A commitment to growth
There has been a marked change in my outlook of life over the last week. I can pinpoint about the day that it started creeping into my conscious, but I’m betting it’s been a long time coming.
I’m coming to realize, in my own life, that the things I’ve delayed and the things I thought I could do without ‘just for now’ are, in fact, not something to put off until tomorrow. These things include being and doing the following:
- Eating healthful foods
- Frequent physical activity
- Monetary and financial plans that will cause me to create more assets
- Committing to professional growth and learning
- Investing more and better quality time in personal relationships
- Pursuing passions and activities that excite me personally
Don’t we all want these things? I presume that if you’re here, you must want them because you are the type of person that is obsessed with growth and in having a better quality of life in some form or another.
The question then, is why are we delaying these things? Personally, I believe it’s because we think it will be hard to attain even one of them, let alone all of them. We’ve let them build up as impenetrable fortresses in our minds; a place we no longer are welcome or dare approach.
I’ve come to realize that it starts with one step. Then another, and another.
So, why have I suddenly committed to this seemingly arduous (from my perspective, anyway) task?
Originally, I was going to say, “It might have a bit to do with a girl,” but that’s wrong. That was merely a catalyst.
When I realized the ramifications of relying on these kinds of external inspirations (the opposite sex), which I’ve done for years, I knew I needed a new set of blueprints for life, happiness, and success. Other people are perhaps the worst reason of all to do anything. It has to come from a desire within ourselves. Otherwise we’ll never appreciate it.
However, the reason does have something to do with our social fabric. I love people and want to spend more time with them. These goals will only help me do that as well as live a better personal life.
You will never see a post like this on my blog ever again, for this is my public commitment to growth.
Stress
Often, it comes when we don’t want it to. It comes when we’re stretched to the limit with our resources. When we start a new career, venture, or book.
It overtakes us and convinces us we’re not worthy of whatever it is we’re doing. It drags us down with an incredible force to a place we didn’t even know existed. Pure hell.
Then, a day later, we wake up and realize the stress has lost it’s hold over us. It’s not gone, don’t make that mistake. But it played it’s best hand and lost (at least for now).
It will be back with force someday, but for now we’ve got work to do.
I won’t have time to finish this
I started writing a little too late today.
So of course I’ve come up with an excuse for doing less than I’d hoped. Isn’t that what happens when we don’t prepare for something? We come up short of our goal. We don’t provide the experience we were hoping for.
We know inside that we could have done more. We know we could have spent every moment, up until now, preparing for this moment.
But we didn’t, and we often don’t. Sad.
On second thought, we couldn’t spend every moment preparing. That would figuratively kill us. That would not be living, but merely preparing to live.
Perhaps there is a happy medium.
gary:
A rant from the heart, hip and head. I am just spilling my guts at 30K feet! Whatya think?
Shipping
It’s intimidating and scary to put money on something that might not do well. When you’re throwing an event and you have to pay that deposit, when you sign a new lease for a creative space, you’re not just putting cash on the line. For most of us, we put our ego on the line too.
However, once you pay that money, a large part of the fear goes away. You’re now committed. You either pull it off or you don’t. Shipping is less painful than quitting now because if you quit, you lose everything.
As soon as you feel the fear, find something to commit to.
PS Don’t ever put your ego (self-worth) on the line… for anything.
What we know about reading…
In 1952, a study was conducted that put researchers in children’s classrooms. For two long, grueling years the researchers (Dr. Seuss among them) came to some solid conclusions.
Among them were: it was very hard to make meaningful conclusions about education because education was very hard to measure; and that most teachers focused on bringing the slow kids up to speed, basically ignoring the ones that excelled. But the most surprising of all was that kids didn’t like the books they were reading because they looked boring!
Dr. Seuss then went on to make over 60 children’s books, focused on adding compelling images with the text. They were used by teachers all over the country to help students learn to read.
Nowadays, it’s no surprise that college students hate going to class. It’s because it’s boring! The truly sad thing about this is that we’ve known this for years. By us, I mean the college students. It’s obvious that the school’s don’t know or else maybe they’d do something about it.
So what’s the answer?
The obvious answer is to make college less boring, even exciting. Classes need more visuals, more experiences, and generally more fun.
The not so obvious thing is that this is already happening. Once again, take a look at the d.school at Stanford. They are the definition of exciting.
The even less obvious thing is that major colleges are losing massive market share to start-up schools promising careers in two years and by self-learners, willing to make their career with their bare hands.
Making enemies is often overlooked. It gives us this strange sense of valor. When we’re making enemies, it’s us versus them, and we have to win! For great justice!
Oh, wait… that’s bad.
It’s bad because making enemies makes our work, the work that matters, a lot harder than it has to be. If we think about it, we all know how to make enemies:
- Criticize
- Contradict yourself
- Belittle
- Accept credit
- Bully
- Blame
- Do not compromise
- Argue
The simple answer is to do the opposite of these. It’s true, you won’t make enemies if you do the opposite, but nobody will respect you either. Here’s a better idea:
- Criticize yourself when you make mistakes, publicly
- If you have to contradict yourself, you better explain why, publicly
- Never, ever belittle
- Give credit where it’s due, often try to give credit to others who helped you, even if only slightly
- Never bully
- Never blame for little mistakes, it’s a waste of time. If it was illegal, be sure you find the bastard(s)
- Don’t compromise, find the best solution (even if it’s not your solution). Involve outsiders if needed, and value their opinions on the matter.
- Go to bat for your beliefs, but remember that finding a solution is more important than arguing.
There, now that we’ve got that out of the way, find an enemy of yours, and fix it. Buy them a gift, do something for them, offer to help. The only way it’s going to get fixed is if one of you takes the first step. May as well be you.
Creating culture… (integrity)
I’ve read the book, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, many times. Probably over twenty.
The thing that is always striking is how much Zappos committed to defending what they believed in, even if it went against general business principles. Even if it meant disappointing somebody.
A great example of this is their incredible use of honesty with their employees. Before the company was profitable, Zappos faced several tough cash constraints. Instead of hiding this from employees they employed their integrity. Staff were notified of the need for cutbacks and why. A lot of employees left the company, but some stayed, taking pay cuts, less vacation days, and in some cases, working for free.
As it turns out, the employees that stayed were also the most productive and believed the most in the brand, building the culture that would later make Zappos famous.
Being forthright with information, both good and bad, builds organizational integrity, especially when you care about how it affects everybody.
We do not look inside and find our inner meaning, instead we look inside, see what’s there and decide to create something else or reinforce what we already have.
Random? OR What we don’t understand
What we don’t understand becomes random.
When you flip a coin, the outcome isn’t random. Not on that large scale. Not even close. After you project it into the air… no, wait, before that. Before you even pull the coin out of your pocket, it’s on a trajectory. You’ve made a choice that influences the outcome. Metaphysical for sure, so lets get down to more concrete detail.
When you finally do flip it, you’ve set it’s path and it will land exactly the way it’s going to land. Based on how/when you decide to catch it, it will either be heads or tails… but that’s not true either.
Have you ever stopped to consider that it could land upright? It’s unlikely, but not that unlikely.
So then, why does the coin always land on one side or the other? Because we make it do so. If the coin lands upright, the pressure from our hands makes it go one way or the other.
The notion goes, “If I can’t see how I’ve affected the outcome, or see the outcome itself before everybody else, then it’s random. An experiment. Either way, I’m not to blame.”
Wrong.
In fact, you’re exactly the person to blame. The coin landed the way it did because of you. Now, you may not have the skill to make it land that way every time, true. But do you see how much of a mistake it is to call that random?
Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s random or that you aren’t a key influencer in its outcome. Not by a long shot.
You have affected the outcome of every project you’ve been involved in. You’ll continue to do so forever. Start acting like it.
Relationship building…
Probably the most overlooked activity. Period.
The truth is staggering. Many people just don’t build meaningful and valuable relationships. This manifests itself in two forms: apathy and fear.
Fear is the least important one here because it’s a lot easier to deal with than apathy. All you have to do to get over the fear of meeting new people is do it more often. That’s all. Just do it every day.
Focus on quality more than quantity. The point is relationships, not acquaintances.
Apathy is a bit harder. It’s the ‘not-caring’ that causes the problem. If you don’t care to meet new people then you’re really saying that you don’t care about the people themselves. Can you predict the effect of such an action?
What happens is you continue to ‘not-care’ and people begin to dislike, even hate you. Sure, you may be a great person with amazing talent, but if people don’t think you care about them, you lose.
It’s hard to fix the ‘not-caring’. The only approach is to learn how to care more.
But you can definitely do it.
Tips:
- Pick up a book on relationships (the romantic kind). The principles are incredibly similar
- Read How to Win Friends and Influence People to get a look at what caring looks like
- Similar to the fearful, if you’re apathetic, try meeting just one new person each day. Perhaps even one per week to start the trend.
It’s been SEVEN years since this video was filmed. Seven…
The education movement hasn’t done a whole lot of moving since then, at least to the layman. Honestly, after following it for years, I have to say it hasn’t changed much from the insider’s perspective either.
Initiatives like Idea School and the d.school have made impact, but only a tiny dent in a very large world of misinformed educators and students.
Today, students are still being taught facts instead of skills, devoid of meaning, being steered away from their passions. What this means is that you might love to work with people, but spend all your time in school memorizing equations that you’ll never use. Why?
People have questioned this for years, but nobody does anything about it.
Because students feel they have no other choice and no power to change the way things work, they either give up or give in.
Some will drop out, work a dead-end job, and maybe turn to alcohol.
On the opposite end of that we have students excelling to finish their Associate’s Degree before they finish High School, completely missing out on many childhood experiences. They go home with hours and hours of homework each night after being in school all day, all the while trying to fit in violin, dancing, and singing lessons. Finally, they graduate with minimal job outlook. What was the point of all that ‘hoop-jumping’?
All this is terribly depressing, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
There is a new type of student emerging. It’s not quite a middle ground. I don’t think that’s a way to describe it. It’s more of an evolution. Here it is:
Students who question the system enough to quit it.
Instead of accepting society’s options, they create their own. They study what they want in their free time, and leverage the skills they learn to create art, meaning, and a difference in the world. They obtain a new job because of real-world work they chose to do, not because of some archaic symbol of indoctrination. They maintain a portfolio of their work, documenting it for others to see and be inspired by. They challenge the Status Quo, not to brag, but to challenge the world to be better.
And yet even more students take up that challenge and work to create even more art.
The third type of student will build our future. They will forge ahead, free and bold. Will it be another seven years?
What is your job? (Part 2)
You might have a job that is pretty nice.
You know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. There’s a problem though. if you’re sold on this job then you’re not sold on keeping it.
To keep it and go beyond you have to drive innovation, step outside your job description, and be willing to tackle difficult problems. You have to make something new happen. You have to build and maintain relationships with everybody in your organization.
If you’re not on the forefront of innovation within your position, then you’re stuck in the past. And when people figure out how to do your job, they will resent you.
Resent: feeling bitterness or indignation toward (person, action, circumstance).
That’s pretty bad. With people resenting you, how will you change the world?
Better to do the hard thing. Better to keep them guessing.
