I have an exercise for you, but it's not going to work unless you stop what you're doing and focus on the exercise. So stop, take a deep breath, close your eyes for a few seconds, and get ready to pay attention. I'll wait.

Okay? Okay.

Think for a few seconds about your job. Use the famous journalist's "six Ws", and think about:

• what you do when you do your job;
• when you do your job;
• where you do your job;
• when you do your job;
• how you do your job; and last,
• why you do your job.

Have a nice, strong image in your head? Good. Now close your eyes and think about how all that would change if you didn't need the money.

If you were, all of a sudden, independently wealthy (I don't mean "fabulously wealthy", just "can pay your bills without working"), how would your job change? Would you even stay in the same job? If not, what would you do?

There's one more part to the exercise. I'll warn you ahead of time that this one's a doozy. You'll want to be sitting down.

Ready?

Okay, here we go:

Why aren't you doing that now?

Office Hours

I was talking with Rachael the other day, and we discovered (through some serious introspection and also Rachael's awesomeness) that part of why I've been stressed out recently is that, like pretty much every business out there, Delight Specialist has been in a bit of a slump lately. But it's not the finances part that was stressing me out (although money is the best way to get me totally freaked); it's that I didn't feel like I was helping anyone. So partially at her suggestion, I'm instituting a new Delightful policy.

From 11 AM until 1 PM Eastern on Tuesday and Thursday, and from 11 AM until 4:30 PM Eastern on the first Monday of every month, I'm holding open office hours, where anyone can consult with me, totally free of charge or obligation. I will Officially Not Be Busy then, so you don't have to worry about bothering me. You can either sign up for a 15-minute slot, and I'll hold that time for you, or you can just call me up. (If you go to voice mail, I'll return your call the next chance I get.)

Naturally, I still have my phone number on the website, and the promise I made a few weeks ago is still good. My office hours are particularly meant for consulting on your business - you get my full attention on your business and how to make it rad for fifteen minutes, for free.

So now you've been through the exercise and you've seen how I'm implementing my results. What are you going to change so that you're working a little less for the money and a little more for the love of the work?

Everyday Delight is a new tradition for me. Every week I list things in my everyday life that make me happier and improve my mood. It's important because I know that it's easier to focus on the negative than the positive - that's not a judgment, it's just how the human brain works - and so by listing the positives, I'm reminding myself that they outweigh the negatives. Please feel free to join in in the comments!

Today, I delight in...

• The rustle and crunch of fallen leaves in the front yard.
• The new color scheme and header of this site! I'm so pleased with it.
• New wireless headphones that let me listen to music and get coffee at the same time. (Thank you, Rachael!)
• Being asked to participate in things that I was sad that I wasn't going to be able to participate in.
• Not having to ask Radices cocta simul illo cupisne?.
• Two friends giving me complementary advice. Ah, synergy.
• The Bizarro comic I have hanging on my wall. I keep noticing it this week and smiling. It's Shootout at the OK Chorale: "I don't like your tone, mister."

What's making you smile this week? Leave a note in the comments and let me know!

I have trouble distilling what it is that I do.

You'd be surprised. I talk at length about what I do. I've done case studies. I actually, you know, do the consultation and run the workshops. But when someone asks me to explain what I do, I have trouble getting it down to a single sentence.

Part of that is because it's necessarily vague. What I do for you is not going to be the same thing as what I do for your friend. Delight is extremely situational. There are basic principles, but the fact is that if I give you the same detailed advice that I just gave your friend, one of you is getting screwed. (I don't do that, just for the record.)

But the other part of it is that it's all still kind of jumbled in my head. It's like a toybox - it's all fun and games, but none of it quite fits together right and you've got dinosaurs tangled up with jump-ropes and some of it has to go on top because it just doesn't fit. (That's Post-It notes, I don't actually have bits of mind leaking out. Yet.)

The one-sentence summary

So tonight I sat down and started sketching out ideas. It wasn't really brainstorming in the strictest sense, since it wasn't focused or directed - I just took notes on the ideas that came to me while I was watching TV. And eventually I came up with this one-sentence summary of what I do:

I take an ordinary interaction and make it extraordinary.

No matter what method I use to do it, that's the core of everything I do. I've said before that my goal is to increase the net amount of joy in the world. Extraordinary interactions do that. One more smile a day makes a huge difference.

It also provides impetus for me to keep moving forward. Eventually the extraordinary becomes ordinary with enough exposure - and then we need to push it forward to extraordinary again.

And it is all about interactions. Someone reading your website is just as much an interaction as talking with them face-to-face - it's just more asynchronous. Delight is about the connections made, however fleeting or tangential, with other people.

Will this help? I'm not sure. I hope it does. Even if it doesn't, though, it gives me a starting point, and that's more than I had this morning.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think about my one-sentence summary or about your opinions of delight!

Also,, Delight Specialist has a new look, just in time for autumn! What do you think?

This is a guest post from Mike Reeves-McMillan of Living Skillfully!

I hate grey days.

Where I live in Auckland, New Zealand, at any given time of the year the sky can become completely overcast with a pearly layer of cloud. It changes the light - I think of it as "grey light". It's glary and headache-inducing, and I really find it hard, on those days, to concentrate and to feel positive emotion.

There's internal weather that does exactly the same thing.

In my early 20s I went through an extended period of grey days. I'd worn myself out overcommitting to various things and got myself tied in emotional knots, and the outcome was an internal overcast that lasted, with occasional breaks, for several years.

What happens when you get really stressed is this. Your body and brain have mechanisms for dealing with threat, but they're set up for hunter-gatherer threats that last a few minutes and involve fighting and running, not urban-civilisation threats that last for months and years and involve sitting and worrying. It's like you have a racing car designed for sprints and you're trying to use it to tow a trailer across the country. Your motor burns out.

The only thing that can restore it is rest, but where are you going to get a rest? You can't sleep, you can't stop working, and every day the same issues are there to worry about. As fast as your resources renew themselves, they're used up. Or faster. And everything becomes a bleary grey blur.

The problem is that something in your environment is triggering off your brain's primitive "this isn't right" signal, and the only thing it knows to do about "this isn't right" is get ready to take physical action.

But even if you can't make your environment right, you can start to change that automatic response. It doesn't feel like it, but there's a moment in between the signal and the response where you can insert a a circuit breaker.

Here are 3 simple emotional circuit breakers you can use.

1. Breathing. Taking conscious control of your breathing, deepening it and slowing it, reassures the reactive part of your brain and helps it calm down.

2. Body Awareness. Be aware of where in your body you're feeling the tension or stress, and what it feels like. You can give it a colour, a sound and a texture if you like - then, in your imagination, change that colour, sound and texture to something calmer and more peaceful.

3. The Now Game. My friend Gabrielle plays this with her preschoolers. You just say a sentence starting with "now" about what you sense with your five senses: "Now I see a bird". "Now I feel a breeze". It gets you out of your head.

All three of these techniques can provide a quick beam of sunlight through the cloud, and start to shift things in the direction of dispersing the overcast. (There are plenty more where those came from: my free course, Simple Stress Management Techniques, provides a total of 7 emotional circuit breakers, and takes you through a simple self-reflection exercise to get you off your Emotional Hamster Wheel.)

What do you do on grey days?

Everyday Delight is a new tradition for me. Every week I list things in my everyday life that make me happier and improve my mood. It's important because I know that it's easier to focus on the negative than the positive - that's not a judgment, it's just how the human brain works - and so by listing the positives, I'm reminding myself that they outweigh the negatives. Please feel free to join in in the comments!

I put this week's off a day because today's my birthday, and I wanted to take some time and be especially mindful of my day-to-day delight today. Next week we'll be back on our normal Tuesday schedule.

Today, I delight in...

• My birthday! I'm 31 today. (Yikes. I feel like just yesterday I was 21...)
• Holly conspiring to surprise me with a visit from Rachael, whose birthday was Monday!
• Little autumn-themed scented candles (Creamy Pumpkin, Caramel Apple, and one that's just called Autumn), courtesy of my sister.
• Coffee with cinnamon added to the grounds.
• Staying up until midnight so my wife can say "Happy birthday" to me. (I actually fell asleep at 11:59! Augh!)
• The palpable release of stress and tension in the house now that Holly's working with an assistant.
• The knowledge that the Autumnal Equinox is less than a month away.

What delights you today? I love reading your lists, so please leave a comment and tell me what's delightful in your life!

I don't think anyone likes to hear that phrase addressed to themselves, and I don't blame them. The phrase essentially starts out the interaction by placing the speaker above the addressee - it says, "I know better than you, so stop what you're doing because I said so." It's a phrase designed to give the speaker power over the listener. No wonder people get so resentful when they hear it. Their sovereignty is being taken away.

Part of it, too, is that they're not necessarily doing it entirely wrong. A, B, and D might be just right, but C's got a spanner in the works and that means the whole thing goes up in smoke. "You're doing it wrong" just says "go back to square one". It doesn't offer explanation. It doesn't afford the possibility of partial successes. Either you did it right or you did it wrong. There's no continuum in that worldview.

Let's make a different paradigm

Richard Feynman, the noted physicist, told a story about how he learned to draw. His art teacher taught out of his basement, and when Feynman presented his first drawing, he expected to be told what was wrong with it. Instead, the teacher said, "look how you captured this line - it's amazing. Try and get that into all your lines." Turning the tables - from the expected didactic judgment to praise and encouragement - made all the difference. Feynman kept drawing and painting for the rest of his life.

Instead of the universal beatdown, how about a more gentle guidance? Instead of "you're doing it wrong", how about "here's what you're doing right, and here's how to improve the rest".

Instead of "10 ways you're screwing up your mailing list", let's say "10 ways to make your mailing list even better".

Instead of "You should never quit your day job without...", try "7 actions you can take to make quitting easier".

Instead of "You fail as a blogger because...", make it "The top 5 ways to be a kick-ass blogger".

Let's extend a classic metaphor to close us out:

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Tell a man he's doing it wrong because clearly only your brand of bobber catches fish properly, and you guarantee he'll never eat fish again.

What do you think? How can we turn negatives into positives? Do you have any stories to share?

Everyday Delight is a new tradition for me. Every week I list things in my everyday life that make me happier and improve my mood. It's important because I know that it's easier to focus on the negative than the positive - that's not a judgment, it's just how the human brain works - and so by listing the positives, I'm reminding myself that they outweigh the negatives. Please feel free to join in in the comments!

Today, I delight in...

• Alex's first day of school. He's a sixth grader, and he loves it!
• Getting to sleep on time for the first time in weeks.
• Doing an interview with Johnny B. Truant for Delightineering 101.
• George Takei in a guest role in one of Alex's teen-oriented TV shows.
• Making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.
• Being able to go on walks again now that Alex is in school.

What's on your mind this week? What's got you smiling and dancing? Let me know in the comments!

First! If you haven't seen it yet, the amazing Fabeku Fatunmise was kind enough to offer me a guest spot on his blog. Please go over and read my post there, titled "Truth. Revelations. MP3s."

Whoops.

There was going to be a different post here. I had a post all written out, based on something I really cared about, and I just couldn't post it because when I was writing it, something that I was writing struck me in the heart and stayed there, and even though I tried to finish the other post, I couldn't. I had to start writing this one. I'll run the other post on Wednesday; check back then if you want to know what it is.

Here's what I was writing when I was shot through the heart:

"Cold-calling has always been hard of me, especially in my line of work. I assist businesses, organizations, and individuals in engaging with their clients, customers, and visitors to improve retent--"

Have illicit relations with THAT noise.

I've been modifying that "what do I do?" statement since I started my business. Every time I revise it, it gets a little bit more business-y. Every time I revise it, it sounds a little more like a vision statement. Every time I revise it, I sound a little bit more like a Real Business. Right?

Every time I revise it, I delight a little less. Every time I revise it, I suck a little more. Every time I revise it, I get farther from where I want to be - from where I'm supposed to be.

Here's what I actually do.

I make you totally rad*. I get you actually talking to and interacting with people, instead of sitting there and letting them come to you. I give you things to do that make people laugh and say, "Thank you for letting me give you my money," and then go out and tell all of their friends that they should give you money too.

Do you want some examples? Of course you do.

Geanine Thompson is having give-away potpourri sachets made for her school and job fairs. That way, people will associate that scent with her - and with the one booth in the entire damn building that doesn't smell like Sweaty Businessman Wearing Too Much "Night Swept". Whenever they smell that potpourri scent - in any context - they'll think of Geanine and they'll think good things about her.

Catherine Caine is turning her About page into a Choose Your Own Adventure book, so that her visitors can find out exactly what they need to become customers - and so that they feel like kids again, which will get them in the right mindset to use Catherine's services.

Amy Crook is hiding tiny zombies around her site. I can't say what the zombies do - that's part of the surprise - but they reinforce her branding and serve as an Easter egg, making the people who find them feel special.

I make your world a happier, more fun, more delightful place.

Leave the business statements to the guys who use too much Night Swept. Tell me what you really do.

* I don't use that phrase ironically. I actually talk that way in real life.

Everyday Delight is a new tradition for me. Every week I list things in my everyday life that make me happier and improve my mood. It's important because I know that it's easier to focus on the negative than the positive - that's not a judgment, it's just how the human brain works - and so by listing the positives, I'm reminding myself that they outweigh the negatives. Please feel free to join in in the comments!

Today, I delight in...

• Alex being home! He spends his summers in California and comes back just in time for school, and he arrived today!
• Holly having a new office space, so she can get work done without being interrupted or having to use the bedroom as her office. (She's been having trouble with insomnia because she associates the bedroom with work, not sleep.
• Having a new perspective on the house, because when we set up Holly's new office, I took over her old desk, which is in a different spot. The house looks totally different!
• All the wonderful people who connected with me through yesterday's post. Thank you all. ♥
• A new project that I can't talk about yet, but that's going to be amazing.
• All of the support and enthusiasm I'm getting for Delightineering 101. I can't wait!
• Vanilla milkshakes. Mmm.
• Rediscovering old beloved books and stories. Re-reading is never so sweet as when you'd forgotten you owned a book.
• Update! Waking up this morning to find Alex's suitcase - which the airline left behind in Houston when he changed planes - on the front porch, safe and sound!

What's amazing, special, and delightful for you this week? Let us know in the comments! Shared delight is delight multiplied.

Hard to see the light now

It's 7:30 PM on Monday and I can't think of a post topic. I was supposed to have a post up this morning, but it's been a rough weekend, and I spent today moving furniture, and I've never managed to establish a post buffer. Now the deadline's coming - I know I have to have something up today or I'll let myself down - and nothing's coming to me.

I'm also stuck on new projects for Delight Specialist. I have Delightineering 101 - I honestly can't remember right now if I've mentioned it here or not, but if you haven't heard about it, it's a five-hour intensive introductory class on how to become a Delightineer - but beyond that I'm not sure what to do. I want to write the Delight Manifesto, but I don't know where to start. I want to write ebooks and make videos and record interviews, but at best I'm suffering from choice paralysis. I don't know where to go next.

And where to go next is a crucial juncture, because Delight Specialist is my only method of making money right now, and it's not making enough of it. If I make a mistake, if I choose the wrong path, then I'm forfeiting any money I'd have made if I'd gone down a better path - and if I choose the right path but do it the wrong way, the same thing will happen. So I feel like I need to choose the right one the first time, or I'm screwing myself and my family.

So I'm sitting here in front of my computer at 7:30 PM, terrified because I can't think of anything to say, terrified that I'm going to make the wrong choice, terrified that I'm going to make the right choice but then screw it up.

Just don't let it go

Sometimes it's not about delight. Sometimes it's about comfort. Sometimes it's about knowing that you're not the only one out there going through this.

If you're wracked by indecision, unable to figure out which path to take -

If you're scared to death that you're going to pick the wrong one, or - worse - pick the right one and then mess it up anyway -

If you just can't think of anything to do, and you're convinced that anything you do end up doing will come out wrong -

You are not alone.

No one is alone.

Someone is on your side

If you need to hear a friendly voice, call me. My phone number is 765-994-7081. I give that out without reservation. If I can't pick up, I will call you back, and I will listen. I won't charge you for the privilege. I won't pitch you at the end. I will be a warm shoulder, a friendly voice on the other end of the line, a reassurance that even when it is darkest, there is always, always light.

If you can't call, I'm etherjammer on Skype, etherjammerca on AIM, or etherjammer@gmail.com on Google Talk.

If you can't do any of those, send me an email at chris@delightspecialist.com.

If you need someone to be there, I promise that I will be there.

I hope that helps you. It certainly helps me.