Breath Control

I read an article earlier today that claimed breath control helps reduce stress.  Stress is too much of  the AcMo package, so anything I can do to control it will make us a better company.  I consider myself a trailblazer, and up for an adventure, so I read the article three times to make sure I understood everything before attempting to control my stress through targeted breathing exercises.  It is possible I did it wrong because I stopped breathing.  When I regained consciousness, I was not only angry, but more stressed than before I had started!  So much for believing what I read.

The only way this was going to work would be if I applied AcMo principles.  I lost my employee manual that listed all of the principles, which sucks for a couple different reasons.  One, since I wrote it, you'd think I would know what was in it.  Two, it makes it difficult to quote from the manual when I can't remember the quotes.  Three, even though I am in charge, I still have to take the quizzes, and some of the questions are from the manual.  Four, it makes me look dumb when I don't know what we're all about unless I read it from a piece of paper.

AcMo is focused on accelerating.  We even juiced our pencil sharpeners to reduce down time by 43%.  Sometimes the sharpener eats a whole pencil before anyone can pull it out, but we're working on increasing our response times to combat that.  I honestly think the sharpeners are just lonely.  We worked out a deal with the post office so that all of our regular mail arrives the next day.  The deal works for both outgoing and incoming mail.  I don't like to brag, but I'm that good of a negotiator.  It didn't hurt that we approached the post office at the absolute best moment.  That place is so mismanaged that they'll take money from anyone to stay operational.  I know that feeling since we suffered through it during our lean years, but we also never spent millions of dollars sponsoring a cycling team that had absolutely no relevance to our core business.  We're so much smarter than that.  We sponsor bridges that lead to nowhere.  We have 7 and are adding to the roster whenever possible.  Two of those bridges are for sale right now if anyone is interested.  Hurry because these things do not stay on the market for long.  We tend to forgo traditional advertising with these because we find those ads bring too much official scrutiny to the transaction.  Oh, I almost forgot, cash only, please.  I've also been stealing your time without your knowledge or consent since I started writing this blog.  That's not so much a negotiation thing as it is me being clever.

The problem with jumping in full speed to a new activity is that things tend to go wrong a lot before (if) they work as advertised.  This breath control thing is throwing me off balance.  I tried breathing into a paper bag while standing on my head with one arm behind my back, but I bruised my elbow.  My net stress reduction was still hovering at or below zero.  Less than zero is not optimal for an endeavor of this magnitude.  What I didn't mention earlier is that my doctor told me I could end up with a condition--he wouldn't tell me which one--if I didn't do something to reduce my stress.  That was the day I fired the legal team, but the stress relief was interrupted the moment I received their lawsuit.  I guess to a hammer everything looks like a nail.  Those lawyers will not know what happened by the time I'm finished with them.  This is AcMo!  We fight all frivolous lawsuits to the death, non-frivolous ones too.  We turn courthouses into terror domes and only one can survive.  I'm 26-0.

If I could only transfer that success to life in general, and this breathing exercise in particular, I would be achieving something great.  During my attempt to control my breathing by sitting in a box, my mind started to wander as the oxygen supply waned.  This was a smaller box, and those packing peanuts made it a challenge to even breathe at all.  I think I figured out after spending all of last night mopping the floors to remove fluids on the shop floor from a car that spontaneously purged itself that the cloud of doom has followed me to AcMo.  The more I reflected on this, the more I realized that the cloud may not have followed me after all.  I suspect that AcMo has its own cloud of doom, but because I'm so used to it, I can't even see it any longer.  The incident at the Volvo dealership just helped remind me how to identify and avoid being caught under that type of cloud.  I plan on resolving this before any more wheels fall off and catch on fire.  It gets expensive when you have to keep buying new wheels and tires for all of your customers.  Some of them even have the nerve to demand a new car to go along with the wheels and tires.  I needed this cloud eradicated at least fifteen years ago.  If I figure out how to do it, you can be certain I will patent my process and profit from it as I help others climb out from underneath misfortune's thumb.

The good news is that the first test of a pilot shipping program has just been completed.  I shipped myself in a box from our Pacific Northwest HQ to our Midwest HQ1 without getting lost or damaged in transit, and I arrived at the time the tracking page indicated I would.  Now that I know it works, I can use this system to ship employees wherever they are needed in an on-demand fashion.  I just need to teach them proper breath control first to ensure we don't lose anyone.