Monthly Archives: May 2012

The Antidote To Your Rat-Race-Rush Life? Social Generosity.

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photo-7So where in this Rat Race are we all Rushing to?

And when we eventually get there… then what?!

An unintended consequence of our choice to live a Rat-Race-Rush Life (and yes, it is our choice!)

We risk misusing our personal power to get ahead of each other…

instead of helping each other get ahead.

The antidote?  Practice Social Generosity.

The beauty of practicing Social Generosity lies in its simplicity:

Do One BOLD Thing Today… To Help One Person Get Ahead.

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© 1993-2013 Ann Ulrich  THE BOLD! FACTOR®  AnnUlrich.com

Photo:  This wire art just looked like a rat race rush(!) to me when I wrote this post. It’s a wire bowl hanging in our kitchen – where it looks much calmer ;)

Guilty Pleasure

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photo-12On a recent flight home, I broke the golden rule of being a good seatmate:

I interrupted the reading-immersed woman sitting next to me.

Noticing she had not come up for air since firing up her ereader, I asked if she always preferred reading digital books.

I mentioned still loving to curl up with my ink-doodled piles of books vs holding my hard metal iPad.

Her comment will forever crack me up:

*If I were reading a business book like you, I’d have no problem holding that book in my lap for all the world to see…*

She continued, *I’m reading the 3rd book in the 50 Shades of Grey series… I’m traveling with my team and believe me I don’t need anyone to know what book I’m devouring… it’s my secret guilty pleasure.*

The look in her eyes told me she sure hoped I didn’t know anyone on her team! 

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© 1993-2012 Ann Ulrich  THE BOLD! FACTOR®  ANNULRICH.COM

Photo:  Ahhhh what better to signify Guilty Pleasure than one of my favorite cuddle-up blankets. This living room blanket is always nearby when I immerse in hours of reading.

Calm Courageous Confident vs. Crazed(!)

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photo-10LOVE this. From always-brilliant Seth Godin:

Often, our instinct is to make the current bump in the road far more urgent than it actually is.

It focuses our attention and rallies those around us to take immediate and deliberate action.

After all, if this is the big one, of course we should drop everything and deal with it.

Missing from this equation is the cost of dropping everything. The short-term herk and jerk that is delivered by an organization that responds to those that amplify problems into catastrophes inevitably leads to poor performance in the long run.

Employees who do this ought to be counseled to cut it out. It’s not what we hired you to do. Bosses who catastrophize are often hesitant to admit it, though, and if you work for one, it’s going to continually hurt your ability to do your best work.

And non-profits who catastrophize to meet their next funding goal inevitably sabotage the very work they set it out to do in the first place, all because it’s an easy way to raise some extra money.

from http://sethgodin.typepad.com

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© 1993-2012 Ann Ulrich  THE BOLD! FACTOR®   ANNULRICH.COM

Photo:  Our Italian stone dining room table is more fun with this contemporary platinum-y runner. It’s at once calm, courageous, confident and yes, even a bit crazed. Perfect!