The Coffee Shop: Spyhouse Coffee in St. Paul

The Cup: An Americano for me and Diane went rogue and ordered something off menu (which should totally be ON menu). She ordered a hot chocolate, but made with coffee. What a creative drink, and I’m telling you, it looked amazing!

The Connection: After many years of running a residential real estate business in Austin, TX, my move to Minneapolis offered the chance to try something new. And as so often happens, a conversation led to a conversation, which led to an opportunity. This was again in real estate, but this time adding commercial real estate to the mix. One of the first people I met in my new endeavor was Lynette Dumalag, a colleague at another brokerage. Lynette is fantastic and over our first lunch together we talked about everything — including this project. I asked her if she knew any beams or bolts and immediately, her eyes widened, she smiled and declared, “Yes! Diane Tran is a total beam of sunshine!” She shared a bit about Diane, and then, back at her desk, she made an email introduction.

Lynette was spot on! Although I will say that Diane technically qualifies as both a beam and a bolt! She’s warm and engaging, but I can also tell she is a woman of action. She has bright ideas and she inspires movement. She’s full of passion and curiosity, and before we dig straight into her story, let’s cover a few:

Common Grounds

1. How did you make your first buck? Babysitting for my neighbor kids, who were very sweet.
2. What book should be required reading for everyone? I’m not the biggest fan of absolutes. I offer an alternate question – what book has had a deep impact on you? Candide by Voltaire, because of the theme of “this is the best of all possible worlds” and then swinging to “this is the worst of all possible worlds”. And, it’s a little bit of a poke at me about being an optimist. It’s a reminder to just remember that there aren’t absolutes, necessarily. It depends on perspective and giving things time, and not making a judgment. This doesn’t mean not taking action, but taking action before it’s time may be unnecessary.
3. What’s something you hate paying for? Books. I’d prefer to borrow from the library and/or read and gift to a friend who I think would enjoy it.
4. What’s a food you can’t live without? The simple answer would be white rice. But I love bread. So, let’s say croissants or toast. Topped with scrambled eggs — or at least butter.
5. What’s your guilty pleasure? Baths and facial masks.
6. What is the best compliment you’ve ever been given? One of my friends told me that everything that comes to me is meant to be, in terms of information or connections, because then I will make something of it. I’m not sure it was meant to be a compliment, but that’s how I viewed it. Other people have said, “You bring out the best in other people.”

This compliment led us into a little conversation about the book/assessment tool Strengths Finder, because I thought she must be a maximizer. I was surprised that she isn’t. Her top 5 are: Input, positivity, connectedness, activator, and achiever. They all made perfect sense — except I wasn’t familiar with “input”, but here’s part of the definition: You are a collector…yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. So fascinating! If you’ve never taken the assessment, I suggest giving it a go! The premise of the book is that contrary to the idea that we should spend time working on our weaknesses, instead, we’re better poised for success when we leverage our strengths. Therefore, it’s helpful to know what those strengths are.

Getting Here

Often, I begin a conversation by asking my stranger to tell me how they got here, and I always find their answers to be incredibly informative, on many levels. For Diane, the answer is, “I am the daughter of refugees to this country. My parents are ethnically Chinese but born in Vietnam due to familial migration. The way I think about ‘getting here’ is that this is a really big world, and a lot of circumstances in family and history shaped my being in this physical geography — and then certainly some of my genetics and my dispositions.”  Diane tells me she’s worked a lot in community engagement, advocacy, public health and well-being and in various campaigns and student movements. She says she thinks about things from the perspective of young people using their voices, and doing things in a way that’s intentional about the future we want to create together. She says, “I feel there’s so much opportunity to think about, in our complex, diversifying world, how through commonality and difference we can really appreciate, connect, value and honor one another. And also drive at solutions that are equitable.  And I think that’s all really interesting, particularly in the context of Minnesota Rising and LOCUS, and it’s the thing we need to do when we think about our generation’s legacy in this world.”

Equitable Well-being

Professionally, Diane is the Senior Director of Community Engagement for Fairview Health Services. She explains her role as “thinking about health, not just how it’s narrowly defined in the biomedical model or as ‘sick care’, but when we think about all that creates health and well-being. The research shows that up to 80% of what influences our health does not actually take place within the walls of a hospital or clinic. There are genetics, but more so, our behaviors, how we choose our lifestyles, and then the infrastructure and conditions that we live in, that are governed by policies and systems. Increasingly zip code is a greater predictor of health outcomes than genetic code. So that says a lot about what levers we have to improve health and well-being equitably.”

This feels like the perfect time to point out one of the things I love about Diane. She identifies a problem, and immediately sees a positive, a possibility or a solution.  If you re-read the last two sentences in her quote above, you see just what I mean. A big issue, followed by optimism about how the problem offers a window into the solution. As we all know, the surface issue is often merely a symptom or indicator of the larger problem underneath. Not to digress, but I’ll share a quote that illustrates this in a rather eye-opening way (for me, at least). “Anger is what fear looks like when it shows itself in public.” Anyone head-nodding with me on that one? Truth is a funny thing. Sometimes it takes some excavating to find the whole story. And certainly when it comes to addressing equality – things aren’t always as they seem and solutions won’t be found by scientists and scholars. But by the individuals whose daily life involves climbing the inequality hurdles. Diane’s work is focused on listening, advocating, and working as a team to build the ladders toward equity.

In-between Time

I ask Diane what the most significant thing that’s happened in the last 30 days and she tells me, “Last week was the one year anniversary of my return from maternity leave. I took a week off and it was a blast to take the little guy out to the aquarium, and out for ice cream and to just play. So the most significant thing was being like, ‘Wow! We made it this far, with this kid, and are having a blast at life.’  Everything is in transition right now, so being able to mark the occasion and enjoy life as it is right now before more things change is significant.”

Diane and I discuss this topic deeper and agree that as a society, or in Western culture at least, we often don’t always allow ourselves the transition time – the time between things. The pause between the inhale and the exhale, and pausing again before the next inhale. We just huff and puff our way through it all — through the happiness, the sadness, the momentous and the seemingly insignificant. What we lose is the space for reflection, centering and processing before moving on to the next thing.

Time + Grief

Diane says, “I’ve been told I’m a deep processor and that just means it takes a lot of time for me to extract all the value and/or start grieving things to be able to transition through them when things do change.” As a new mom, she sees this in the changes with her son, remarking that soon enough he’ll be walking, so she’s living the moment, but aware that the change is coming and a level of grief will accompany it. She adds, “I understand, in the larger sense of time, how to do the transition stuff, but it’s not in my nature to transition or to do as many things as our modern age calls for us to do. Even though I can pack a lot of stuff in. That’s why, maybe, it takes more time to unpack later.” It’s interesting to consider that time is really simply a natural cycle. And a lot of our unrest is self-created because we’re trying to speed up a process that we didn’t create.

Slowing Time

I ask Diane to tell me something she’s ridiculously good at and this is the moment I knew we were soul sisters. She tells me, “I like to be a novice. I’m really good at signing up for classes and putting myself in situations where I know nothing. I love that feeling of trying something for the first time.” Learning something brand new is my favorite thing! And since we were just speaking about time – and how it’s not within our control to adjust the speed – I will contradict myself just for fun, and share this article which offers 7 ways to slow time. My favorite: novelty. We can’t actually slow time, but if we can make how we spend it more novel, and thereby more memorable, it feels bigger. Which in some wacky way, makes the passage of time feel slower.

Big Impact

Whose life has had the greatest impact on Diane? She says (without a moment’s hesitation), “My husband’s. He’s just a really good dude. He’s super smart and I love learning from him. Also, he loves me unconditionally. I’ve never felt that in such a deep way and it’s taught me more about love, how to accept and love myself and it’s inspired me to try to love people in that same way. He’s the best human I’ve ever known!” And I will just add, the smile and the light in her eyes told the entire love story!

Attention = Love

If she had 30 seconds to make a speech to the world, Diane would share this: “The quote that’s been sitting with me lately, is attention is the most basic form of love. And so I’ve been meditating on that because having a child, I really have a chance to practice that daily. We think about that in terms of the people we have the deep connection and responsibility and accountability for, but then also, when we take it up a level to our organizations, systems, institutions, to our policies. Who are we paying attention to? Who are we seeing and valuing? Whose concerns are we making time to hear, to put on an agenda, to consider, and then what actions are we taking in response to what we learned when we did pay attention to them? I think that’s the big question.”

Diane’s work is all about peeling back the layers. Using health and well-being as a platform to dig into the issues below the obvious, to uncover the root causes. And for her, it begins with an understanding that the answers must come, at least in part, from those most acutely aware of the impacts. Those in the zip code, so to speak. Listening and truly paying attention – utterly rare in our modern day, and yet more important than ever.

I’m reminded of the quote (which has been attributed to too many people to name): “Where attention goes, energy flows.” Who/what is most deserving of our attention? And who/what is getting our attention? Is there a disconnect? Can we begin to direct our attention and energy toward the things that truly matter? And what will we do with what we learn?

Into Action

• Check out Strengths Finder and consider ways to leverage your innate gifts and talents
• Challenge yourself to find a positive or a possibility in a problem you’re dealing with
• Allow transition time. A few ideas for starting small: Read an inspiring quote just before bed, read it again first thing in the morning, close your eyes and take three full breaths before you head to your next meeting, offer a prayer or a gratitude before your next meal.
• Try something new. Sign up for a class, try a new coffee shop, drive a different way home from work. Mix it up!
• Practice truly listening – and don’t be discouraged when you find it’s really hard! Begin to view questions as sacred and try only asking them intentionally. A good one to start with is, “How are you doing?” Practice looking the other person in the eye and really listening to their response. It’s a worthwhile skill to hone! And one that needs constant practice. Trust me!

Until next time, wonderful friend – be well, love big and stay curious! xo