My delightful daughter turned 18 this month and will be graduated from high school at the end of next week. And like everyone else, she has had a series of adventures that brought her to where she is today.

Over the Memorial Day weekend she had an interesting experience that represents an odd milestone for both of us. I went to a technology conference in New Orleans. She needed to find her way to another city, 150 miles away, check into a hotel, and take a two day class.

The organization paying for all this did not make the correct reservations and she had to fix a travel glitch at the last minute. So Daddy jumped in (from across the country), made the hotel reservations and paid for the room. In some sense you can say “what’s new?” but the whole thing is new.

My new reality is that my girl is going off into the so-called real world. We will rely on me when needed. That will become less and less frequent as time goes on. At the same time, she’s at that delightful stage of life when the most mundane things are an adventure. I don’t remember the last time driving three hours to stay in a Travelodge was an adventure for me. :-)

It was nice that she called me. She had a good class and a good adventure. She was a little scared in the hotel alone. But it was a very safe city and a very safe hotel. So in the end it was mostly an adventure.

Now she knows the glamour of travel! She also knows that she can do this again and what she would do differently.

In the meantime, I have a taste of what remote worrying is like. I guess when she goes off to college I’ll be doing more of that. I also need to get used to the new reality.

- – -

It is always good to slow down and take note of these milestones, no matter how small unimportant they are.

In this case I recognize that Victoria is mature and capable. I fully expected this to be as uneventful as it turned out to be. But a little “proof” of her maturity was very nice to see.

There is a sweet sadness in helping my only child to leave home. So far we’re both holding up well.

:-)

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Last week my daughter Victoria (age 17.9 years) embarked on an adventure. The plan was to spend three days in New York City just seeing the sights, then hop over to England and Scotland for a week. She has two weeks for Spring Break and this is her senior year.

We had plans for the first night and the last night in the UK, but nothing in between. We had Britrail passes and tube passes, so we were set to just go. Our plan was to wake up every day and figure out what to do that day.

In this modern era it is very easy to hop on the internet and find a hotel at a good price on short notice.

Note: This approach takes a certain willingness to believe that you will be okay and that things will work themselves out. I have been cultivating that spirit for some time.

Meditation helps, as does an actual commitment to being a low stress person.

I believe you can always choose how you will respond to your environment. Sometimes it’s easier than others. The more planning you have, the easier it is. But, as the saying goes, sometimes life gives you lemons and you have to make lemonade.

So here’s what happened to our vacation plans.

After three fun days in New York City, we went to the airport to catch an all-night flight to England and arrive at 8:30 AM. But my daughter could not get on the airplane because of a problem with her passport.

Stop. Vacation gone. Plane departing in two hours. Fix it or forget it.

At this point some people would add: Panic.

I was a little panicky, of course. But I decided a long time ago that I’m not the kind of person who blows up, yells and screams, abuses the person behind the counter, etc. I tried to stay calm, gathered the information I could.

It quickly became clear that I could not solve this tonight and we were going to miss the plane. Period. Nothing we could do about that. We could contact the passport office in New York or Connecticut. Quick phone call. NY was a seven day wait. No good. Connecticut might get us in within 8 business hours in an emergency. And might get a new passport within 8 business hours. But that means 1-2 more days in NYC with 1-2 days sitting around a government office, just so we could spend a day flying to England to continue the vacation.

We decided to do England another time. The next question was: Do we go home or reboot the vacation?

Important factor: My daughter only gets one spring break her senior year in high school.

So where do you want to go? The entire East Coast is at your disposal. Or we could rent a car and drive home, seeing the sights. Or take trains and see America. Or whatever.

We decided to catch the next flight to Florida and spend time in the sun. Went online and booked one-way airfare. Cheap, even at the last minute. Thank goodness for the Internet.

Total elapsed time since vacation destroyed: about 60 minutes.

Was I happy about the situation? No. But I had decided to NOT panic, NOT make it a disaster, and NOT focus on what I can’t control.

Yes, it will cost a lot of money. But we can use those Britrail passes another time. And we had almost no other out of pocket expenses except airfare. Called the airline and cancelled. They’re rebating a good portion of what we paid.

And here’s the key: We can’t control what we can’t control!

The mindset of not wasting energy on things you can’t control is a mindset that you can practice. You can create that approach to life.

The mindset of creating lemonade when life gives you lemons is a mindset that you can practice.

You get to choose how you will respond to the world.

I hope that my daughter will love the new vacation we are creating and that she will always take the attitude of slowing down and looking on the positive side when things go wrong.

“Stuff” happens in life. You can make yourself miserable and dive into the well of dispair, or you can pick up the lemons and start making lemonade.

Daily quiet time, meditation, and prayer go a long way to making this possible.

Status Report: We just finished three days in Orlando. We’re working our way through the Disney parks. On Sunday we’re heading to Church (It’s Easter) and then off to Daytona Beach. We got a nice hotel ON the beach for $46/night. Thank goodness for the Internet.

We’ll head home when we had planned. It won’t be the vacation we planned, but it’s been a Great vacation and a great adventure so far.

:-)

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No one is surprised when they see that plants don’t grow straight. Plant a squash or a vine and see what it does. If you want it to grow straight, you’ll need to use tent stakes to staple it’s tentacles to the earth.

If fact, it’s almost laughable when you see what people do with trees and bushes. In the “wild” they’re wild. They have a beauty and spontaneity of their own. But under the skilled hands of humans they spend most of their lives staked down and roped into place. They look alike, similar, and uniform — and boring.

But somewhere along the road we get the idea that other things should grow in a straight line. The economy should go up and up and up. Better every year. Faster. Richer.

And when the inevitable slowdown or “crash” happens, we step back and tell each other that it had to happen eventually. You can’t go up forever. House prices can’t go up forever. Stock prices can’t go up forever. Profits can’t go up forever.

Businesses have good years and bad years. Things go up. Things go down. Sometime things even go sideways.

And what about we humans?

Well, we certainly don’t grow in a straight line either.

When you set a goal, you’re eager to go right to it. And we all know you need to focus on that goal and always be moving toward it. But then you find out that there’s a stumbling block or detour.

Very often it’s the case that we need to stop and go get some education. Learn how something works, or who the players are. And while this detour is necessary, we’re not very patient with it because it draws us “off course.”

The truth is, when you’re evolving as a person or a business, you’re only off course if you lose sight of the ultimate goal. Side tours and missteps are part of the process. You can never go in a straight line. The longer you live (or are in business), the more you believe this truth.

In my business we have a philosophy about major projects:
“Something’s going to go wrong. We don’t know what it is, but we’ll find it and fix it.”

Basically, our philosophy is that we’re going to be 100% successful. Why? Because we never lose the big plan.

As individuals we would do well to take the same approach. You might think you’re going to go down a perfect path to a perfect goal. But you won’t. You can’t. Life steps in . . . and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

We’re all going to grow in a twisting, turning, slanted way. Accepting that will help us to understand the path we’re on, and to forgive ourselves when we realize we’re not growing straight. Keep your “eyes on the prize” as they say and you’ll eventually grow to where you need to be. But don’t insist on a straight path or you’ll spend a lot of energy worrying about the path instead of the goal.

:-)

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Why was the glowworm unhappy?

Because her children were not very bright!

:-)

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There are two primary ways of looking at your life. Actually, either you look at your life or you don’t look at your life. Everyone does each of these some time. A few people examine their lives all the time. A few people never examine their lives.

But almost all of us are in the middle. We spend most of our time only thinking about our lives a little bit. Then from time to time we go through a stage of thinking about our lives obsessively. In other words, 80% of the time we think about our lives 20% of the time. And 20% of the time we think about our lives 80% of the time.

I have had two incidents recently that brought this into focus for me.

First, I have a great life coach named Jenifer Landers (see Fully Expressed Coaching). One of her constant themes is to leave an opening for something to happen. Leave an opening for someone to enter your life. Leave an opening for good things to occur. Leave an opening, leave an opening, leave an opening.

Then I hired two people in my business who have the profiles of really great leaders. And it didn’t take long before they were volunteering to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I heard lines like “Well, I can do that tonight. I have time available between 11 o’clock and midnight.”

The first thought that pops into my mind is . . . If you don’t leave an opening in your life for a personal life to show up, then it never will.

There is an assumption among many people that your personal life is the time that is left over after all the business and commitments are taken care of. But if you really want to have a personal life, you need to set aside time for it to happen. Whether it’s playing a sport, collecting something, or going out into the woods to have a good time, you need to put it on your schedule!

There are certain things in this world that expand to take up all the space available. Work can be like that if you don’t set boundaries around it. I try to leave work at 5:00 PM every day. I’m rarely there at 5:30. There is enough work to do. I could stay until midnight every night, work seven days a week, and never catch up.

And what would be the point of that? What would I have at the end of every day except another day just like the one completed? When I hear people say “I have no personal life” all I can think of is how they put themselves in that position. If you don’t make time for a personal life it certainly won’t show up on it’s own. Even if you don’t know what to do with yourself, that’s okay. Set aside the time and see what you want to do!

Workaholism kills.

Besides, you’re a much more interesting person when you have more than one dimension.

:-)

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By Karl W. Palachuk, author of the book Relax Focus Succeed. Please visit the RFS web site at www.relaxfocussucceed.com and sign up for our free newsletter.

Palachuk relax focus succeed

Mo attends to a revival and listens to the sermon. After a while, the pastor asks anyone with needs to come forward and be prayed over. Mo gets in line and, when it’s his turn the pastor asks, “Mo, what do you want me to pray about?” Mo says, “Pastor, I need you to pray for my hearing.” So the pastor puts one finger in Mo’s ear and the other hand on top of his head and prays for a while. He removes his hands and says, “Mo how’s your hearing now?” Mo says, “I don’t know pastor, it’s not until next Monday.

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I loved my father. And one of the things I loved the most was his sense of humor.

One time we were driving across country from our old home in North Dakota to our new home in Washington State. Alongside the freeway were telephone poles. Mile after mile. Hundreds of miles after hundreds of miles.

Whenever we drove alongside railroad tracks, there were short telephone poles. I don’t know if they were telegraph lines (this was the 1960’s) or whether the train companies just used short telephone poles because they didn’t have to deal with buildings.

It didn’t matter. My father had a great explanation. I asked why the telephone polls were short and my father immediately explained: “They’re for when children make phone calls.”

Even at the time I realized how very funny that is. In addition to being a great explanation, close enough to believable to get a kid thinking, it was also a fast answer. I appreciated my father’s quick wit.

And more than 40 years later I still think that’s funny.

We travelled 1100 miles. And I remember one joke plus coloring books in the back of a station wagon.

After all these years, the interesting conclusion is very unexpected. The conclusion is that you never really understand a transition until after it’s complete.

I have a few memories of visiting North Dakota, but no strong memories of when I lived there. Once we moved to Washington State I remember a lot — even a lot about our first year there. Somehow that trip was a big enough event that it became a transition from “too young to remember” to a series of memories I savor many years later.

How can you understand the road you’re travelling without reflection? The truth is, you can’t. At the same time, there isn’t any other road. You can’t stop being on “this” road and begin being on a different road. The most you can hope for is that you build the road in front of you and create your own detour.

You can be on any road you want. But you have to start from where you are today.

The good news is that you build your road every day and you can be lazy (going nowhere) or purposeful (heading where you want). In terms of meaning, it’s hard to force meaning into your daily journey. You can try, and you should try, but evaluation of such things always involves looking backward.

When I consider all the great memories of my father, I didn’t know at the time that those moments would be the moments I would keep forever. Looking back, just less than half of my life’s journey involved travelling the road of life with my father. And now they’re powerful snippets filled with meaning for me.

Changes can be hard. Transitions can be hard. Building a detour you didn’t want to build can be hard.

But every day you can look at where you are and where you want to go and head in that direction. Life goes on. Memories are powerful motivators. At the same time, you need to be vigilant. You never know which tiny thing you experience today will become a lasting memory you’ll have forever.

It helps to sit quietly and let you life’s experiences sort themselves out in your mind. For that I recommend daily reflection, or a walk/jog without headphones. Spend time being alone with yourself without an outside source of distraction.

:-)

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A newsboy was standing on the corner with a stack of papers, yelling, “Read all about it; Fifty people swindled!” Fifty people swindled!

Curious, a man walked over, bought a paper, and said, “Hey kid, this is an old paper, where’s the story about the big swindle?”

The newsboy ignored him and went on calling out, “Read all about it; Fifty-one people swindled!”

:-)

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This Friday (today) I wander off to a retreat center for my annual silent retreat. This will be my ninth year.

If you’ve read Relax Focus Succeed, or many of my newsletters, than you know I’m a big fan of quiet time, prayer, and meditation. Sometimes our lives become just so “busy” that we forget to stop and take stock of our lives. My annual retreat gives me time to do that.

On one hand, the timing is terrible. First weekend in December? Yikes. Beginning of Christmas season. Lost a weekend to Thanksgiving. Christmas and end of year are rushing toward me like a freight train.

On the other hand, when is a good time?

Retreating from the busy-ness of the season is a great habit. And one I’m proud to be developing. Some say you need 37 repetitions to form a new habit. Some say 40 or 42. Whatever it is, this is only my ninth in a row. So I can’t really call it a habit yet. :-)

Sometimes they call this a three-day retreat, but it’s really two full days. I arrive Friday afternoon and leave Sunday afternoon.

The most common question I get is: How can you be silent for two days? My daughter once told me “You have to talk to stay alive.” Of course she was fourteen at the time and it may have been true for her. I would reply that you need to stop talking to bring meaning to your life.

To get the most out of my two days, I try to increase meditation in the weeks leading up to the retreat. This helps me get in the mood and set my attitude to be open to a higher level of self-analysis.

I don’t really go into the weekend with an “agenda” so much as an openness to self examination. The retreat leaders provide a theme and some guidance. But they also encourage folks to wander off, take a walk, take a nap, and spend time in contemplation.

I have faced a number of personal challenges recently and the retreat is coming at a perfect time for me this year.

If you haven’t been on a retreat of any kind, I highly recommend it. Just do an Internet search for “Retreat” and your city. You’ll be amazed at how many retreat centers are scattered all over the place. Some are religious. Some are just relaxing. Start with the one most appealing to you.

My retreat is religious in nature, although the greatest benefits come from my quiet time during the weekend and not from the actual theme. Early on (retreats one, two, three) the guidance and themes mattered a lot more. But when you bring your own intentions of openness to the retreat there is less need for “starter” activities.

There are no promises that I’ll be a better person on Monday. But I look forward to a quiet weekend unplugged from the frenzy.

:-)

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