Category Archives: Breaking Away

Tell the truth more often. Then you won’t have to remember what you said to whom. Tell the truth as kindly as possible. Then you won’t have to say you are sorry so often. Curb those impulses to lash out … Continue reading →

I was doing a last-minute browse through my favorite blogs and I was struck by the fact that so many creative and talented people are going through hard times alone. I flashed back on those times when I had been in the same position and recalled how desperate and worried I was at the time. Here’s what I learned about going it alone.

Those worst times of my life occured when I made self-determined changes that put me into a different culture with no friends to call upon for support. These included: going off to college, starting my first job in a strange city, and being forced out of a company I had helped to found.

In each of these situations, I found myself facing new and difficult challenges with no one to offer a helping hand. Yet, all of the situations were fundamentally caused by the same thing, I had not developed a network of trusted friends.

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There is something about February that prompts a desperate need for change. Sometimes the change is so easy and natural, that I forget until much later what prompted it. I find an interesting synchronicity about this time of year and many of the changes that occurred in my life.

In February, 1968, while looking at the snow piled up against my office window at Honeywell, I decided to abandon Massachusetts for a warmer climate. At the age of 34, I was heavily into skiing and other winter sports like shoveling snow, but the endless effort to keep a house and family warm and healthy were beginning to pall. It seemed that too much of our effort went into getting warm and staying warm, with not enough time for interesting projects and life in general.

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Hitting the wall is a well-known phenomena in almost any field where you have freedom to exercise initiative. If you are in sales or marketing at any level, or in almost any management position, you have seen someone hit the wall and splatter or you have done so yourself.

This generally happens to a self-motivated person who has managed to succeed in spite of all obstacles put in his or her path. They push through one barrier after another and succeed even while others may be telling them to stop making waves. Just when it seems they are unstoppable, they hit a barrier they can’t overcome.

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