Hi Friend,
What a week! I’m writing you early this week, though I’ll still send it Sunday morning. I am headed to Chicago tomorrow to spend a couple of days with my son, which I’m very excited about. I’ve had so much transpire since I last wrote you, I figured I can jot a lot down now.
Last weekend I was part of a three day virtual conference my business coach hosts. It was a variety of times throughout Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It wasn’t so much a conference because there were only eight of us total. It was fabulous. Intimate, informational, inspirational and gave me some challenges to address.
On Tuesday I spoke in Denver, where they treated me like royalty. They were so kind and generous, even booking me in the Presidential Suite at the Gaylord, which is quite nice!
The next day, I attended an event for speakers in Dallas. It too was an intimate gathering. There were nine speakers plus some of the people who spoke. I experienced the most professionally humbling situation of my life. It was awkward, tense, frictiony and I loved it. It was an interaction between me and the leader about my credibility. She said something like “why should anyone give you a microphone and let you on stage?” It wasn’t mean spirited or even personal. It flowed from her perspective about credibility. It was an intense 15 minutes of interaction, that sucked the air from the room and required a break afterwards.
Ironically, 20 minutes earlier I had a received a call from a new client that they were awarding us a contract for a very significant project worth a lot of money! I was incredibly grateful and honored that they chose us for it.
COMPRESSION
I first learned about compression when I worked in a recording studio 33 years ago. An audio compressor lifts the lows and squishes the highs, eliminating peaking on both ends of the frequency spectrum. It protects against distortion.
Though I can be an extreme character, thankfully I don’t give my emotions the leeway to go too far in either direction. The fact that I got the most affirming news and then not long after got the worst news, was a glorious, humorous juxtaposition that made me grateful for gratitude. That’s kind of funny, but sincerely, I retained a joy and peace through the brutal verbal exchange because I have a settled contentment about who I am & what I have to offer.
Distortion isn’t just a painful noise. Our emotions can distort what someone else says or does interpreting it in a way that causes us pain. Or worse, we want to cause them pain because we let our emotions bottom out or peak. Do you currently have any distortion in your life because of emotional extremes?
HUMBLED
The serendipity of these two events happening so close to one another was a pure gift. I was and am sincerely humbled that our Hawks Agency team was selected for this consulting project. I was also entirely humbled that in a room full of colleagues – most of whom are on bigger stages and pulling in bigger speaker fees than me – I was challenged on my competency.
Humility – Our choice of posture.
Humbled – Because of someone else’s favorable decision.
Humiliation – negatively exposed unexpectedly.
Instigating Ideas…
1. What environment do you need to put yourself in to learn, grow and be challenged?
2. Do you have distortion in a relationship because of a lingering extreme emotion?
3. Do you choose humility frequently?
4. Encourage someone who feels like they’ve been humiliated.
By those above definitions, some could have interpreted my exchange as humiliating. It wasn’t. Thankfully, I know the person and her entire intent was for my good. Her delivery was direct, persistent and genuine. Not unlike the way I like to communicate. It was painful. Of course, pain instigates change. I got very clear take-aways from the scenario.
EMOTIONAL COMPRESSOR
When our emotions are triggered to go the extreme we distort motive and meaning. It’s possible in a current relationship with friction you’ve got a distorted perspective because you aren’t utilizing an emotional compressor. I implore you, don’t let yourself go too high with the highs or too low with the lows. Neither will remain or serve you well.
Being in two different intimate learning experiences within the same week gifted me so many thoughts about communicating and investing in others. Thanks for willingly reading my words!
I hope this week you consciously monitor your emotional frequencies and recognize who or what causes them to peak? I’m not suggesting we live emotionally flat, but attempt to eliminate distortion.