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How do you spell infinity?  (Thanks to Savage Chickens)

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Where do your stand?  (Thanks to TruthDig cartoons.)

From our newsletter Outside the Lines – The Business Edition

Blackout

The power went out last night at 10pm, and 24 hours later it’s yet to go back on.

That wouldn’t be so bad if I was still in Australia and frolicking in an Antipodean summer.

But I’m back in Toronto and going through a deep freeze.  It’s -25 degrees Celsius outside (that’s about -15F) and it’s not getting any warmer any time soon.
I’ve escaped to the other side of town and found one of my favourite coffee shops up and running and warm. So I’m sipping espresso and warming my toes and musing about power.

Discussing power

In organizations, flowing along beneath most conversations are questions about power, responsibility and accountability.

Peter Block’s work first opened my eyes to this, and since then I’ve been encouraging people to surface the issues of power, bring them into the light and discuss the implications.

Imagine this conversation with your team, with your boss, with your customer, with your CEO, with your kids, with your colleagues…

• How do you feel about the amount of power you have in this situation?

• Here’s how I feel about the amount of power I have.

• What shall we do about that?

A powerful and difficult conversation.  (And one that gets easier the more you do it.)

While you work your way up to framing those conversations (start with the person with whom it will be most easy,) here are some additional ways to think about your power.

Four tips to keep your power

1. Get clear about your Great Work.

Unless you know what work really matters to you, what impact you want to have in this world, it’s hard to decide what to say Yes to and what to say No to – ultimate expressions of your power.

Know what you want.  Ask for what you want.  (Knowing the answer may be “no”.)

Resource: Find Your Great Work

2. Remember that feedback is not the truth.

Mostly, it’s just someone else’s opinion of you, and more often than not, that’s a mix of judgment, projection and hypothesis.

When someone gives you feedback, take what’s useful and ignore the rest.

Resource: Non Violent Communication

3. Go easy on yourself.

One of the places our power leaks out most conspicuously is through our own self-judgment.  Our capacity to beat ourselves up – the notorious “inner critic” – constantly diminishes who we are.

Resource: Taming Your Gremlin

4. Stop taking it all so damned seriously.

Hands up if what you’re doing is life and death.  I thought so.  OK, hands up if what you’re doing will really matter in 100 years time?  Yep, the same.

It’s one of the paradoxes of Great Work – it’s both important and in the big scheme of things, not that important.  Remembering that can free things up nicely.

Resource: The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun

Don’t take my word for it

Smart folks thinking out loud about power.

“Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.”
James Allen, American writer

“Dear, never forget one little point. It’s my business. You just work here.”
Elizabeth Arden (to her husband), Canadian businesswoman

Read more quotations about power here.

From our newsletter Outside the Lines – The Business Edition

Don’t take my word for it

Smart folks thinking out loud about power.

“Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.”
James Allen, American writer

“You can have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power.”
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer

“Dear, never forget one little point. It’s my business. You just work here.”
Elizabeth Arden (to her husband), Canadian businesswoman

“All human power is a compound of time and patience.”
Honore de Balzac, French writer

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential — for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.”
Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher

“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”
Elie Wiesel, Romanian writer

“There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.”
Steven Wright, American comedian

From our newsletter Outside the Lines

I have to say, I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions.

Here’s how they’ve looked for me in the past…

With a not-so-healthy dose of fed-up frustration I look at all the murky things that lurk in the back of my mind, unleash my inner critic and decide
- I’m out of shape
- I’m lazy
- I’m not going fast enough, high enough, deep enough, wide enough
- I’m drifting
- etc etc etc  (once you start digging here, you find an endless pile of these *bollocks*)

… and then I decide I’m (miraculously) not going to be any of that come the next day, January, when I wake up.

So I make a list of somewhere between 5 and 55 things I’m going to start doing to Make Me A Better Person, feeling a little bit like Bill Murray’s character in Lost in Translation.

…and then January 8th rolls around

Around about now or maybe just a little later, I discover that I’ve failed, forgotten or flunked pretty much every single resolution.

So I carry on with life until the next December 31 and press “repeat” on the NYR Hamster Wheel of Doom.

NYRs often set you up to fail.  There are three key factors that scupper things

• 1. You try and change too much…

I heard Marshall Goldsmith, one of the most successful coaches in the world, say that when he works with people he’s reduced his goal from changing three key behaviours to changing just one.

And yet, with NYRs we so often list SO many things that we’d like to be different.

• 2. But the context hasn’t changed…

On January 1 you’ve got just as much life going on as you did on December 31.

You’re busy, committed, and have a bunch of set patterns and habits.

And, to give a nod to Darth Vader, “The Force (of-Life-As-It-Already-Is) is Strong.”

• 3. And self-will just doesn’t hack it

When I read Jim Loehr’s excellent book of The Power of Full Engagement, the thing  that struck me most is this key insight:

We just don’t have very much self-will.

Loehr’s program is all about developing healthy habits, because once the habit is established its momentum will carry you along and through.

Grit your teeth and say, “This time I’m REALLY serious”.

So, if you’re going to do one thing …

Don’t.

And here’s my suggestion.

Rather, figure out what’s the one thing you should stop doing that will have the most impact on your life.

One thing you’ll stop.

One thing you’ll eliminate.

One thing you’ll unsubscribe from. (A-hem.  I’d prefer it not to be this.)

I figure that you’re probably already filled up.

Don’t add.  Try removing for a while.

And let me know in the Comments section below what you plan to eliminate in your life.

Don’t Take My Word For It

Smart folks thinking out loud about why less can be more.

“The more opinions you have, the less you see.”
-Wim Wenders, director

“The more you reason the less you create.”
-Raymond Chandler, writer

“Always do one thing less than you think you can do.”
-Bernard Baruch, businessman

I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies.
-Julia Roberts, actress

Read more quotes about less is more in the Quotations section of the Blog here.

From our newsletter Outside the Lines

Don’t Take My Word For It

Smart folks thinking out loud about why less can be more.

“Less is more.”
-Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect

“Less is only more where more is no good.”
-Frank Lloyd Wright, architect

“The less routine the more life.”
-Amos Bronson Alcott, reformer

“The more opinions you have, the less you see.”
-Wim Wenders, director

“The more you reason the less you create.”
-Raymond Chandler, writer

“Always do one thing less than you think you can do.”
-Bernard Baruch, businessman

“The more we have the less we own.”
-Meister Eckhart, philosopher

“To say more, is to say less.”
-Harlan Ellison, writer

“The more laws, the less justice.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman

“The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.”
-Pablo Picasso, artist

“I once tried thinking for an entire day, but I found it less valuable than one moment of study.”
-Xun Zi, philosopher

“The less you talk, the more you’re listened to.”
-Abigail Van Buren, journalist

“The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.”
-Stendhal, writer

“Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.”
-Charles Kettering, inventor

I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies.
-Julia Roberts, actress

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
-William Blake, writer (from Auguries of Innocence)

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Get to know yourself in 2009. (Thanks to Vimrod - see more about him here.)

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Whee!! Life- go for it!  (Thanks Inklesspress.com.)

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Simplify your life in 2009.  (Thanks to Toothpaste for Dinner.)

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Make the most that stuff in between in 2009. (Thanks to the Critical Thinking.net.au cartoon collection.)