A Big Surprise About Success

One of my biggest wisdom bombs: For over thirty years, I've studied conceptions of success throughout human history, and have analyzed advice about success from nearly every historical period, across cultures. And it never really occurred to me until recently that, as important as the enterprise of proper goal setting and attainment is for the individual or the group to leave a positive mark on the world and contribute to its betterment, the growth that comes from the struggle is every bit as important, and sometimes more so.

The whole structure of human attainment in the end is a spiritual thing, and it's supposed to be about individual and community growth in spiritual maturity, across all the dimensions of our lives. It's meant to be a difficult and joyous adventure, embraced and shared with others. Apparent failures on the surface often hide deep success down below. We're brought into the world as amazing creatures, and that's supposed to be the starting point of an equally astonishing growth. Many get it wrong, and have done so for thousands of years. But there is hope that more of us can catch on and deepen the process, and attain through our mistakes and struggles the glorious ends for which we were made. And yeah, there's a word you don't see often. But you should. Because that's the nature of the intended journey we're on. So remember, it's not so much what you get in life as how you grow that matters most in everything you do.

Two Greek Words

Two Greek Words. Ok, in English letters: Telos ("TEA-loss") means something like Real Purpose. Techne ("TECK-nay") means Rational Process.

Your telos is your true reason for being, the essence of who you are at your best, what you do when you’re in flow and flourishing, and why you properly are and do. It's your overarching aim and goal and calling in life that properly helps you select, organize, prioritize, and balance all other goals and interests. It’s the North Star of your wellbeing and best work.

Techne is the art, craft, and science needed to live your purpose and attain your goals. It's the toolkit for embodying your telos in the world. It's rational in the broadest sense of the word, incorporating logic, information, and intuition properly together, the head and the heart, which both have their reasons, as Pascal once said.

Your Right Path is the result of both, brought together well, in work and in life.

So to sum up: Real Purpose + Rational Process = Right Path. And that’s how philosophy should work. Simple. Deep. Comprehensive. Practical. If you agree and find this post helpful, please share it with friends. I did a shorter version on social media today, but this is the full deal.

A Good Life

I woke up early this morning with these thoughts rolling through my head and had to write them down.

A Good Life. We all want to live a good life. But what does that mean? I suspect that at the core it’s fairly simple.

We all want a life in which we make our proper difference in the world and it makes its proper difference in us.

We seek the journey and result that our being here makes a positive impact for good, however small it may seem, since there is no such thing as small in the realm of the spirit.

We want to be and become with appropriate action, wonder, and most of all, love.

We hope to serve as a blessing to others wherever we are, and to the broader natural world.

And we want to grow into some version of our better or higher or even best self, in the circumstances given us and that we form throughout this adventure.

We may not have all the words for these things explicitly in our minds along the way, and we may not keep consistently on track, but this is what we are born to aspire to, and what's always hidden away in the bottom of our hearts. And all of this, seasoned with gratitude, hope, and compassion along the way, is, I think, a good life.

Aristotle's Recipe for Greatness

Aristotle's simple recipe for human greatness:

People in Partnership for a shared Purpose.

It's never put so briefly (he's Aristotle, after all) but it's to be found in his Politics, which is about how we best live well together. Oh, how we've drifted! Here he is sans pupils. But that's ok. We can be his pupils, even today. He reminds us that greatness is never a solitary achievement. It arises out of people working together. How? In partnership. And there must be a clear, shared purpose that brings the people together and makes the partnership possible.

I just finished my second reading of The Iliad a few days ago, as I’ve mentioned here before. It’s a great story about partnerships breaking down when there is no longer first and foremost a shared purpose. I had a great talk on the plane the other day with a fellow philosopher from the real estate world about how The Iliad can help us to be better in our organizations and to avoid or heal those breakdowns. The wisdom is out there. It’s up to us to find it and use it. Good wishes in your own wisdom adventures!

The Tree, The Fruit, and The Ladder

Here's a thought that came to me a few days ago and I've pondered it since then.

Imagine for a moment that we can represent true spirituality and even the purpose of our existence in this world as a tall tree. High up in the tree is the fruit that we're here to pick and enjoy. It's life changing. It's meant for us and is the true nourishment we need. But it's beyond our normal reach. So we find or build long, tall ladders we can climb to get to the fruit.

Imagine a positive religion as a ladder, or a life philosophy as one. Any enterprise, any structured activity or array of human activities could be conceptualized as a ladder propped up against that high tree. Some of the ladders may be rickety and dangerous or too short, but some are great and even truly inspired. Perhaps, many are. And you may properly believe that you're on the best one of all, a great ladder that's been explicitly designed for reaching the highest fruit of all. You've been taught how to climb the ladder. And suppose you've learned well. So you climb high. And you've not just mastered the techniques of ascent, you've learned lots of other things along the way because of what you've experienced and seen as you've climbed.

But here's the problem. Many people who climb in search of the ultimate fruit tend to cling tightly to their ladder with both hands. And they won't let go. Ladder climbing has been turned from a means into an end. And that's a problem. When people keep a firm grip on their ladder, some fearfully and with white knuckles, they can't actually reach out for the fruit that awaits them and take it and eat it, and share it with others.

Only those who are willing to let go of the ladder can reach for the fruit. They can still keep their feet firmly planted on its rungs, but they have to reach out beyond its structure with an open hand to get the real treasure they've sought.

And the tragedy, it seems to me, is that many people who have good ladders just become ladder experts, ladder specialists and aficionados. They work on their ladders a lot, and paint them, and polish them, and keep them in good repair. They may even gild them with gold and show them proudly to others. But when they climb, they simply cling and don't reach out for what's really the purpose of the climb.

The moral of this little metaphor is, of course, simple. Find a great ladder and climb high. But then learn to let go enough to reach for the fruit that's the real point of the climb. Life, after all, isn't about the ladder, but ultimately the fruit.

Can The Deepest Secret Be Spoken?

There is perhaps no insight of philosophy more important than this. 

In all my years of teaching, I had just one student get really mad at me. We were two weeks into a month-long daily seminar on "Faith, Reason, and The Meaning of Life." The National Endowment for the Humanities had brought together a group of amazing teachers from around the country, remarkable individuals who taught in grades K-12, for a summer enrichment program. I was the sole professor. And I was pretty young, in my early thirties. The seminar itself, after eight years of teaching and learning, eventually became the book Making Sense of It All.

The student, an experienced teacher, was irate. His wonderful, fairy-tale, story-book marriage had just come to an end, days before he was to travel to South Bend for my seminar. His wife had left him a message on the kitchen table that she was gone and would not be coming back. Their life together was over. He was stunned, and crushed, and in emotional free-fall. He was desperate to find some sort of meaning and how to make sense of this shock, and of life itself, amidst the craziness, the disappointment, the despair, and the unexpected suffering that can assail us in this world. We had been reading and talking for two weeks, and he was at the end of his rope. He wanted to know the meaning of life, and he wanted to know it right then. That day. No more delay, no more waiting. Why did we keep beating around the bush? We'd been reading stuff and philosophizing for hours at the time, and there was no clear answer! 

I went by his dorm room and talked with him for two hours. I quickly came to realize that he was suffering under an assumption that a lot of us naturally make.

He was assuming that the deepest secret for living in this world, the most profound insight, the key to a meaningful, happy, fulfilling life, can somehow be captured in the content of a sentence, or statement, or proposition. And he thought that I was stubbornly refusing to utter that statement, choosing instead to tease the class with roundabout hints and elusive suggestions, but never saying the one thing that most needed to be said.

I had to challenge him and ask him how he knew that what he was searching for could be said at all. What gave him to believe that there were some magic words that would change everything in an instant? 

Now, admittedly, this was years before I wrote a book called If Aristotle Ran General Motors, and in a chapter on "Business and the Meaning of Life," I did actually manage to convey what I consider to be the single deepest truth that can be stated on this issue, a truth I had to discover for myself, from hints and clues spread throughout the wisdom traditions of the world. So, in that book, and in the subsequent big yellow tome, Philosophy for Dummies, I did write a sentence providing what I think is the one and only definitive answer to the question "What Is the Meaning of Life?" And I've had people tell me that it's the most important sentence they've ever read, which makes me glad. But even then, once it was said, once the crucial statement on life's meaning was communicated, there was still something else, something crucial that, perhaps, cannot be said, and that, it seems, may be even more important.

The deepest secret may not be a statement, or a proposition, at all.

Wait. What?

There is an inevitable elusiveness to enlightenment, to salvation, to the ultimate mindset of transformed wisdom. In a book I just read for the third time this week and twice already wrote about here, Siddhartha, the title character comes to exactly the realization that, maybe, the most important and deepest secret to living well in this world can never be said or taught in simple declarative statements. He meets Gautama the Buddha, and says to him:

I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teachings. To nobody, O Illustrious One, can you communicate in words and teachings what happened to you in your enlightenment. 

He admires greatly the message that the Buddha is conveying in his words, as he teaches his disciples, and yet says this about it, as a whole teaching:

But there is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious One experienced - he alone among hundreds of thousands.

The deepest secret is perhaps too big, and deep, and transformative to be caught like a bird and caged up into language, into words. But it can be discovered. It can be encountered. One who has experienced it can introduce it, in a way, to another. And then, it can do its work. 

Even Plato, writing in his Seventh Letter, says about his own deepest wisdom that:

It is not something that can be put into words like other branches of learning; only after long partnership in a common life devoted to this very thing does truth flash upon the soul, like a flame kindled by a leaping spark, and once it is born there it nourishes itself thereafter.

In the third chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus tries to explain to the scholar Nicodemus that, in the case of our Ultimate Quest, the name of the game is not discovering the right true sentences, but undergoing a radical transformation. Siddhartha's own eventual Guide to understanding and metamorphosis, the simple ferryman Vasudeva, basically has to help his new friend see that there is no shortcut to the deepest secret. We each have to make our mistakes, commit sins and errors, take wrong paths, try things that don't seem to help, live through adventures, and maybe, as a result of being in the right frame of mind at the right time, the light from the most elusive flame will be sparked in us. There will be a dawn. We'll then see anew. But this will happen, in some sense, and in every case, beyond words.

And that's what all the mystics have been trying to tell us, with many words, for a very long time.

Oh, and my one angry man, my irate student: He calmed down as a result of our many words together and my efforts to push him that day beyond words. He seemed to understand. I couldn't be blamed for not doing the impossible. And yet. And yet.

I know now more than I did then. And I could have been more helpful, I think, if I had lived through and learned all that I've subsequently lived through and learned, but, as Plato says, not like in other branches of learning. This tree grows in a distinctive way. And perhaps it speaks its deepest secrets almost as faintly as as the sound of a light breeze blowing through its branches. And if there is a spark, that breeze may fan it into the flame that's needed to provide the light that's desired.

Siddhartha's Search

I think I first read Siddhartha, the little classic novel by Hermann Hesse, in college, in the early seventies. I read it again in 1998. Then again this week. It's the story of a well born boy in India who is handsome, highly intelligent, well liked, and by all appearances effortlessly successful in everything he does. But he's not happy inside. Despite what seems to be an easy path of Brahmin life, through study and eventually a sort of priestly vocation, Siddhartha decides to renounce all his privileges and go into the forest as a Samana, or beggar. The idea is to minimize the physical in order to get in touch with the spiritual and find both meaning and happiness. His best friend Govinda joins him. They go in search of spiritual teachings that will bring them meaning, purpose and fulfillment, and continue on this path for three years. But they don't find what they're looking for. 

And then they hear of a great teacher, the Buddha, who has broken free of all illusion and has attained the goal of true wisdom and happiness. They go to meet him. He shows inner peace in everything he does. His words are attractive. Govinda wants to become one of his followers. Siddhartha can't. He is immensely impressed with the Buddha but senses somehow that what he needs is not more teaching, or more words, from anyone, but a different path, one that's distinctively his.

The childhood friends part company. Siddhartha moves on, and comes to a town where he sees Kamala, a stunningly beautiful young woman and richly attired courtesan who, as a profession, teaches the art of love. He ardently wants to be her student. But she's unwilling to practice her art with a dirty, ragged beggar. She will see him only if he wears beautiful clothes and shoes, and is bathed and perfumed, with his hair fixed in the way of the wealthy. He then quickly attains these things as effortlessly as he's gained anything in the world that he's ever set as a goal - other than, of course, enlightenment, which alone seems to have eluded him. And he becomes Kamala's best student ever. He learns to play at love as an artist. And in order to continue with her, he learns also to play at business, as another art, or nearly a sport. He flourishes in all outward ways. But he's still not happy at his core. He grows to love Kamala but to hate what he's become in order to win her.

One day, Siddhartha leaves again for the forest. But this time, he's so distraught over what he's become in his pursuit of wealth and worldly pleasure that he feels suicidal. He meets a ferryman at a wide river and, to his great surprise, this man becomes the person who leads him to the enlightenment he has always sought, but who does so more with actions than with words. The ferryman isn't a teacher or preacher so much as a listener. And because of this he shows Siddhartha how to listen - at first to the river, and then to any living thing, and to hear and see and find within the nature and people around him the universal pattern and unity of all things that has otherwise eluded him.

In the Bhagavad Gita, a charioteer is the source of wisdom and enlightenment. In The Legend of Bagger Vance, it's a golf caddy. In this story, it's a river ferryman. All are servants. All are people who help others to move toward their goals. And in all three stories, the simple servant is the source of enlightenment. Because a good servant listens, he can then speak in such a way as to direct the seeker toward his goal. And that's a lesson worth pondering for those among us who want to help others accomplish the right things in their lives.

Siddhartha is a book you can read multiple times, a short tale of 122 pages in the old edition I own. And it's provocative. You won't agree with everything in it, but it can stimulate your own thoughts  about life and love, work and wealth, meaning, purpose, and happiness.

Life Purpose

Arthur C. Brooks recently wrote in the New York Times:

In a 2009 study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, researchers interviewed 806 adolescents, emerging adults. and adults about their purpose in life. A key finding of the study was that being able to articulate a life purpose was strongly associated with much greater life satisfaction than failing to do so. In contrast, purposelessness — no matter how closely tied to worldly prosperity — generally defines a hamster-wheel life, alarmingly bereft of satisfaction.

What struck me from this statement, first of all, is that, on this particular study, it didn't even matter what you had articulated as your life purpose - some purpose was better than none. Imagine, then, the level of satisfaction that can result from a truly meaningful life purpose, and one that's deeply right for you.

What is your purpose? Can you put it into words? According to the study cited, that in itself can make a difference in a positive way. And the clearer you are about your sense of purpose, the easier it is to assess potential goals, business opportunities, and even social activities. If you're vague about your sense of life direction, meaning, and purpose, it becomes difficult to know what to say yes to and when to say no, apart from momentary feelings. But temporary feelings aren't always our best guides to long term good. A sense of purpose is a great guide forward.

What's yours?

Your Money Or Your Life

Decades ago, the famous television comedian Jack Benny did a routine that played off his reputation as being a cheapskate. In the sketch, a robber came up to him with a gun and demanded "Your money or your life!" Benny just stood there, silent, staring into space. The robber said something like "Come one! What'll it be?" And Benny replied with frustration, "I'm thinking. I'm thinking."

Let me ask you a question. Why do you do what you do? Is your goal in life to make as much money as possible? Maybe that's not a realistic aim in your current job. But is it a dream? Many people tell me that they indeed fantasize about "The Number" - the amount of money they'd have to make and save in order to just stop working and enjoy themselves lavishly for the rest of their lives. The fantasy is one of immense wealth and all its trappings. So they start a company, or play the lottery, whichever path their circumstances seem to allow. Some people work almost all the time, in pursuit of that number. They'll do whatever it takes. They'll pay any price.

But do a thought experiment with me. Suppose you came across a wise person with the ability to see the future. Imagine that she's always right. She has an unblemished track record. She could see what is to be, and also what would be if you were to keep on your current path. Imagine then that you shared with her a dream of riches and she said to you, "You can be wealthy beyond imagining, if you choose, but you will be miserably unhappy if you take that path." Let's say you asked for clarification. She replies, "Chase money, and you'll be wretched. Pursue a greater purpose and you'll find happiness."

How would you react? Would you doubt her words? Or would you heed them? 

Many people replicate the Jack Benny skit in their lives. The guy with the gun is just pointing out the choice they face. Will they give up their entire lives just to get as much money as possible? Or will they give up some money for the sake of a life?

I attended a meeting the other day where my friend Matt Ham spoke to a real estate company on the topic of his new book, Redefine Rich. His presentation was about how to define riches in a way that will be deeply satisfying, and and that will lead you to pursue all the right things, so that the treasure you attain will be something that no one can take away. There is no amount of money that's forbidden to a wise person, as Thales in the ancient world demonstrated. But there are ways of living that are. When we understand that, we truly prosper. 

Extraordinary People

A few days ago, I just finished writing a second draft of a little book about the philosophical underpinnings of the extraordinary success experienced by Apple founder Steve Jobs. Then I found out that this week a new book is being published about him, a biography that might correct some of the impressions we all had when reading Walter Isaacson's authorized tome. The new one is called Becoming Steve Jobs. And it promises a more rounded portrait of a man who didn't just scream at people, but was a more complex character who changed modern life for all of us. I look forward to it.

Then, hours later, I read an article about Elon Musk, the young developer of PayPal, Tesla cars, and SpaceX, a guy who's just started with his own entrepreneurial magic, and may be the real life version of comic book and movie character Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man. Elon has taught himself physics, astrophysics and many other things, while most of us where sitting on the sofa and watching The Voice or Modern Family.

I was once in one of Henry Ford's former homes right outside Detroit. The caretaker was talking to me about how Henry used to sit around with his buddies Thomas Edison and the tire guy Firestone and dream up new ways to change the world. What can we learn from such people? 

We're not all world transforming visionaries. But we can all have visions for our lives and the world around us. We can accomplish more than we might suspect. And all that stands between us and the legacy we can create is habit, inertia, easy comfort, and distraction - all things that can be overcome with just a little effort.

We might not invent a new technology, or revolutionize industries, or fly people to Mars. But if we try, we can create more extraordinariness around us than we might ever have imagined. The magic is in us. That's why we're here. We just have to act like the pioneers we're meant to be, in whatever domain and on whatever level. Whether the results will get into the national papers and onto the covers of magazines isn't the test of our worth. We can feel whether we're doing what we're here to do. If you don't feel it, then give yourself the chance to dream and do. And then value your creative best by the right standards.

Focus!

One of the greatest keys to success in modern business is focus. Let's think about it for a bit.

First, notice that the word is primarily a verb. Focus. Even the noun form is an action word. Focus is something you have precisely when it’s something you do.  And I think there are three basic imperatives involved with attaining and keeping great focus.

1. Ignore Distractions. Ask What Matters.

There’s an old saying that the two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. That could be true. And if there’s a third, it just may be distraction.

We’re always surrounded by distractions – news, gossip, emails, texts, phone messages, the never ending streams of social media, the various forms of old fashioned media, and people stopping by to shoot the breeze or tell us about their problems. The buzz of distraction is incessant. And it’s all around us. We have to learn to block it out and ignore it.

We need to question things. What’s relevant to our concerns, and what’s off target, even if just slightly? What can advance us along our path, and what would just detain us and hold us back? We can draw this crucial distinction only if we have clear targets, clear goals around which to structure our focus, and guidelines for properly getting there. Those organizing aims, ideas, and principles then become the test for anything that enters our consciousness: Will this thing or idea or opportunity or conversation help us properly to attain our goals, or not? Is it useful, or not? Will it keep us on the road, or detour us off course?

2. Select. Eliminate.

Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs would often say, “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” He would then usually explain that, “Good things have to be set aside so that we can do really, really great things.” 

To select is to eliminate. We all have limited time and energy. Choice allows us to cut through the thicket of what’s possible and carve out a path we can follow. The famously groundbreaking modern painter Piet Mondrian claimed that the most difficult brush stroke in any painting is the very first one. Prior to that, the blank canvas presents to the artist infinitely many possibilities. The first stroke begins a process of elimination. To choose is to exclude. When we do this, we can’t also do that. 

Without elimination, there is no selection. You may think you’ve made a new choice, and set a new goal, but if that hasn’t resulted in the exclusion of other contrary behaviors, you really don’t have a new goal at all. “No” is just as important than “Yes,” and must be much more frequent. 

3. Use the Perspective of Purpose.

How then can you be properly selective? You can use the perspective of purpose. 

I’ve suggested that clear goals help us to identify and eliminate distractions that would get in the way of our progress. But how do we set the right goals in the first place? By having a solid sense of purpose and mission for what we’re doing. Why do we exist as a company or department or institution? What’s our purpose? Why am I doing what I'm doing? Those should be questions that everyone can ask and answer, in their own context. A strong sense of purpose brings with it both a motivation to focus and a power to do so well. 

Aristotle understood long ago that we humans are essentially purposeful beings. When we have a purpose we can believe in, then it will by nature guide our behavior in a way that external forces can never threaten or replicate. Buying in to a purpose is just setting your heart and mind in a particular direction, and on a specific road, and one that inherently involves the strength of focus. 

I think we can say even more. Focus is destiny. What we focus on determines what we become and accomplish. Vagueness is the enemy of excellence. Focus is its engine.