Fortune Favors The Brave

March 5, 2011 by Leda Karabela - Leave your comment

Would this bring me a fortune? “Fortes Fortuna Juvat” The phrase means that Fortuna, the Goddess of luck, is more likely to help those who take risks or action.  The phrase was shouted by Turnus in Virgil’s Aeneid just before he was utterly destroyed by Aeneas’ Trojans.

But Latin is only a dead language to some, and this is not a linguistic exercise. It’s just that the phrase that took me back to my high school cramming days as exams were crashing down on my tender teen passionate soul and fervor for life. And it is only natural that I could not really grasp the marginal bump with Latin and its effect on my preparation for life and adulthood.

Little did I know back then, that everything you learn matters. Even if you don’t know why or how you are going to use the information – in the end, somewhere, somehow you are richer with the knowledge.

So, in my usual exploration detours and lost paradise trails, I devoured the Poke The Box workbook created by a team of brilliant folks to promote the Domino Project, the brainchild of Seth Godin, named after the domino effect— where one powerful idea spreads down the line, pushing from person to person.

Fortes Fortuna Juvat is in a quote in the workbook by Mary South – go check it out.

Disclaimer: I have no connection with Seth Godin or the Domino Project and I don’t get anything out of writing about this. I just love the boldness and brainpower of the enterprise. (These days one never knows).

Why Hesitate?

March 1, 2011 by Leda Karabela - Leave your comment

Following up on last week’s Feminists: Born or Raised post and being bombarded by more than my fair share of the Oscars, Natalie Portman’s pregnancy, and the Black Swan plot debate, I was pondering on the unavoidable stereotyping and labeling.

(You are wrong. This post will not be about feminism – guys, relax and read on.)

Expectations about women – pregnant women especially – are pretty much cast in stone. When someone pregnant stays on and continues her relentless pace, some people frown.

Characters like Black Swan’s Nina clearly show that the steep price of a woman’s success will be the death of her traditionally nurturing relationships; her sure stumble under the unbearable weight of her balancing act; and the final betrayal of her dreams and possibly that of her family as well.

In a 2010 study of the Center for Work-Life Policy, co-authors conclude: “It’s a classic catch-22: a woman’s personal choices, whatever they may be, brand her as not quite leadership material.”

Frankly, I am tired of such affirmations of female powerlessness.

All of us, men and women alike, are making thousands of choices on all kinds of different subjects. Men, equal to women, suffer the consequences of their ambitions, having their sons and daughters blame them for their absenteeism as some of them are growing up needing their fathers who are burning the midnight oil working hard at their jobs. While societal expectations are different for men, sometimes the burden of the preconditions ease the difficulty of the choices. Is there a point in looking back and questioning the options and the decisions we have all been making?

From the moment we leave our mom’s warm and cozy womb, slapped on our cute little behind to kick start our first independent breath to the moment we die, life’s full of sacrifices and that triple shot of compromise. There will always be second guessing, ambivalence and what ifs. But I fail to see the usefulness of looking back, assigning blame, guilt or regret – and most importantly – finding the differences, the cons, the negatives, the difficulties.

Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt when she turned back. Looking to the future and deciding on the next big (or small) thing you simply have to do gives you a better chance to your own future, your plan, your target.

Does it matter if you are a man or a woman? Why then hesitate?

Feminists: Born or Raised?

February 24, 2011 by Leda Karabela - Leave your comment

Verbal karate lessons for upcoming feminists… Take a peak.

All delivered by a cute little girl who is no longer voting Barbie and Ken as couple of the year. I would love to keep track of her life and see her in a few years when she falls in love and the life dilemmas start crowding and clouding her vehemence and purity.

Will women in her generation break the mold or will they follow the paths taken by so many mothers, daughters, wives, girlfriends – professionals with their own choices and balancing acts? And what I also wonder.. will the men of her generation be different, as open or not?

Regardless, the influences will be there – as long as our own little girl ends up finding her balance, her own way of doing things and being independent enough to follow her heart and her dreams. One thing I am sure of: if she stays as determined, most likely the man she will end up falling in love with, again most likely, will respect her way of thinking. Ain’t love (and determination) grand?

PS: And I also wonder: did her mother do the same – not marrying before having a job first? What do you think?

What To Do About Doing

February 18, 2011 by Leda Karabela - Leave your comment

“So, what do you do?…” people I meet for the first time, habitually and politely, ask me.

And I launch into my explanation of what it is I do for a living – (other than breathe the air and consume the energy along with all those things that sustain living). And after the blank stare, the courteous smile and the hesitant guttural sound I usually get in response to my answer, it is my turn to smile and, depending on the circumstance, launch into the explanation of what it is I am passionate about – and naturally to me, I also do for a living.

And then, rather recently and with much delay (where is all the time to read everything really going?..) I reviewed Daily Beast’s Cheat Sheet on “gigonomics.”  I half-agree/disagree with Tina Brown who coined the term of the gig economy. While the recession did create the new employment phenomenon of people doing many “gigs” to get by, necessity, brink of bankruptcy and the overall weak economy are not the only reasons people do their own kind of jobs, without bosses, fixed incomes and employer subsidized health plans.

Whatever happens, we are all our own life-masters marching to our very own heart and mind- beat, in spite of the “noise” and interference by others. Even when the choice we make is to do something other than what we want at that particular moment, the choice is still ours to make.  And for some of us, meaning and significance –  will always feature strongly in our choices and what we actually do for a living.

Addendum: Coaching – executive and leadership kind – is the kind of work that brings on the blank stares and the courteous smile from a lot of people. If you don’t know, you can read about what it is here but this is probably -definitely- not enough.

Important But Not Urgent

February 11, 2011 by Leda Karabela - Leave your comment

After a couple of years worth of work as a solitary and lone soldier, following more than a couple of decades of more traditional executive life, yesterday was the one of these extremely rare days I stayed away from my daily world of emails, tweets, blogs and e-news. To a regular, non-wired person the statement may seem clearer than blue sky. To me and all of those who feel there is no such thing as information overload, it was something remarkable. But, all of a sudden, I woke up and wanted to do something else – something new, something different. I needed to disconnect, zonk out, clear my head and break my pattern.

I needed to remember the freedom to detach, step back and simply walk away and renew my thinking, so I could then re-focus. That was important (highly important) to me.

Those who know me, can attest to the fact that my energy level is usually higher than average high. And grit, perseverance and yes- stubbornness to a certain extent – make it easy for me to focus and dive deep into whatever it is I am doing.  The fact that I am in love with what I do and how I do it, having the freedom to just walk away for a short time to look at things from a different perspective also counts.

So, what do you do when you are in a similar situation? And please don’t talk to me about the luxury of being able to do it or not. Not tuning in and ignoring your inner eye may be more harmful than you think. As a matter of fact, not taking the crucially mandatory time-out will hamper whatever it is you are doing.

Legendary Steven Covey said it best: “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically, to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.”

His acclaimed 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People – is a great read – classic and for some hollier than the Bible. One of the more provocative concepts in the book is that of the four quadrants of activity management

The separation of urgent from important is not as simple or straightforward. Depending on the moment, the mood, the personality and the level of maturity and experience, we all have a tendency to focus on urgent stuff, mistaking crises, pressing problems or deadlines (quadrant I) and interruptions such as “unavoidable” meetings, phone calls, chit-chat (quadrant III) as important. You must recognize the pattern. You know instinctively exactly what Covey means.

So, take your own time-out. Ask yourself that critical question: How important and how critical is what you want to do/think/make/say? And don’t assume that just because something is urgent, that it is also important.

Knowing how to objectively tell which is which and act on what’s TRULY important may make all the difference in your world – and hopefully somebody else’s, too.

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