Things going weird = a present for you
Well, we had a terrific time on the last teleclass, and I was looking forward to sending you the recording. However, the recording turned out pretty scratchy. And as you may know, I’m a stickler for super high quality products even when they’re give-aways. Plus, you really shouldn’t have to exert yourself to process the information. Because that’s no fun.
So I had a professional and absolutely gorgeous transcript made up and edited so that you can get the most from the themes and ideas we discussed. Reading it isn’t the same as being there, but you get to enjoy the wonderful discussion and there’s a ton of really great material there.
Whine of the week: Ow! Stop making me think!
Note: You may notice that this isn’t really anything like my normal articles. C’est la vie. It’s probably because I’m on holiday in Berlin which means:
a) my English is slowly fading again
b) I’m taking it easy
c) sometimes a short whine is just the thing!
Thanks for indulging and I hope it’s helpful for you too.
I admit that I went just a leeetle overboard with the freebie transcript download (we’ll talk some other time about the whole perfectionism vs. professionalism thing). You know what? It was fun going overboard. It was a way of working through my irritation at the general shoddiness that prevails all too often in the internet world.
Here’s the thing. In the past few months I have bought some terrific information products online. And I have downloaded a bunch of useful, interesting give-away manuals or articles. And yet, they were all kind of, well.. shoddy.
Terrific and shoddy? Well, I say “terrific” because the information was useful, interesting and relevant. So I got what I wanted and am happy to have gotten it. At the same time I still ended up feeling frustrated at the lengths I had to go to to extract the information from these pieces — the basic professional courtesy that I expected just wasn’t part of the package.
When I buy recordings I always listen to them on iTunes. Why not take two minutes to label the digital files properly so I can find them easily if I ever want to listen again? It doesn’t make sense that you would have to exert yourself to use a product — and if I’ve already paid $80 for a recording, it seems reasonable that it would at least come with the title and author already in place.
When I read a transcript of someone’s retreat or teleseminar I don’t want to slog through a bunch of random distractions. A little atmosphere is okay, but I really just need the information. So why not edit out the UMs, the YOU KNOWs and everything else that is irrelevant and distracting? It’s a small thing to delete every sentence that goes: “Um, like, hold on just a minute while I unmute you here, okay, that’s better”… and it’s totally worth it.
When I listen to someone’s teleclass(especially if I paid lots of monies for it) I really don’t need to hear all the beeps and burps and long pauses while people decide if they are ready to ask a question. Editing is the responsible, mensch-like thing to do.
It’s a joy for me to be a part of other people’s self-work process: releasing stuck patterns, finally doing stuff differently and just having fun doing it. And it’s also a joy for me to be able to give things away too. But I want these gifts to not only come packed with information, but also be so easy to use and absorb that they elicit sighs of relief! Sure, I have great material, but great material isn’t everything. The way it’s transmitted is important too.
Steven Krug, whom I greatly admire for his big, fat brain, wrote a genius book called “Don’t Make Me Think!”. The book is all about how to build a website that is a pleasure to navigate, but his theme is applicable for just about anything in business or in life
It’s all about the mensch-points!
One of Krug’s ideas is that we basically go through life consciously or unconsciously judging everything in terms of how much mensch-like it is. We’re looking for empathy and consideration because we want to feel like we are being acknowledged and cared for. When we go to a website that really speaks our language we automatically dole out “mensch points” and when we get sent to the wrong link, we feel annoyed and end up mentally deleting “mensch points”. His whole philosophy of website-usability can really be summed up in terms of how to do mensch-like stuff, so that your visitors and customers can feel safe, comfortable and loved.
Same goes for products. When they help us achieve breakthroughs, they are earning their mensch points. When they are getting on our nerves by not having dotted the Is and crossed the Ts, they are losing mensch points.
It’s also similar for human interactions. When you practice listening with compassion, or expressing your feelings, or just paying attention to what someone needs (or to what you need) in a given moment, you’re mensch-ing it up. When it’s harder for you to be present in the interaction, what’s missing is your ability to connect to your inner mensch.
Of course none of us is perfect (thank goodness!) and we can’t be. I know I’m not, though I do like to think that we are all doing the best we can where we are.
We all overlook things. We all drop the ball occasionally. We all have our moments. Sometimes we have wonky links on our websites and sometimes we have trouble communicating. Sometimes we can’t notice that we are in pain and sometimes we are so entangled in our own pain and distress that we aren’t able to pay attention to someone else’s pain and distress. Sometimes we need a good whine. Sometimes.
It all comes back to noticing and paying attention. You want to be conscious of what’s going on for you so you can recognize your patterns, let yourself have them, tweak them, work on them, and maybe even like yourself anyway.
And every once in a while, when you need a whine, let yourself have it. That’s what I do. And it feels great.
Warm greetings from Berlin! I’ll be back in California next week.
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