Doing Your Best

"Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority." - Jane Austen's Emma, in the eponymous novel.

The concept of negligent superiority brilliantly captures an all too common phenomenon to be seen among the lavishly gifted, talented, and connected. But as the twentieth century philosopher Wittgenstein once opined, to rest on one's laurels is as dangerous as falling asleep in the snow. Those frozen in their sense of superiority do not flow on to further success.

But modest endowments put to great use can accomplish much. In fact, it's the negligence of superiority that allows for many others with lesser gifts to prevail by doing their best. My wife's parents told her when she was young that the grades she brought home didn't matter nearly as much as the fact that she did her best. It's really both a reassuring and a daunting concept, but it does carry promises and hope. So, in all that you do, do your best.

Life Skills

How skilled are you? Do you seek to identify, acquire, develop, and improve the most important life skills, in an ongoing way? 

We often think about success, and even happiness, as if it's mostly about talent and luck - what you're born with, and what comes your way, completely apart from your control. But obviously, this is a passive and even fatalistic viewpoint. We don't get to choose our talents, or innate levels of talent, and we can certainly position ourselves for luck to strike, but we can't call it down from the heavens. It happens, or it doesn't. That's inherent to the concept of luck.

I've come to realize that this common way of thinking is both wrong and terribly unhelpful. Life success is more about skill than it is about either talent or luck. A skill is something that can be learned and developed. Riding a bike, swimming, dancing, and golf all involve skills. You don't start off in life innately knowing how to do these things well, but you can learn, and you can get better with time, effort, and deliberate practice.

A lot in life is like that. Goal setting is a skill. Listening well is a skill. And because of that, great conversations tend to result from the cultivation of a skill, or a set of skills. Building and maintaining confidence is a skill. So is the mental act of concentration. Building a business, or a career, is all about cultivating the right skills and using them well.

I've come to think that building a life of fulfillment and happiness is like that, too. There are skills to be learned and cultivated. They are things we can get better at doing, as we seek to improve. But if we have a passive mindset, we won't even try. To me, the exciting thing about the concept of a skill, and especially the idea of life skills, is that once we have the concept and begin to apply it, we can change our lives for the better, and improve greatly. We begin to see little things everywhere that we can work on in our emotional and behavioral repertoire. And as we become more skilled at doing the things that count, that elusive partner called luck seems to find us more often, and treat us much better.

For good books related to this, books that will help you to understand this more and develop your own best life skills, go get Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin, and Mindset, by psychologist Carol Dweck.

Desire Beats Talent Any Time

"Desire beats talent any time." Mary Wells - Famous Talented Advertising Executive.

And this is my take:

Talent is potential. Desire is an actualizer of that potential.

Skill is potential. Passion is an actualizer of that potential.

Knowledge is potential. Vision is an actualizer of that potential.

Relationship is potential. Leadership is an actualizer of that potential.

Talent, skill, knowledge, and relationship are inert things without desire, passion, vision, and leadership.

Desire, passion, vision, and leadership are empty things without talent, skill, knowledge, and relationship.

There is a yin and yang with what we can call potentiators and actuators. Cultivate both sides. Start where you are, and then grow what you need.

Oh, and by the way, after great initial success working for someone else, Mary Wells, whom I quoted above, created her own firm of Wells, Rich, Greene, and with great talent and desire they went on to have such iconic ad hits as

• Plop plop, fizz fizz - Alka-Seltzer
• I can't believe I ate the whole thing (winner of the 1971 Clio Award) - Alka-Seltzer
• Try it, you'll like it - Alka-Seltzer
• I ♥ New York
• Trust the Midas touch
• At Ford, Quality is Job 1
• Flick your Bic
• Raise your hand if you're Sure - Sure deodorant
• Friends don't let friends drive drunk  - Public Service Announcement

Friends don't let friends allow their talent, skill, knowledge, or relationship potential to lie fallow. 

Potential begs to be actualized. Actualize some today.

Making Your Mark in the World

Let me quote from the New York Times columnist David Brooks who is quoting from someone else:

“I believe the really good people would be reasonably successful in any circumstance,” the detective writer Raymond Chandler wrote in his notebook in 1949. If Shakespeare came back today, “he would have refused to die in a corner.”

That's a striking image, and a fascinating perspective.

This week, I spoke to a great group of people one day for five hours. We were talking about business and personal success - in all its definitions and contours. Our topics included the two frameworks of ideas that I call "The 7 Cs of Success" and "The Four Foundations of Greatness." We laughed, we pondered, and a few times, I quoted long passages from Shakespeare to throw some unexpected light on a hidden facet of our subjects, and of our lives. And I do think that Raymond Chandler was right. Whenever he might have been born, in any alternative possible world, Shakespeare would most likely have made his mark.

At one point in the five hours of philosophizing, not counting the extra hour of pondering the mysteries of life at lunch over barbecue, baked beans, and cole slaw, I mentioned what I like to call my "3-D Conception of Success" - that, however different personal success may look for different people, it's always about three things:

1. Discovering your talents

2. Developing those talents

3. Deploying them into the world for the good of others as well as yourself.

Circumstances may facilitate this process, or inhibit it terribly. But really good people have a way of prevailing in almost any circumstances. What do we mean here by "really good"? Simply, the people who insist on doing the process of 3-D living well. Those who work at it, and keep at it, and pour their hearts into it.

But maybe, you might wonder, it's just the people like Shakespeare, the people who have that extra spark and talent and wisdom and even "genius," who will stand out, no matter what. Yeah, maybe. But maybe, also, more of us have that in us than we ever might imagine - our own versions, for sure, but a spark worth fanning into a flame that will provide its own light in the world.

How will you handle your circumstances now? To be or not to be: that is the question.