Personal Development

After doing something for 27 years, you’d think that you could figure it all out and know how to “do” it really, really well, and gain fulfillment too.

That “something” for me is work (aka what we do to make a living).

And nope, I haven’t quite figured it all out yet - which I gather isn’t unusual given that a Google search for “Secret of Work” produced no less than 181 Million entries.

Keep in mind I’m not talking about the classic cause and effect here - that is, the objective results of the labor, which is in most cases contributing to profit or loss.

What I’m searching for looks inward, to the effects of the work on ourselves, our psyches, and our overall feelings about life.

Yep, the deep stuff.

The problem is, we can get so tied up in the “day-to-day” nuts and bolts activities that are part of our daily working lives that we rarely can come up for enough rarefied air to ponder those larger issues.

Occasionally, however,  this higher level reflection can happen, and this past week was one of those times for me.

It was the confluence of several things - a funeral, a business trip, a management meeting, and a conference - that created a perfect learning environment.

And here’s what I learned, in very simple terms:

• Work must be done with passion
• The work must be for a cause greater than ourselves
• It ultimately must be fun, or it isn’t worth doing

What’s more, these 3 are truly a set - that is, you can’t just get to 2 out of 3 and call it good.

We need to get to the fun part, and that’s all too often neglected.  It’s an underrated piece of the puzzle.

For example, how often does someone ask  “Are you having fun?” at your workplace?

I suspect it’s a rarity,  since “fun” is all too often associated with “unproductive“.    Where the work itself can’t possibly be the cause - if someone is enjoying themselves too much, it must be because they spent more time playing video games than cranking out spreadsheets.

In other words, there’s a “fear of fun”.

But here’s where my lessons of the past week come in.

I see “fun” when the passion and the cause are making a difference - when a group of people are continually hitting targets and raising bars - in other words, to use a sports analogy, they are “winning”.

And who doesn’t enjoy being a winner? Think of the camaraderie, the smiles, the feelings of satisfaction, the pats on the back, and yes, the celebrations.

That’s FUN, all right.   Better than getting a high score on Tetris.

I realized that I don’t fear this - in fact, I do regularly ask my team if they are having fun.

Because I’m confident that the foundations of the “secrets of work”, the passion and the cause,  are already in place.

I just need to get them (and myself) across the goal line to the fun zone.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by James Michener

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both”

Yipee!

In case you haven’t heard , we have entered into yet another new phase in human development  - the “New Age of Nice“.

It was declared as front page news (with a big smiley face) in this past Sunday’s New York Times.

The article made its case by citing the recent popularity of Judd Apatow’s movies and their “nice” characters like those played by Paul Rudd, and the humble, polite and amicable Kris Allen, the latest winner of “American Idol”.

And there’s a earnest little blog, “Operation Nice“, which is recruiting readers to take an “oath of niceness“.

All well and good - but the terminology needs to change - soon.

Mind you, I’m certainly not rebelling against the sentiment - what I’m objecting to is the word “nice” itself.

“Nice” is just too easy of a target for the cynics of the world and their poison arrows to muddle and belittle the message.

That’s because of the word’s confusing etymology - as I had noted on my previous attempt to discontinue its use a couple of years ago, even the dictionary itself couldn’t sort it all out:

“The semantic history of nice is quite varied, as the etymology and the obsolete senses attest, and any attempt to insist on only one of its present senses as correct will not be in keeping with the facts of actual usage. If any criticism is valid, it might be that the word is used too often and has become a cliché lacking the qualities of precision and intensity that are embodied in many of its synonyms.”

Because of this historical ambiguity, it’s almost too easy to label “nice” as too wishy-washy, or too “middle of the road”.

As the NY Times article pointed out, critics and pessimists have a field day coming up with their own definitions, like “predicable and vaguely reassuring, like easy listening radio and greeting card sunrises“.

Those of us who are inclined to believe in the better nature of humanity (myself included)  know that isn’t what we’re driving at here.

Humans who exhibit considerate behavior can also disagree. They can also be provocative.  They can also listen to AC/DC as well as The Carpenters. They can even poke fun at life’s absurdities (including some Hallmark cards).

It just boils down to this - it’s a much better world when we conduct ourselves with humility and grace, and treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated - with respect and civility.

And if the NY Times is correct, and we are indeed entering a new age where that kind of  behavior is in vogue and celebrated, then amen to that.

Let’s just not call it “niceness”, please.

We’re selling ourselves way too short.

How about, “the Age of Better Humans“?

Or  “Operation Better Humans“?

Because there is too much to gain from this seeming sea change than to let a vague four-letter word obfuscate a genuine desire of a growing number of people to live out their long held (and perhaps previously masked) belief that love is, and has always been, the answer.

Keep the sentiment, change the word.  And then the world.

I find it fascinating that I can have a conversation with certain people and I always know I’ll walk away from it with some kind of useful insight.  One of those people is Chris Garrett, blogger extraordinaire and co-author of what I consider to be one of seminal books on our craft, “ProBlogger“.

Unfortunately we didn’t get a lot of chances to talk at the recent SOBCon conference in Chicago, but when we did, it didn’t take long for us to dive into the philosophical pool.

Even when we weren’t trying.

It was a light discussion about singing and dancing and our feelings about participating in such activities.  I told Chris I didn’t have any problem cutting a rug or belting out a tune, even in a crowded room (or at a podium at a bloggers conference).   He, on the other hand, didn’t have the same inclinations- particularly in the dancing category.

He quickly added, with more than a tint of admiration, that for some in his family, dancing was “like breathing“.

Like breathing……………..”Kerplunk“

We were now once again in the pool.

After absorbing that comment I then replied - “So what’s like breathing to you?”

I leave that for Chris to answer in a blog post of his own, but what this little exchange did for me was set off alarms in my own head.

What’s like breathing to me?  What are those things that help define who I am but are yet rarely thought about, because they come so naturally?

Chances are, if I give this more than casual thought, I can gain some valuable clarity about the state of my life and what should be the focus of my work, my play, my relationships, and everything in between.

Problem is, just like we rarely stop to ponder something so essential to our lives as breathing, there is often no reason for us to stop and try to figure out the “why” in our lives.

Why do I love to sing? Why does music move me?  Why does making a friend smile with wry humor so meaningful? Why do I feel so good around mountains? Why can I make a speech or presentation without having a panic attack?  Why is my leadership instinct to guide and nurture, instead of control? Why is my intellectual “default” to pick something up and read it, even if it’s a cookbook sitting in the kitchen (and I don’t even like to cook)?  Why do I practice yoga at 5:30 in the morning, even though I know it’s 5:30 in the morning?

That’s all like breathing to me, but it may be a good time to dive into those “whys” a little deeper, since Chris already pushed me into the pool.  So that I will do - and we’ll see what happens.

Thanks Chris for the help, and I look forward to your take on this.

How about you?  What’s like breathing in your life?  And more importantly, why?

C’mon in, the water’s fine!

I had an interesting exchange on Twitter last week, where I was referred to as a “non-stop” evangelizer.

That one made me run to the dictionary, because I wasn’t used to “evangelize” being used pejoratively.

Aside from its religious connotation,  an evangelist is “an enthusiastic advocate“.

Someone promoting a cause, or a person, or a concept - or themselves.

Meaning, nearly every single person that chooses to express their thoughts “in public”, a la Twitter, blogging, and all the other forms of Social Media.

Whether they are positive or negative.

Whether they deal with the weightier issues of the day or what they had for breakfast.

That’s the nature of the beast - if we are going to be a blogger or a Twitterer, we are wanting our thoughts to be heard by a wider audience - the very nature of evangelism.

So yes, I’m an evangelist, thank you, just like everybody else who chooses to participate in this medium.

And that’s what makes it so interesting - all these voices out there, advocating, trying to make connections.   For profit, for fun, for friends, for learning, for career development….. or all of the above.

(Yes, even the negative stuff is interesting- as a different approach to the evangelistic science. That is, unless it violates basic civility - then all bets are off)

It’s humanity in action,  for better or for worse.

I say better. Evangelize away!

As a “Baby Boomer”, I’m old enough to remember a world without computers,  the Internet, blogging and social media - the days of pencils, paper, stamps, payphones, rotary dialing, social centers, happy hours, discos, and all the other “analog” ways we used to communicate and meet up with each other.

To navigate that (now) ancient world, we learned that by operating under some pretty simple rules, we could successfully, in the immortal words of Dale Carnegie, “win friends and influence people“.

But now that we’ve moved much of this playing field to the digital realm, new levels of complication have ensued. This technology  “depersonalizes” our modern communication because of its brutal efficiency (read that as the myriad of Social Media applications and their vast family of add-ons) and two-dimensional dynamic (computerized words on a flat page).

There’s no time to think.  We can’t hear a voice. We can’t smell someone’s perfume on letter paper. We can’t feel the vibe of a human in close proximity.  All we have is cold, digitized and processed text that we often need to respond to immediately.

Their is good news here - because of the technology we can have vastly more friends than we used to, all over the world.  The bad news is that these friendships are typically a mile wide and an inch deep.

Which brings me back to those analog rules again. Can we still apply them today when the word “friend” is applied ever more loosely?

Of course we can.  And we should, for no other reason than to keep our new “digital social centers” a civil and enjoyable place to go.

So allow me to kick it old school, with a little help from Dale Carnegie,  and relate those old rules to the present day:

1. Be Polite - Just because you can hide behind an avatar doesn’t give you the right to not use basic courtesy in your communications.  “Please“,  “Thank You“, and “I’m Sorry” should never go out of style.
2. Whatever Language You Use, Use It Properly- and Spell It Properly Too - Nothing says “I don’t really care” than something poorly written and horribly misspelled.  Oh, and try not to forget punctuation too (as tough as that may be on things like Twitter).
3. Be Genuinely Interested in What Others Have to Say - This is not a one-way, broadcast medium (at least for me).  Engage, ask questions - make the other person feel important.  That’s Carnegie 101.
4. Use the Other Person’s Name - Carnegie said that “A man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language”. Think about your own experience - doesn’t an online response always carry more value when the sender uses your name?
5. If You Don’t Have Something Positive to Say, Don’t Say it - Especially in Public - I know, this is really old school. This is the 21st Century, right? Everybody has a digital soapbox now, and are free to critique anybody, and it’s now much easier because you don’t have to look anyone in the eye when you do it.  Wrong.  Carnegie was right here too - you CAN change someone’s mind without giving offense.
6. Smile- There are lots of ways to let the other person know you are smiling, even when they can’t see you.  Let your writing be friendly, positive, generous  and encouraging.   Show a “lightness of being”. Tell a silly joke or two, perhaps even at your own expense.    And yes, use these every now and then    

After all,  good friends are one of our most precious resources - so remembering these old lessons is likely to win you more than your share (even in a cacophany of Tweets) - and the payoff of a much more fulfilling life.