Momentum in Milwaukee
momentum
Today we did a dry run in the Frontier Airlines Center while it snowed outside here in downtown Milwaukee. Ian and I are here with Bill at the MTNA (Music Teachers National Association) as he prepares to deliver a keynote address tomorrow morning. While Bill has been working hard to pull all the details together, Ian and I have been enjoying the indoor water park right here in our hotel.
Keynote speaking is different than delivering a workshop, a lecture, or a more typical presentation. Keynotes involve the whole community of conference-goers, designed to be anchors of conferences such as this – to give everyone something to think about and talk about. Bill has been developing the content for this talk over the past three years after he was invited into the world of music pedagogy at the OU Graduate School of Music. That’s not counting the years of coaching and teaching that have shaped his own methods for helping people perform at their best when it counts… in athletics, in business, and now in music!
By observing Bill’s process of preparation over the past couple of months, I think I can safely say that the content isn’t the hard part in keynotes! Fortunately, Bill has worked diligently at this one, has embraced the opportunity to refine his skill in this particular speaking format, and has gotten the right people on his team to help make it a great experience for the participants tomorrow. I think it’s going to be great, and I’m really eager to see it all come together.
The new part for Ian and me will be selling books in the back of the room! We’re hoping to go home having spread the good news that you CAN learn how to perform at your best when it counts, you CAN make practice more effective and more enjoyable, and you CAN become a better self-coach! If we are successful, it will also happen to mean that we’ll be traveling home with with some emptier suitcases come Monday!
This photo of Ian, while of poor photographic quality, reminds me of this new phase of life that we are entering. Bill and I are both entering into new territory with our careers. Transitions such as these can be scary, difficult, and unpredictable. Ian wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to go down this slide by himself or not yesterday. When he finally decided to do it, the first time, he did so slowly, and a bit awkwardly as he slowed himself the whole way down. Today (sorry – no photo), he was whizzing down the big-kid slide solo, and loving every minute of it.
Maybe we can learn something from Ian… BRING ON the keynote and back-of-the-room sales! Wheeeeee!
Integrity? Needs some work!
Back on July 2nd, I said I’d let you know how it went when exercising my integrity muscle over vacation. Then, I didn’t post again until today. This is an excellent example of a lack of integrity.
As it turns out, keeping up with multiple websites is hard, particularly when it’s even a challenge to keep up with everyday life as a mom, wife and career-woman. Doesn’t mean keeping up with this site is not a worthy endeavor, or something to be attempted – it just means it isn’t a cakewalk.
BTW, has anyone participated in a cakewalk lately? I have – at the St. Joseph Fall Festival – and I gotta say, after about 5 tickets worth of attempts, Ian and I left without a cake. Sure, all we did was walk around in a circle 5 times and that wasn’t hard… but it also wasn’t successful.
So, what do you have in front of you that is hard, but that is worthy of your concerted effort? Would life be a bit sweeter if you accepted the challenge to become successful at something that’s difficult?
Tomorrow, Bill and I will deliver a talk on self-leadership and self-management to a local real estate company sales meeting. It’s kind of the “rubber-meets-the-road” of goal-setting & goal-attainment, and it’s actually good stuff (not just your everyday goal-setting). I think I’ll listen to ourselves a little better tomorrow, and maybe this time I’ll actually get back here & put letters to screen a little more frequently.
Integrity
I’ve been reading a book by John Maxwell, “Becoming a Person of Influence,” and although I’ve actually made it through most of the chapters by now, the one that is standing out the most still to me is the first on integrity. I’m wondering what connections there are between integrity and performance… be it athletic performance, musical performance, business performance or mothering performance. I think the implications of integrity are HUGE. If integrity has to do with doing what you said you’d do, or being who you say you are, then it connects to performance on nearly every point.
One of the ways the authors of the book suggest for exercising your integrity muscle is to early in each day, do at least two things you don’t want to do before you do things you DO want to do. They frame such activity as practicing doing things that are hard. What a great idea.
We are on vacation this week, and I think I may work on this concept a bit within myself. It’s been awhile since I’ve really had to be super-disciplined about something. Perhaps my own dismay when I closely, honestly examine my personal integrity has to do with laziness the realm of doing what is hard. So, I think I’ll work on turing dismay into encouragement this week. I’ll let you know how it goes.
We’re Back
Hi there. If you’ve been to www.mooreperform.com before, or recently tried to access us via that website, you may have been frustrated. Frustrated that the e-mail contact page didn’t work. Frustrated that the content hadn’t changed in at least 4 years or more. Frustrated that our son, Ian (now 16 months old) had not been added to the About section. We are sorry. We don’t like frustrating people. There are enough frustrations in life already.
In fact, part of our mission is essentially to help you deal with your life’s frustrations more effectively! So, please forgive us, and give us another chance. We will continue to be imperfect in keeping everything totally fresh ALL the time. However, we will be considerably better, and this site will be more interesting, more informative, and maybe even more fun.For now, the message of the day is: “take a step.” That’s what this is – simply a step. But, it feels pretty good to take it, even if it is a small one!
I can’t tell you how long “update the MPC website” has been on my list of things to do. Well, for probably about 4 years! Why have I procrastinated? Below I have outlined my reasons, and summarized the errors in bold I made which contributed to my procrastination.
- Over-estimation of Ability: I thought I was better at DreamWeaver than I was, and the longer I waited, the less I remembered, and the more overwhelming the project became.
- Emotional Attachment: A good friend (Jim Schachterle) designed our old site, and it looked great. I didn’t want to disappoint him. He even got some books for me on Dreamweaver to help!
- Lack of Confidence: Sometimes when I got down the path of at least exploring other options (if I couldn’t figure out Dreamweaver adequately), I’d think, “well, what would we put up there anyway?” Honestly, I still have that thought, but we sure as heck aren’t going to come up with any interesting/new/helpful thoughts for clients and potential clients if we don’t start somewhere!
- Under-estimation of Time: This could also be worded as “over-estimation of efficiency.” In other words, I have a tendency to under-estimate how much time it is going to take me to take care of technically-related tasks.
There may be other reasons, but these are the ones that rise to the top for me. How about you? Are you procrastinating on something? Maybe it would help you too, to consider if you are encountering some of the mental barriers I was, or some of your own. In fact, if you come up with some others, I’d love to hear them.
Otherwise, I’ll sign off for now. Not sure how often we’ll up-date, but we hope what we post will be of some value for you! If you’re interested in getting the up-dates automatically, you’ll need to sign up by entering your e-mail in the subscription box in the upper right column of this page. Thanks for stopping by!
