Motivational Leadership Speaker, Bestselling Oprah Author

Archive for August, 2008

I got an e-mail from an executive’s Blackberry yesterday, inquiring about me speaking at an event she was hosting. Get this: She was sending that e-mail while she was getting a root canal. I am not kidding. Janet Johnston now wins the Oscar for Best Performance by a Type-A Personality.

It gets better. In the middle of all that, she was summoned to talk to some state official for the routine meeting about her au pair. She had to get out of the oral surgeon’s chair, cotton in mouth, and make the appearance.

Janet!

I love her. Love her energy, love her vibe, love her indomitable ways. But, Sister has got to chill. In this balance dilemma, it is so important that you build up the personal firewall that will protect you and your time. It is way too easy for work to intrude on personal and family time because a) companies are more demanding than ever b) it is so easy for work contact us to reach us at all times c) we often feel a need to demonstrate unlimited loyalty in the line of duty d) we get a little too wrapped up in what we are doing.

Knock it off, or you will go crazy. You have the right to reserve time for your self and your family. If you feel that pressure is on you to be available 24/7, talk to your boss about making some adjustments. Employers are sensitive to the balance issue these days because it is costing them money when employees leave.

Make it clear that your job is important to you and that you are committed to succeeding with the company. But, you need to have a firewall that gives you time with your family so that you don’t raise a bunch of drug addicts and juvenile delinquents, or wind up e-mailing people from your Blackberry when you are getting a root canal.

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I got an e-mail from an executive’s Blackberry yesterday, inquiring about me speaking at an event she was hosting. Get this: She was sending that e-mail while she was getting a root canal. I am not kidding. Janet Johnston now wins the Oscar for Best Performance by a Type-A Personality.

It gets better. In the middle of all that, she was summoned to talk to some state official for the routine meeting about her au pair. She had to get out of the oral surgeon’s chair, cotton in mouth, and make the appearance.

Janet!

I love her. Love her energy, love her vibe, love her indomitable ways. But, Sister has got to chill. In this balance dilemma, it is so important that you build up the personal firewall that will protect you and your time. It is way too easy for work to intrude on personal and family time because a) companies are more demanding than ever b) it is so easy for work contact us to reach us at all times c) we often feel a need to demonstrate unlimited loyalty in the line of duty d) we get a little too wrapped up in what we are doing.

Knock it off, or you will go crazy. You have the right to reserve time for your self and your family. If you feel that pressure is on you to be available 24/7, talk to your boss about making some adjustments. Employers are sensitive to the balance issue these days because it is costing them money when employees leave.

Make it clear that your job is important to you and that you are committed to succeeding with the company. But, you need to have a firewall that gives you time with your family so that you don’t raise a bunch of drug addicts and juvenile delinquents, or wind up e-mailing people from your Blackberry when you are getting a root canal.

Soon after Hard Won Wisdom was released, my insurance agent asked me to save her a signed copy. When I dropped it by her office, she thumbed through it and said, “Maybe this will show me how to juggle all these balls I have in the air.”

I looked at her and said, “The secret to juggling is to let some of the balls drop.”

Simple enough. In my last posting for this series, I talked about how important it is to know what matters most in your life. Once you have that list of what really counts, you will see that you are wasting time on activities and “pulls” that keep you from the things that really move your soul.

First, look at your calendar. How are you spending your time? How much time are you handing over to tasks and people that don’t hold value to you? It is really easy to hand over your time to obligations that are rather meaningless to your life.

I know that, because there was a time when I spent almost every lunch hour networking and trying to build my business. I thought it was necessary. A part of the job. But, I learned something. Time is too precious to hand over to people you don’t especially like or to waste on things you don’t especially want to do. I know how important it is to network. But, I got much, much smarter at it. Instead of doing five lunches a week, I devoted one-half of a day to it. I didn’t waste time driving downtown for lunch every day. I’d meet someone for breakfast, then someone for coffee, then drop by someone’s office, then do lunch. I would do a week’s worth of networking at once. And after awhile, I became much more discriminating about who I would even network. It is amazing how much time I had once I took control over that.

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You also have to be an expert at organizing yourself because there are a million distractions and “pulls” that will keep you from doing the things you really want or need to do. E-mail is a great example. What a great idea that was when it was first invented. Now, we get hundreds of them every day and have no time for our real work. It is absurdity. And then the cell phone. We used to have lives. Now we can be reached anytime, anywhere. We feel compelled to constantly check in to see what is happening. We don’t fully engage in conversations because we are trying to check the Blackberry or Treo out of the corners of our eyes.

We used to worry about balancing work and family demands. Now we can’t even balance ourselves.

It is because we have not realized that we have the power to set good boundaries that give us room to live and breathe. Who is more balanced, the person who checks e-mail while driving in traffic or the person who only checks e-mail once a day? The once-a-day person has set boundaries that create a healthy life.

Then there are those periods when everything is happening and there truly is no time to stop and take stock of anything. I know about this because the speaking industry has some peak seasons that can really exhaust me. One time, I was so stretched that I hadn’t had a day off in six weeks. I was tired and grumpy and one-dimensional. I took out my PDA and opened up my calendar. Two weeks out, there was a Friday with nothing scheduled. I wrote in the word “OFF.” And that is when I learned the secret that, if you block a day off like that, it does not exist. All of my appointments had to flow around it.

I do that all the time now — just keep a day for myself. It is healthy.

So, as you juggle so many balls in the air, realize that you are the one who decides what you are going to keep juggling and what you are going to drop. Stop killing yourself.

I can mark each era of my life in dog years. The Honey years. The Honey/Buster years. The Buster/Vinny years. The Vinny/Reggie years.

Vinny has been at my side through four books, two houses, a coupla relationships, a career change, a lightning strike and a lot of really good times.

He’s been there. Right with his mama.

Yesterday was a good day. Playful. Normal. Happy. Today, we woke up and I filled his bowl with Moist & Meaty, the food I’ve been spoiling him with since he was diagnosed with lung cancer and no longer had to worry about his waistline. He has always, always loved Moist & Meaty. Just not today. I coaxed him to his bowl, but he was not interested.I sat on the floor and put some in my hand and held it out to him, and he took a nibble — for my sake.

Then, he gave me the look.

He gave me the look and then it was my job to keep my end of my bargain with him. I would give him a good death because he’d given me so much good life. I called the vet and asked him to come out to the house after the clinic closed. Vinny would be in his home and he would not be afraid.

All day, I watched his labored breathing and knew this was really the day he had to go. I dropped my Golden off at my friend’s house so I could have my last day with Vinny and so Reggie wouldn’t continue to try to steal the attention away from his sick brother. And I gave Vinny a bunch of toys and got him to eat a little beef jerky and I cried. All day, on and off, because a world without this dog doesn’t seem possible to me. I have loved him so much for so long, and now I don’t know where I will put that love. Or get the love he gave to me. I have no idea how I will fill the void in my heart.

But I said goodbye to him knowing he had been the sweetest gift God ever sent me. He was just for me. My special boy, who made me laugh every single day.

Now I embark on the Reggie years, sad because Reg is my old man — almost thirteen, and sad because I know he won’t t live forever either — no matter how much I love him.

With his Billy Idol Mohawk. I re-colored it brown a week later.

Thank you, Vinny G-r-r-r-r-mer. For every last little thing.

My first day on the job at The Miami Herald was an absolute shock. My boss really laid everything on nice and thick as she courted me in the hiring process, but the minute I got there, she informed me that I’d be working some weeknights, every Saturday day shift and, gee, when I wasn’t working until 12, I’d be expected to hang until at least about 8 — even if I was done with my work.

I went there when I was only in the third week of my marriage. At a time when I should have been enjoying life as a newlywed, I was being tested to see how loyal I was to the whims of a newspaper with insatiable demands.

It didn’t seem fair. My work was important to me — extremely important to me. I was passionate about it, and I delivered huge front-page stories. But, I had a relationship that I wanted to tend to. I’d just moved to town and wanted to get out and make friends and learn about my new city. I’d always turn my stories in on time — at 6:30 p.m. — but that didn’t matter. Nobody left that early. Nobody.

So, I would sit there, watching the clock and wondering when I could leave. I was done with my work! Other reporters were turning in their stories late, so why couldn’t I benefit from my always on-time performance and go home to my husband?

A few weeks into my tenure there, editors from The Palm Beach Post

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invited me to lunch and offered me a job with better assignment with better money and much better hours. I turned them down, thinking I owed something to The Herald. The editor of The Post told me that editors at The Herald wouldn’t think twice about cutting me if it benefited them. I didn’t believe them.

A month later — just days before Christmas — the managing editor came to our bureau and announced the paper was shutting the Palm Beach operation down. Half of us would be spared, half would not. I survived the cut. The ones who didn’t make it were the veterans who didn’t have the same paranoia that us newcomers felt as we tried to impress our bosses. I thought about what that editor at The Post had said, and it was so very true.

I was transferred to another bureau and worked weekends and wasted more hours just sitting there late because my bosses wanted me to be part of the team. The politics of those offices were so brutal that I routinely saw one editor setting up the next in hopes of getting rid of a potential competitor. The entire time I worked there, I was on edge. I had no time for my husband or myself.

My first anniversary was approaching and I knew they would never let me out in time for a celebratory dinner out. I knew it. So, I called in sick. I had to take a sick day in order to make sure I could go out at 7 p.m. with my husband.

When I finally took a vacation, we flew to Greece for two weeks. I still have the journal where I was wrestling with the pulls of my work versus the true priorities in my life — God, relationship, family, friends and humanity. I closed it saying, “When I die, it will mean far more to me to have people say that I loved and was loved than I really knew how to write a 12-inch story. I need to learn to live my life for the big picture.” All that wisdom, and I was just 28 years old. Notice work wasn’t even on the list. It was important to me, but it wasn’t central to my being. I came home from that trip and started sending resumes out. A month later, I was gone.

That awakening stayed with me and centered me whenever work would start to take over my life. Work is work. It is exciting and challenging and mandatory. But, it is work.

So, as you start to contemplate the balance issue, ask yourself what matters most in your life. What are the five or six “pulls” that you have to honor, and what do they mean to your world? If you only had one week on earth, how would you spend your time?

The “What matters most?” question will always serve to give you perspective and help you to decide how to divvy up your time. Some people write a personal mission statement that incorporates their personal priorities so they can always check in easily to see if they have veered off course. Before you wear yourself out trying to juggle everything, go within to make sure you are juggling what really matters to you.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books and speaks to corporations and organizations about courageous and creative leadership strategies.

  I have no idea how you pull it off. How many e-mails, voice mails, phone calls or faxes did you deal with today? How many meetings and conference calls? Lunch appointments, calendar shuffles and  “emergency” interruptions?

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I sure hope you made time to pick up the kids, do the wash, clean the kitchen and help with homework, because if you didn’t, you must be a terrible mother, a horrible housekeeper and a really lame wife.

Oh, I’m just kidding. I often am hired to help corporate women deal with those famous “work-life balance” issues, and I constantly tell them that they a) can’t do it all b) should stop trying and c) need to cut themselves slack. More than anything, they need to stop wallowing in guilt and start making changes that will free up time and brain cells.

It you are exhausted, frustrated, guilt-ridden and depleted by the demands pulling on you in your daily life, hang with me for the next week as I review some of the ways you can deal with work-life balance challenges. Hopefully, your life is balanced enough so you’ll have time to read it.

————

Who are you, anyhow? You aren’t a robot or Superwoman or June Cleaver. You might be able to do two things at once, maybe three. But, you can’t do ten, and the way this world operates, you feel inadequate if you can’t. If you are a star in your career, but you drop the ball for even one minute when it comes to perfect performance at home, you feel like a complete failure.

Years ago, I was working on the most exhaustive investigative reporting project I had ever undertaken. It lasted for ten months, and the last two months of the project just about killed me. I was meeting with sources from the state attorney general’s office in the basement of a McDonald’s restaurant. Staking out the mayor’s office. Dealing with what appeared to be our local Watergate. Numerous city officials were fired and criminally investigated.

Because of that work, I was nominated for the Pulitzer prize – twice. But, in the midst of it, several friends stopped by my house before we went out for the usual Friday night dinner out. Most of the house looked presentable. But, I have to admit, I’d shoved a lot of piles of paperwork and other “stuff” into the junk room because I hadn’t had time to deal with them.

watch godfather part iii the in divx I don’t know whether my now ex-husband thought he was being funny or if he was deliberately being passive aggressive, but he called everyone together in the hallway and said, “You’ve got to see this.” He opened the door to the junk room and exposed my mess.

In the midst of my greatest professional success, I’d been outed as a failed housekeeper, which somehow translated into a failed wife in my mind.

Granted, I have evolved a bit since that happened. I know I can’t do everything, and the first thing that is going to give is housework. I’ve got a relationship and family and work and life and I will take care of those priorities before I clear the pile off my desk.

Housework can be delegated, but life can’t. Remember that.

Balance? We don’t get that kind of equilibrium very often. One priority often trumps another. It has to. If you waste energy trying to be great at everything, you are good at nothing.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books and speaks to corporations and organizations about courageous and creative leadership strategies.

My 70-year-old chosen sister-in-life is about to deliver a baby, and the labor pains are a killer. Her “baby” is her first book and the labor pains are especially horrid because she has to upload everything electronically to a behemoth publisher that doesn’t have time for hand-holding its first-time authors. It is a insanity-inducing process that is taking its toll.

She sent me an e-mail last night asking me for technical advice, which I didn’t have the expertise to give. Instead, I wrote back, “Calm down. This will not kill you if you lose a few days. There have been many times when I’ve had to just let things go to the wind. Your book will be ready when it is supposed to be ready, men in black movie not one minute sooner. So, just go through the motions and enjoy the process!”

It was probably not the most sensitive way to handle my loyal friend’s feelings, because she’s so close to what she is doing and is really striving to push this thing through right now. She wrote back and reminded me of the chaos I faced when my first book, Hard Won Wisdom, was released the day before 9/11. “I doubt if you relaxed and enjoyed that. True, there is no comparison, at all, with my little technical speedbump, but it just shows how anything, at any time, can throw a curved ball.”

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The truth is, I didn’t enjoy 9/11 any more than any other American, nor did I like having to figure a way to make my book succeed in that difficult environment. But, once the shock of the unthinkable tragedy set in, I did regroup, figure out a strategy and enjoy my moment. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I’ve got so many photos of going on the road, catching up with old friends, promoting my book, speaking, doing television and pushing for my dream. It was an incredibly chaotic time and I had no control over what happened with my book. I could only control one thing: My enjoyment of the moment. I laughed through it. I lived it out loud. I had so much fun, because that was the only first book experience I would ever have.

I’ve been thinking about that experience all day, and want to post some old photos, circa 2001, just to share how much fun I had. In the first photo below, my friend Bette made it to my signing — despite a hard hit from her terminal ovarian cancer. She’s gone now, but that moment will never leave me. It is proof that, despite any turmoil, there can be great joy.

My great friends, Tami, Jeannie, Teresa and Bette.

Speaking at Denver's Tattered Cover, the fantasy that kept me moving when things got rough.

Hooking up with the great Helen Thomas and having a blast.

My dear friend Miriam Reed bought so many copies of Hard Won Wisdom, she single-handedly turned me into a best-seller.

My mother sitting with me at an early signing -- in a clothing shop!

I want my friend to have fun with her moment. She has earned that. She’s worked so hard on this book and she should be able to soak that up at every turn, even when it gets a bit gnarly. If publishing were easy, everybody would have a book out there. I just home she embraces this huge achievement for what it is, enjoying it in all its magnificence. So what if the computer is giving her trouble. Look what she’s doing!

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Yes, life throws lots of curve balls. That’s what makes it so interesting.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books and speaks to corporations and organizations about courageous and creative leadership strategies.

I am having the best time.

I’m going to a party this evening for my friend who is being cared for by hospice as emphysema closes in on her. She is one of the most colorful, alive, brilliant women I have ever known, and I know she won’t be with us much longer.

Last Monday, I mentioned that my canine soulmate, Vinny, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and is not expected to make it a month.

There have been a lot of tears lately, but I’m in a euphoric moment because nobody is going to a meeting with the Grim Reaper without a celebration. I have always wondered why people wait until their loved ones go before telling the stories they would tell at a wake. Forget the wake. Share the moment in life. That’s why I am going to party with my dying friend and a handful of other wild women.

And ‘tho my sweet Vinny is starting to show signs of his illness, they are greatly mitigated because he is being fed so much people food, getting huge bones and a brand new baby every single day. He gets to sleep on my pillow in my bed and I spoon him at night. I know he has never been happier, and so that makes me happy. We are going to have one hell of a goodbye month. He is alive. He is not dead.

You might wonder why we didn’t do these things all along. Well, my friend knew I thought she was the coolest 73-year-old I’d ever met. I certainly told her that and laughed endlessly with her. And, Vinny and I never wasted a moment. I could not have given him a baby every day and fed him steak, chicken, watermelon, jerky, etc. The house would have been overrun by dog babies and he would have weighed twice what he was supposed to weigh. But, that dog knew how much he was loved.

But, as we say goodbye to our loved ones, we can either shut down or lighten up. We can lament what we are losing or relish in what we have — and had. My sadness is still there, but there is also real joy. It’s in these moments of immense grief that I find such intense gratitude. I have been blessed, and it is a moment to relish in these blessings.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books and speaks to corporations and organizations about courages and creative leadership strategies.