Transformation

One of the most enduring themes in world literature is transformation. The great commonality among the otherwise very different religions across the globe is the possibility of transformation. And in business, there's nothing more important than the promise of this very thing.

Transformation is all about where we are now, where we ideally need to be, and how best to get from this present to that future.

In the world of work, transformation is about turning potentiality into actuality, a need into a business, raw materials into products, people into performers, potential customers into loyal fans and investments into profits.

In life, our weaknesses can be transformed into strengths, our limitations can be morphed into the outlines of our distinctive excellence, and our mistakes can be redeemed into new wisdom.

The nearly magical spark of all positive transformations is a vision that can turn regular men and women into heroes, despite all the challenges and setbacks they might face. The right vision creates the right energy in the right people to produce the right results.

The greatest wonder in our world is the ongoing possibility for transformation that it allows.

When we understand deeply where we are, envision clearly where we could be, and create boldly a path forward that will spark the best in those around us, as well as in our own hearts, we provide the leadership necessary for great transformations.

Running the Race Well

I just came across an old image. Life is like a relay race. So is your work. Someone has passed a baton to you. And you're now running with it. At some point, you'll pass it on to someone else. As you run, you should reflect on at least these considerations:

1. The person who gave you the baton - Who was it? What do you owe him or her, as a result of the gift of that baton? What responsibility has been passed on to you with it?

2. The person you'll eventually give the baton - Who will it be? Do you know? Do you care? Are you selecting a proper recipient, even now? What do you owe that person? What responsibility do you have to him or her? What duty, or possibility, or momentum, will you pass on?

3. On a deeper level, is this the right race for you? When you pass off the baton, should you then find a different race, or a different track?

To run the race of your life or work well is to take care of these things. And, while you hold the baton, you move forward as well as you can, and you uphold the process at its best.

That's running the race well.

Self Reflective Consciousness

Self Reflective Consciousness is the distinctive type of awareness that carries within itself the ability to consider and think about ourselves. It's the mind's inner mirror that reflects to us what we're doing and thinking, and lets us ponder that. It provides the capacity for self appraisal, self judgment, self correction, and self guidance.

It's our great glory, and our big problem. It allows us to consider, choose, adapt, and transform our lives. It also lets us critique, doubt, second-guess, and worry about our lives. It's the chief engine of  what we know as personal excellence. And it's the chief obstacle to that same exalted state. We need to make the most of it, and equally, to rise above it.

Fortunately, the phenomenon of self reflective consciousness can itself help us to get into a position to leave it behind, as we enter "The Zone" or "Flow" or the "Deep Play" of creative work, athletic mastery, musical reverie, or even a great relationship, at its best.

Is it then a ladder to be climbed and eventually kicked away? Or is it a lifeline that we need always with us, at least in the background, despite our equal need to transcend it?

The top performers in any art, science, or work, in their greatest moments, as they report later to us, rose above it, kicked it aside, and shed its limitations as they soared to their highest achievements. They became self forgetful in order to reach the pinnacle of self fulfillment.

This reflective state of consciousness, this inner mirror and critic, is a blessing when it helps us to find our way, and a curse when it just gets in our way. We need to grow better at using this capacity so well that it will help us to soar far beyond its limiting and commenting chatter. 

Then, we enter the realm where we can fly.

Half-Hearted Half-Lives

How intensely do you live? How fully embodied are you, throughout your day? Are you doing your thing All-In, or just semi-engaged?

Here's a challenging claim from Walter Kerr, in his book, The Decline of Pleasure:

"We are vaguely wretched because we are leading half-lives, half-heartedly, and with only one-half of our minds actively engaged in making contact with the universe about us."

Is that true of most people? Is it ever true of you, even half the time?

Just reading Kerr, I'm already vowing to make sure that, throughout this day, I'm playing life as a full contact sport, totally immersed, and committed to the full, with all my heart and mind.

How about you?

Churchill on Art and Life

Sir Winston Churchill discovered the joy of painting when he was forty years old. It was to be one of the most rewarding activities of his life. I just read, for the second or third time, his little book Painting as a Pastime. It's full of great advice about mastering new activities that can enhance our lives immeasurably.

At one point, Sir Winston is talking about learning the art that was his favorite, and he says something profoundly applicable to progress in any great endeavor, in anything worth learning, where great delight can reward great difficulty. Let me quote.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

What a wonderful statement! The adventures that we're on should extend out into the horizon, without any end in sight. There's always scope for new discovery and mastery, and indeed, new delight. We each need something in our lives that promises never ending challenge and enjoyment.

And it's never too late to find your art. Until, of course, it is. Therefore, start!

A Better Model For Decisions

How we think about choices can help us or hinder us in making them. I suspect that most of us carry around, in the backs of our minds, an inappropriate model for decision making that actually gets in our way and trips us up.

Many of us approach decisions as we would a True-False Test - there's a right answer and a wrong one. Take the new job, or stay in the old job. Move across the country, or remain where we are. True, or False. The difference is that we haven't previously learned in any sort of class which is which, and so we're in the old dreaded situation of guessing.

Sometimes, the Multiple Choice exam question might seem to be a more accurate rendering of how we think: There are many options for how I could approach my work or my life right now, and only one of them is best. Depending on the circumstances and the options, this can seem to capture a decision situation better than the True-False. But normally, it still puts on us a pressure that's totally unnecessary.

Philosopher Ruth Chang has an interesting Op Ed in the New York Times relevant to this. She says we often approach life decisions as a maximizing gain, minimizing loss scenario, and assume that if we could just get at the right facts out there in the world, the decision would be made for us. And she suggests that this isn't so. She counsels instead that when the options are at least "on a par" - there's no obvious best path forward, and we could live with either - we ought to ask what we could best commit ourselves to. It isn't a matter of guessing, but of commitment.

My suggestion is this. Decision making is less like an exam and more like an art. Every choice we make is a stroke on the canvas, a chip in the marble, a move in the dance. It's not necessarily a matter of True-False, or of picking The One Right Answer. It's a matter of "What's the next move we can feel really good about making?" And that aligns with Ruth Chang's consideration of commitment. What do you want? What can you commit to best?

When you think like that, you don't worry so much about "getting it wrong" and making a big mistake. Your thinking is more positive than protective, more about wants than about wariness. And that can liberate you to be the artist that you, deep down, are capable of being.

New Goals

My gym has been amazingly full the past few days. Has yours? Don't worry, it won't last. There's a weekly version of this, too. Every Monday, the place is hopping. By Wednesday, it's just the old regulars.

In the opening days and weeks of a new year, we often allocate special energy to setting new goals. But then, a month or two later, it's back to normal, all too often. Why do so many of our New Year's Resolutions fade away?

Too many of us think we have new goals when we just have new fantasies. A fantasy is a figment of the imagination. I have a fantasy of lying in a hammock in Key West, perpetually. But it's not a real desire, not something that, when I actually think it through, I would want at all.

A desire is something stronger than a fantasy. Philosophers call it an inclination of the appetites, broadly speaking. It has some level of inner urgency to it. We feel a pull or a push toward anything that we actually desire. It isn't just an idle dream.

A goal is something very different. A real goal is a commitment of the will. The problem with many New Year's Resolutions is that they're fantasies, or desires, but not real goals. There's no commitment. And that's why they fade so quickly.

A commitment is a firm decision that has the quality of inner resilience. It can't easily be defeated. It's a motivated choice with renewable energy behind it, because of the values it embodies and that are therefore at stake. A commitment rides the wave of those values. And they are what will carry it on.

So if you've set new goals in the new year, and feel yourself wavering, ask whether you merely have a fantasy, or a desire, or have a real commitment, a choice based on values that you hold near and dear. Fantasies and desires can generate goals, guided by values, and they can support our goals, if we use them well. But they can't replace real goals.

Remember the importance of commitment. And I'll see you in the gym for a long time to come.

Motivational Speakers

On several occasions, after being in one of my audiences, someone has said to me, "I've always hated motivational speakers." That's an interesting remark for me to hear, since I'm often described as a motivational speaker.

Fortunately, the next sentence, on each occasion, has been something like: "But this, I really, truly enjoyed." And then, some version of an explanation has followed: "This was the real thing, today - the real stuff, not just fluff."

One Harvard educated PBS producer, after telling me how much he dreaded being dragged to see a motivational talk, said to me, with great enthusiasm, "But this, I couldn't believe, it was so good. You dug deep into human nature. You nailed all the real stuff. This was genuine philosophy, not just empty cheerleading. I mean, it was inspirational and uplifting because it wasn't just a lot of hype. It was deep truth, presented simply, logically, and with a lot of fun." He didn't hold it against me that I was a Yale guy. 

I was relieved, and grateful for the positive words. But, hey, we all need a little cheerleading now and then. "Come on. You can do it. Head high. Just believe. Aim for the stars. Etc." But at other times, we do need much more. We need to understand the leverage points in human nature for making things happen. And ever since there have been written documents, wise people have put into writing what they discerned about those deep wells and resources we all have. Or, sometimes, their students have recorded their remarks, when they were not writers themselves, like Socrates, and Epictetus, the Buddha, and Jesus of Nazareth.

We benefit when we hear or read "the real stuff, not just fluff." The truth is exciting enough to give us hope and inspire us to move forward productively in our lives and our work. We don't need revved up hype to pump us up.

Some motivational speakers are indeed like parrots of fluff - human tape recorders of clever phrases ending with exclamation points. A few, sadly, are charlatans concerned only about their own success, not yours or mine. Some, unfortunately - and I say this as charitably as possible, and without feeling at all judgmental, but you likely know what I mean - are deluded careless thinkers. Sorry, but it's true. And some are wise, loving, and helpful guides to the heights of what we're capable of accomplishing and experiencing in this world, because they're grounded deeply in truth, and are motivated by love.

Brian Johnson, founder and proprietor of Entheos has a nice concept for the concerns of the wisest throughout history: Optimal Living. Anyone who can help us to that deserves our attention. And I include in that crowd such eminences as Aristotle, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tsu, Rumi, Hadrat Ali, Emerson, and even some much less celebrated people alive in our day.

In motivational matters, as in life, the adage holds true: Let the buyer/listener/reader beware. But if we're discerning, and follow the genuine breadcrumbs of wisdom left for us throughout the ages, we can indeed prosper and succeed, finding fulfillment and happiness along the way. Then, we become wisely motivated achievers of optimal living.

Wild Advice

In last Sunday's New York Times, the authors of the books Wild and Gone Girl were interviewed together. In the course of the conversations, Cheryl Strayed, author of "Wild" said:

The story I wrote has an ancient tradition in literature, man against nature, the hero’s journey. I was conscious of the narratives that I was both taking part in and also countering because the variation on the theme is: It was a woman, and it wasn’t “versus.” I say the wild felt like home to me. It wasn’t me trying to conquer it; it was me living in it. So much about “Wild” is about acceptance and surrender and vulnerability. To me that’s the greatest strength, not this conquering kind of narrative that we have embedded in our bones.

That got me to thinking. How much of personal growth and achievement advice is about conquering? A lot, actually. In America, especially, where the self help literature really got going, back in the last century and before that, we're all about action, fighting for what's right, changing what we don't like, conquering the next foe, battling the obstacle we'll face on our way to our goal. But it could well be that "acceptance, surrender, and vulnerability" are much more important in any heroic quest than we normally suppose. And we forget that to our detriment.

There's a famous woodcarver who has said that average carvers often fight the wood, and try to force it into what they have in mind; whereas master carvers "listen to the grain" they're working with, and truly partner with the wood for the greatest results. Could it be that every situation has its grain, and that we need to accept that fact, surrender to it, to some extent, and be vulnerable to learn and change and adapt? Could it be that this is as important to any heroic quest as the determination and will to fight and struggle? 

Cheryl Strayed offers us some wild advice that's well worth pondering.

To see her book, click here.

Trust the Process

Every effort toward something important, every quest, every goal-centered pursuit, is a process. And one of the toughest challenges in life is to trust the process as it unfolds.

Good things rarely happen as quickly or as easily as we'd like. Time passes. The horizon recedes. We begin to wonder. Certainly fades into maybe. And our confidence lags, along with other emotions. We're tempted to jump ship, give up, and go on our way.

But this is so common a scenario that we ought to recognize it as such, and approach it differently. Delay is natural in the world. The timing we want is not often the timing we get. So patience is needed, but even more so, trust. We need trust. We need faith. 

There's an old adage (Ok, it's my old adage): Plan your work, and then work your plan. Every good plan needs an investment of trust, of commitment, of hope and realistic optimism.

Then, when the time has fully come, things happen. When the time is right, the process comes to culmination, to fruition, to completion. Would you want it sooner than when the time is right?

If you've chosen the process, if you picked it because you believed in this way of working, then one thing only remains. Trust the process.

Today.

Joy

Joy. It's a big concept bottled up in a little word. It's a big thing available to each of us.

One of the major surprises I had when I was studying the stoic philosophers, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, years ago, in preparation for my book The Stoic Art of Living, was that they were so different from what 'stoic' and 'stoicism' has come to mean in the popular mind. Most people think that being stoic is all about not feeling anything - that it's almost like philosophical anesthesia. But it's not.

The stoics wanted to help us to keep from being disturbed by fleeting emotions so that our natural joy could rise to the surface and be experienced and lived. Negative emotions like resentment, and bitterness, and anger can obviously prevent an experience of joy. But the additional insight of the stoics was that unreasonably strong positive emotions could, too, like that "irrational exuberance" that can come from hearing what we think is great good news. When we get too worried, or too excited, we can become unhinged from reality and our own inner poise and healthiness. The stoics seemed to think that if we could avoid such unsettling emotions, negative or positive, we could become peaceful enough in our surface consciousness as to allow a deep joy that is our birthright to bubble up into our souls and truly bless us.

Joy is not the same thing as happiness. It's not giddiness. It's not mere pleasantness. It's deeper and higher and more abiding. Most of us have felt it, at some time, if only in a momentarily taste or touch of it. But some seem to live it enduringly. Do you have it in your life right now? If not, why not? What's getting in the way? What obstacle to your joy could be removed or eliminated?

At its best, therapy removes obstacles to joy. At its best, self examination prepares the soil for joy.

What gives you joy? Can you integrate more of that into your life this week? Or even today?

It's meant to be yours. And it can enhance everything else you feel, and do.

The Tools of Success

There are certain universal tools for success in any task, job, or role we play in our lives. I've been speaking for 25 years on a framework of such tools that I long ago isolated and extracted from the world's wisdom literature, with a focus on the insights of the most practical philosophers who have contemplated the contours of our lives. I've also written often on what I call The 7 Cs of Success. And, in brief, they are:

The 7 Cs: For true success in any challenge or opportunity, we need:

1. A clear CONCEPTION of what we want, a vivid vision, a goal clearly imagined

2. A strong CONFIDENCE that we can attain the goal

3. A focused CONCENTRATION on what it takes to reach the goal

4. A stubborn CONSISTENCY in pursuing our vision

5. An emotional COMMITMENT to the importance of what we're doing

6. A good CHARACTER to guide us and keep us on a proper course

7. A CAPACITY TO ENJOY the process along the way

This simple framework of seven universal conditions was initially fairly difficult to identify and articulate, in all its proper details. I was looking for universality and logical connectedness. But understanding it is far easier than applying it effectively, which is really 90% of success.

Ideas and implementation are both important. But, ultimately, it's the implementation of ideas like these that makes all the difference. The tools of success, like any tools, have to be used in order to facilitate real world achievement, and they have to be used well. Plus, what results is just as much reliant on the materials of construction as on the tools used. 

Imagine yourself a carpenter. Your tools are the universal conditions for success. Your materials are your talents, skills, knowledge, and opportunities, as well as your relationships. What you create from those materials will demand a good use of appropriate tools. And that's up to you. 

Using the 7 Cs well involves understanding your situation, and also deeply understanding your self. We all have various strengths and limitations within us, obstacles and facilitators of some of these universal conditions. What holds you back? What drives you forward? Knowing yourself well positions use to use these tools well. That's why the philosophers have always encouraged self-knowledge, without which we end up without the particular structures we need for full and happy lives.

The Road to Greatness

This week, I've written an earlier blog post on the idea of greatness. A friend read it and told me something interesting. He said that his son had once been at a school where he was surrounded by mediocrity, and then switched to another school in the same town where he encountered the quest for personal greatness, left and right. My friend went on to say that the new, more challenging environment, had a decidedly uplifting effect on his son, right away, and that the results of this got him into a top university, where the level of expected excellence increased again. 

It's amazing how often we've been told by philosophers that we become like the people we're around, and how commonly we forget to use this important truth to our own advantage. During my years at Notre Dame, it astonished me to see that, no matter how good our football team might be, when they played a bad team, they played badly themselves. The sloppiness and mistakes they showed could be truly perplexing to witness. And yet, when they played a top five team, they'd play them toe-to-toe, and often win.

We're so often like thermometers, rising or falling with the temperature around us, and yet we'd prefer to think of ourselves as thermostats, determining it, instead.

There are a lot of deep evolutionary reasons, related to survival, for our unconscious need and drive to fit in with the people around us. We need to be accepted. We need to be liked. And so, below the level of awareness, we conform in many ways. We become like our tribe.

But we also have the gift of free will. And that allows the possibility, within limits, and sometimes even apart from any limits, for us to choose our tribe. Who do we want to hang around? Who do we want to be like? Who do we most admire?

And yet, here's the apparent dilemma: I want to be like people who are a lot better than me. That way, I can grow into my own form of greatness, encouraged by my environment. But if they're at least as smart and ambitious as I am, they'll want to be around people much better than them, which clearly excludes me. Remember Groucho Marx, who said he'd never want to belong to a club that would have someone like him as a member? That's sort of the problem.

But there's the secret. If I want to be around people significantly better than I am in all the right ways, they will be people of great kindness and curiosity - two very different virtues. And yet, either of those qualities will open them up to my company. Problem solved.

So, why not aim for the stars? The real stars, I mean, not the fake, manufactured ones. When we associate with people of real wisdom and virtue, real accomplishment and knowledge, we're encouraged in our own adventures with greatness. The path is much easier.

Why, then, should we ever settle for less?

Greatness

Do you aspire to greatness? Or does that question just strike you as silly, or almost embarrassing? 

One of my favorite books in the late '80s was Attaining Personal Greatness, by Melanie Brown. It's actually one of my favorite success and personal growth books of all time, and I bet you haven't heard of it. That's too often the way things go. It's great (appropriately) but not well known. You can buy it on Amazon now for a penny. I quickly learned not to carry it around with the title showing, lest I elicit comments like "Oh. Have you attained it yet?" Or, "How's that going?" (with a raised eyebrows and a finger pointing toward the title).

Can you even imagine the concept broached in a speed dating situation: "What are your interests and plans?" - "Well, greatness. I'd like to attain personal greatness." - "Ok. NEXT!"

I did a podcast interview yesterday with a great guy who seems to be a real kindred spirit, Jay Forte, author of the book The Greatness Zone, and proprietor of the website named, appropriately, The Greatness Zone. He said that when he told his kids about the book, they advised him that he desperately needed a different title - that nobody is going to go around googling "greatness," or even binging it, or Yahooing, or whatever.

But I did. A quick google of the word 'greatness' reveals that it got used a lot in the year 1800, but that since then, it's been on a long downhill decline, which has only recently begun to reverse. The word 'awesome' by contrast had almost no usage in 1800, but experienced a marked increase of usage beginning after 1900, and spiking in the 1990s, until relatively recently, when it slowly began to become "not so great, or awesome, after all."

Our word 'great' has an interesting ancestry. In Old English, it was pronounced like "Greet." In Dutch, the root was 'groot.'  In German, 'gross' - but we'll pass over that one. In Old Saxon, it was 'grot', meaning, of course, something very different from 'rot'. These terms each tended to imply "big" or "tall" or "thick" or "stout." They were words of distinctive magnitude. In Middle English, there was a related verb, greaten, that meant "to grow, to increase, to become larger, or develop." And that's a key to the modern meaning.

Greatness is the result of a proper development, or appropriate growth, far beyond the norm. We speak of great musicians, great painters, great leaders, a great product, great service, and great art. The great is the wonderful and rare, the exceptional, the extraordinary that's far beyond the range of the ordinary. Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with what's ordinary, except when that word far too often comes to mean mediocre, subpar, poor, or even not really that good.

Nobody's born wanting to be a failure. Few people aspire to mediocrity. But is it Ok to shoot beyond good? Is it fine, or even commendable, or rather, obnoxiously elitist, and even narcissistic, to strive for greatness?

I happen to think that, in life and in the many roles we play within it, greatness is first and foremost a spiritual condition, an expansion of skill, ability, and performance that involves bringing something or someone to a special form of heightened completeness. It arises from innate gifts but develops through passion and persistence and a refusal to be stopped short of what's possible. Greatness is an achievement and pinnacle concept. And it's a realizable ideal.

Greatness isn't the same thing as perfection. Great men and women often have great flaws, or imperfections. But greatness requires the ability to learn from mistakes and challenges and failures along the way. And its measure is context relative. A great hotdog doesn't have to compete with a great painting in the realm of the aesthetic. Great work in college may be judged differently from great work in a professional context at the apex of an industry, or discipline. 

Perhaps, we can each aspire to our own personal form of greatness, at any given time, dependent on our talents, interests, values, and opportunities. Your proper greatness now, or in ten years, need not get you on the cover of Time Magazine, or invited to a sit-down with Oprah. But it will ennoble and elevate you and those around you, when it's done right. And it could even be what you're here for.

Just be careful how you talk about it, if you're first aspiring to it, or well on your way.

Anger. Grrrrr.

How often do you feel angry? I hope it's a rare experience. Aristotle taught us that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this emotion. It can be rational and appropriate, but only with the right reason, toward the right object, in the right measure, and for the right amount of time. Anger toward an injustice can rouse us to work to stop it. It can light our fuse and get us moving. But if it continues to burn, then we're going to be the ones incinerated by it.

Frequent anger is corrosive to the soul. It's a poison. And we need to understand it better in order to avoid it more.

Anger often arises from fear or frustration. When you feel it welling up in you, you should ask, "What am I afraid of here?" Or "What's frustrating me right now, and what can I do about it?"

If something's bothering you that you can change, then action is better than anger. If it's something you truly can't do anything about, then acceptance beats anger any day.

The more often you feel this emotion, the more you should analyze your fears and frustrations. If you can deal with them properly, then this inner disruption will not bother you so much, but rather, literally, leave you in peace.

And, ultimately, it's only from a state of inner peace that we can best face new challenges and situations that would otherwise spark in us fear or frustration.

When we deal properly with the inner causes of anger, the results can be grrrrrrreat!

Excellence

Long ago and far away, wise people knew what we need to keep in mind.

I was cleaning up my office today and found a bunch of old 3x5 note cards from decades ago, dating from my time at Notre Dame. On one yellowed card was this, which I thought might be worth sharing:

"Badness you can get easily, in quantity - the road is smooth, and it lies close by. But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it, and rough at first. But when you come to the top, then it is easy, even though it is hard."

Hesiod. Around 700 BC.

The view from the top is amazing. But the air is so thin. And yet, the work of excellence is, at a point, easy as well as hard. It's just another of the wonderful paradoxes of life. You see as you climb.

Grace and Mercy

Grace is defined as unmerited favor. It involves giving others, and sometimes even lavishing on them, something they don't literally deserve or have a claim to receive. It means going beyond what could be expected, and acting from the boundless resource of love.

Mercy is typically defined as compassion, or forbearance. It involves not dishing out to others something negative or harshly judgmental that they might actually deserve. It involves a certain restraint, or a holding back, with a sense of another's intrinsic value, born only of love. Mercy finds a better way.

Grace and mercy. How often do we speak of such things? Really? And yet, they are surely among the most important things of all. Do we cultivate these amazing dispositions with our thoughts and actions, daily? Or do we merely admire them from afar and hope to be their beneficiaries, rather than dedicating ourselves to being their conduits into the world?

Go to a movie, turn on a TV, or sample what's happening online, in news comments, and social media, beyond your closest circle of friends. How much grace and mercy do you experience?

Too many of us are dipped into a toxic mix every day and then wonder why we don't shine.

Each of us is here, I believe, to be a blessing to others, and never a curse. How then do we manage that? By living with grace and mercy. Expose yourself to others who live this way. Read of these things. Think on them. Use your imagination well. Ask: "How can I be a vehicle for grace and mercy to others?" Avoid the poisonous brew spread abroad by those who are strangers to these concepts. And, in a famous twist on the golden rule, treat others as if they were what they ought to be, and you can help them become what they're capable of being.

That way, you'll be a blessing, and never a curse, to those around you, to our broader world, and perhaps, most important of all, to yourself.

So go live a little grace and mercy.

Today.

Patience and Waiting

Last time, we began to examine the view that patience is a virtue, by looking at the strengths of patience and the undesirable elements of impatience.

The patient person:

1. Subjectively has inner peace, confidence, and poise

2. Objectively has a calm demeanor and waits, when needed

The impatient person:

1. Subjectively has eagerness, anxiety, frustration, and even anger

2. Objectively has an action orientation, determination, persistence, but can also express frustration and anger

The subjective side of impatience is mostly negative. The objective side looks mostly positive, aside from the negative expression of unpleasant emotions. 

And yet, consider those positive qualities that an impatient person can possess, like a tendency to take action and persist. They can have unfortunate implications in certain situations.  An impatient person may act when waiting is better, and mess up everything in the process.  But then, a patient person may wait when acting is better, and miss an important opportunity in the process. So, what’s it best to be: patient or impatient? 

A virtue, by the way, is by definition a quality or habitual disposition that it’s always good to have. And haven’t we just seen that there are circumstances in which patience and impatience each are bad?

No, actually, not at all. Look again at our characterization of patience, subjectively and objectively. There are no circumstances in which those qualities would be bad to have. The patient person can wait when needed. The only negative sort of example we were able to give assumed waiting when it was both unneeded and counter-productive. The patient person can even share all the objectively positive qualities of the impatient go-getter: that action orientation, the persistence, determination, and even creativity in trying new things in pursuit of a goal. She just does all that with an inner calm that strengthens her and that the impatient person lacks.

Patience does look like a virtue. And impatience looks like a vice. Who needs all that negative emotion? But remember Aristotle's understanding of a virtue. Every virtue has two corresponding vices, a "too little" and a "too much." Connected to patience, the too little is obviously impatience. What's the too much? Clearly the tendency to wait even when waiting is not good, the tendency to simply quit and hope when beneficial action is still needed. We might jokingly say that such a person is "too patient," but that wouldn't literally be true, if patience is indeed a virtue and involves waiting only when it's needed.

So, in the end the only real puzzle is determining when it’s best to wait, and when it’s best to press ahead. And, as I mentioned last time, that requires discernment or wisdom. But more can be said as well. If you're in a situation where you're trying to make something happen, and it's not going as well or quickly as you wanted, you need to know whether to wait a bit longer or to act anew to push things along. You need to ask questions like these:

The Waiting Check List

1. Have I already done all I reasonably think I can do?

2. Is it even a little bit likely that further action would be counterproductive or alienating to others whose goodwill or assistance I might need?

3. Could my timetable itself be unreasonable, and based on insufficient considerations?

4. Am I possibly operating under any false assumptions about the need for things to happen now?

5. Could waiting patiently for a while allow me to do or develop other good things that impatient action would prevent?

If you get at least one "Yes" here, you have an indication that patient waiting might be good. The more affirmative answers, the more likely you should be patient and wait. For at least a while. But we always have to do cost/benefit analyses along the way. Waiting for a day or a week or a month can be desirable in situations where waiting a year or three years may not be, and could even be counterproductive. The more you know about your situation and what you're trying to make happen, the better you'll be able to do such analyses. But always ask yourself questions like these, above. And try to avoid the negative subjectives involved in the impatient mindset. A patient person can act with persistence, determination, and creativity, pushing and reminding, but without the detrimental emotions tied up with impatience. He or she just knows how to release and relax, and maintain the peaceful being that is behind masterful doing over the long run.

Patience, properly understood, can be an important virtue in an active life.

Making Little Plans

I got an email in my box just the other day with the big title, appropriately all in bold:

Make No Little Plans. Think Big.

And it struck me immediately how commonplace such a piece of advice is, nowadays.  A culture of hype, superlatives, and grandiosity has gradually developed around those of us interested in personal growth, self-improvement, success, and spiritual development. And in this culture, it's sometimes amazing what people will actually say with a straight face, or an enthusiastic one.

I'm convinced that the real truth in life is exciting enough. We don't need to cavort in fields of hyperbole and exaggeration in order to get psyched and excited about our genuine prospects in this world. Not everything has to be the equivalent of a high wire act over the Grand Canyon, or between buildings in Chicago. You don't have to become a billionaire, or change the face of the world. Sure, some people launch rockets. And some rockets explode. And not everybody should aim for outer space, in the first place.

Sometimes, it's good to make small plans. And maybe, the best thing you can do, in some situations, is to think small. And I'm not talking nanotech here. Because, in many circumstances, little things can make a crucial difference. Often, it's just the difference that's needed - in a relationship, in an office, at home, or with a client. Yes, we do live in a world of grand gestures and huge plans, with plenty of seminars, books and videos to tell us how to be gigantic, and enormously admired. But aren't we often touched and impressed with the little kindness, the small gesture, the tiny act of grace and love that might convey something deep and wonderful? And who's to say that small and quiet lives in this world can't capture the greatest spiritual beauty to be experienced? If they're lived well.

And that's what it's all about in the end, isn't it? Quality, not quantity. Magic over magnitude, grace over grandiosity. But if it's right for you, aim as high as you can imagine, and make big plans. In the end, the right plans for you end up being the biggest and best, however big or small they might seem to someone else.

What I Learned at Yale

When I was a graduate student at Yale, I quickly came to realize that everyone around me was very busy pretending to know more than they actually knew. And once you realized how the pretense worked, you could see that they were investing a lot of energy in the deception. Intellectual posturing, or posing, in service to pretending, was one of the main activities on campus - at least, among my fellow graduate students at the time. No one would ever say, in class, "I'm not sure what you mean. Could you say more about that?" No brave soul would ask for a repetition or an elucidation or an explanation. Everyone made it seem as if he, or she, understood everything perfectly, on a first hearing, or even before. There was an enveloping fear of asking questions and thus revealing a weakness or gap in knowledge or understanding, which, of course, merely perpetuated every such weakness or gap there was.

And I came to realize, quickly, that one of the best things anyone concerned with excellence can do is to ask questions. It sometimes takes courage. It can be a heroic act of bravery in certain situations. But questions are breadcrumbs to truth and real understanding.

The most important thing I learned at Yale was to ask questions when everyone else was afraid to do so. And that's when I started to learn lots more.

So, ask. And ask again. Boldly, bravely ask, without a care as to what others think of you for asking, and thereby improve what you're able to think.

Today.