5 Best This Week

Across industries, we hear from top performers what separates the leaders from the wash-outs: take time to recharge.  It’s a shame, if we treat our bikes, cars and devices better than we do our own body. Don’t you agree? From Healthcare Software Debuggers to Montessori Program Educators, the same best practice occurs in the top performers in their field. As Asian-Australian Comedian YouTuber MyChonny might say, “Calm your man-boobs, down!”

Impolite? Yeah. But it cuts to the point. No one wins when a leader drops dead from a cardiac arrest while soiling himself/herself in the middle of a regional webcast. Right?

Analogies for non-power tools with serrated edges or Eden illustrations, leave you cold? Okay, imagine a depleted cookie jar. Old school. Thanks, SmartyGirl Kai for this badass example. How can you create that Zen moment to bring back sanity to your schedule? Is it buying resin for your cello? Is it restringing your acoustic mandolin? Not musical? Is it listening to actual tweets from the raptors at CuriOdyssey’s aviary in San Mateo? Like the cabby from the 2004 movie “Collateral” virtual vacation via visualization might be what keeps us from being a reluctant star on Vine having a meltdown.

Think of the cost of not planning ahead to clear your headspace and become a better you. Consequences? Increased turnover of your employees because you douche-out as Grumpy Cat middle manager. Increased health insurance premiums that alert your enterprise to shackle you with a FitBit to monitor the lowering of your blood pressure in 90 days or risk probation. Increased work-life dissatisfaction where you long for a violent, highway speed death just so you have external permission for some hospital rest. Irrational? Yep, that’s the short circuiting of a leader-mind that we all want to avoid.

2       Thought-starters for Refriending Yourself:

1.     Notice that Zombie Hunting Permit in the red Honda Fit on California Avenue. Sure, you are waiting for garage parking that does not say monthly permit holders only in San Francisco. However, can’t you afford a chuckle at a bumpersticker? The United States is modded out in white with pinpricks of blood red leaking into Kansas to show the growing biohazard threat of the undead. Come on, now. Laughing with let you breathe through traffic stress.

2.     Treating yourself to a Café Au Lait with Almond Milk though it takes 20 seconds more in line and maybe a look of annoyance from your local barista to tailor your drink so you don’t get the squirts at hour 10 at the office.

3.     Re-watch a clip of Office Space for retro fax machine murder. Ideation? Maybe. But who actually has an archaic fax in view at the workspace. No fax machines will die as a result of your imagination. Pull on a pair of Harbinger gloves and beat the sh-t out of the standing kick-n-punch weighted bag during your dinner break before you do another 4 hours of overtime.

This is in no way promoting a nihilistic/fatalistic point of view. We are borrowing from best practices from writers who were English major undergrads, though. After listening to the comedy musical on SoundCloud, consider the ultimate Beginning With The End in Mind: write your novelty obituary. Novelty is the adjective. I remember doing this for sh-ts and giggles in journalism class to learn the format of such announcements.

Remember Corey Feldman in a Disney shipwrecked teen movie? He played a stoner who posited how cool it would be to be memorialized on a funereal page in his high school year book: Killed by Tigers. For those who are participating in Camp Nanowrimo this April 2014, this might be a writing warm-up.

The Editor-in-Chief, Renee Marchol, summons her courage sometimes and gets scary Zen when she says that she feels super-calm before a high-stakes pitch if she pretends that she is already dead and no rejection can hurt her. Too dark and quirky? Maybe, but it works for that boss lady.

As part of the employee selection process, prospective SmartyFella interns screened by Despite Mike, Broiled Jeff and Jack Paper must give a three sentence obit announcement. Example? Jack Paper offers: Jack Paper died at age 77 in an hot air balloon explosion over the Atlantic Ocean doing a piss-poor imitation of the Count of Monte Cristo Edmond Dantes being a showoff. Like the imagination exercise above about murdering the f-ck out of a fax machine, SGL Media suggests that no action be taken by any individual to hasten the real need for an obituary release. ‘Nuff said?

Receive a negative comment or a challenge via a social media share post? Called nutty or something more R-rated? Show that you can take it, and spin that label so that a troll or a new friend knows you are imperturbable. Don’t flame. Instead laugh with him/her.

Profit? When something is beyond your control and it hurts, have you considered this as real-life material for a stand up comedy set? Maybe later you can paid to entertain an audience with this story. Something so tragic happen to you that it is out-of-body-experience funny? Go ahead and store it in your comedy writer’s arsenal. When life gives you sh-t, can you make lemonade or even a sh-t salad? No, right? Then turn it on its head and take the power out of the circumstance’s sting.

Comedian Reggie Steele did this especially well when entertaining the audience at Rooster T. Feathers comedy club in Sunnyvale. Can’t share a spoiler but will just hint the word bear makes an appearance.

Vote for Pedro? Think of creative comrades to join forces during crunch time. Laugh twice as much. Also laughing to yourself seems less creepy if you have friend who also entertains your department with photoshopped pics of Minecraft+Middle Management. Dance with your moonboots in the Town Hall arcade. Have your friend announce this performance. It might draw a crowd faster than #DonutBlitz Thursday.

The lone zebra is easily spotted by lionesses to cut along the lines. Right? However, it’s harder to differentiate where one zebra starts and where the pack ends when they are zigzag cocktail partying together at the water cooler. How did Don Quixote get away with tilting at windmills, at least for a short everyman’s story? Because of Sancho Panza. Think Harold and Kumar for a pop culture example. Stepbrothers also comes to mind. As strutting with confidence ready to f-ck sh-t up!

Photo Credit: Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas

Sources

YouTube MyChonny

YouTube The Brothers Riedell

Step Brothers (2008)

The Artist Way by Julia Cameron

Camp Nanowrimo by Nanowrimo

Roxanne (1987) starring Comedian Steve Martin

7      Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey

1-1   Interviews with Comedians at Rooster T. Feathers (2013)

1-1 Interviews with Badasses (allies of SGL Media) (2014)