Stress

Born-again Minnesotan

January 30, 2020 By Tom Mungavan Leave a Comment

One person in ten considers winter their favorite season. Those who love to ski or snowmobile are probably a good portion of those who prefer winter.

Christopher Ingraham wrote an article in the Washington Post about how to survive and even enjoy winter. He says there are many good things about winter. Most people disagree. He explores how people enjoy winter. He recommends:

Stop being cold. Dress for the cold. Wearing warm layers virtually eliminates being cold. Long underwear may be appropriate at times.

Find activities outdoors that you can enjoy in winter. My experience is that zero degrees can feel quite warm when Nordic skiing in the woods. The air is fresh and clean. Alpine skiing can be similarly invigorating with warm cloths and goggles.

Walking in a park with warm cloths and boots also works.

Snowmobiling and ice fishing are things that some people get very excited to do. I talked to a man with a new ice house that looked like a camper. He was very excited for the ice to form.

Getting away to a warm location as a vacation has many advantages. Looking forward to a warm vacation gives you a few weeks of enjoyable anticipation. You have the time on vacation. When you get back to the cold, you know that spring is not far away. However, it is not a replacement for finding something to enjoy outside.

Get a dog was another suggestion from Ingraham. If you aren’t motivated to get yourself out for a regular walk, taking your dog for a walk every day is a good incentive.

OK , maybe warm cloths, skiing, a warm vacation and getting a dog is not enough to make winter your favorite season. Hopefully, it will make winter more fun and make it feel shorter.

Solitude is a Competitive Advantage

November 6, 2017 By Tom Mungavan Leave a Comment

The sun is rising as I sit at a table with my cup of coffee. The Santa Barbara, California, beach is across the street. The birds are saying good morning to the ocean breeze. I am building my competitive advantage … just ask HBR. My first read for the morning is a Harvard Business Review article “In a Distracted World, Solitude Is a Competitive Advantage” by Mike Erwin. Who knew it would be so delightful having a competitive advantage?

Feeling bombarded by stimuli and distractions is not new news. Multi-taking seems like the only way to handle the onslaught. Unfortunately, many studies have proven the folly of multi-tasking:

IQ drops by five to 15 points when we are multitasking.
Brain performance can decrease by up to 50% when a person focuses on two mental tasks at once.
Distractions reduce the brain’s ability to filter out irrelevancy in its working memory.
Emotion stimulated by news feeds or other external events reduces our ability to focus.
People develop Attention Deficit Trait (ATD), which demonstrates the same symptoms as the medical diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) including inability to concentrate, or focus. Only a brain scan can tell the difference. (The medical prescription is stop multi-tasking.)

I have seen my clients dramatically improve the control of their lives, and manage stress by adding blocks of time to think. An hour per day looking at priorities, strategy,

How Old Are You?

March 10, 2017 By Tom Mungavan Leave a Comment

When my father was 60, he referred to himself as being “middle-aged”. His friend asked him, “How many people do you know who are 120?”

A Life Well Lived

Minnesota Orchestra Conductor Laureate Stanislaw Skrowaczewski was born in Poland 93 years ago. He started playing piano at age 4. He loved playing music until he was injured by a bomb during World War II. He became a conductor in Warsaw and Cleveland before he took over the Minneapolis Symphony in 1960. A few months ago we heard him conduct the Minnesota Orchestra with such gusto that it was hard to believe he was 93 years-old. His love for the music was clear. One non-stop performance was 80 minutes long without using the written score. Last year he conducted in over a dozen countries. So how old was Skrowaczewski? Sadly, he died last month. He fully lived all of his 93 years.

Being Engaged in Life

There are numerous studies that all point to being engaged in something you find worthwhile (for pay or not) significantly improves our happiness and our health. I feel blessed to feel that way about what I do. Most of my “work” gives me energy, even though I am well past what many think is retirement age. See my blog Build your Return on Life (ROL) from 2014 about Mitch Anthony’s book “The New Retirementality” that challenges the concept of a retirement age as a leftover concept from the Industrial Revolution.

How Old Should I Feel?

I do not advocate that people should not retire because I have not done so. There are many people who have sacrificed enormously to build their career and feed their families. They have traveled extensively, or in other ways, sacrificed family time to do work that is not all that satisfying any more. Finding a way to remove from your life what is draining and add things that are nourishing is a wonderful endeavor. I know many who have focused on their grandchildren to recapture what they lost with their own children’s growing years. That is a fabulous opportunity to recover. Others have found the artist inside them during their retirement, like President George W. Bush.

My misconception of how a grandfather should feel is very apparent to me. Looking at the photo of the man looking in the mirror pretty well captures the gap. I feel like the younger man, and the mirror reflects an older man. I expected to feel like the older man in my 70’s, but I don’t… most of the time.

I know many who think their 60’s and 70’s are the best years of their lives. Maybe the 80’s too …. I just have not asked enough people in their 80’s. That was not my expectation when I was in my 30’s. That was not how I saw my grandfather in his 70’s.

Should We Allow More People to Work Longer?

Many would say, “Not on your life!” and others would find community, contribution and maybe purpose, if they were able to continue to work. Warren Buffet continues to make good investments in his 80’s. The Supreme Court is filled with senior citizens. Many cultures honor the wisdom of age more than the US culture.

There are definitely limitations brought on by aging. There are also strengths that build with continued age. I was blessed with a grandmother who was young at heart and willing to share honest wisdom such as, “Those who talk about the ‘good old days’ have bad memories. It was not all good.”

The companies who can overcome unfounded age discrimination and also make adjustments, where appropriate, to work rules will have a competitive advantage in many industries.

How Safe Do You Want to Be?

November 28, 2016 By Tom Mungavan 1 Comment

I recall the decision to start my own business and leave the “security” of a large company. It was a big challenge. It was tougher than I ever anticipated. Had I known in advance … I would have chickened out. It took about five years to toss off my large company paradigms. When I needed office space … I had to find it and negotiate the contracts. There was no facilities manager to call. So I learned. Looking back … knowing what I know … I would do it again in a heart beat.

So is it risky to be in my own business? Absolutely. Is it riskier than being a senior leader in a large organization? Probably not. In both cases, it’s about control and options. When I see a leader who has chosen to be financially conservative and not define themselves by their job … they are able to be the best possible leader. If she has some viable “Option B” and “Option C” to her current role … she can be at her best. She can fight for what is right and do what needs to be done … even against the odds. It is a lot like running your own business.

When leaders feel dependent on their job and company financially and/or emotionally … life can be hell when things aren’t going well. We are seeing it way too often. People who do not do what is right because they are afraid. It destroys the person and the company.

The classic story of the frog sitting still for being boiled when the temperature is slowly increased over time fits several companies today. Each year the stress temperature gets a little hotter, and the courage gets a little cooler. Soon the stress is boiling hot and courage is gone. People race up the ladder to the top and find it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It can feel very painful and scary. It is too easy to play it safe as the critic, instead of being the doer and the fighter.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

It is ultimately personal choice that gives us freedom and courage … not the company or the role.