The personal side of hard times

I've almost stopped watching the news. Why? Because the media's fixation on a moment by moment reporting of a global financial collapse serves no one's best interest. I'm not a financial analyst so I'll give you no advice about your investment portfolio. I do have some thoughts about how you survive the hard times we are all experiencing.

In early 2002, I spent about six months immersed in a single project. A start-up of a national non-profit. I learned a lot. Near the end of my involvement, the people involved changed almost over night, and I was no longer part of the team.  I found myself not only without any projects, but having not spent any time developing projects during the previous six months. I went for three months without any work. I learned that I was not prepared to deal with hard times. It is a lesson that sticks with me today.

So, what did I learn that I carry into these hard times. There are three principles that I follow.

1. Personal integrity. I won't sacrifice it for financial gain. Trust is hard to build, and easy to lose. How we respond to hard times is watched by others, from our children to our clients. They are watching because they too are experiencing the same things. Personal integrity has a lot to say about the values that we want to live by. If I violate my own values, for example, for me it is being a servant rather than being a king, then a deep conflict grows within me. If I am in conflict over my own motives and actions, then how will I be able to serve my clients well? I cannot emphasize enough the importance of our personal integrity. It is one of the singular strengths that we possess that is difficult to replace once lost.

2. Personal relationships. Healthy relationships, whether personal or professional, are a product of trust, openness, mutuality and caring. Add confidence in our competency to do the job to the professional list, and you have a set of guides for the kind of relationships that survive hard times. The ways these qualities are discovered in our relationships is through involvement, availability, and participation in activities together. Call it networking if you will. But it does not come by expanding your address book. It isn't a numbers game. It is a connection game.

But it is not simply a connections game. I make meaningful personal connections with people every day. I meet people I want to know better. They are interesting people. We have common interests, goals and aims in life. Yet ... nothing happens with the connection. Why? Because long term healthy relationships require a reason to exist beyond knowing one another. My closest friends are people with whom we share a commitment to making a difference in a specific way.  Our relationship is built on mutual work together, not having lots of conversations.

Right now, I have as many volunteer projects going as I do client ones. I do them for many reasons. One of the primary ones is to build relationships with people I respect and want to get to know.  It follows back to a simple principle that I follow, the list of activities is not a measure of impact. Change is the only measure of impact. And if our relationships are not creating change, they will languish into mediocrity and indifference. This leads to my last principle.

3. Personal Impact. Hard times are a transition point between the past and the future.  It is time of purging of old ways that are no longer effective, and the acquisition of new ways that are.  We build the future in the midst of transition. Now is the time to change how we will approach everything we do. Now is the time that we become committed to creating an impact in our personal and professional lives.

What is impact? It is change. It is making a difference. It is moving from one level to another. It is removing that which doesn't work and replacing it with that which does. We can choose to change, and by focusing on making a difference in both our personal and professional lives, we can make it through the hard times as better people with stronger businesses and communities.

You don't create this impact in your head. You create it in action, in participating and contributing, in doing personally meaningful things that are socially fulfilling. If you have less work, go volunteer. If you have more work to do because there are fewer people to do it, then focus on each encounter being one that makes a difference. Discover for yourself what this means. I can't tell you. I can only point you in the direction that will help you discover how you can make a difference.

Do this and you will have prepared yourself for the good days that are coming. Focus on these things. Stengthening your integrity in aspects of your life. Take your relationships to a deeper level of trust and confidence. Create a higher level of impact than ever before in all you do. If we do this together, then the world we live will also be different, and that is a good thing.

I'll be talking about these ideas and more next Tuesday afternoon in Asheville, NC when I will be presenting two sessions of Leading from the Middle during our Lessons in Leadership event. It only costs $39. Five presentations and a boxed dinner. A great deal. Check it out and come.

Comments

[Betsy]

Awesome! Stumbled you.