Welcome! Thank you for coming and giving me the opportunity to
share with you my ideas and thoughts.
Today I'm thinking about commitments -- commitments I make to
myself, and how I often abandon them in the face of my perceived demands of
time and effort. This post is about that....
Sometime in 2002 a friend and co-worker made an observation of me.
He said "Dave, this project is all screwed up, you are the PM [project manager],
and yet you are not being blamed. Nothing sticks to you. It is as if you have a
teflon coating."
At the time this made me feel good. It made me feel safe. So I
analyzed why this was true. From this I developed the teflon coating strategy.
Here is the great secret that until now hasn't appeared in writing. :)
·
When
you make a mistake be the first person to tell your immediate supervisor or
customer about it.
·
Do
not commit to things that you don't absolutely know you can do.
·
Produce
solid work products, at least one every two weeks, but preferably as often as
possible.
Shortly after this in late 2003, I was coaching a PM team on a
temporary contract and was confronted by my client. "I heard you're
telling my team how to avoid being blamed for things by applying a teflon
coating!", to which I replied with a smile.
"Let me get this right. It would be a problem for you if
people came to you right away when they made a mistake, didn't tell you they
could do things they didn't really think they could, and produced a solid work
product as fast as possible?", to which he replied kind of sheepishly,
"well no."
I thought of myself as one clever dude. Pats on my back all
around. My ego was happy. For a while the hole I felt inside from my lack of
personal fulfillment was filled.
Of course the strategy is actually a good thing to do. It helps
everyone involved. My sharing of this strategy actually has helped people out
many times, and most of them appreciated it. :)
But what I failed to realize for myself, in my cleverness, was
that while I was doing good work and achieving results, I was ignoring my most
important customer -- myself. I used my strategies entirely to protect myself
from criticism by others and to gain the acceptance and appreciation of others.
I was dependent upon the outside validation, and I needed it to feel complete.
My cleverness was serving me and failing me at the same moment and I didn't
even know it.
Here is the sequence of events where I abandon myself.
I identify a problem I want to solve or something I want to create,
and I tell myself I will do it. I come up with a plan and thoroughly commit to
myself to follow through on it.
Then this plan meets the perceived reality of my co-dependent
mind. With so much focus on the acceptance and appreciation of others there is
no place for my desires in the mental model. So I abandon my plan and
commitment before I even start. In order to I protect my own feelings, I act as
if I never made the commitment, choosing instead to be needless and wantless.
This way of abandonment of myself is so easily done and so
pervasive in my past I honestly cannot fathom the number of times I've done it.
I've been working to change this for many years. And in many
places in my life I've had success. Recently, through work I'm doing on myself
around my weight, I've come to be aware of this process at a new level. I'm
acutely aware of how this process was feeding my desire to overeat. In order to
appease my inner self away from feelings of anger and sadness at my abandonment
of self, I indulged myself with food.
So as expected, once awareness is had, I cannot return to blissful
ignorance. Once awareness dawns, here comes my higher power to challenge,
reward, and fill in my needs.
Insert into my life Tony Robbins' book, Awaken The Giant Within,
my psychotherapy process, and my desire to achieve a biggest loser competition.
I daresay I cannot get off this road of change now.
Tony's words come blasting out loud and clear in my new desire to
change -- "The power of decision will change your life." They are
followed quickly by the words of Vince Horan -- "your decision to be
needless and wantless worked for you in that old family system but it doesn't
work for you now."
Bam! Right in the face. Why am I making decisions to accomplish
things and not following through? Why am I unwilling to put my own needs and
wants out into the world?
Because I decided to a long time ago, and I'm still making that
decision.
Once the question is asked, the answer is there, and the opportunity
for change provided. Like a veil lifted. In the time between two seconds, I
find the time to change my decision. In the time between two seconds I can
decide to make a different commitment.
So now I'm applying the teflon coating internally -- To be
accountable to myself. To not tell myself I'll do something I don't know I can
absolutely do. To make good on my commitments to myself and produce the
creations and outcomes I have committed to myself.
And you know what? The universe is conspiring to support me and
it's using people in my life to do it.
For example:
I had an idea last year to create a stand for my iPad to make it
into a document camera. I put the idea into action and made a commitment to
myself to do it. I in fact got with a friend and built the stand. It was a
great dimensional prototype. But honestly looked bad. My decision was to find
someone to help me design it to look better but had no idea who. So I set a
time frame to reach out through my social network to see who I could find to
help me.
A day later, Erin, my wife, returned from a trip and I proudly
showed her my ugly duckling of a stand. Before I could say more than five words
she declares, "it's kinda ugly." To which I had a moment of fear
realized. But I let it pass without defense or comment. She was simply
stating her observations and I agreed.
But what came next surprised me. She simply said, "give me a
piece of drawing paper and a pencil." In fifteen minutes, she ripped out a
design that was beautiful as well as meeting the functional dimensions I had
already proven out.
I was blown away. I had in my hands the answer to my problem, a
solution I would never have seen had that ugly prototype not existed. I had
simply followed through on my commitment to myself to build the prototype. I
had set aside my fear of criticism and failure and made it anyway, and the
fascinating part was the realization that it was the imperfection of the
prototype that compelled Erin to action. She felt a desire to solve the obvious
problem in front of her.
Without the failure of the prototype to be visually appealing, the
design would have not been created.
My mind still boggles at that chain of events.
By following through on my commitment, I had achieved more than I
had expected.
What I know from my life is that an internal commitment is a
double-edged sword. Made too easily and sloppily, I can set myself up for
failure, leading to poor self esteem. However, living without needs and wants
means that I remain co-dependent and miserable.
Today I will apply my strategy to my internal commitments and use
the teflon coating. I will share my commitments with others so the commitments
have a life beyond my mental box.
I am committed to blogging here. I like it.
Thank you all.
A big thanks to my friend Fritz for some grammar edits. Really appreciate the support I'm getting.
ReplyDeleteMany powerful insights. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and experiences.
ReplyDelete