But anyway, back to it: the hospital room. The only other times I’ve been inside a hospital room involved having babies—so I was a little bit distracted. This was the first time that I found myself with time to just stare at the walls and very unexciting decor.

So naturally, I thought about branding. Specifically, I thought about what this seemingly non-branded space was communicating.

Think about it: When you’re inside a hospital room, as either a patient or a visitor, you’re probably either (a) afraid or (b) in pain. You want something to reflect neutrality and normalcy back to you. The drab walls, shiny linoleum floor, basic wood wardrobe and drawers, and white linens say: “Hey, nothing exciting here. Just same-old, same-old.” Aesthetically, it’s as boring as a grey pebble. But that boredom is comforting because it’s just terribly normal. And in this case, normal is good. Normal is what you want to get back to.

A hospital room communicates comfort too, but in a very temporary way. It’s like home (there’s a bed, after all), but not really. In fact, everything about a hospital room communicates temporariness. Everything is adjustable or on wheels. “No need to personalize this for you: you won’t be here long,” it tells you. You get a window too: usually a fairly large one. “The world is still going on out there,” it tells you. “You’ll be joining it again soon.”

We have a tendency to think it’s just about the function. Of course the food tray has to be on wheels: it has to move out the way easily. Of course the bed has to adjust: it serves the masses. Of course the floor has to be durable: it gets messy. But even when choices are born of function first, they communicate something to the outside world. Leopard-print linoleum says something very different than a white and grey speckled pattern. A wall of mirrors communicates something entirely different than a matte eggshell finish.

No Escape, Just Opportunity

Everything is a brand, and everything communicates something. There’s no escape hatch from branding: we’re in it all of the time, even when it least seems like we are. I used to think it was sort of awful that we were stuck in this thing (“society!”) and at its “mercy.” And the only way to change the world was to somehow escape from it, so things could just be purely what they are.

But now I see that we are creating it all of the time, which means that there is opportunity around us. Sure, there are forces greater than us from institutionalized ways of thinking. I’ve studied those smarty-pants German and French theorists. I get it (well, some of it). But I still choose to believe that we can each make choices that communicate the stuff we think is important information for the world. And we can make meaning from the stuff we see in front of us.

Okay . . . that started with linoleum and got existential really fast. So I’ll bring it back home: your brand is an opportunity to communicate important stuff. Cool, right?

But here’s the flip side: even if you make half-hearted choices that really don’t feel that important, they’re still communicating something. Even if you’re just going for function (“I just need the links on my site to work!”), you’re still communicating something. For example, if you just threw a font together for your logo, slapped some copy on a page, and created a shell of a site—just to get started—that’s exactly what your stuff is communicating (“I just needed to get started with this!”). That’s a perfectly fine thing to communicate, because getting started is awesome. But then one day, it’s not the right story anymore.

Nothing is ever just what it is. It’s created in people’s minds. But that opportunity is yours first, whether you are designing a hospital room, a soda marketing campaign, a piece of jewelry, or a city government subcommittee.

You have way more power than you think.

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After our first day of meetings, I was on such a high. All I could think about was how more people needed to take risks and do The Crazy Thing, and that you only get to rewards when you take risks. I also thought about how I was really excited to be doing some things in my business that felt like risks, like turning down work that wasn’t in line with the direction I want to take my business, being much more bold in how I communicate with clients, and organizing a virtual conference.

Then I got back to my hotel room, where I did a terrible thing. I turned on the TV and watched the news for a minute. Everything was grim. A hit and run. A murder. A break-in. Then, I called home to talk to my husband—who I always enjoy talking to. But he was having a day where he was freaking about things like saving for retirement and The Future. And then, because I hadn’t learned my lesson with the TV, I watched a little bit of the coverage of Whitney Houston’s death.

Suddenly, the world felt like a scary place. Drugs, violence, thieves, savings accounts that weren’t full enough, poverty-stricken golden years: all I could see was risk everywhere, and I didn’t want any part of it. “Risks are scary!” that voice in my head said. “You are crazy to take any risks!”

But just 30 minutes before that, risk-taking felt inspiring. Was I just being flaky? Maybe. But it’s more likely because of a phenomenon behavioral economists call loss aversion (Dan Ariely, who’s sort of a quirky rock star in this field, once explained to me in an interview).

It’s like this: When you win because you took a risk, and things are going your way, you feel pretty good. You might even feel intensely good. But when you lose—when the risk doesn’t work out—you feel rotten. Really rotten. In fact, the rotten feeling of losing is more intense than the good feeling of winning. Bottom line: you’re not as happy as you think you’ll be when risk pays off and every bit as miserable as you think you’ll be if things go south—and you anticipate that you will be just that miserable. Hence, you avoid risk.

Finding Neutral Ground

I’m not saying loss aversion is bad. It’s pretty much why I don’t gamble. Or do drugs. Or daytrade. Or sing karaoke. But when it comes to livelihood-type risks, the kind of risks where resourcefulness and effort make the difference, this kind of thinking seems like a problem.

So what if we could just be risk neutral? What if we took the language of risk out of it altogether, and thought of it another way? What if we approached decisions about whether or not to proceed with something with this question: “If I don’t do this, what else will I be doing?” Not, “what will happen if this fails?” (Because if you fail, you’ll figure out very quickly what to do.) For example, instead of assessing the risk of going back school for two-years for another degree, think of it this way: you have to live your life for the next two years anyway. What else would you be doing? And is that thing better than the thing you actually want to do? Is it equally as good, equally as interesting, and equally filled with opportunity?

It’s really not different if you are facing the decision about spending money on a rebranding campaign, narrowing down your ideal client, launching a new product, or starting a business. What would you be doing if you don’t do it? Is that thing equally as good, equally as interesting, and equally filled with opportunity? So for me, if I don’t turn down the work that takes me in another direction, it means I have to do that work. It means I will be resentful. It means I will lose focus. It means that I will be cranky with my husband and kids. Those things are not as good as doing the work I really want to do.

We can’t insulate ourselves from news of risks gone bad. You can avoid watching the news (I recommend in fact), but at any minute, a conversation can still jerk you right back into “risk is scary” mode. That’s why risk neutral ground is a good place to hang out for a while. You don’t have to build a permanent settlement here, but try it out, just for a bit.

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But do you know how it started out? As a Neoclassical building. When they dug ground and started construction, it was designed as a Neoclassical masterpiece, full of linear baroque seriousness. You don’t have to know much about architecture to know that Art Deco and Neoclassical are pretty different: they come from different mindsets, reflect different worldviews, and present different ideas about space. There were economic and cultural reasons that the Union Terminal project team had to switch gears about a third of the way through the construction process. But can you imagine what the series of conversations that led up to the decision must have been like? Can you imagine what it must have been like to walk around with that “oh, crap” feeling during those stressful weeks or months, when the decision was being made? To go to bed every night thinking, “How did we miss like this?”

Of course, a bunch of brilliant people worked magic and transformed it, and now it is what it is. But it started as a miss. A pretty big one.

In the past two weeks, I’ve missed with clients, twice. Two misses. Now, when I say, “miss,” I’m not talking about having to tweak or rework—that goes with my job. I’m also not talking about putting something out there with a point of view that someone doesn’t like. As I’ve written about before, that’s a good thing. A bad Amazon review isn’t a miss. I’m also not talking about doing a bad job. When I miss on a writing project, it’s not a question of quality. A miss for me is failing to get it, failing to hear the voice, or failing to understand what will help the client most. It’s giving someone Neoclassical when they really need Art Deco.

If I Can Miss, I Can Grow

This week, I decided to look more closely at these misses, because another (unrelated) client project I’m working on helped me see that the misses often represent the greatest opportunity for growth. (I love when clients teach me things without knowing it.)

So, the first miss stemmed from lots of things out of my control: a crazy time crunch, an unsteady flow of information, and an incomplete picture. But it still didn’t have to be a miss. Magic could have happened (it has before). I could have been the hero. But this time, I wasn’t.

The second miss was because I was unclear about what the client actually needed and gave him something completely unhelpful because I was trying to force something to work. The first one, I couldn’t really fix. Someone else already fixed it. All I could do was make the decision to charge less. They didn’t ask me to charge less, of course. But I had based my original fee on the presumption that I’d be a hero, so it didn’t feel earned. However, I’ve done good work for that company in the past, and I will do more good work for them in the future. I just have to accept that I missed the opportunity to be a hero that time. I really like to be a hero, so this stinks. But I’ll get over it.

The second miss was the one I really needed to learn from, because it forced me to have a very uncomfortable, brutally honest conversation with a client (the kind where your lower back starts sweating). But having that conversation was the only way to find out that Neoclassical wasn’t the right look. It was the only way to understand how things got misaligned. And it was the only way to get a chance to fix it (which I’m working on now). The miss reflected that there was one area of my business that I hadn’t worked out yet, and I had to miss to see it.

Sometimes when you miss, you have to move straight away into “what’s next?” or you make yourself absolutely crazy with regret and self-meanness. Other times, you have to dive right back in and swim around in uncomfortable water for a while. Me? I’m blowing out the last of the bubbles and about to surface again, a little out of breath, but way stronger than before.

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For the past year, I’ve felt like a UK movie poster that says “coming soon” for something that’s long past fresh.

I seem to be perpetually two months behind the insights I’m writing about, because I have my own stuff going on. For example, in November, I wrote a piece about how my new brand is built on connection. It wasn’t until after my business retreat a few weeks ago that I really got what that meant, and changed my home page, story page, and about page to reflect it. When did I take this action? Almost two months to the day of writing the original newsletter. I mean, when I wrote that newsletter, I deeply believed it. But it still took time for my day-to-day/how I do business self to catch up. I can go back through my newsletters and see this time and time again.

It used to happen all of the time when I wrote for women’s magazines, too. I’d interview brilliant researchers about stuff I dig like sports psychology, and write about their findings/insights for a magazine article—distilling it down in a common sense way for readers. And then it would hit me in the middle of a run—two months later—how that research finding or expert insight perfectly applied to my exact situation.

Learning by Writing

I think it’s because I learn things by writing them. And then I process them. And then I see their place in how I live my life and work with clients. For me, ideas funnel from intellectually getting it . . . to emotionally feeling it . . . to a “wow, that was obvious” moment. I write it long before I truly understand it at my core.

I think there is something real to this two-month phenomenon. Sports psychologists who study how habits are formed often say that it takes about eight weeks to really form a habit, because that’s how long it takes to (a) create a routine you don’t have to constantly think about, and (b) do some neurological rewiring. Our muscles adapt insanely quick: if you do the same workout three times in a row, by the third time, your body already remembers it and has figured out how to do it with less effort. But brain wiring is another matter. I’m sure there is an evolutionary explanation, somehow related to maintaining the species. But all I know is that as much as I write about just all of the sudden “getting it,” Carrie Bradshaw voiceover-style, it never really happens that way.

What’s my message here? Good question. I need another two months to really know! But I think it’s this: don’t let the fact that you don’t totally understand how what you want to say affects your life and your business stop you from writing it. I mean, don’t spew out a bunch of BS. But don’t worry if you don’t know how your new insights will change your Thursday afternoon or the way you engage a new client.

You’ll rewire. It will happen. Be patient.

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Your brain does a weird thing when you fall: you can’t remember the moment of falling. I remember my hands hitting the pavement. But I don’t remember what caused me to fall, or the moment I realized that I was falling. It’s not that interesting of a detail, except for this: I do remember precisely what I was thinking about right before the splat happened.

I was thinking that my business is about creating connections, mostly because I can’t stand disconnection. Specifically, I hate to feel disconnected, and to see other people disconnected. I was thinking that it wasn’t fair that Betty White was about to turn 90 and my dad—whose 81^st birthday was yesterday—has a brain full of Alzheimer’s worms and doesn’t really know my name anymore. I was wondering how long my brother held that last pain pill in his hand before he took it and if he had a final result in mind, or if he just lost count. I was thinking that no one who felt connected to something good could ever fly a plane into a building. Mostly, I was thinking about how I was going to say all of this about disconnection in a presentation I was giving in three days to a group of fellow business owners at a business-building retreat.

And then I went splat.

The intrusion of the physical world in such a painful way was . . . you know, annoying. Maybe I was supposed to get the message that yes, disconnection really does suck: it sucks so much, you have to fall down. But that just seemed like a downer. So when the ache really started to set in around 8:00 that night, I decided that I was going to create a purpose. I was going to create a story.

The story is this: falling hard doing something I love reminded me of three things: (1) sometimes you just fall, and you can’t be prepared, (2) I was strong enough to catch myself and not get seriously hurt, and (3) most importantly, I got the exact thing I needed, right when I needed it: I got someone to take me home. The moment I realized what I needed, I found it.

So I brought that purpose and thought to my talk, and the retreat as a whole: I’m going to get exactly what I need, exactly when I need it, I told myself. It’s a sort of weird thing for me to think, because it’s very metaphysical and woo-woo and doesn’t involve getting A’s on papers or solving clients’ problems. But you know what? I got exactly what I needed from that presentation—and that retreat—exactly when I needed it (I’ll tell you more about it later). I got it because I was looking, and I was looking because I told myself to look. And I told myself to look because I had the power of a story behind it.

Stories Are Scary Powerful

I didn’t fall to get a great story or a great lead in for my presentation (although I admit, it was handy). I fell because I just fell (hence, lesson #1). But I took a thing that happened in the world and made the story that I needed about it. I could have created many different stories from it, and none of them would have been wrong. But I just reached in and plucked out the one that felt the ripest at the time. I created the story, and then I listened to the story.

But there’s one final step: I believed it (that’s the really hard step). For a story to impact how anyone thinks (including yourself), you have to believe it. If you don’t believe it, trying to sell it to other people will be more painful than skidding on pavement.

Your next great story might happen 30 seconds from now, or it might have happened five years ago, and you’re only now getting around to realizing it. But the intersection of the things in the world and the thoughts in our head and the shape that forms around them? That’s insanely powerful stuff. Let it all connect. Let your message bubble from it.

(But watch out for uneven pavement. It will get you when you least expect it.)

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So, aside from being the cool one who gets to tell teenagers to ignore well-meaning adults (you’re welcome, parents), I also get a chance to talk to them about nifty stuff like voice, and how the best way to find it is through reading everything your teacher assigns (I’ve got your back, teachers).

Reading what other people have written shapes everything about who are as a writer. “Innate talent” is a bunch of crapola. You learn to write by reading stuff you love, stuff you hate, and stuff you don’t care anything about. The problem is when kids stop at the stuff they don’t care anything about and don’t explore beyond it.

Adults do this too, of course. Business owners, especially. “I just can’t write,” they say. Now, let me be honest: it’s much better for my bank account if you can’t write. Because I can, and I would really like to do it for you. Writing books and marketing copy and speeches and scripts is a skill, and I am all for people knowing their limits and hiring people like me to do it.

But, just because you aren’t going to write your stuff, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a sense of your voice.

No, not whether you’re a soprano, tenor, or baritone. I’m talking about your voice on the page or on camera: your tone and way of communicating. Your attitude and way of approaching language.

Even if you lack a command of language, you still have a relationship with it. Teasing out that relationship is the golden nugget, the glowing stone, the thing Harrison Ford is always searching for in those movies. It’s the job of any good copy strategist to pull it out of someone (it’s my favorite part of the job, actually). But if you have a running start, it really helps.

Notice, Absorb, Channel

One great way to figure out your voice is just to notice what kind of writing you respond to, and what you recoil from—across all mediums and genres. Any writing fair game: 19^th century novels, scripted TV shows, brochures from the doctor’s office, blogs, marketing emails, biographies. All of it is good material if you can notice why. What parts of the voice do you like? And most importantly: What parts have something to do with why you’re in business and the way you do business?

Right about now, you might be thinking: “Okay, Ms. Know It All, what about your voice? How did you develop it? What writing have you noticed that has something to do with your business?” If I had to assemble a snapshot of the parts of the voices I totally dig and often channel, it would combine the lovely neuroticism of Elizabeth Gilbert, the corny storytelling of Harry Chapin, the smart humor of Mark Twain, the incredible pacing of Aaron Sorkin, the raw inspiration of Seth Godin, the irreverence of Diablo Cody, the quirky normalness of Anne Tyler, the crystal clarity of Malcolm Gladwell, the sassy lilt of Virginia Woolf, the transparent warmth of Anna Maria Horner—and hundreds of other writers I can’t possibly list because I know you have better things to do.

I’m sort of obsessed with voice, so I’ve thought about it, you know, a lot.

It’s okay if you haven’t. But if you are thinking about refreshing your brand, changing up your copy, and/or creating new marketing materials, I’d start noticing the many voices out there—mostly the ones you love and the ones you hate. Read other people’s sites and eBooks. Watch their videos. Download their freebies. Check novels out of the library. Pick up a magazine that looks interesting. Notice the different ways writers address their readers and engage with them. Sit with it, hear them, and absorb them. Make notes: “I like this, but I don’t like this” is great. Even better: “I like this or I don’t like this because . . .” The “because” is always what matters. (“Because it sounds good” is not the nugget. “Because it feels true for my business” is getting closer.)

Remember, a story without voice is just words on a page or teleprompter. Your business deserves more. It deserves a voice. So start listening!

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But what I really love is when some guy is just running toward the end zone, faster than seems possible. So fast that for a second, you think you might be fast-forwarding your TV. It’s not the physical effort or display of strength I love, because that’s just a matter of sweat and practice. No, I love it because I know it’s really, really scary to run with that kind of abandon, when you think your heart might burst or your lungs might fall out. If you ask one of these guys what they feel when they’re running toward the end zone, I know they are not going to say they feel fear. Of course not. They feel adrenaline, excitement, and energy. But at some point, they learned to just let go of the fear. They’re fast not just because they have developed powerhouse quads. They’re fast because they’re not afraid to be. Without that mindset, none of those crazy drills they do in training to build speed matter.

I can’t believe that I am drawing a lesson from football of all things, but this fear thing is sort of a big deal. And I’m pretty sick of it. That’s why I have a mini-plan to let go of my own fear (it doesn’t involve making touchdowns though—thank goodness).

 Time to Run . . . And Poke

“Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do. If you lived in that world, what would you do? Go. Do that.”

This passage is from Seth Godin’s book, Poke the Box (that’s the cover below). This little book is all about doing it. (No, not “doing it”—get your mind out of the gutter.) It’s about testing with your effort. (The title comes from the phrase programmers use when programming: they try some code, and when it doesn’t quite work, they try something else. They “poke the box.”) It’s about trying. It’s about starting projects (instead of just talking about them). It’s about failing, too. Because you have to fail at stuff to know what works. (We’re talking marketing and creative work here—not, you know, trying a new technique for flying a plane, making a risky investment with your life savings, or winging birth control.)

Starting things, trying the unknown, testing when there’s a really good chance it will fall flat: that all involves fear. I’ve never been afraid to write or afraid of my voice. But I have been afraid to do stuff related to my writing business that I don’t really know how to do because I’m afraid someone will tell me that I’m doing it wrong.

But this is the year of rising above that! This is the year of poking the box! It doesn’t mean it’s the year of absolute success. It means it’s the year of running toward the end zone and not caring if my lungs fall out.

Here are some of the things I’m going to try: a branding webinar in a few weeks, a virtual conference in the spring, two eBook projects where I’ll be weaving together ideas that I don’t completely understand yet, and a potential book collaboration with a company I great admire.

I know I will fail, at something. Definitely not everything. And probably nothing that’s going to humiliate me. So, in the spirit of poking the box, I’m going to do a book giveaway. I bought a five-pack of Poke the Box; two I’m keeping for me (one for me personally to re-read and one to have on hand for when I come across a person who looks like they desperately need it). That leaves three, so I’m giving away all three. As long as you’re in the U.S., I’ll ship it right to you. (Oh, and even if you’re not familiar with Godin, you’ll love this book. It’s the most approachable, inspiring, and smart manifesto I’ve read. And you can read in one sitting.)

I have three ways to win a copy of Poke the Box (you can enter all three to increase your chances):

1. Leave a comment on this blog post about what you are going to start this year/what you might fail at/what else you need to get motivated to just do it. I’ll approve any blog comments that aren’t spam.
2. Go the Facebook page and comment on the post you’ll see there about poking the box.
3. Just “like” the Facebook page. I’ll choose a random fan.

I’ll choose the winner next Tuesday (January 17^th). Forward this on to anyone you think needs some inspiration and push to start that project!

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(I’m loving that it’s a New Year, but I assume you’ve done all of your celebrating, so I’m just going to jump right in.)

So, where were we? Ah, right, mixed messages in your brain about who you are.

Let me give you a current example. The question I’ve gotten more than any other question in the past two weeks is this very harmless, very innocent one: How was your holiday?

But every time I get asked this, I have a choice to make: am I really going to answer this question with the thoughts in my head right now, or am I going to tell another version that is more consistent with who I am and who I want to be?

Here is the first answer: “Well, I have two children, ages 1 and 3, who have zero impulse control. My husband and I spent most of our time chasing them around at other people’s houses, shooing them away from things that are really, really shiny and tempting, like ornaments, Christmas lights, and presents. All we wanted to do was sit down for 5 minutes and relax and get to be part of grown-up conversations we could hear happening all around us. We all ate way too much butter and sugar, and my kids got a lot of things they don’t need. So now, there are toys all over our basement, many of which they probably won’t even play with because they will lose half the pieces. All I want to do is recreate the Christmas magic I remember as a kid, but I just wind up frustrated and exhausted and desperate for January 1.”

Here is the second answer: “Really nice! The kids had a great time with their cousins. My husband and I got to spend time with each of our families. We’re so lucky that everyone is healthy, and that we could all get together, eat really good food, and share rituals—like gift-giving—that we enjoy. It was a reminder of how fortunate we are.”

Neither answer is a lie, yet they are completely different. The first comes from the thoughts of the moment (the small picture), and the second comes from the way best-self-Judi thinks of the holidays (the big picture) The thing about big picture reflections is that it is really, really hard to channel them when you are in the middle of the small picture. There isn’t space to breathe and find the big message when you’re stuck in the small. But if you don’t, you wind up perpetually in the small picture, and all of your messages come from there.

That’s a problem, because the messages that inspire you and motivate your people need to come from the big picture—from the stuff that you know is true. So. . .  I know that I am exponentially blessed and lucky to have these amazing, healthy, gorgeous children, who are just little forces of joy. (Focus on the joy, right?) I 100 percent believe this—in the big picture. I love to tell stories, in the big picture. I love challenges, in the big picture. I love clients, in the big picture. I love being healthy, in the big picture. In the small picture, I want to eat cookies, be left alone, sleep, and look at pretty blogs.

It’s sort of like if you ask me how it’s going during the last 15 seconds of a two-minute interval of sprinting. I will only grunt, growl, wheeze, and maybe hit you. Instead, ask me two weeks later, after I’ve shaved 30 seconds off my 5K time. Then, I’ve got a message for you about why intervals are awesome speed-builders.

So, is it a lie?

I started thinking about the way we have to toggle back and forth between our thoughts of the moment and our best self thoughts last week, when I revised the “about” page on my web site. I took on this task in the middle of holiday-week-small-picture-syndrome. So everything I wrote felt ridiculous, fraudulent even. My story felt like a lie. It was so utterly positive and happy, and I was in no way feeling positive or happy. Yet, I know that overall, I am a positive and happy person, with a positive and happy message about telling stories, living your bliss, and being your best self. But if I had waited until I “believed” it again . . . well, my bio page would still not be updated.

I used to think you had to wait for inspiration to write the good stuff. It sounds romantic, doesn’t it? The problem is, it’s crap. You have to create the big picture, right now, with your words. The rest of you will get on board.

We learn a lot from the short-terms struggles, and plenty of people have brilliant brands based on self-deprecation, or poking fun at the little picture (Louis C.K. comes to mind). The little picture is great material—for standup comedy, or for figuring crap out. But your messaging needs to stay big. How else are you going to move your people from their little picture to their big picture?

And as for “authenticity”: It’s just an overused word. Let’s all agree to stop using it. (I’m probably the worst offender, I know.) As long as you show up for the big picture most of the time, you’re not lying. But don’t wait for it to tap you on the shoulder and say, “hey, lighten up!”

Just show up. Put it forward, and show up.

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I’ve been watching this happen in my neighborhood for five years, and I’m guessing it’s happening in neighborhoods all across the country. It used to make me sad. Really sad. It seemed like a waste. I mean, people grew up in these houses. What about their memories there? Is nothing preserved anymore? (Cue swelling music and montage of poignant images of kids.)

But I’m a softy. I like vintage tablecloths and chipped milk glass at flea markets. I like stories. I like history. I swing toward sentiment, and because of that, I don’t always see the whole picture of something.

Like . . . maybe that house had mold. Maybe the rooms were divided up stupidly and just didn’t serve the way we live now. Maybe a young family is going to move into that new house, and that space is going to make a huge difference in their lives, and get them where they want to go in life—in a way that a house from another time period just couldn’t do.

So, is new just inherently bad? It’s not bad when we get rid of old ideas, like the idea that certain people get to sit at a lunch counter and other people don’t. So why is it bad when we get rid of old things that don’t serve us well either? I mean, from a strict molecular perspective, everything on the planet has always been here and will always be here. We just keep redistributing it. So it’s not even really about waste. Nothing actually goes anywhere. (Of course, there are some problems with the places we put it . . .)

Maybe it’s really about innovation.

Sentiment or innovation. That’s the conundrum, the pendulum, the continuum. These ums of our lives, these back and forth notions that are loaded at each end with two equally powerful ideas—they never have easy answers.

So maybe it’s the wrong question. I think we have to look at how sentiment and innovation can work together, and not necessarily assume that tearing down the old is a waste, even when it does house the most tender of memories.

In the same way, I have to keep reminding myself that I can do both with my brand: channel the 8-year-old girl who loved to tell stories, while I create some fantastic new thing that involves getting rid of lots of crap that doesn’t work.

The best way to navigate this tricky business and not let yourself swing too wildly between extremes is to have a strategy. You can bet that the construction company has a strategy for the kind of house they are going to build to blend in with the character of this neighborhood. Right now, a lot of people in my tribe are building some really cool things (if you’re saying, “Um, me? Does she mean me?,” yes, I mean you). You’re probably going to have to tear down some stuff too. Do you have a strategy?

If you need some help, I created a webinar (with my design partner Claudia Sandman) called BrandCom. It’s all about building a brand that communicates your story, so that you can connect to your people and build the kind of business you want. I was going to wait until after the holidays to tell you, but I’m so excited that I figured I’d plant the seed now (even if all you can think about today is wrapping presents). It starts January 24^th.  Check it out here. That’s judiketteler.com/brandcom.

Cherish sentiment, but don’t be afraid to innovate. And have yourself a merry holiday.

I decided I’d use it to write down inspirational quotes and ideas. This is what inspires people, right? Lovely sayings about the loveliness of life that fuel our creative juices.

So I’m not sure why the first thing I wrote down was, “I’m tired of being treated like crap.” (Actually, correction: I didn’t write that. I wrote something like that, but with a lot of expletives.) I haven’t done a thorough market survey or anything, but I’m pretty sure no one has ever put this on one of those Success posters. Still, it’s what came out of my brain, and it felt powerful to see it there. Yes, I’m tired of being treated like crap! Hey wait, that means that I shouldn’t take on projects that involve me being treated like crap! When an assignment or client request landed in my inbox, I could ask myself: does this involve me being treated like crap?

After a few months, I felt ready for a new mantra. So I erased it, and thought for a minute. Here is what came out: “I think I might be a team player.” This was a curious thing for me to write, since I had always enjoyed telling people that under no circumstances was I a team player. Teams were stifling and annoying, I would say, and I preferred to do my own thing. But without knowing it, throughout the year I had been forming teams and collaborating and it was crazy awesome. Putting out there—in writing—that I was a team player was like sending magnetic energy into dry erase board land. It sent a series of team-oriented projects back to me.

For the past few months, my saying has been: “Focus on the joy.” It’s appropriate, now that we are in the season of joy. But I’m not talking about manufactured, twinkly-light joy (well, except for the picture above of my JOY display in my living room, because it’s just pretty). But seriously, I mean joy. Real joy. The joy of an idea that comes to me when I wake up at 4:30 a.m. to go to the bathroom and I can’t stop thinking about it until I write it down. The joy of finding the exact right word, telling the story that changes someone’s life, or learning a story that changes my own. It’s the joy of good work, happy bank accounts, deadlines I care about, and day planners that I want to open because I can’t wait to start. It’s the joy of moving from A to Z, and not being freaked out by the 24 steps in between.

Focusing on the joy doesn’t make every moment joyful, but it helps me recognize the ones that are (like writing this newsletter). Last night, in fact, when I sat down to write this newsletter, I had a much different topic in mind. But it wasn’t working. At all. So I glanced up and saw it: Focus on the joy, Judi. Ah, thank you, dry erase board guardian angel.

Stop Borrowing Mantras That Don’t Work

Mantras are such a simple concept: little pieces of positive self-talk that calm, energize, and center us. They help keep us focused and even push out negative self-talk. But it’s funny how we screw them up all of the time. I’ve actually written about the psychology of this, and it’s fascinating. When it comes to exercise, we hear mantras from pop culture and advertising, like “no pain, no gain” or “pain is weakness leaving the body,” and we think they are brilliant because they are tried and true. But they’re not. They’re terrible (those are), and as manufactured as twinkly light joy and Success posters. They don’t work because they have nothing to do with us. They don’t come from a place of what we need. Do you seriously need self-talk that keeps you in pain?

The same is true of business-type mantras. Lots of things can inspire you, but the best mantras are usually the ones that randomly pop out of your head and take you by surprise. Capture those. It’s not just that they might lay a foundation for your brand and your messaging, it’s that they might also change your behavior and guide you to making a different decision at some key point in your life. One day, I wrote down that I was tired of being treated like crap, and then a series of things happened based on that.

I don’t know what my mantra will be come January 1, but I already know it will feel completely random and surprising right up until the minute I write it down and greet it. Then, it will be exactly what I need.