The Upside Of The Stress Of Keeping Up In A Digital World

It’s not easy keeping up in a digital world.

You take off for a week - to a location where internet service is unstable - not to mention expensive. The withdrawal gives you the shakes. You find yourself distracted in conversation, your hand keeps reaching for that iPhone, certain there is something important happening inside of it that you can’t get to. You worry your business might suffer and no one will sign up for your June workshops because you are suddenly absent from Twitter and haven’t blogged in a week. That fear you are missing out on something happening somewhere else is getting in the way of where you are. You keep hearing Agapi and her sister Arianna Huffington reminding you of what their mother used to say  - “don’t miss the moment” - but you realize you probably are anyway.

It takes a few days and slowly but surely, the stress subsides. The sunshine, the blue skies, the sand and the sound of the ocean win out. The views are breathtaking. A camera cannot do it justice.  Everywhere you turn you are surrounded by family and friends, some new, some old. There is laughter and conversation - the live and in person kind - not the texting kind. Joy and love fills the air - after all you are here to celebrate the marriage of two wonderful young people who found their soul mates. You dance under the stars to a live band and feel transported to that time not so long ago - before technology had overrun your life and it was still possible to hide from the rest of the world.

You come back - relaxed and tan and happy and yes - a little bit excited to sit in front of your computer and catch up and get back to the work you love.

But within hours you’re overwhelmed. 

There are 500 unopened emails in your inbox, most of which are junk, but you have to go through anyway in case an important one is hidden in the bunch. You vow to unsubscribe to them all even though you know you won’t. Your page views on your blog have shrunk. All those creative ideas that were running through your head on what to write next while you were sitting under the shade of an umbrella negotiating with a local for that multicolored sarong with the sequins that caught your eye has suddenly disappeared into the ether. LinkedIn reminds you it has “been 8 days…since your last update. Share something new to stay top of mind.” The 8 days are written in bold red.

You start to wonder if you really do love all this technology as much as you think you do. You question if you can really keep up or if you even want to.

Then you sign on to Facebook and notice you have new friend requests from the people you just met. Those same people are sharing pictures from the big group vacation instigated by this destination wedding. People are commenting and liking and you get to relive each moment. 

You can’t stop smiling. 

And you remember - this is why you keep up. This is why you love all these social networks and digital tools. For the connections that get to continue when face to face is not an option. 

Registration for Your Digital You - the blueprint - 

a workshop designed to improve your digital profile 

is now open for June 12 and June 14. 

Grab your seat now!

What I Learn From My NYU Students

I teach for a lot of reasons. At the top of the list is because I genuinely enjoy it. I like my students. I like educating. I like encouraging people to think.

I also teach because I like learning. Anyone who has ever taught, and taught well, will tell you that teaching forces you to know more about a subject than you would otherwise. It keeps you at the top of your game.

But that is only part of what I learn. I also learn what my students teach me.

I tell them that going in. That I expect that I will learn from them. For starters it's a graduate class in digital marketing. The subject matter is a work in progress with new tools and new approaches occurring every day. It's impossible to know every single detail, but we need to try. Sharing what we find is our best hope to stay ahead of the changes. 

But there is more to what I learn than that.

The majority of my students are international. The global perspective they bring from sharing something as simple as how in Taiwan 7-11 is a much bigger part of the community than simply a place to buy a Slurpee enriches my classroom. It also forces me to slow it down and think more carefully how I might explain a concept since for many English is not their first language. I can't assume because something is widely understood in the US, it is in the rest of the world. They teach me how to present better in the classroom. The bonus is it hones my skills for when I am working with my outside clients.


I've learned that just because one generation is inherently more comfortable with technology, does not mean with that comes an understanding of how to use all these new tools strategically.  Generations need not be divided by technological advance but rather help each other as we learn this new stuff by getting our hands dirty - together.

Most importantly they teach me by offering  what Arianna Huffington calls "third metric" moments in which I can define my success not by power or how much money I am making (trust me - adjuncts are not highly compensated employees) but in having changed someone's way of looking at something.

When a student tells me I "inspired" them or thanks me for "seeing their potential" or "encouraging" them I am keenly aware of the ability we all have to make a difference in someone's life. 

I will never forget the student who this semester when I asked the class what they got out of their midterm presentation in which they were required to present themselves as a brand in three minutes, said the one thing she did not expect was that the experience would make her fall in love with who she was again.  

Moments like that make me downright teary eyed and others just make me smile. Like the email I got yesterday from a student who just finished the semester with me and "had to share" how she experienced first hand the power of connection that social media affords us when she shared a picture on Instagram of her favorite bakery.

What I learn from my students - it's why I teach.


ps. You don't have to be an NYU graduate degree student to  have me teach you. Your Digital You - the blueprint - a workshop designed to improve your digital profile returns with two dates in June - 6/12 and 6/24. Use the code EARLYbird for a special discount.

pps. My workshops can be customized and brought in-house to your company or organization. Email me for more information.

What I Learned When The Room Started Spinning

I haven't posted a new blog in a couple of weeks. It's rare but when that happens it causes me angst. I preach consistency in content creation. And I get mad at myself when I don't walk the walk.

But this time I had my reasons. For starters I have been running a full schedule and working on some exciting stuff that has been commandeering my creative process. More to come on that later.

But the most important reason is I had one of those moments. You know those moments. When something happens to cause your world to spin out of control. 

That's what happened to me.

Literally.

One minute it was just another Friday. People to see. Places to be. The next I was at the gym, stretching out on the mat, listening to Bruno Mars when I turned from right to left and everything in the room started to move. No matter where I tried to focus a piece of gym equipment was in a tailspin.

I knew what it was. It's happened before - but I hadn't had a real episode of vertigo in years.

If you've never experienced vertigo, at first it feels like a very bad hangover complete with nausea. All you want to do is stay in a darkened room and sleep.  Except that even the worst of worst of hangovers is more manageable.

Luckily my gym is in my building so I didn't have far to navigate my off balance self into the elevator. 

Once inside my apartment I fell onto my bed and did what one does when they get vertigo. Try and find the one position that does not make the room spin, close your eyes and don't move. Not one fraction of an inch. The slightest little shift the wrong way and you are back on the Ferris Wheel at top speed.

I was dizzy. I was nauseous. But I was also angry. I did not have time for this.

I tried to will it away. I tried to convince myself I was more powerful than the vertigo. I wanted to control it instead of it controlling me.

But it wasn't happening.

There was nothing I could do but just be. 
Be still.
Be quiet.
No Internet.
No television.
No conversation.
A lot of sleep.
A lot of time to think.

Before you know it Friday had turned to Saturday and I was still in my bed. The worst of the vertigo had passed, but I felt fragile. I was functional but I was far from off to the races again. 

It was clear the furthest away from my bed I was going to get for the rest of the weekend was the couch. 

The really good news was I could focus enough to read. I picked up the book I had started earlier in the week. Thrive by Arianna Huffington. And everything started to make sense.

Arianna talks about these kinds of moments in her book. When something happens that causes you to step back and reassess what you are doing. Sometimes they are truly life altering and sometimes they are more nudges and reminders you have fallen off track. 

Mine was a big reminder. I suppose my vertigo could have been spurred by a virus or inner ear congestion. But I think differently. My body was reacting to the pace I've been keeping. I had let myself disconnect with my core. So much so that it did what it does when it wants to make sure I pay attention. It gets very Greek and does something very dramatic.

And just in case I might still have refused to see the obvious, it made sure that the book I just happened to have started reading was about well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving. 

I finished the book that weekend and have been regrouping ever since. 

Which explains the lack of blogging.

I'm still moving slowly. Vertigo likes to linger after it comes to visit. But that's okay. Especially in this case. It wants to make sure I don't forget too quickly the message it came to send.


Note - If you haven't yet, make sure you get a copy of Thrive. This is a wonderful and important book you don't want to miss! 

EXTRA SPECIAL NOTE - Register for the Thrive event in NYC on April 24-25 and  use the discount code Rep99 at checkout. The $299 tickets become $99!  It's going to be a powerful and inspiring conference - one you don't want to miss!

On Being Brave

I wasn't a brave kid. Take me someplace new and I did not stray far from my mother's side. I was shy. Afraid to open my mouth. Never knowing what to say. Terrified I might be  made fun of.  

I remember how it felt to be like that. When fear would consume my core and render me immobile. Unable to take a step much less even explain what I was feeling. 

To know me today, this might sound hard to believe. But it's true. Just ask my mother. She'll illustrate with the story of what happened when we first moved to Glen Oaks. 

The neighborhood, which sits on the outskirts of Queens, was an idyllic place to raise a family in the sixties. The apartments surrounded big grass courtyards lined with benches and filled with baby boomer kids allowed to play outside without having to schedule a date to do so. The neighbors watched out for each other. It was a safe place.

Apparently I was not convinced. 

One of those first days in the new apartment I was outside. My mother heard me screaming at the top of my lungs and raced to my side to find me standing in the middle of a circle of kids, tears streaming down my face, tiny fists clutched tight to my doll carriage.

I was too busy crying to say a word so she asked the kids what happened. They told her they didn't know.They told her they were just trying to be my friend.

That's how not brave a kid I was. 

I've struggled with being courageous and with speaking my mind for most of my life. I know what's it like when my body reacts, my mouth goes bone dry or my legs feel like they might give way underneath me.

Sometimes I've been clumsy in how I've gone about overcoming my insecurities. Somedays I still am. Somedays that inner child, the little insecure girl afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing wants to come out and play. 

I've learned how to deal with her now. But she has also made me acutely aware of what it takes to be really brave. She knows that even if it looks easy, it never is. And she still reminds me to pause and take note when someone else is stretching into their own courageous acts.

When I see a young woman, like Christina Huffington on the Today Show talking openly about how her addiction to cocaine almost killed her, I am in awe. When I read her articles on the Huffington Post and her story in Glamour, I am struck by her ability to be that articulate and honest about something that - given the option - which she had - most would hide from the public. She chose to be brave. She chose to demonstrate courage. She doesn't need the notoriety. She was born into it. Her mother is Arianna Huffington. She chose brave so that she might help others with her story.

I don't know what it's like to have that kind of substance addiction to anything but chocolate or coffee. 

But I do know what it's like to push past what might otherwise limit us. I know how appealing the choice to run and hide and not say a word can be. I know the risk that comes from putting yourself out there as fair game in a digital world in which there is no topic we will all ever agree on and something called Twitter that invites open discussion which too often includes spewing not so nice comments. 

I still struggle with being brave every day. Each time I hit publish on this blog and expose a little more of who I am and how I think  I get a little braver. But I never stop being scared.


Note: The doodle is an original - created on a very cool new social site called Doodle.ly


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Things Happen With Purpose

"Failure is not the opposite of success,
 it's a stepping stone to success."

-Arianna Huffington

I believe things happen with purpose. Even the ugly, awful things. In fact, sometimes it is in those moments of despair and hurt and perceived failure that we are propelled forward to something far better and greater than that for which we are mourning our loss.

Not everyone agrees with me. And I understand why. It's easier not to believe that. It's less painful to take our punches and lay there nursing our wounds, struggling to get past them while we are waiting for the next shoe to drop than to mourn fully and step forward with trust in a power greater than ourselves, that something good, something far better than what we ever could have imagined is just around the corner.

It's a bit of a mind game we have to play with ourselves. Turning around the bad to find the good.  But over time when you can look with 20/20 hindsight you can find your proof, if not in your own life, then in the life of someone else.

I caught up with a friend I knew from my early days in the business last week. She's had a streak of not so great things happen that she was trying to make sense of. Of course I could not help myself but to offer that there was a reason for it all, that at the moment did not particularly look clear. She wasn't so sure.

I invited her to watch this clip of Arianna Huffington's acceptance speech at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards last week, her views on failure and a look at what happened when a man wouldn't marry her.

Do you believe things happen for a reason?
What examples can you cite in your life?

Can You Hear Me And Are You Listening?

In Jon Stewart's closing remarks at the Rally to Restore Sanity he said "If we amplify everything we hear nothing."  But what if we hear and don't actually listen?

When we listen we get the meaning of what is trying to be conveyed within the context of which it is being spoken. Hearing is often cherry picking words or phrases and repeating them back in a way to convey the meaning  we want them to have, not necessarily what the person saying them meant. For example the snippet of a sentence that is served back up as promotional teaser to get us to read more, watch more, or click through to the next link.

I've always been a good listener.  They used to give grades for it in Elementary School. I always got an outstanding. But even with the highest grade you could get I didn't understand. I never heard I was good at something. I heard the negative side, that I was too quiet and didn't raise my hand enough.

But that's what I mean about listening versus hearing.

Listening is a skill that includes comprehension and understanding. Hearing often reflects our own issues. Sometimes it is a process in which we look for the parts we want to hear and ignore the rest. Hearing sometimes is nothing more than a garble of words strung into sentences that if someone asked us to repeat back would be met by a blank stare.

I didn't know back in third grade that being a good listener would make me money. In my first sales job I was told that if I asked the right questions and listened to the answers the client would give me all the information I needed to close a deal. It sounded too simple to be true.

I wasn't going to close a lot of business by going in and starting to talk without knowing what the client needed and how that could match up to my radio station. But if I listened carefully, took notes and applied some strategic thinking I would have the perfect pitch and close a lot of business. Yes, it was really that easy.

It doesn't seem a lot of  people take the time to ask the questions and listen for the answers anymore.   Most seem to be talking too much. Call it a casuality of the "over amplifying" 24/7 world, but there is too much focus on getting your pitch out fast and furious so you can be heard above the crowd whether or not anyone is interested in hearing it. There just isn't enough real listening going on.

But there is a lot of hearing what we want to. And a lot more of twisting the parts we do catch to suit our purposes or worse yet, create unintended meaning.

The number one concern voters had at the polls last week was the economy, yet the new majority in Congress seems most focused on repealing Health Care. Are they listening or hearing?

At the Rally to Restore Sanity over 200,000 people turned out from all over the country because they are tired of the yelling and name calling and lack of focus on the real issues that the media spins out of proportion.  The majority of that media heard the rally to be nothing more than a comedy show. The only one who seemed to really be listening was Arianna Huffington.  The rest chose not to listen or perhaps only to hear what they wanted to. I'm guessing it's because they really like enraging and inciting and don't want to hear that most of us want them to stop.

Sometimes we don't really listen because we don't want to acknowledge the truth. Say you start dating someone who tells you loudly and clearly they are not interested in an exclusive relationship. You say you are OK with that. But when you cause a big scene the night you run into them on a date with someone else they are going to ask you if you heard them. You did, but you weren't  listening.

In such a noisy world slowing down long enough to really listen, for yourself and not the way someone else might suggest you comprehend things becomes more important than ever before. It will make all the difference in what your life looks like. Because if you do make the time and you listen and not just hear words, you'll get all the answers you need to create whatever you want for yourself and the world.  Sometimes the voice speaking is the one right inside of you. But you have to be quiet first before you can hear it. And once you hear it you have to listen.


Do you take the time to listen?
Do you think there is a difference between hearing and listening?
What are you hearing today?