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    What I Learned about Motivation on My Summer Vacation

    I’ve just returned from a two-week vacation in Israel, Jordan and Spain – and I am writing this email saddled with incredible jet lag, some squishy new love handles made from gelato, falafel and Manchego cheese, and many beautiful memories to last a lifetime.Deb_Jacob_Camels

    What made this trip so special for me? My sole travel companion was my 15-year-old son, Jacob.

    I knew that we would both enjoy sampling the local cuisines (luckily, gelato is always a local cuisine), taking history tours, shopping, swimming, and just wandering around. And I also knew that this trip would benefit from planning beyond flights, excursions, and lodging. It would require us to shift from a task focus (the what, where, when, and how of getting the trip off the ground) to a relationship focus (the who we were — separately and together – and why we were choosing to do this together.)

    Admittedly, it’s that kind of focus that busy, driven people who are motivated by getting things crossed off their to-do lists often neglect — and the costs of that neglect include the loss of connection, collaboration, ownership, engagement, and meaning.

    I didn’t want to look back on this trip and only be proud of what we did, where we went and how we got there. I wanted to look back on this trip and be proud of who we were and what we built together.

    Can you think of a partnership or team you work on (or live with) that could benefit from a little more of that?

    Here are 10 questions I asked my son and myself before our trip that you can bring to your next staff meeting, board meeting or Labor Day vacation.

    1. What’s our purpose for doing this?
    2. What could we do that would have each of us jump out of bed in the morning with excitement to get started?
    3. What would make each of us want to crawl back into bed and say, “I’ll pass”?
    4. What have we done in the past that we want to make sure we repeat?
    5. What have we done in the past that we want to make sure we don’t repeat?
    6. What do we each want to learn/get better at/get smarter about?
    7. How might we veto something that one of us really doesn’t like/doesn’t want to do?
    8. How should we let the other person know when we’re feeling stressed/sad/tired/overwhelmed/frustrated?
    9. How should we ask for personal time/space without it feeling “personal”?
    10. What would we want our sound bite about this [project/task/challenge/opportunity/trip] to be a month after? Six months after? A year after? 10 years after?

    There Once was a Little Old Lady

    –>

    There once was a little old lady from Minsk…or was it Pinsk…or Krakow or Lodz or Timisoara…and I took her picture.
    But wait a minute…let me back up and tell you the story.  Once upon a time I travelled a lot…and all of my travel was to visit the Jews of Eastern Europe…what so many of you called the “remnants of the Holocaust.”   I was very blessed in that I had the opportunity to travel with either the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) or with the Jewish Federations of North America (then called UJA or the United Jewish Communities depending on just how far back we are going here).  The other night when I was sitting at a very, very boring speaker I was trying to count just how many of these places I actually visited. (OK, I smiled at the speaker and looked focused and engaged, honest.)  I came up with something like twenty to twenty five visits… seven of those were just one four day trip to Romania with my husband and Zvi Feine of the JDC where we stopped to meet with the “Jewish Community Leadership Board” in each and every shtetlach from Timisoara up to Bucharest. 
    And everywhere I went, I took pictures of the beautiful people that I met.  Now some of you are too young to remember the days of something called “film”.  It was this stuff that was in your camera (another foreign concept to many of you) and when you filled up a “roll” of this stuff, you took it to a magical place where the round roll was turned into pictures on paper, and they were almost always in duplicate.  Then you took these pictures home and, if you were as well organized as I was, you tossed them into a drawer.  And if you travelled as much as I did and you took as many pictures as I did and you got duplicate copies as I did and you ended up with lots and lots of drawers of lots and lots of pictures!  Get the picture?
    All of this was just fine, unless one day you are asked to write an article about your years of work with the JDC and the Jewish Federations of North America.  And of course since we all know that the facts of our stories from these visits are really best represented by the faces of the people we have met, you need a picture.
    And that is where my trouble began.  I opened the first drawer and there were pictures, lots of pictures, all with no names, dates, and worse of all NO PLACES.  I went to the second drawer.  Same thing.  And the third drawer…again…no identifying information.  And everyone looked the same!!  Grey hair ever so neatly combed, lovely small smile, sparkling eyes.   I panicked….how was I going to tell my story without a picture???  And I couldn’t possibly write the first word of my article until I had overcome this miserable feeling of panic.
    So, I did what I often do in times of crises?  Yelled at myself, cried, threw things.  And then went for a long walk.   And since the weather was a perfect sunny 60 degrees, within one block I had my epiphany: it absolutely did not matter that I could not tell one face from the other…that I had no idea which lovely woman was from which shtetl, because the point of the story was not that one specific woman, but the fact that she existed at all and that we, the organized world Jewish community, had made her life in this, the 21st Century not only possible, but filled with joy.
    And so I went back to my computer and began to type away, telling the story of the amazing Jewish communities of Romania, Hungary, Poland, what was once Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the Former Soviet Union.  I wrote about how each town has (no matter how teeny tiny that town might be) a cultural center, education programs, Gans, Chesed Avrahams (the JDC version of Jewish Family Service), young leadership programs.  All of the things that make up a Jewish community, even the politics and the grown ups telling the young folks “you can’t do that — we tried it and it didn’t work”  Honest, I heard it for myself from the Young Adult Division of the Warsaw Jewish Community!!!. And while I am on that topic, a Young Adult Division of the Warsaw Jewish Community??  Who would have believed that would ever, ever, ever be possible back a mere twenty years ago?
    And I scanned a picture into the article.  It was a picture of a woman, grey hair ever so neatly combed, lovely small smile, sparkling eyes, and I typed “The Beginning” and hit send.

    TXTNG WHL DRVNG

    As my husband Michael and I were heading to JFK airport, envisioning the sun, sand and frosty beverages of our upcoming “no work allowed” weekend in St. Martin, I peeked into the car to our right to see a frightening sight.

    “Michael,” I exclaimed in horror. “That guy over there is driving with his knees while he texts!”

    Michael turned to me, eyebrow raised. “Jealous?”

    Boy does he know me. Boy oh boy.

    So here are my two pledges, beginning immediately:
    No work on vacations — it’s bad for my relationships, my mental health and for my own business
    No texting while driving — it’s bad for my safety and the safety of those around me

    Now call me an overachiever (please…do!), but I think we could all benefit from identifying ONE habit we need to attend to immediately for your own health, wellbeing or safety.

    What’s yours?

    Deborah
    www.myjewishcoach.com
    www.jewishorganizations.blogspot.com
    www.myjewishcoach.blogspot.com

    Looking forward to Freckles: My Day Before Vacation

    I finally did it:

    I used some of the frequent flier miles I have been hoarding for years and booked a NON-WORK TRIP WITHOUT THE KIDS (see that, honey? I didn’t feel a little bit faint this time!)

    Michael and I are going to St. Martin. And St. Maarten. And we’ll probably pop over to Anguilla — because we can. Four days. No kids. But at a hotel with internet access (sorry, hon!!!)

    So here are the questions that got me to this trip…

    • What can I do to better manage my work and my life?
    • Who am I outside of work?
    • To what extent does work define me?

    …and When am I going to schedule another break from work?

    What are your answers? I’d love to know! But not this weekend….

    Deborah
    www.myjewishcoach.com
    www.jewishorganizations.blogspot.com
    www.myjewishcoach.blogspot.com

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