Parking on a Friday Night

Last Friday night, a friend and I went to downtown Stuart for dinner. The parking lots were rather full and as I turned into a particular lot, she was amazed that I immediately found a parking place.  I believe her comment was “Oh, do you manifest parking places too?” No, I just knew there was one waiting for me. There always is.

Some people go through life looking for full parking lots and find them. They spend hours driving around looking to find ways to see full lots. They are so focused on finding spots in exactly the right place, they will block traffic for ten minutes waiting for someone to pull out and make room for them. Most of the time they go home complaining about the lack of parking, the selfish people who beat them to a spot, or how much they didn't accomplish because they spent all day driving in circles.

Other people pull into parking lots and immediately find parking places. They know there are places available and so they drive to one, accept it for what it is, and are willing to walk an extra 45 seconds in exchange for not having to drive around frustrated. These people usually get to where they want to go faster, happier, and maybe a tad bit healthier.

I am always amazed how people choose not to find success, not to find love, not to find happiness because they are so busy finding excuses that they never see the opportunities right in front of them.  Just because the opportunities don’t come gift-wrapped with big bows and our name written all over them, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. 

It's time for some FUN!

FUN!!!!

Fun???

Fun. It’s that magical thing that gives meaning to life. It’s that thing that keeps the batteries recharged. It’s that missing ingredient that we seem to forget about when work, life, and school seem to be demanding all of our time. During the times when we feel we have too much to do, fun is the first thing that we willingly sacrifice. We feel guilty to take time out for fun and forget that an hour or two of fun will make us more productive in everything else we do.

I had a work-study who made a technically nice flier today. The information was well presented but the flier was BORING. I asked him about fun, and he couldn’t remember what it was. I have a grad student whom I mentor who was feeling overwhelmed this afternoon by life and years of study. She is making less than A’s this month because her work is flat and predictable. I mentioned that she needs to go have fun and she doesn’t feel she has time for it. A former student today was talking to me about feeling depressed because she works and takes care of her three children and can’t figure out what is wrong with her life. She too couldn’t remember fun and laughing outside of her existence with her children.

 I too had forgotten about our need for fun because I was swamped with grown-up responsibilities, until this past weekend. I spent some time with friends, rode around Stuart, FL for two days on a GoPet, and smiled and laughed like I haven’t in years. I came back to school this week with renewed energy, focus, and enthusiasm and have gotten more done in the past three days than I have in the last three weeks.

Life is short. Work and family can be demanding. Everyone expects more and more from us and so we hide in video games and YouTube and television and Facebook just to escape the pressure. But it doesn’t help does it? Instead, go fly a kite, laugh like a kid, buy a new toy, or something else you used to do when you were young. Fun is still there, you just have to rediscover it. And when you do, you’ll find that you actually have more time and energy than you’ve had in years because you are more creative, productive, and energetic.

Work hard and play hard is more than a mantra. It is the recipe for success in everything you do. Talk to you later, I am off to ride my very own GoPet around town for a few hours.

PS, - If you don’t know what a GoPet is, e-mail me (greg@getagopet.com), or visit http://www.GetaGoPet.com. I got so excited about having fun again that I am becoming a distributor for the company this evening, but that is a new blog and web site that will just have to wait until tomorrow.

Ten Easy Ways to Sabotage Your Career

1. Be conceited, ungrateful, or arrogant. Watch the leaders in any field and to a person, they always find time to say thank you, to share, and to listen.
   
2. Be vengeful, negative,  and deceitful, especially in public places. It’s always easy to find faults, but it takes talent and discipline to find solutions. Employers and clients need solutions not criticism.
   
3. Treat your online activity like the boy’s locker room. Everything you say or do online can and may eventually be seen by the people whose respect you need to earn. Acting and posting as if you are in eighth grade shows an future employer you are not yet mature enough to represent his or her firm.
   
4. Put cute messages or extremely long musical numbers on your answering machine. When a client or employer wants to speak to you they don’t want their time wasted. I know an excellent designer who has lost at least three interviews because you can’t leave her a message until you’ve sat through 90 seconds of a poorly recorded message. “I don’t have time for this. Next!”
   
5.  Dress and act as if you don’t care. If you don’t care enough to iron your shirt, to comb your hair, and to put a little polish on those shoes, then you don’t really care about the company for which you are hoping to work. It’s a matter of respect.
   
6. Go to the interview, presentation, or meeting unprepared. Research the company/client. Be prepared to not just answer questions but to ask intelligent ones as well. Reorganize your portfolio to show your future employer /client the work which is relevant to their business. Being prepared shows you care and are willing to earn the opportunity to work for the firm or individual.
   
7. Treat the receptionist like a peon. He or she doesn’t really count anyway and has no influence in the company. Right?
   
8.  Make people wait and be impatient if you are required to do so.  I remember my firm once lost a $10,000 web site because my sales person was ten minutes late and didn’t even bother to call. “If you don’t respect the value of my time, then you don’t respect my company.”
   
9.  Place your company information on a vehicle and then drive like a jerk. I seldom respond to vehicular advertising except when I make it a point never to work with a particular company because their driver cut me off in traffic.
   
10.  Don’t bother hand-writing a thank you note and following up with a phone call. Taking the time to say thank you isn’t really that important anymore and neither is the person who gave you an opportunity to work with them.
    
11. Send out mass e-mails and thank you notes. Everybody loves being treated like a number, so why not reaffirm this by showing some real insincerity. It's better to personally thank a few individuals at a time, by name, than to try and thank everybody with a generic mass mailing.

Yes, I know I can't count. Giving more than I promise is another one of those nasty habits I'm working on. :)