We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. -Winston Churhill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister.
Teleological. Goal seeking organism. According to Aristotle, that’s what we all are. Some call it go-getters, others refer to it as survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. Only the strong survive. All that don’t fight are fit for extinction!
Really? Is this the human condition? Wouldn’t an unbridled attack attitude lead to chaos? Look at how much ill will there is toward the wealthy. Certainly we celebrate the inventors like Steve Jobs who brought us pleasing and life changing products, but what about all those bankers who raked in massive fees while their industry tanked…where was the value added cried the abused!
So it appears that the masses tend to lean towards fair play…no problem that there’s a game to play and win, but when you cheat you get reeled in quickly and chastised. So what’s at play here? To some extent we all like to “get” and advance our own cause, but is there a right or better way to do it? And if there is, who says what’s better? Who makes the rules anyhow?
Some would argue that there’s a moral authority that we should look to, but what if you don’t believe that God or any higher power exists? What about a referee? Do we need one? Can we even find an unbiased one that’s incorruptible?
Rather than get exasperated about trying to police unbridled “getting”, why not look to giving? Consider the historical perspective…who do we remember the most? The extreme “getters” such as Napoleon, Hitler, Hussein amongst other enterprising conquerors and the extreme “givers” such as Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King.
When you feel lost maybe it’s because you lost your mojo, but what is your mojo and how do you find it once it’s lost. We could make the argument that your mojo is that personal swagger, not necessarily your ego, rather a simple confidence that makes you feel good.
In the context of your business, start by asking yourself why you’re the best option for the consumer and watch as your passion to compete swells up. Listen to the conviction with which you describe the problems in your industry and how the lesser competitors could never compare to your compassion and level of service.
Then write it all down. Clean it up. Simplify it. Convert it into a simple claim based statement that tells the world why they should choose you. Then there you have it; the campfire that your mojo loves to gather around.
You can do this in any aspect of your life. Simply remember that all you need to find your mojo again is to turn your passion loose. You’ll always find your way back!
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fail. -Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) Irish poet, writer and physician.
Chest pumped up. Head held high. Come and go as you please. Get paid well. Spend it freely. Plenty of friends. Who cares about the haters? If anybody gets too close for comfort, bite them. Who cares? Everybody that matters likes you anyway…or do they?
So is this the description of us at our best or just what our self-indulgent ego thinks is our best? These days it’s not hard to see how little tolerance the general population has for those that think they can dictate and dominate at the true hard hitting expense of others. It might work for a while but, ultimately it will bring you down. Just look to the world’s dictators who are no longer or the financial institutions that redistributed the average consumers money without adding value.
All of this has come into complete focus as people have been broken by a changing world. For me, I’ve lived it and coached many people through it, even my new dog. Our full-of-life Springer had gotten so out of control that he thought he had a rightful place at the dinner table. Now after a second round of training he came home almost dejected and depressed. Talk about pulling on your heart strings.
Yet I’m blessed to know that look let alone feel it. It’s the tired stare we make after life yanks us off the greased skids we were cruising along. What the heck happened? Our sails were filled with plenty of wind and the waves at our back and just like that it changes. We figure maybe it will be okay soon enough, but it stays tough. Then the clouds start to roll in and we don’t even notice them.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. -Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher.
My word is my bond. My name is everything. This is what I heard from a few real estate agents this week when I asked them about their values. This all came in the context of of helping them build the presentations that they give to their prospects. My train of thought had been challenged by something I recently read that said all great presentations were based on values and described values as internal states of emotions…something more abstract than simple words.
Perhaps this discovery is at the very heart of why so many people seem to be going through the motions in business and life. It’s one thing to be taught something that works, but if you’re not really feeling it internally, won’t it shine through? If you believe that we can read each other by simple body movements, wouldn’t a lack of true conviction be obvious? Furthermore, if other people truly are looking for leaders and experts why would they line up with somebody that didn’t fully believe in themselves and their message?
Many of us are always after that seemingly illusive concept of success. We want it so badly that we tend to get obsessed with its pursuit. Some of us will even cheat to get it. Enormous volumes have been written about it. Many works about success eventually conclude that we have to start with why we’re after it at all. Why we want to be successful might ultimately be as simple as our drive to survive, which in modern days invokes a more complicated plight in the information age than kill or be killed.
Getting hit motivates me. It makes me punish the guy more. A fighter takes a punch, hits back with three more. Roberto Duran (1951-) One of the greatest fighters of all time known as Manos de Piedra (Hands of Stone).
So many ups and downs in life. The tide rises and carries us to the top of the mountain where we catch a glimpse of glory only to come crashing back to sea level as the wave slams back down on the sand. Just watch a surfer go from taming a monster wave to getting tossed like a rag doll only to paddle back out and look for some more.
It’s so frustrating to continually be pounded down to the ground and eventually we wonder what the heck happened to all those good days. The times when nothing seem to go wrong and if it did, how we were able to keep rolling forward and nothing could stop us.
The other night, I watched a fantastic boxing match where the champ traveled from England to come into the challenger’s home town of Washington D.C. The battle was ferocious from the get go with the champ knocking the home town fighter down twice in the early rounds. The tilt of the ring made it look like it might be an early victory celebration for the visitor.
Yet in spite of being shaken early, the challenger kept coming forward and he never stopped all night. He kept throwing punches with great intent in spite of being over-matched in the skill department. In fact he was so relentless the champ resorted to pushing him away and lost 2 points for trying to regain the edge.
Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. -Suzanne Somers, Actress.
So you’ve done something wrong. It keeps gnawing away at you. You keep burying it deeper. You rationalize why you did what you did but it keeps poking away. It wakes you up in the middle of a deep sleep. It invades your peace of mind. You get mad every time you think about it. You blame the circumstances of those who “made” you do it.
Eventually you run out of ways to make it okay. It tackles you to the bed. You pull up the sheets as the anger turns to depression. You start to wonder if a drink or a pill will make it just go away and it does…but for how long? The bottle doesn’t seem to be deep enough and before you know it you’re further down the wrong path. It all seems to be slipping down the hill quickly.
You come to the realization that life is like a game of shoots and ladders. One minute you’re climbing to the top and discovering the best of who you are and the next minute your dropping through a trap door and plunging into the abyss. What was the tripping point? Where did it come from? Was it a sudden event or was it like a cobra laying low in the grass for hours just waiting to pounce?
Suddenly one day it just seems so clear. You see all the silly things that you do in those moments of weakness and compromise. How you hurt other people just to self-satisfy and get ahead. In the moment, you never see the cloud building over your head. The one you create. Eventually it cracks wide open and floods your life. You know you caused it. Now the tough part.
Your brain is involved in everything you do. -Daniel Amen, M.D. and author.
Negative Attack
So who questions you? Your teacher? Your parents? Your spouse? Your kids? Probably all of them on a regular basis and then some. Maybe they don’t do it out loud, but rest assured they do it, especially when they don’t agree with what you say or how you say it. When they do get up the courage to challenge your spoken thoughts, you might even get a bit worked up and feel attacked, but maybe it’s those feelings that should have us questioning ourselves.
So what if we’re spewing a bunch of negativity? Do we even realize that it creeps in or is it happening to us at a more subconscious level? Where does the stuff come from? Our emotions? Are emotions caused by external events or are the inbred? Is it possible that we’re hard-wired for a little bit of the positive and negative mixed together that eventually cheats to the bad side? What about a physical trauma? Can that create a mess of negativity?
The ANTs
According to Doctor Daniel Amen’s book, Change Your Brain Change Your Life, there’s no question that there are many direct physical links to negativity. He also counsels his patients to beware of ANTs or Automatic Negative Thoughts as they can inflict serious medical trauma to the deep limbic system of the brain. He challenges them to understand that ANTs are literally brain pollution that need to be exterminated.
The first step to getting rid of the problem is to recognize it even exists. Notice the words you use. Do they blame? Do they express negative absolutes like “I Never”? Are they predictors of doomsday around every corner? How about mind reading all the negative thoughts other people are having about you? It’s all really nonsense that most of us engage in at some point. So how do we slow it down?
Thankfulness…the attitude of gratitude. For what? The good things only? How about the tough times and the trip-ups that teach us too? Why aren’t we thankful for all of it?
Just up the road a bit from where I live, the Pilgrims gave thanks. They had plenty of ups and downs, especially in the first winter when many of them didn’t even survive. To this day you can go there and witness the rugged conditions those early settlers had to endure.
Nevertheless they were thankful. They were free to live and worship as they saw fit. Nobody telling them how to think. They made plenty of mistakes but found meaning in all of it.
So how about you? Are you grateful that people like that came before us and struggled immensely to chisel out greater opportunity for future generations? Is your life really that hard? Look around and I bet you’ll find somebody today struggling like an early American settler. Be thankful that you have what you do and reach out with your talent and your resources to help.
Thanksgiving is a time to recognize the blessings that you really have but might have forgotten…so slow down, take inventory and be thankful!
No man means all he says and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought it vicious. -Henry B. Adams (1838-1913) Journalist and member of the Adams political family.
My mother was always threatening to wash my mouth out with soap when I was a kid…so I challenged her with a wee bit of vulgarity. Not only did she keep her promise, she upped the ante by coming after me with a mop in an attempt to clean me up once and for all.
Obviously since I’m still talking about it, the impact and lesson was important. At first blush, it might seem as simple as a parent trying to reel in the rebellion of just another wild kid pushing the envelope, however, the key point is that I never realized the words were having a much greater negative impact on me than my mother.
I’ve come to realize that although the brain is wired a certain way upon birth, it can be changed either over time or in an instant during a traumatic event. Regardless of the circumstance, we tend to attach great emotion to any situation and create a picture in our minds…a virtual movie. That movie is then added to our in-brain library and plays both on-demand or consciously and automatically or subconsciously.
When anything dominates our mind, we feel compelled to give it life through words. If the emotions are positive we tend to use wonderful words to release the movie to the public, often times in a very conscious way. However, what if the movie is a tragedy filled with pain and suffering? Who wants to talk about that…throw that thing in the back of the library and lock it down. Not so easy.
The salvation of a man is through love and in love. -Victor Frankel (1905-1997) Author of Man’s Search For Meaning and concentration camp survivor.
What would you do if you were locked in a concentration camp? Ironically, Victor Frankel did just that…he concentrated. You talk about somebody who really knew his subject by living it! It’s hard to even fathom that somebody could find the strength to focus enough and chronicle his thoughts during such duress, but doesn’t that perhaps make for the best time to learn…when you’re constantly pushed to the brink of death.
How would you transcend the circumstances? How could you grow wings and fly away? With your mind! Frankel found that those that were able to continue to fight and carry on were those that never lost hope. Others that decided to simply fade away would succumb to a last simple pleasure such as smoking a cigarette and die. So how did the survivors find their hope?
Frankel tells the story of a particularly brutal night marching in the wind as a fellow prisoner mumbled, “if our wives could only see us now.” A simple statement that in the context of a life of freedom might be passed off as a simple musing, but it struck Frankel like a lightning rod of understanding.
For that moment in time, he realized how much he loved her and contemplated where she was and if he would see her again. The desire alone to see his beloved wife helped Frankel find meaning in his life even at the lowest point. The love itself gave Frankel a tremendous “why” as he continued to persevere; but what if there was no loved one to contemplate. Frankel found other love pathways as well.
