Finding the Energy to be You (or, Stop Wasting Energy Trying Not to be You)

I wonder how much energy people waste trying not to be who they are? It is true that everyone has some things about themselves that it would be best for everyone if they did not. Everyone has a tendency towards something like sloth or being just a little too curt or too flirtatious or … well the myriad ways of being that we don’t like in others or ourselves.

The sad thing about this is that the energy we spend trying to rid ourselves of the bad is diverted from trying to build on the good. The charismatic or creative self gets distracted, if not repressed, by our project to squelch the undisciplined or reckless self. There is only so much energy and if we waste it on not being us we have so little energy left with which to actually be us.

Peter Drucker once wrote that most problems cannot be solved and most problems are rendered irrelevant by success. Picasso made a mess of relationships but what if he’d worked successfully at getting relationships right but didn’t leave us his incredible body of work? Would the world really have been a better place if that had happened?

I wonder how much energy we’d have to do great things if we accepted that we, ourselves, were not that great but nonetheless accepted ourselves and then tried to find our way in the world with what it was about ourselves we wanted more of?

That might be one way to end a personal energy crisis, to find the energy for life that might otherwise be missing. You're only alive once - you may as well be fully alive.

After writing the above, I read an excerpt that Thomas gave from from Franzen's "Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts." Franzen seems concerned with something similar.

If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick. You may find yourself becoming depressed, or alcoholic, or, if you’re Donald Trump, running for president (and then quitting).

...

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

....

I was forced to confront a self that I had to either straight-up accept or flat-out reject.

Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.

Not So Much Unreasonable As Its Own Reason

It might be that you’ve found your personal reason if it seems unreasonable to everyone else.

Some things you do might do for money. That’s a reason everyone gets.

Other things we do for no extrinsic reason but just because of their nature. That, too, is a reason that everyone gets. We revel in a hug or great music, savor food or beautiful art simply because that’s part of the human experience.

Finally, there are things that you do simply because that is who you are. How can you explain why you’re compelled to write poems, play the ukulele, make fun of jokes, walk the high wire, juggle, or collect found art that others would categorize as junk? If there is no reason outside of the thing itself, it might just be your own “raison d'etre,” or reason for existence. (Or at least one of the reasons.)

If, by contrast, you have a reason for doing the thing other than that thing itself, it might just be that you’re still at least one level removed from your true passion.

To others your passion might seem unreasonable but perhaps it is simply the case that the thing is not so much unreasonable as something that is its own reason. 

What is the Purpose of Teaching Purpose?

Life's purpose is an odd and curious question. It might be the reason that just as we reach a point in human history in which the likelihood of dying from hunger or violence has gone down, we find a rise in the search for therapy and self help books, a susprising persistence of unhappiness.

In less developed communities, the work for food and shelter is enough to busy a person. Years ago, a little friend of ours from Texas, born in the late 1800s, announced to us, "Stress? All this talk about stress? We never had time for stress. We were too busy working."

And without a crush of information that needs to be processed and numerous myths and worldviews competing for our attention and undermining one another, life's purpose is essentially a given.

Here in the 21st century, survival is a given for many. Nor can we expect to duck the question of what overarching purpose to accept or define, defining what matters.

I wonder if taking a job or partner is not too often a substitute for the hard work of defining a life. The unemployed or recently separate are forced into an existential angst that the rest of us would just as soon avoid.

For the most part, there is little in traditional education to deal with this question of who one will be. It's left to the Learning Annex and issues of Oprah magazine.

Given this is hard to grade and harder to prescribe, the process of defining who one will be is likely to stay out of school curriculum in spite of its importance to leading a happy and fulfilled life. Meaning is too hard and too controversial so we'll just keep children focused on polynomials and parenthetical asides rather than purpose. Because if we have learned nothing else about education it is this: if you can't grade it on a standardized test, it ought not to be taught.

Do You Follow Your Heart? Head? Intuition?

A friend of mine is asking for advice. He’s in his 20’s. He’s struggling to define what’s next, not sure whether he’s already there or even where there might be. He’s going through the kind of thing that any thoughtful person seems to go through. Specifically, he's debating about whether to pursue an MBA or not, but as with any of these big life decisions, the specific decision hinges on so many other decisions, all feeding into the question about what kind of life one wants to live.

For me, a big part of what is meant by integrity is an alignment of head, heart, and gut. (And in matters of romance, I think it's important to add in a fourth organ.) I feel best when reason, emotion, and intuition all conspire to assure me that I'm in the right place, doing the right thing.

But here’s what I’m wondering. Which is the best leader? What have you relied on at different times in life? Have you plunged into life head first? Heart first? Or have you been led by your gut, that sense of intuition that you can’t articulate? How has it worked out? Does it depend on the situation? What do you think is best to follow?

Thoughts? [At this point, it'd be customary to express yourself in the comments section. Thanks!]

Finding Our Way

Yesterday, I learned what might be the secret to finding one's way in life.

My wife and I were at UC San Diego. We arrived early for our play and I wanted to scamper over to the university bookstore to see what special treasures they might have. This seems like a simple task save for one thing: we San Diegans, apparently struck with guilt about how easy our lives are in this land with the climate of an indoor shopping mall, have a propensity to construct convoluted paths. Horton Plaza, the downtown shopping mall, is constructed so that one can actually see a store across the way but not know how to get there sans the cable and pulley systems that someone like James Bond might carry in his wallet. UC San Diego is similar - a beautiful, big campus that seemingly opts for meandering sidewalks and foot paths wherever it can.

We knew the general direction we wanted to head but we quickly found ourselves in a dead end of sorts. I asked a student, "How do I get to the bookstore?" In a delightfully helpful manner that reminded me of why I love living among humans, she walked us a short distance, trying to describe how one might navigate the convoluted, un-named paths that eventually led to the book store. After a few attempts to describe a route that defied description, she finally turned to me and offered this simple advice.

"Just head in this direction," she said, pointing, "and ask people along the way."

I had to laugh. How perfect was that advice? And how broadly applicable.

None of us can make it on our own. Find your general direction – and then ask for help along the way. As it turned out, I didn't even have to find the bookstore to get my daily dose of wisdom.

Purpose (or, The Road Home)

Purpose is about discovering you and then getting there.

Imagine that you're headed to meet a friend for coffee. En route, you hit a roadblock. The authorities have closed the freeway because of a spill. At that point, you might just call your friend and cancel or reschedule for another time.

Imagine, by contrast, that you encountered this road block on the way home. Likely, you'd look for an alternative route and, even though it took longer than you'd planned; you persevere until you arrived home. It is harder to dissuade us from going home.

Following this analogy, some people find home by following the green lights. This is a strategy that might result in making good time. It is less obviously a strategy that will get you home. In fact, you can try it some day. Some day when you are away from home, drive back. If the green light is an arrow, turn left. If you encounter a green light, go straight. No green light? Turn right. Just keep this up for as long as you had expected to take to get home and see where you get to.

A purpose should feel less like a coffee date, vacation, or trip to work than a trip home. You can be sure to encounter obstacles. At that point, you can give up and start sleeping in the Laundromat, never quite feeling settled or content. Or you can convince yourself that the green lights brought you to exactly the place you should be. Or you can persevere.

What OJ Tells us About the Media

Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, the media had a particular role. Its business objectives included making a profit, yes, but its purpose was to make this a better country.

In today's world, the health of the Republic is subordinated to profits. Fox demonstrated their commitment to this principle of profits first when they decided to broadcast OJ explaining how he would have murdered his children's mother if he had. The fact that Fox chose not to go through with this plan says nothing about their conscience and everything about their awareness of the power of consumer boycott.

The enlightened person realizes that one's own fate is always bound up in the community she's a part of. We exist only in a web of relationships and to ignore the health of this web is to ignore any credible definition of self. Yet what are the prospects for a community when their very media forgets this?

Business guru Peter Drucker said that a business's purpose is never to make a profit anymore than a person's purpose is to breathe. Profit is necessary for a business but it is not a purpose. One wonders how well, if at all, the modern media could articulate such a purpose if unable to use the words "ratings" or "profit."

Perhaps the saddest thing about this is how keenly so many journalists realize this and how well they could articulate a mission. Yet one of the things that I repeatedly see as I go into organizations - from medium-size companies to Fortune 10 companies - is that leadership, sadly, sets the bounds for ambition and rarely can any individuals within an organization sustain efforts that transcend the bounds set by management.

Attention Tuning

All around you is a sea of information. Some you can perceive and some you cannot. We're wired to hear things from one spectrum of the wavelengths around us, to see things from other spectrums yet need to rely on cell phones, radios, TVs, wireless cards and the like to perceive others. And even if you have an FM radio, say, you still have to tune it to actually hear any particular station. Until you tune the radio, you have only static. It is not that the stream of coherence and information doesn't already exist - it's just that you cannot perceive it until you tune in to that exact frequency.

Some of life is like colors - as long as your eyes are open you will see whatever colors are presented. Some of life is like radio or TV - until you tune to a specific frequency you will miss it altogether.

Traditional education is like eyes open. You show up in the modern world and a series of people fill your consciousness with a stream of information that you can use. A sense of mission is like radio or TV - until you focus on a particular potential you will miss opportunities and the spectrum of possibilities for realizing that potential.

Get a sense of your own potential, get excited about what it could mean, and your problem won't be in failing to see possibilities but, rather, in narrowing your focus. Having a sense of your own potential is not a guarantee of a great life - but it is a guarantee that you won't walk blindly past great opportunities.

Lazy may not be your problem

“Sometimes we confuse work ethic with love of what you’re doing.”
- Jim Dietz, SDSU Baseball Coach, speaking of Tony Gwynn

When I taught Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People seminars, folks would receive feedback about how well they did in each of the 7 habits. Invariably, people scored lowest on habit 3 - put first things first. At first blush, this suggested that they weren't driven enough, organized enough - didn't do enough to set and keep priorities. Years later, I don't see it that way.

Habit 1 is “be proactive.” Habit 2 is “begin with the end in mind” - articulating a compelling vision by which to live one's life. Habit 3 is to then “put first things first” - doing the things that support your vision. My own opinion is that breakdowns in habit 3 actually reflect problems with habit 2. If people have discovered or created a truly compelling vision, putting first things first will not be a problem. If they have a vision that comes from a sense of obligation instead, putting first things first will be a chronic problem.

Finding a sense of purpose that resonates is difficult work. If you think that you are not disciplined, you may find that you simply have not created a compelling vision for yourself. Compelling suggests that it is exciting, suggesting a possibility that captivates you. It also suggests that is credible to you - something that you see as possible, perhaps even probable.

Once you've truly found yourself, even you may have trouble stopping you.