11/14 Making a Positive Difference in the World

Stuff I did over the last couple days that made a real, positive difference in the world.

• Told a client who I felt was spinning his wheels trying to do a brochure to let go of the damn brochure already and start developing his social network
• Helped a client further define her target customer definition. She’s gotten two customers and that makes me feel happy for her.
• Wrote copy for a client that was very heartfelt and captured the spirit of her inspirational CDs
• Wrote a little note about how my instructor’s errors made things feel more freeing to me and it made him feel really good.
• Offered a good example yesterday around how to write an article and how to create a story
• Referred someone to the DaVinci group

11/12 Making a Positive Difference

Things I did in the past few days or so that made a positive difference:

• Went for a walk with my son the other day to Blockbuster and rented the Bourne Identity
• Hung out with my husband and son and watched the movie together and ate popcorn
• Made a short packing list for our trip to Chicago which will lessen the stress factor because I’m not waiting until the very last minute
• Did everyone’s laundry
• Got our down comforter cleaned and put on the duvet cover. A small thing but I love the down comforter. Now we won’t have little bits of down floating all over the place (before we were using a comforter that was ripped a lot)
• Connected Joan Schlaefer and Rebecca Campbell, I’m hoping there’s a win win there
• Turned Barb onto Your Money or Your Life and to Holly Graves

10/20 How I made a positive difference

Sometimes it’s difficult to focus in on one thing or another that I did where I can say, “Yep, doing that made the world a better place in however small a way.”

I try to take Friday’s off as often as possible. I look forward to my Fridays. It’s the one day where I have very few things that I need to get done. The only thing I’m a stickler with is exercise. Everything is is optional.

Yesterday my husband and I went out for dinner at a local sushi restaurant. It was crowded when we got there and we had to wait awhile to get a table.

There was something so pleasurable about eating a good meal and relaxing.

I especially love sushi because we order it by the piece and I only order what I really like. I also like the variety of flavors and textures and how each piece is like a small work of craftsmanship.

Sometimes enjoying life is enough.

10/17/07 Making a Positive Difference in the World

I’m having a hard time today seeing how what I do is making a positive difference. Here are some things that seemed to:

• One of my clients, who bakes gourmet pastries had the assignment to deliver product samples to local businesses that might become good customers. She left a message on my voice mail sounding really happy. Her samples were very well received (not surprising to me–someone hands you a bag with gourmet cookies right before lunch–that would sure make me happy). Hearing the joy and excitement in her voice felt really good.
• I’m working with another client to help her define what she is really selling. On the one hand, she can do a lot of things that travel agents do. On the other hand, she loves organizing vacations for families and she’s really good at it. Given how vacations which are supposed to be a joy are so stressful for me to organize and even while on the vacation I don’t feel particularly rested dealing with complaints from my husband and son, I think she has something a lot of families could really use. At least I certainly resonated with what she was talking about. The question I’m still not clear with is how she can create a packaged product in which she can add this value and get paid.
• Finally got some resolution around another client. I guess my contribution was that I stayed true to the issues I needed addressed. The client will be working with a business planner which is good but she won’t make any additional progress until she has defined what her product is, who her target customer is, and how much it will cost. I kept asking for clarification until we all agreed that this was what had to be answered. Otherwise, I felt there was no point in developing a sales forecast if we didn’t know what we were forecasting sales on.
• Last night my husband was upset because someone at the company he works for reprimanded him for completing a form incorrectly. My husband hates paperwork to begin with and getting publically reprimanded by email really upset him. I just sat with him and didn’t try to fix him; didn’t try to make him “come out of it.” Just hung out with him. It also felt good that it felt ok to do this. In the past, doing this was really uncomfortable for me and I found myself figgiting and thinking of other things. This time I was relaxed and found I could be comfortable just hanging out.

10/9/07 Making a Positive Difference in the World

Anne Wayman has challenged me to stop looking to others so much to feel good about myself. Leave to Anne to kick my butt in the kindest possible way.

She’s right and it’s good advice. Everyone suffers from self doubt from time to time and mine is keeping me from connecting with people where good things can happen.

So here’s my list for Tuesday, 10/9/07

• Asked a current client from a place of compassion whether they should really be pursuing their current course in starting their business. I don’t think the client will like it but it felt good to come from a place of compassion. Compassion is something we need more of in our world.
• Spoke with another client whose marketing launch is humming along. I could hear a lot of happiness and energy in her voice. She has great products and is very focused on growing her business. I like seeing her feeling so encouraged.
• Spoke with another client who told me she felt I wasn’t supportive of her business idea and she wasn’t sure she wanted to work with me. I didn’t get defensive. I didn’t start telling her why she was wrong. I just listened and when she asked me what I could do for her business I told her that I wasn’t sure. That I’d never worked on a business like hers before and that there might be someone who could do a better job than me. Positive difference? I was truthful and respected myself and the client. It felt hideously uncomfortable. My ego was screaming bloody murder because it felt humiliating but I honestly didn’t know what else I could say that would be helpful in the situation. Interesting because the client later agreed to proceed with me. I still don’t know exactly what the hell I’m doing though.
• Took a long walk in the afternoon through the light industrial end of my neighborhood. There are lots of buildings that are probably 40-50 years old that are occupied by small manufacturers. One distributes Naked Juice, another is an offset printer.  Just felt good getting out and seeing a part of the neighborhood I didn’t usually see. Plus this was an area that was pretty “raw” in the sense that there was zero gentrification. Nothing was prettied up. There was litter and rusting metal and concrete with exposed rebar all over the place.  There’s something refreshing about that.