For Patrons Only

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“Restrooms for Patron’s Only”

Because it costs too much to let other people use it. Then you might have to let everyone use it. I’m sure the cost per flush on that bathroom would bankrupt you. The cleaning process would overwhelm your labor costs. The toilet paper costs would throw off the ROI of people using your bathroom.

Or you just don’t want to deal with all that other stuff, so you don’t. You tell people ‘No’ unless they buy a pack of gum or stick of beef jerky.

Most people won’t. They will walk up the street to your competitor, use their bathroom, and probably end up spending more than they would at your establishment. They might even make a meaningful connection to the clerk who is focused on saying, ‘Yes.’

But at least your bathroom is clean and readily accessible.

Where are your priorities a little cockeyed due to a social norm? Where are you saying, ‘No’ where you could be saying, ‘Yes’?

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Right To Peace

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Freedom. Almost synonymous with Ol’ Glory. Our right, our privilege and our banner. As an American, freedom has been one of the most monumental pillars of my identity. I have the right to bear arms. I have the right to freedom of speech. Right to freedom of the press. Right to…

Rarely have I ever considered the cost of freedom. The method by which freedom is attained. Freedom is not given, it is earned. Earned through bloodshed. Fighting. War. Revolution. Rebellion. Absolute and complete defiance.

Freedom comes at the cost of war.

Peace comes through a very different means. Peace comes by choice. Peace comes in the face of war. In the face of oppression.

I do not have to cause conflict to gain peace. I have to give up conflict to live out peace. Peace is not brought through fighting. Peace is a decision I can make in any circumstance. I can prioritize the other party enough to find resolution through peace.

Freedom through peace.

When was the last time you worked to live out peace before you worked to have freedom?

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Well Balanced Diet

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We have all heard it before, you are what you eat. Over consume alcohol or candy or bread or beef, and you will see a difference in yourself and it will be reflected in your health. Eat a good balanced healthy diet and your body will reflect it.

Likewise, you are what you eat. Watch a strict diet of dark angry movies and tv shows, you will see it in your attitude. Constantly watch popular news and digest their firehose of angry news, you will see it reflected in your personality.

How is a bad movie going to effect you any different than eating a half an apple pie in one sitting? Maybe you went the extra mile and ate the pie while watching the bad movie. You know what you can handle. You know yourself. I know myself. I know what I can handle.

The same way I have to pay attention to what I eat and how I am taking care of my body and what I am taking in. I have to watch my social media, movies, news, and tv shows to make sure I am not overeating bad media.

It is all equally available. The internet is a flattened landscape, for now, and we can only blame ourselves for finding bad media to suck down like it is going out of style.

What makes it onto your tv? What makes it onto your phone screen? What makes it onto your computer screen? Do you want to be more or less like what you are putting on your screens? Do you want to have friends who are emulating what you are putting on your screens?

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Story Time

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You have lived so much life. It has passed you by, day by day and has come and gone. The memories you have of trips, adventures, and daydreams from childhood. The experiences you have from the time you spent doing chores, working odd jobs, learning new skills, and how you learned to drive.

These are yours. You had to be there. You can share them and express them. Discuss the nitty gritty and share what it was like to be there when you were there. People listen and share too. They commiserate about the bad and celebrate the good. The neurotic self absorbed narcissist is more rare than common.

Sharing your story is healing to past hurts and soothing to the soul where there is turmoil.

Listening to someone else’s story also has strong qualities. Hearing where they’ve been. What they’ve learned. How they have dealt with a very different life than yours, or maybe their life has too many uncanny similarities to be real.

Either way, you get to hear them, learn them, and share with them. Hearing their stories you can bond your souls and share in all the twists and turns and ups and downs and look forward to what comes next.

Who’s story do you need to hear next? Who do you need to tell your story to? How often do you really listen to other people’s stories? How often are you putting yourself in a situation to hear other people’s stories? How often are you putting yourself in a situation to tell your story?

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I Woke Up Like This

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Beyoncé may have woke up the way she did. But you and I oddly enough did not.

It has taken us our whole lives to get to where we are. We are who we are because of the course of life we have lived, the decisions we have made, and the experiences we had as we lived life.

Your over or under productive lifestyle did not start yesterday and it is not going to disappear tomorrow. Your craving for sweets, dessert, ice-cream, and candy did not start three minutes ago and it will most likely not stop three minutes from now.

Similarly, our social standards did not start yesterday. The government policy was not born last week. The highway and transportation infrastructure was not built over night.

Why then do we expect to lose weight, pick up new habits, and perform social reform in a week.

Set a realistic incremental goal for yourself and start there.

Do you want to lose weight? Start going for a walk once a week. Once you have mastered your once a week walk, add in a second walk.

Whatever your incremental goal is, get a teammate to help you in the process. It is easier to shoot for the moon when you have teammates and friends to help you assemble the rocket.

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Consuming Raw or Undercooked Meat

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Every restaurant serving beef, pork, fish, and eggs has the warning about the dangers of consuming raw or undercooked meat? I would not be surprised if there are mountains of legal precedents regarding these warnings and how they have saved restaurant after restaurant from millions of dollars in lawsuits.

But these warnings are everywhere. They have become white noise. When was the last time you actually read one of these notices? They are there. Go to your favorite local eatery and they probably have one of these warnings.

They are not pretty. They are not fancy. They are just a warning against the common knowledge. A warning many people ignore.

I like my eggs sunny-side-up. Some people want to eat a steak that is blue. I do not want to get sick. I am guessing people who eat blue steaks do not want to get sick.

Why do we still let this noise persist? These signs have as much use as a restroom sign. Never visible until you need to see them. But we keep posting restroom signs and meat disclaimers because we have always posted meat disclaimers.

How much of your work do you do because the industry or organization has always done it? How much of your work ends up being background noise, invisible till needed? What is more meaningful that you should be working on?

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Finders Seekers

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Have you ever notice we find what we are looking for?

When we go to the grocery store looking for milk and there it is. We go to the mall to find new shoes and there they are. We get on amazon.com to order toilet paper and there it is.

We go to one coffee shop to find rude baristas with burnt coffee and there it is. We go to the other coffee shop to find perky baristas with sugar coffee and there it is.

We go out to the restaurant that has good food with bad service. And? Every time we get good food and bad service.

We show up to work expecting the same people to be frustrating and the same people to be a pleasure to work alongside.

What if the problem is we keep looking for the same thing and finding it, not that the thing we’re looking for is always present every time we go looking for it? What are you looking for? What should you be looking for?

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Ballot Identity

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Who are you voting for?

Again I say, who are they?

Today more than ever we get to see the full, raw, unedited versions of our city, county, state, and nation’s leaders. And more than ever knowing who you are voting for is more important than whether they are in this party or that party. Whether they have an (I) or (R) or (D) seems to have less weight now than when we elected Reagan, Bush, Clinton, G.W., or Obama.

Today, knowing who you are voting for outweighs everything else. I have not heard much about the president lately. But I sure do hear quite a bit about the man named Donald John Trump.

So before you check the box with the (I) at the end of his name. Punch the chad with the (D) at the end of the name. Or ignore the woman with the (R) at the end of her name.

Look them up on Facebook.

Find them on twitter.

Check out their instagram. (And their children’s instagram.)

What is it full of?

What is on page 3 or 4 after you Google them?

What do you think about this person? Is this who you want to be your city council member? Is that what your Mayor looks like?

P. S. Are you voting for your candidate out of fear? Do you want other people voting out of fear? Do you want this nation to be in fear of you?

The people on the other side of the aisle have a pulse, thoughts and feelings just like you. Please get to know them before you fear them. You will be surprised by how many things you have in common.

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In The Midst

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The highway is full of people and life. The road does not lack traffic or action.

When you travel down the highway, you are surrounded by people. They are mere feet or yards from you. They are in their space moving down the road in the same way you are. Going the same direction, possibly even with the same destination.

These people have the same problems and fears you do. Traffic. Speed limits. Tailgating. Fender benders. Stop lights. Flat tires.

They plague you both equally.

Yet the inches of steel and aluminum and white or yellow lines and speed of travel separate you into our own little worlds. You are secluded into your own personal bubble with no connection with the other drivers. And you live with these problems and fears by yourself.

Do you recognize you are not the only one with the problems you have? Do you share your problems with your friends? Who do you share your problems with? Who do you support as they have problems?

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Hitting The Mark

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Where is your destination? What are your goals? How do you measure progress? How do you get there?

I recently experienced a situation where I thought I was spinning my wheels barely making any progress on what I was doing. I was trying to improve the quality of product but I felt like I was ultimately failing.

Turns out, I was not only doing a good job but out performing the widely accepted metrics of the industry.

I had no metrics of my own. I was just firing my work off into the ether and it felt like everything I was doing was barely more than a success.

Where is your destination? What are your goals? How do you measure progress? How do you get there?

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Gut Check

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When I am talking to someone who is highly passionate about a topic I am interested in, it is very hard for me to not get swept up in the emotion of the conversation. I especially become equally emotional when their is an injustice for them.

I want to help them and make it right. I want them to know how they can make it right and get themselves out of the bad situation. I want to twist them around and help them see how they can get out of the bad situation.

More lately, I have been catching myself as I get swept up in the emotion. I stop myself and monitor my feelings. Not because my feelings are negative but strictly because I go too far. The person I am talking to might be passionately explaining something at a 6 out of 10 but I am ready to take it to an 11 and just go overboard to the extreme.

Slowing down and checking myself has helped me measure my own excitement and extremist moments. More importantly, it has also helped me temper my response to whoever I am talking to. I deliver a measured and equal response to their passion. I do not stoke their fire and escalate them from a 6/10 to a 9/10. Instead, I help them process their response to be fair, equal, and healthy. Other times, I let them vent, and then I help them move on to another topic or take on a healthier topic.

How do you react when someone is passionate about a topic? How do you temper your response when someone has suffered an injustice? How do you decide what to respond to and what to let roll off your back?

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Flying Solo

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When you run into a struggle. You are not alone. You do not have to do it alone. There are people in your life who want to be there for you and they want to be a part of your life. They are your friends for a reason.

I am not the first person to have the struggles I have. You are not the first person to have the struggles you have. I ask my friends for help when I have hardship and I share with my friends in real time where I am at. Sharing my struggles or requesting help from friends has never been met with denial.

Friends do not leave each other in the lurch. They pick each other up and share when they are celebrating and when they are hurting.

Who are your friends? Who do you share your high points with that is not your significant other? Who do you share your low points with that is not your significant other?

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However, Although

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In my high school English class, we had to write a paper on the famous novel Watership Down by Richard Adams. Being the famously intelligent student I was during my senior year of high school, I did not finish the book. I paid attention to the conversations in class, I started reading the book. But truly did not care or finish the book.

We then were required to write our summary of the book and relate it to something, I cannot remember what I was supposed to relate the book to or even what I wrote about besides writing an eleven page paper when the requirement was five to seven pages.

The teacher that year required we turn in a rough draft of the paper for her to review as her way of assisting us in the paper writing process. So I did. I was up till 11:30, midnight, or later the night before pounding out the rough draft.

The following week we all met with the teacher one-on-one to discuss our drafts. When she and I met, I don’t remember anything else about my discussion with her besides one thing.

She laughed at me.

My teacher laughed at me for starting a paragraph, “However, Although?”.

My goal in doing so was to get her opinion of which word would better start the paragraph. Ultimately, I just picked a word and said nothing else to her the rest of the conversation.

Who do you have influence over? How careful are you with your influence? How much do you measure your words and actions with those you have influence over?

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Consistency

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Posting so frequently I have to regularly be writing and producing posts. I am constantly observing to find more ideas. Many ideas. I have to come up with enough ideas that I can throw out the bad ideas and keep the good ones. Sometimes the bad make it through too.

As much as I like the ideas I have, they all are not good ideas and not all of them turned into a post. My ideas page is full of ideas that will never be posted because I know the ideas are not worth the time it takes to post much less the time it would take to read it.

The idea is only the first step. After the idea I have to sit down and write it, workout an image I like. All of this take time and patience on my part because I want to be done after I come up with the idea.

The most difficult part of the process is the writing the post. I will regularly run into a phase where I do not want to write something, cannot write something, or just plain do not know how to address a topic. The only saving grace I have in this process is routine.

The more I go to the same place. In the same chair. With the same view. At the same time. The fewer and fewer issues I have. The words write themselves from the tips of my fingers when I am feeling truly inspired and they steadily drip out of my fingers when I have no motivation or at all.

Where are you stuck? What routine do you have to help you cross the hurdles in your life? Where are you so beholden to routine that you are sacrificing others for the sake of routine?

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Fact Finding

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What is your story? Where does it start?

What happens in the middle? Where does it go wrong? What does it look like on the other side?

When was the last time you asked someone else about their story?

Are you actually getting their story or are you fact finding about how they succeeded and failed? Are you really digging into their lives? Are you waiting for your turn to talk?

I have yet to find someone who does not want to tell their story. Truly listening to someone else tell their story takes more than just showing up. You have to listen too.

Who’s story are you listening to?

–JT

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Blank Canvas

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When you do something, do you look at it and ask how it should look or do you dig in and get started?

It is so hard to stop and make sure it is going to look the way it should. The way it should look does not have to be the way everyone else makes it look. But do you know what a success will look like when you get there?

Do you know what a failure will look like when you get there?

Developing a picture of where you are headed can decide how the process should go and how the process will look through the development of your ideas and projects.

Having a clear picture of the end result will keep you from being over run by the structure overseeing you.

Changing the picture of your final product based on new information is natural.

What is the picture of success for what you are working on? When was the last time you updated your picture of success? What new information have you gained to help you succeed?

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Flow

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When you are inspired, it just flows. Everything comes out just like it needs to come out. The words flow. The art streams from your paint brush. The contracts write themselves. Job is practically done by the time you get to work.

The rest of the time, we show up and make it happen because we need it to happen. We force every character from our finger tips whether we like the words or not.

We drag the paint brush over the canvas like it is soaking up the paint faster than we can dab our brushes.

The contracts take ten times longer to write.

Work feels like it is work-ier today than it will ever be.

Doing the work anyways pays off when the next stroke of inspiration comes. It will also come sooner.

Sometimes inspiration comes from within. The rest of the time, it comes from practice and showing up.

What are you putting off? When is the next time you’re going to work on your project despite not feeling like it?

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Remembering The Future

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I was recently observing someone who is older than I am and their children are much older than my boy is. They were lamenting a decision one one child was making and did not appreciate a turn another child’s life had taken. The parent fully loves their children, they were in a moment of expressing concern for the differences their children had decided to make in their own lives.

As the parent expressed their concern, I had to mark it down. I had to mark down an acknowledgement of my own future feeling. I had to put a flag in the ground to remind myself that my child will make decisions, but these decisions will not always be my decisions and I will have to find a way to love him and support him as my boy.

Remembering what has not happened, but is yet to come, will be most important when it happens.

I cannot let my feelings overrun me in the moment or I might forget those who have gone before me and forget the lesson they taught me.

Other people will make decisions I do not completely agree with. My continued involvement in their lives will be dictated by my reaction to their decision.

How do you react to decisions you disagree with? How do you treat people who make different decisions than you? What is your threshold for the difference between the importance of a person and the importance of a decision?

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Unprepared

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Fridays come every week. You look forward to them as the last day of the week but you also run into Thursday evening like a freight train. It runs you over!

Thursday evening is the night where you do not feel like cooking. You still have to go to work the next day and it has almost nothing to look forward to doing. Thursday is the day you have to survive to get to Friday. Wednesday is the middle of the week and you can celebrate the halfness of the week being over but all you do on Thursday is throwback to the days that were not Thursday.

What if you started doing Thursdays differently? What if you started putting something to look forward to on Thursdays? How about start planning a fun lunch date on Thursdays? You can Thursdays so much better, reward yourself with a dessert on Thursday nights. Thursday does not have to be a drag. And the best part is, you know Thursday is coming every week, you can plan on it.

What else in your life are you treating like Thursday? What else in your life drags like Thursday drags? Are you plagued by the 2PM blues? Do you plan to reward yourself for the hard meeting you are about to lead? Are you prepared for your car to break down, again?

Life throws you curveballs, but not knowing when they are coming does not mean you cannot prepare for them. I promise you your car will break down again. Your roof will spring a leak. A bag of groceries will fall apart. A friend will let you down. A safe bet will go awry.

Are you ready for it? How are you preparing for the curveballs?

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Half Slice

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The landline has existed, as far as I am concerned, since the dawn of time. It was a great tool in its time. It worked well. It was relatively reliable. It was not too complicated to use. Best of all, it was a stepping stone to the internet’s infrastructure.

Today the phone is not what it once way. Today, we do not use them much at all in the same way to how they were intended to be used. Today most everyone uses a cell phone and that cell phone is probably a smartphone.

Our tools change over time. They develop and grow into what we need them to be. We needed a way to talk to our friends and family who were far away. Now we can talk to them, send them a picture, send them a video, or write them a message all from the digital half-slice of bread we keep in our pockets.

We all wanted to be able to talk to our friends and family. What we got is way more than what we needed. Where we’ll end up is way more than Ma Bell ever imagined. But these tools are integrated into our lives almost as much as the food we eat or the clothes we wear.

What tools are deeply integrated into your life? What tool could do the job better? What tools do you not need? What tools do you need in your life?

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