WE’RE BACK after an eventful few months that included three R’s: Retirement, Relocation, and Restart – no lack of stress in these activities, is there? But these are topics for future issues. We’re still unpacking a few boxes, so until the dust settles, we will plan to make VIEWPOINTS a bi-monthly newsletter, and will plan to resume a monthly publication schedule in January 2005.

Charlie Boyer, Editor

QUIPS & QUOTES. Here are a few thoughts to lighten your day:

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Life is a banquet and most damn fools are starving to death. (Auntie Mame)

Don’t be afraid to try something new, Joey. I thought carrots were terrible until I tasted sauerkraut. (Dennis the Menace)

Are you a DO-IT-YOURSELF JAILBIRD? Do you have the feeling that you have spent most of your working life locked behind walls? Doing the same job or task in the same way year after year can become boring, and that can contribute to your feeling stuck, and that can become a mindset against anything new. Difficulties can become detours, then roadblocks, then walls that can become self-constructed prisons. When you discover that has happened to you -- Congratulations! You have just become a Do-It-Yourself Jailbird!

Believe it or not, we all tend to collect building blocks that become walls without realizing we are doing so. We humans have a tendency to narrow our viewpoints and our scope of interests as we grow older. We tend to stay on comfortable paths that become ruts, to stay in ruts that become foundations for walls, to build walls around us -- block by block -- that gradually imprison us.

Have you collected any of these building blocks for your prison wall?

- But we’ve always done it this way.
- This doesn’t follow our procedures.
- What if it doesn’t work? It’s never been tried before.
- Let’s form a committee.
- We’d better leave well enough alone. Let’s maintain the status quo.

Recognize yourself in any of these? Let’s take a closer look at your collection of building blocks:
- “But we’ve always done it this way” says out loud and very clearly that you have already made up your mind and don’t wish to be confused with new facts or listen to new ideas.
- “This doesn’t follow our procedures” indicates that you are becoming a prisoner of your procedures, that it is more important how something gets done than whether it gets done.
- “What if it doesn’t work? It’s never been tried before” shows that you are afraid of failure, and that you’re defeated before you start. So what’s the worst that can happen if it doesn’t work? Never been tried before? I doubt it. Are you more concerned about what you can’t do than what you can do? Talk about self-designed prison walls!
- “Let’s form a committee” tells everyone that you don’t have confidence in your own ability to flesh out a good idea when you hear one, and that you’d rather shelve a good idea than act on it. Remember the old joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee?
- “We’d better leave well enough alone. Let’s maintain the status quo” says that you are perfectly happy to be stuck in that rut you’re in. Every time I hear the words, “status quo,” I’m reminded of a great quote by humorist Jim Boren: “Status quo is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.”

Maybe you’ve seen a widely circulated, tongue-in-cheek list of “Fifty Reasons Why It Won’t Work” – all potential building blocks for your prison walls. Most of us are much better at deciding what won’t work than figuring out what will. Lucky for us that Thomas Edison didn’t accept failures – he had a lot of them, but he kept looking until he found what worked.

Here’s another who didn’t accept failure: In 1933, Irving Berlin was working to create another holiday song. He wanted it to sound old-fashioned, but he just couldn’t come up with the right combination of words and melody. He looked through his files and pulled out a song he wrote in 1917 that had been a complete flop. The song was called “Smile and Show Your Dimple.” Berlin gave it new words, a new title, and we’ve been singing it ever since. The ‘new’ song was “Easter Parade.”

Five Ways to Break Apart Your Building Blocks:
If you find yourself collecting quite a pile of self-limiting building blocks, look for ways to break them into little pieces and free yourself from that prison you are constructing for yourself. Here are five ways you can begin to free yourself:

1. Work smarter, not harder. Athletes, musicians, teachers, surgeons – they all make the difficult seem easy. Make what you do look easy – and attractive -- to others, and you’ll enjoy what you do so much more yourself.

2. Do the same thing differently. It’s a challenge, and it’s fun. Take a different route to work. Which shoe do you put on first in the morning? Make it a point to put on the other one first. Read the newspaper from the back page frontwards. A few little changes will begin to make big differences in your life.

3. Accentuate the positive. Did you notice how many of the above “building blocks” are negative? Can you turn around a negative statement to make it positive? When someone expresses a new idea to you, think of one way the idea will work, rather than 50 reasons why it won’t.

4. Try something new. Never had lessons as a kid but you always wanted to play the piano? Who says you can’t? Are you among the technologically challenged when it comes to computers? Enroll in a class, or hire an 8-year-old kid to teach you! Don’t like carrots? Try sauerkraut.

5. Look to the future. Your grandmother was right about not crying over spilled milk. What’s in the past should stay there. Self-renewing people and organizations embrace and anticipate what’s yet to come. Change is going to happen, either with you or around you. Enjoy the banquet!

RESOURCES: There are hundreds of self-help and self-renewal books available. This is not at all an exhaustive or definitive list, but some that I’ve found helpful and would gladly recommend to you. Here are a few good books to read and ponder:

Gardner, John W. Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society. ISBN 0-393-31295-X.

Kushner, Harold S. Living a Life That Matters. ISBN 0-385-72094-7.

Adrienne, Carol. The Purpose of Your Life. ISBN 0-688-16625-3.

Hudson, Frederic M. The Adult Years: Mastering the Art of Self-Renewal. ISBN 0-7879-4801-2.

NEXT ISSUE: How to Find A Window When You’re Hitting Your Head Against A Wall – tips and techniques for getting unstuck, not coming unglued. Coming in September-October.

If you’re someone looking for a window and all you can see is the wall, call Charlie at Infinite Perspectives (303-972-2581) to schedule a complimentary coaching session!

Please invite . . . your friends, relatives, co-workers to subscribe to Viewpoints. Visit our web site at www.infiniteperspectives.com and fill out the newsletter subscription box. Infinite Perspectives Coaching and Consulting will help you create windows in the walls that block you. A complimentary coaching session is available to any of our Viewpoints subscribers.