Your Own Personal Maven

I’m curious – how familiar is this thread of conversation?

“I want a new electric toothbrush – do you have any recommendations to help me?”

“It Depends.”

“Ha! Can you throw me a bone?”

“Well, I know you’re a traveler. So maybe you're looking for something you can travel with, lose, and repurchase anywhere in the world? If so, there’s some cheap ones that are highly functional and replaceable. I also know you have kids. Are you trying to help them develop better brushing habits? I’ve got some killer light up ones that do music for a minute so you can train them not to take it out until the music stops. Do you want an all in one device the whole family can use that will make your teeth feel sparkling every time and don’t mind spending some $$$? Well... I've got options for that too.”

See, it depends.

Not all products, services, or lifestyle choices that are similar serve the same purpose so how do you choose what’s right for you in a culture where choice abounds?

It starts with that simple sentiment: what's right for you?

Knowing what’s right for you is a lot easier said than done. When we encounter choices, there are merits to many of the options. Few choices we face have a distinct right or wrong. So the art of quickly anchoring around what's right for you can be more difficult than it seems.

It could also be far easier than you realized.

What Matters

Before you can know what’s right for you, you need to know what matters to you. This seems relatively simple on the surface. I want to be a good mom, I want to deliver value at work. I want to make time for my hobbies (like blogging). I want to change the world (literally). At a basic level, it seems as though we should all know what matters. But in my personal experience, many of us don’t... myself included at times. And there seems to be common mindset threads underpinning that gap in understanding.

1. You know it, but you don’t Know it
2. Everything matters so nothing matters
3. This should matter (but if I’m honest, it doesn’t really)

Let’s expound on these a little. Has someone ever asked you what you want for your career and you look blankly at them because while you have a surface level understanding of what you want; you don’t intimately understand it at a conscious level? In these cases it becomes very difficult to apply that surface level knowledge to real life decisions. That’s the gap between knowing and Knowing. When you deeply understand what drives you – at the purest level – translating that to decision making is relatively easy.

Now let’s say you Know what matters. But when you break it down into its components, the list is a mile long, diffused across so many areas of your life that you can’t invest in them all. This lack of focus and priority puts everything on a level playing field. Without clear priorities there is no way to distinguish and assess the options.

And of course, I firmly believe most of us (myself included) at one time or another fall prey to expectations. These expectations can come in the form of societal norms, familial desires or any number of other pressures about who we should be that affect our decision making. When I'm helping people work through decisions, one of the things I’ve learned to look for is the use of the word “should”. Should is a powerful word, because it is often an indicator that someone has the prescience to know they are considering an option that is aligned to what they believe is the appropriate vs. what they Know. The words want, will, have to, and can reflect sentiments of desire, decision, obligation, and inspiration. But when I hear myself saying “should” I know it’s not something I’ve committed to yet. So I ask myself why and if that’s okay. Sometimes “should” serves me – it can indicate a conflict between desire, will and my actual path and can helps me refine what really matters.

So how do you pick the right product, or choose the right action, or engage in the right activity – the one that will support what matters most to you?

1. Start with a vision.
2. Support it by cornerstones. The things that must be true for the vision to be realized.
3. Fuel it by attitudes and energy that enable the cornerstones.
4. Build it with actions.

Mapping the Choice

The more deeply rooted the vision and priorities are, the easier the choice will rise to the top among the cacophony of options. In the search to adopt changes in your life this can improve everything from how you research, how you root out options, what you ask for to craft clarity, and how you execute.

There are so many ways to define a vision from the grand questions “what is my life purpose?” to the very real “what do I want out of a toothbrush?” There are exercises, tactics, and techniques; but all serve the same end goal. To help you see the end state, so when you’re walking down the road, you aren’t looking down at your feet and find yourself miles off course; but you’re looking up – and magically – you are working in a straight line closer to the end goal you pictured at the beginning. The vision is being able to see a distant outline of where you are headed. It narrows choices; it motivates when the path gets tough, and it keeps you going in the right general direction when you encounter obstacles and forks in the road. As a result, because it’s something you need to see, a great vision exercise synthesizes a lot down to something crisp, clear, resonant, and unforgettable. To each individual - the method to capture and harness it may be different. Given my personality quirks and developed preferences, I like a vision that comes in the form of a picture or an essence, that can translate to a painting or a few words that capture a highly inspirational and personal frame of mind.

Once you understand the vision – there’s a set of big rocks – or cornerstones – that need to be understood. You don’t need to define everything or even understand everything; but you need to understand the big items that set apart something that will enable your vision from something that won’t. This is the first aspect of prioritization.  When I was buying a house; I described the kind of lifestyle I wanted to lead. From that lifestyle arose some must have end state items – the “big rocks”. These weren’t requirements; because there were multiple ways to get that end state – but they represented the 4-5 things I wanted to be true about the space I was calling home for the next 10 years. As an example, “I need to have nature in my daily life” was a cornerstone for me. This could have ended up as a fenced in backyard with trees, a space to build a great garden, or a house that backed up to a crick. In my case it meant a walk to a river, parks nearby, a fenced in backyard and a line of 100 year old lilac bushes outside of my kitchen window that now house dozens of birds.

So often in our journey to enable choices, we forget that behaviors are fueled by attitudes. Our energy often propels us down paths whether or not they align to where we wanted to go. That is due to various reasons. We get tired. We forget. We just don’t think about it. So to drive the outcomes we desire it starts from within. How do we seek out the place where we fundamentally feel the state we want to create? Sometimes this is natural. Sometimes it means a little pep talk. Sometimes it means the right support structure that rubs off on us. This is probably the hardest step – because it’s the one least tied to a process you can put to paper. It's about being aware of your feelings, motivations, reactions, habits, and thoughts. 

At some point in my early adulthood, I finally realized that awareness is at its most powerful when combined with understanding and acceptance. At the time I didn't call it acceptance, I called it self forgiveness. I realized when I was mad at myself for a failure to be aware and do the "right thing" I dug the hole deeper creating a guilt complex that thwarted my growth. Since then I've realized that acceptance is at the cornerstone of the mindfulness practices becoming more prevalent.

When I sought to understand, I was open to what could be learned from the state of mind. When I accepted, I reduced resistance, and reducing resistance is what allowed me to channel the energy and attitudes I was looking to drive my vision. There are a ton of methods for this from mindfulness to trying on different perspectives, being consciously curious, art, keeping a journal, exercise, the list goes on. The key is exploration and finding ways that allow you to understand and channel what moves you forward; which often means accepting the parts and pieces that do not move you forward with grace. What you accept you can tap into. What you do not accept is hidden. By not accepting it, you keep it confined to a space as trapped energy and it is no longer accessible to you. You fight with it instead of accepting it and it never truly resolves.

Now I'm guessing you could pick a toothbrush without this step. But even in the most rapid fire manner, it’s fascinating how this can affect our perceived value on an object and what it represents.

Let’s say you are setting a vision to travel more, live lighter and more nimble so you can go at a drop of the hat. When you pick up a toothbrush in the store does it serve the purpose to enable that? Does it remind you of that vision? Is it a physical reminder that fuels the energy that will get you there? Is it something that doesn't fuel your vision but doesn't detract either? Is it a sign of an anchor or frustration? Often times we assess this subconsciously; but it’s important to remember because these perspectives affect our day to day activities in a very real way.

Once the big rocks are clear and the attitudes and energy are conscious – the rest is easy. It’s action. Creating a plan that maps to a vision and prioritizes requirements is something the majority of us do in our everyday lives. If I want to travel more, I know my requirements for that toothbrush are light, mobile, cheap, easy to lose and easy to replace. Perhaps I want it small enough to stash in my purse, and common batteries I can get anywhere in case it turns on accidentally in my luggage (a true story in my case)!

Putting it in Action

Let’s make this bigger. 3 years ago I did a visioning exercise to help drive the next 5-10 years of my life. I did it myself in a coffee shop and spent an hour after I had given myself a few weeks to just mull over it. I described where I wanted my life to move/shift. The vision was was rooted in a sense of community and family and being more grounded physically and mentally. It meant being more present and at peace in my life and the world and with my family so I could grow and stretch in a more meaningful way and have a greater impact in this world. While it seems generic – it rooted me to a life I could see and then create.

I developed a few cornerstones from that. My focus ares were (in this order of priority):

1. Create an increased sense of family and community for my kids, me and their dad.
2. Focus on physical and emotional well-being for me and my kids.
3. Introduce more creativity into my life.
4. Stretch myself mentally.

From those focus areas I set goals:

1. Move closer to my kids dad and establish a sense of home.
2. Work where I could be reliably have more time for my kids and be closer to home.
3. Change fields at work to learn new skills.
4. Pick up new outdoor activities that keep me moving and emotionally more whole.
5. Find ways to insert creativity in my every day life and my work.

Then I made decisions. Within a short period, I changed jobs, moved to a river town and a house with a yard, put a reading nook in, and made dabbling in the arts a focus. Over the course of the last few years; I’ve bought a house, started meditating, adopted a dog, picked up overnight backpacking/hiking and figured out a way to cook more. And this just scratches the surface of the evolution.

Being your own personal maven – or expert – is at the core of making meaningful decisions for you. But what about when it’s not all about you?

Adding Complexity – When you have to be the Maven for Many

Let’s add another layer. We’ve talked about toothbrushes, life goals, and jobs. What we have not yet broached is how to apply this to your work. The challenge that often comes at work is that you are crafting visions and making decisions that have nothing to do with being your own personal maven and everything to do with being the organization’s maven. Those visions you produce and decisions you make, have to represent what matters most for the organization, not you. In the moment we’re building plans and solutions, it is often difficult to separate our own sense of what matters from what is best for the organization as a whole unit.  This same complexity applies to families and other units and relationships. One technique I’ve used in this is asking myself what “hat” I’m wearing when I’m taking an action, responding to a question or prioritizing. By naming who I am representing at that moment, I can more clearly see if I’m doing the right thing or justifying an action because it’s what I want.

I am as guilty as everyone else of prioritizing my own needs over an organization’s in the heat of the moment but the simple act of being conscious that I am a representative of a larger entity helps me separate that out successfully more often.

Now that doesn’t mean your own individual wants, needs and values don’t matter. To the contrary – they are everything – because they are what allow you to map your own role in the organization’s path forward; but if you can separate those two things… the organization from the person, you will find your decision making is clearer; your motivations purer, and then you can make subsequent decisions about how you fit into those organizational decisions to best reflect what matters the most to you.

In this space, you can see where the needs of the whole and the part can be aligned; or if misaligned, you can take the best possible action to ensure your own needs are met without unduly impacting the direction of the whole beyond the simple fact of your part in (or not in) it.

Back to Basics

Life is fluid. It constantly changes shapes and forms. We have the ability to change or hold our shape within that fluidity. We can choose how to thread ourselves into the changes happening around us, or we can determine how to keep our path constant amidst that flux. When I picture life, I often think of a kaleidoscope of color with madness, seeming randomness and strict patterns all flowing from a center stage and I am simply observing it from the perspective of a child in jaw dropped wonder.

From that child’s vantage point it doesn’t matter what we’re doing; our ability to be our own personal maven will make our choices the most impactful they can be.