The Curse of Customization.
Isn’t it amazing how each of us can now dial our lives and experiences down to the most granular, seemingly insignificant level? Not only can we be our own DJ’s and turn on the alarm for the house from 20 miles away, we can tap into podcasts and audiobooks while having our teeth cleaned, plug our menstrual cycles into apps that calculate ovulation, look at our wrists to see how many steps we took that day – and get business cards designed, printed and shipped – in two days. More and more, our lives are becoming customizable – but you know what that does to everything that ISN’T? It makes us cranky. As we get more and more accustomed to things being connected, in sync, measurable, on-demand and tuned into our every mood and preference, all of the elements of life that are out of our control – relationships, business deals, creative projects, partnerships – all of those variables that cannot be swiped, clicked or downloaded – become incrementally more frustrating.
It’s simple, actually. We’re getting used to having our way with our worlds. But the world is still reminding us that we’re human, people are people, life is still life – and most of it is still out of our control.
So now we get to practice tolerance. Patience. Flexibility.
Funny how the technical pace of life might also be accelerating our spiritual paths. If we let it.
Here’s a list of some of my favorite customization tools.
Where to eat? Any time, city, circumstance.Tara Brach podcast
Spiritual musings.Ovia app
When am I ovulating? Now you know.OMG I can Meditate app
Self explanatory.
Marc Maron podcast WTF
Musicians, artists, actors, writers – Q and A.
Hotel Tonight app
Last minute hotel – any city.
Astrolis Horoscope App
Silly predictions – but kinda believable.
Quora
Every question under the sun – answered.
Tiny Scan
Take a picture of a document – scanned!
Is it that hard to…?
A question I get a lot is, “how hard is it to start a….line of toxin free tween cosmetics? A bathing suit company? A beauty blog? A sportswear brand? A water bottle company? A styling business?”
Want to know the answer?
Yah. It’s hard.
Does that change anything? The truth is, starting the thing is pretty simple – plenty of businesses can be started without too many headaches. But it’s everything after that – biz dev, the sales, the number of clients, clicks, registrations, views… each of those have their own strategy for success. Beyond all that, it’s the noise of a marketplace that won’t tolerate average- or even good enough – anymore. It just won’t.
So ‘is it hard’ should just be an assumed and resounding yes. But the better question to ask is, can I really do something that is not only original in its essence and offering (very hard), but can I do it in a way that keeps them watching, clicking, browsing, buying, talking, sharing, referring, opening….because if you think you can, then maybe you should. But I find myself on the reluctant side of many of those questions. Here’s what I ask myself before anything else:
Do I, or anyone on my internal, BFF team, do any of the critical things it takes to make this work?
Is money a “nice” thing or an “essential” thing for the success of it?
Am I just another human putting more content or widgets into a world that already has too many?
How good is the existing average? Brilliant? Mediocre?
Average can only stay in business as long as nothing else comes along for comparison. Which it usually does. But the higher the average starts, the harder it is to leap over it. And that’s what makes it worth doing. So go for it if you’re really ready to play the game. But know there’s no shame in passing on good ideas that can’t make that leap, too.
Misery.
This past weekend I paddled around Misery Island in Manchester, MA, where I live, in a race that my husband created and directed called The Misery Challenge (what a name!). Last year at this very same time, at this very same race, I had been without a voice for 3 months, was so thin I could barely make it up a flight of stairs, and could be found on most days lying down – searching for answers about why I was so sick (misery pretty much describes it). By September I was hospitalized at Mass General in Boston, quarantined in a negative pressurized room, and diagnosed with….tuberculosis. So unlikely. So surprising. So strange. I’m still trying to put the pieces together of why and how that happened to me – but mostly I marvel at how far I’ve come and how grateful I am to be healthy, strong and able to kayak 4 miles around an island with choppy waves and the force of the Atlantic behind it! But it’s not an accident either.
I share this because my prognosis for healthy, strong lungs was not good – even though TB is usually curable. Would I ever be able to run? To walk up a hill? To dance all night? With less than 50% lung capacity toward the end of my treatment, my pulmonologist gave me a prescription – and it was to exercise daily for 45 minutes – breathlessly – no matter what.
So, I’ve been doing that. And now I see what he meant. I feel stronger and better than EVER, with a renewed perspective on my life, my work, my relationships. He knew that even though my capacity couldn’t really increase, my FUNCTIONALITY could. And I thought – what a metaphor! Some of us can’t become bigger or more of what we already are – but we can function or perform at a higher level – which usually means more of whatever we want, and better versions of it at the same time.
A singular focus on a goal, done daily, yields results. But as he said, it’s the “100% rule. That means just that. Every. Single. Day.”
What single thing can you commit to?? Please tell me. It will encourage me to stay on the path. It can be personal or professional. Just share it. And if you’ve already committed, I’d love to know your results!
Brave.
What a great word. And what a great sentiment – since most of us aim to be brave-er, strong-er, bold-er in our embracing of life and work.
Lately I’ve been asking the “if not now, then when?” question.
Since that started, I’ve taken up African Dance (see a recent performance here!), fired a lucrative strategy client, asked a favorite client for a bigger role, and told a high ranking CEO that his messaging needed First Aid.
All this stuff feels brave. The reason is that it’s possible to lose something by doing it – whether that’s losing face, losing confidence, losing money. But brave has no time for those concerns. When you take brave and decide to connect it with the greatest possible good, productive, exciting, miraculous things happen.
What have you braved lately? Tell me. I want to know. And if you haven’t, how can I help?
Brave waits for only one thing – and that’s you.
August is a slow month….so you won’t see much SMARTY event action. Enjoy the unstructured nature of this lazy summer month!
Blind Spots.
I have them. You have them, too. The question is, are we willing to hear about them from other people?
The hardest thing about a blind spot is that you just don’t know it’s there, no matter how hard you want to know. The only way you find out about it is when someone braves up and tells you – which is usually a disruptive, startling, blind-siding event – like being hit by an emotional truck. Blind spots exist in the professional universe as well as the personal, but it’s the personal that impacts the professional sense of stability, and much less the other way around.
Inevitably, we have enough relationships that go deep enough or become important enough that we become aware of these behaviors that offend, hurt, alienate, control or otherwise damper positive feelings from others – and at that point we have a choice. We can become hyper-present and hope to catch future offending trains before they leave the station, or, decide we are who we are, and change is impossible or at least improbable.
I think the more important question to ask about blind spots is this; what if, instead of the surprise punch to the gut, we actually asked our peers and friends to put us on the hot seat for blind spot reviews? Sort of a tell-me-everything kind of thing. This is totally terrifying. But it’s also potentially liberating. And much less surprising.
Can we manage and hold the nausea of that uncertainty, of that big, blank, pregnant space of “what will they say?” long enough to get to what could be a big, juicy, gratifying, satisfying, elevating, profit-making, game-changing evolution on the other side?
Maybe we should try. Could be worth it.
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