Difficulty and Heroic Success

I flew to Austin, Texas recently, after talking to 100 doctors here in town, to speak to 300 bankers and software experts about success in changing times. On the four planes to get there and back, I read the amazing new book, Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight, about the founding of Nike, the great shoe and sports apparel company. Phil experienced more troubles, difficulties, bad surprises, terrible developments and unexpected shocks along the way than I've ever heard about in any business or work story. I told my wife that in every chapter it's almost like being chased by a rabid dog and escaping at the last second only to be hit by a car, having the EMTs come to get you and, on your way to the hospital, the ambulance gets swept away into a raging stream. When you finally get airlifted out of the river and make it to the ER, the building catches on fire around you. That would almost be one of Knight's good days in trying to start his company. And yet he kept plugging away. And he intuitively used a lot of ancient wisdom in his quest.
 
In case you don't know my 7 Cs of Success, or do and yet would benefit from having them in front of you for a moment, here they are.

In any challenge, with any worthy goal, we need:

C1: A clear CONCEPTION of what we want, a goal vividly imagined

C2: A strong CONFIDENCE that we can attain the goal

C3: A focused CONCENTRATION on what it will take to get there

C4: A stubborn CONSISTENCY in pursuing our vision

C5: An emotional COMMITMENT to the importance of what we're doing

C6: A good CHARACTER to guide us and keep us on a proper course

C7: A CAPACITY TO ENJOY the process along the way.

You can see all 7 Cs of Success at play in Phil Knight's heroic responses to awful situations, again and again. For years, he made almost no money and it constantly looked like his fledgling enterprise would go under and he'd lose his home and everything he'd worked for. Then, after fighting more battles than you can imagine, he was able to take the company public. By the end of the book, he was able to change sports in America and even our overall culture in many ways. Plus, he winds up with a personal financial worth of over 10 billion dollars—a result he hadn't even sought.
 
Well, we don't all get that pay-day, for sure, but Phil gives us an amazing example of how to persist and perform, day-to-day, even when things are so challenging that others can't imagine how we continue. It has to come from a strong belief and conviction that we're doing something vital and important, something meaningful that makes a difference. When your talents are matched up with a great quest, incredible things can happen. So be of good cheer, and keep hope alive, as you use the wisdom of the ages to power yourself forward!

Diane von Furstenberg on Clarity

For 25 years, I've spoken on what the great philosophers realized about attaining success in anything we do. Long ago, I isolated seven universal conditions for success. The first two are:

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.

In this week's Sunday Business Section of the New York Times, Adam Bryant did his great "Corner Office" interview with fashion legend Diane von Furstenberg. I've referred to it earlier this week. Let me share one more question and answer here:

Q: How do you get the best work out of creative teams on your staff?

A: I think the most important thing is to believe in what you do. And identifying a goal, to have clarity, is very important. You cannot fake clarity. When you don’t have clarity, you don’t. And then all of a sudden, the fog lifts and you’re clear. It’s very important to constantly try to look for clarity, like pruning a tree or cleaning the plumbing.

DVF starts with condition #2 and quickly backs it up with condition #1.

I've found that a lot of CEOs take for granted that everyone around them is clear on their corporate goals, while fog is actually enveloping everyone on the ground. We can't just assume that our own clarity has been communicated well. And sometimes, we find that we ourselves aren't as clear as we need to be. We allow general vague slogans with feel good language to substitute for rigorous clear thought. And that's always a problem. We need to heed the fashion mogul's words. In any pursuit, Confidence and Clarity are needed. And they'll never go out of fashion.

For a video related to the interview with DVF, click here.

Self Doubt

Someone asked me to reflect on self doubt. And I was going to, a week ago, but I had doubts.

Confidence is a good thing, so self doubt is a bad thing, right? Well, it turns out not to be so simple, like much else in life.

Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." He encouraged frequent and honest self-examination. How am I doing right now, as a blogger, a public speaker, a philosopher, an author, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a neighbor, a friend? How am I doing as a human being? The result of an honest self examination in any of our roles or activities can be one of either affirmation or doubt. We might conclude, "I'm doing great." Or: "I'm good. I just need to hang in there a little longer and success will be mine." Or we could see that, "I'm not doing so well in this. Maybe I'm outmatched. This might not be the challenge for me right now." Or the conclusion could be, "I'm on the right track but I need a little help in order to get the outcome I want."

Self-affirmation can be healthy. But then, so can self-doubt. People sometimes chase the wrong things, things that are not right for them. People can also drift in a direction that's not desirable. Self doubt can slow them down and turn them around. It can be a stimulus to additional work and learning. Or, it can be the bane of your existence.

Like almost anything else in the world, our evaluation of self doubt has to turn on the question of how it functions in our lives. Do we experience it in healthy doses, or in a pathological way? Is it an occasional phenomenon that helps us, or a default position that always nags us and even holds us back? Does it result from real self knowledge in the present, or from unresolved issues in the past?

Psychological research shows that proper doses of self doubt can lead to important efforts to improve. It can stimulate collaborations ("I don't think I can do this alone") and needed work in developing new knowledge or skill sets ("I don't yet think I know all that I need to know"). But it can't be allowed to dominate in a life. It should not be the overall tonality of our existence. We're not in the world mainly to refrain from things, but to do things, and to accomplish things. In case doubt is getting in your way, and not allowing you to be and do all that you would like to achieve, I have one piece of advice. Doubt your doubts.

Confidence and Courage

Confidence and courage are closely related. We often need them both in challenging circumstances. But how exactly do they relate to each other? It occurred to me today that I should reflect for a moment on what's similar and what's different between these two important qualities. 

I've claimed for years that confidence is one of the seven most universal conditions for success in any difficult undertaking. But why not courage? Don't we need it as well? Why would one of these qualities, and not the other, be universally applicable to success in challenging endeavors?

First, some careful clarification. 

Both confidence and courage are dispositions to think and act in certain ways rather than others. Neither of these qualities in you will let your circumstances dictate what you think or what you do. Courage and confidence both seek to rise above circumstances and shape reality, not just reflect it.

Confidence isn't mainly about believing that certain things will certainly or likely happen. It doesn't require making precise predictions concerning the future and feeling sure of them. It's more about believing in yourself, or your team, than it is about believing that one or another thing is sure to happen.

Courage is more about valuing and treasuring, than it is about predicting or believing, although it can involve all these things.

Confidence is a positive orientation toward doing what you judge to be right that's undeterred by obstacles. It carries a personal expectation that your action will lead you in some way closer to your goals.

Courage is a positive orientation toward doing what you judge to be right that's undeterred by danger. It carries with it a positive commitment that your action is right, regardless of its ultimate results.

Ignorance isn't confidence. Ignorance isn't courage. Neither positive quality can be produced by brainwashing indoctrinations, or supported by mind altering drugs. Each of these qualities is best nurtured in a soil of knowledge and wisdom.

Confidence helps you do what you feel you want to do. It's about marshaling your resources.

Courage helps you do what you feel you ought to do. It's about defeating your fears.

A person acting courageously doesn't necessarily expect success in securing a desired outcome. A person acting confidently does to some extent expect success in securing a desired outcome.

Confidence is a universal condition for success in any challenging endeavor, because challenges always involve obstacles and difficulties. Courage is always helpful, but not always literally necessary, since many challenging situations don't literally involve dangers of harm. But a generally courageous person ordinarily has an easier time of being confident in the face of difficulty.

The deeper of the two qualities may be courage. But the most pervasively useful is probably confidence. When you think about them enough, you come to realize that, different as they are, these two qualities very often go together and be mutually supporting.

We Know So Little

We don't know one tenth of one percent of anything. Who first said that? I think it was Thomas Edison who, at least in that remark, knew one hundred percent of what he was talking about.

It's easy to think that our best science already basically understands the world and those of us in it, until you talk to real scientists, or at least the ones who are the pioneers at the cutting edge of their specialities. Human history is a series of misguided certainties. People have always thought that they basically knew what was going on in the world around them. And people have been so very wrong so many times that it should give us pause and instill in us a little humility, along with the measure of confidence that we also rightly need.

Modern medicine is at the brink of discoveries and changes that will so deeply revolutionize everything that it's hard for us now to imagine what health and healthcare will be like in a hundred years. And it may come much sooner than that.

Robotics will drastically alter manufacturing. Bigger, better, and much faster computers - even different sorts of computing - will reinvent business in many ways, only a few of which are already evident.

I suspect that psychology will even make discoveries that will transform our self understanding. And philosophy may make inroads that have been hitherto unanticipated. We're moving into the unknown at a faster pace than we can even guess on our wildest days. The cosmic and epistemic wind is strong at our backs, but we don't always feel it.

There are times on board a plane when it can seem like you're just sitting still in a nice leather armchair. But you're moving at hundreds of miles an hour. I see this as a nice metaphor for the human condition. It can sometimes feel like we're sitting still, when we're all moving forward much faster than we can sense.

When I was in middle school, and even high school, I'd ride for an hour in the family car to visit my grandparents, my father's parents, on their farm. They didn't have indoor plumbing or an electric stove. To wash my hands for lunch, I'd first go out behind the house to a dark metal pump. I'd put a basin beneath the spigot and grab the old rusty handle and pump a couple of times, before the cold, clear water began to flow. With the basin full, I'd take it back into the house and wash up in it, using soap someone had made, and then I'd go eat whatever had been cooked on the wood stove. Later in the day, we'd find leftovers stored in the unrefrigerated white wooden "pie safe" and have a snack. The "bathroom" had no walls, roof, or floor, and was out back behind some bushes. Things have changed, to put it mildly, at least for most of us. But the changes we've seen are nothing compared to what's around the corner.

So, when you're tempted to think you've got it all figured out, remember our kinetically kaleidoscopic context. We all could use a little Socratic self-realization about how little we truly know concerning the most fundamental mysteries of existence, and even the mundanities of everyday life. We need to open our minds a little more than ever before, with genuine curiosity to learn. The pace of change won't slow or stop, apart from a technology ending global catastrophe. The only way to dance with change well is with a humble spirit, an open mind, and insatiable curiosity.

I'm a philosopher who believes that we know many deep truths about life already. But I also think we have much more to learn yet ahead. And this sense impels me to explore, and seek more avidly than ever before. I hope you feel the same.

Exuberance!!!

I've come to think that a vastly under appreciated quality in life is exuberance. It's a form of passionate energy that lights people up and gives a glow to anything they do.

Now, I'm not talking about the artificially chirpy forced positivity that you sometimes see in exceedingly annoying people. That's an artificial copy, a counterfeit, easily recognized, for the genuine article of my concern here. I'm talking about a natural energy that flows through some people and leads to great things. I remember reading about a lecture once given by Linus Pauling, the Nobel Laureate, where he was literally dancing on a table in excited illustration of some idea that was inspiring him. His cynical colleagues would just shake their heads. But it was exuberant Linus who did the breakthrough work.

Exuberance, done right, is motivating and magnetic. It enlivens and uplifts. It's the fuel of discovery and great change. And it's insufficiently understood.

"Wait," you might be saying if you have a bit of skepticism in you about this, "Would you really want an exuberant plumber or electrician? An exuberant barber or checkout person at the grocery store?" Actually, yes. Whenever I'm around genuine exuberance that's not a mask for something else, I feel refreshed and energized. It raises my confidence level in the person displaying this quality. And it makes me glad that, in a world of Eeyores, there are still some Tiggers.

The NaySayers in Life

"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." Walter Bagehot.

I once sat next to a man on an airplane who told me of his days as a high school baseball player and his dreams of professional ball. “You’re pretty good, but you’ll never make it to the pros,” people in his hometown would tell him. But then he made it to the pros and heard people say: “Enjoy it while you can in the Minors, but you’ll never make it to into the Major Leagues.” When he did make it to The Show, he had to listen to the newest verse of the old song: "There's no shame in sitting on the bench." But he didn't want to sit and watch. And he played, and then heard, “Don't even think about home runs, you’re lucky to be there at all.” 

But Willie Stargell would not believe the naysayers. And he took great pleasure in every home run he ever hit, each one of the 475. This Hall of Famer would have missed out on a lot if he had listened to the people around him who had no idea who he really was, deep down inside.

That day on the airplane, I showed Willie Stargell my laminated wallet card on The 7 Cs of Success. He read each condition carefully, and then said, "You nailed it with these ideas. You're the first person to ever explain to me how I became successful as a baseball player. I did each of these things you outline here, and I did them intuitively, instinctively, but I never could have put them into words. Thank you for this. This is a great gift to me."

The whole conversation was a great gift to me.

Remember that naysayers will always be with us. Even our best friends will sometimes warn us about how hard and unlikely our goals may appear, not wanting us to set ourselves up for disappointment. They just don't realize that we're often really setting ourselves up for success. The dream comes first, then the goal, then the work, but always, the belief and confidence deep inside. 

You have to know your own strength and follow your own heart, believing in your own sense of mission in life.  Then you can hit your own home runs, and take pleasure in the results. So step up to the plate.

Today.

The Mirror Advice

"I celebrate myself and sing myself." - Walt Whitman

Many years ago, I heard Dr Ruth Westheimer, America's most famous sex therapist ever, give a talk to a hundred corporation presidents and their spouses. She was hilarious. And wise. At one point, she really surprised the group by recommending to all the men that, as soon as possible, they find a full length mirror, take off all their clothes in front of it, and just stand there admiring themselves for a couple of minutes. She explained that we don’t celebrate ourselves enough.

That got quite a reaction. Hours later, I was scheduled to go out to dinner with Dr Ruth, and was to meet her at a specified time in front of the table where she was signing books for all the presidents. I had dashed down the hall to the Men’s Room, and ended up having a couple of philosophical conversations along the way, as often happens in public places, and I got to Dr. Ruth about three minutes later than scheduled.  When I suddenly appeared, she made a face and pointed to her watch. I said “Sorry, Ruth, I passed a full length mirror along the way.”

I don't necessarily recommend what she advised. And in an age of ego and narcisism, we do have to be careful with Whitman's sentiment, as well. But I do believe that it's important to aproach life with a celebratory attitude and an appreciation for what we've been given, on the inside or out. 

Think about the uniqueness that is you. Celebrate the being you have, whether in proximity to a reflective surface, or not. And find a new way to be thankful for all that is you. 

Today.

Skill and Confidence

"Skill and confidence make an unconquered army." - George Herbert

Skill by itself may never accomplish much. Don’t you know very talented people who never manage to turn their talents into success? A skilled person with no self confidence will not likely try anything new and difficult. And every path to major success involves the new and difficult.

But confidence by itself can be downright dangerous. Confidence without skill is a recipe for disaster. It’s the combination of skill and confidence that makes for great achievements.

Make sure that the people around you understand this. Our skills and our attitudes are equally important for our overall success in life.