GROW OUR NETWORK, ONE SISTER at a TIME

Acknowledge your sisters; make eye contact and smile. Compliment your sisters. Don’t lie, but find something, and say it. If you really can’t find anything at all [which is doubtful] just say ‘have a wonderful day’.  

First of all, your sister will look surprised. This is sad, but we pass each other on a daily basis, and think to ourselves ‘cute haircut’…. [okay, so I’m obsessed], or nice shoes, neat purse… So verbalize that thought! It will make another sister’s day. Then she will pass the gesture along.

We live in very stressful times and it’s much too easy to be bitchy. Yes, you’re right, sometimes it is fun, as long as we don’t make a habit out of it. We have to band together. We certainly are not getting the recognition we deserve from a lot of the younger generation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am painting with a wide brush.

I want to see every Sabertooth walking proud, heads held high; proud to have lived and accomplished everything we have, without excuses! I hate it when I hear a older woman sigh ‘I’m old’. You are NOT old, unless you choose to think you are. You are accomplished. Sit down and start writing everything you’ve accomplished in your 50, 60, 70 or more years. You will be amazed!

Remember what Cher once said when talking about the up and coming young diva’s: “I’ve been an evil freakin’ diva for 40 freakin’ years. Top that, Bitches!”

All women are a Sisterhood… know it, believe it; pass it on!

BEWARE of EMOTIONAL VAMPIRES

I find myself these days searching for that illusive line between Positive Thinking and Self Delusion. Every time I think I’ve struck the perfect balance between the two, I find that I’m woefully wrong; especially when it comes to friends, or rather, acquaintances.

Let me explain. I’m one of those people that everyone seems to go to for validation. For some reason, my acceptance is needed to validate life itself. Sometimes I play along and bless them, however… sometimes the person neither warrants or deserves validation. Sometimes the person is just having a pity party and wants me to assure them that they are either right and life sucks, or talk them into seeing how truly gifted and marvelous they really are. Homey don’t play those games anymore, because those games can suck the life right out of you, and I will not empower emotional vampires. Say it with me: “I will not empower emotional vampires”. Believe it or not, at the moment, your probably are.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the ‘there are no problems, only opportunities’ bullshit. I’m talking about an intelligent, creative approach to problem solving, rather than the much too easy ‘let whoever caused the problem, solve it’. As I may have mentioned before… women are a sisterhood, and we either all succeed or we all fail. It seems too easy, why do so few people get it?

Okay, so where does that leave us? How do you keep a realistic positive attitude when the world around you is falling into the abyss? Oh, wait! That sounded rather negative, didn’t it? OMG, it’s catching! Thinking of unicorns… unicorns and puppies…… okay, I’m better.

So how do you deal with a gloom and doom husband, partner, sister, brother or imaginary friend? What do you do with the person who can fall into a pile of rose’s petals and complain that about the smell of fertilizer? How do you stop that kind of thinking from infecting your personal universe; and it will if left unchecked.

First you have to set up some rules to derail the Emotional Vampire before seeing them:

Declare your personal space a negative-free zone.

Of course you can talk about problems, but leave the emotions as the door.  

Be prepared to discuss your view of the problem; the good, the bad and the ugly.
Give credit where credit is due. Ask your vampire directly is anyone has been a help to them lately. Force them to have a positive thought.

If you are aware of a particular issue before the meeting, come with some possible solutions. Just throwing out a problem with no solution, is fodder for the EV and gives him/her a starting gun for the whole gloom and doom scenario.

 No one is allowed to sit silently, stare at the clock and sigh.

That’s a good start. We’ll go into more ideas as they come. Right now I have to string some garlic for my next EV encounter.

Peace, Strength and Patience!

THINGS THAT DISTURB MY CALM...

There are No Problems— Only Opportunities for Success

Well, isn’t that a crock? How as at least partially educated people did we ever come up with that inane philosophy? We really have to stop demeaning ourselves with that kind of thinking.

When you have a problem, put on your big-girl panties and call it what it is; a problem! If at the last minute you wuss-out, at least call it an issue, but never refer to it as an opportunity, or I swear to Starbucks, I’ll hunt you down……..

There is no “I” in Team
And there’s no “I” in ‘fat chance’, ‘really?’ or ‘get bent’. Trust me, I cleaned that one up.

Usually that kind of manipulative crap comes from a sales dork, trying to get you to do ‘a little favor’ – some menial task that they could do for themselves, but are too elite or just plain lazy.

DON’T DO IT! It’s a slippery slope and it’s not easy getting back up that hill, unless you take a chain saw to the user (male or female)….

Case in point: An engineer on a project I was leading (business-as-usual, no big whoop) needed to fly across country for a three day job. He asked me to get him a window seat and a king-size bed because he hated to be cramped. I reminded him I was his manager and not his assistant.

He then went in to a long (and boring) story about on his last job, the manager insisted on doing everything for him. Bering the sensitive person I am, I suggested that possibly that other manager wanted to sleep with him, and then assured him that I didn’t, so he’d have to fend for himself.

Collecting for Charity in the Workplace…

Yeah, this is a touchy subject, so let me explain before you to all Fox on me (referring to the hysterical diva O’Reilly at Fox News).

Before I happened to stumble into my current profession, I ran an office for a national service-type company. A sales dork (hmmm, I see a pattern forming) suggested that we put a large box wrapped in Christmas paper by the check-out desk, so our clients could bring in canned food items for the needy.

I questioned if that was really the place for such an endeavor, to which she replied (and I’m serious): “Well, maybe when they see the box, even if we don’t give them exactly what they want, they might realize that some people are not as fortunate as they are, and not complain.”

Really? Did you get all that? What a self-serving con! And when in your experience have you’ve paid for something, but were willing to take less because some people are less fortunate than you?

I bet her twenty dollars that it wouldn’t work. One month later I collected my winnings standing right next to that empty box [which I dropped in the bucket of the Salvation Army bell ringer].

“I just don’t get it,” she kept repeating. I just nodded and sighed: “I know.”

I'd love to say, once you identify your pain points, they all go away, but they don't. But talking and/or writing about them, helps. Just reading what I just wrote, made me laugh...  Sometimes I'm such a dork! [still laughing!]

BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU ASK FOR....

Stand proud sisters; you have knowledge

and experience that money can’t buy

 Once when I was being interviewed, I was asked what I’m looking for in a company. In my in-side-the-head voice say: “I want to make a butt load of money due to my genius, work about 3 hours a day, and have my teams adore and worship me for my knowledge and guts.” But what generally comes out is: “I want to work with nice people…..” And as silly as it may sound, I meant it.

Well I’ll be … I got my wish! The nice people part, not the butt load of money part. Nice people, great surroundings and a decent paycheck. I should be in hog’s heaven, don’t you think? But I’m not.

Root cause analysis time! I ask myself:

What is bothering you? The nice people.

Isn’t that what you wanted? Yes

So what’s the problem? You have nice people, just like you asked.

Wait! Maybe we should define ‘nice’! (Ah-ha, the $3.50 I spent on the coffee while reading a USA Today introspective on proto-analysis is now paying big dividends!)

What is nice? Let’s make a list of nice attributes! After all, we’re highly organized and lists are our life!

Nice is:

People not being deliberate pains-in-the-ass

People who smile appropriately

People to offer help and suggestions rather than demand help

People who can stop working long enough to engage in occasional social banter.

So, are the people ‘nice’?

Yep, they certainly are!

Then what is the problem?

Wait; is there such a thing as being too nice? Ahhh-haaa!

Yes! They smile way too much, yet no one is that happy! Have they missed scheduled medications or just waiting for an opportune time to cook off some crystalline devils dandruff?

Crap, these folks wouldn’t say crap if they had a burning bag of it on their desks! What kind of games are they playing? Do they have something so hideous in their pasts that they can’t stop smiling, as the reoccurring memories are just too delicious to let go of?

Does this really affect the day’s progress?

You tell me…One guy hijacks all conversations within ear shot, no matter what the focus of the discussion. This nice person will jumps in, commandeer the conversation and wander off in the weirdest direction!

Seriously, he smiles and injects, “yeah, but, have you ever wondered what…” And continues to describe or construct a straw-man or a contention that is so full of crap, you wonder how he could pile it that high and it not slump over due to gravity.

Then, the other nice folks blindly follow the course and respond in a children-of-the-corn type monotone: “no, I never thought that…’. And off we go!

By then I just want to shove hot burning spikes deep into my ears and block it all out…

How many pleasant conversations can you have about the lovely freakin’ weather? I think I’m working with Stepford-Children-of-the-Corn people, except these clones are just comical, out of shape, real people.

I am to the point of wanting to stand up on my desk, open my blouse and while the old warm winds of truth blow over my girls; burst out with a string of coarse expletives that would make a dockworker blush, all in an attempt to bring a bit of worldly grit into play!

Next time an employer asks what I want in a company, I just might have to tell them the truth.

Peace; pass it on!