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AGILITY

Flex Your Agility to Grab New Opportunities

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

GAIL SHEEHY

When you stretch yourself in what you're afraid to do, the next challenge isn't nearly as scary; the ground is more familiar.

VICKIE L. MILAZZO

Women's bodies are naturally more flexible than men's. Just go to any beginner's yoga class and watch the men. Then watch the women. Men have their own strengths, but women are naturally engineered for agility.

This inherent agility extends to our thought processes. Women excel at multitasking. How many things can you do at once? How many things can your spouse or significant other do at once? Chat up any group of women with a variety of talents, emotions and intelligence and you'll find most of them are juggling a dozen different projects, a handful of important relationships and at least one pressing dilemma.

Flexible and adaptable, women handle unexpected change gracefully. We're not thrown by 10 things hitting us at once—that won't wreck our day. We're wired for agility.

In prehistoric times women and men participated almost equally in hunting and gathering. As agriculture developed, women had to use both sides of their brains to prepare food, make clothing and care for children, while also plowing fields, harvesting crops and tending animals. Later, as people gathered into cities, women kept many of those “prehistoric” responsibilities and also sold or traded goods in the marketplace. So very early on we developed the agility to be well rounded in our expertise.

A constant reminder of women's agility greets me each morning as I drink my first cup of healthy green tea and look out to the silhouettes of giant timber bamboo that surrounds our home. Easily reaching heights of 60 feet, the bamboo stalks sway gently in the wind, like ballet dancers in the predawn light.

Even the slightest breeze will prompt their graceful movement. A strong wind sets off a dramatic modern dance performance accompanied by the sounds of giant wind chimes. I love hearing the stalks clacking through the stillness.

Like a woman, bamboo is unnaturally strong and flexible. And like a woman, it will bend almost double before breaking. Rather than crack in the face of a strong force, it flexes and twists, reactively buffering any changes in weather and wind direction. After a hurricane, Houston was blanketed with downed trees and broken tree limbs. Bamboo leaves littered the ground, but almost no bamboo stalks lay in our yard.

A passionate, agile woman never says “I can't” when it comes to achieving. She knows that success comes in “cans,” that when faced with strong forces, every “can't” she utters will undermine her agility and limit her ultimate wicked success.

Though strong, bamboo is slender and lightweight. It reminds us to keep our lives and careers trim, fast and agile. Being trim and fast like bamboo, a woman can change directions quickly, take advantage of opportunities and try new alternatives.

Hand a woman an iPhone and you turn her into a captain of high-tech industry. She'll set appointments, answer email, snap and send photos to friends and family, update Facebook, arrange a party, make dinner reservations and text her husband to pick up the dry cleaning. We've learned to bend technology to fit our needs, and extend our agility for handling more complex situations at increasingly higher and faster levels.

Agility is the path to a deeper, richer experience and agility is the strength that gets you to bigger, more audacious goals. The more we stretch, the deeper we're able to go into our passionate vision.

This is true not only with our bodies, but with our minds and the goals we pursue. When we challenge ourselves to stretch, our physical, mental and emotional energies rev up to make anything possible. Agility can snap us out of rigidly held commitments (a job, a relationship, an attitude) that are no longer congruent with our vision. Agility shapes us for the only constant in a woman's life: change. Agility is the strength we wield to initiate imperative, but often dangerous, changes.

With agility we can look at an old situation in a new way. When we change, we make easy that which was formerly difficult. Agility lifts us to the next level, where each new challenge expands and strengthens our agility for moving through life with ease and confidence.

SHAKE IT UP

In a Buddhist monastery in Bhutan I witnessed two monks working on a mandala. Intricate and brilliantly colorful images are “painted” with colored sand laboriously trickled onto a horizontal “canvas,” almost one grain at a time. Monks will spend countless hours creating these highly detailed sand paintings.

Once the mandala is completed, you might expect the monk to proudly display it or at least savor its beauty. Instead, as soon as the exquisite work of art is finished, he destroys it, in recognition and celebration of the impermanence of life.

Like a monk creating a mandala, we may painstakingly and lovingly craft a dream, pouring our passion into it and attending to every detail. For some women the dream manifests as a perfect spouse and family; for others it's career advancement, a promotion to vice president or steps to retirement. Surely, we tell ourselves, this is the dream that will satisfy.

Wickedly successful women fully understand the saying: “To make God laugh, make plans.” Even the best dream is as impermanent as a mandala. A dream, any dream, is simply the first step on the journey. Once we create the perfect dream, before we know it, it's time to destroy it and start over.

To be wickedly successful at anything, you must be willing and agile enough to go new places, change directions and shake things up, even to the point of destroying a very comfortable state or a perfect dream. Risking even minor change strengthens your agility to go where you need to go next and prepares you for major challenges later that will undoubtedly require even more change.

I wake up every day with a plan. But I also wake up fully intending to bust that plan. Wicked success cannot be managed tightly and neatly. Wicked success is messy, welcoming an occasional gentle shake-up or, sometimes, a massive tremor. Agility is the strength that welcomes surrender to the myriad unplanned opportunities that come our way.

Stedman Graham contacted me to do a business presentation with him, but Stedman wasn't part of my company's 65-page strategic plan. When the universe summoned, agility is the strength I used to refocus resources, money and efforts to make that presentation happen.

When I find myself resisting change or disruption, I try to remember that soon I will see this challenge as the barrier that, once crossed, opened a gate to new perspectives, new opportunities and new choices. I will look back and see how risking this change presented an opportunity to become more agile.

More and more women today are using their agility to shake up their careers and embrace technology, some even creating their own high-tech start-ups. I'm not one of those women. I'm the least computer-savvy person in my office. When technology invaded my company I felt all shook up and just wanted the whole techno-world to vanish. I had to relax my resistance and rely on my strength of agility to appreciate how technology could advance my company to a whole new level and galvanize my genius into learning wicked new skills.

Since I founded Vickie Milazzo Institute, we've moved from a single DOS-based desktop computer to 30 Windows and Mac computers, used for everything from running our CRM software and managing our customer relations to editing our videos and creating complex graphics. The single server that sat in the corner has morphed into a climate-controlled, secure server room filled with a rack of SANs, servers and hosts running a minimum of 11 virtual machines at any one time on a variety of platforms, our VoIP equipment and all the switches and other paraphernalia required to make everything work together. Now that we're turning to the “cloud,” a lot of that equipment and software will go away.

Who knows where technology will take us next? I'll have to stay agile enough to find out.

Agility demands courage to create effective change. Courage is not the absence of fear, it's the confidence to agilely shove fear aside and act despite it. It's simply another choice we make.

Every morning, while showering and getting dressed, ask yourself, “What's not working as well in my life as it could? What might work better? And how can I change it?” Then employ your strength of agility to implement that positive change, no matter how small.

Overthrow Your Natural State

When we welcome change and expand our agility, we realize that what we thought of as our “natural state” will never return to its former stiff and monotonous self. We find ourselves in a new space, one of unlimited options.

It's easy to believe that only a certain type of charismatic person will be wickedly successful. But I remember as a child being teased about my imaginary classes. My sister and twin brother thought I was the nerdiest kid ever—quiet, reserved and serious, while they were more outgoing. I always had a mission. My girlfriends changed their baby dolls while I plotted to change the world.

As I took more and more risks, diving deeper into areas I'd never been, I lost that timidity. When you accept the challenge of change, you stretch yourself in what you're afraid to do, and that feat of agility builds reserves of courage that will expand with each new stretch. The next challenge isn't nearly as scary, because it isn't out there so far. The ground is more familiar, the obstacles don't loom as large and you're more agile in scaling them.

FLEX YOUR CURIOSITY

I've already confided to you my fear of water. A near-drowning experience when I was a child left me wary of swimming and totally unwilling to go deeper than snorkeling along the water's surface while safely wearing my inflatable buoyancy vest. That's why I had no plans to scuba dive with Tom when we went to Fiji.

Several years earlier, on Maui, I tried learning to dive. On that first attempt Tom, my 14-year-old nephew Matt and I started our lessons in the pool. As soon as the water closed over my face mask, and I struggled with the weight of the tank dragging me to the bottom and the BCD vest that was supposed to help save my life, but instead was threatening to drown me, I climbed out of the pool and didn't look back.

On the safety of the shore, I enjoyed a massage instead. While the guys took to the ocean like fish, exploring coral reefs, shipwrecks and the limitless variety of sea life, I clung to my beach chair with my self-help book, Mastering Your Fear for Dummies.

On later vacations Tom and I worked out a compromise. He would dive, then return to snorkel with me. Although not much of a swimmer, I was a great flailer. I snorkeled in the shallows, where I could stand up when I tired from flailing or needed to adjust my mask. Yoga practice had prepared me for proper breathing and body control, and over time my confidence grew. So did the quality of my flailing. To this day my nephew still calls me shark bait.

Back to Fiji: I watched a young girl with a mental disability go out doggedly every day to learn to dive, while I stayed safely on the surface, afraid to leave my shallow comfort zone for the deeper unknown. I wondered who had the greater disability, she or I. Hers was real, mine only imagined. Who was more agile?

Every morning, Tom regaled me with stories of turtles, lionfish, hammerhead sharks and the vibrant coral he saw on his dives while I continued flailing about in the shallows. But each day I snorkeled into deeper and deeper water until, finally, on day four, I built up the confidence to approach the edge of a 300-foot wall. Looking into its depths I was suddenly no longer content to observe from the surface. My curiosity engaged, I longed to dive deep and envelop myself in the dark wonders below. I resolved to try diving again.

My first dive was in a shallow bay. I clung to the bottom, pulling up sand and sea grass 15 feet below the surface. Easy. Being close to the bottom gave me security and perspective, and the small success encouraged me to go for more.

The second day I dove longer and deeper, to 25 feet. Upon arrival at the reef, the first thing the dive master talked about was sharks. “This is their world. They're in control. Don't approach or move toward them. Respect them. Respect their space.”

Actually, sharks didn't scare me at all. I was too afraid of the water to worry about sharks. First I had to get into the water. Then I'd think about sharks.

On my third day of diving, we boated to a sandy ledge that led to the 300-foot wall I was ready to explore. The boat rocked on 5-foot swells.

Tom and the dive master rolled off the side of the boat backward—the standard diver's show-off entry. When the dive master instructed me to do the same, I said, “No way!” and waddled down the narrow stepladder designed for deck shoes, not fins. No easy feat. Tom said it was typical of me to take the hard way down.

After the initial roller-coaster ride associated with equalizing my ears and my anxiety, we swam along the shallow bottom to the precipice of the wall, slipped over the edge and slowly dropped into the abyss. Surprisingly, the stability and quiet of being underwater was a wonderful respite from the swells that bounced the boat on the surface. Anyway, it does no good to scream underwater, no matter how claustrophobic you feel, with 45 feet of water between you and the surface.

Soon I was keenly observing the sea life. Coral heads, bulbs, fans and thousands of fish, all sizes and temperaments, from the diminutive clown fish bravely defending his anemone home to the shy 35-pound sweetlips that disappeared into his coral cavern at the first sight of us.

As my breathing relaxed I began to hear the sounds of the sea life. Midway, Tom joined me, held my hand in celebration and I lost all sense of time, depth and my childhood fear, even when the menacing 10-foot reef sharks swam past us. While I'll never be a fish in the water, I was now enjoying their world. Even more, I was enjoying my newfound agility.

CHALLENGE A FIXED VIEWPOINT

Where would I be if I hadn't challenged my fear of water? Probably where I am now, but with less confidence. I believe the happiest people are those who continuously grow and stretch. The only way to grow is to question, challenge, probe for new answers and new viewpoints and remain agile enough to try new experiences.

In business, you grow or you die. Most of us are willing to stretch when it comes to our careers. It's expected. You strive for a bigger paycheck, a bigger office, more influence or more power. Why don't we do the same in our personal lives? One always affects the other.

In life, as in business, when you neglect growth and cling to inertia, the passion inside you cools. Plan not only for a bigger house or a snazzier vehicle, but for muscling up your inner strengths. Strive to reinvent yourself on a regular basis. Why wake up five years from now greeting the same person in the mirror when you could see a smarter, stronger, bolder woman who has transcended former boundaries? Refusing to grow and stretch keeps you in the shallows, just as not taking that dive might have kept me out of the depths of the underwater world for the rest of my life.

Don't Inject the Heroin

When we believe the fixed viewpoints of those insidious mantras—”I can't …,” “I don't …,” I wasn't trained for that”—we set up our own failure. In nursing school I worked with heroin addicts—not exactly the most fun or inspiring bunch of people to be around. Not having an addictive personality myself, I couldn't understand the forces that drove them. I wanted to shake them and shout, “Just because you've inserted the needle doesn't mean you have to inject the heroin,” but I knew it wouldn't mean anything to them.

Tina, struggling with the fast-paced training of our seminar, became upset when she couldn't keep up. I encouraged her to relax more and embrace the opportunity these struggles were offering her. After it became apparent that wasn't working, I offered to let her take home the DVD version of the program and study at her own pace.

She refused the offer. Instead, she sat in the front row the entire six days, talking to herself, escalating her frustration and not listening to a word of what she'd come to learn. For six days she injected the heroin over and over again. She was one of only a few students who failed the certification examination, simply because she sabotaged herself with her fixed “I can't” viewpoint.

Have you ever started down a path and discovered your direction or viewpoint was not working, but you kept going anyway? Then a sudden flash of insight—just because you inserted the needle didn't mean you had to inject the heroin.

The next time you notice yourself inserting the needle filled with rigidity and resistance to change, take a minute to think about what you're about to do. Ask yourself: “Do I really need to inject the heroin or is there a better way to do this?” You might be surprised when a new perspective from a better viewpoint appears to you in a flash of insight.

Agility enables us to recognize what's not working and fix it. When employees come to me with company problems, I say, “Don't just tell me the problem. Challenge your fixed viewpoints and give me the solution.”

I didn't always own a company. I grew up selling Avon, working at Burger King and eventually working in hospitals as an RN. Making the transition from registered nurse to entrepreneur was a long stretch. Entrepreneurship constantly challenges my agility and has taught me this attitude: “Wherever you are, make the most of it by questioning, probing and challenging fixed viewpoints.”

I had to challenge the fixed viewpoint that nurses don't own businesses; they only work for hospitals. I had to challenge my own fixed viewpoint that I didn't have time to start a business with a full-time job. Decades later, I had to challenge the fixed viewpoint that social media and blogging are not for CEOs. More recently, I had to challenge a fixed viewpoint I shared with my financial director, that we were an education company, not a finance company. Financing a portion of our clients, knowing we wouldn't see a self-sustaining return or cash flow for almost three years, felt like corporate suicide. A radical change, but it worked.

In a tough economic environment that has made it difficult for many people to own a house, a car, books or even a bicycle, the new business model of sharing challenges the fixed viewpoint of ownership. College students and young adults have long shared apartments and lodgings—nothing new there—but Vélib' in Paris has made bicycle sharing an affordable and convenient alternative to owning and parking a bike. This concept is spreading to the United States for both bikes and cars. Today, Zipcar is making car sharing easy for those who either cannot afford their own cars or for whom ownership is impractical.

Websites appear almost daily that promote sharing everything from rides to books to baby clothes and babysitting cooperatives. Young people may see sharing as a last resort, when they can't afford to own, but this is a cleverly agile generation who may view it as a new and sensible way of life.

What fixed viewpoint is preventing you from stretching? Inside every woman is the agility to be anything she wants to be and to do everything her passionate vision demands.

STRETCH TO INTENSIFY AGILITY

I thought scuba diving to 45 feet was a big deal until I learned there are divers who go more than 11 times deeper—without scuba gear. Imagine taking one huge breath and plunging hundreds of feet into the ocean, so deep you need a light to see where you're going. Just try holding your breath for six minutes!

Some free divers ride a weighted sled to the target depth and swim back to the surface—all on a single breath. The no-limits women's record was set by Tanya Streeter in 2002, who dove to 525 feet and back in 3 minutes 26 seconds—deeper than many submarines reached during World War II.

Natalia Molchanova set a record depth of 331 feet for women's constant-weight diving in 2009. A constant-weight free diver uses only a pair of fins to propel herself alongside a guideline to her target depth. She swims entirely on her own strength, using minimal oxygen and exertion, each movement as graceful and fluid as a dolphin's. She wastes no energy; every scrap goes into pushing toward her goal.

Like Natalia and Tanya, strong, agile women are willing to dive deep into their dreams, visions, desires and fears. Challenge yourself. It's important to have realistic goals, like losing five pounds or selling five percent more, but you should also have a stretch goal that's out there on the horizon. Stretching intensifies agility. I'd much rather set one audacious goal and not quite reach it than set all my goals too low. Expanding and intensifying agility prepares you for the bigger opportunities you'll encounter as your new passionate life unfolds.

DIVE DEEPER EVERY DAY

Record-breaking free divers practice their skills until they become automatic. A free diver's amazing agility comes from setting aside a huge portion of their lives for training, planning, preparation and execution.

To survive such extremes, to break records and safely return to the surface, a free diver pushes to new limits on deeper and deeper training dives. For a dangerous dive lasting mere minutes, she might endure 10 months of training. She runs, lifts weights, diets, practices holding her breath and achieves startling levels of concentration to extend one breath even further than ever before.

I attribute the growth of our company to our continuously going deeper through training, planning, preparation and execution. We make sure we're working smarter, not harder. We constantly ask ourselves if there's a better way to do what we're doing. Can we be more flexible, more responsive to opportunity? Are there new technologies we must master and incorporate into our business? As a result of this constant agility training, we can dive deeper with every breath.

We never settle for ordinary when another stretch might take us to extraordinary. Fifteen percent growth in one year is great, but the real gain comes in the cumulative effect. Growing even 7 percent, personally or in business revenues, might not sound like a big deal, but do that every year for 5, 10 or 30 years and you'll find yourself in an awesome place that's not crowded.

What are the skills that will take you to the next level in living your passionate vision? Like free divers, you must be willing to invest time and energy in training until your skills become deeply ingrained, then maintain those skills so that you can access them with agility, as needed.

For a free diver, taking the correct action instinctively, with the lightning speed that a prepared mind is capable of, can make the difference between survival and drowning. When you face a challenge in your personal life or career, your skills and knowledge will serve you well—if you've practiced until you instinctively make good choices.

To dive deep you must focus on a few things, not on everything. My company, for example, could create continuing education in hundreds of nursing specialties, but we choose not to. We train and certify registered nurses as Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. That is our passion and that is what we do best. And because we don't dabble all over the place, our students trust us as the true experts we are.

In today's world we are bombarded with so many options that it's difficult to choose where to focus. The deeper you dive, the narrower your choices. Choose a few areas in which you passionately want to improve your agility, and focus on diving deep to reach them.

What new agility will propel you to dive more deeply into your passionate vision?

SCHEDULE AN AGILITY BREAK

The value in routine is that it conserves energy. As we learn from our mistakes, we develop routines that facilitate speed and accuracy. Routine can be a source of confidence as we accept new risks. Attacking new problems with a familiar and successful system saves time and other resources. We get into a groove.

One of my favorite Broadway musicals will always be Jersey Boys. I've seen it five times, four with the original cast and have had the pleasure of sharing it with many friends.

Two of the lead characters, Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio strike a deal to collaborate and share everything 50/50. They sealed their deal with a “Jersey contract”—also known as a handshake. This happened in 1961, early in the group's history—a time that brought us many hit songs including “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don't Cry” and “Can't Take My Eyes Off of You.” Their Jersey contract thrives today.

I recently entered into a Jersey contract with the owner of a company. I've known him for a long time and always felt we had a bond that transcended business. I was thinking we'd be like Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio.

I always joke that I like to break the rules, and here I was in typical fashion violating one of my own, which is to have a contract in every business relationship. Questions and issues that should have been covered in a contract came up and needed to be resolved. It became obvious to both of us that the only way to clear things up was with a contract.

Luckily, we have enough respect for each other and a strong enough relationship to withstand revisiting our deal and committing it to paper. We arrived at a contract favorable to both, but along the way there were a few tense discussions and potential for damage to the relationship we'd nurtured for more than 20 years.

So as much as I admire Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio, I have to admit it's not 1961; and in 2011, I resolved not to break my rule concerning contracts ever again. No more Jersey contracts for Vickie Milazzo Institute. It's not a matter of trust—it's business (even if you're in Jersey).

But routine can be the enemy of your agility. At the gym, if I do the same workout, without adding new challenges to my muscles, they get so used to it that I stop advancing. I have to shift, do a different exercise—five different types of planks instead of the same one.

When I work out with my trainer, every session is different. He never repeats a routine. Not only is this more fun and interesting—my body is more awake to the benefits of exercise. We need to be agile mentally and emotionally, as well as physically. Routine can quickly become a rut that we dig deeper and deeper simply to avoid risking a new path.

To strengthen agility, be spontaneous and break your routine by doing something you wouldn't normally do. Think of an activity you've always wanted to try but resisted. Break out of your ordinary world and experience what else is out there.

Be a Glutton for Punishment

Hang out with people who are different from you. One of my best friends from high school asked me one day, “Vickie, did you ever wonder how we got to be such great friends when we're so different?” While I excelled in business, Missy excelled in being a great mom. While I'm excessively neat, she doesn't mind a little clutter. She might say that I have better taste in men; I'd say she has a better gift of gab. Totally dissimilar but totally in sync with each other.

My twin brother Vince and I are very different, and not just in gender. In one of our favorite baby photos he's playing with a ball and I'm reading a book. That sums it up. Even as babies, we're unconsciously grasping the totems that mirror our separate paths. You'd think we'd have nothing in common, but he's my best pal (albeit a rough one), and the reason is because we know we're different and we accept those differences.

Wickedly successful women know to surround themselves with individuals who expand their imagination. One of my staff members sees everything from a totally different perspective than I do. Every time I ask her to review something for me, I think, “I'm a glutton for punishment.” Before I know it, instead of sitting and discussing, I find myself standing up, defending my ideas … but also refining those ideas. She gets my imagination going, and I get to where I need to be. When you're around stimulating people, people who challenge you and who think differently, you may resist at first, but ultimately your mind will go in new directions and agilely snatch the choice opportunities.

When choosing your support team, consider people of varying ages, interests, attitudes, talents and educational and social levels. They will shake up your thinking, encourage you to step out of your routines, fortify your courage to take new risks and introduce you to new ideas and new ways of solving problems.

Dare to Appear Foolish

At our conferences I walk down the aisle of a ballroom and up to the stage amidst rock music, rotating lights (I nixed fireworks after the hairspray and sparkler incident) and confetti-firing cannons, to lead our mantra-cheer in front of an audience of hundreds. To some, I probably look foolish. The majority, though, love it, and when we chant our mantra, we rock the house! What once felt foolish now feels perfectly normal.

As we say in Texas, there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. The neutrality that middle-of-the-road routine creates is rarely a formula for wickedly successful women; daring to look foolish is. Whichever side I pick, you can be sure I'll rock the house with my foolishness.

What agility break will propel you to rock your house and dive more deeply into your passionate vision?

ADD THE RIGHT TOOLS TO YOUR AGILITY ARSENAL

I'm on the road about 20 weeks a year for business and vacation. That means I'm on a minimum of 40 flights a year. Yes, I do have elite frequent flyer status that affords me upgrades, but sometimes all my elite status guarantees me is early boarding and sitting near the front of the plane behind the Platinum and Million-Mile members. I'm close enough to see them up in first class, sipping champagne and eating a succulent rib eye steak, at least until the flight attendant pulls the velvet curtain that separates “us” from “them.”

Lately the airlines have been stingier with their upgrades, and as I write this section, I'm sitting in a coach seat, 9C. Thanks to fewer and more crowded flights and extended ground times, I've been sentenced to more than three and a half hours of false imprisonment. The airline industry seems to be one of the few that excels in getting worse instead of better. What I really want to do when I'm flying coach is weep. But what good would that do? Instead, I use my strength of agility to turn crowded confinement into a tolerable, if not enjoyable, experience.

Soon the cabin door will close, and if I'm lucky, the person next to me or across the aisle won't hack up a lung or kidney. For the next 10 minutes I'll listen to the woman in the row in front of me with the cell phone voice tell her friend about her frightening medical condition while I dodge carry-on bags and backpacks as I people-watch during the boarding process. Watching people board is sort of fascinating, in the way that it's fascinating to watch a train wreck.

Upon preparation for takeoff, no fewer than two surly female flight attendants came by to tell Tom, in no uncertain terms, that he was threatening the safety of not only all the other passengers, but possibly the destiny of the free world, because he still had his headset, iPhone and laptop turned on. And, if he didn't want to say hello to the business end of the air marshal's Sig-Sauer pistol, it was time to shut things down.

As luck would have it, at that exact moment, my iPhone rang; it was a call from the one person I really needed to talk to, so I answered it. This put me on the watch list for the next three hours. As a consequence, not only did I not get my four ounces of TSA-approved fluids, I also was on the receiving end of that special “inattention” that only a hostile, angry and otherwise unsatisfied-with-her-career flight attendant can provide.

I can deal with that. I've learned to flex my agility to be self-sufficient. I travel with teapot, table and tent. I've got my water and snacks. But what I really want is … quiet. Once in the air, I have about three hours to work on whatever I want, without interruption.

Flexing my agility, I plan ahead for any contingency and bring along the right equipment. Bose noise-reducing headphones and fresh batteries are a must. Check. My fully charged iPod, loaded with Green Day and all my favorite music, a trash novel—oops, I mean a piece of classical literature in the original Greek—and plenty of magazines for takeoff, landing and layovers. Check. Two person auto-inflating life raft, personal flotation vest and two weeks of freeze-dried foods in case of an unforeseen incident. Check. (Just making sure you're still reading.) Uncheck. Laptop computer. Check. Sterile handi-wipes to clean the seat, tray table, armrests, restroom and airline burrito prior to consumption. Check—sort of. (I'm a nurse, so I know infections lurk everywhere and prefer to let my immune system deal with them.)

Adding the right tools to our arsenal increases our agility for handling difficult and unforeseen conditions. My strength of agility always cushions my flights. Oh, and I forgot to mention—I always start my flight with Green Day's “Novocain,” so for those first three minutes I won't feel a thing.

AGILITY IS A TWO-MINUTE INVESTMENT

I like to move, and anyone who knows me knows I can't sit still for long, unless I'm having my morning tea or enjoying a theatrical performance. Even in my office, I'm on the move all day. Frequently getting out of my chair helps me sustain both my mental and physical stamina. I probably log a couple of miles a day just moving around the office.

That's one reason being on an airplane seems like false imprisonment. Confined to my seat, I quickly become restless and uncomfortable. Shortly after takeoff on an eight-hour red-eye flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi, I realized I had to do something about my uncomfortable seat or I'd be miserable for the rest of the flight. I wanted to arrive in Africa in better condition than my luggage, and there was a solution in the overhead bin: a small lumbar cushion I'd packed in my carry-on bag. I tossed Tom a huge smile and asked him to pull down my bag, which was wedged behind his.

Tom is normally a bundle of energy, but when we're on an airplane he's a perfect candidate for blood clots. As soon as we board, he hunkers down and builds himself a nest in his seat, surrounded by his books, tech magazines, Bose headset, iPod, iPhone, bottle of water and laptop. If I don't remind him to move, he won't budge or even look up until it's time to deplane. This is great if he's in the window seat, because he never climbs over me. But it also makes him severely resistant to any requests that involve rising once he's nested.

You can imagine Tom's response to my plea for assistance. In textbook husband-speak: “Are you really sure you want to pull that cushion out of your bag?”

Years of marriage allowed me to quickly translate what he was really asking me: “Now that we're seated and I've perfected my nest, are you sure you want me to get up, haul your bag out of the overhead, take everything out of it and dig out that small cushion stashed in the very bottom, just so you can see if it will make you comfortable? And are you really sure you want me to put down my work, shut my laptop, fold up my tray table, unbuckle my seatbelt, stand up and go to all that trouble, only to have to get up again, as soon as I've settled back in, and repeat the process to repack the bag and then wedge it back up there?”

My response was an unqualified, “Yes! The two minutes it will take us to do this is a great trade-off for eight hours of comfort.” Tom grudgingly agreed and the entire process required much less time than I spent thinking about it and Tom spent trying to talk me out of it. A two-minute investment paid off with eight hours of comfort.

Of course, it might not have worked at all. The point is, I was willing to invest my time (and Tom's reluctant energy) in attempting a solution. Agility often means experimenting today in hopes of wicked success tomorrow. Agility comes from a willingness to try something different.

Are you investing today to ensure your future comfort and growth? Or are you resisting a simple change that could pay off big down the line? Stop the insanity of excuses for why you can't, won't or shouldn't do something. Today is the day to commit to one small action. Whether a shift is large or small—a simple step toward comfort (like getting my cushion) or a major shift in your life or career—that change is often just two minutes away.

Invest two minutes today, five minutes tomorrow. Small investments in your growth can pay big dividends when you need that agility later.

DON'T BE A RELIC OF PAST SPLENDOR

Angkor Wat is the relic of an ancient civilization that was far advanced for its time. On a trip to Cambodia I was blessed to spend three days exploring the ruins of this magnificent complex of temples, many built more than 900 years ago. These relics of past splendor were constructed with stones carried from far away, and without modern machinery. Yet the structures have withstood the ravages of time, weather and humankind.

In contrast, on my last evening in Cambodia, I took a boat ride through Chong Khneas, a floating fishing village. This loose collection of more than 700 families of fishermen and a complete support community live on boats and travel Tonlé Sap Lake following the fish and the rainy season. To reach it we drove along an unpaved road through villages with primitive living conditions. Bamboo shacks stood on spindly poles to withstand flooding. I would have been afraid to roll over in my sleep in these houses, much less raise a family or ride out a monsoon in one. Electricity was nonexistent, and the only running water was the stream we were following to the lake. The only nod to the twenty-first century was the existence of televisions, running on car batteries and prominently displayed in glassless windows.

The floating village consisted of hundreds of boats, some no bigger than 20 feet by 8 feet. Entire families lived on each boat. Cages suspended underneath the boat served as impromptu fish farms. The back of the boat held a primitive outhouse. Children bathed in the lake while old women cleaned fish or cooked noodles in water dipped from the front of the boat. The lake served not only as a source of food and drinking water, but as the bathtub and septic system, as well. Outboard motors, used to power the fishing boats onto the lake each evening and those ubiquitous televisions were the only lifestyle changes in the last 200 years.

The bamboo shacks and floating village were light-years below the standard of living enjoyed by the Cambodians who designed and lived in the temple complex at Angkor Wat. All of those past splendors seem lost to the Cambodians of today.

What lesson can we learn from this study in contrasts? How did these people lose touch with the agility of spirit and intelligence that made Angkor Wat possible? Instead of stretching forward, they idle in place.

Once we cease to learn, build, create and stretch, we not only stop gaining or growing, we allow the rest of the world to pass us by. Ask yourself, frequently, “Am I moving forward or simply drifting?” The lesson I learned in Cambodia helped me, especially during the most recent recession: Use your agility so you never become a floating relic of past splendor.

GET IN SYNC WITH AGILITY, NOT INSANE WITH DIVERSENESS

Agility also encompasses the way we interact with the world around us and the people in that world. For 29 years I've been a student of business, and during that time I've encountered many management theories obviously written by university professors or solo consultants who have never managed a functioning business for a single day in their lives. It's like getting relationship advice from someone who's not in one.

I don't profess to be a management expert. Managing employees is probably the most challenging thing I've ever done. Believe it or not, managing conferences with 1,000-plus attendees and celebrity speakers is a piece of cake compared to managing my staff of 23.

I never expected to find myself involved in management. In fact, when I worked in the hospital as an RN, management was not one of my ambitions. What I've learned from my experiences is that managing a business is like being in a giant laboratory. Sometimes your experiments work, sometimes they catch fire and sometimes they blow up in your face.

While I don't know everything there is to know about management theory, here's what I do know: I've got five executive directors and every one of them is distinct. Their differences make for a stronger company, but also demand that I be agile in the way I manage.

When they're successful, my company is successful. So I'm extremely motivated and called upon all day, every day to flex my agility muscles and interface differently with each executive director. Some perform at their best when I'm totally hands-off; others perform best when I'm very hands-on and at least one performs best when I'm somewhere in the middle (one hand on, one hand off). If I tried to manage each individual the same way, the outcome would be disastrous.

You may not automatically think of yourself as a manager or director, but if you're a woman, you are. You manage your life, career, family and probably most of the people involved. I'm sure you've noticed by now that every relationship in your life requires some form of management. Whether it's your spouse, mother-in-law, parents, children, coworkers, boss or even your dry cleaner, they all have to be treated differently.

Check the Water Level of Your Relationships

People are like orchids. My twin brother Vince loves animals, and he's always trying to get me to buy a horse or a dog. Whenever he does, Tom chimes in with, “This is the woman who kills plastic houseplants.”

Historically, every plant I've brought into our home was dead or dying by the time I returned from one of my trips. It got so bad that I started expecting them to be dead. After my last cactus croaked, I almost gave up for good.

Then I discovered orchids. I love their delicate beauty, their range of colors and their various shapes. But like many first-time orchid owners, I had no idea how to treat them. At first I fed them too much plant food. They survived being overfed, but I could sense a rebellion was about to take place. Next I overwatered them. I could practically hear their roots gurgling, “Please, no more.” Next I neglected them, allowing them to tell me when they needed attention—usually by starting to wilt or wither. Finally, I learned to strike the perfect balance between care and neglect.

As it turns out, orchids are the perfect plant for someone like me, because they thrive so well on their own and don't even mind being neglected. Orchids have the agility to survive despite hardship or smothering. Today when I return home from a trip, my orchids are there for me, just as beautiful as when I left them.

Just like orchids, you can overwater a person with too many phone calls, too much contact and too much of too much. It's a delicate balance. You must retie the connections with clients or friends, but constantly commenting on their Facebook pages, or texting or emailing them for no good reason, may be too much. Put yourself in their “pot,” and ask yourself how much “water” you would need.

I gave my second client the same level of information I was giving to my first client, whose philosophy was, “Tell me everything you know.” I figured if the first client liked it, so would the second. It turned out I was overwatering the second client. He thought I was flooding him with information he didn't need. Right or wrong, I learned through this experience that people come in all shapes and sizes, and I learned which ones needed extra water and which ones thrived on small amounts.

Likewise, if you're not paying enough attention to the people important to you and your passionate vision, it's like neglecting your orchids. An old client or friend no longer hears from you because you're not retying the connection. The relationship withers and fades.

People are as precious as orchids. Use your agility to treat them like these stunning flowers, and your relationships will blossom and grow.

Agility Sustains Odd Couples

A big test of my skills in managing my own agility came shortly after I started my business. The first attorney I consulted with was serendipity. Everything I did was perfectly in sync with him. We hit it off like best friends. With my goal to turn my business from a part-time venture into a full-time business, I concluded, “I've got it all figured out. I know exactly what attorneys want, and this is going to be easy.” Boy, I could not have been more wrong.

When Andy went to his partner Jim (who literally wrote the book in Texas on medical malpractice trial tactics), and said, “Jim, you have to start using Vickie,” use me Jim did. He rode me like my brother rides a thoroughbred horse—hard and fast.

Jim was the smartest attorney I've ever met, and he turned out to be my most challenging client. In contrast, Andy was fun and respectful and treated me like a lady, while Jim was 100 percent good-ole-boy. He thought women had their place and should stay exactly where they belonged.

When I moved to Texas from New Orleans for nursing school, I had steered clear of the good-ole-boys. The one and only time I went country western dancing with my friends, some urban cowboy clamped his hand around the back of my neck to lead me like a horse onto the dance floor.

“That's it! I'm out of here.” I never went country western dancing again.

To this day I don't like pickup trucks or men in cowboy hats, and country western music still gives me a pain in my neck. (Apologies to all country music fans—please don't let my regrettably bad experience stop you from reading the rest of the book.)

Working with Jim was like being right back in that cowboy dance hall again. After a particularly difficult Jim encounter, I figured if I could survive growing up with my twin brother, who taught me to buck up at an early age, I could survive Jim.

I knew I could learn a lot—that is, if I had the agility to avoid bashing Jim on the head with one of his big cigars. I haven't mentioned the cigars and the way he'd smoke them everywhere he went. He figured that when your name is first on the door, you do what you want—and he did.

This “odd couple” (like Brooks and Dunn) were amazingly effective together. Jim was the courtroom showboat, strutting his brilliance for the judge and jury, while Andy was the street fighter, slugging it out behind the scenes in depositions and motions. Together they created an enviable record and legend. That in itself was an agility lesson for me.

The experience with this formidable pair taught me that if I was going to build something big, which was my intention for my business, I needed to be agile enough to respond to odd relationships, to get in sync with them instead of going insane.

Jim set the bar high, expecting everyone to leap over it; and we all did. His partners, associates and legal assistants all rose to his challenge. So I bucked up, and Jim and I did our dance, through clouds of cigar smoke, glasses of whiskey, dirty boots up on his desk during brainstorms and along the way he taught me more about medical malpractice than 95 percent of other attorneys will ever know.

The teaching went both ways, though. In my buck-up style, I taught him that women professionals didn't need to be led around by the neck. Jim and I reached a truce and our own level of understanding. He made me a better consultant. I like to think he'd admit that my work product made him a better attorney.

Here's the real surprise: Like Andy, Jim will always be one of my favorite attorney-clients. But hey, maybe that's not so surprising, after all. I love a challenge to my agility, don't you?

LEAVE YOUR OLD COMFORTS AT HOME

When packing for a trip to the deserts of Morocco, I noticed that I was cramming in an awful lot of American comforts. Here we go again: teapot, table, tent and hair dryer—plus two Sherpas to carry it all. Having invested my time and money in the adventure of exploring this exotic destination, I had to admit, “If I'm going to bring the United States with me, I might as well stay at home.”

By replicating my homey comforts on the road, I'd actually miss what I was traveling in search of—an exciting, unpredictable experience that would enliven my senses, stimulate my creative juices and move me out of my comfort zone so that I could return home rejuvenated, with increased agility to deal with all the challenges of life and business. I didn't need my hair dryer to ride a camel and sleep in the Sahara desert. By leaving such items behind, I packed lighter and was able to immerse myself in the Moroccan culture with a more complete sense of adventure.

Isn't this how we often approach life, dragging old baggage into new situations? We decide to travel to a new place—a new career, a new relationship. But we carry along old attitudes that deny us the new experience.

In your passionate new life, you'll be traveling to a new place, so leave your old comforts at home. The less baggage you carry, the more opportunity you'll have to flex your agility. Pack a lighter bag.