After a number of coaching sessions yesterday, I stopped by Page One , an independent bookstore in Albuquerque, NM.  While standing in the check out line, I noticed a rack of refrigerator magnets that had various inspirational quotes.  One by Carol Shields caught my eye:

“Go for long walks, indulge in hot baths, question your assumptions, be kind to yourself, live for the moment, loosen up, scream, curse the world, count your blessings, just let go, just be.

A common theme that I am hearing not only from clients, but also from some of my friends who are going through various transitions or dealing with difficult issues is the internal “should conversation as in “I should do this or I should do that.  When I ask, is the particular “should working for you, I usually hear a resounding “No!

After my wife Maureen died, I really wanted to sell our house because it was not the same living there without her. Just about all family and friends recited the mantra to me that “you SHOULD NOT make any major change in your life for at least a year. One exception was the facilitator of the grief support group I attended.  He told the story of a man who also wanted to sell his house right after his wife died.  After his family gave him the same “should statement, he got out a calendar and started crossing off each day and noting the “days remaining before I can sell my house.  When he reached the end of the year, he said to his family “are you happy I waited, I’m not. And he sold his house.  The point of the story was that he was psychologically ready to make the move long before what conventional wisdom said he should do.

For a lot of situations, we get constrained by assumptions, out-moded norms, and what other people tell us we should be doing.  So take a hot bath after your long walk and question those assumptions , in fact, try questioning everything.

The summer before my senior year at Princeton, I had an internship with a bank in Philadelphia.  My job was to do a market research project to determine how satisfied the bank’s trust customers were.  All in all, it was an interesting project and I felt like I did some meaningful work.  However, what I remember the most about that summer was not the nature of the work. It was the time I got chastised by a Senior VP for violating the dress code.

During that summer, I wore a suit everyday along with a starched dress shirt and tasteful necktie.  On this particular day, early on in my internship, I made a fateful mistake , I wore a pale blue dress shirt.  You see the bank required all male employees to wear WHITE dress shirts.  In fact, that practice was so inculcated into the culture, that everyone assumed I knew that!  Well, I did learn.

During my career have watched businesses move away from a coat and tie culture to a “business casual one. I recall when “business casual first appeared, many businesses really did not know what that meant.  One VP that I coached interpreted business casual to mean that it was now OK to wear a bowtie to the office!  There was a big fear, that if people started to dress less formally, it would impact the quality of work.  I don’t think that was ever the case.  In fact, to this day I maintain that I find it a lot easier to think if I am not being strangled by a tie!