Be Useful in Times of Change and Turbulence

July 11, 2016 4 Comments

Tokyo. July 2016. Bob Miglani being photobombed by Japanese Chef who loves his job.

It feels like the world’s a mess.

From uncertainty in the world, change in our job, chaos in our career, disruption in our business, randomness in our life, it feels like nothing is secure, certain or predictable.

We often get so consumed by all the change going on in the world and the troubling headlines that we forget what we’re here to do. And that lack of clarity is what makes us feel worried, stressed and stuck.

So what do we do in times of change and turbulence?

Be Useful.

Build. Get busy building a body of work that you’ll be proud of at the end of your life. Be useful in building bridges. Be useful in building relationships. Be useful in building up people not tearing them down.

Give. Be useful to someone in your life. Help someone work through a problem they’re struggling with. Be honest. We all know someone who needs help. Don’t deny them because you don’t have time. Giving your skills and support gives your life a renewed sense of purpose.

Work. Be useful to your work. Show up early. Act sooner. Complain less. Call a customer. Return emails faster. Be proactive. Instead of killing an idea, encourage an idea. Dedicate yourself to a cause bigger than yourself.

Engage. Be useful in how you speak to people. The words we use matter to others and to ourselves. Use meaningful words. Words that say what you really mean. Don’t dance around a topic. Get straight to it. Be the person of substance that you are by using rich, bold, powerful words with real meaning, emotion, intelligence and pragmatism.

Solve. Be useful in solving your problems. Stop overthinking your mistakes and what went wrong. Stop blaming yourself or other people even if they are to blame. Do something useful to solve your problem. You’re the only one who can. Get out a sheet of paper and start writing your plan and take action. [Read more…]

We Know How to Improvise

June 25, 2012 4 Comments

My 4 year old daughter has a life threatening egg and nut allergy. We discovered it when she was about 10 months old when we gave her a piece of egg to eat. She broke out in a horrible rash, vomited, turned blue and passed out.

I didn’t know if she was alive in the ambulance that was rushing her to the Emergency Room that day. She survived and is fine but now has to live with a constant fear and anxiety of eating an egg or encountering a nut…or even eating something that has traces of egg in it.

Even the kisses from her grandfather (a big fan of omelets) after breakfast can be challenging because of the red rash on her cheek those warm smooches of love leave behind.

The hardest part is when the cake comes out at a birthday party like the one we went to the other day. No anxiety or stress here, so I thought as I saw my daughter running around and having fun. Then it was time for the cake. Suddenly, stress and anxiety reared it’s ugly head.

Hoping it’s made of ice cream, she looks at the cake and gives me a sad look and asks, “Does it have eggs in it?” Breaks my heart. Because I know that it probably does and she can’t have any.

My wife and I have learned to accept it all – the epi pens accompanying her everywhere, the Benedryl allergy syrup in the glove compartment of our car and trying to decipher if the bread at the table in a restaurant is made with a little egg in it. And these days, I know that a small thing like an egg allergy is not that bad.

But sometimes it gets to her. She looks up with frustrated moist eyes and asks, “Why me? Why can’t I eat that? How come everyone else is eating it?”

[Read more…]

5 Ways to Deal With Uncertainty at Work

June 2, 2012 17 Comments

“Will I have a job in 6 months?” was the question that kept me up many nights. For some time, I went through the gut wrenching stress and anxiety of trying to deal with uncertainty at work especially where things would come out of left field almost constantly.

Unable to deal with uncertainty and chaos at work, I froze and became paralyzed by over thinking about what I thought was going to happen next. I just couldn’t deal with uncertainty and it caused me to have stress and anxiety. Then for a while, I went through an up and down journey which led me to my breakthrough. Uncertainty didn’t go away – I just learned to deal with it.

Here are 5 ways to deal with uncertainty at work that helped me and may be helpful to you:

1. Accept the craziness

Understand that your place of work will have lots of changes. Don’t be surprised with chaos at work. It will happen. No one is immune from the up and down cycles especially during an unpredictable economy. People will change, the nature of work will be different and the way your place of work is organized will be different. Things you didn’t expect, will likely happen because no one can predict the future. [Read more…]

Five Bucks Before Five Billion

May 16, 2012 Leave a Comment

One Hundred Billion Dollars just rolls off the tongue. With the pending IPO of Facebook, people throw out millions and billions like its no big deal. We read and hear about it in entrepreneurial magazines, in the elevator, in the movies and of course when we hear politicians refer to the public debt of our country. Millions and Billions of dollars have become a normal part of our everyday lexicon as much as OMG and LOL.

For some who have dreams of stellar entreprenuerial success, constantly hearing billions and millions can be as much inspirational as it is debilitating. As a budding entrepreneur or a rising sales person trying to “make it”, those terms can at times cause paralysis because sometimes you tend to measure what you are doing right now with that very specific goal post. You start to draw out the line from your current path and think, “how will this make me a billion dollars?”

You start thinking negative thoughts about all the challenges of life and you fall down this spiral of logic and numbers and find yourself trapped in its debilitating grasp.

And so you don’t even try. You stop. You freeze. You don’t bother starting a business. You don’t bother making the sales pitch. You stop pitching new ideas at work. You don’t bother putting your passion into something you dream about. And you lose hope….all because a billion seems way out of reach. [Read more…]

The Scars of Life Serve a Purpose

April 19, 2012 6 Comments

I took my 7 year old daughter bike riding the other day in the beautiful spring weather. Sun was shining late into the afternoon and the air was warm with a hint of the coming summer. She moved forward swiftly on the sidewalk in our neighborhood showing off her skills with a happy smile.

Then she fell and almost cracked her helmet! Thank God she had that helmet on in the first place. She started crying showing me her bruises on her right elbow and her right knee. It wasn’t that bad but she was bleeding. Not the first time she fell but it was the biggest fall she had to date so she was still crying a lot. It breaks your heart but kind of cute at the same time.

Her little sister and I tried to calm her by listening with empathy and saying it was going to be OK. Eventually, her crying slowed along with her breath and I encouraged her to get back on her bike right away. Because that’s what you do right? Get back on the bike and move forward! She was scared and didn’t want to but with a little bit of stubborn encouragement from me, she did it and was actually feeling better pedaling down the street back to our house. I think she was pedaling fairly well because she wanted to rush home to show her mom the bruises and beg for a band aid.

As the bandages peeled off during the last couple of days, she was a big girl once again treating it as if nothing had happened. After she took off the last of the bandage on her knee, she asked me how long the scrapes and bruises would remain. “Not long baby. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine”, I said to her, as moms and dads have said throughout time.

What I realized in that moment is that all of us at some point in our life go through really difficult times. We’ve all “fallen off the bike”. Uncertain work situations that cause us stress, anxiety and migraines. Complicated relationships that make us think twice about getting back into another uncertain relationship. Friendships that get tested through challenging and unpredictable situations. Health or finance problems that bring us down. Business challenges and so on. We’ve all had chaos filled situations that make us pause. Sometimes we hurt because of some major chaos at work where we had certain expectations.

But, we don’t see the emotional scars that getting through chaos has left on ourselves. The imprint of bruises we have suffered in a life of chaos are not as visible as a banged up knee. But it still affects us. It haunts us years later. We stop moving. We over analyze. We don’t move forward. We freeze. We get stuck because we’re afraid to get back on the bike. We’re fearful of trying new things because we’ve been burned by co-workers, customers, friends we thought we had or people who we expected to love. We tend to forget these scars that chaos has left on us while we continue to suffer from its paralysis. [Read more…]

So what do we do in times of change and turbulence?

Be Useful.

Move Forward. Embrace the Chaos.