Don’t turn a bad five minutes into a bad day

Years ago, I had the privilege of attending a lecture by Albert Bandura. He is the most famous living psychologist and for good reason . If you’ve ever talked about a sports or entertainment figure being a bad role model, you’re referring to Bandura, whether you know it or not.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura

He said that the happiest people have “an absence of self-ruminative thoughts”. Unhappy people, on the other hand, are constantly thinking over and over of how they look, that the guy at the coffee shop called the person in front of them ‘sir’ but just said to them,’here you go, guys’.

If you’re more the podcast type, you can hear Eva and I discuss mango popsicles and the secrets to happiness on the More Than Ordinary podcast. We’re back with a new co-host.
http://www.7generationgames.com/podcast/secrets-to-happiness-maybe-its-mango-popsicles/

Somehow, I gradually slipped into the habit of being really bad about this. I would have a meeting where I completely disagreed with some policy and be mad all day about it. I’d be walking through the park and instead of noticing all of the really beautiful and interesting sights, I'd be ruminating about how unfair it was that my travel expenses did not get approved because I did not keep my boarding pass to show I actually went (really, dude?).

Solve two problems at once. Quit thinking and do something

I read something on instagram (yes, really) that snapped me out of it. I can't remember if it was Louis Velasquez or Alejandro Peraza, they both post a lot of interesting stuff, anyway, (whichever) he said,

Don't turn a bad five minutes into a bad day

I realized that's what I was doing. I would get notified we received a grant, we'd have a new game published in the app store and Google Play, we'd have another school district adopt our games and I'd be thinking all day about that expense reimbursement that got declined instead of doing the happy dance because business was going so great.

Here's what else I realized, I was ruminating about those things that made me unhappy instead of doing something about them.

Do you feel as if someone is continually dismissing your ideas and treating you as if you are a moron because you are a woman/ young/ black/ Hispanic / whatever ? Don't work with that person any more. Seriously. There are billions of people on this planet. Don't work with people who ruin your day every day. That's just silly. Find a new lawyer/ accountant/ agent. (Note to gossip-mongers: This is just an example. I like my lawyer and accountant fine and I don't have an agent.)

Decide and move on

There are two decisions you can make. One is that this behavior is unacceptable and you need to take action to stop it. Then, you do. Many times, I've found the paperwork  required to get funds for a grant or contract, whether for judo or my business, takes so much time that if I just did consulting work and billed for those hours, I'd come out ahead financially and could spend the money however I wanted. If you are continually mad about how your time is being wasted, stop and think about it in terms of how you could address that.

The second decision you can make is that it is not worth getting too upset about. Some family member I was talking to on the phone cut me off and said, "I have to go", like they had more important things to do than talk to me. Maybe they did. Honestly, I just called to check in to let them know I was thinking about them and, mission accomplished, so on with my day.

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Yes, You DO Have Time for It

There are several things in my life I don’t feel as if I have enough time to do:

• Learning more about programming
• Improving my Spanish
• Hiking
• Strategic planning for our company rather than putting out the latest fire
• Teaching judo
• Keeping up with people - answering email, returning phone calls, just checking in
• Data analysis and research

I’ll bet you have your own list. There might be some times, temporarily, when you have to put everything else on hold, but be careful of letting it become your lifestyle.

My guess is, if you are reading this blog, you and I may have a little bit in common. Speaking for myself, one of the tendencies I have is to go all in. That can be good. It led to a world championships, a Ph.D., a published book, a few companies founded. That can also be a bad thing.

I’m not one of those people who hate on Facebook. In fact, my friends’ list is regularly curated so I only see what I want, which is how my friends and family are doing and people who post interesting (to me) stuff. I admire those people who manage to always have time for their family and hobbies while simultaneously holding down a job that supports said families and hobbies .

However, I’m not talking about those people, I’m talking about me and the last few months have been simultaneously a disaster and an amazing success. The success part is that we hit a lot of deadlines with very good results for our company. I pitched at 3 Ed Tech events, including 2 in Spanish, which takes me seven times as long to write and practice because it’s my second language.

Me, at my day job

 I  did three presentations in Spanish, two live and one streamed to over 7,000 people. One of those live presentations was hosted by a ‘district’ seven hours south of Santiago, where I also visited two schools and discussed our latest games. I could go on, but you get the idea.

No greater success than seeing kids' interest in our games

Have you ever been like that? You have so much going on with your job or your sport that you exclude everything else?

Well, stop it. Like so many things else in life, my base in judo is helpful here. I won a whole bunch of gold medals while going to college, going to graduate school and working full time as an engineer. I also had a baby/ toddler the last two years. So, I know from personal experience you don’t have to spend 100% of your time on one goal to be a success. Maybe you do TEMPORARILY, like the two months leave I took from my job to compete and train in Europe and focus on my training in the US. However, if that two months turns into six,  you might want to start questioning how temporary this is.

So, what’s my answer? Well, you are reading it. Those deadlines I had to meet were really important but one thing I have finally managed to understand is that not everything is equally important. Event at U.S. Embassy with 20 very knowledgeable people on education in Chile - extremely important and can’t be put off.  Someone want to meet with me and talk about using our software in our schools on Monday - if they called me Friday afternoon, I DON’T have to spend all weekend preparing for it. In fact, if they are the kind of person who thinks I should jump at the opportunity to meet them at the last minute, maybe I don’t want to work with them.

(Proof I take my own advice, I'm back to doing the More Than Ordinary podcast with a new co-host)

Here’s a key point ... you’re making yourself crazy

Most likely, if I tell that Head of School, “Could we meet the next week instead? Here are three times that work for me, are you available any of those?”  They will be perfectly willing to meet with me later. They just threw out the first time that was available. (Go back and read my other post on not giving it more attention than it deserves.)

Now that I’ve gotten through the immutable deadlines, that’s what I’m doing. Because I’m me, it would be easy to get back into the same rat race of waking up, taking 10 minutes to shower, dress and dash out the door, a frantic day of meetings, then more work until I fall into bed, drink a glass of wine while reading my email and go to sleep exhausted.

What I have decided NOT to do is go back to this schedule by trying to do everything every day.

What I have been doing is started working on a couple of items on my list every day. In the morning, I just work on learning more Spanish or programming , sometimes both. That’s what I do the first hour that I’m up. More, if it’s a weekend . I started going to bed earlier,getting up an hour earlier and doing what I most wanted to catch up on first.

I turned the international plan back on for my phone and I’ve started calling a couple off people a day just to catch up.

One of those calls was to James Wall who mentioned the JudoCon in Kansas City, November 2nd and 3rd. I had thought of presenting at that and concluded I could not spend an extra week or so in the U.S. Again, it occurred to me, hey, if the people I am working with can’t accept that I’m going to be gone a few extra days, perhaps those aren’t the right people to be working with. I mean, it’s not as if I’m a slacker.

So, yeah, I’ll be in Kansas City in November, head home to southern Cal in time to vote and then, most likely, head back to Chile after doing my civic duty.

There’s your answer then - make the time. Start work an hour later. Take a vacation . The people around you most likely will be totally fine with that. If not, find new people .

AzTech: The Story Begins - Mr. Gonzalez history class loses an average of 2 students per year. What happens to them?  Find the answer while learning fractions, statistics and Latin American history .

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I Need to Take My Own Advice, Or Stupid Things I Do and Maybe You Do, Too

Like Alice in Wonderland, I often give myself good advice but very seldom follow it. I've decided to get back to blogging and make this into a series: advice of my own I should take. Who says you can only make resolutions on New Year's? No one asked me about those rules.

I've decided to make July resolutions that will lead to me being happier, and you, too, if you follow along.

Don't give it more attention than it deserves.

I stole this line from Gary Butts and it's very good advice. Do you ever catch yourself worrying about something over and over? There was a misspelled word on my slide in that presentation. That person corrected me in a meeting and,  in fact, their correction was wrong, how disrespectful!

I left my keys in the office and had to go back for them. Is that an early sign of Alzheimer's?  I am getting old, after all.

The fact is that even things that seem SUPER-IMPORTANT at the time really aren't that big of a deal in the overall scheme of things. I like Facebook for seeing what kids I knew when they were in judo are doing now. That kid who was just devastated not to win the junior nationals at age11 and beat herself/ himself up about it is now a speech pathologist, married, with two kids and just bought a house. Really, was it that important that you got caught by a foot sweep?

I know I am a big hypocrite because I was always upset when I lost. Even today, if a sale to a school district doesn't go through or we don't get a grant funded or an investor decides to take a pass on us, I feel like a big failure. It's silly, I know, but I'm working on it.

At the end of the day - there's another day, because that's how time works.

There's a really big world out there

I've always been kind of like this my whole life, blowing things out of proportion. I think it comes from wanting to do everything perfectly, which sounds good on the surface but no one is perfect and trying to be is the key to always feeling like a failure.

When I look at people I know who are usually happy, they all have this in common
... they don't get upset by things that aren't all that important. For example, I went to pay the notary -everything in Chile requires a notary and you have to pay in cash ( - if you are interested in my life in Chile, check out the Start-up Diaries over on the 7 Generation Games site) and she said my 20,000 peso bill was fake. I tried to give her another and she said that was fake, too. If you don't have the Chilean peso exchange rate memorized it's about 20,000 pesos = $67.  I was pretty pissed off.  I had gotten that money from the ATM at the bank and you'd think that wouldn't give you fake money.

I thought of some of the happiest people I know, and channeled my inner Alice, asking:

"Is $68 really going to cause you to go bankrupt? Is it worth ruining your day over?"

The answer was,

"No."

I went to Santa Lucia Park, ate fresh strawberries I bought from a fruit stand on the street and wrote this blog sitting next to this giant piece of pre-Columbian art

Here are my next four or five posts in this series, coming up  (I say four  or five because I'll probably end up putting a couple together....

1. Your success in life and value as a human being are not decided on just one day (no, not even if it's the world championships or Olympics - maybe especially not then, since you must have done a hell of a lot to get to that point. )
2. Don't talk about other people. In fact, don't even think gossip about other people
3. You decide how happy you are
4. The secret to happiness: The absence of self-ruminative thoughts. 
5. Yes, you do so have time for it (see, that's why I'm back to writing this blog).
6. The other secret to  happiness: Focus on the good
7. Yet another secret to happiness: You don't need to be perfect and you don't have to know everything (yes, really)

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Email annmaria.demars@7generationgames.com  and let me know what you think.