The Experience

This spring I took a leap - I left my job, where I had been happily telling people what to do for seven years, to find my passion in life. I wasn't sure at the time what that was, but I knew I couldn't wait to figure it out. So I jumped.

Bob Mankoff/The New Yorker Collection/Conde Nast via nwpr.org

It was exciting, but it was also lonely. I didn't realize how much I valued being around people all day. I'm an introvert (mostly) and because all my social needs were filled at the office, I never thought much about other communities. But now I started to see community all around me, even in things that probably weren't intended to be social environments, like going to CVS. Why yes, I do need some help choosing toothpaste. Want to be friends?

Something really cool jumped out at me. We spend our lives consuming stuff. Food, technology, infrastructure, media... and every time we consume we have an "experience" - the customer experience. Companies strategize on how to best provide great customer experience, through customer service, product quality, etc. Now, with so much information available to consumers which gives us a lot more power to be choosy, customer experience is changing.

Providing a great customer experience still means attentive customer service, knowledgeable employees, innovative products, etc. - but now it's critical to provide a sense of community and identity, to keep customers engaged, to make them feel like they belong to something big.

Companies are definitely starting to get this - UnderArmour has its "I will what I want" campaign (watch this video of ballerina Misty Copeland. Totally inspiring.), Reebok has Spartan Race and CrossFit and "immersive fitness".

But it has to be bigger than events or marketing campaigns - customer experience is about telling a consistent, compelling story in every part of a company's operations. Oiselle, one of my favorite women's athletic apparel brands, sponsors amazing female atheletes who kick ass and blog about it. But they also provide a community for runners (including some cool dudes) called the Flock, with outlets on Twitter, Facebook, and Strava. The brand is much more than clothing - it's a shared bond. Even if you never meet any of your new running buddies in person, it's nice to know that someone out there is rooting for you.

After all that warm fuzziness, are products just icing on the cake? Quality, innovation, and design are still important - but I think the experience is becoming more of a non-negotiable, a requirement to selling great product. Without it, no matter how beautiful or innovative your product is, it's just stuff competing with other stuff for shelf space. Experience is the differentiator. 

You decide.

I was at an event this past weekend where someone I didn't know told me "You have a cute nose." It's a pretty weird thing to say, but it's not that much weirder than a lot of other comments that solely address appearance. Whenever this happens, I want to somehow explain every cell, thought, belief in my body - all the other things that describe and define me - but that's pretty difficult. I sometimes feel like who I am is out of my control.

Truthfully, I'm obsessed with image and always have been. I care about how I look, and about how I'm perceived. I'm not mad that my nose is cute. I'm mad that there's so much more to me, and it's so much harder for people to see. I'm mad that people think commenting on nose cuteness is an appropriate social interaction.

Most people probably remember being taught that perception is on the outside, and not worth worrying about. It's who you are on the inside that counts, and no one can take that away from you. But on the other hand, there isn't such a solid line between outside and inside. Or between real and perceived. Or between now and the future. Oh boy.

Maybe it's a merging, or a reconciliation. I'm not that different at thirty than I was at three:

Super focused. Loves sweaters. Definitely does not color inside the lines.

But obviously, I've been through a lot more at thirty and those experiences have made me more capable of making decisions about who I am. People often describe life as a journey, but I'd say it's a process. You build, review, and change the process until it works optimally. Sometimes you choose the inputs and sometimes you don't, but you get to decide how they contribute to the process. Over time, you decide who you want to be, and hopefully you use that power for good. After a while, maybe those decisions become so strong that people are compelled to perceive you the way you see yourself. But if that's not the case, at least you got to decide.

I find that to be an incredible freedom, and also a good mantra. You decide.

Gratitude

This fall I started working with a program called Girls on the Run as an assistant coach for a group of twenty 4th & 5th grade girls. They are crazy, super fun, talented, intelligent, and amazing. I am learning so much from them! Twice a week, we discuss issues relevant in their lives and then work on our strength and conditioning and put in some miles with the goal of completing a 5k at the end of the season.

Leading  discussion with the girls makes me think about how these issues affect my life (in a shocking amount of ways, life is not that different now than in 4th grade). Today, we talked about gratitude.

Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

I think of my recent adventure trekking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, a trip that was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. I had just quit my office job, where I had been for seven years, to focus on finishing my masters. I had no idea who I was anymore, or what I wanted in life. I needed this adventure to wipe the slate clean - and it did. 

Everything I had worried about at home - which essentially boiled down to Am I enough? - was irrelevant. All I worried about in Nepal was access to clean water and putting one foot in front of the next. The most grateful I have ever felt was when I stepped into an outdoor solar shower and found that the water was not only hot, but had good water pressure.

That shower was so damn good, given the circumstances, that I'll never forget it. I mean that seriously. Every time I take a shower at home I tear up a little. I have such a nice shower, and I am so grateful for it. There is no sarcasm here. I feel similarly about toilet paper and working plumbing, and anyone who has spent time on a similar adventure knows what I'm talking about.

So I'm grateful for showers - but also what they remind me of: surviving, persisting, and succeeding through my 20s, only to find in my 29th year that I felt like a stranger to myself. And then having the courage, and the support from my friends and family, to go find myself again. I'm still in that process and it's been tough, but man am I grateful for being here.

But gratitude isn't just about feeling thankful. It is also "readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness" (Oxford). This is the gratitude that strikes me as important now. To be thankful is good, and good for you. To return kindness, to take your thankfulness and happy feelings and do something with it - actually means something. 

Now I have to ask myself: I'm thankful for hot showers, so what...?

Humpday Commit

via theoatmeal.com (it's like he's in our heads!!)

It's Wednesday, and the week is half over. What have you accomplished? If you're anything like me, this is the point when you think Crap, I meant to do _________ and now it's basically Friday. Ugh. I guess I'll do it next week. Except, as you probably know, next Wednesday rolls around and the same thing happens.

This is not about procrastinating - I'm not a procrastinator so I have no advice for people who struggle with that. When it comes to getting things done, I'm the queen of lists. I'm a do-er, a get-it-done-er.

The problem I have is that my goals don't actually need to get done, and usually get pushed to the side by the things that do. So I'm creating something called "Humpday Commit" (#humpdaycommit) - every Wednesday, I'm making a small commitment that helps me achieve my bigger goals. (Let's take a moment here to recognize that I'm making a commitment to make commitments. Woah. I might have problems.)

This is about setting yourself up to win at life by making regular, incremental commitments to bring about change for yourself. Not just to complete a task and cross it off the list.

I really hope you will join me in this. I'd love to hear your commitments and share in your success, but I'll also need you to hold me accountable!