My Morning WalkNew day, uninterrupted thoughts

Close your eyes and imagine getting home after work, hugging your family and sitting down for dinner.  After dinner, you get the kids ready for bed.  After you tuck them in, you and your spouse share some quiet time watching TV, reading your favorite books, or whatever you most enjoy doing together.  Then you retire to bed, your minds clear of all the headaches and hassles of the day…all is quiet and peaceful.  The phone didn’t ring once.  There were no calls from friends or family, no calls from pesky telemarketers, your insurance agent, or the local charity hitting you up for donations.  (You’ve taken care of all of those things with online access, online bill payments, and e-mail.)  How would an evening like this make you feel…if you got to spend every waking moment without interruption, with those who mattered most to you? 

Is this a difficult thing for you to imagine?  Do you think a world like this will ever present itself to your family?  If not, why not?  What are you doing today to make this kind of quiet world possible?  Do you answer those phone calls?  Do you buy from those telemarketers?  Or do you research your products, purchases and service providers before asking a sales representative for help?  What will the trend be in the future?  Do we anticipate having more or fewer interruptions going forward?  And whose choice do we want that to be?

A few years ago, my wife and I were in Maryland.  While walking down the sidewalk, we stumbled upon a Restoration Hardware.  We had never seen one before.  Was it a hardware store?  Was it a DIY supply store?  Whatever it was, it looked intriguing…Large entry doors, beautiful decor, the works.  We just had to check it out.

Once inside, what we found was an incredibly limited yet high quality selection of everything from bedding to furniture to accessories for every room in the house.  But what was really cool was this:  Instead of the plethora of paint shades and samples, Restoration Hardware had 32 carefully-selected colors…  Not 320, not 3200.  

How much stress could we eliminate from our lives if we weren’t overwhelmed with hundreds of low-quality choices and instead presented with a few high-value decisions to make each day?

I may be a small business owner who has to earn a living, but I’m also a father with a busy family life.  I really enjoy sitting at the dinner table talking to my wife and children about how their days went.  The likelihood of me cheerfullyanswering a ringing telephone, eagerly opening a stack of “junk” mail, or signing up for your “free, once-in-a-lifetime webinar on financial success” is extremely low.  Quite simply, it isn’t going to happen–ever.  Now there is legislation being proposed that will prevent people from calling me back even when I initiated contact with THEM and provided MYcontact information. 

What’s that telling us?  That RELATIONSHIPS rule business.  No matter how much money companies spend trying to maintain and enhance their images, the rubber hits the road when a personal relationship is established between the consumer and a needs representative.  (I can’t even say salesperson.)

Some of the most wonderful experiences in life start on a whim.  Like the other night when when we got together with some of our neighbors on the back patio for a few beverages and appetizers.  The kids ran around while we all talked and listened to music.  Every time we’re around them we feel like some of the luckiest people in the world to be part of a real “neighborhood”.  Imagine how it would be if we had the ability to make decisions without being presented opinions that influenced us or made us feel bad for making a choice.

My family took a weekend vacation this summer where we visited an art museum.  In the hallway sat a red phone under a glass cube with the sign:  ”In case of emergency, break glass”.  It was supposed to be a replica of the phones in White House movie scenes.  We have always had a running joke in our family that if the phone rings after 10 pm someone had better be really sick, injured or dead.  In other words, it had better be an emergency.  10 pm in our house is bedtime and my brain is “closed for the day”. 

The question in today’s world then becomes “Why is 10 pm the cutoff time for the phone ringing?”  Why is it acceptable to interrupt family time between 4 pm and 10 pm?  Is our family not as important as the 8 hours we just spent answering the phone at work?  A  time management CD produced a few years ago said:  ”The phone is for the convenience of the person who owns it, not for the person who is using it.”  In other words, we are not required to jump to attention every time the phone rings, especially since 8 out of 10 times it’s someone calling to sell us something.  Surprises are only fun on birthdays or if someone you love is on the other end of that unexpected call.  And unless it is either of those cases, is anything ever said in a phone conversation that can’t at least be started in an e-mail (No SPAM, please)?  How often when the phone does ring is it actually an emergency?  Maybe once or twice per year.  Anyone know where to get one of those glass cubes?

Do, think, feel…  As the father of 3 very wonderful children, I have to appreciate their growing independence.  I was reading some posts on  www.dadomatic.com, and found it interesting how many dads think just like I do:  Many of us don’t want our kids to grow up too fast.  We want them to enjoy the time they have as children because they only get to do it once.  As parents we are faced with a difficult dilemma:  How do we raise them within the boundaries of the household while encouraging them to explore and find their own way? 

Has there ever been a time that your child lashed out at you for “getting too involved”?  My oldest daughter is thirteen, so I can see this one coming.  What’s funny is that by the time she get to my age, the world will have bombarded her with its attitudes, opinions, fears and worries.  This will then influence her to be reactive as opposed to proactive, just like her dad.  How does this happen?  How does an independently-minded child become an overwhelmed adult?  Every day, advertisers, marketing professionals, and sales people spend millions to gain our attention in an attempt to make us focus on what is important to them.  Why do they need to tell US what’s important?  Where is our sense of responsibility to ourselves and our families?  When, better yet HOW, do we regain control of the child within us who never wanted to be told what to do?

Nobody has enough of either these days and it doesn’t look like anyone will very soon.  So what do we do with the precious little of both we do have?  How do we make the decisions that matter most to us and our families?  It’s funny how marketing and advertising representatives influence nearly everything we do without ever getting to know us first.  Most of the time they specifically persuade  us to think about things we don’t have the time or money to think about.  When they interrupt whatever it is we are doing, we immediately stop and take their argument or concern personally.  They have gained our attention:  exactly what they wanted to do.  Now we’re off track and in “their world”, receptive to whatever solution they are pitching.  Why is this possible?  Because we don’t have time to analyze everything associated with our lives…we just want our problems or worries to go away.