. We smile while we watch them take off in a rocket ship made from the cardboard box the new dishwasher came in, or when we see them staring for a long time at a bug. What happens to that in us?

I heard the story of a school administrator who asked a large group of kindergarten students, “How many of you can draw?” Almost every hand went up. Then he asked the same question of a similar size group of High School Seniors. Only 4 or 5 hands went up. Why the difference? Reality set in? Maybe. In his famous TED Talk called “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Sir Ken Robinson suggests that we systematically stifle and kill creativity in people by the way we teach. Creativity is the outward expression of imagination.

Stephen Covey said, “Everything is created twice. First in the mind and then physically.” Before you ever pound a nail to build a home, you first draw up blueprints. Even before the blueprints, which are a physical picture of the house, you imagine how you want it to be. Then you draw it, then you build it. So, imagination is more than just kid’s stuff.  We use it all the time.

What Is Imagination?

I haven’t called “Word Nerd Alert!” in a while so here we go. The online dictionary definition of Imagination is – “the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.” In other words, it’s the ability to picture things in your mind’s eye that are not present in physical reality.

Think of a dog. What came to mind? I can guarantee you it wasn’t the letters D-O-G. It was a picture of a dog.  Maybe it was your dog or a neighbor’s dog or the dog you had when you were growing up. But it was a picture.

How many external doors do you have in your house? Chances are you don’t have that number memorized so how would you be able to answer that question? You can walk around the inside and outside of your house in your mind (imagination) and “see” the doors so you can count them.

We use our imaginations all the time. If you think about it, we couldn’t drive anywhere or give someone directions without using our imagination, without mentally picturing the route. In fact, when we give directions, we’re attempting to transfer the picture in our mind to the other person’s mind so they can get where they’re wanting to go. Interesting.

What’s The Point?

We use our imaginations all the time. But, the vast majority of the time, we’re using them descriptively. We use them to recreate in our minds a picture of what we’ve experienced in physical reality.

The difference between most of us and the people we think of as “creative” is that those people, creatives, use their imaginations “prescriptively.” They use their imagination to make a picture in their minds of what they would like to see in physical reality. As the online dictionary definition of imagination said, forming new ideas or new concepts or new physical objects.  Then they get busy creating it the second time in physical reality.

It’s like one of those TV shows where teams compete with each other to make the best cake. Those teams get an idea in their minds of what their cake will look like, then they start working with what they have to make the physical version of what they imagined.

What might happen if more of us dared to use our imaginations prescriptively again? What if we spent some time making pictures in our minds of positive things we would like to see? Imagine!

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Eating On Purpose

No, this is not a post about dieting (as you can see from the picture). This is a post about eating out, on purpose. Suzi and I love to watch people in all kinds of settings. Restaurants are a particularly interesting study in human behavior. I’m sure you know what I mean. You often have the elderly couple who sit across from each other and eat without saying a word to each other during the entire meal. Or, you have the table full of 4 – 5 teens, each one on their phone seemingly isolated by that device from the person next to them. You may have the family with unruly kids running around making noise and a mess, or the table full of guys who’ve had a little too much and are laughing way too loud.

In the midst of all that is the restaurant staff. Servers, Bussers, Kitchen staff are all working hard to make everyone’s dining experience as good as it can be. These days, with short staff and restaurants opening to fuller capacity, that can be a tall order. Suzi and I have always made it our purpose to brighten the day of the restaurant staff when we go out to eat. Whether it was when we had all five of our young kids with us back in the day, or when we go now with just friends or by ourselves, we strive to make a connection with the staff and make their day.

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had servers tell us our group has been the best customers they’ve had all day, or that we’re so much fun or something like that. Another way they communicate their appreciation is by little extra things they do.

Orange Juice on A Sundae?

One example of that is Bailey at the “Rebel Grill.” I call it that because they never shut down during the pandemic. One evening a couple of months ago, Suzi and I and another couple who have the same mission we do when they eat out went to the Rebel Grill. We go there often but we had a new server this night. Her name was Bailey.

We had our usual fun and received our usual comments from her but she went a step further. We had been joking about toppings for a sundae for dessert. It went something like this, Bailey said, “I can put anything on your sundae that you want.” One of Us: “Can you put orange juice on it?”  She said, “If you want!” All joking aside, we ordered our favorite sundaes (with no orange juice). If you look closely at the picture I included with this post, you’ll see that Bailey made little signs, attached them to toothpicks, and put them on top of each of our sundaes. The signs said, “Orange Juice.” She actually did put orange juice on top of our sundaes!! You may also notice that she “Misinterpreted” the meaning of “Small Sundaes.”

Bailey was great fun but the interaction started out in the normal way. “Can I get you something to drink, etc?” As we two couples interacted with each other in a very positive way and drew Bailey into the conversation, she loosened up and had fun too. Those incredibly fun sundaes were her way of showing us that we had brightened her day.

A Follow Up To Orange Juice

We (all four of us) have been back to the “Rebel Grill” several times since then over the last couple of months but we hadn’t seen Bailey until just the other night. When we walked in Bailey was our hostess! We had a fun little reunion while she seated us then our server came to take our order. At first, we were a little disappointed it wasn’t Bailey. But, very shortly we were back in “Make her day” mode.  At dessert time we ordered with no unusual fanfare. But, when our sundaes arrived, there was extreme fanfare. Right in the middle of the whipped cream on each sundae sat a tiny paper condiment cup filled with … orange juice!

Bailey not only remembered our previous encounter, but she brought our new server into the story. How fun is that?! That’s just one story. There are many. Some are fun, others are touching, some others turned into long-term friendships. Here’s my recommendation. Go out to eat. Do it with a purpose to makes someone’s day and see what happens.

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Hello, Opportunity, Nice to Meet You

In the last few posts, I’ve been talking about problems and what they do for us. They introduce us to ourselves. Problems introduce us to others. Now I want to talk about how problems introduce us to opportunities. I’m what I like to call a “word nerd.” One of the first things I do when I’m learning something or wanting to communicate an important point is to look up the words being used. Often the definitions open up new insight. I wondered if that might help with this topic.

What is a Problem? – a problem is “a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome”

OK. So, what’s an Opportunity? – an opportunity is “a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something.”

Here’s how this one works. If you take opportunity’s “set of circumstances” and substitute it with problem’s “unwelcome or harmful situation” you get  “an unwelcome or harmful matter or situation that makes it possible to do something.” That’s how problems introduce us to opportunities. The problem, by definition, needs to be dealt with and overcome. In that way it not only makes it possible to do something, it requires us to do something. Whatever that something is, we would most likely not have done it without the problem.

In last week’s post, I talked about people who use problems as stepping stones to success. Am I one of those people? Are you?

Here are some examples of that kind of thinking.

Infectious Disease

Infectious diseases are a real problem. We know that all to well since the onset of COVID 19 almost a year ago. The story goes that Sir Alexander Fleming was working on a cure for diseases. He tried all kinds of things. Finally, in frustration, he threw away his petri dishes. A little later he noticed that mold was growing on those petri dishes. He also noticed that the mold was killing the bacteria. He started studying what he had found and the result was penicillin which has saved countless lives for over 100 years.

In this case, the solution was in what Fleming threw away. Don’t quit too early or you may miss the solution you’re looking for.  Don’t give up.

Burs on the Dog

If you have a dog and have ever gone hiking you know about burs. Those pesky little balls that stick in the dog’s fur. Even if you don’t have a dog, you know what I’m talking about because they stick to your socks, too. Well, a Swiss engineer named George de Mestral decided one day after a hike in the Alps, to look at those pesky burs under a microscope to see what made them stick so well. What he found was tiny hooks on the burs that allowed them to grab on to the loop weave of socks and to the dog’s fur. That discovery led to the invention of Velcro. Ever heard of it?

In this case, the very nature of the problem led to a world-changing invention. Study the problem. The very thing that makes it harmful or unwelcome, may be what makes it possible for you to change your world.

No More House

Three days after the election of 2008, the company I worked for laid me and six other highly compensated, newer employees off. No one was hiring then, at least in my industry. The housing crisis at that time expanded an industry called “property preservation.” It’s where you care for the inside and outside of foreclosed properties. I attempted to get into that industry but was unsuccessful. Unemployment didn’t cover my mortgage so I could see that in a few months I would be without a home. Long story short, I found a job outside my industry that moved us to China for a life-changing (in a good way) two-year experience.

In this case, the problem caused me to take action on something I never would have even considered under different circumstances. That led to a life-changing experience. Think outside the box. Color outside the lines. Try something different.

Some people don’t even talk about “problems.” They substitute the word “opportunity” because their mindset is on what possibilities that harmful or unwelcome matter presents.

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The Dancer and The Book

One of the stops on our recent vacation was Olathe, Kansas (Kansas City area) to see our oldest daughter, Juliana, who moved there three months ago.  She’s the one I mentioned in my post “How Does A Klutz Become A Dancer?” This is the same girl who, right after graduating from High School, was given no choice but to move to China with her parents and two younger siblings. “What am I going to do in China,” she asked? I’ll tell you what she did. She started a dance school.

I was working at an international JK – 12 school and Juliana saw an opportunity. She started classes in the cafeteria after school. She had classes by age group and by dance style (Hip-hop, Jazz, Lyrical, Ballet, etc.). The junior Kindergarten kids were adorable and she even had some of the staff in classes. She learned how to get costumes made and had several full recitals over the two years we were there. She charged for the classes but also held bake sales to raise money for a scholarship fund so no one who wanted to dance was unable to.

Fast forward to three months ago. Juliana has become a Dental Assistant. She was working and living in an apartment with two other girls in the same town as us . The three of them lived in a two bedroom, two bath apartment that cost them over $1,700 a month for rent. Their transportation was a minivan Juliana’s roommate had borrowed from her dad. When their lease was up, the roommate decided to move home to save money so she could buy a car. Juliana and her two dogs moved in with us temporarily.

Time to Get Out of Dodge

After several months of living with her parents again, Juliana wanted to get back out on her own. She decided to leave California because of the cost of living and she does not like the hot summers. So, where do you go? She had three criteria for choosing another place to live and work. One, it had to be a state where her Dental Assistant credentials would be accepted with no additional work. Two, there had to be a family member or friend living there so she wouldn’t be completely on her own (that one may have been influenced by mom). Three she had to be able to afford an apartment on her own.

After a couple weeks of research Juliana zeroed in on Olathe, Kansas. She has a cousin there who agreed to let her stay until she got a place. She had put her name out in the area and had several phone interviews which led to invitations to in-person interviews, so she packed her stuff and her dogs into a rented minivan, got a friend to drive along with her and hit the road.

Within two weeks of arriving in Olathe, Juliana, after having several working interviews with different Dental offices, had multiple job offers. She loves the office where she’s working and the pay and benefits are far better than she had in California. Better pay and benefits with the lower cost of living, I’d say she landed pretty well. She found a two bedroom, one bath apartment that she can afford on her own (with her two dogs). That’s the girl we went to visit.

Dancers Gotta Dance

We arrived on a Monday night. Juliana got the next day off so we had an evening, all day on Tuesday, and the morning of Wednesday together. She took us to the Kansas City Market downtown, to Union Station and to a cool “Made In Kansas City” shop with some amazing ice cream. The day we left, we had brunch at a local breakfast-and-lunch-only place that was delicious.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time with Juliana. One thing that tickled me happened the night we arrived. We planned to have dinner together which we did, but before we had dinner, Juliana wanted to keep her appointment. It was her class at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio where she’s moved on from Hip-hop, Jazz, Lyrical and Ballet to Ballroom and Swing. Hey, dancers gotta dance. I love that she’s doing that.

O Yeah, The Book

Suzi and I needed something to do while Juliana was at her dance class. I took Suzi to a nearby store where she wanted to look for a few things and, at her suggestion, I want across the street to a Barnes and Noble Bookstore.

On the way to the bookstore I remembered a book I’d been wanting to get so I went in, bought it, and started reading it in the car while I waited for Suzi and Juliana. The book is called The Go-Giver: A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea. It’s by Bob Burg and John David Mann. I absolutely loved it. I’ve read it twice already. The title is a link to the book so you can check it out.

Stories

Stories can have purpose. I could have shared this story (actually there are several stories here) to a number of ends. I could want to talk about entrepreneurship (dance school in China) or to introduce you to the character of my daughter. I may want to highlight some of the spots in Kansas City or talk about the comparative cost of living in different parts of the country. I definitely wanted to introduce you to a great book. What other purposes could you see for these stories? What are some of your stories that can have a purpose?

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The Cover Letter

A Friend of mine is a highly successful salesmen. We’ve worked together on some big projects in the past so I know firsthand how good he is. He is especially good at writing. Whatever he writes is concise, precise, clear, engaging, sometimes entertaining (when appropriate), always on point. So you can imagine my surprise when he called and asked me to review something he’d written as a cover letter for a potentially huge deal. I was humbled and honored by the request.

What he sent me was typical of his work and required none of the editorial comments you see in the picture I chose for this post (it is one of the pictures that came up in my search for “cover letters”). In fact, he not only told a story, he told two. They were both hypothetical stories that came from his understanding of the needs of this potential client and how the service he was selling would specifically connect to meet those needs.

The Power of Stories

Last week I wrote about how I used a personal story to connect with an audience. I mentioned that stories are powerful to connect, to teach, and to persuade. We often make a big mistake when we set out to connect, teach, or persuade. That mistake is that we aim for the head. We think that we need to engage a person’s thinking to achieve those goals. We eventually do want the person to think but the heart is the gateway to the head. I must know, like, and trust you before I would be willing to connect with you, learn from you, or be persuaded by you.

One of the most powerful things about stories is that they engage the heart. Whenever I speak to an audience, I hear comments afterward like, “I love that story you told about …” or “It’s cool how you talk about your family.” I don’t often hear, “Now I understand the definition of …” or, “Your second point was very informative.” But guess what, the story that person loved actually defined the term and what I said about my family drove home the second point of my speech.

Stories are about ROI (return on investment). People remember stories more easily than they remember facts. If you want someone to remember a point you’re making, make the point with a story. If you are trying, for example, to advocate for children in the foster care system, it’s overwhelming to hear there are over 400,000 of them. It’s so overwhelming that we can’t take it in. If, however, you tell me the story of Alicia (made up name), who had a particular experience in the foster care system, I can grasp that. The story elicits far more from me than the numbers.

  • Stories connect
  • Stories illuminate
  • Stories illustrate
  • Stories explain
  • Stories inspire
  • Stories are powerful

Your Stories

After hearing Suzi and me share one of our stories, someone said, “You should write a book.” We’ve had a few people say that, actually, so one day we thought it would be fun to sit down and list episodes in our life that were memorable for us. I think at that point we ended up with a list of around 65 stories. Some more significant, others less but still memorable. Some of them were sad, some hilarious. It was a fun exercise, like going through a verbal photo album.

I’d like to suggest that you do the same. Take some time to jot down as many significant events in your life as you can remember in one sitting. Then pick a handful of them and write out each full story. That’s an exercise great communicators do to sharpen their communication skills. When you’re communicating, use one of your stories to connect, inform, or persuade.

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My Black Swan

Several years ago I took my young family on vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was just Suzi, our oldest son, Joshua, and me at the time. The resort had a tall hotel on the beach and a condominium style set of single story units arranged around a beautiful pond behind it which is where we stayed. When we first arrived and were checking the place out, I noticed three beautiful black swans gliding across the water on the pond. I grabbed Joshua and the camera and said, “Let’s go see the swans, buddy.” As we approached the water’s edge, the swans gently turned and started to swim in our direction. “Cool,” I thought, “if they get close enough, we’ll be able to get a great picture.”

I got to the edge and crouched down holding Joshua between my knees to keep him steady by the water. By this time the swans were moving in our direction. “Look at that, Josh,” I said, “they’re coming to get their picture taken.” While I watched the swans through the viewfinder of my kodak instamatic camera three things suddenly began to occur to me all at once. 1. Items seen through the viewfinder of this camera appear farther away than they actually are, 2. I had a vague recollection that someone once told me swans are mean, 3. The two outside henchmen swans had stopped swimming and the bigger boss swan was coming up out of the water right at us.

I dropped the camera, quickly picked Joshua up and started backpedaling as fast as I could. I slipped on the wet ground, got up, lifted Joshua into the air and turned away from the attacking swan in one movement. Just then the monster swan reached out and bit me on the butt. I screamed like a little girl (no offense to little girls intended) and ran to the deck where my lovely wife was laughing hysterically. The black swan literally did a victory dance around the deck with it’s wings flapping and then went back to join it’s henchmen in the pond.

To make matters worse, there was a group of construction workers across the pond on top of some scaffolding who had seen the whole thing, too. The roar of their laughter from across the pond completed my humiliation.

So, my Black Swan Event was literally a black swan.

So Why The Story?

I began with that story a few years ago at a high school graduation where I’d been asked to give the commencement speech. I felt less humiliated when they roared with laughter, probably because I hammed it up and acted out some of the story. They especially liked when I grabbed my butt while describing where the swan bit me.

As I explained to that audience, my black swan story had nothing and everything to do with the topic of the speech. They agreed when I suggested that my story had connected us in an unexpected way. Many of them didn’t know me and I only knew a few of them. But, because of my story, they now knew they liked me and believed they could trust someone who would be that funny and vulnerable in public.

The topic of my speech was the power of stories. This was a Christian School so I went on to show how God uses stories throughout the Bible to connect with us, to inform us and to persuade us.

Then I turned to the graduates. “Most of your story is yet to be written,” I said. I played the Natasha Bedingfield song, “Unwritten” for them and then challenged them to think about what kind of story they were going to write and how their story might impact the world. Stories are powerful.

Regardless of where you are in life, whether you’re retired, you’re approaching “retirement age,” are in college, or you’re in the middle of life, family, and career, the same thing that was true of those high school graduates is true of you. The rest of your story is yet unwritten.

I’d like to encourage you to do two things. First, use your story up to this point to connect with people. Don’t be afraid to let people get to know you a little bit by sharing some of your story. Second, think about how the next few chapters of your story will go. Will they be about consistency, surprise, struggle, achievement, overcoming? How will your story impact others? I’d love to hear some of your story in the comments below this post.

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Are You At Capacity … Nope!

Suzi and I were at an event with our kids and she said, “Oh, get some pictures of this.” I pulled out my phone and opened the camera app to start shooting when it said, “Not enough space left to take pictures.” the camera had reached it’s capacity. I could fit no more pictures on it, but this was important so I frantically began looking through the gallery for the random funny face selfies my kids had taken, or the unintentional shot of my foot to delete in order to free up space for the pictures I wanted to take. I lost a few moments in the process but was able to capture some nice pictures in the end.

Capacity is a limit. By definition it means “the maximum amount that something can contain or produce.” Are you operating at capacity? At first, that may sound like a good thing, to operate at capacity. But, consider this quote by Albert Einstein: “The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.” That suggests what John Maxwell calls the “Law of Expansion: Growth Always Increases Your Capacity.”

How Much is Full?

The truth is, nobody knows. We’ve all heard the myth that we only use 10% of our brain power. That’s been debunked by science, but true or not, we do know that people who think they know everything don’t tend to learn and grow. On the other hand, we’ve all experienced the phenomenon where we learn something new and realize in that moment that there is more we don’t know than we do know. Our capacity has just been stretched.

Living overseas was a huge capacity expansion for our family. Experiencing the sights, sounds, and smells of another country on the other side of the planet expanded us to realize there was a whole world we knew nothing about prior to living there. There are hundreds of more subtle examples, When you go to the grocery store to buy bread, for example, you select the bread you want, buy it, take it home and enjoy it.

I’ve worked in bakeries in my past. There is a whole commercial baking world most people know nothing about. There are GMPs (Good Manufacturing Practices) to be followed, food processing sanitation to be sure equipment is clean, recipe formulas, line speeds, proofing, oven temps, packaging, shipping, and distribution. Each of these elements has experts.

My point is that I didn’t know anything about anything until I learned it. And, each thing I learned actually increased my capacity to learn more. The same thing happens for you. So, how do we get intentional about expanding our capacity?

Expand Your Thinking Capacity

  1. Stop thinking MORE WORK and start thinking WHAT WORKS? If working longer and harder made you successful then more developing countries would be successful. Put your time and energy into what gives the greatest return.
  2. Stop thinking CAN I and start thinking HOW CAN I? When you add the question How? you have moved from doubt to solution finding. Doubt cripples and hinders, Hunting for solutions is energizing.
  3. Stop thinking ONE DOOR and start thinking MANY DOORS. There is always more than one way to achieve a goal. The problem with one door thinking as that you are usually disappointed when you go through that door because it doesn’t deliver all it promised and you wind up going through other doors anyway. Keep options open on the front end.

Expand Your Capacity For Action

  1. Stop doing what you’ve ALWAYS done and start doing what you COULD and SHOULD do. At first you do what you know. But the more that you do what you know you will discover additional worthy things, innovative things, that you know you should do. At this point there’s a pivotal decision. If you know what you should do but continue to do what you’ve always done, you’re in a rut. But if you know what you should do and then do what you know you should do, you’re leading and you’re growing. Get out of your comfort zone. Stay in your strength zone.
  2. Stop doing WHAT is expected and start doing MORE THAN is expected. Jack Welch calls this “getting out of the pile.” During your annual evaluation, do you want to be the person who “Meets Expectations” or the one who “Exceeds Expectations?” I had a boss once who said his favorite three words were, “And then some.” He wanted that extra from himself and others.
  3. Stop doing important things ONCE IN AWHILE and start doing important things EVERY DAY. Important things are those that are
    1. Required – things that not only must be done but that only you can do
    2. Deliver the greatest return – don’t just look for the “low hanging fruit”, look for what will multiply results
    3. Bring the greatest reward – the things that are in your sweet spot, where you passion, your strengths, and your dreams come together

Nike had a slogan, “There is no finish line.” In the same way, unlike my camera, you will never be at capacity. Keep growing.

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The 5 T’s

Hi Friends. This is a bit of a different post for me. It occurred to me awhile ago that five members of the Thomason family are actively either posting online or have an online presence for a business. Those 5 guys are my Dad, Jim Thomason, my brother Dr. Dan Thomason, my other brother Dr. Steve Thomason, my son Justin Thomason, and me. I thought I’d take a few minutes to highlight the other four.

The first is my Dad. Jim Thomason is a retired pastor who is also an artist. He regularly posts a blog where he features a piece of his art every week. He writes briefly about the art, it’s medium and inspiration, and follows that up with a “Thought” which is always a wise devotional. Here’s a sample.

Next is my younger brother, Dr. Dan Thomason. Dan is a Psychologist with an emphasis on Marriage and Relationship coaching and counseling. In addition to his practice, Dan does speaking, training and coaching. Check out his website where you can start the “Relationship Makeover Blueprint,” book his to speak, or begin receiving the benefit of his coaching.

This is my youngest brother, Dr. Steve Thomason. Steve is a pastor and an artist. While he does fine art like our Dad, you’re more likely to see his cartoon work. Steve put himself through college doing caricatures at theme parks in the summer and did that as his business for awhile before entering the ministry. His latest website, “Visual Preacher.com,” highlights how he combines both.

Finally, my son, Justin Thomason. Affectionately known as “Mr. T” by his high school students, Justin is a social studies teacher. He has also been a volunteer youth group leader at his church for many years. Justin is a song writer, musician with one album so far. You can find “Where You Find Meaning” by Southbound 5 on Apple Music. Justin also regularly publishes a podcast, “Chicken Scratch” I had the privilege of being a guest on Justin’s podcast on leadership.

I’m proud of all of you!