Day One...

I've been doing so much for so long doing too much seems almost like not enough...

If that makes sense to you, you're in too deep and in as much trouble as I generally am, trouble that probably stems from being 'Recognition Dependent' and never really being able to say, No!

If you think I'm kidding ask your analyst... No, really, I'm not going to force you schedule an appointment. Instead, I'll offer my own definition.

In its simplest form, "Recognition Dependent" just means caring too much about being recognized - how you are thought of or esteemed by others - particularly, those whose opinions are meaningful to you. Because you want people to think highly of you, because you want people to like you... You are likely to do whatever they ask you to do, whatever you think they want, need or expect from you.

My experience has taught me most 'good' shop owners are "Recognition Dependent." They care and act accordingly as the result of that caring. They bend over backwards to satisfy their clients, at least in part because they want their clients to 'like' them.

Most of us are "Recognition Dependent" to one degree or another if you think about it and that's OK. The wheels start to come off, however, when you're trying to please too many different people or groups of people, especially when there are conflicting agendas.

I'm no stranger when it comes to being over committed. I've been working at the shop, writing to the Automotive Aftermarket, presenting seminars and delivering speeches for more than twenty five years. That's a long time and a lot of balls in the air. It's a lot of conversations that end with, "Sure, I'll do it!"
If you don't believe me you can ask Lesley, my wife! Our conversations generally either start or end with Lesley asking, "When were you going to tell me you were going out of town? The night before..." And, me responding with, "I'm almost sure we talked about this when it came up a few months ago..."

The biggest problem with being over committed, at least for me is fighting fires: putting out the hottest and most pressing fires before they singe the door and burn everything in your front yard to the ground. You do that a lot when you have lots of fires and lots of deadlines and you're trying to juggle them all without searing your toes. Oddly enough, I've gotten pretty good at managing the chaos and frankly, I must like it because I'm stilling doing it!

The bad news is, I fall apart when the fire is out and I have to figure out where I was and what's left to do on all the other projects that were abandoned when the alarm bells began to ring and I went diving for that shiny brass pole in the center of that big hole in the middle of the floor.

I mean, where do you start?

The answer came from a blog I read yesterday morning, a blog by Chris Brogan, a web marketing expert, auther, speaker and all around good guy...

The blog was titled, What Does Day One Look Like, and it really struck a nerve. Strange how something like that can turn your world upside down...

What I got out of the blog was elegantly simple... when things fall apart and it's time to clean up and get started again, instead of looking at whatever it was you were involved in from the beginning, pick it up from where you left off as if where you left off was the beginning. In other words, as if it was Day One...

Hurt your back and quit going to the gym, but you're feeling better now: Day One...

Got distracted by a wedding and watched the Marketing Plan you were working on grind to a halt, but the wedding is over now and the kids are back from their honeymoon, so there is no reason not to start working on it all over again... No problem: Day One...

Way behind on writing assignments or the presentation looming up in your rear view mirror because you were working on everything else... Fugheddaboudit! Day One...

The coolest part about it is I have great hope it just might work! OK... So, it's early and I've only tried it twice and it is only the first day! But... so far it's two for two. In fact, I'm convinced it's going to work.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt anything if I could just learn to say, No! a little more forcefully and a little more often!

Qi Thieves...

I am not a Roshi or a Tao Master. Nor, am I an Obi-Wan Kenobi “wanna be.” But, it would be hard to deny there isn't some kind of a unifying force at work in the world. 

It’s role may not always be altogether clear, but most of us have sensed its presence or felt it at work. It may not always be referred to as Qi, Ch’i or even, the “Force.” However, what it’s called isn’t nearly as important as what it is, how it works or the impact it can and does have on your everyday existence.

When everything in your world is ‘aligned,’ this energy flows through you as well as all around you. When things are out of alignment - something many of us know an awful lot about - things begin to fall apart rather quickly. In fact, depending upon the severity of the mis-alignment, it can feel like the wheels are just about ready to come off your life.

In the human body, the nexus for this energy is the Tan T’ien, located an inch or two below the navel. For all intent and purpose, it’s the body’s warehouse for Qi. Everyone has a spiritual center. Although, it’s certain not everyone is in touch with theirs. It is equally as certain the majority of people are just plain unaware it exists at all.

The more aware of this energy center you become the more you begin to realize just how important it is to remain centered and an integral part of the world surrounding you: a kind of “at one with.” You do this through situational awareness and a sensitivity to the energy of everything in your world. If you have ever folded your body onto the floor board between the front seat of the vehicle you are working on and the firewall, reached up into the wiring harness and instrument cluster between the brake and accelerator pedals like a surgeon searching for a leaky blood vessel, closed your eyes and then seen something you could not see or done something you knew you could not do, because for that fleeting moment you and the vehicle were one, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You know with equal certainty that it’s impossible to do that unless you have achieved a minimal level of harmony, both internal and external. You know just as clearly how little it takes to destroy that moment and how quickly you can find yourself struggling with the machine, contending against self-imposed physical and mental constraints. 

Much of this we bring on ourselves - our minds and our lives are filled with a symphony of noise and clutter.  The chaos that surrounds all of us and fills our lives with a constant and unrealistic demand for attention loves nothing more then to draw you in: texts, cell phone calls, blog posts, tweets, four thousand friends clamoring for attention and the never ending requests to “send this to your ten  closest friends” is more than enough to disturb the calm we secretly yearn for and our minds and bodies so desperately need.

But, as frustrating and distracting as the world around us is or can be, it is not the devil I fear most. The devil I fear most is the Qi Thief! He is the insidious bastard who delights in destroying the harmony you seek. He is the monster lulling you into a false sense of peace and security and then sharttering the harmony you yearn to be a part of by crashing and banging through your world like a Dragon in the middle of a Chinese New Year’s parade!

He is the master of the unkind word, the center of his own selfish world. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything else. Because of the demons that torment him, he can never be at peace, and because he will never be at peace, he will do whatever he can to ensure you will never find the peace you seek. 

Where you try to tread lightly, he is likely to stomp. Where you try desperately to find that quiet place within, he works just as hard to marshal a roiling storm of chaos and contention pointing it all straight at you.

If you’ve been in this industry as long as I have, you’ve already associated a name with the portrait I’ve just painted. You know this person... Or, you knew him (Or, her...). They are energy thieves and they rob you of your center. Sadly, the worst part is they aren’t trying to steal the life out of you because they want it for themselves... All they really want is to ensure that if they can’t find peace, you will never have it either. 

There is no rehabilitating a Qi Thief, at least nothing I know of that will work. You can try, but experience has taught me that it is rarely more than a game: a game created by the Qi Thief to frustrate and disappoint you. The only way to win is not to play. The only way to win is to become strong enough to ignore their efforts to disturb you and the world around you or to eliminate them from your world altogether.

The best way to ensure harmony and a constant flow of energy to you and through you is to create an environment that is as peaceful and calm as you can make it: as peaceful and calm as it needs to be. 

The best way to ensure that constant flow of energy is to deny the Qi Thief his prize or to steal it back from him when he isn't paying attention.

More Time...

Everyone is always asking for more time...

"If I only had more time..." "Gee, I wish I had more time..." "There aren't enough hours in the day..."

What in the world is that all about?

I don't want more time... I want more discipline! I want the courage to say No! more often! I want to be able to power on my computer and just start writing without feeling the irresistable pull of facebook or gmail tugging at my sleeve!

No! I don't want more time... Not until I'm sure I'm making the best use of the time I've got now!

Sure, I'd love to be more productive... Who wouldn't? Wouldn't you?

OK, so there are a few individuals we all know who laugh at the rest of us as we scurry around with that permanent look of constipated intensity etched into our collective portrait, people who don't give a damn about productivity: yours or their own. And, while they are laughing at us we're probably racing around feeling sorry for them, bathing in a false sense of moral superiority.

The question is: Who is right and who is wrong...

I don't want more time... I want to be happy with the time I've got! No... That isn't entirely correct. It's not happy with the time I've got that I want: it's "satisfied!" I want to be satisfied that I used the time I've got wisely, and wisely means for something other than work: something more than work!

I want the willpower to ignore Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Yahoo and the four thousand, eight hundred and thirty two other browsers that are clawing for my attention every second of every minute of every day. I want to silence the constant noise!

I don't want to connect with someone half-way around the world on the Internet: not, when I can connect with another human being in the same room!

I don't want to watch someone else exercise either! I want to get up from my desk and move around a little myself!

I don't want to watch someone on television. I don't want to watch the story unfold on the the screen. I don't want someone to tell it for me or to me. I want to experience it for myself. I want to experience it myself!

I don't want more time until I know I can and will make the best use of the time I have and quite frankly, I'm pretty sure I'm not there yet! 

Do you know how I know that? If you don't I'll tell you. I know I'm not there yet because every time I make a list of the "To Do's" I need to get done there is always one thing conspicuously absent from the list and that is the "To Do's" I need to do for me.

I'm not whining... I'm not crying the blues... I'm not bemoaning the fact I've dealt myself out of this equation. And, no, I'm not afraid of being considered selfish. I'd just like to get better at the art of living: living a full and satisfying life that recognizes that it's alright to find yourself penciled in on your own "To Do" list. That being selfish doesn't have anything to do with being on that list: Being selfish has everything to do with being the only thing thing on the list!

No... More time isn't the answer. Everyone's got the same amount of time: the same number of seconds, hours and days they are allotted. More living and more life in the time we all have is the answer!

So, until we have the wisdom to ask better questions and make more intelligent decisions, I think I'll just have to satisfy myself with the time I have... the time we all have. I'll just have to muddle through and make the best of it. 

And, if someone stops me to ask if I have the time, I'll smile and rejoice in the hidden knowledge that there is a lot more to that question than a wristwatch, cell phone or a clock will ever tell you.

Kickin' The Can Down The Road...

I don't know about you, but it seems like we're approaching some kind of a record for the use of lame expressions during a campaign year. The one that annoys me the most this year is, "Kickin' the can down the road..."

It isn't the metaphor itself that bothers me. Politicians have been "Kickin'" that can down the road for generations: long enough for it to finally come back and haunt them. What bothers me about this particular phrase is the way the OEM's - the Original Equipment Manufacturers: the people who build the cars and trucks you purchase and I work on, have started to kick the maintenance can down the road.

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about what the OEM's consider "acceptable" oil consumption rates and the disastrous impact extended service intervals can have when it's "normal" to use a quart of oil every 800 or 900 miles and appropriate to change oil every 10,000. You don't have to be a Math scholar to realize that unless you have a twelve or thirteen quart crankcase capacity you will run out of oil before you run out of miles.

Well, the same thing is happening with other service requirements and recommendations. But, that isn't the "can" I'm talking about. The "can" I'm talking about are the normally scheduled maintenance operations that are no longer even listed in your owner's manual: services that are no less important and yet no longer there. For all intent and purpose, they've disappeared or the interval is so long the service feels unnecessary, even irrelevant.

One manufacturer recommends a transmission service: a fluid exchange, every fifteen years! The average Californian drives more than 12,000 miles a year. That's a fluid exchange every 180,000 miles! How many transmissions are you aware of that will last that long without some kind of maintenance?

It seems attractive until you stop and think about it for a moment, something we ask our clients to do just about every day when someone kicks the can into the office and onto the service counter!

Think about what? How about just one simple, but realistic question: Who gets to pay if "it," whatever "it" is, fails and the vehicle is out of warranty? The answer is just as simple: You! And, the cost can be in the thousands!

You see, these services are being deferred in many cases to create an illusion of false economy. The fewer services required or the longer the interval between service, the less the overall cost of operation. Or, at least that's the way it looks on paper. And, while there is no argument that just about everything on your vehicle is being made better and to last longer, we still haven't managed to create a perpetual motion machine or even a machine that is maintenance free!

That's something you need to think about when you kick that maintenance can down the road... The fact that sooner or later the road will end and that can and lot more just like it will be there just waiting for you to show up!

2:45 A.M.

Standing at the kitchen counter at 2:45 in the morning, staring out the window at the rain with a glass of water in your hand isn't exactly the kind of place you would think a flood of positive emotions about our industry would wash over you. I certainly didn't think it would happen to me, at least not there and not then. 

But, it did and for whatever its worth, there wasn't much I could do about it...

Now, at 2:45 A.M., most people would let those positive and powerful emotions wash right over them and then go back to bed. In fact, I'll bet most people might even have lied to their significant other about why they were up, what they were doing and what they were thinking, but I didn't...

Lesley asked why I was up and I told her. I told her I was thinking about "the industry:" our code for what you and I do, and how it had been very good to me... very good to us. 

Fortunately, she was so tired she just grunted and went back to sleep, but not before she mumbled, "That's good, because you've been very good to the industry."

I wasn't that lucky. I had to analyze why there was an instant replay of a lifetime committed to the motoring public, our customers and this industry running in my head and why I was convinced I'd gotten so much more from the commitment I'd made to my craft all those years ago, than I'd given. After all, it hasn't all been fun and games!

You can come up with some strange explanations for all kinds of "stuff" at 3:00 A.M. while you're watching the numbers on your digital clock change minute by minute. "Stuff" you might never have even considered during the day... Like all the incredible relationships you were privileged to experience: the wonderful people who enriched your life in more ways than you could ever articulate or explain.

 

You think about all you've learned: invaluable life-lessons that may not have fully registered when "class" was in session because you were too deeply involved in them to recognize everything you were absorbing.

If you were me staring out the window at 3:15, you were thinking about how your future father-in-law was so concerned about your ability to support his daughter: your wife of what has now been forty-two years, he felt compelled to warn her not to hang out with you because all you did was "pump gas and work on cars..." And, the fact that "pumping gas" and "fixing cars" has paid for a pretty good life so far: a house, more than a couple of nice cars over the years - cars that always ran and ran well, two great kids, two four-year college degrees, some really incredible vacations, a big chunk of one wedding ten months ago... and, just about a week ago, a bigger chunk of another.

 

You think about the fact that after more than forty-six years, it isn't over yet. And, perhaps, more important, the fact that you're still excited about getting up every morning and going to work every day! 

Maybe, not in two-and-a-half hours… But, most days, anyway!

How many people do you know who can say they feel the same way about what they do... And, mean it?

I guess it's true, you do think about a lot of strange "stuff" in the middle of the night and not all of it is likely to make you smile or feel good about yourself. I was lucky this time: lucky to find myself thinking about why I decided to keep working with my father when I had more than a couple of chances to leave, lucky to understand how and why I was drawn to the same challenges and satisfaction that motivated him and lucky to realize just how privileged I am to be able to share it all with you.

Perhaps, more important, I was lucky enough to fall back to sleep before the sun finally did come up. And, even though I only slept for a couple of hours, I was lucky enough to sleep soundly and to sleep well: lucky enough to realize that when it comes to this industry, it would be safe to say that we just might have been good for each other.

An Act of Not So Random Kindness...

It's odd when doing something almost entirely for someone else: someone you don't know and most likely will never meet, feels uncomfortable. But, there are times the discomfort is more than acceptable. This is one of them. One of those acts of random kindness that is as compelling as it is noble or majestic.


I'm just sorry I didn't think of doing it sooner...

Because I didn't think of posting it sooner and since this is as good a time as any, I just posted this on my Motor Age site. 

Normally, I would never do something like this, but this is for kids: kids with serious illnesses who could really use the distraction a game consol like the ones Ryan will be donating can provide. If you get a minute take a look and follow the link to the crowdraiser site. You'll feel better if you do. I know I did ;-{)}


Here is what I posted there...


...

As many of you may... Or, may not know, my son Ryan is an "Endurance Athlete:" an Ironman, which is kind of a Triathlete on steroids.

 Normally, I would never share this, bore or burden you with tales of either of our kid's accomplishments, but this is a little different. I'm not sharing this because he will swim two-and-a-half miles, bike about 113 miles and then finish the day off with a full 26.2 mile marathon or because he has really covered more than 1,000 miles in training for Ironman, St. George - Although, you have to admit, that's worthy of at least a smile and a little fatherly pride.

I'm sharing it because his heart is as big as it is strong. I'm sharing it because I hope you just might be moved enough to follow the link to Ryan's fundraising page and contribute a buck or two to help brighten the lives at least a couple of kids coping with more than any kid should ever have to.

Just think of how good you'll feel if you can. And, if you can't, no worries... I'll still love you!

Just find something equally as noble, equally as important, and contribute what you can there. My guess is if we all do a little something for someone else, our industry we'll be a lot closer to making the world a better place: a lot closer to finishing the work of creation... 

Here's the link... I'm afraid you will have to cut and paste it, but I'm thinking the feeling you get from giving will be more than worth the effort! 


http://www.crowdrise.com/starlightchallenge/fundraiser/Ironmadman/1/return/success/success

Mitch

...


Hi everyone,

As some of you may know, this Saturday I’m tackling arguably the hardest Ironman course in North America, Ironman St. George.  It’s going to be a tough day, but I’m elated because with every mile I’ve trained since March 5, I’ve donated $1 to Starlight Children’s Foundation.  I’ve swam, biked and ran more than 1,000 miles in two months.  For those of you who haven’t heard of Starlight, the organization helps seriously ill children.

Specifically, I’m raising funds to place Nintendo Fun Centers in children’s hospitals.  They feature Nintendo Wii game consoles, DVD players and a mounted TV that can be wheeled into patients’ rooms.  This links my passion for the video games industry with my passion for Ironman and especially with helping the most innocent folks of all, kids. 

Oftentimes, children’s hospitals have little to no entertainment for kids as they undergo treatment.  With today’s array of budget cuts it’s understandable but unfortunate.  Still, tell that to the kids who endure mind-numbing boredom while undergoing sometimes painful treatments.  I’d like to help change that.  There’s a hospital wait list 1,000-long for these units.  I’m hoping that I can donate at least two by the time I cross the finish line this Saturday evening.  Three would be even more amazing!

We’re on our way to getting there.  As you can see with my fundraising page, we’ve made a pretty sizable dent.  What’s not included is that my employer, Insomniac Games, has matched and doubled my donation, and a few other very generous souls have matched me mile for mile.  With that in mind, we have already raised enough to donate one Nintendo Fun Center ($5,000) and are about halfway to the $10,000 mark to donate two.

Would you be so kind as to consider helping me reach this milestone?  I’ve never asked for anyone to donate anything in the past.  I’ve kept my charitable acts private.  But this is a cause I strongly believe in, and have personally seen the looks on kids’ faces when they get to play with a Nintendo Fun Center. It changes their entire outlook about a stay in the hospital.  This is worth sharing.

I hope you agree my Ironman Starlight Challenge is a worthy cause. I hope you’ll join me.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.  And please consider donating if you can.  If not, you can help by simply linking my fundraising page to your Facebook wall!  I’d greatly appreciate that.

Sincerely,

Ryan