Sometimes, Play

I was in Maui. I had spoken three times during the week to a very large audience of international corporation presidents and their families. It was a lively group. In one of my talks, I had mentioned years before playing in bands. I can't remember how that came up, but somehow I used the reference to make a point, to illustrate some idea I was presenting. But I quickly forgot about even having made the reference, until the end of the week, when on the last night, a great band was playing on a big stage outdoors near the beach and under the star filled Hawaiian sky.

The organizer of the group, a company president from South Africa, I think, saw me somewhere toward the back of the crowd and yelled out, "Hey, Mate! You've GOT to play with the band!" I laughed and told him it had been too many years since I had done anything like that, and I wouldn't be any good anymore. But he continued to insist and took my arm and guided me toward the side of the stage. I could have gotten out of it, I'm sure, but from the look on his face, it just meant too much to him. So I put aside my rational doubts and any semblance of a reasonable concern to retain an intact professional image, and climbed the stairs, and at the top, someone handed me a guitar, and before I even realized what was happening, I was with the band, in the center of the stage, taking a lead break in whatever song they were doing. And everybody just went nuts. Some even rushed the stage, as you can see from the old photo above. When I finished the song and got down off the stage, the instigating global business leader gave me an enthusiastic high-five and shouted to me, "Now I believe everything you've said this week!"

My work as a philosopher was confirmed. Who knew? And I had a memory. And, yeah, it was fun. I'm glad I did it. You know what they say about risk and reward. Sometimes, you have to just lay aside your excuses and get up on the stage and play. Whatever that metaphorically means for you in your life and work, you just have to do it. You'll be glad. And maybe someone will see you do it, and appreciate you, or your normal work, in a new way.

Sometimes, play.

Self Knowledge and Goal Setting

I was giving a presentation recently on success, and we were talking about the importance of basing our goal setting in self knowledge. I explained that one philosopher had parsed self knowledge in an interesting way. He said, "Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. Know your opportunities." And that's interesting, isn't it? Strengths and weaknesses are inner things. Opportunities are outer things. So how can knowing them, as external circumstances, be a part of self knowledge?

A situation that creates a great opportunity for one person will not provide the exact same thing for a different individual. Knowing what external situations are opportunities for you is a matter of self knowledge. But, how so?

Maybe we need to dig a little deeper. Maybe the imperative "Know Yourself" has a few more elements:

Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. Know your limits.

Know your passions. Know your ideals.

Weaknesses are certainly limits, at least for now. But not all limits are weaknesses. Some limits are a result of our prior choices and commitments, and some are actually among our strengths. A robust and proper structure of commitments is a great thing to have. It empowers and it limits. And such limits will be very relevant to the goals we decide to set or adopt.

Knowing your passions is equally important. Some are strengths. Others are weaknesses. Some may be neither, in themselves, but developed can go either way. Passion is a source of drive and motivation. Setting goals outside of any concern for our passions is never a recipe for greatness.

And perhaps most important of all is knowing our ideals. We all have fantasies, desires, or passions that would not be right to pursue in a certain way or at a certain time. Our ideals are those values that should guide us in choosing. And they will help to determine what external situations do indeed provide opportunities for new goals and new successes.

All goal setting should be an ongoing exercise in self knowledge. And all these factors matter.