A hit song from 2002 had the refrain “I’d rather be anything but ordinary please”.  What I really don’t understand about the sentiment is “Why is ordinary bad?”

Personally, I like thinking of myself as ordinary. I looked up ordinary on Dictionary.com, the definition I use is the 4th option on the site, which cites ordinary as meaning “customary; usual; normal”.  My life consists of activities that would fit that definition to a T – and I’m pretty happy. I like my Monday – Friday work schedule, starting off with my usual caffeine boost, maybe doing the Sudoku puzzle in the newspaper and then starting the workday. Some days I take a break at lunch to walk or run, then I work until dinnertime. Weekends I get to sleep in and hopefully get to see friends or family. We share a meal, see a baseball game or listen to music. All very ordinary, but good stuff!

Sure, I have times in my life that are outside the norm, that you could call extraordinary. But their infrequency is what makes them special. The majority of my life is amazingly and wonderfully ordinary.

If you’ve made it this far, you might be wondering why I am even writing about this. It is because I see people making themselves miserable because they are not “special’ or “extraordinary”. My teenage children have complained to me at times that kids their age all think they need to be special at something. Being a teenager has always been rough, but I do think it is tougher today. Why? Because people become instant stars on You Tube (think Rebecca Black’s song Friday) and, probably a bigger reason, the explosion of social media. Much of it glorifies superficial qualities as important. It is easy to think of yourself as unworthy if you don’t match up to what you see online. In an earlier post that focused on Facebook, I mentioned a quote from the movie “Easy A’, when a teacher laments that social media included really trivial things, like someone had a Coke Zero that day. To be honest, I wish social media included more ordinary posts mixed in with the glamorous ‘selfies’ that teens are intent on creating and sharing. If more people posted ordinary things, then we’d probably feel better about our own ordinary activities.

This brings me back to the reason why I created this blog — one of my objectives was similar to the goal of the TV show “Seinfeld”. The show was supposedly “about nothing”. It really wasn’t about ‘nothing’, it was about ‘ordinary’. That is what made it so fun to watch. The characters were often doing ordinary things, but they had a blast doing it.

Since I just discovered Seinfeld re-runs on Hulu, I think I know what I’ll do this evening. Have a great Tuesday evening, all you fellow ordinary folks. 🙂

I started this blog exactly two years ago – sitting in a hotel room in the Zuri hotel in Bangalore, India. I remember the hotel room vividly – the curtains, the desk, the chairs in the room. Since that trip, I’ve been on probably 10-15 other business trips in the US, however I have a harder time remembering what those hotels looked like.

One of Maya Angelou’s often cited quotes is this: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  While she was speaking about how we remember other people, I think the idea of feelings affecting your memory of a person can also be applied to how we remember things like hotel rooms. I probably remember the hotel room in India much more clearly than a more recent stay in Washington DC, because of how I was feeling at the time. My feelings in India were excitement and anticipation of being in a new country. I was meeting new people, seeing new places and doing things I had never done before. My feelings when staying in DC were not necessarily bad, there was just not the heightened emotions during a routine business trip.

Outside of our internal recollections, external triggers can cause us to remember something clearly all of a sudden, such as:

• Seeing a photograph of some place you knew or visited a long time ago;
• Running into an old friend. Memories can be triggered just by seeing someone’s face that you have not in a while or by hearing them talk about something that you both experienced in the past; or
• Talking to someone who is experiencing something in their life now that is very similar to something you experienced in the past. While they are not talking about your past experience, their current situation can bring back memories of how you felt when in the similar situation.

I really enjoy having an unexpected memory trigger.  That is because I think our own memories largely support our view of ourselves, so they can be somewhat limited and narrowly focused. I consider myself to be a math/numbers person, so my memories of elementary school are, unsurprisingly weighted towards different math related lessons and games my teachers played with us. On my own, I didn’t have much memories about my elementary school music classes, I’m guessing because they did not involve a lot of math. On Facebook, I recently exchanged messages with an old classmate of mine, who spurred a memory of a class with my music teacher, Mrs. Solomon. This friend quoted part of the lyrics to a song we sang probably in 2nd or 3rd grade. When I read her post, suddenly I remembered not just the words she had typed, but I could hear the tune to the song in my head — what a fun and completely unexpected memory!

Like most people, my memories seem to get a little fuzzier as I get older. Part of my reason for this blog is to record my memories of things like my trip to India. It is also a place to just write what I’m thinking about – my random thoughts. Hope these random thoughts have triggered unexpected (and hopefully good) memories for you also.

 

 

 

 

 

One of the pivotal scenes in the movie ‘Wayne’s World’ happens when a security guard (Chris Farley) shares information with Wayne and Garth about the exact location of a wealthy music investor, Mr. Big. This information comes at a key point in the movie for Wayne, allowing him to try to win back his love, Cassandra.

I thought about this goofy movie scene today as I was reading an article posted by a favorite speaker/author of mine, Tim Sanders. Mr. Sanders’ article talks about the benefits of connecting people with others. His article is primarily focused on sharing contacts, but I want to extend his idea to sharing information — not necessarily confined to contacts, but knowledge that can help others as they pursue their goals in life.

I love the idea of sharing information – so much to the point that I probably share too much information. My view is that people are smart enough to decide what information they want to filter in or what they want to filter out. By other people freely sharing their knowledge/contacts/tips, it can help others piece together what might be useless as a standalone piece of information, but could be a key component of a new idea/end product that was just dreamed up.

Thankfully, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn make it easy to share information and make new connections with others. Who knows what next great idea will be triggered by a random social media post? An even more exciting thought to me is  — what if a great idea is inspired by something I shared? What a wonderful possibility 🙂

 

This post is about laughing, which is one of my favorite things to do. I have a very low threshold for things I find funny, a trait I’ve had since birth.

Case in point: My mom has retold a story about hearing what she thought was a loud old man laughing in my room when I was still a baby/toddler. She says it was a pretty deep sounding laugh, so she went into my room to see who was laughing. There was no old man in the room, just her young daughter. She said I was watching a spider trying to crawl up either the screen or the glass on my window. It would get part of the way up, then fall back down to the bottom (at which time I would start laughing madly) and start climbing back up again. To my delight, this poor spider seemed to fall several times, so I continued to laugh over and over.

As I’ve grown up, my willingness to laugh at simple things has remained. I still like to watch kids’ cartoons and reading the comics in the newspaper. The comics are great for getting going in the morning — an especially funny one can get my mood on track for the entire day.  Here are links to a few favorites of mine:

• Zits (the teenage boy bears a strong resemblance to a son of mine)
• Pearls before swine
• Calvin and Hobbes, which was unfortunately retired too soon

A recent find that has tickled my funny bone is a blog that became a book. I bought the book one morning when I arrived at the airport early. As usual, I wanted to start my day laughing if possible, so the book’s cover commanded my attention.

The drawings were crude and the subtitle contained the word ‘mayhem’, so I was sold without knowing anything else about why I was spending $18 on this book.

Here is a link to one of the stories on her blog which is also in the book, to get a feel for her humor: ‘The God of Cake’

If reading that did not make you smile, giggle or burst out laughing, well, you are in need of a laughter checkup 🙂 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary provides three definitions of the word loyal. Of the three examples, the third one is what I see most often, “faithful to a cause, ideal, institution or product”. I think it is the easiest to demonstrate because it often shows up in groups — such as being faithful to a sports team, having brand loyalty to some product (such as owning a certain brand of car or clothes or drinking certain beverages). If you live in St. Louis, being loyal to the local baseball team is assumed.

If you are not a loyal Cardinal fan, then you are often looked up as not being a real St. Louisian.

Being loyal in this manner is fun, but it seems to miss the real substance of the word ‘loyal’. I prefer the meaning in the second definition which talks about being “faithful to a private person…” Unfortunately, this definition seems to be the hardest to find examples of in day to day life. In a society that values the rights of an individual first and foremost, is the idea of being faithful to a single person old fashioned or out of touch with reality? Why should we think that another person deserves our loyalty?

The best answer I have found to these questions is in a favorite book of mine, called “The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits to Living a Compassionate Life“, by Piero Ferrucci. I own this book in hardcopy as well as an electronic version, both versions have been bookmarked many times because there are so many wonderful ideas for how to live. Not a single section of the book talks about what sports team to follow or what clothes to wear, but there is an entire chapter on the topic of loyalty in the best sense of the word. The full chapter should be read to appreciate the author’s insight, however, I will include excerpts from the last two paragraphs. These passages show what true loyalty brings to person’s life.

“When we show loyalty in hard circumstances, we show how much we care, we show the stuff we are made of. It is easy to be loyal and faithful to someone when all is well. But if we remain loyal when the person is unpleasant or boring, when we gain no advantage in seeing her or when we have more interesting matters to attend to, that is where our substance shows. That is where we are seen for what we are…… Always, loyalty gives substance and strength to kindness. In a world often so distracted and careless, this is a priceless value.”

Another favorite author of mine, J.K. Rowling, seems to agree with this interpretation of loyalty. In the Harry Potter series, the characters who remain loyal throughout the numerous hard times continue to grow as individuals and those that are not are reduced to meaningless caricatures. This theme is obviously why I enjoy watching the Potter movies over and over — it is a message that cannot be repeated too often.

I am certain that I will continue to enjoy showing baseball loyalty by wearing Cardinals attire, but I’m more grateful for individual loyalty that I have experienced firsthand. While I haven’t had the life challenges of Harry Potter, I am fortunate to have many friends like Hermoine, Ron, Luna, and even Hagrid.

For many years, the US dairy industry ran an ad campaign with a simple slogan, ‘Got milk?’ It was a short and easy to remember slogan to help people understand the importance of getting enough calcium in their diet.

My latest random train of thought has been on friendship and its importance in our lives. Friends can help us find ways of coping with problems or help us enjoy life by sharing a laugh with us.

Got friends? 

As a child, we make friends pretty easily through school, sports or other activities. Sometimes those friends stay with us throughout our lives, sometimes we lose touch and meet new people in our adult lives (according to Gallup, making friends at work is ideal). It doesn’t really matter how we meet our friends, it just matters that we’ve found someone to connect with. Once we’ve made the connection, the duration of the friendship depends on both parties — each person needs to know what the other one expects to give and get from the friendship. Some expectations may be trivial and don’t impact the long term duration of the friendship, others are more substantive and disregarding an expectation may lead to termination of the friendship. You can run a google search for ‘how to be a friend‘ and come up with lots of do’s and don’ts. Those can be a good starting point, but you need to know what the other person values in a friend to be able to build something long lasting.

One of my favorite movie series that shows friendship dynamics over time is the ‘Toy Story’ trilogy.  The two lead toy characters are Woody and Buzz Lightyear, whose friendship has ups and downs throughout the series. At the start of the first movie, Woody (an older toy) doesn’t trust Buzz Lightyear’s (a new toy) motives. Buzz proves himself by rescuing Woody from an unscrupulous toy reseller, returning him back to the safety of Andy’s room. That movie ends with Woody and Buzz as good friends.

This budding friendship is tested in a later movie, when Woody unexpectedly decides to join a new friend Jessie and the Roundup Gang to go to a toy museum, rather than returning with Buzz and the others to Andy’s room. Woody isn’t doing this because he does not like the other toys, but because he is afraid of becoming obsolete and no longer important as Andy grows up. This hurts Buzz and the other toys, who think Woody is rejecting them and only thinking of himself and his new friends. To repair the friendship, Woody apologizes to Buzz and the toys and brings new friend Jessie along back to Andy’s room. He took a big risk (possibility of getting thrown away with all the toys as Andy leaves for college), but it pays off in the long run when Andy takes the entire group of toys to another young child to play with and enjoy.

It may have been a movie directed to children, but the important messages apply to friendships throughout all stages of life. You may need to take risks in friendship, however, the long term bonds that develop can enrich your life when you find a true loyal friend.

I’m starting this post with a fun video.

If you watch any of it, hope it is enough to see Sammy Hagar’s infectious energy and Eddie Van Halen smiling as he plays the guitar. Even if you don’t understand the English language, it would be hard not to pick up on the fact that these artists are enjoying the moment ‘Right Now’.

We don’t all have jobs like singers and may feel like it is easier for people like them to be happy while they work — they make a lot of money, have lots of fans. No one watches most of us at work and if someone does, they probably are not clapping and yelling out our names. So we need to have a different reason to be smiling or jumping up and down like Sammy does in the video, right?

Wrong. In my view, I think Sammy is jumping up and down not solely because of his money or his fans, but because he is just being himself in the moment and enjoying it fully. He clearly loves to sing and perform, so he puts all his energy and enthusiasm into it and it shows. Even though I am a die-hard ‘original’ Van Halen fan, I love the Van Hagar days simply because of Sammy’s attitude. Watching VH with Sammy usually made me smile too, which was probably what he was hoping for – for the entire audience to leave the concert feeling upbeat.

So how do the rest of us get the same energy and spirit infused in our present lives? We have to figure out what makes ourselves tick. The neat thing about figuring this out is that our inner drives are not singular – finding one inner driver may lead us to find another one we hadn’t realized yet. Our drivers are not static either, the things that make us jump up and down when we are young can change as we get older (and we may not jump when we’re older – smile). When I was in elementary school, I knew I liked to solve math problems. I liked it so much, my teacher sometimes had me share my enthusiasm for it with others. That led me to discover another inner driver I have, which is to help others. It isn’t surprising that my field requires understanding of technology and numbers and I spend a large portion of my day helping other people who have problems with software. I’m getting to do my own version of Sammy’s stage jumping, even if it doesn’t look that way to the outside world. I definitely feel it inside when I’m getting to use what makes me tick.  If each of us can find a way to use our primary inner drivers every day, there is no doubt we’ll be showing that energy in our daily work and family lives. We may not show it as exuberantly as Sammy Hagar does, but we’ll feel it and our co-workers and family will pick up on it too.

So how about it, do you know what makes you tick ‘Right Now’?