Peter is an older man who puts one foot in front of the other as he sweeps the street each morning in front of the local school. I have seen him each December on my daily walks on this small island tucked away in the blue seas of the Caribbean. As drivers go to work, they give him a slight horn “toot” in their morning meet and greet. Peter looks up and responds with a gentle nod of the head. He then goes back to his task – walking the same steps every day, cleaning the same stretch of road.
One morning, it was cloudy and when I stopped to say hello. I asked Peter if the locals welcomed the gray skies. He smiled his sweet smile and said in his beautiful, slow and cadenced voice, “You know, we just accept it.”
I came home from our lovely holiday relaxed, with new vigor. Then my website crashed, a client disappeared and on and on. I then remembered my gentle street sweeper friend and his calm demeanor.In a slightly altered version of a popular question, I now ask, ”What would Peter do?” And almost always the answer is acceptance. If I do that first, I can move into action if necessary. Sounds a lot like the successful introverted leaders I researched. They don’t go into a panic and react to circumstances they cannot control, even in the midst of chaos.
I would guess that millions of dollars have been spent this past year on time management books and training programs. We all seem to want to know the answer to managing the chaos around us. Continue reading the rest of this article...
“Much of my work as a virtual assistant involves social media these
days. Initially, this was much easier for me to handle as an
(extreme) introvert. Strangely enough, I find that as friend counts
climb and the volume of online communication grows, I react with the
same sense of overwhelm, stress and exhaustion as I do to live or
phone communications. Have you heard this from others?”, she asks. Continue reading the rest of this article...
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