If I hear the ubiquitous December greeting one more time this week, I think I’ll puke.  In the halls at my son’s school.  In the coffee shop.  In the library.  In front of the mailboxes.  At church.  In the grocery store.  You know what it is.  I’m willing to bet you’ve said it.

“How’s your Christmas shopping going?  Done yet?”  I know, I know, it’s a strictly social seasonal question.  When people meet this time of year, invariably it spills out.  No one really wants to know if you’re done.  They either want to brag that they’re ahead of the curve or they want the assurance that they aren’t the only family overwhelmed with details during December.  They want to commiserate.  Aunt Bertha is so difficult to buy for.  There are so many cousins.  Dad doesn’t need another tie.  There’s so much to do.  Directing and executing the production that Christmas has become does involve an overload of details, activities and money.

So, how can you save me from puking for the next week and a half?  Since I’m sure that’s high on your list of things to avoid (I know it is on mine), here are a few suggestions:

1.  SIMPLIFY.  It’s never too late.  If you’re overwhelmed with things to do before Christmas, make a list of it all and then eliminate at least 3/4 of the items.  Do it now.  Bring overload to a screeching halt…right now.  Buy less.  Bake less.  Decorate less.  Do less.  Your soul will thank you.  Take the emotional and physical space that elimination of detail creates and spend it laughing with your children.  Spend it cultivating a sense of wonder at the beauty and stillness of a starry night.  Spend it snuggling with your lover.  Make the season memorable, not for its busy-ness but by renewing the relationships that are meaningful to you.

2.  NOTICE.  Notice the beauty of twinkling lights.  Notice the excitement on children’s faces.  Notice how proud parents look when their four year old does not stand stage left and pick his nose at the school Christmas program like last year (wait, I might be veering off topic here).  Notice when your UPS guy looks tired.  Notice that the grandmother next door looks lonely.  Notice when the mom down the street looks overwhelmed.  Why?  Because noticing requires a few key things.  It means you’ll slow down your own pace and focus on other people.  Simply slowing down and noticing the beauty in the details of the season will feed your senses and renew your spirit.

3.  RESPOND.  You’ve freed up your time and energy and are noticing the people around you.  Now use some of that freedom to respond to their needs.  What would give the UPS guy a lift?  Can you share a cup of coffee with the lonely grandmother?  Could you watch the young mom’s children for the five or ten minutes it might take her to unload the car?  Find a way to give the gift of your responsive heart once a day to someone who isn’t expecting it, hasn’t asked for it, and may not even deserve it.

4.  GREET people in a new way.  If you do the above three things, then you’ll have more than enough reason to share the joy that should be the hallmark of the season with the overstressed folks that want to know how your Christmas shopping is going.  “Oh, that’s the least of my worries, I’ve had a great week giggling with my kids every night, sharing the real meaning of Christmas with my neighbors and looking at the lights reflected in my partner’s eyes. It’s already been a very merry Christmas.”

Well, that might not really win you points with people who just want to let you know how stressed they are, but it sure will make your season bright.  And if  hear you, it will keep me from gagging.  I’m going to go snuggle my son and gaze at Christmas tree lights.  What are you going to do?  HINT:  Make that list…

There are certain things best seen from a distance.  Large things.  The Grand Canyon.  The Golden Gate Bridge.  The New York City skyline.  Without distance, pieces are all you can take in.  This is a massive Christmas tree at Opryland Hotel.  There’s a beautiful view of it from an overlook and as you look from that distance you can take in the whole view.  You can see how it fits into its surroundings.  You can watch the water reflect the lights and the fountains disrupt that reflection.  You can see how it’s set in a perfect location and surrounded by the other trees and plants and decorations.  From this point, it draws you in, it’s a foregone conclusion. As people get to this location in the gardens, they are pulled to that tree.  From this vantage point you can watch it happen.  Visitors from all directions converge on that tree.

We’re in full swing of the busy holiday season, but small business marketing dude David Johnson of Epiphany Marketing reminded me this week that what you do now lays the foundation for your January success.  He was speaking in terms of business…the plans we make now, the strategies we put in place dramatically affect our first quarter of 2010.  On a personal level, many of you will be thinking about New Year’s Resolutions in a few weeks after the bedlam of shopping and opening subsides. Don’t wait until you’ve had too many cookies and eggnog  to think about 2010.  Not only will it be too late, but sugar comas are bad for clear thinking.

Now–during mid-December, find a way to set some quiet time aside to mentally back up from your life and gain some perspective.  Take a look at the big picture…

• Where are you?
• Look around.  How do you fit in your surroundings?
• What do you reflect to the people around you?
• What gets in the way?  What disrupts a good reflection?
• Are people drawn to you and your life?  Why or why not?

These aren’t the standard “review your life” questions and in reality (especially if this is new to you), the actual questions and answers are not the most important thing.  The critical thing is the exercise in perspective.

What do you see when you back up?

Today is Thanksgiving and like many people, one of the things I am most thankful for is the life of my son.  I don’t often post family images on this blog, but I feel strongly that it’s important to build a thankful heart into ourselves and our children…all year round.  Celebrating the reasons we have to be thankful on a national holiday is a wonderful thing.  I love seeing twitter posts and facebook status updates telling the world what we value.  But, for me, a more important aspect of giving thanks is the one-on-one telling of that story throughout the year that weaves a tapestry of value around the people we care about.

There are a few really simple ways to cultivate a thankful heart in both you and your children.

PAUSE. We live at breakneck pace. Make a point to slow down and look around you.  Really notice the things, but especially the people you’re thankful for.

REFLECT. What do those people mean to you?  To your life?  To your past and future?  Where would you be without them?

SHARE. Tell your loved ones what they mean to you.  How have they impacted your life today?  Say thank you.  My son and I do this every night before bed.  “What are you thankful for today?”  The answer with him varies from the mundane (my bed, windows, trains) to the profound (that you’re my mommy…well, if not profound at least meaningful to me).  It doesn’t have to be complicated or profound.  Simplicity is fine…focus on being authentic.  If the only thing you can feel thankful about your teenager that day is that everyone survived…then let them know.  “Oh Evil One, today wasn’t so good…but I”m still thankful you’re part of my life and I love you.”

REPEAT. The bedtime answers from my son on any given day aren’t the important thing.  The critical thing is the habit it creates.  My intent is to teach him an outlook of counting his blessings, of thanking God for what he has and of speaking value into the ones he loves.  So, do this everyday at least once.  We tend to do it randomly throughout the day as well.  “Wow, I really appreciate how helpful you were with that chore, I’m thankful for your help!”

This four step process can take less than a minute.  But over a lifetime of the people you love, the impact of building an attitude of thankfulness and telling the ones we love how much we value them goes far beyond a minute a day.

An interesting side benefit is that a thankful heart spills over into all other relationships.  You begin looking for ways to thank your co-workers, your hair stylist and your waitress.  The impact of being genuinely thanked for something can be much larger than the effort it took to speak the thank you.  Noticing and appreciating someone’s contribution to your day can go a long way toward making theirs.

How thankful is your heart when the turkey and pumpkin pie are long gone?

Do you remember that 80′s “Hang In There” poster of the kitty gripping the branch?  Probably dates me.  Very pre-lolcats.  This shot reminds me of that poster, but updated for today.  Our world isn’t static. It’s changing at breakneck speed all around us.

What do you have your arms wrapped around?  Is it able to support your weight?

It’s a big, wide world out there.  Really big!  There are fields to explore, treasures to find beneath your feet, trees to climb, both close, dark passages and light-filled open places.  There’s underbrush to pick your way through (trying to avoid thorns) and wide gravel paths to follow.  There are trees and hills beyond your sight and beautiful moments poised to happen.

How do you see your life?  With the wonder and adventurous spirit of a child?  Are you engaged with your landscape?  Or have you staked out a permanent spot and planted a lawn chair?   There are too many wonderful things waiting to be discovered out there!  I recommend two essentials:  a sense of wonder and a good friend.  If you’ve misplaced either one…find them and then get out there and start exploring!

This is an image taken some time ago on Beale Street in Memphis.  I ran across it late tonight scrounging around in some old archives instead of doing what normal I’ve-been-sick-all-week people do in the middle of the night.  They sleep.  I think about writing.  There should probably be a blogging rule about writing in the middle of the night when you’re grumpy, don’t feel well and can’t sleep, but then I guess I’d just go and break it, so it’s probably just as well no one’s told me about it.  And if you’ve heard it, don’t enlighten me until I’m over this damn cold, ok?

There’s not a lot of television that I watch consistently, but Mad Men has become a can’t-miss.  In last Sunday’s episode a lot of relationships were changed.  I won’t drag you through the story line, but in a review of the episode, Maureen Ryan stated (about Joan), “She’s still in the role-playing stage that Roger and Don were for so many years — as they were, she is married to someone to whom she doesn’t reveal her true self.”  When I saw this image tonight, it brought that quote home to me.

I remember standing in front of those doors at the end of Beale Street with my camera in hand feeling an aching sadness.  I’d completely forgotten that reaction until I connected the image with the quote tonight.  Looking at the image now makes me think about all the valuable pieces of ourselves we keep locked away from those closest to us.  We all do it to some degree.  Treasures that reveal who we are, what we care about, how we feel, where we’ve been and where we want to go.  Gems of ourselves that would enrich those around us…if we had the courage, opportunity and ability to share them.

The locks become so comfortable. We don’t even notice their constraint after a while.  The patina blends in with the trim on our doors.  They belong there, those locks.  They protect us.   There are some good reasons for locks.  But if yours are rusted, if the key is floating around in the bottom of a junk drawer, if you’re not sure the hinges on the doors really work anymore–maybe it’s time to re-examine your relationships.

Where’s your key?  Do the doors of your heart open for those who should be closest to you?

P.S.   Maybe I can sleep now.

The Betelgeuse of the 1988 film was more humorously disgusting than frightening, but this scarecrow re-creation was fairly fearsome.  It was the one scarecrow of the afternoon at Cheekwood that creeped out my young son, (though, in all fairness, that’s really not such a difficult feat).  I wrote my last post about the importance of protecting our dreams and ideas as it related to a happy looking scarecrow image with stuffed crows on his shoulders.  The reality of our internal lives, however is that there is a lot more that needs protecting.  And I’m afraid that a happy looking scarecrow gently waving straw fingers in the breeze really isn’t good enough to scare off the things that need to be scared off.

I’ve been spending some time this week thinking about the variety of ways that cultural messages infiltrate our lives.  Sometimes those messages benefit us and other times they don’t.  The problem is that most of us don’t bother to think about filtering the messages, for ourselves or our children.  If we are even aware of the harmful messages we internalize, we feel hopeless against the sheer magnitude of the messenger.  Our personal scarecrows are few and far between and often not scary enough.

Wikipedia defines a scarecrow as, “a device – traditionally a human figure or mannequin dressed in old clothes – placed in fields by farmers to discourage birds such as crows from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.”  Crows high-tail it out of town each Fall when Cheekwood fills up its grounds with scarecrows of all shapes and sizes.  Some are scary, some sweet, some ghoulish, some silly, but all interesting.  As I enjoyed the perfect Fall day and wandered around the grounds enjoying the creativity and variety of the 65 plus scarecrows on display this year, it occurred to me that we all need scarecrows.

How many times have you had an idea, a plan, a moment of inspiration that became bird food?  Maybe you negative-talked your way out of it before it even saw the light of day.  Maybe you mentioned it to a friend or family member and they laughed.  Maybe you pitched it to your boss and were shot down.  Maybe its happened so many times that those ideas now enter stage left of your mind and saunter across to exit stage right without bothering to pause to let you get a closer look.  Maybe dreams don’t even make it on stage anymore.  Maybe they just slink around in the shadows, evaporating soundlessly.

Inspiration, dreams and ideas need a safe place to grow.  A recent blog post by Darren Hardy, publisher of Success magazine linked to a document in which a man listed several pages of pithy advice earned in his 102 years of life.  One of those nuggets was to nourish the dreams of your children, no matter how outlandish or unrealistic.  I’ve thought about that several times today.  Initially I saw it as a call to support our kids.  But, as I thought about it more, I realized how truly important it is to teach and encourage our children—and each other—how to dream, how to create a safe haven for ideas and inspiration.

I’ll have a few more things to say about scarecrows in the coming weeks, but for now…

What are the crows in your world?  Negative mental voices?  Or other people?   Do you ever play the part of a crow to your family, friends or business associates?

What kind of scarecrow can you construct to keep the seeds of your inspirations and ideas safe until they’re healthy enough to stand or fail on their own?  I’m interested in your ideas, let’s hear ‘em…

P.S.  From now on, expect to hear from me every Monday and Thursday!

After struggling to find anything to say last night because I couldn’t put my finger on what was bothering me, I woke up this morning thinking more clearly (as if that’s any surprise).  I think I dreamt about comfort zones all night.  I was going to wake up and write some more thoughts, but Adrian Savage already did a good job of that a few years ago, writing about How To Break Out of Your Comfort Zone.  You should check it out and I’d encourage you to spend some time thinking about what small habits have calcified your thinking or behavior.

The changes in my life over the last year continue to make me realize how much of our lives we assume have to be lived a certain way.  You might think you have to stay in your job, live where you do, put up with difficult relationships, etc.  Well, you don’t.  Did you hear me?  Think through all the excuses you give yourself for a minute.  Done?  Now, listen to me.  While I understand that there are unchangable circumstances in many lives, the vast majority of you have the power to make more changes than you think you do.  If you want your life to be be different than the one you’re living, you can make that happen.  Even if you’re living with some circumstances completely beyond your control–health issues, caring for an elderly parent, etc., there are still choices you can make.

I definitely am not saying that making life changes is simple or easy.  I’m saying that if you want to, you can.  Over time, as we live with circumstances (generally) of our own making and that becomes “normal” for what life is, the ability to imagine what could be slowly leaks away.  When a thought like, “wow, wouldn’t it be cool to….,” crosses our mind, we are progammed to mentally respond to ourselves, “too bad I can’t do that because…..”  Well, maybe you can if that negative voice would go do something else and leave you alone for ten minutes.

What do you want out of life?  Really.  Have you ever thought about it?  I mean, have you spent some serious uninterrupted time thinking about it since you were 20?  I took a weekend early this year and really thought about it.  Dreamed about it.  Wrote down who I want to be and what I want my life to look like. You may not be able to get a weekend away (though I’d really encourage it), but here are some ideas for you:

1. Give yourself permission to dream. Begin to think about what your ideal life would look like.  Do this in the background of your world for awhile.  Driving to work, in the grocery, taking a break, grilling hamburgers.  We waste a lot of time thinking about nothing.  Put that time to good use.  Where would you live?  How would your family spend your time together?  What would your work day look like?  What would you do?  How would you feel?  What would your important relationships be like?  At this point, just dream.  Don’t allow the negative voice to have any input.  This does actually involve giving yourself permission.  Permission to want.  Permission to believe that things could be different.  For some people, that can be a huge step.  Do it anyway, dream big here.  What would your ideal life be like?  This is a brainstorming stage, so give yourself free reign.  Save judgment for later.

2.  Write it down. After you’ve spent some time thinking in the background, schedule some uninterrupted time, whether it’s a weekend or a few hours, and write down what you’ve been thinking.  I’d break it into several areas of your life at this point:  What would your ideal life look like in the areas of family, career/work, finances, relationships, health, spirituality, recreation, etc.  That’s not an exhaustive list and in no particular order.  Who do you want to be?

That’s step one and can take some time.  You will probably learn some interesting things about yourself.  VERY few people do this.  But many of the people who have a life they love DO do it.  That can be you.

Having processed some of those things, I still find myself making assumptions about my life.  I’ve always wanted to live for a short time in an urban area, just to experience it.  Since I have a young child, I assume I can’t.  But you know what?  I can, if I choose to.  And I especially can more easily now than when he starts school.  We continually need to allow ourselves to dream of possibilities.  Are you willing to take that step?

I have a love/hate relationship with my tripod.  I’m supposed to love it.  I’ve been trained in its advantages.  If I don’t love it I’m at least supposed to use it anyway.  But I hate it.  I’m not sure what that says about my personality, but I do try.  I start out using it.  I try.  I decide I’ll just take the camera off to compose and then put it back on the tripod for the shot.  Invariably, thirty minutes later I realize I’ve wandered away and abandoned the poor thing.  Again.  Last night I went shooting with some other photographer friends and I specifically scheduled a night shoot so I’d have to use it.  Which I did.  Sort of.  I still wandered away.  I still cranked the ISO up and handheld till I absolutely couldn’t any longer.  Sigh.  I came off the night (which was really fun, involved a big storm, a drowning cel phone, a deaf waiter, a piece of chocolate, rasberry heaven, and some good friends) with images I like–but feeling like I failed myself.

I have a lot of leadership training in my background and there’s a train of thought that says that by focusing on improving your strengths and not your weaknesses, you’ll have far greater success.  So, maybe I should just ditch the tripod and go with what I do best?  I don’t think so.  I’m starting a group here in Nashville that shoots together on a regular basis with the goals of recharging our creative energy and getting outside our comfort zones.  I just realized how hard it is to step outside that zone when I have my camera in hand.  Next time I’ll do better.  I already know what my personal assignment is.  And it already makes me cringe.  And the tripod gets to stay home.

Do you need a creative boost?  What are you doing about it?  Step outside a comfort zone in your life!  It may not be easy, but the growth will be worth it!  Let me know what you try!