#284: Time to get high

It’s time to get high. All this stress and uncertainty, anger and fear is driving me to it.

I use to live in a place where it was easy and cheap to get high and so I got high quite often. But where I live now there are no mountains. Not even proper hills. Getting high here means first taking a drive.

Nevertheless I will do it, soon, because nothing else I know puts things in perspective quite like sitting high up on a mountain, where the fresh air blows in one ear and out the other.

When you’re that high, you can look into the far beyond and see forever.

Being able to see forever now and then greatly enhances your ability to carry on carrying on, because being able to see forever makes you realize that this too shall pass.

So, dear reader, do yourself, family and friends a favor. Get out, get fresh and get high.



I’m James McIntosh at nonsenseatwork.com

Copyright: 2009 James Henry McIntosh

James can be heard on Public Radio: Monday - 7:19am and Saturday - 8:19am
88.9 FM WCVE, Richmond VA | 89.1 FM WCNV, Heathsville VA | 90.1 FM WMVE, Chase City VA

#283: Simplify your focus

Just for a change I stopped thinking about this recession. Instead, I thought about its implications. Will it change us? If so, how?

Questions triggered no doubt by all these articles celebrating Darwin’s birth. They reminded me that Darwin believed those who are most adaptable to change will survive.

Here’s the interesting bit. Many people, believers and non-believers in the theory alike, assume that evolution leads to greater complexity.

Well, guess what. Some experts argue that a creature can adapt by becoming simpler, not more complex. In other words, ‘survival of the fittest’ could mean ‘survival of the simplest’.

The debate is ongoing, but I’m not going to wait to see who wins – complexity or simplicity. A simplified life-style seems awfully appealing right now.

Come to think of it, so does a simplified organization. We used to called it strategic focus.



I’m James McIntosh at nonsenseatwork.com

Copyright: 2009 James Henry McIntosh

James can be heard on Public Radio: Monday - 7:19am and Saturday - 8:19am
88.9 FM WCVE, Richmond VA | 89.1 FM WCNV, Heathsville VA | 90.1 FM WMVE, Chase City VA

#282: Diminishing choices

I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Or a yachtsman, engineer, architect, the list goes on.

What happened? Time happened.

As the years added up my options subtracted. I’m now too old to be those other people. I’m stuck with me as is.

What happened? Choices happened. Maybe I did not choose the circumstances of my birth, but I can now see how my choices carried me from there to here.

I now know that this freedom to choose has boundaries. Life gives us nudges and hints about what to choose. The more you resist being authentic, being real, the harder the nudges, the broader the hints and the fewer the options.

For many of us these have taken the form of job-loss and financial problems.

Today I’m left with another choice. To mope about who I might have been or to be who I am now. And, of course, to take the blame or the credit.



I’m James McIntosh at nonsenseatwork.com

Copyright: 2009 James Henry McIntosh

James can be heard on Public Radio: Monday - 7:19am and Saturday - 8:19am
88.9 FM WCVE, Richmond VA | 89.1 FM WCNV, Heathsville VA | 90.1 FM WMVE, Chase City VA

#281: Time for some inaction

We’re at that stage of the economic cycle where I worry that there is too much execution in executive.

The term ‘executive’, as in chief executive officer, means having the power to execute, to make things happen. This begs the question ‘what things?’

Therein lies my problem. From a young age we are pushed to action by the questions adults ask. Have you done your homework? Have you made your bed? Have you done this, have you done that?

No one ever asked me ‘have you thought today, have you contemplated, have you meditated?’

Not only are we conditioned to act, executives are trained to act. Combine this with the current climate of fear, the fear of not doing enough, of not working hard enough, and what do we get? Executives who are not spending time contemplating a future beyond this recession.

Being unprepared for a recession is bad enough; being unprepared for the recovery is insane.



I’m James McIntosh at nonsenseatwork.com

Copyright: 2009 James Henry McIntosh

James can be heard on Public Radio: Monday - 7:19am and Saturday - 8:19am
88.9 FM WCVE, Richmond VA | 89.1 FM WCNV, Heathsville VA | 90.1 FM WMVE, Chase City VA

#280: Getting beyond stuck

Are you feeling stuck? Life has a habit of doing that to us.

Don’t see being stuck as a failure. Being stuck is often a necessary phase to trigger something new. It’s a way of getting your attention, a way of waking you up.

These wake up moments I call nonsense moments because they tend to get your attention away from nonsense and back to what has meaning for you.

Think about a recent nonsense moment - the one that got your full attention. Was it a positive event, something that almost happened, that made you think and react in time? These events tend to shock, but not hurt. Or was it a negative event, one that actually happened and did hurt, physically or emotionally?

If you can interpret your ‘stuckness’ as a positive nonsense moment, one that makes you think and see differently, one that can wake you up, then you are already moving beyond stuck.



I’m James McIntosh at nonsenseatwork.com

Copyright: 2009 James Henry McIntosh

James can be heard on Public Radio: Monday - 7:19am and Saturday - 8:19am
88.9 FM WCVE, Richmond VA | 89.1 FM WCNV, Heathsville VA | 90.1 FM WMVE, Chase City VA