Deborah Fike

Deborah Fike is the founder of Avalon Labs, which provides marketing consultations and writing services for start-ups and online businesses.   She carves out a significant portion of her time to raising her two young daughters.

The Art of Compromise

compromise

Not many people like to compromise, and why should they? A compromise means two people need to exchange something, but one or both can’t easily come to an agreement. Whether it’s negotiating a work-related partnership or negotiating who will do the dishes at home, we want things to work out in our favor.

When we use the term “compromise,” we often use it to describe something in which we lost more than we gained, but coming to a compromise doesn’t have to be a losing game. Notice how the word breaks down: “com” and “promise,” or in other words, “we make a pledge together.” That means you should be getting something out of the deal.

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5 Lessons Learned from a Toddler

lessons learned

If I could summarize my world for you in one sentence, it would be: chasing my toddler. I know the back of my daughter’s scruffy blonde head anywhere: dashing across the living room, making a break for the next grocery aisle, or attempting to go up the slide (much more fun than going down). My old day job required me to attend meetings and sit in front of a computer most of the day. Now, I’m lucky if I get 10 minutes to sit down for a breather before my girl has me running to catch up with her.

I’ve never raised a child before, and given my personality, I decided to read about it. All the toddler self-help books talk about what you need to teach them: how to play with others, learn language, go potty. These books contain great advice for child rearing, but none discuss the things parents learn from toddlers. I have learned at least as much from my daughter as she has learned from me. So here are some tips for living from someone who just started her life journey:

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Life Doesn’t Have to Be a Struggle

Life Doesn’t Have to Be a Struggle

Let me be the first to say that I believe heart and soul in the power of perseverance. I busted my tail through several college degrees, always studying hard to get the most out of the experience. I worked for a start-up company where long hours and imminent deadlines were the norm. I powered through those days, learning a ton in the process. Now with a 1-year-old child, I’ve had all the stereotypical experiences that define new motherhood: sleepless nights and constant worry. These experiences have helped define me and I would not trade them for the world.

That being said, they are not the only things that have defined me.

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How to Handle Criticism

criticism

No one likes criticism, and why should we? By its very nature, criticism means that something is missing, that you have flaws, that someone has found you lacking. Even constructive criticism, given with every intent to help you rather than harm you, can plant seeds of doubt in your head. What if I can’t get better? What if I’m just not good enough?

Unfortunately, if you never receive criticism, you put yourself in the dangerous position of never improving. That’s fine if you’re the definitive expert at what you do, but for most of us, we’re working hard to get better at something every day. It would be great if we could criticize ourselves, but it generally takes an objective person to give us solid tips to improve.

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Beneath Surface Appearances

beneath surface appearances

We like to think we know our family and dearest friends, down to the deepest detail. Without telepathy, though, we can never truly know what it’s like to walk in their shoes.

Take one of my good friends, who gave birth to her son around the same time I had my daughter. We had eerily similar birth experiences: the first few hours of labor went okay, but the baby’s heartbeat began to drop so we had emergency C-sections. We hold the same values on parenting, so we exchange advice on breast feeding and sleep training. We both gave up full-time jobs to become full-time mothers. Our situations are so similar that I didn’t know how to respond when she asked me last week, “Why is being a mother so easy for you?”

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5 Items that Should be on Every Bucket List

universal bucket list

Once again, those “100 things to do before you die” lists are making their rounds on Facebook. You know, the “100 foods you should eat before you die” or the “100 places to visit before you die.” I admit that I try to cross as many as I can off the list, but inevitably, I fall short. I’ve only eaten 32 out of 100 foods against the average user at 45, and 15 places, where the average user sits at 21. Even among my friends, I generally am the least well-rounded as far as foods and traveling goes.

Of course, these lists are just for fun, but still, it got me thinking. Everyone’s got his or her own bucket list, and they must vary wildly from person to person. Is there a universal list of things everyone should try before they shuffle off this mortal coil? I would argue for the following:

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Under-Promise and Over-Deliver

over-deliver

I hate car shopping. I’m one of those people who will wait until my car is more rust than machine before trading it in. It’s not that I hate new cars. I will just do anything to avoid the car salesman pitch: Buy this car now! It’s the best deal on the lot! Hurry! It could be gone tomorrow! I know it’s part of the car-buying dance, but honestly, I’d rather sit this one out.

The vast majority of marketing we encounter is overblown. Everyone claims to be the best, whether it’s your real estate agent down to your toothpaste provider. We’ve become jaded to the promises we’ve heard through advertising, to the point where many of us actively block it whenever possible. I mean, Super Bowl aside, who gets pumped about watching ads?

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Breaking through Stereotypes

stereotypes

When we moved into our new house last year, our neighbor’s yard looked like junkyard material. Among the debris lay a rotting shed, rusted over RV, and stagnant water pool. To make matters worse, the only way into their back yard was through a shared driveway that passed through our property. Since we had children, we weren’t exactly thrilled about the situation.

Our concerns heightened when we talked to the other neighbors. We heard stories of vagrants living in the RV, playing loud music and keeping everyone up at night. The neighbors also claimed that the owner, while a “good person,” was often out of town, letting random friends have run of the property. Both claims seemed legitimate since we saw lights in the RV at night, but no one ever answered the front door during the day.

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The Importance of Play

play

“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve been reading way too many child-rearing books recently. It’s comes with the territory of being a new mom and wanting to give your child every advantage in life. With all the advice I’ve read, one that strikes me as particularly solid is to foster your child’s creativity and problem-solving skills through free play. No one tells you what to do. You simply use your imagination and the environment around you as inspiration. There are no ribbons to be earned, no goal set at the end of the day. Just have fun.

I thrived on free play during my own childhood. I grew up in a rural area with a large back yard, plenty of toys, and enough siblings to start a basketball team. I spent time outside – pretending to run a restaurant, re-enacting my favorite cartoon scenes, and mucking around in the dirt. I spent time inside – constructing elaborate societies with colorful ponies, tracing the same pictures over and over onto lined paper, and trying to beat the high scores off pointless video games. The memories blur together into one happy kaleidoscope.

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Cultivating Patience

We live in a “now” culture. If it takes more than five seconds for a website to load, we won’t view it. We want to call our friends now, even if we’ll see them in 10 minutes. The “now” culture is one of convenience, and let’s face it, convenience can make our lives easier.

Unfortunately, by gaining convenience, we’ve lost some of our patience. Waiting has become a common enemy. We get irritated when the guy in front of us jokes with the cashier because it takes longer for us to buy milk. We want pills and surgery to lose weight instantly, rather than streamlining our diet and exercising. We want to have the best life possible right now, not tomorrow, and certainly not next year.

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Listen to Your Gut

listen to your gut

I knew my first marriage would be a disaster, but I went through with it anyway.

I tend to analyze things. It comes with the territory of being a project manager. So when it came to marriage, I thought about it like a logic problem. How compatible are we? Would I be happiest with him? What if I never found anyone else? The scenarios rolled in my mind, and I even wrote a pro and con list of why we should be together. Ultimately, I decided getting married to someone I had been dating for 6 years was a safe bet.

If this approach seems a little off to you, you’re on the right track. There are two basic approaches to problem solving. Analysis is one way to look at a problem. Let’s say my primary doctor had retired and I needed to get a new one. If I had used the questions above on compatibility, happiness, and worst case scenarios, I probably would have found a decent doctor.

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