What’s Love Got To Do With It? – Live Life Like You Mean It
Jul 3 2010

“What’s love but a second hand emotion.  Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken.”  So go the lyrics of Tina Turner’s famous song What’s Love Got To Do With It (wikipedia link).  Check it out on YouTube if you haven’t heard it in a while.  I kept thinking of that song when I was reading a book recommended to me by someone, who I’ve come to respect greatly, with decades of experience in the field of psychology.  The book is called Living Like You Mean It: Use the Wisdom and Power of Your Emotions to Get the Life You Really Want (Amazon link) by Ronald J. Frederick, Ph.D.

It’s a valuable book for any manager/leader/entrepreneur to read because it discusses in simple terms how many of us have challenges processing our emotions and using them as tools to get a better understanding of what is happening inside of us and outside of us.  So many of us have been trained not to fully feel our emotions or stop them because we have been judged, place judgment on them, or simply feel we can’t deal with them right now.  We are a bundle of feelings and they surface, just like thoughts, to give us data points to help us navigate this crazy world.   I was speaking to one of our entrepreneurs at the Austin Technology Incubator recently and he said something like “I don’t have time to feel right now.”  I could relate to that statement because when I was running my companies, I put many things on the back burner and one of those things was my feelings.  The same thing happens when you are parenting little kids who take so much of your mental and physical energy…you feel like you have to keep up a front of having it all together so the kids don’t see what you are processing.  But you know what?  Even if they don’t see it, they feel it.  Of course your ‘gut feeling’ is always right there but sometimes we ignore it and defer to the ‘powers that be’ when if we had only listened to it earlier we might have taken action earlier and ended up in a better place earlier.

Dr. Frederick used very powerful examples based on his client’s stories that many people can relate to.   It’s hard to summarize this book, so I’m just going to highlight some key quotes/takeaways:

He says that “in general the spectrum of our emotions is actually made up of eight primary feelings and their related shades and combinations,” which are Anger, Sadness, Happiness, Love, Fear, Guilt-Shame, Surprise, and Disgust. (p. 54-55).  He lumps Guilt-Shame together as one category but makes a distinction that I found very enlightening.  Guilt is feeling bad about something you did and shame is feeling as if you are a bad person.

The fear of feelings is apparently common.  “In fact, most of us are afraid of our feelings.  We’re afraid to feel the full extent of our emotions and afraid of being emotionally alive and present with others.  We’re afraid of being vulnerable, of drawing attention to ourselves, of looking like a fool.  We’re afraid of being overwhelmed, of losing control, of getting out of hand.  We’re afraid of being seen for who we really are.”  So “We distract ourselves, push our feelings aside, stuff them back in, and hope they’ll go away.  But they don’t.  They keep trying to get our attention, to be heard, to be responded to — that’s their nature.  They reemerge as the sense that something is off, odd, or not right; as worry, irritability, restlessness, anxiety, or depression.” (p. xiv-xv).

In the last few years there have been many studies on emotions leading to a better understanding of how the brain works.  “We now know that emotions can play a more powerful role than thoughts in bringing about well-being and lasting change.  Our feelings can arise much faster and be more intense than our thoughts.  At times, no matter what we do to suppress them or how hard we try to control them, they’ll have the edge.  In addition, recent discoveries in the field of neuroplasticity…reveal that emotional experience actually has the power to rewire our brain!” (p. xvii).  “In recent years, technological advances have enabled scientists to understand more precisely just how the brain functions.  Joseph LeDoux, in his fascinating book The Emotional Brain, clearly illustrates how the neural connections that run from the emotional parts of the brain to the thinking parts of the brain are actually much stronger and more numerous than the connections that run in the other direction.  This helps explain why at times emotions are able to overwhelm our thoughts and dominate our thinking and why it can be difficult to control strong emotions through rational thought alone.” (p. 18).

There are so many ways we avoid our feelings that I can’t type them all here but I recognized myself in many of the descriptions including things like “Overthinking issues, getting ‘stuck’ in your head. Having to be in control or being overly self-sufficient (otherwise, your strong facade might crack and allow your emotions to come through).” (p. 78)

The amygdala is a cluster of neural circuitry deep inside our brain and is a storehouse for significant emotional memories.  It also gauges the emotional significance of events and it’s the place where fear originates so it has the ability to overwhelm rational thought and overlook reality.  It has the ability to hijack the brain.  (p. 90).

He discusses letting yourself actually feel the emotion through it’s entirety.  When you don’t, it never gets really dealt with and you keep reliving it instead of letting the emotion come through like a wave to its natural conclusion.  It’s a process and doesn’t happen overnight.  Attaching a label to a feeling (e.g., anger, sadness, etc.) dampens the fear response and decreases emotional distress. (p. 94).  He also gives tools to help you name and process the feeling.

As a business person and a parent, understanding and paying attention to your feelings about situations can help you make better decisions in all aspects of your life.  I know so many entrepreneur’s who look back and wish they had listened to their ‘gut feelings’ during critical times but they were too afraid to do so.  I’ve been there and done that!  The maternal (parental) instinct (based on feelings) is strong and I’m not sure if there have been any studies done but I’m guessing that instinct has saved many a baby’s life.

We shouldn’t be afraid of our feelings because they “1. Impart information.  2. Provide insight.  3. Give us guidance.” (p. 135)

Here’s to your emotional health and well-being!  I’ll end this post with a quote the author has on p. 131 that starts Chapter 7 of his book: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom.” – Anais Nin.

The 39 Clues and Children’s Chatter
Jun 23 2010

I took the kids to Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago to look at books and play with the train set in the kids section.   When I can’t think of anything else to do, I go there because I can get a Starbuck’s hot chocolate or passion tea lemonade and hang out with them while they look at books.  My son happened upon a book series on display called The 39 Clues (there’s even an official website!) and for some reason he decided he wanted the books.  I think there are 9 in the series and he was excited because the 9th book took place in the Bahamas which was a place they were about to go to with their dad.  Although he’s not quite the recommended age (9 to 12 years) for the books, I was thrilled he wanted to read them.  He’s a good reader, but he really hasn’t been that interested in sitting down for any length of time and reading a book.  He loves any and all things sports related and usually prefers to play Wii NFL Madden football than read a book.   He asked me almost every day since the day he saw them if the books were here…well they arrived today.

This book series seems to be about kids searching out clues around the world to unlock and discover the secret to their family’s powers.  It’s apparently a New York Times bestselling series and it comes with special clue cards.

Being the frugal mom/person that I usually am, I told him that I would go check them out online first before buying them and of course they were cheaper online at Amazon so I ended up buying him The 39 Clues Book 1: The Maze Of Bones – Library Edition (39 Clues. Special Library Edition), The 39 Clues Book 2: One False Note, The 39 Clues Book 3: The Sword Thief, and The 39 Clues: Card Pack (v. 1) (Amazon Links).  It will be interesting to see if he likes them and gets hooked.

As for children’s chatter, I love listening to my kids having conversations with each other.  The things they talk about are so funny and interesting.  While driving around running errands with them after work today, they decided to ask me how babies are made and I explained to them as simply as I could how a baby gets inside a mommy’s tummy.  They grasped the concept but not really the details as I didn’t get into the mechanics of how it happens.  [My daughter usually says she does not want to have babies.  I ask her why and she says because her tummy would get big.  But then a few minutes later, she’s playing with her baby dolls! My son hopes to only have boy babies because other than his sister, he much prefers hanging with his buddies.]  Anyway, they laughed and then started talking to each other about turning into sand.  My daughter said she wanted to turn into sand after she died.  My son said that according to the Chinese, you become an animal after you die.  He asked me if that was true and I just told him that some people believe certain things and no one really knows what happens after someone dies.  My daughter kept asking her brother if he wanted to turn into sand and after a while he agreed that he would also want to turn into sand.  She then smiled a victorious smile because she got her brother to agree to something she wanted to do.  I feel so blessed that they usually get along really well with each other right now.  They really seem to look out for each other and make sure the other is OK.  I hope it lasts and I can’t wait to overhear their next sandy conversation. 🙂

Streets of Barcelona
Jun 6 2010

I just got back from Barcelona, Spain, and I don’t recall another time in my life where I’ve had the time to sit, think, write and let the words come without having some daily routine distraction.  I was in Barcelona visiting my cousin, Ashan Pillai (a true Outlier) on my way back from a business trip to Portugal.  After getting all the gifts for my kids (couldn’t forget the Spanish team soccer/futbal outfit), I sat in a plaza near the famous Ramblas shopping area in Barcelona with a notebook, listened to the people, listened to the street noises & pigeons, and waited for the words to appear.  I had a lofty goal of writing 7 song lyrics.  I should have gone with the goal of 3 that Brett Wintermeyer, our courier at work and also band member of The Sophisticates suggested, but I have an ‘eyes bigger than stomach’ tendency.  I wrote 3 lyrics and started 2 others.  I wrote 5 poems and started 2 others.  Many more started and swirled around my head but never made it to paper or computer.  I still have no idea if my lyrics are any good as I haven’t yet put them to actual music.

The thing with poetry that I’ve discovered over the past year or so is that sometimes its meaning is different between the writer and the reader.  Who or what the poem is about becomes about the readers personal experience or interpretation of the words.  As a writer I know that I often write things that have double meanings which are both true but the degree to which one is truer can only be fully known by the writer and possibly specific readers close to the writer.

The meaning can also slightly change depending on how it’s read out loud…the rhythm of the reading can affect someone in ways unknown.  If you are a poet, this is probably not news to you. I suppose that’s the point…if it can touch someone even if it’s different than intended then it would have served its purpose.  I wonder how many poems/lyrics go unread by others because there are so many writers out there who write for themselves as they struggle with their humanity.  I suppose the really famous writers have their poems discovered after their death and people are left to interpret them best they can, but for us mostly unknown writers they probably disappear into oblivion.

I have never shared my poetry on this blog…well not the serious ones anyway but after being inspired by Shaku letting me post her Icarus In Flight poem on my blog, I thought I’d share just one.  On a side note, in addition to me knowing Shaku through a non-profit organization, she also worked for an Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) company called Webify that was bought by IBM.  It’s a small world considering I work for ATI now.

I wrote the following poem in my cousin’s neighborhood (the day before I went to the Ramblas) after hearing a song in a video my aunt was playing for me that evoked many juxtaposing emotions that compelled me to escape outside.  Fortunately, the weather is gorgeous in Barcelona this time of year.   This poem is a mixture of recent stories…a little bit of mine, a little bit of his, a little bit of people who changed our lives.  He is in the middle (or shall I say the beginning) of an experience no new father should ever have to go through.  So without further ado…

Streets of Barcelona

On the streets of Barcelona
I wander with ancient tears in my eyes
Thinking of you and nights all alone
At Last the song with many sighs

A translucent marriage to a soul
Recently departed to a sully sea foam world
Because one could not wait to grow old
Afraid to take comfort in touches never know’d

The blustery city noises and a pigeon’s soft coo
Might wash out the pain of consequence ridden choices
And obliterate irrelevant, life altering feelings taken by you
While holes you exposed must be filled with clear voices

True sadness eludes me because fear
Overrules the quixotic, addictive emotion of love
But steely sharpness of knowledge shall bring forth to bear
Wavering courage to continue onward from Above

© May 30, 2010 Aruni S. Gunasegaram

A Band Aid Solves Everything
Apr 21 2010

Well it doesn’t solve everything, but for a kid it seems to take away pain.  No matter how many times I explain to my kids that a band aid is supposed to just cover a wound so dirt won’t get in it or so that blood won’t spurt out everywhere, they still think it takes away pain.  My daughter has a long scrape on her leg from trying to move/drive one of those big drivable electric rechargeable cars at a friend’s birthday party last weekend.  Strange on many levels I know…she seems to have a little bit of tomboy in her like her mom.  But before the driving incident she was making bracelets.  When she first showed me the scrape she was calm about it.  Then I took her inside the house, and she started saying how much it hurt.  We cleaned it up and put a band aid on it.  Then she was fine and went back to playing.

As soon as I take off the band aid because the scrape needs to be cleaned or to replace the band aid, excruciating pain all of a sudden appears!  She refuses to take it off when taking a bath.  She will only let me take it off for a few minutes to put Mederma or Neosporin on it and put another one on.  I say to her “Why don’t we just leave the band aid off so the scrape can breathe?  It’s not bleeding, and we really shouldn’t be wasting band aids.”  Her response is to whine and moan in agony about how much it hurts and how much she needs the band aid because it hurts so much.  She’ll even start limping and saying she can’t walk without the band aid.  I sigh, give up the useless discussion and put another band aid on it.  She smiles and goes off on her merry way.

Oh if band aids still held such pain relief magic for grown-ups, I would be putting them over my heart and head every day! 🙂

Encouragement
Apr 17 2010

Back late last year (November 21, 2009 to be exact) this quote fell into my in box from Jeffrey Fry’s daily quote email list: “The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run even faster if encouraged.”  –Ovid. I think I’ve met Jeffrey (also an entrepreneur) twice, but we’ve exchanged several emails about our life’s journey’s.

That quote hit me for some reason.  And I just now realized that quote came in almost exactly a year after I stood at the Entrepreneurial Ledge (I wrote that post on November 20, 2008 with tears in my eyes) after having heard that the first company I founded had gone out of business.  I subsequently heard that the assets had been sold to a manufacturing company and some of the people went to work for that company so the technology in some form has survived.  I know that some people might find it cheesy or maybe even ‘girly’ to be so affected by such news because after all, it’s just a company.  But to me it was like a baby.  The people were important to me and I cared about them.  I have heard many of my entrepreneur friends refer to their businesses as their baby.  They equate the experience to one of giving birth to and nurturing it as best they can.  Starting a business is a wild financial, emotional, and physical ride very much akin to rearing kids!

At any rate, after letting that quote sit in my Outlook Inbox for a few days or weeks…I can’t really recall, I sent the following email to my fellow Director’s at the Austin Technology Incubator.

I think this [encouragement] is an important part of what we do.  As an entrepreneur (spirited horse) you have so many forces trying to bring you down, being critical, double guessing you, etc. that even the slightest amount of encouragement can keep you going and running faster.

Because our incentives are not set up like most investors/VCs, we can be liberal with our encouragement which I think is a huge intangible benefit we offer towards the success of our companies/entrepreneurs.

Giving someone (or a group) positive energy helps them see things they might not have been able to see or better said makes it easier for them to see things because they don’t feel threatened by criticism/limits.  I’d say a good example of this is what’s happening with [XYZ Company] with their big business model change.  But I can point to a few more companies as well who when encouraged and highlighted have increased their odds of success.

But that’s just me.  I believe in energy flows/vibrations at the sub atomic level and if you’ve noticed scientists have been proving and writing about this phenomenon.  And as someone who broke her arm at the age of 13 riding a big, black ex-race horse (whose name I think was Jude) who was inadvertently encouraged to run faster by another horse, I speak from experience.

I do believe that encouraging someone can go a long way to the success of that individual and/or the company.  Of course, encouragement has to be tempered with reality.  I don’t believe in the “let’s all win a medal for lifting a cup to our mouths” encouragement that some kids are subjected to because I think that sets them up for huge disappointment later.  As we all know, we don’t get medals just for showing up to work.  In fact, I like playing board games with my kids because someone has to lose and they have to realize that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and in many cases the person who wins is determined by who draws the first card (e.g., Candy-land)! Plus when one of them starts to say ‘that’s not fair,’ it’s prime teaching time to let them know many things don’t seem fair in this world but they just have to deal with it.

But the right amount of encouragement, with a nice side helping of humorous perspective, can help someone (e.g., an entrepreneur) immensely especially during times when it seems like the rest of their world (investors, board members, employees, family) is pulling them down or doesn’t see or feel what they do.  I think the mere act of believing in someone, helping them focus on their strengths, and being there for them during a tough time, can have a huge impact on their ability to reach their full potential.

As usual the gorgeous photo is by my good friend Sandy Blanchard. When I look at it, I see a flower that was encouraged by the right amounts of sun, rain, and nutrients to open up and present such stunning beauty to the world…

About Pain
Mar 19 2010

Some of you may have been wondering why I took such an extended blogging break and why I’ve been so spotty in the times between posting.  I thought quite some time about posting this, but then I thought I might never reach my potential as a writer or even as a human being if I don’t throw caution to the wind and risk offending or for that matter validating/pleasing others.   Plus I thought that if it helps one person or helps someone think differently even if just for a nanosecond, then it would have been worth it.  Some of you may recall I wrote About Laughter, About Sleep, About Writing and About Car Paint.  This post is About Pain.

There’s physical pain and then there’s emotional, mental, and spiritual pain.  Most of us have experienced all different kinds in life.  The worst physical pain in my life came as a result of breastfeeding my son over 7 1/2 years ago now.  I developed an infection that hurt so bad I couldn’t sleep and if I was able to nod off, I would wake up with tears in my eyes.  I remember thinking “I want to die right now, but I can’t because I must feed my baby.”  I was determined to breastfeed him no matter how many people said I should give up.  I have never wished to die before or since.  I have wished to be waited on hand & foot while laying in a hammock on a beach drinking a pina colada and having my feet massaged, so if that’s what happens after death, I’m all in!  Thankfully the maternal instinct is so strong, and we live in a day & age where antibiotics are available that in a few excruciating weeks the pain was gone. But I still occasionally have memory pain that has diminished over time.

But emotional, mental, and spiritual pain seems to last much longer (unless you have chronic physical pain which probably exacerbates the emotional kind as well).  And unfortunately, a week of antibiotics doesn’t cure this kind of pain.  This kind of pain can start from childhood and stick with you…flaring up at various times in your life when things trigger your deep seated fears and emotional memories.  There’s a theory that you are often attracted to people that have some of the same traits as people in your family did growing up because it’s a known/comfortable pattern.  The theory continues that down deep, you want to resolve some of the pain that you as a child were never able to resolve, see your parents resolve, or resolve with your parents.  This theory is outlined in a book called Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage (Amazon Link), and I read it before I got married, but I didn’t really get it until now because I didn’t know what those patterns were until I was immersed in it as an adult and mother.

What happens when someone in a marriage (with kids) finally realizes that the pattern is not resolvable or they don’t know how to, don’t want to, or can’t resolve it?  They suffer or get divorced and the pain is horrid.  Especially the pain you feel for the kids as you imagine the pain they might feel.  I lived through a divorce myself as a child and was often caught in the middle of a lot of bitterness and anger, and I have relived that pain for my kids even though it’s a completely different situation and their dad is a very good, involved father.

What’s even harder is when you are both good people that happened to have a lot of unexpected crap happen throughout the marriage.  You wonder what is wrong with you.  When in most cases, there is really nothing wrong with you, but you look back and realize that neither of you knew how to nurture a marriage or you didn’t see or understand the signs that should have been big clues that something huge needed to fundamentally change in each of you.  It’s like you both have blinders on until suddenly one of you takes them off and doesn’t like what they see, don’t see, feel, or don’t feel.  Marriage, like life, does not come with an instruction manual and even if it did everyone is so different it would be hard to apply to your unique marriage and you would think you could wing it or that it didn’t apply to you.  There are more instructions around a divorce which requires a signed agreement between the two of you outlining your responsibilities than there is before a marriage.

So, yes I just got divorced after what was probably close to a year of being separated mentally, if not physically.  This past year is somewhat of a blur.  It’s the hardest emotional, mental, and spiritual pain I’ve ever experienced and unfortunately there are no legal drugs I can take to make the pain disappear in a few weeks.  Despite the fact that 50%-60% of marriages end up in divorce, it is the 2nd most stress inducing event anyone can experience behind death of a loved one.  And it doesn’t really matter if you are the one leaving, the one being left, or it’s mutual.  Mix divorce with unusual work dynamics, kids, and other personal issues and you have a recipe for a potential breakdown.  Fortunately, I am very lucky/blessed to have wonderful friends, co-workers, family friends, and family who have supported me and let me cry on the phone, on email (yes, it’s possible to cry on email) or in front of them and repeatedly (until I’m sure they were sick of it) told me that everything will be OK.  They let me say and write stupid (although sometimes funny) things and were kind anyway.  I have never felt so out of control in my life!  I mean I’ve gone months without reconciling my check book, was late on a couple of house payments, and my house (although overall neat) more disorganized than I’d like.  Plus a whole shit load of other emotional stuff.

I’m still a ways away from being back to normal whatever that is, but we both love the kids immensely and right now we can’t foresee not being friends and friendly for their sakes.  From my perspective, we both still respect each other and as hard as this has been, we’ve both taken the high road because that’s the kind of people we are, and we know it’s best for the kids.  A child counselor told us it was obvious we loved the kids and they loved us.  She also said that they got along so well with each other, were exhibiting normal behavior for going through what they were going through, and seemed happy despite what they were experiencing which of course took off about 80% of my maternal guilt.   I did a post back in September 2009, called Double The Trouble, Double The Fun which stemmed from me feeling glad they had each other during this hard time their parents were going through.  I felt that I/we had done at least one thing right by giving them the gift of each other to weather storms that life will inevitably bring them.

So now you know why I had such a long break from writing on the blog.  My personal life started to bleed into the blog, and I needed to get a handle on things for a little while.  I think back to that Entrepreneurial Ledge where I stood almost a year and a half ago.  When your sleeping heart wakes up suddenly, it’s a very disorientating, scary feeling.  It’s like gasping for air while at the same time trying to soak in all the colors, beauty, sounds, smells, shapes, feelings that you have not noticed/felt for years.  You start falling in love with life again and it seems that pain is a part of love.  You unknowingly/desperately reach out to people, anyone kind nearby to help ease this searing pain. In the case of some friends and family, they are there for you in ways you never imagined.  In the case of others, they can’t or don’t know how to be there like you want/need them to be and it exacerbates and magnifies the pain.  You start to realize that you are really reaching out to your lost self and the only one who can save you from drowning is YOU.  Then you start the process of excruciatingly, slowly mending a broken heart and falling in love with yourself…and you wonder why and when you fell out of love in the first place.

Thank you for reading.

About the photo:  The photo above is of a piece of art that my cousin, who goes by the pseudonym of Isaac Falconer, made for me when I told her I was getting a divorce.  I didn’t get to see her that often growing up.  She is a unique, vibrant, passionate individual.  She has followed her own path and seems to have found happiness in doing so as well as people who appreciate and buy her art!  She has even exhibited in Italy.  The piece is called No Pleasure Garden (c) 2009 and it’s made of Chantilly lace from Italy with hand made hypo allergenic orchids affixed to two locations on the huge piece of lace.  In her words, “It’s meant to be placed across the bottom of your bed as a reminder to you of YOUR personal glory – which has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with your life-mate or your kids or your professional work.“  It looks so lovely at the bottom of my bed and makes me smile when I enter the room.

A Point In Time
Mar 10 2010

Today was an interesting point in time for me.  March 10, 2010.  My son is 7 1/2 years old and my daughter is almost 5.  God, I love them so much.  A mother’s love cannot be explained in mere words.  When we learn to communicate telepathically maybe we can share that intense love and the world would be a better place.  I will blog more later about the poignancy of this day which happens to be a day or so before SXSW Interactive 2010 starts.

I picked up my kids from school after their soccer class today, and they rode their bikes near the house for a little bit since it was such a gorgeous, sunny day after the sudden burst of rain earlier in the day.  My daughter wants me desparately to take her training wheels off so she can ride like her older brother, and I keep telling her to wait until summer or the weather is consistently better so I have time to teach her like we did my son back in 2008.

I’ll be attending SXSW Interactive this year as a spectator.  Last year I organized a panel called Building A Web Business After Hours.  It was fun and well attended.  I learned since then it’s a very hard thing to keep up especially when you don’t have the time, support, and monetary resources to do it well.  I ended up transferring ownership to my amazing partner, Nicole Johnson.  This year I submitted a panel idea on how to leverage your online and offline networks, but it was not selected because I think they wanted it to be more narrowly focused.  I was kind of relieved actually.  I’m looking forward to going and supporting the Austin Technology Incubator‘s presence there via Bart Bohn’s (Wireless/IT Director) involvement with the Entrepreneur’s Lounge, Austin’s Interactive Showcase, and The Accelerator.  A couple of ATI’s companies have been nominated and will most likely do very well.  I’m also looking forward to the parties I’ve been invited to, catching some interesting panels, and seeing some of my online friends I haven’t seen since last year.

Onward and upward.  Today is another day in the journey of the rest of my life…

Dr. Ari Brown – Success To Me
Sep 20 2009

I interviewed Dr. Ari Brown (pdf) for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, for an article that was published in the July/Aug 2006 issue.  My writing partner, Pam Losefksy, and I pulled these articles together a while back and you can see them on the Success Profiles page of this blog.  You can see the full article on Ari by clicking HERE (pdf).

Dr. Brown is a board certified pediatrician at the Capital Pediatric Group in Austin.  She’s the co-author of Baby 411: Clear Answers and Smart Advice for your Baby’s First Year and Toddler 411.  She received her MD from Baylor College of Medicine and did her residency and fellowship at Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital.  She has two children.

She shares:

The hallmarks of successful people are perseverance, self confidence, and satisfaction in what they do. In my daily work, I interact with parents, and I truly think being a parent is the most rewarding thing you could possibly do. A parent who is raising his or her children well, being a good advocate for them, and ensuring that they grow up healthy and strong in every sense of the word is a huge success.

She goes on to say:

My advice to young people looking to be successful in life is this: You can do it all, but you can’t do it all at the same time. Pace yourself. You want to accomplish many things in your life, but at the end of the day, your family is really the most important. Don’t put your family on hold to build your career; you have your whole life to work!

Parenting is one of the hardest yet rewarding things I’ve experienced.  It’s so true that if you can help someone be a better parent and connect with their kids, the world can be a better place.  That’s why I admire those people who take care of children from a childcare or medical perspective.  As a parent, it was great to get affirmation from our kid’s doctors that we were doing OK or to get advice from them on what things we could do differently.

I have to constantly remind myself of the fact that I can do a lot of things but not all at the same time.  I have a hard time pacing myself but I’m learning and trying and saying “no” to many things…even things I want to do but know I can’t do well right now until I get a few things settled.  My kids (as are most parents) are the most important things to me in the world and I hope when all is said and done they grow up knowing, believing, and feeling that so they can do anything (within reason of course) their hearts desire.  🙂

Double The Trouble But Double The Fun
Sep 2 2009

I haven’t done a parenting post in a while but I’ve been thinking recently about siblings.  I always knew that if I was going to have kids, I was going to have two.  I have a sister and despite the occasional hair pulling ups and downs, I wouldn’t trade her for the world!  There were times growing up I probably would have traded her, but now I can’t imagine having made it this far without knowing she was there.  Although we are very different in many ways and sometimes we don’t understand each other, we are the only two people in the world who have experienced our pre-college years living in the same house. We can reminisce about the good times, the bad, and our perfect dog.

My sister was the pretty/creative one and I was the smart/determined one.  Some time in college I realized I was kind of pretty and some time before she got her Master’s she probably realized she was smart too.   It’s funny how the labels we get assigned in a family stick with you even when you’ve left home for so many years.  I learned a lot from her and was always amazed with what she was able to get away with. 🙂  I always usually laid everything out on the line and tried to be hyper rational about things since I was a nerd, and she always seemed to know how to get what she wanted.   We always had each other.  Being the eldest, I would protect her when I could even though she might not remember all those times and even when it got me in trouble.  I would bribe her to help me with rolling newspapers when I signed on for my first job, and by association I was a little less nerdy.  As little kids we would laugh and play with each other, as older kids we fought and played, as adults and mothers we share.

And that’s why I wanted two kids.  The thought crossed my mind for a nanosecond that I couldn’t survive another kid after our son was born.  He didn’t sleep consistently through the night until he was probably 4 1/2 years old.  He had night terrors and I finally concluded it was past life trauma that he was still trying to sort out.  It was a horrible and sleep deprived hazy time.  But even after a miscarriage and not sleeping for 2 years, I was determined to have another kid for him before my body couldn’t handle it and fortunately we were blessed with an angel of a girl who slept like a dream.   At the time I kept thinking I don’t know if I’ll survive this but I was going to do what I had to do for him to have a sibling.  Many of my girlfriend’s felt the same way since we all agreed giving birth and parenting was the hardest things we had ever done.  We wondered if our parents felt the same way.  Some of my friends weren’t able to have another one for unexpected reasons, but almost all of them wanted at least two kids for the simple reason of them having that shared bond with someone.

As I watch my kids play together, it makes my heart happy.  They will run around the house, jump on the bed, and make each other laugh hysterically.  They also make each other whine or complain that one is getting more than the other but mostly right now they play well together which gives us a break.   They play hide and seek, they build a fort out of all the pillows in the house, they scare and tickle each other, they watch TV together, etc.  They genuinely seem to like each other right now.   As they get older, I’m sure having each other will hone their negotiation skills plus they will try to devise plans to outsmart us and I’m sure they will succeed!

I am so glad they have each other to share the great times and the inevitable not-so-great times.  I hope they will always be there for each other and I hope they’ll be there to turn to each other (knock on wood) after we are long gone.  At least they can share the burden of figuring out what to do with us when we get old and senile. 🙂

Yes, although I know we will probably have to deal with some sibling rivalry, I feel truly blessed that the greatest gift we were able to give them is each other.

Nothing Much To Write About
Jul 23 2009

Well that’s not entirely true.  There is always many things to write about but it doesn’t always fit the topics of this blog which are business and parenting.  I’m meeting some great people on this path to finding a home for Babble Soft (I so enjoyed the comments from all of you on that post) but nothing I can write about yet.  It’s an interesting process to go through because we haven’t really set a price for the company but of course people want to know what the price is, and I say it depends on the buyer! 🙂  Which it kind of does because we want to make sure it’s the right fit with the right marketing channels that will enable Babble Soft to live on.

I found it interesting that one of the professors at UT Austin did her dissertation/thesis to prove that entrepreneur’s don’t always sell their company to the highest bidder.  I could have told her that without all the research.  We look for the right fit, the right timing, the right exit, and for hopefully the place it will live on the longest and be paid the most attention to.  The hope is that the highest bidder fits all of those criteria!

The kids are doing great and enjoying summer camp.  My daughter has a little end of summer camp performance tomorrow and then she’ll be at the same place my son is at but it won’t really be camp for her like it is for him.  He goes bowling, swimming, skating, to the park, and on field trips constantly it seems like.  At the end of August they will start at their new school:  The Magellan School and soon they will be babbling in Spanish!

So yes, there’s loads to write about but writing about the trivia and minutia of daily life takes too much time and is boring to most and the high tragic/dark comedy drama…well we must leave that to reality TV shows, the movies, and to shows like Grey’s Anatomy.

The Waves of Life
Jun 21 2009

The kids and I just got back from a fabulous beach vacation in South Padre, TX with some friends of mine.  This was the first time I had ever been to a Texas beach and I’ve lived in Texas for a very, very long time.  It was a really nice beach…certainly not better than the beaches I’ve seen in Cancun or Cozumel but perfect nonetheless for this week long trip.

We had a blast!  We even made it to the small Schlitterbahn park there.  I’ve mentioned Sandy Blanchard in several of my posts in the past.  She’s the one that takes those fabulous nature/flower pictures that I use in my posts sometimes.  To the left is a picture of our feet in the sand. 🙂

They also have two kids and our kids had a great time playing together.  I’ve known them for almost 18 years now and there’s something about hanging out with people who know you, that makes things so easy.  You can mostly be who you are and we can all laugh about ‘way back when’  before kids.  I met Sandy’s husband, Jay, at a company we interned at back in the summer between our junior and senior years in college.   They were high school sweethearts and still dating at the time.  I remember laughing a lot with that group of interns and Jay always tried to pull one over on me with his ‘underwear sticking to walls’ apartment mess, but I got him good a time or two.  Plus he reminded me he had to help me take my car to get fixed about 5 times that summer.  It was a used car my dad had given me that turned out to be a lemon and turned me off of ever buying a Volkswagen.  Sandy chaperoned us when I beat him at a drinking game at Bennigan’s restaurant (he’ll deny this one) and at a jalapeno eating game in another restaurant in front of his parents and my mom (he doesn’t deny this one).

On this trip, he and the boys were driving in one car and Sandy and I and the girls were in another.  As we were pulling up to border patrol on our way back, he all of a sudden gets on the walkie talkie and starts saying things like “Aruni, make sure you throw that weed out the window right now.  You don’t want to get caught.”  I laughed and said something like “Oh no.  I’m throwing it out the back window right now and you better hope they aren’t tapping into this wireless channel or we’ll all go to jail.”  Fortunately, they weren’t tapping the lines, but they did ask us if we were US citizens and I had to tell them I wasn’t born in the US but I was a naturalized citizen, and that the crazy dude behind us had my son in his car.  Of course Jay told me later he told the patrol guy he had no idea who we were.  Then because we were laughing at our narrow escape, I had to play “Sweet Emotion” by Aerosmith and blast it through the walkie talkie so he could hear it.  The walkie talkies on occasion made us sound like the teachers did on Charlie Brown and Jay would go around saying “wah, wogh, wao”…guess you just had to have been there.  😀

But back to the ocean, there is just something about the sound and motion of the waves that help put things in perspective.  Seeing all the seashells and grains of sand reminded me of how we live in a blip of time and in a hundred years most of us will have been forgotten.  Yet we stress and live like everything is so important when most big things in life are out of our control except for those things that are.  We make choices every day and we choose whether or not to live a mediocre life and as Seth Godin, my favorite entrepreneurial, marketing blogger just posted:

On the road to mediocrity

Year End Performances
May 31 2009

I’ve heard that the fear of public speaking is one of the top fears in the world.  According to Speech Topics Help, Advice & Ideas the top fears are:

1. Fear of public speaking (Glossophobia)
2. Fear of death (Necrophobia)
3. Fear of spiders (Arachnophobia)
4. Fear of darkness (Achluophobia, Scotophobia or Myctophobia)
5. Fear of heights (Acrophobia)
6. Fear of people or social situations (Sociophobia)
7. Fear of flying (Aerophobia)
8. Fear of open spaces(Agoraphobia)
9. Fear of thunder and lightning(Brontophobia)
10. Fear of confined spaces(Claustrophobia)

So it’s amazing to me how little kids pull of their year end school performances.  I was so proud of my two kids this weekend.  They had their year end performances this past Saturday.  They go to the same international school so they both got up in front of a crowd of tons of parents and kids at the University of Texas at Austin JJ Pickle Center and sang songs, acted out skits, and read poems in French, Spanish, and English!

Both of our kids in the early days seemed to always have a meltdown when they performed.  Our son went to Montessori school and invariably he would freak out, not say a word, or get pissed off.  Of course it was quite embarrassing for us parents plus we felt bad for him.  Our daughter did the same thing.  She would be totally fine before the performance but then all of a sudden when she saw the crowd of people she would shut down and get shy and embarrassed.  She would then cry afterward because she felt she had let us down.  Of course we would hug them and tell them they did a great job and it’s OK to get nervous sometimes.

But this time was different.  They both preformed and sang with gusto!  I was so proud of them.

It’s funny how these performances bring back the memories of when I performed as a kid.  I’ve probably blocked out some occasions, but I do remember totally blanking on what came next in one of my piano recitals.  I think I even forgot words during a voice recital.  I felt horrible and completely embarrassed for days.  I can’t remember what my mother said to me but I probably didn’t hear anything over my internal dialogue of ‘you are such a loser.’  But for some insane reason, I kept on trying different things.  I guess it’s sort of like getting back on that horse after they buck you off (which happened to me quite a few times – once I even broke my arm in a horse riding incident).  The fear is still there but each time you get a little bit more used to it.

The same is true for trying new things in business and life.  Sure you get hurt and bucked off from time to time, but you have to get back on and try different things.  No sense in beating your head against the same wall and getting the same undesired result.  You should try beating it at a slightly different angle or just get off the horse and try a different one.  😀

Anyway, I’m thrilled they did so well and had a good time.  Our daughter rewarded us by getting sick today.  Hopefully she’s better by tomorrow.  Maybe if she watches enough Dora the Explorer she’ll be peachy keen by tomorrow…one can only hope!

I hope all of you other parents out there survived your school’s year end performances!

Have You Discovered Your Passion?
May 25 2009

Everyone has heard the word passion.  It’s written about in business books, in fiction books, in poems, in romance novels, etc..  It’s shown on TV and in the movies when people find their true loves or their calling in life.  But what is it?  In the world of entrepreneurship, people tell you in order to be successful you must be passionate about what you are doing.  I’ve run into a lot of people who appear passionate about what they are doing but they don’t always succeed in the way they expected.  Passion ebbs and flows in most everything in life.  Sometimes you are in love with your business and sometimes you aren’t, but in order to survive like Microsoft, Dell, Apple, etc. the passion must be there, the underlying love for your products, people, and company must be there and the gaps between must not be long.

They say true passion can be traced back to childhood, when everything seemed possible.  My son is passionate about soccer and hanging out with his good buddies.  If it was up to him, he’d be kicking around a soccer ball all day long.  I often have to tell him not to kick the soccer ball in the main part of the house.   If we’d let him, he’d probably sleep with his soccer ball.  If you mention one of his friend’s names, he will incessantly ask us when we are going to see him next.  He’s a bit of a socialite like his mom.

I can’t tell what my daughter is passionate about yet, but I think she has an affinity for music and lip gloss.  We have a keyboard in our house that my father gave us and she tends to gravitate to it and punch the keys from time to time.  And she likes to play the bowling game on the Wii.

My husband is passionate about starting the multi-lingual, international Magellan School here in Austin.  He is passionate about his kids learning Spanish since he is fluent in Spanish and wants them to have the gift of multiple languages that was given to him.  He is also passionate about biking and exercising.  He set a goal to do the Shiner Bash – 100 mile ride and he did it.  He exercises every day and he says he’s in the best shape he’s ever been in his life.

What a blessing it must be to discover your passion and find yourself being able to realize your goals.  It’s even better when you can make a living at it.  It seems like most people can’t turn their passion into making a living for whatever reasons whether it be timing, market acceptance, encouragement, money, health, ability, skills, etc.  Many people try to keep their passion alive on the side or after some time, we forget what it was we were passionate about.

Right now in my life, I’m most passionate about my kids.  I am passionate about helping people achieve more than they thought they could.   When I look back upon my childhood, I remember the passion I had for music.  I think my father actually started taking us to piano lessons when I was about 9 years old when we lived in Albuquerque, NM.  When we moved to Lubbock, TX , I sought out my own piano teacher who lived nearby and I would walk to her house for lessons.  It was hard to find time to practice and hard to find time to continue since it was just me, my mom, and my sister.  My grandmother studied piano in Oxford University in England so I must get some of my passion for music from her.  Sadly, I can’t play the piano today, but I can sing.

I sang in church and actually did a solo in front of the entire church in my early teens.  I sang in high school choir.  I sought out my own voice teacher and when I went to college at UT Austin, I took voice courses for two semesters.  I knew I was reasonably good, but not great.   I never envisioned myself singing in a musical or singing opera so I guess I thought what’s the point and continued on with my business degree.  In grad school I sang a few songs in a couple of bands.

I also remembered that I liked to write.  In my early teens, a few girlfriends and I would start this notebook with a story and each of us would have to write the next part until we ended up with a full story.  I hate to admit this, but I think Michael Jackson and his glove showed up a time or two in those stories. 🙂  I wonder what happened to those notebooks.  I would also invariably get high grades in creativity in my English classes but very low grades in grammar.  The concept of grammar didn’t click for me until my freshman English class in college for some reason.

I also didn’t have anyone around me encouraging me, connecting me with people, giving me feedback, or showing me the way to nurture those creative right brain activities I was drawn to.  So I did what any respectable child of two doctors would do….I got an Accounting degree and then an MBA, which has served me well and odds are has resulted in a much more lucrative career than if I had pursued writing, singing or horse back riding (another younger days hobby of mine) as a career.

So now here I am in mid-life.  Too old to start up regular horse back riding again for fear of breaking my bones…well not really, but not enough time to go to a barn and take care of a horse.  It’s highly unlikely that I can make singing a financially rewarding career at this point in my life, but I am enjoying my voice lessons and relish any time I can make it to a jam session.  I do enjoy writing in my blog.

So that leaves me to figure out how best to blend my passion for working with people, with a product I’m passionate about, with a path to millions of dollars….

Any suggestions?  How did you discover your passion?

Connecting The Dots
May 21 2009

Sometimes the dots connect and sometimes they don’t.   Sometimes you connect them and a nice picture emerges.  Sometimes you connect them and a mess shows up.  Some seemingly random dots are showing up in my life right now and I’m not sure if and how I should connect them or if there is any connection at all.  Here they are:

I recently received the new & improved purple peacock hat I mentioned that I wanted in my New Year’s Resolutions post that my good friend Julie Fergerson, VP of Emerging Technology at Debix, got me for my birthday.  The one she got me was too big for my small head so I sent it back and the designer, Sharmon Hardin, created me a new one that fits great and even has peacock feathers!  She was so friendly and easy to communicate with. Every hat someone buys from her she makes another for St. Jude’s.  I think I’m going to submit Sharmon and her hat business for inclusion in Seth Godin’s new book.  Now I have to wear it to lunch with my friend one day!

My daughter made me a beautiful bracelet for Mother’s Day that I wore to work yesterday and got many compliments on.  Of course, I was shoving it in people’s face to look at it so they were forced to say how pretty it was whether they liked it or not. 🙂   But it is quite lovely.  I’ve been noticing her personality starting to show more.  Sometimes when she says something, I’m taken aback at her sophistication and the signs that she’s growing up.  I smile at her confidence and beauty.  She’s starting to drop her baby words but I still tell her she needs to get her ‘swim soup’ when she’s going swimming.  She had so many cute words that will probably hang around in our family’s vocabulary forever.  I used to come up with words when I couldn’t say something properly and my mother still reminds me of those or says them in sentences when she’s talking to me.  I had words for elephant (my favorite animal), apple, sweet things, etc.

My son made me a wonderful card with a picture that he drew of himself on the front and he wrote “I love you mommy” in French inside the card.  I have it on my desk at work and several people have remarked how cute they thought it was.  The only word I remember that he used to say was ‘mimi’ for milk otherwise he seemed to pretty much learn a word and say it right.

Our roof was damaged in a recent hail storm and even with insurance coverage it will cost us $3 to $4K out of pocket.

My husband’s car was practically totaled by the hail storm with windows blown out and body damage that will also put us out of pocket some money.  The windows are fixed so he can drive it but he still has dents all over his car.  His car is jinxed because so many things have happened to it.

Interesting opportunities are presenting themselves for me and Babble Soft making me wonder how I should deal with them.

I’ve had a surge of creativity recently around writing song lyrics, singing, and writing in general but no consistent time and space to get it out.  It’s all bottled up and I feel sometimes like I’m literally going to explode.  I’ve never experienced this before, but it’s a form of torture (not water boarding).  I also don’t generally hang around people who get that or who I can share what I’ve been able to write, which makes me a little sad sometimes.  It helps that I work in weekly voice lessons over lunch.  We are working towards recording a few songs for demo purposes.  I tell my voice instructor that I consider our lessons therapy sessions!

I am tired from burning the candle at both ends as they say.  The whole Building A Web Business After Hours is taking it’s toll.  I’m home sick today just feeling worn out with a scratchy throat.  The upset tummy has disappeared for now.  I will hopefully be fine tomorrow.

The new school, The Magellan School, that my husband is founding is going really well and set to open this August 2009.  Many families have already signed up and donations are coming in.  The first years are always challenging so it’s going to be tight around here for a while.

There’s a bunch of other dots that I either can’t write about or I’ve forgotten but needless to say I am living in interesting times and it’s seems like it’s exactly where I’m meant to be to deal with what lies ahead…

How about your dots?

You Are So Smart Mommy
May 2 2009

I try to mix my parenting and business posts here on entrepreMusings.  Of late I feel like I’ve been doing more parenting related posts, but I just couldn’t pass this one up.  This morning as I was getting the kids ready for swim classes and soccer, my 6 year old son said the most brilliant thing!  We have a busy day today as I’ll be taking them both to my daughter’s swim class, then to my son’s soccer game, and then later back for his swim class.  Then we are heading out so they can see their dad finish the Shiner 100 mile bike race later this afternoon.  It’s two hours from Austin so I’m sure they will both take naps in the car.  [UPDATE: It ended up being a 5 hour roundtrip because I didn’t have the right directions.]

Anyway, my son was getting dressed for soccer, and he wasn’t sure what shirt to bring.  Sometimes they wear a black one and sometimes they wear a white one.  I told him why don’t you bring both just in case and then all of a sudden out of the blue he said “You are so smart mommy!”  I said “Really?”  He said, “Yes you are so smart to think of bringing both of them.”  I was like “Wow, thank you sweetie.  I’m so glad you think I’m smart.”  I gave him a huge hug and kiss and told him “I hope you still think that when you are 12 or 13 years old.”  He looked at me and said something like, “If I’m still playing soccer and you tell me to bring both shirts, you will be smart.”  We both laughed and my daughter laughed along with us.

He then couldn’t find his shirts and was looking in the wrong drawer and I told him to look in the other one and there they were.  He looked at me in disbelief and happiness that I found his shirts and again said “You are so smart!”  I was smiling from ear to ear and gave him another squeeze and tickle.  He was truly being genuine and he learned that I responded positively the first time so I thought he was quite brilliant to say it again so soon.  He’s picking up quick that when mom is happy, life is easier and he’s more likely to get to play the Wii.  🙂

I didn’t understand why people said boys have their moms wrapped around their fingers until I had a son.  My daughter has me wrapped too.  The wrapping loosens a bit when they whine but when they say and do brilliant things and when they flash their adorable smiles or are peacefully sleeping, it gets wrapped so tight it squeezes my heart and takes my breath away…