Month: August 2020

Whose blood was as rich with cynicism as with iron

There’s a simple acid test to determine what kind of attitude a potential job candidate has.

When the shit hits the fan, do they focus on what they can to do improve their situation, or do they find more excuses to justify their problems?

Optimists will typically choose what’s behind door number one. They will reveal a resourceful, abundant, forward thinking and life giving approach with their circumstances. And that generative energy inspires persistence in the face of obstacles, both for themselves and others.

Pessimists, on the other hand, will typically choose what’s behind door number two. They will hold a sterile, scarce, regretful and victim based posture towards their circumstances. And that poisonous mojo will drag down the momentum, both of themselves and others.

Which candidate would you rather have on your team?

Clearly, the person behind door number one. These individuals are clinically proven to have stronger coping skills, better stamina, greater resilience and, in general, add more joy to the organization.

Sign on the line which is dotted. Welcome to the team.

But none of that is new or surprising information. What is more compelling is the lurking interpersonal challenge that happens next.

Once an optimist comes on board, how will that person deal with the inevitable contempt and hostility from their pessimistic counterparts?

Once an optimist comes on board, how will that person deal with the inevitable contempt and hostility from their pessimistic counterparts?

Because make no mistake, this is a very real thing. Hope scares people. Enthusiasm is strangely threatening.

Having worked at four different companies of varying sizes in the past several years, I can attest that the curse of optimism is no joke. And it’s not specific to any one industry or geography. It’s everywhere. And it’s very difficult to deal with.

One coworker of mine famously took me aside one afternoon and told me that I was laughing too much during the day and it was starting to stress out the other employees. Perhaps I could take my positive energy into the other room so it wasn’t such a disruption.

Now there’s something they don’t teach you in business school.

Kierkegaard famously wrote that for without possibility a man cannot draw breath. That’s ultimately why companies hire optimists. That individual’s full bodied yes to life oxygenates the organization. Possibility will have no trouble finding room for them.

But lest we forget, the other thing that finds optimists is that very human, very visceral resistance to their beaming white hope.

Just be ready. Steel yourself. Find a way to trample all over people’s cynicism adorably. Have faith that your love will wear them down eventually.

And if all else fails, just remember that this isn’t about you.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you focusing on what you can to do improve your situation, or are you finding more excuses to justify your problems?

Pushing past the gravitational pull of what isn’t working

Is the reason you began doing this still valid and as important today?

Weiss asks this in his book about life balance. It’s a simple and candid question that honors the inevitable changes human beings undergo in life. Challenging us not to hold ourselves hostage to accreted detritus solely out of our sense of obligation or a need for consistency.

And so, the sign that we’re always on the lookout for is, this isn’t working for me anymore.

Because everything in this world has a lifecycle. As our needs change, so do our reasons for doing things. And there is nothing wrong with jettisoning them.

In fact, the humility and bravery to name, frame, claim and aim those things is our greatest asset. It could be a stale relationship, an obsolete job, the community we’ve outgrown, or the city we’ve aged out of.

We all have things in our life that, at this very moment, have clearly run their course. Things that have outlived their usefulness. And unless we learn how to push past the gravitational pull, then we’ll never fulfill our potential.

Back to the original question.

Is the reason you began doing this still valid and as important today?

Unfurnish the overcommitted nervous rooms of your life. Stop allowing guilt to clutter your life with things you do not love or no longer need.

If not, let it go. It’s going to be okay. Unfurnish the overcommitted nervous rooms of your life. Stop allowing guilt to clutter your life with things you do not love or no longer need.

Reminds me writing the fated ten page letter of retirement to myself. My first career as a public speaker had run its course. The need was no longer there, and the even want was no longer there. My reason for beginning that journey was no longer valid and important. It was time to walk away.

And although it took a few years to officially fight the pull of gravity and transition into act two of my professional life, eventually, there was no looking back.

My potential was once again gloriously unimpeded.

This is what’s possible when a person does their absolute best to articulate what has fulfilled its lifecycle.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Will you choose not to force something if it’s no longer working?

Free yourself from the tyranny of pessimism

We have a tendency to make things harder on ourselves than is necessary.

Mostly through the vehicle of pessimism. Instead of interpreting our troubles as transient, controllable and specific to one situation, we tell ourselves the story that our suffering is our fault and will certainly last forever.

Seligman’s research on learned optimism found this story to be the key differentiator between those who flourish and those whose flail. People take much more responsibility for bad events than is warranted. And they have an endless supply of reasons why each of their successes is actually a failure.

That’s simply their way of explaining events to themselves. Either by default or by design.

But although there is a sad little death of hope and optimism that happens every time something tragic and unforeseen goes down, the good news is, all of us can exit out of our pessimistic mindset and into a more flourishing attitude.

Will this truly be an insurmountable barrier, or is it a temporary obstacle?

One method that’s been helpful for me is to ask questions to point out just how absurd my cynical thinking really is.

  • Is this really dangerous, or are you creating a catastrophe that is simply not there?
  • Are you actually about to fall off a cliff, or are you just going over a small bump?
  • Will this truly be an insurmountable barrier, or is it a temporary obstacle?

It’s a reminder to myself that, look, this is not what you want to be spending your thought process on. Insert some rationality into your thought process. And trust that whatever suffering may come to pass, tell yourself a story that reminds you that it’s not permanent, it’s not pervasive and it’s not personal.

Free yourself from the tyranny of pessimism.

Let the light of truth drive out the shadows.

And if you drive people crazy with your relentless optimism, but it all works out for you, then that’s not your problem.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What will reaffirm the faintest glimmer of optimism in your failing spirit?

Between the clashing waves of past and future

Our sense of fulfillment is contingent on how we relate to the present moment.

Whatever pain we are experiencing, odds are, it has nothing to do with what’s happening right now. That suffering comes from somewhere else.

Perhaps the past, aka, the painful archive of our imperfections, aka the rabbit hole of useless rumination.

Maybe we messed up the hotel reservation that we made three months ago. Or we accidentally pronounced a client’s name incorrectly during a conference call.

Dwelling on these past moments only kidnaps us from the present moment. It blocks our ability to feel joy right now.

Is that worth shredding ourselves into pieces with ruminating bouts of merciless scrutiny? Of course not.

Dwelling on these past moments only kidnaps us from the present moment. It blocks our ability to feel joy right now.

Another place our suffering comes from is the future, aka, the enchanted place that holds our happiness hostage, aka, the time when the mystery will finally be answered.

Maybe we envision a phase of our lives when everything is easier and all of our problems are solved. Or we postpone our happiness until we finally earn the right to feel joy.

Is it worth rejecting the present moment just to disappear into that fantasy? Of course not.

Tan, the meditation coach for the most powerful company in the world, frames it in the following way:

To feel regretful, we need to be in the past, and to worry, we need to be in the future. Meaning, the house we need to build cannot be built anywhere other than right now. Any time we are caught in rumination of what no longer is, or in the dread of what might exist, we are lost.

If we are to find our way back to joy, we must say yes to the present moment.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you living your life kidnapped from reality?

Everything collapses and he lives with an alarming happiness

James tells us in the scriptures:

We are merely a vapor like a puff of smoke a wisp of steam from a cooking pot, which is visible for a little while and then vanishes into thin air. 
 
As such, why squander what time we do have being miserable? Life is about optimizing for joy, not climbing a ladder. 
 
Our goal is to take full advantage of, rearrange our life for, and modify our experience around, that which makes us feel more alive. Without justification, without shame, without permission and without regret. 
 
Allow me to list a few of my personal favorites. 
 
Laughing out loud at cheesy jokes until my face hurts. 
 
Taking pictures of reflective puddles on the street that most people ignore. 
 
Singing karaoke at the top of my lungs on the commute to work. 
 
Watching a movie and taking furious notes on the best lines in the script. 
 
Keeping a running list of ridiculous names of rock bands that will never exist. 
 
Ordering anything on the menu that has the word diablo in the title. 
 
Making whimsical purposeless art that gets trashed immediately. 
 
Stopping my workday to watch a music video that makes me weep. 
 
Indeed, true happiness often comes in small grains. Keep pulling your triggers for joy, as my therapist would say. Keep building a fulfilling life on the foundation of our true nature. Engage in the activities that are uniquely appealing to you. 
 
What if you stopped living life out of a sense of obligation and start optimizing for joy instead?
 
It may sound overly mathematical, but approaching fulfillment quantitatively is quite helpful. It’s a formula. We can literally train ourselves to spend as little time as possible on things we didn’t care about, that way we no longer have to feel guilty about spending time on the things that we do care about. 
 
The hard part is the permission. Being able to announce to ourselves, fuck it, it brings me joy. 
 
Not to mention the trust. Knowing that our happiness is the best gift we can give the world. 
 
But once we solve that equation, define joy for ourselves and seek it in our own way, life becomes a whole lot lighter. 
 
In weight and in spirit. 
 
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you the kind of person who always seems to wrest joy out of the most unfortunate circumstances?

Tonight the final curtain drops upon my short life’s precious play

If you’re not even around when people discuss your legacy, then what’s all the fuss about? 

Perhaps it’s time to call legacy for what it really is. Yet another denial of death. 
 
People torture themselves day after day trying to create notch after notch in their precious little legacy belt, because they’re afraid of not being remembered when they’re gone. It’s the specter of insignificance. Our complete inability to confront the impermanence of all life. 
 
And ironically, it’s making millions of us miss out on the very life we’re so desperately trying to preserve. 
 
We’re so focused on leaving a legacy after we die, that we’re forgetting to live our lives while we’re still here. Our ego is so obsessed with posthumous recognition, that we’re forgetting to access the miracle that is this glorious moment. 
 
Becker famously wrote in his award winning book that all humans use their ideas for the defense of their existence and to frighten away reality. They don’t want to admit to themselves that their life may be arbitrary, and their own way of existence may be just as fundamentally contrived as any other. 
 
Eagleman has a related philosophy, which suggests there are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time. 
 
Therefore, our thought experiment is as follows. 
 
What if there were no such thing as legacy? What if all we had was now? How might that change our daily life? 
 
Eisenhower, through various wars and battles, famously carried around the following poem in his pocket about an indispensable man:
 
Sometime, when you’re feeling important, sometime, when your ego’s in bloom. 
Sometime, when you take it for granted, you’re the best qualified man in the room. 
Sometime, when you feel that your going, would leave an unfillable hole.
Just follow this simple instruction, and see how it humbles the soul. 
 
Take a bucket and fill it with water, put your hand in it up to the wrist. 
Pull it out, and the hole that’s remaining is a measure of how you’ll be missed. 
You may splash all you please when you enter, you can stir up the water galore. 
But stop and you’ll find in a minute, it looks quite the same as before. 
Don’t think of this as the practice of nihilism, the trance of unworthiness or the cynical rejection of meaning.
Think of it as an invitation to liberation. A skeleton key to unlock extraordinary untapped aliveness waiting for you when you no longer have to worry about what lives on beyond you.
Follow this simple instruction, see how it humbles the soul.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Does your obsession with legacy improve your life, or distract you from living it?

The knight of abstinence is not the hero people worship and honor

Rubin’s book about being happier at home clarifies a crucial distinction between two personalities. Both have different answers to the following question. 

How do you deal with managing a strong temptation? 
 
Her research found that for some people, occasional indulgence heightens their pleasure and strengthens their resolve. They get panicky and rebellious at the thought of never getting or doing something. These people are called moderators. 
 
But the other camp of people are the ones who do better when they avoid absolutes and strict rules. Because they have trouble stopping something once they’ve started. For them, it’s much easier to give something up altogether than to indulge moderately. These people are called abstainers. 
 
Which category do you fall into? 
 
Personally, abstinence has always been my thing. Not necessarily by choice, it’s just how my brain is wired. Having just one just isn’t possible. Moderation simply doesn’t work for me. 
 
Unfortunately, most of the world doesn’t accept this approach to life. Mainly because we live in a culture that fetishizes moderation, shames monotony, celebrates cheat days, rewards temptation, scoffs at rigidity and insists on indulgence being a healthy and necessary part of a fulfilling life. 
 
Is it any surprise how quickly people become judgmental, insecure and disapproving around abstainers? 
 
The knight of abstinence is not the hero people worship and honor. 
 
My favorite is when moderators explain to abstainers how it’s not healthy to take such a severe approach and they should lighten up and live a little. 
 
Thanks for the advice, but allow me to briefly explain how my brain works. 
 
By abstaining, you don’t have to spend a lot of precious energy justifying why you should go ahead and indulge. 
 
By abstaining, you accept your abnormality instead of trying to become a normal binger like everyone else. 
 
By abstaining, you respect your lack of desire and capacity for moderation. 
 
By abstaining, you take yourself out of the victim position in regard to substances around which you can’t control yourself. 
 
By abstaining, you draw an airtight boundary that guarantees your continued sanity and freedom. 
 
By abstaining, you experience complete relief from the craving you once tried to satisfy through compulsive restricting. 
 
By abstaining, you no longer have a thing to rebel against and can declare yourself free from that thing that used to control you.
 
By abstaining, you are no longer constrained by numbers, you are liberated by zero. 
 
It’s just easier for me. Abstinence requires no additional thinking on my part. 
 
Now, that may sound sad and boring to you, but it’s pure freedom for me. It’s a privilege. Abstinence is built on the foundation of my true nature, and it is a gift to be cared for and strengthened. 
 
And now if you’ll excuse me, there’s an entire box of chocolate cereal with my name on it. 
 
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How do you deal with managing a strong temptation?

My love will wear you down eventually

Carlin used to do this classic comedy bit about converting to a solar religion. 
 
Sun worship is fairly simple. There are no crucifixions, and we’re not setting people on fire simply because they don’t agree with us. There’s no mystery, no miracles, no pageantry, no one asks for money, there are no songs to learn, and we don’t have a special building where we all gather once a week to compare clothing. And the best thing about the sun, it never tells you you’re unworthy. Doesn’t tell you that you’re a bad person who needs to be saved. Hasn’t said an unkind word. Treats you fine. 
 
George depicts the perfect model for our interpersonal relationships. 
 
Especially when the people we love are suffering. You know they’re hurting and it cuts you into a thousand pieces. You know their brain is not in a place where they can learn. And in that moment, what they need more than anything is for us to be like the sun. 
 
Meaning, don’t do anything to solve the problem. Just be the solution. Offer warmth and presence and love. Trust that they’ll get the insight they need if you just love them through this chapter of their lives. 
 
And trust that they will make it out alive, as long as you keep reminding them who they are along the way. It’s about all you can do. 
 
You have to resist the urge approach them from a place of fixing or consulting. Otherwise everything you say will just pass through them like a breeze. 
 
Yes, it’s painful to accept the powerlessness that love brings us. But lest we forget, this is the cost of love. It’s what our heart and soul signed up for when we decided to take the plunge. 
 
Be like the sun. As the great poet once wrote, let there be light, and let it begin with me. 
 
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you trying to take the journey for someone?

The dangerous conceit of putting our faith in our own hands

Kidman, in her stellar performance in the award winning racing movie, makes the following speech to her driver and then husband. 

I’m going to let you in on a secret that most other people know. Control is an illusion. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next. Not on a freeway, and certainly not on a racetrack with other infantile egomaniacs. Nobody controls anything. You’ve had a glimpse of that, and you’re scared. 
 
And who wouldn’t be, right? All human beings are control freaks. Forget about opioids, that’s our country’s most prominent addiction. 
 
But the good news is, just because control is an illusion doesn’t mean that we are victims. We may live in this dizzying and uncertain world, but we are not impotent in the face of it. 
 
If we are willing to confront the dangerous conceit of putting our faith in our own hands, then we have a real shot and becoming empowered and fulfilled human beings. 
 
Citrin’s research on resilience comes to mind. He found that most people misperceive and underestimate their ability to deal with such perceived lack of control and, consequently, it’s their thinking that needs to change. 
 
Running with that, here is a collection of absurd questions to assess your own relationship with the drug of control. 
 
Do you believe this world is truly yours for the enjoying, or do you see it as wearying burden that pins you down with obligations? 
 
When things go awry, do you take control of the process, or sit back and hope it gets better? 
 
Can you acknowledge that you actually have a role in your future, or are you submitting under the unseeing eye of some blind idiot god that you inherited as a child? 
 
All nihilism aside, empowerment, which is the ability to make decisions that influence the outcomes of our work, is our best shot at responding to our lack of control in this world. 
 
Because no matter how chaotic things get, each of us can grow to love the empowerment that accompanies being responsible for all our actions. 
 
The simple awareness that we can stop sitting on our hands and start getting them dirty to improve our condition, it really does make a difference. 
 
Bonhoeffer summarizes it beautifully in his book of sermons: 
 
Having peace means having a home amid the restlessness of the world, having solid ground beneath one’s feet, and though the waves foam and rage ever so wildly, they can no longer rob me of my peace. 
 
Control may be an illusion, but empowerment isn’t. 
 
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What one very small change could profoundly influence how your life unfolds daily?
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