What Are You Resisting? (Part 2)
By: Lori T. Williams, Owner/Managing Attorney of Your Legal Resource, PLLC
Some time ago I wrote an article called “What Are You Resisting?” (Click here for prior article). I find myself on the other side of resistance once again, and need to tell you about the experience. While I’ve entitled this post “part 2” of my resistance story, it’s most likely part 999, as I’ve experienced a fair amount of resistance during my 45 years on this planet.
I’ve felt such a positive shift in productivity and joy, ever since I gave up resisting something this past weekend. Technology was the object of my resistance, and since Saturday it has truly become my friend. The technology tool in particular that I’m speaking of is my blackberry. I never had one before, until Saturday. I probably sound like the person who had to talk themselves into getting a fax machine or a cell phone, back in the day. Sadly, I recently needed help reconnecting my fax line after getting confused by the sea of wires under my desk and accidently disconnecting the fax line one day while trying to do something else, and I couldn’t use it for awhile. The person who helped me with that also showed me how to scan for the first time. My machine actually copies, faxes, prints, and scans, but I could only use two of those functions for awhile. And as for my cell phone, it looked prehistoric. Beat up, barely functional, but free! I was finally motivated to “invest” in a new computer (last one 5 yrs old), and a blackberry, by my social media coach. The computer I purchased was recommended and optimized by one of my tech professionals, who said I’d be taking a quantum leap in technology over my last computer. He was right!
You know what it’s like if you are a business owner. You pay for what you have to have, not what you want to have. At least that’s how I operate. My outdated technology was actually slowing me down and these new tools started to become a “have to have”. I convinced myself that it would be cheaper to have a blackberry than a laptop, and I’ve never really wanted a laptop anyway (more resistance), and my blackberry could be like a portable office once I got the calendar, social media apps, email, and phone all in sync. Sounded good, and logical, and cost effective. The reality was even better!
I took my blackberry with me to attend an event called a “pie-up”. This is a networking meeting (meet up) at Grand Traverse Pie Company with local people (tweeps) from the Twitter community. It tends to attract a lot of men; I guess they like pie or eat it more than women! And it tends to attract lots of techies, of which I am not. (Like I had to tell you!) But I didn’t get stopped by the fact that I’m a non-techie woman. I thought, “hey at the very least I can eat some amazing quiche!” The event was supposed to last from 8am to 10am, and I left at 2pm! Both the event and the quiche were amazing, and I couldn’t pull myself away from the place. I got so much techno love from all the knowledgeable experts in attendance on how to make my blackberry work for me. I asked this one how to enable ubertwitter, and that one how to create my signature block with the stroke of one key, and another how to enable linked in. Before the event I managed to set up all my email accounts on my blackberry. Now I know why they call it a crackberry!
I had an immediate increase in productivity once all the tools were enabled, and I was tweeting like nobody’s business, facebooking, taking calls, making calls, emailing, getting referrals, giving referrals, thinking of articles and blogs to write, etc. I never imagined that I could do so much work away from my home office, and enjoy it so much! In my mind, there is networking and there is working, and they don’t usually happen in the same place. What was cool about today, was that long after the networking event ended, several of us just stayed and worked independently. We would pause from our work to chat here and there, about all sorts of stuff. (ie. A tweet one of us read on twitter, a question I had about my blackberry, “can you believe we’re still here?”, etc). We were all doing important, productive things, outside of our offices, and were really enjoying working separately, yet together.
Today was a breakthrough in technology, in networking, in overcoming more resistance, in increased productivity, and in being able to do business anywhere anytime. For years I’ve heard people talk about being able to do business from a laptop on a beach. Maybe I’ll get there one day. For now, the blackberry is sufficient!
