The Power of Let’s

Nov 12, 2018 | Library Life

LIBRARY LIFE

The Power of Let’s

Written by Sarah Verno
17 April 2018
Everyone needs a “let’s” person in their life.

I was blessed to have one for 30 years. When it came to my ideas and interests, my mom was always the first to say, “Let’s find out.”

Instead of approaching an idea with, “Will this work?” my mom would ask, “What do we need to know and/or do to make this work?” Not all of my ideas were good let alone feasible, but this fundamental shift in thinking empowered me to try anything and everything with bravery and confidence.

There’s a unique courage that comes with knowing someone supports you enough to willingly take those first steps alongside you. “Let’s” tells someone you are worthy, you are heard, you are not alone, and you are not stuck.

When I started a cheerleading squad for special needs high schoolers, she said, “Let’s make the girls encouraging signs for their lockers!”  When I decided to start writing picture books, she said, “Let’s go to the library to get ideas!” When I was determined to make my own furniture, she said, “Let’s get you a drill,” and took me to the lumber store to pick out the perfect wood for my table.

Then one day she told me some very bad news, and I responded the best way I knew how, “Let’s check out the cancer resource center and get more information.” When it was a treatment day, I would pack her snacks and announce in a sing-song manner, “Leeeeet’s gooooo to cheeeee-mo!” When she started to lose her hair, I suggested, “Let’s try on wigs!” We tried on every style imaginable — laughing the whole way through. When the day came in hospice for my mom to take her final breaths, I said, “Let’s lie here together.” My dad held her hand, and my brother and I lay by her side until the slow beating in her chest was absorbed in stillness. 

My mom teaching me how to play golf.

Arizona, March 2007

Every time I walk into a library, I’m reminded of the beautiful impact my mom had on me simply by saying, “Let’s.” Librarians hold the same power to profoundly shape peoples’ realities and influence their lives. 
“Let’s” is the word that transforms a library experience into a life-changing experience. It is more than a contraction — it is an invitation.
“Let’s” is always inclusive, and just as my mom used it to affirm and support me, librarians have the privilege and responsibility to use “let’s” to empower patrons and their communities. 

So, whatever challenge may lie ahead of you today… Let’s do this.

My family (from the left: Wes, me, mom, and dad) celebrating the end of the first round of chemo treatments.

November 2015

Book Notes: “You are a Badass at Making Money”

Feb 12, 2018 | Musings

BOOK NOTES

You are a Badass at Making Money

Master the Mindset of Wealth

Book Written By Jen Sincero

Post by Sarah Verno

12 February 2018

“We all have seeds of unthinkable badassery inside of us.” – Jen Sinceroo

What I liked about the book: If nothing else, Jen Sincero’s book is a well-needed ego boost and reminder to stay focused and stay positive (which, let’s be real, all of us could use more of).

“Even if people think you are crazy, do whatever you choose to do with joy, gumption, and dedication so it will be your money maker and merry maker.”

What I didn’t care for:

I must admit that while the book has many inspiring points (as you’ll see below), I do not buy into the “Law of Attraction”* and am cautious of advice that relies substantially on self-manifestation. This book is saturated with one-liners and mantras that reflect this kind of mindset.

(*”Law of Attraction” = the New Thought philosophy of using the power of the mind to translate whatever is in our thoughts to materialize them into reality.)

I do believe, though, that what we think about and how we think about the world around us largely dictates how we experience life – e.g. that we are more likely to see positive things if we are committed to finding them – which is why so much of the content in this book is extremely beneficial. 

 

Habits and tidbits that lead to financial success:

  • Take risks
  • Stick to decisions
  • Address your fears about money
  • Set good boundaries
  • Give back
  • Work smart
  • Go to the spiritual gym
  • Delegate
  • Constantly learn
  • Stay disciplined
  • Focus
  • Practice patience
  • Surround yourself with other ass- kickers
  • Talk about ideas with other people
  • Get back up instead of giving up
  • Show up on time
  • Know what’s going on around you and what’s happening with your money
  • Have zero tolerance for negotiating with your habits
  • Stop devaluing your work**

**Especially when it comes to creative professions. Clients often don’t quite understand the amount of time, energy, and resources that go into it creative work. When you don’t charge what it’s worth (at minimum what it actually costs you to create the product), you give people an easy excuse to devalue your efforts and take advantage of you. People need to be invested in your work to rise to the occasion. “Demand people put on their big people pants and poney up,” as Jen Sincero says.

“Roll up your sleeves. Study those who have gone before you. Decide you’re unavailable to live your one and only life treating your dreams like they are not as important as your fear. Demand of yourself that you’ll figure it out and make it happen. We have, after all, figured out space travel and how to make jam out of a cactus – you can figure out how to flourish doing what you love.”

Jen Sincero

“You have to be as serious as a heart attach about creating an awesome life in order to crowbar yourself out of your comfort zone and make it happen.”

Jen Sincero

action leads to answers.

Not sure what you want to do with your life? Take action on what you do know. If there are bits and pieces that feel totally right, focus on those instead of waiting till you have the entire picture figured out. 

Stop pretending like you don’t know what you want to do when you’re really just scared to do it.

Change your habits, change your reality.

Consciously choosing what is in your mind and on your mouth will dictate your reality.

“What comes out of your mouth comes into your life.”

Jen Sincero

“Time wasted rationalizing the mediocre could be time spent creating the magnificent.”

Jen Sincero

Money gives you freedom and options.

You cannot give what you do not have. So, if you want to take care of others financially, you have to care about your own finances.

Badassery comes to those willing to take risks.

Detach from the can’ts, shouldn’ts, and wouldn’ts. Have the audacity to follow your heart instead of your fears.

When you figure out your deep seated beliefs about yourself and money, the key is to keep moving forward and not retreat into endless self analysis.

Agree to get really, really uncomfortable. Taking risks is uncomfortable. It’s a thrilling discomfort.

“Taking huge, scary leaps into the unknown is the best way to scare your BS to the surface anyway. it’s like a two for one deal – you make progress AND you unearth your shit.”

Jen Sincero

Change your habits, change your reality.

Consciously choosing what is in your mind and on your mouth will dictate your reality.

“What comes out of your mouth comes into your life.”

Jen Sincero

Your determination to make money must be bigger than your discomfort over what you have to do to make it.

Be ruthless with yourself. You don’t have to know exactly what you’re doing before you move forward. Get practiced on taking next steps. Practice. There’s as much to learn from falling on your face as hitting it out of the park.

“…Nature is forever moving, growing, changing, reproducing, evolving—it’s all the rage, even the damn Universe itself is expanding. Likewise, you are not meant to just survive, to stay stagnant, to settle; you are meant to keep growing and thrive… to reach your fullest expression of the you that is you, to inspire and birth awesomeness in others, and to use whatever resources you need along the way.”

Jen Sincero

“Vague aspirations lead to vague results. Specific aspirations lead to kicking ass.”

Jen Sincero

Be specific about what you want, and give yourself permission to go for it.

You’ve got to know what you want and why you want it to stay the course, make the mental shifts, and take the necessary risks. Be crystal clear on what the money is for, what it means to you, and how it makes you feel.

Fall in love with your vision “so it’s no match for self-limiting beliefs”. Have faith. Be grateful.

Become the grandest, most generous person possible

You are meant to thrive, and by thriving you help others to thrive.

You will be much more effective if you have the energy, options, and freedom that come from not being in financial struggle.

“Our world now more than ever needs as much generous, compassionate… people around to change this mother.”

Get caught up in your dreams, not your drama.

Investigate your BS and take steps forward. Don’t get caught in the cycle of self-help but never apply it to get somewhere.

You can have excuses or you can have success. But you can’t have both. It’s impossible to focus on one thing and see another. Getting trapped in worry keeps you from seeing other possibilities around you.

“I’m officially unavailable for any other outcome.”

Jen Sincero

Book Notes: “Option B”

Jan 13, 2018 | Musings

BOOK NOTES

Option B

Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy

Book Written By Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant

Written by Sarah Verno

13 JANUARY 2018

 “…A vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe.” If you’ve ever experience loss or trauma of any kind, the void as described by Sheryl Sandberg is likely a familiarly darkly and uncomfortable one. 

Sheryl Sandberg is the COO of Facebook and the founder of Leanin.org. She wrote her book, “Option B,” after the sudden death of her husband while they were vacationing with their kids in 2015. The tragedy left her with acute pains from grief, feelings of loneliness and helplessness for her children, and hopelessness for ever experiencing joy again.

With the help of Adam Grant, her psychologist friend from Wharton, Sheryl gives readers compelling and tangible ways people can overcome profound hardships and find strength and resilience in the face of painful adversities.

“Option A is not available, so let’s kick the shit out of Option B.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

“[Resilience] comes from gratitude for what’s good in our lives and from leaning in to the suck… I learned that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

There is always something to be thankful for.

Practice gratitude. Even when Option A doesn’t pan out, we still have options.There is always something to be thankful for.

“Although it can be extremely difficult to grasp, the disappearance of one possible self can free us to imagine a new possible self.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

When someone is hurting, just show up. Knowing that you are there is what makes a difference.

“We find our humanity—our will to live and our ability to love—in our connections to one another.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

People can’t become what they don’t see. If you don’t see growth as possible, you won’t find it.

We must learn to have “grounded hope” –  the understanding that if we take action we can make things better.

“Well all need other people… but at the end of the day, the only person who can move my life ahead, make me happy, and build a new life for my kids, is me.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

“I thought resilience was the capacity to endure pain… Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity—and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.”

Sheryl Sandberg

Tragedy does not have to be personal, pervasive, or permanent, but resilience can be.

Three P’s stunt recovery: 

Personalization (belief that we are at fault), Pervasiveness (that it will affect all areas of our life), and Permanence (that the aftershocks of an event will last forever).

If you can keep these in perspective, you are more likely to decrease depression, improve performance, and recover more quickly from trauma.

“Resilience] comes from gratitude for what’s good in our lives and from leaning in to the suck… I learned that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

Make friends with your own demons.

When life really sucks, accept it. Instead of being surprised by negative feelings, expect them. Acceptance lessens the pain.

Post-traumatic growth is possible, and so is pre-traumatic growth.

It’s possible to fall forward and grow in these five ways:

    1. Finding personal strength
    2. Gaining appreciation
    3. Forming deeper relationships
    4. Discovering more meaning in life
    5. Seeing new possibilities

Also, you don’t have to experience tragedy personally to build your resilience for whatever lies ahead.

“Even when we’re in great distress, joy can still be found in moments we seize and moments we create. Cooking. Dancing. Hiking. Praying. Driving. Singing Billy Joel songs off-key. All of these can provide relief from pain. And when these moments add up, we find that they give us more than happiness; they also give us strength.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

“I am more vulnerable than I thought, but much stronger than I ever imagined.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

Other quoteable content:

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

“In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus

“Some things in life cannot be fixed, they can only be carried.” Megan Devine

“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Holocaust survivor and Psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl

“Psychologists have found that over time we usually regret the chances we missed, not the chances we took.”

“A day of joy is fifteen minutes. A day of pain is fifteen years. No one pretends this is easy, but the job of life is to make those fifteen minutes into fifteen years and those fifteen years into fifteen minutes.”

“Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. It comes from gratitude for what’s good in our lives and from leaning in to the suck. It comes from analyzing how we process grief and from simply accepting that grief. Sometimes we have less control than we think. Other times we have more. I learned that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again.”

Lessons & Implications for Businesses:

Teams that focus on learning from failure outperform those that don’t.

When it’s safe to talk about mistakes, people are more likely to report errors and less likely to make them.

Adam has published five different studies demonstrating that meaningful work buffers against burnout.

In companies, nonprofits, government, and the military, he finds that the more people believe their jobs help others, the less emotionally exhausted they feel at work and the less depressed they feel in life. And on days when people think they’ve had a meaningful impact on others at work, they feel more energized at home and more capable of dealing with difficult situations.

“When companies fail, it’s usually for reasons that almost everyone knows but almost no one has voiced. When someone isn’t making good decisions, few have the guts to tell that person, especially if that person is the boss.”

Sheryl Sandberg, author of “Option B”

How Photography Captured My Heart

Sep 22, 2014 | Musings

Musings

How Photography Stole My Heart

Written by Sarah Verno

SEPTEMBER 2014

I WILL NEVER FORGET THE MOMENT A PHOTOGRAPH WRECKED ME.

I was standing in a Denver exhibition of Pulitzer Prize-wining photographs, enjoying my afternoon until I turned the corner and saw it. My breathing slowed and a dry swallow painfully forced its way down my throat. My eyes fixated on the frail African baby curled up in the desert foliage. Starving to death. As my focus widened to take in the full frame of the photo, I noticed a dark figure eerily lurking in the background – a vulture. It was waiting. Expectantly.

 

IN THAT MOMENT, I felt a compelling URGE TO WANT TO RESPOND, to TAKE ACTION – to DO SOMETHING.

Everything in me wanted to reach out and hold that baby close to my heart, to do anything that would somehow remedy this horrifying scene. I didn’t know what action I should take, but that deep-rooted feeling that I should and can do something has stuck with me to this day.

Curiosity led my eyes to the photo description. Hoping to find an answer to what happened to the child, a sheering pain shot down my spine and my muscles clenched: after taking the picture that had just moved me to tears, the photographer walked away from the whole thing.

And did nothing.

 

The best photographs inspire action, and the best photographers take part in that action.

As a humanitarian and travel photographer, I decided then and there to prioritize people over pictures. My purpose was clear: to deeply love the people I captured, to invest time and compassion in getting to know them and share their unique stories, and to do whatever I could to leave them better off than how I found them.

Some days, that meant I played with the disabled children before I even thought about pulling out my camera. Other times it meant drinking chai on the workroom floor with ladies in the slums of India. Whatever it took, my focus was not only capturing what a person did, but also who that individual was.

This perspective changed my photography, changed my experiences, and ultimately changed my life. I am forever grateful for the role photography has played in shaping me into the person I am today.

Design for Good

Jan 13, 2013 | Musings

DESIGN

Design for Good: A Look at Colorado 2012

Written by Sarah

December 2012

It was a hellofa year for Colorado, first with the wildfires and then the movie theater shooting in Aurora.

There are so many ways people got involved and gave back to help the families affected by these devastating circumstances, and the inspired outpouring from artists in response and desire to help has been remarkable.

Graphic design played an important role this summer in communicating and mobilizing people in the wake of tragedy. Design enabled Colorado to “go viral” in the midst of these horrific events and get the help and resources we needed.

(For some examples, check out this Denver Post article, “Businesses step up to support Colorado wildfire victims”)

“In all of our interactions with our local people, we have seen first hand how our city and state has risen up to the challenge of these fires… has risen up together as a community.” – Wild Fire Tees

Wildfire Tees

In 2012, Colorado experienced 4,167 wildfires resulting in 32,000 people being evacuated from their homes and some $538 million in property losses. “A fire of epic proportions,” as described by the Colorado Springs Fire Chief Rich Brown.

Colorado Springs Waldo Canyon wildfire forces thousands to flee flames (2012)

Source: The Guardian, 27 June 2012

Here are some of the creative ways people used design to aid in the relief efforts.

“T-shirt fundraiser for Colorado wildfire relief takes off”
Source: NBC News Feature)

The shirt that started it all…

Design by Austin Buck of CoPilot Creative

“We wanted to create a badge of honor, a symbol of remembrance for this tragedy, those affected by it, and the indomitable spirit of our communities that continue to fight. Colorado is burning, but we stand strong.” – Wild Fire Tees

 

More Disco design by Mike Solo of Hello Image

Hope Spreads by Matt Stevens

“There are so many things in our lives that we take for granted. The car will start; the light will turn on when we flip the switch; our families will have a safe place to sleep for the night. The thought of losing it all is one I can barely fathom, but knowing that’s what many have been faced with in the Colorado wildfires inspires me to action….” -Matt

Spread the LOVE design by Design Rangers

 

Phoenix design by Last Leaf

 

Fire Mountain design by Jay Fanelli

 

Let’s See Your Rain Dance design by Mathew Sisson

 

Fight Fire by Fixer Creative

“The only way to truly conquer these fires is with a resolve to stand up to this tragedy, with a fire in our belly that says, ‘We will fight this fire, and we will win.’ We will fight fire with fire.”  – Wild Fire Tees

“While flames from the Waldo Canyon Fire poured down the hill 30 feet from where he stood, Jeremey rushed to evacuate his family from his home on Tuesday, June 26.

Although his house is still standing, as of the launch of this shirt, Jeremey and his family still can’t return to his home and don’t know when they will return, or what they will return to.

This design comes right from the front lines, capturing the spirit of all who have been so affected by the fires in our state. We will rebuild.”  – Wild Fire Tees (June 30, 2012)

Colorado Rise design by Don Clark of Invisible Creature

“Thankfully, there is always a new day. Rise.” – Don Clark

Design by Ryan Brinkerhoff

“This tee from Ryan Brinkerhoff with Bandito Design Co. sums up why we are giving money to Colorado Springs Together and NoCo Rebuilding Network.” – Wild Fire Tees

Persevere by Tristan Plank of HF Designworks.

 

Tree Huggers Unite design by Michael Hefner of Starley Design

 

Design by Last Leaf

 

Design by Jackson Latka of Tuxedo Ranch

 

Unite CO design by Jared Rippy

 

Design by Ken Roberts of 4240 Architecture.

 

C is for Courage design by Luke Flowers

 

Bring the Rain design by Ben Lew

 

Stay Wild kid’s tee by Wild Fire Tees

 

Design on the fly

Other designers also emerged during this time. Whether it was to create graphics for merch or imagery for social media, for profit/fundraising or for free, it was an honor to see the design community come together bolster each other’s creativity.. 

Helicopter tries to put out Waldo Canyon wildfire as it moved into subdivisions and destroyed homes in Colorado Springs (June 2012)

Source: The Atlantic | June 27, 2012

Disaster relief posters created by Colorado resident, Steve Lowtwait

Source: Steve Lowtwait Website)

Example of a social media banner that started popping up everywhere.

Colorado merch designed by Douglas Koke and Soapoint benefitting the relief effort in 2012
Source: The Denver Egotist)

Colorado Wildfire Sources: