Decision Making – Page 21 – mardihumphreys.com

It’s Complicated

B2B holiday gift giving was tricky without the constraints of COVID-19. Now, it’s practically a minefield. Does your company have the budget to give corporate gifts nine months into a pandemic? If teams are mostly working from home, will your gift end up at an empty office? Will your clients accept a gift when they can’t possibly know how many unaware-coronavirus-carriers have touched it? When choosing gifts for clients this year, here are five things to consider.

Surprise And Please

Don’t buy people stuff they don’t want just to buy them something.They’re your clients, part of your job is finding out what they like. What have they joked about in meetings? What does their website say about them? Has your sales staff left clues in your CRM? What is on their LinkedIn profiles interests lists? Strive to give gifts that both surprise and please. For example, you could send a gift-wrapped case of quality toilet paper. They won’t be expecting it (surprise) and it gives you the opportunity to make them laugh (please). Hopefully 2020 will be the only holiday season where toilet paper is considered a gift.

Set Reasonable Expectations

Even if your business is growing during COVID-19, it’s counterproductive to flaunt that happy circumstance with an expensive corporate gift. If you give your clients an over-the-top gift this year, what will they expect next year? You are not trying to buy their loyalty. An extravagant gift leaves the impression you’re blissfully ignorant of the current economic climate. The easiest thing for you to do is to give all your clients the same gifts, but they don’t all pay you the same amount, right? (Helpful hint: if they paid you $1000 this year, a $90 gift is appropriate.) Your goal is twofold. One: demonstrate appreciation. Two: emphasize your relationships with these clients are important to you. The same goes for not spending enough money on client gifts. A coffee mug with your logo on it may daily remind them of you, but not in a good way. This is the year to scrutinize your list and decide which clients will receive a gift and which clients will receive a season’s greetings thank-you note.

Think Small

We’re all in this pandemic together. Buying gifts from local small businesses is a win-win-win. You acknowledge the importance of small businesses to the community in which you and your clients work. You remind your clients what a great community you both live and work in. You and your clients help sustain another business in your community. Most retail small businesses offer gift cards, home-town themed gifts, and some even offer contactless delivery.

Donate To Their Favorite Charity

Give in accordance with both your company’s and your clients’ company values. Your clients are people. They will remember who supported the community during these hard times. This gesture declares you appreciate the relationship your businesses have so much that you want to support the charitable organizations they care about; especially during the pandemic.

Wait For It

Your clients may be receiving lots of holiday gifts right now and yours could get lost in the pile. Think about waiting until January and giving a New Year’s present. This would set you apart, and, thanks to the pandemic, you have a great angle: “Good Riddance 2020!” or “Wishing You a New Year of Both Hope and Growth!”

What is your company gifting your clients this holiday season? Please share your ideas in the comments.

Can You Feel the Heat?

This COVID Christmas feels off just enough to make us lose our balance. For example, our daughter called me during her commute home the other night. She was stressed. She’d spent eight mask-wearing-social-distancing hours at her office and was rushing home in Chicago traffic to set up the work station in her apartment. She was scheduled to guest on a college’s webcast to promote her company to their student listeners. As I tried to extinguish the fire of her burnout over the phone from 316 miles away and five minutes before Jeopardy!, she accused me of speaking in lyrics from Hamilton, an American Musical. Can you blame me? It has several relatable scenes of characters striving for work-life balance; “Non-Stop” being the most obvious.

The focus of the song “Non-Stop” is Alexander Hamilton writing The Federalist Papers, but he’s got a lot going on in addition. He’s practicing law. He’s a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He’s distracted by Angelica Schuyler’s move to London and impending marriage. His wife, Eliza, pressures him to accompany her and their children on a summer vacation to her dad’s place, and George Washington enlists him to lead the Treasury Department. Alexander was both working from home and homing from work. Sound familiar?

Maybe you don’t practice law, but you do own a business
You aren’t a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but maybe you are a board chair
Maybe you aren’t distracted by a friend moving across the ocean, but you are preoccupied by your child’s intent to move into his college’s student housing
Maybe you aren’t being pressured by your wife to accompany her and your children to the in-law’s place for a holiday, but, wait; maybe you are
Maybe you haven’t been approached to lead the Treasury Department, but you are concerned about leading your sales department through the rest of Q4

Add the holiday season to any one of the above scenarios and you’re on the road to burnout. So what can you do? Tap the brakes.

Ways to Combat Holiday Burnout

Take a day (or even just half a day) of vacation and get your hair done; particularly if you get a paid holiday off this month. The extra time spent on your appearance will make you feel better
Phone a friend. We’re all feeling a little mental right now. Find out how he is coping. Stay connected to people; especially the ones you care about and who care about you
Find your release. Take a walk outside. Listen to a true-crime podcast. Take a power nap. Snuggle your pet. Browse memes. Whatever it is, take fifteen minutes to decompress
Change your scenery. If you’re working from home, don’t conference call in the same room every time
Do something holiday themed. Wrap a Hanukkah gift. Bake Christmas cookies. Plan the Karamu menu. Switch to egg nog instead of coffee

I can’t believe I just suggested a drink other than coffee.

What are you doing to battle holiday burnout? Please share your tips and tricks in the comments section.

You Can Do Hard Things

Merriam-Webster defines resilience as a noun meaning “1: the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by cohesive stress and 2: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Thanks to the pandemic, I can apply both of these definitions to my life. 1: My strained body needs to recover its shape after the deformation caused by COVID-19’s cohesive stress. 2. I strive to adjust to pandemic-induced change, but the constant pivoting makes me nauseous.

TMI

For this discussion, let’s stick with the second definition. We talked about a form of resilience in this earlier post. Other ways to think of resilience are Viktor Frankl’s theory of Tragic Optimism, Friedrich Nietzsche’s adage what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and even the Serenity Prayer. (I like Erma Bombeck’s version at the bottom of page 11.)

IRL

It’s physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting to think about our ingrained routines and adjust them for COVID-19. For example: Let’s say you’re a mom with a husband and two kids, one school age and one younger. You work in an office and your husband is a trucker. Every morning pre-pandemic, you:

Kissed your husband goodbye
Dropped your younger child at daycare
Dropped your older child at school
Hit your favorite coffee shop
Went to the office

Now, your husband is constantly on the road, your children are home, and your favorite coffee shop is closed. You’re working from home, but need faster internet to accommodate both your teleconferences and your older child’s online school. Overwhelmed? Resilience is taking baby steps toward solutions.

Buy some quality coffee and make yourself a pot
Call your internet provider and upgrade your speed
Tell your husband you’ll be thinking about him while he’s on his route today
Color with your youngest
Listen to your oldest’s struggle with an assignment
Email your manager. How is he doing? What is the one thing he’d like you to accomplish today?

Whew, you did it! You made it through the day! Take a deep breath and relax.

FTW

COVID-19 fatigue is real. You can get through any trial when you know it’s going to end; like a pregnant woman in labor. With no end in sight, you have to adjust your goals. In his book, Survival Psychology, John Leach describes transitioning from short term survival behavior to long term survival behavior. It seems very similar to the grieving process (e.g., shock, denial, anger, acceptance). One key is self-discipline, but be careful of thinking in absolutes like, “I’ve blown my diet by eating one cookie, so I may as well eat the whole bag.” One lapse does not ruin anything. Try again. Another key is your value system. Keep reminding yourself who you are and what you do. For example, say out loud to yourself:

I’m (your name)
I’m a (what you do) for my clients (or team)
The most important task for me to accomplish today is (your number one priority)
The next step to getting it done is (you get the idea).

Silly? Maybe, but it helps you to both focus and prioritize. Filter your priority list through the company’s current mission statement, which may have shifted because of COVID-19. (E.g., your company went from producing rum to hand sanitizer.) The company’s purpose should drive your daily tasks.

How is your company helping you be resilient? Please share in the comments section.

Gratitude Works

Thanksgiving is the time of year we discuss gratitude, but 90% of Americans started talking about it a few weeks into the quarantine as a way to fight stress. COVID-19 has given us plenty of time to think. If we dwell on what we’ve lost instead of what we’re grateful for, we’ll get depressed. Research indicates practicing gratitude has physical health benefits like better sleep, a stronger immune system, and lower blood pressure. It also benefits the health of your business.

With a Bit of a Mind Flip

Pre-COVID-19, gratitude in your workplace may have looked like Free Doughnut Fridays, employee of the month awards, or celebratory team lunches at the country club. Those are nice, but they don’t inspire company loyalty. Historically, work is a place for competition. Everyone battling for the same promotion or the biggest percentage of the limited raise pool. Would it surprise you to learn the key to retaining talented people is expressing gratitude, exhibiting patience, and excusing mistakes? When these habits are ingrained in a company’s culture and practiced by everyone from the C-Suite on down, they create a place where employees want to work. Why should you thank someone for what they’re paid to do? Studies indicate employees who feel valued are not only more productive, but also support the company’s goals. Gratitude reinforces trust. It bonds teams and reduces employee burnout which are especially important right now during the pandemic. Expressing gratitude is not only good for the person receiving appreciation, but also for the person giving it. Using positive words, recognizing a coworker for their contribution, or thanking a direct report’s effort, alters the mindset of the praise giver. You feel good when you see you’ve made someone else feel good.

I Have to Praise You Like I Should

The holiday season is a logical time to begin the habit of a company-wide gratitude practice, but don’t stop January 2. Put triggers in place to keep it going throughout the new year. Gratitude isn’t a feeling, it’s an action, so you must choose to express it and can give it anytime. The key is consistency. Think about putting someone in charge of identifying employees who deserve recognition and determining how they should receive it. For example, if an individual contributor is shy, putting him on speaker view at the company-wide teleconference to thank him may backfire. Being the center of attention may embarrass instead of appreciate him. Something else to consider: it’s logical to praise success, but you can be grateful for failure too. Every failed iteration of your process brings you closer to the solution. This allows you to thank team members for their soft skills (e.g., patience, perseverance), as well as their job performance. It’s work to give sincere thanks and make sure everyone is included, but the ROI can be huge. An employee who feels appreciated does more than the bare minimum her job requires.

COVID-19 Era Gratitude Suggestions:

Thank you emails – to individual contributors from their managers
Thankful Thursdays – managers send reminders to individual contributors to thank a team mate for something they helped with this week
Begin 1:1s with something you appreciate (e.g., unique insights, positive attitude, critical thinking, sense of humor) this can come from either the manager or the individual contributor
Create a page on the company’s website devoted to staff thanking each other

How does your company thank its employees? Please tell us about it in the comments section.

Thank You, Future Self

As the global pandemic drags on and reshapes our economy, I’ve learned a few things. Spending our money on local small businesses is more important than ever, I can make really good coffee at home, and I should not look at my 401 (k) statement right now. What are some things you can do to financially sustain yourself through this seemingly endless crisis?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Reduce – It may be difficult to increase your income right now, but you can find ways to save it. You aren’t driving your vehicle as much as you did pre-COVID-19, so you’re saving money on gas, oil changes, and wear and tear. Working (or not) from home eliminates the need for walking around money (e.g., money spent on coffee shops, lunches out, parking fees, etc.). You’re saving money simply by not being able to spend it. This should have added up fairly significantly eight months into the stay-at-home order. Move that money to your long-term savings account where it will earn interest.

Reuse – Stay away from online shopping. Yes, those yoga pants you found on Amazon are cute, but don’t you already have three pair of cute yoga pants? Cancel automatic renewals. Don’t you have enough goodies from Watch Gang, Trendy Butler, or BREO BOX to last a while?

Recycle – Compare your monthly expenses from February to October. Note any savings and why they happened. Can you sustain any of the circumstances that caused those savings once the world opens up more? For example, you saved money by working from home. Is it possible to make remote work more permanent? You’ve probably already thought about it, so take the next step and make a list of what it would require. Then, you’ll be ready with a plan to present to your manager when the time is right.

Let’s Make a Deal

Credit card companies make money selling debt and counting on you to pay it back with interest. If you have run up over $5000 in charges, (especially if you’ve lost your job) call your lender. Ask them to suspend payments for two months and to permanently lower your interest rate. Do not take them up on their offer to sell you more debt. With so many borrowers unable to repay due to COVID-19, credit card companies are in a bind and willing to work with you now more than ever. Take this opportunity to renegotiate the terms of your credit agreement. A new arrangement will protect your credit score.

You Can’t Touch This

Your assets are low right now, so don’t sell them. If you have a 401(k) and/or an IRA and get scared easily, don’t look at your account statements. If you get another stimulus check, consider putting it in your IRA if you can currently live without it. The people who managed to save money back in the recession of 2008 are still hitting their long-term savings targets. You have more financial support from the government than during the last recession. It’s not a lot, but it’s useful.

It feels like the pandemic will last forever, but nothing does, so resist the urge to live for today and think of your future self and what that person will need: food, clothing, and shelter. Even if you move just $25 a week to your long-term savings account, after one year, that’s $1300 your future self can live on.

How are you resisting the urge to panic over your budget? Please share in the comments section.

Getting to Know You

I’ve disappointed Rick Springfield. He told me not to talk to strangers, but I lean more toward young Forrest Gump’s philosophy of business development. There are plenty of services that allow your sales team to send hundreds of emails extolling the virtues of your products/services to strangers. There are even companies with the technology to make hundreds of cold calls for you and when the prospect answers the phone, transfer the call to a sales rep waiting to pitch. I’m usually a big fan of automation, but why would a company reveal their pain points to you when they don’t know, like, or trust you yet? This is why Relationship Marketing is so important.

What Is It?

Relationship Marketing is simply building long-term, trusting relationships with strangers; essentially, developing clients into friends. When your friends face challenges, you want to be the first person they contact for a solution. You should feel the same way about your clients. People need to know you’re authentic in order to trust you. You must be the same person to your clients as you are to your cousins. Unless you’re Tom Hanks, you can’t act like different people in your relationships. Being inauthentic is exhausting and counterproductive.

How Does It Work?

Mom is right. If you want to make a friend, be a friend. Take the initiative. Network. Communicate. Be curious. Provide value without an agenda. Businesses are run by people. Go where the people are. Get personal. Do your homework. There is so much information at your fingertips (e.g., company websites, LinkedIn, business newspapers/websites), find out what their business does and their role in it. Figure out how you can help. The companies you want to partner with need revenue to survive. How can your company help them either attract customers, or save money on their operations? Do they have a problem your company doesn’t fix? Do you know someone who does? Introduce them. While this doesn’t bring you revenue now, proving you want what’s best for their business demonstrates you can be trusted to put their interests before your own. Have a mindset of their success means your success. We get further together than we do on our own.

Why Does It Work?

Giving your clients great experiences differentiates your company from your competition. You have to go beyond persuading them to believe in your brand. Your clients want to be seen. They want you to help them solve their unique issues. They want to give you permission to be on their team. They do not want content forced on them. They want to learn what your company has to offer and what you can do for them in their own time using the communication channels they favor. I can’t think of one business owner who enjoys having their day interrupted by a cold sales call or sifting through all the cold emails they daily receive. However, I can think of several who appreciated a congratulations-on-your-latest-success LinkedIn message.

How do you make new friends in this COVID-19 enhanced Relationship Marketing era? Please share your story in the comments section.

Vuja de (This is Not a Typo)

As a result of COVID-19, a major employer in my community has decided to have their 1600 employees permanently work from home. This could signal the beginning of a mass transition to permanent remote work for many of us. Obviously, there are some jobs that cannot be done from home (waiter, mail carrier, fire fighter, etc.), but if you used to be in an office under the watchful eye of your supervisor and now she’s not in your residence dictating how you spend 40 hours a week, this is a chance to vuja de your role.

Vuja de means looking at something familiar in an unfamiliar way. Before the pandemic, did you feel limited? Did you have little control over how you did your job or what tasks you had to accomplish? The upheaval of quarantine is a logical time to explore aligning your passions, abilities, and standards with your job. For example: Let’s imagine your job is recruiting college seniors for internships. One of your tasks is to discuss next steps with them and answer their questions. Pre-COVID protocol was to spend hours at the office surprising them all individually with an unscheduled phone call. This is a perfect time to book a teleconference and invite a dozen interns to attend. This saves you time, allows recruits to meet whom they’ll work with, and prompts follow-up questions relevant to the whole group; questions no one thinks to ask when put on the spot during a spontaneous phone call.

We have an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate we can adjust our positions to better fit both our strengths and our needs and still get our work done; in fact maybe even get more work done. At the beginning of sheltering from home, most employers were skeptical full-time employees would actually work the traditional 40 hours every week. Turns out, they were right. Research indicates employees are working longer to prove we’re actually productive. With a long term crisis on our hands, we’re compelled to view our jobs as flexible because the conditions under which we perform them have to be.

During this time of returning to the office, we can ask ourselves, “What needs to get done?” “When is the best time to do it?” “Where is the best place to do it?” For example, if you’re working on a budget report, and you need to concentrate, the best time and place for you may be 11:00PM in your home office while everyone else is asleep. But if you’re brainstorming ways to automate a client’s requisition process, you may need to be in the office with your team and a wall full of whiteboards. The tasks should dictate the schedule and venue and will likely produce a hybrid model of working from both home and the office.

It would be wise to document your responsibilities since sheltering at home began. What projects have you completed? How much time did you spend? Who worked with you? How did you communicate (e.g., in person or remote)? You can use this data to produce a case study for your manager proving the benefits, both to her and the company, of allowing you the freedom to vuja de your role.

How have you adjusted your job description during the pandemic? Please share in the comments section.

Self-sufficient Social Security

The headline in our wealth manager’s newsletter read: “Almost Nine Out of Ten Women Qualify for Social Security on Their Own.” I wondered, “Why is this newsletter worthy?”

Milestone

More women enter the workforce every year. Since most people have to earn 40 credits to retire, you have to work (and pay into Social Security) for at least 10 years to qualify for retirement benefits. The fact that the percentage of women ages 62 to 64 who meet these requirements based on their own work records has risen 24% since 1980, means women are staying in the workforce long enough to earn their own benefits.

How it Works

There are three types of Social Security benefits: retirement, disability, and survivors. In a nutshell, when you are employed by an organization where the Social Security Administration (SSA) takes a percentage of your paycheck in taxes, it uses those wages to fund a program that distributes payments to retirees, the disabled, and their families who qualify. The assumption is eventually most Americans will qualify for Social Security and draw money from it. We’ll stick to retirement benefits for this conversation. To qualify for SSA retirement funds, you must reach your full retirement age, accumulate enough credits, and apply for it. Here is a good explanation of Social Security benefits.

What Women Should Know

Almost 55% of people receiving Social Security retirement benefits are women. Not only do women earn their own benefits, they can qualify for a spouse’s benefits. This is significant because women tend to live longer and earn less than their spouses. Social Security will not be as much money as your current paycheck. You can expect it to be about 40% of what you’re currently earning. Social Security should only be part of your retirement plan. You can use it as a foundation to build on. If your employer offers a 401(k) (or a 403(b)) plan, you should participate. If your employer contributes to it as well as invests a percentage of your paycheck for you, contribute at least as much as they do and increase your percentage beyond their contribution every year. It would also be wise to open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). The current rule of thumb is saving 15% of your income for retirement. Three sources of retirement income seems like overkill, but a quick Google search indicates a nest egg of $1,000,000 will only last 19 years in retirement. Social Security benefits last until you die, but you won’t receive the same amount throughout your retirement. Payments are made monthly and usually by direct deposit. Every year, the SSA considers adjusting retirees’ payments for inflation and decides whether or not it will increase them to reflect the cost of living. The SSA has explanations for how changing your name, becoming disabled, or divorced or widowed affects your social security benefits. You can read about it here.

The increase in women who earn their own Social Security benefits means more people are paying into the program. It also means more people intend to be paid from it. Could this be an incentive to prompt thinking on how we can empower more women to stay in the workforce so Social Security can sustain funds?

What do you think? Please share your opinion in the comments section.

I Wish I’d Known

“Mom had made sure we were exposed to ideas and information that were not available to her as a young woman.” Brene Brown, Rising Strong

When I ran across that quote, it reminded me there are umpteen things I want my daughter to know about work because she’s a woman. Here are three.

Assertive and Likable

If you intend to be a leader, that violates current gender stereotypes. Research shows when a woman’s behavior violates gender stereotypes, it’s harder for her to advance in the organization. At my first full-time job, a male coworker chuckled at me, “Stop working so hard. You’re making the rest of us look bad.” The very behavior that could put me on a leadership path, made him uncomfortable. I navigated this by asking for help and including others (particularly male colleagues) when making decisions. To get promoted, I had to be both assertive and likable and that is not easy. Unfortunately, the business world hasn’t changed much.

Work-life Balance

If your job is building dependent (e.g., hospital, school, grocery), you have a better shot at work-life balance because you leave your work at the building. But you may be putting in more hours there keeping up with the demands of COVID-19, particularly if you work a frontline job. The pandemic revealed plenty of jobs aren’t tied to a specific building and can be done any time of day, blurring the line between work and home. As a woman, the work-life balancing act is more difficult thanks to stereotypical gender roles. The term work-life balance has a negative connotation, as if work isn’t part of your life. I suggest you strive for work-life integration. Pre-pandemic, this worked particularly well for those who have control over how and where they spend their workday. COVID-19 forced more employers to not only allow employees to work remotely, but also consider the possibility of making remote work a permanent option. Consequently, you have more opportunity to shape your day now than ever before and for the foreseeable future. It’s easy to go overboard and work too much, and there will be times when work is slow and life demands more of your attention. But if you create a schedule, coordinate with your partner and kids, unplug regularly to intentionally rest, work-life integration is more practical than work-life balance.

Own Your Success

In school, you work hard and get noticed. That doesn’t happen in the workforce. You have to promote yourself. First, internalize the fact you earned the right to recognition. We tend to remember our failures better than our successes, so keep a running list of your wins (e.g., attained goals set in your last performance review, clients you’ve landed, the number of clicks on the page you created for the company’s website). Second, accept compliments. Women are famous for diluting our achievements. We attribute our success to luck or we overshare credit. You work hard; accept recognition for it. This is not bragging. Just say thank you. Express gratitude for the contributions of coworkers who helped you, but don’t exaggerate their efforts and underestimate yours.

What advice do you give your daughters about work? Please share in the comments section.

A Mind at Work

I got offended at work. I sought clarity from a couple outsiders. Both suggested I check my ego. Turns out, ego doesn’t always mean liking ourselves too much. Do you know ego also causes us to stay quiet to protect ourselves from perceived harm?

Fight or Flight

The fight or flight response kicks in whenever our sense of self is challenged. If we find our identity in our job and we’re asked to do something that’s not our job, (e.g., a CEO asked to serve coffee at a board meeting) our boundary is crossed and fight or flight activates. This could look like getting defensive, “I’m the CEO, not the barista.” Or, allowing the breach, “Do you want cream and sugar?” Ego can convince us to do things that undermine our success. For example: If I binge watch Hulu the night before a webinar instead of rehearsing, when I deliver a lousy presentation, I can blame Hulu instead of acknowledging my failure. If I give a lousy presentation, it’s unlikely I’ll be asked to give another one, thus preventing the possibility of future failure. Ego mitigates risk for us to protect our self-esteem, but that protection may deny us opportunity for future success.

Ego or Calling

Both feed ambition, produce comparable results, and spur us to work hard. Is calling healthy and ego not? Actually, they need to work together. Ego is our mind’s bodyguard. It protects us from worrying so much about what others think that we’re too paralyzed to make decisions. It’s the version of ourselves everyone sees. But its operating system is based on fear. Its tone is urgent, implying something bad will happen if we stop hammering away at the project. Ego needs to be balanced by calling. Calling is our authentic self. It whispers reminders of what we care about and encourages us to see our work through its filter.

Asset or Liability

The boss wants employees who get things done. She’s likely too busy with her own responsibilities to monitor ours. How will she know we do good work unless we tell her? Ego can help us track when we go above and beyond our job descriptions, especially when those efforts pay off big time for the company. This is not bragging. This is owning the fruits of our labor. If we have regular 1:1s with our managers, that is the time to shine, but if not, we can draw on ego to prepare a list for the next performance review. This is also a good time to use ego to inform our supervisors of our career development intentions. Going for a promotion? Use ego to voice that desire. It can help us illustrate how we already fulfill the responsibilities of the next title on the company’s career path.

Ego is a powerful tool and we need to wield it for good. If we can recognize when we’re in a situation that triggers ego, we can stop and question why. Then use it to navigate the situation. Do we need ego to cheerlead? (“I can do this hard thing.”) Or do we need it to go back in the tool box? (“I can let my team help me do this hard thing, and share the credit.”)

How have you focused your ego lately? Please share you story in the comments section.