Author: morningrunguys

A Pro Among Pros

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timhudson

Last night, the San Francisco Giants won their 3rd World Series in 5 years. In order to accomplish the feat, Madison Bumgarner, the Giants’ 25 year old ace, had to come in on 2 days rest and pitch 5 shut-out innings earning his third win of the series and the title for the Giants.

Lost in the headlines was the starting pitcher for the Giants in Game 7, Tim Hudson. Hudson, the oldest man ever to start a World Series game 7, didn’t have his best stuff and he was yanked in the second inning after just 28 pitches. After 214 wins, over 2,000 strike-outs, 13 seasons, and 3 teams, Hudson finally has a World Series ring anyway. But none of the stats, good or bad, are what stood out to me about Hudson this post-season. What stood out to me, and was tested to the greatest degree last night, was Hudson’s professionalism, team-first mentality, and character. After one of the worst outings of his career, it would have been easy for Hudson to sulk, feel sorry for himself, and hang his head after the game. Instead, he did what you see in the picture above – he celebrated with his teammates and hugged and honored his young pitching staff mate, Bumgarner, on a job well done.

Hudson’s reaction last night is a strong lesson for young athletes, of course. It reinforces what most coaches preach about the success of the team being more important than individual performance and that losses belong to the team as well, no matter the circumstances that led to them.

But the lessons aren’t just for young kids. Tim Hudson is 85 days older than me (certainly in better shape), and a example that I need to learn from as well. When I bring in business for the company I work for, it is never because of my brilliant salesmanship. It is on the back of all of the outstanding work we’ve done over the past 20 years, it is aided by the professional advice and estimating that I receive from my Project Management team, and it comes from relationships that have been influenced by a myriad of people. Similarly, when a project doesn’t go as planned and we don’t fully meet a client’s expectations, it isn’t the fault of the design team because they have bad ideas. They are informed by things I share with them, inspired by others in the workplace, and have distractions outside of the office just like the rest of us, and we all own a part of those failures. Finally, what a great reminder to celebrate your teammates’ successes – I don’t need to pout and fuss when I lose a big deal I was hoping for and my colleague wins the one he is working on because his success is all of our success. If he closes business this week, it helps the company pay my health insurance premiums this month and next month when I close something, I help the company pay his.

Tim Hudson reminded me last night that we’re all in this together. I admire Hudson for a fantastic career, yes, but more importantly I admire him for the way he reacted to the negative he faced last night. Well done. Thanks Tim, War Eagle!

How I Saved “One of those Days”

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one of those days

I felt great when I woke up this morning. We went through the normal morning routine at the Searby house with no tears and no screaming, which was amazing in itself. I waited at the bus stop with the kids, and took off for my morning run when they loaded up (as is my habit when I’m home). It was a gorgeous day – sunny and cool – perfect weather for my scheduled long run of the week…but it turned out to be “one of those days.”

Any recreational runner has had ‘one of those days’ when you just don’t feel like running. Every time I came to a road I had to cross, the traffic was buzzing and I had to come to a complete stop and break my stride. A mile in I had to take a restroom break. At mile 3 I got a side stitch and slowed down so I could take some deep breaths until it passed. It seemed like nothing was going right with this morning run.

Around the 3 1/2 mile mark, it happened. Another runner, coming towards me on the greenway near my house approached and we passed each other. It took a tenth of a second for her to smile and say ‘good morning,’ and it saved my run. Just as I was starting to talk myself into walking the rest of the way home, a smile and a greeting lifted my spirits just enough to keep me going. The second half of my run got better and better with every step. I passed 3 other runners and gave each of them a smile and a ‘good morning’ and finished my run relatively close to my target time.

Life throws “one of those days” at us sometimes as well. Maybe we’re not in sync with our spouse or the kids are in a difficult stage. Perhaps work has become challenging or a friendship is strained and we don’t know how to repair it. This morning it only took a smile and two words to change my mindset about my run and turn the outcome around. I’m sure that my fellow runner who gave me that lift had no idea the mental battle going on between my ears at the time. Similarly, I don’t have any idea what is happening in the lives of most of the people I interact with on a daily basis; the cool thing is that is doesn’t matter. We all have the power to save “one of those days” for someone with a smile, a kind word, genuine listening, or a simple ‘good morning.’ I’m going make sure I don’t miss a chance today to make a save.

Family Time

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momdadkids oct 2014

I have a handful of friends who are fortunate enough to have their parents or spouse’s parents living close enough that their kids get to see Grandma and Grandpa on a regular basis and they are there for the emergency school pick up or a spur of the moment Saturday night dinner out. I am envious of those friends and often remind them to be thankful for their parents’ proximity, even when it comes with the occasional meddling or parental advice that seems annoying.

My parents are 6 hours away from our home in Charlotte and my wife’s parents are 16 hours away, so the luxury of unplanned, unexpected, or spur of the moment family time is not a part of our lives. Being this far away from immediate family is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. Before World War II, if a young man left his small Southern Illinois town to get his medical degree (as my Great Grandpa “Doc” Parmenter did), he’d hurry back to his hometown or a small town near there when he was done with school to practice. He often married a girl from the same area and they raised their children in the shadow of all kinds of family that would get together on a regular basis and help each other out as needed. It was the generally accepted way of life all over the country. When the next generation of young men went off to war in the early 1940’s, they returned with some different attitudes. Suddenly, farm boys from Kansas who had been globetrotting around Europe for 3 years decide to move their young families to California and live a different lifestyle; and young men from New York City came home and headed South to places like my hometown of Charlotte where the climate was more like where they’d been fighting in Southern France. All of a sudden, families started to spread out, and the dynamics of the extended family changed.

Over the past week, however, I was reminded of the importance and value of finding that family time, regardless of miles. My in-laws made the long drive to spend the week with us last week and help my wife out while I was gone on a business trip. The kids got off the bus for a few days to a waiting Granny and learned plenty of new things (good and bad I’m sure) about their maternal grandparents. Most importantly, they were reminded that there are other adults who care very deeply for them and want to encourage them to grow mentally and emotionally, as well as physically, strong. This weekend, we packed up the car and met my parents in the mountains of North Alabama (picture above) for a few days of relaxation and time together. Along with my mom’s never ending supply of songs, my kids saw yet another peek into what makes them who they are and felt the love and caring of their paternal grandparents who gave them all the attention they wanted. It was also a good chance for me to talk out thoughts and ideas with the only two people who have been a constant presence in my life.

I am so grateful for both my parents and my wife’s parents for the sacrifice of time and money that they make to spend time with us. We haven’t chosen to live in the same town as either of them or even close enough for regular visits, but it is important enough to both of them to have family time that they are willing to carve out time and resources to make it happen. Who knows what extended family life will look like as our kids grow up, but I have learned from the example of my kids’ grandparents that I need to set as a priority time with my children when they are adults and their kids when that time comes. Family time isn’t always neat and tidy, but it is an important connection to who we are and an informative look at the people who have shaped us. If you are fortunate enough to have your parents or in-laws close by, you should tell them thank you. If you’re like us, you should do your part to make family time a priority.

Across the Pond

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london8

In 1776, the American colonies declared independence from Great Britain, fought a war to defend that independence, and shortly thereafter became a sovereign nation. Americans have been traveling back to England ever since. Until this week, I’d never visited the “Mother Country,” but as tonight is my last evening here I thought some thoughts and photos were appropriate.

Some random observations I’ve made this week in London…

London is OLD. The United States is a little over 200 years old, London was founded by the Romans 2,000 years ago. While not all of the history has endured, there are some pretty amazing old buildings, including the Westminster Abbey (below).

london7

London is WET in October. I’d like to come back in the summer when I can walk around the city a little easier.

England is OBSESSED with futbol. I know, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but I spent my week at Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea FC, at a sports conference and let me tell you…these people are WAY more passionate about their futbol than we are about our football.

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London has a learning curve. When you visit, you’d better learn quick to look right first when you cross streets (I almost got smashed by a double decker bus), you’d better “Mind the Gap” in the Underground, and if you’re doing business here, I’d strongly recommend that you “dress smartly” to avoid embarrassment. It will take me a few more visits to get the hang of things.

All in all, I loved London. I’d love to come back for a holiday and see it in more depth. I’m not sure how we’d have turned out if we were still a part of the British Empire, but they’ve done quite nicely for themselves without us. Thanks for a great visit, London, and one of my favorite runs of all times along the legendary Thames. Cheers!

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Smoky Mountain Rain

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smokies 020

It is so funny how things connect to memories in our brain. Seemingly unrelated things are connected by strange, oft forgotten, little triggers from our past that stir up memories of those times who framed our being.

I seldom remember how much I love sitting on a porch in the morning, sipping coffee, while a light rain comes down until it happens again. It isn’t an experience I ‘crave,’ but it is one that I always cherish when it happens. This morning was one of those moments and I was overwhelmed by the flood of memory connections that started to occur as I quietly let that moment happen.

I know that one of the reasons that I love softly raining mornings is that we had them a lot when I was a student at Milligan College in the mountains of East Tennessee. The rain would fall lightly as we walked or biked to class, coffee in hand, trying to wake up for an 8a lecture. Normally, when we came out of classes for lunch, the rain and fog would have burned off and we’d have a view like the one in the picture above greeting us. For some reason this morning, the temperature, fog, and soft rain were exactly right to trigger a very specific memory of a fall day of my junior year when I rode my bike to class in such a rain from my first apartment to campus. It was a glorious day, rain or no rain. I was so excited to be able to ride my bike to class with my new Mountainsmith backpack (which I still have), no longer an underclassman, time on my hands since basketball hadn’t started yet; a man with the freedom of living off campus!

And the memory connections continued…as I recalled that rainy mountain bike ride I remembered that a song popped into my head that day that took me even further back in time. When I was growing up my parents listened to the ‘new country’ of the time – The Carpenters, Barbara Mandrell, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, and Ronnie Millsap. That fall morning as I rode my bike to class, the song Smoky Mountain Rain popped into my head right off of one of my parents’ 8 track tapes and wouldn’t let go. I sang it over and over all the way to class that day. I’m singing it again this morning.

I was profoundly impacted by my time at Milligan College. In some ways it was the mountains, which I fell in love with and have been a place I’ve loved ever since. In some ways it was the lifestyle; an outdoorsy, laid back approach to a life lived in pursuit of knowledge and beauty. And in all ways it was the people – my best friends, my roommates, my first loves, my coaches, my professors, and my classmates who made up an environment that shaped me from a boy with few of his own thoughts and values to a young man who had figured out how to learn, question, search, and find what he needed to be successful in life.

I’m so glad that the brain finds ways to connect those little things in our lives to one another in amazing ways that allow us to recall and give thanks for moments in our lives that have made us who we are.

You Never Know

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Jackcurious

You just never know who you are impacting with what you say, do, or write. Twice over the past few weeks I have had close friends tell me how a specific blog post that I have written has spurned them to think about some part of their life and has encouraged them to work on a change in that area. Then, this weekend, I ran into a friend who I haven’t seen in awhile and he told me that he has enjoyed reading my blog and appreciated the insights.

AsI was sipping my coffee on Sunday morning I got to thinking about how we impact people’s lives and don’t even know it and it reminded me of the picture above that I took this week of my son, Jack. Jack had finished swim lessons and we were waiting for his sister and he was reading this poster out in the lobby. I don’t even remember what it was for, but he certainly was absorbing it. He’s shown a recent interest in running, swimming, and biking so maybe he’s contemplating a triathlon?!?! Whatever he was reading is sure to come up in conversation this week.

What has been so impactful about those comments my friends made and my son’s curious interest in reading everything around him is that it is a reminder to me that the words that I speak and write, and the actions in my life ARE VERY IMPORTANT because people are listening and watching. In a world where it seems like everyone is only worried about themselves and rushing so fast they aren’t paying attention to anything, the reality is that everyone is still actually searching for answers and direction in their own lives (me included). You never know when a kind word in an email about something positive you saw someone do will encourage them to greater achievements. You never know when being kind and polite to your spouse in day to day interactions will be witnessed by your kids and replicated with their friends. You never know when telling a cashier or service provider how much you appreciate the work they do will add enough meaning in their life to keep them going one more day. And you never know what sort of impact you are having (good and bad) with the things you post on social media.

As I start a new week of business interactions and life to be lived, I’m going to keep in mind how powerful my words and actions can be sometimes. I don’t expect to move mountains with my wisdom this week or seal the greatest business deal of my life with slick-talking closing skills this week. What I DO EXPECT FROM MYSELF this week is to treat others with kindness, regardless of how they treat me; encourage the people I love about the strengths I see in them; commit to consensus building and honesty in all of my business dealings; and stay present with people in conversation so that I can really LISTEN to what they are saying so I can provide timely and creative insights. I think if I can do those things, no matter who is listening, reading, or watching they will walk away better than before they crossed my path.

The Danger of Assumption

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There’s an old saying about what happens when you assume…you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. I’ve recently found out that making assumptions is also dangerous.

About 3 weeks ago, I got a new phone, switching from my iPhone to an Android phone. I won’t go into all of the details of why or argue the benefits of one over the other, but one of the nuances I found out about the iPhone is that when you change to a non-iPhone, but keep your same number, other iPhones still try to communicate with you via iMessage instead of regular text message (This apparently is a common problem – click here). Since I no longer had an iPhone, most everyone who did and was trying to text me, did not have their message go through. Apparently there is a setting on iPhones where you can disable this, but it isn’t a default setting, and hard to find, so most people don’t even know about it. What does this all have to do with assumptions…a lot.

In today’s world, we all have people that we text with as our primary form of communication. I have a couple of those types of friends in my life and this weekend, after not getting any text responses from me for over 3 weeks, one of my neighbors stopped over to ask me why I wasn’t responding to his text messages. Glad we talked, because he was starting to get upset that I was just blowing him off. Another friend of mine, who I work on projects with from time to time asked me this weekend if I wasn’t interested in the recent project he had asked about a couple of weeks ago? I’m sure my look back at him was puzzling because I didn’t know anything about it…of course, he had texted me and I never received it. His response when I apologized profusely and said I’d love to work on the project with him…”oh, I just assumed you were swamped right now and didn’t have time.” Missed opportunity narrowly avoided.

It’s not all my iPhone-toting friends making dangerous assumptions. I’ve been making these myself with clients recently, too. Months ago, a prospective client that I’ve been working to do business with for a year told me face to face in his office that he had 5 projects that he was going to bundle together and have our company work on for him. He even went as far as to give me tons of detail on the projects and I put together formal proposals for them and sent them over for his sign off. That was over 60 days ago. Since I’m in sales, I naturally continued to follow up on getting the signed contracts back – at first calmly asking about them every other week or so, and then getting more persistent and more direct about him signing the contracts he had promised. After 2 weeks of NO RESPONSE AT ALL, I assumed that something must have changed his mind and he just didn’t want to tell me…a competitor came in with a better deal, his superior nixed the deal and told him he shouldn’t have promised, budgets got cut and the projects got put on hold, he was tired of me badgering him and decided he didn’t want to do business with me…you name it, I had made up a reason as to why he wasn’t sending the contracts. Since this client is on the other side of the country and not returning my calls or emails, I chalked it up to business lost. And then, out of the blue, I get an email from the client…”John, sorry for the delay, I’ve been working on the details of a 6th Project that I want to include with the others so that you guys can work on them all at the same time – I’m sending over the details of the 6th Project and I’d appreciate you putting together a proposal for that one and we’ll get them all signed off together and get rolling.” Come to find out, the 6th Project is going to be as big as the other 5 combined!

My dangerous assumption caused me a lot of unnecessary heartache. I’m sure that my friends assuming I was ignoring their text messages caused them some anxiety as well. It did, however, lead to some good – it made me realize how much I assume about people, feelings, and situations that have no validity whatsoever. That is valuable for two reasons: 1) It is a reminder that nearly always my assumptions are false and until I’ve had a chance to discuss things face to face with the other person, those assumptions are irrelevant and dangerous; and 2) Everyone else is making assumptions about me as well, and if I want to avoid others making false assumptions I should be clear, straightforward, and open about what I’m thinking both personally and professionally. I can’t control the actions of others, let alone pretend to understand what they are thinking, so I’d best stay focused on the known and the now while I strive to make sure that I am open with others so they can stay there with me.

So, if you’ve been trying to text me and getting no response, I’m not blowing you off! Change your iPhone settings or give me a call and we can chat.

Small things

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hotel work

The past year and a half has been an ongoing lesson and instruction for me in both mindfulness and productivity. It has been very interesting to me to watch my own development in these areas because when I started to really focus on mindfulness in my life, I had no idea what an impact it would have on improving my productivity. This improvement has come through focusing on and making changes in several “small things” that have added up to huge gains. I still have a long way to go to improve both of these areas, but I believe I’ve experienced the path that leads to success in these small things that will allow me to duplicate it as I strive to be a more mindful, present person and see that lead to improvements in my productivity.

There are many small things that I could go into great detail on that have changed in my life because of improved mindfulness. From setting aside time each morning to be quiet and meditate which has a calming effect to the start of my day to leaving my phone in my bag when I’m in meetings on the road so I can truly focus on the conversations and be present with my clients. Both of these things have made me healthier mentally and more productive. The list goes on and on, but recently I realized a small thing that I could change that would have monumental impact on my productivity directly.

I’ve been re-reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss as an inspiration to continue to push myself to greater flexibility and freedom in my life while being able to continue being a productive employee for the company I really enjoy working for and want to continue to be a part of as long as they’ll have me. One of the great things about the book is that it has a TON of useful suggestions of small things that you can change that will allow you to work more efficiently, with more focus on what is important, so that you can get more work done in less time (therefore freeing your time to do what you really want to do in life).

Two weeks ago I went in to my Outlook mail settings and turned off all of the desktop notifications. Long ago I had turned my cell phone email notifications to vibrate only, but always had that ‘ding’ and the small pop-up box in in the corner of my computer screen turned on so that no matter what I was doing I would see when an email came through and see the first few lines of the message. I can’t tell you how many times I’d be in the middle of building an important proposal for a client or researching a prospective project and see something like this pop up:

FROM: Bob Smith
MESSAGE: Client Issue
PRIORITY: High!

Well, you know what I did…stopped everything and jumped over to my email as fast as possible as my blood pressure spiked and my mind started racing about all of the projects I was working with Bob on and speculating what it could possibly be…only to find the following message:
John,
Just keeping you in the loop on the issue at Client X that we were working through last week. Everything has been resolved and the development of their interactives is back on schedule. Call me if you want more details.
Bob

Whew, blood pressure drops back down, mind starts to settle back, but now I see there are 4 other messages in my inbox that I should look at and see what is up with those, maybe fire back a couple of responses; or it jogs my mind of something else I wanted to do and I start surfing the internet. 30-40 minutes later I remember that I was working on something and shift back over to the proposal where I spend 15 minutes refreshing my memory of what I was doing and the topic I was working on so I can get started again. Just like that, an hour of the day is gone.

The simple change of removing those notifications has kept me focused on the tasks I’m working on and finishing them before moving on to other things. And you know what I’ve found out…none of those emails that I don’t respond to immediately have cost me any business or any client goodwill, not one. It is a small thing, but one of the many small things that I’ve changed that have had a profound impact and it won’t be the last.

The Beauty in My Life

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Jessi flowers

My wife is responsible for all of the beauty in my life. Today is her birthday and while I won’t say how old she is, I will say she’s more beautiful than ever! The most amazing thing about Jessi, however, is that EVERYTHING that is beautiful in my life stems from her in one way or another.

All summer long, Jessi has been watering, weeding, and nurturing flowers of different types all around the outside of our house. In the last 2-3 weeks they’ve just exploded and I took the picture above last weekend after she cut a bunch of her flowers and put them in vases and jars all around our kitchen. It is incredible to me what bright, fresh cut flowers do to brighten a room and I have noticed that they also have had an effect on the mood and cheeriness of our entire family when we’re in there – it is just hard to be sad or grumpy or upset with this kind of beauty hanging around. It is a beauty that wouldn’t be in my life if not for my wife.

This week, our kids started school. Our 3rd grade son wasn’t so excited, but my wife has been pumping him up and encouraging him for a month now and he seemed genuinely interested in what the new year was going to have in store. Our 5 year old daughter, on the other hand, was wired beyond belief about going to Kindergarten. Jessi helped her pick out all of her supplies and a new outfit for the first day of school, and ordered her the coolest lunchbox on the block to make this special week for her even greater. To see the happiness on my kids’ faces this morning when I dropped my daughter off for her first day was really rewarding for me. It is a beauty that wouldn’t be in my life if not for my wife.

On any given Saturday or Sunday in our house you can usually find us enjoying a leisurely breakfast, reading books for pleasure and relaxation, listening to NPR or some tunes in the background, and preparing for some sort of outdoor activity that involves a bike ride, hike, farmer’s market trip, walk around the neighborhood, or day at the pool. Contrary to my upbringing and the way I was wired for a good part of my life, we don’t typically race around to do a million things or cart our kids all over the place for sports and activities on the weekends. We relax, recharge, and spend time together and I am so grateful for that space in our family and the fun we have together. It is a beauty that wouldn’t be in my life if not for my wife.

13 years, 3 months, and 11 days ago I married the woman that I chose to love for the rest of my life. She was gorgeous when I first saw her, stunning on our wedding day, and has been my smoking hot wife ever since. Our marriage hasn’t been all flowers, fun, and frolicking – we’ve had struggles that felt like they’d never end and we’ve had mountaintops that we wished we could have held on to longer. I’m certain that she’s wanted to choke me more than once, confident that I’ve screwed things up royally a time or two, and grateful that through all of that we’ve continued to love each other. There will be more beauty to come in my life; now, more than ever, I am aware that life is more beauty than ugliness, we humans just have a way of fixating on the negative. I don’t know what form that beauty will come in, but one thing I’m sure of is that it will be a beauty that wouldn’t be in my life if not for my wife.

Happy Birthday Jessi. I love you.

Life is NOT Extreme

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OregonFamilyPhoto

Mostly life is mundane. That is just how it is for most of us; we go through days and weeks tackling the everyday challenges and enjoying the everyday joys without much up and down. Don’t get me wrong, there is some variation off the middle – you might have a great Saturday relaxing together as a family that goes above the median line or you might have fussy kids on a Tuesday who fight you to get out of bed and don’t want to do homework when they get home so it drags the day down a little. Mostly, life is NOT extreme.

This weekend my wife and I got new phones so we were going through the exercise of deleting pictures from our old phones and deciding which ones to put on our new phones to carry around with us in our pockets. I came across the picture above of our family trip to Oregon this summer when we snapped this pic in front of Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach. That was pretty extreme – on the other side of the country on a two week camping vacation exploring areas we’d never seen! Life at its best, right? It was great, and it was certainly a highlight of the summer, but it really wasn’t what life is all about.

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And then I found this picture. It was a Tuesday last fall and instead of taking her to preschool, I told Josie she could stay at home while I worked in the morning. I worked for a few hours while she played with Barbies or something and then we went and ate lunch. And I snapped this picture; this picture is really what life is mostly – a regular day that has a little bit more joy than any other day. A chance for a dad and a daughter to each lunch together and smile at each other. I don’t remember what we talked about, it doesn’t really matter. It was just a little above the median line, but it was great. 

So yesterday, when I had both kids at home all day with me while I worked (or attempted to work); because school hasn’t started yet but all of the college babysitters have already gone back to campus, I was going crazy. It was a day full of interruptions, fighting, crying, childhood boredom, and an impatient father. I lost my cool more than once and we all just wanted to get away from each other by the time mom got home from work. As I reflected on it this morning, however, I realized that it was just a regular day that happened to be a little below the median line. I fantasize that every day I get to spend with my kids will be like that day on the Oregon coast at Cannon Beach. The fact is, life is NOT that Extreme and I need to relish ALL of the days – good and bad, easy and tough, happy and sad, exciting and mundane because that is where the richness of life comes from – staying in each moment, no matter what that moment is bringing.