Category: personal touch

Of Gems and Chunky Bacon

I swear, I’ll return to a regularly scheduled blogging! Maybe with tales of woe, tales of “d’oh!”, tales of “whoa!”, and tales of dough. Gluten-free, worry not.

But not before mentioning how, like, OMG, holy cow, I’m reading a strangely compelling book.

It’s a picture book with a deeper hue of the child-like humor found in the epic series Captain Underpants. Take burnt sienna. Now dunk it back in your local toaster, set to 11. Crisp-eh-licious.

It’s a story that folds in The Isle of Dr. Moreau with cartoon foxes. One part starmonkey, five parts chunky bacon.

While I wait for an Amazon-sourced and Cicero-serious book in dead-tree form, with content surely as dry as a witch’s tit, I bathe in the mobile bath of the Google-sourced and painfully playful online book, content as moist and dripping as… the outside of this Dunkin’ Donuts small iced coffee. Cream and sugar. OK, sure, and one blueberry cake donut, please. Just this once. Don’t judge. Thank you. Nah, keep the change. No, thank YOU.

Have you ever been inspired to create, but it involves learning a new skill? Like a computer programming language? Like Ruby? Where you hope to have fun while you’re at it?

Take a look:

Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby
tenderly written and illustrated by why the lucky stiff

…It’s in a book. A Reading Rainbow…

ScrumOfTwo

You go to a wedding. You chat up the peeps. You talk small-talk: the weather, them Yankees, the Ebola virus. You are offered a beer. You take it: mmMMmm! You then ask what was in it: good stuff. You are asked what you do for a living. You take note of the crowd. You make a decision.

You …point out the ceremony is starting.

At some point, there is a… reading?

And now, a reading from the Central Little Dogma, by Taco Bell MSG, the Taco Bell Motivational Speaking Group.

Life is like a burrito.

Life is like a burrito where you have full control of what you put inside your burrito. You can put in the tastiest components, the most delicious ingredients. Or, you can put in shiiit. It is up to you. You have full control of what you put inside your burrito.

Some people say life is like a circle… which is valid: just look down the length of the burrito, and the burrito model of life still holds.

Some people say life comes in stages… which is also valid: it is generally recommended to eat burritos one at a time, so again, the burrito model of life still holds.

Now, it is not only important what you put inside your burrito, how much and the quality, but what is also important is who you share your burrito with.

Ever since eating was invented, it has evolved to be best enjoyed as a communal sport, so who you bring to the table is as important as what you bring to the table. For just as you may be having some burrito of that special somebody, you must think about the burrito you yourself will be sharing.

There is a quote by Jim Rohn, an American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker, that, when lightly para-phrased, goes,”You are the average of the five burritos you eat most frequently.” Beyond the notion of, “You are what you eat,” this noted burrito aficionado succinctly serves us a recipe for how you are shaped by how you have your meals.

Indeed, it is a beautiful thing to see two ravishers of the burrito, together partaking in the mystery of alimentary bliss that is complementary burritos.

You are slightly confused, yet happy for the couple.

Wedding Bands

You are also suddenly craving Mexican food, which we’re they’re not serving at the wedding.

How Not To Forgive Myself

Two guys walk into a bar. (Ooh, a joke…) One guy says, “Hey man, good to see you again.” (Alright, so this next part will be the funny part…) The other guy says, “Hey man, I don’t entirely want to be here.” (…well that was hardly worth a chuckle)

That’s what I actually said to him! Was that rude? (Oh, it’s not a joke, Merrill’s the second guy.)

At my Scrum Product Owner training session over three months ago, I met a Product Owner, started talking about my application of Scrum to Personal Development, heard how he was into using Scrum for Professional Development, and then took the conversation back up a couple of days ago. (A man-date?)

So when I told my buddy that I didn’t want to be there (“I was being a wicked rude jerk-face”), it was in the context of how I see a necessary level of forgiveness from the Product Owner in ScrumOfOne. In ‘regular’ Scrum, this is analogous to the practice of building a buffer into Sprints: a reservation of a part of the velocity for things the team or Product Owner decides to get done that arrive mid-Sprint. (You mean you can’t stick to a plan for a full Sprint?)

It’s because you can never plan what opportunities may arise or what fires may suddenly need putting out – and definitely not for a full Sprint. (Oh.) Thus, I almost NEVER fully follow through with what I set up at my ScrumOfOne Sprint Planning meeting. (And what, you beat yourself up for this?)

And I feel bad (oh) because I see these remaining Sprint Backlog items at the end of two weeks, staring me in the face from the glowing rectangle that lives in my pocket. (‘Glowing rectangle’, that’s funny.) This is what I brought up with my buddy. (Did you mention how you talk to yourself in your own blog posts?)

By me grabbing a drink with him, I’m NOT doing something I had already set up for myself. The forgiveness comes in if I ultimately believe that the activity I DO do (tee-hee) is effectively a story that gets me closer to some vision for myself. By chatting up somebody in the thick of promoting Scrum at corporations, I knew I would learn a tonne (the metric ton, good choice) about the various adoptions of the framework, and I think we were able to devise some concrete next steps for getting professional development underway where he is.

(I get it: doing the man-date meant you didn’t do stuff on your Sprint Backlog, but in the larger picture, it’s all good.)

So now here is my struggle: I want to replace the notions of forgiveness and anxiety over not accomplishing carefully prioritized stories towards building the product(s) of me, with the notion of judgement-free doing.

Yes, I’m trying to weave the Taoist concept of Wei Wu Wei (effortless action), or at least a consequence of this idea, into ScrumOfOne.

Suggestions?

(Yeah, he needs all the help he can get!)

Bust A Rut

One of the biggest things I got out of reading ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne was the idea of a Secret Shifter:

Secret Shifters, such as pleasant memories, nature, or your favorite music, can change your feelings and shift your frequency in an instant.

By frequency, she’s talking about the energy you give off to attract the things you really want. If you’re not into that ‘frequency’ and ‘law of attraction’ business, that’s cool. It’s actually not as simplistic as visualizing what you want, because you have to pair that with NOT focusing on what you DON’T want, since, per this game, you’ll just attract that into your life, too. It takes a little work, but that’s not what I wanted to get into. I want to talk about the ‘feeling good’ part.

Before I get into work, and after I leave work, and in the morning if I remember to, I cue up my Secret Shifter, my theme song, Thand101. It’s awesome, I love it. It kind of sounds like a galloping horse when fully orchestrated, and I’ll hum it to myself when I’m feeling awesome, like I’m radiating bad-assery, or I’ll hum it to myself, all morose and in more of a minor key than it already is, as a sympathetic back pat as if to say, “Cheer up, ol’ chap, chin up.” Yeah, that bit comes through in a British accent. Self-talk can get weird.

Martha Beck, life coach extraordinaire, has a version of this which is more involved: ask yourself what is your favorite thing to sense with each of your five senses, then ‘sense’ them. Man, that was a clumsy way to say it. Let’s try this:

Right now, what is your favorite thing to see?
What is your favorite taste?
What is your favorite smell?
What is your favorite touch sensation?
What is your favorite sound?
Now, see that thing, taste that taste, smell that favorite smell, feel yourself touching that favorite… touch, hear that sound. Fully immerse yourself in each of these sensations.

They won’t always make sense to… sense all at once, and that’s not the point. You’ll most likely smile, and you’ll take deeper breaths, and your shoulders will slump a little, and you’ll be more present and in your body – that’s the point.

As hustlin’ and bustlin’ humans in the first world, most of us reading this, myself included, we’re often focused on the future or the past, and not in the present. That’s a pretty broad and accusatory statement, so I invite you to analyze that for yourself: are you limiting yourself with regret (past-focused) or worry (future-focused)? One way to bring you back in the present is to then bring you back into your body (vs. your head), and what better way than by sensing. Sure, the fantasy of favorite senses isn’t real, but it uses what your body does to result in a smile.

So there you have it, folks. To bust a rut, immerse yourself in a Sensory Meditation or use a Secret Shifter. This stuff works for me, and yes, the language here can be a little ‘woo-woo’, sure, but we’re not talking about reconnecting with the greater consciousness of the universe (or are we…), we’re just talking about feeling better.