Familiarity

There's an old saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt." And I think it's wrong, at least, as normally understood. I suspect that familiarity rather breeds a lack of awareness. The most familiar things, we look beyond. We rarely focus properly on them. We take them for granted. We ignore them. And that creates problems.

What's the closest, most familiar thing of all to each of us? Our own mental stream or theater of consciousness. The solitariness and uniqueness of our inner experience. Nobody else has my state of consciousness right now. Nobody else has yours. And we can know only as much about it as you might be prepared to share and reveal. But it can never be shared fully. The inner sanctum of you can never be fully put into words and conveyed to another person to the extent that they would know 100% what it's like to be you, to think like you, see like you, feel like you. 

And I don't think we spend enough time pondering that inner self. When the Greeks advised "Know Yourself" they meant all of our inner reality, including things normally hidden to our conscious states. But they also meant this. What is the flow of your experience, in your mental and spiritual hiddenness? What tonality of feeling or attitude colors the inner you throughout the day? Is it helping you to develop into the person you want to be, or is it holding you back? Is it conveying patterns into the future that belong to your past, but that will prevent the best outcomes you most desire? We ignore our inner lives to our great detriment.

And then, I think, the second ring of familiarity may be our bodies. We too often ignore one or more aspects of our physical being in ways that aren't conducive to health and flourishing. Sure, some people seem to fixate on their bodies. But most of us ignore some aspect of our physical needs that would benefit from more attention.

And then, think beyond yourself: The next ring of familiarity may be your immediate family. The things of the world that demand our attention, added to those that lure our attention, can easily cause us to overlook, and pay insufficient attention to, the closest people around us. And that's deeply detrimental, to us, and to them.

We need reminders now and then not to let the most familiar things in our lives go begging for our attention, which is almost always focused elsewhere. The stuff that's elsewhere will never enhance our lives well, unless we're taking care of the most intimate parts of our existence and experience. So my advice today is: Don't let familiarity breed either contempt or unawareness - or, rather, what may actually be the contempt that consists in habitual unawareness. Rather, use the intimacy and proximity of those closest things for proper exploration and cultivation, creating a sound and healthy foundation for all else.

Redefining Luxury

We need to redefine luxury in our time. It's not about price. It's about quality.

In a world of mediocre stuff, made too often by people who really don't care, and of services that are offered, and barely, on automatic pilot, real quality produced by passionate people has become a rarity. I think it's become a luxury. The chairman of the philosophy department at Notre Dame, long ago, who went on to be the Dean of Arts and Letters at NYU, once told me about a friend of his who said, "I'll never be able to afford the best car in the world, but I can afford the best fountain pen." He wanted an experience of rare, top quality. And he got it.

I've had a couple of nice long rides in a new Rolls Royce. Ok, I get it. It was nice. But I like my Audi A8L just as much. It's eight years old and still surrounds me in luxury. It looks like, and performs like, it was made by people who care. Plus, my local Audi dealership, Audi Cape Fear, really cares. Their top notch service is a luxury. Thanks to AJ. Aliah, the owner, who shows everyone there how to care, and insists on the highest customer service, which is a true luxury in our time.

I've written here before, a couple of times, about Peter and Aletta Stas, founders of the Swiss watch maker Frederique Constant. Go look at their amazing creations. They've been a great example to me. Their motto is "accessible luxury." People often think of that as a paradox. Isn't luxury inherently inaccessible, because of price? When you define luxury in terms of exorbitant cost, of course it is. But that's an inappropriate definition. Our English word 'luxury' comes from Latin roots, and a word that long ago meant, in its time, excess, extravagance, profusion, or delicacy. In old French, it developed connotations of the sensual. But it never meant the unaffordable or inaccessible. A luxury item was one that went beyond the norm. It was somehow an extravagance, even a delicacy, involving an excess of attention and care and quality, beyond the norm. And that's still what it should mean, today. A luxury doesn't have to be available only to multi-millionaires, or billionaires.

We can extend to other people small luxuries all the time, if we really care, and want to go beyond the norm. Even larger luxuries can be provided, without a exorbitant cost.

In a season of gift giving, consider the ultimate luxury: A gift of your time and attention and care, delicately and extravagantly delivered with an exquisite consideration for the needs, wants, and concerns of the recipient. That, like a meticulously crafted and beautiful Frederique Constant watch, is an accessible luxury of great value.

Greatness - with Jay Forte

What does it take to be great? A new friend, Jay Forte, just interviewed me for a podcast on his website The Greatness Zone. I'm going to post a blog of his below on the topic, and let it direct any of you who might want to hear the interview to the place where you can. Here's Jay:

Who’s Your 'Go-To' To Learn How To Have A Great Life? - Jay Forte

With thousands of years of history, learning and wisdom available to us, who could you check with, what could you refer to or what wisdom could guide you to know how to live a great life? What does the wisdom of the philosophers have to say to you to help you live life like it matters – to live in your greatness zone?

I’ll be honest, I took philosophy in college because it was required – I didn’t have any burning interest in connect with what I felt to be outdated thinking from old dudes in togas. But as I got over my uninformed understanding of philosophy, I came face-to-face with profound guidance and wisdom in how to show up successfully and authentically to a constantly changing world. I now find I am a convert to incorporating wisdom from every generation to learn how to show up more successfully in the moments of life.

I thought I would share some of the profound wisdom that supports the message of The Greatness Zone and introduce you to the practical side of philosophy that has so much guidance for us in today’s wild world. Just maybe it will pique your interest to return to the wisdom of the philosophers as a go-to source for successful life wisdom.

“The archer must know what he’s trying to hit, then he must aim and control the weapon by his skill. Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is heading for, no wind is the right wind.” ~ Seneca

So many of us just show up to life without a plan. A meaningful plan can only happen when we become aware of who we are and what is going on in our world. We can then start to notice what areas in life are for us – which areas align to our best abilities and passions. Once clear, we can direct ourselves into areas that matter – we can move forward on a plan to achieve our goals. Without the clarity, we roam aimless and live most of our lives searching for success and happiness, out of our greatness zones.

“Anyone is free who lives as he wishes to live.” ~ Epictetus 

We live in a noisy, loud and pushy world. The only time we are truly living authentically and free as the philosophers say, is when we are choosing how to live. Learning to listen to our own voice instead of the voices that say buy this, be this, live here, drive this, study this, own this, etc requires awareness of what our own voice sounds like. We can only access our own voice when we learn to disconnect and unplug from our world – to create some quiet. In that quiet, we are able to look inside ourselves to determine what matters to us. All important information will come from the inside out. Have a plan to connect to that information to know what you want in life. Then you will be free because you are living life on your terms.

“Discover your talents. Develop those talents. Deploy your talents in the world for the good of others as well as yourself." ~ Tom Morris 

Tom, today’s profound practical philosopher, calls this "3D living" – discover, develop, deploy. Your talents are your gifts – your unique abilities that help you create your roadmap for a life that both suits you and one that brings your best to all you do. We are not great at everything; however we are amazing at some things. Discover, develop and deploy those things and you will find yourself in your greatness zone. This is the key living a successful, happy and impactful life.

There is wisdom everywhere – guidance to help you show up big to life, or as I say, to live in your greatness zone. Build on the wisdom of others – they advance your progress and help you find direction. They remind you to look within, not without, for guidance, direction and purpose. They remind you to both treasure yourself and to see the value in others. They have it all going on – and we could be a more significant society and world if we listened more to what has been shared. Find your favorite philosopher and build on that wisdom to live each day in your greatness zone.

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LISTEN – The PODCAST 

Episode 24 – How To Have A Great Life - Tom Morris, Practical Philosopher, Speaker, Educator and Mentor

In my powerful and inspiring conversation with today’s entertaining, wise and practical philosopher, Tom Morris, we talk about what greatness is and how the wisdom of the philosophers provides guidance how to have a great life today. Always passionate, lively, entertaining and wise, Tom has activated a love of philosophy in his classes as a professor at Notre Dame and shares the practical relevance of philosophy in running extraordinary organizations.

This conversation is loaded with powerful and practical wisdom including the 3D living approach, what Michelangelo and wood carvers teach us about focus, why “know yourself” is the key to finding your next adventure in life and how to access all the information you need to have a great life. There are too many Morris gems to list so make a commitment to bring a note pad, a great cup of coffee and listen to this one. You’ll play this one over and over. Brilliant.

Click here to listen to the podcast. Click here to download the podcast from iTunes. Click here to connect to Tom.

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Motivational Speakers

On several occasions, after being in one of my audiences, someone has said to me, "I've always hated motivational speakers." That's an interesting remark for me to hear, since I'm often described as a motivational speaker.

Fortunately, the next sentence, on each occasion, has been something like: "But this, I really, truly enjoyed." And then, some version of an explanation has followed: "This was the real thing, today - the real stuff, not just fluff."

One Harvard educated PBS producer, after telling me how much he dreaded being dragged to see a motivational talk, said to me, with great enthusiasm, "But this, I couldn't believe, it was so good. You dug deep into human nature. You nailed all the real stuff. This was genuine philosophy, not just empty cheerleading. I mean, it was inspirational and uplifting because it wasn't just a lot of hype. It was deep truth, presented simply, logically, and with a lot of fun." He didn't hold it against me that I was a Yale guy. 

I was relieved, and grateful for the positive words. But, hey, we all need a little cheerleading now and then. "Come on. You can do it. Head high. Just believe. Aim for the stars. Etc." But at other times, we do need much more. We need to understand the leverage points in human nature for making things happen. And ever since there have been written documents, wise people have put into writing what they discerned about those deep wells and resources we all have. Or, sometimes, their students have recorded their remarks, when they were not writers themselves, like Socrates, and Epictetus, the Buddha, and Jesus of Nazareth.

We benefit when we hear or read "the real stuff, not just fluff." The truth is exciting enough to give us hope and inspire us to move forward productively in our lives and our work. We don't need revved up hype to pump us up.

Some motivational speakers are indeed like parrots of fluff - human tape recorders of clever phrases ending with exclamation points. A few, sadly, are charlatans concerned only about their own success, not yours or mine. Some, unfortunately - and I say this as charitably as possible, and without feeling at all judgmental, but you likely know what I mean - are deluded careless thinkers. Sorry, but it's true. And some are wise, loving, and helpful guides to the heights of what we're capable of accomplishing and experiencing in this world, because they're grounded deeply in truth, and are motivated by love.

Brian Johnson, founder and proprietor of Entheos has a nice concept for the concerns of the wisest throughout history: Optimal Living. Anyone who can help us to that deserves our attention. And I include in that crowd such eminences as Aristotle, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tsu, Rumi, Hadrat Ali, Emerson, and even some much less celebrated people alive in our day.

In motivational matters, as in life, the adage holds true: Let the buyer/listener/reader beware. But if we're discerning, and follow the genuine breadcrumbs of wisdom left for us throughout the ages, we can indeed prosper and succeed, finding fulfillment and happiness along the way. Then, we become wisely motivated achievers of optimal living.

Wild Advice

In last Sunday's New York Times, the authors of the books Wild and Gone Girl were interviewed together. In the course of the conversations, Cheryl Strayed, author of "Wild" said:

The story I wrote has an ancient tradition in literature, man against nature, the hero’s journey. I was conscious of the narratives that I was both taking part in and also countering because the variation on the theme is: It was a woman, and it wasn’t “versus.” I say the wild felt like home to me. It wasn’t me trying to conquer it; it was me living in it. So much about “Wild” is about acceptance and surrender and vulnerability. To me that’s the greatest strength, not this conquering kind of narrative that we have embedded in our bones.

That got me to thinking. How much of personal growth and achievement advice is about conquering? A lot, actually. In America, especially, where the self help literature really got going, back in the last century and before that, we're all about action, fighting for what's right, changing what we don't like, conquering the next foe, battling the obstacle we'll face on our way to our goal. But it could well be that "acceptance, surrender, and vulnerability" are much more important in any heroic quest than we normally suppose. And we forget that to our detriment.

There's a famous woodcarver who has said that average carvers often fight the wood, and try to force it into what they have in mind; whereas master carvers "listen to the grain" they're working with, and truly partner with the wood for the greatest results. Could it be that every situation has its grain, and that we need to accept that fact, surrender to it, to some extent, and be vulnerable to learn and change and adapt? Could it be that this is as important to any heroic quest as the determination and will to fight and struggle? 

Cheryl Strayed offers us some wild advice that's well worth pondering.

To see her book, click here.

My 40th Anniversary

Today is my 40th wedding anniversary. And it's also my wife's. Duh. I couldn't have done it without her. We fell in love in 1973, and were married on December 1, 1974, when I was 22 and she was ... younger.

I realize how rare a 40th anniversary is, these days. So, you might wonder: what's the secret?

To start with: Love is vital. Real love.

Forgiveness is just as important. A capacity to give and receive forgiveness is like a car's shock absorbers and overall suspension system - needed to get you over all the bumps and holes and to keep you from careening off the road. And this is especially needed on the wife's part. If I'm at all representative of my gender, husbands can be idiots at time, despite even PhDs in wisdom. 

Communication is also important. Ideally, it magnifies love and makes forgiveness not needed quite as often. Believing in the other person, and in who they most fundamentally are, is another key. Faith is probably the most important of all, at least in our experience - it transcends everything else.

I couldn't let the day pass without acknowledging this milestone here. Thank you, Mary Morris, for hanging in there and helping me to become the person I am now, a much better person - I promise.

Love. As always.

Oh, and you guys reading this - I wish this sort of experience for you - in quality, or quantity, or both!

Enough for now. I gotta go. Champagne awaits. Oh, and Pizza.

The Two Hardest Things

We're told that the holiest spot in ancient Greece, the Oracle at Delphi, had two inscriptions of advice chiseled into marble to welcome all visitors, who typically came for advice. They were:

Know Yourself.

Nothing in Excess.

The longer I live, the more I come to appreciate the depth and practicality of these two recommendations. Ironically, knowing yourself may be the hardest thing in the world. And why? Nothing is closer to you than your own self. But it's protected by layers of obliviousness and self-deception. Getting to really know yourself is like peeling back the layers of an onion. And it might bring tears. But nothing is more important for living a good, successful, and happy life.

As hard as self knowledge has been for me, avoiding excess has been even tougher. I'll eat too much, drink too much, work too much, exercise too much, and talk too much. I may even blog too much. But that's me. I'm lucky I lived through my twenties, with all the stupid excessive things I did. And I'm just coming off two months' worth of muscle strains from taking a perfectly good exercise in the gym, and doing an insane amount of it in an excessively short time.

Aristotle nailed it. Excellence is always somehow about identifying the too little and the too much and equally avoiding them both. Virtue, as he said, or strength, in a more modern idiom, is about finding what's just right. 

And the two recommendations at the Oracle are of course connected. You don't know yourself unless you understand your limits and what counts for you in any domain as "excess." And you can't avoid excess unless you truly know yourself, what motivates you, what prompts you, and when you're most likely to make bad decisions that cross the line.

So here we are millennia later, and I can't think of much better advice than what was carved out of that marble so long ago. Maybe these ancient admonitions could be the basis for some 2015 New Year's Resolutions. Maybe they'd be good guides for the days to come. But, knowing myself as I do, I have to avoid implementing them ... excessively.

Dump the Grump

In a recent op ed in the New York Times, Arthur C. Brooks tells an interesting story. He spoke not long ago at a Mormon university, Brigham Young, and his hosts gave him all sorts of BYU branded paraphernalia, including a very nice briefcase with the school's name on it. At first, he says, as a non-Morman and not a graduate of the school, he hesitated carrying it, but it was really nice, and so he finally started to travel with it. And something strange happened. Carrying around the name of a Mormon school, he began to reflect on the virtues that Mormons are known for, like friendliness and courtesy. And, without ever deciding to, he found himself becoming more friendly and courteous, and helpful to people in airports. He came to realize that he had started acting like the people who gave him the briefcase.  He even felt happier, he says, "almost like magic." And, he writes:

But it wasn’t magic. Psychologists study a phenomenon called “moral elevation,” an emotional state that leads us to act virtuously when exposed to the virtue of others. In experiments, participants who are brought face to face with others’ gratitude or giving behavior are more likely to display those virtues themselves.

He's right. Exposure is morally contagious. What we're associated with, or around a lot, gets under our skin, and into our personalities. There's a bunch of research showing that we become like the people we're around, in a good or bad way. Hang out with cheerful, friendly, optimistic and upbeat people, and you'll tend to become one of them. Hang out with grumps, and you'll end up in the dumps. 

There's an easy solution. Dump the grump. Ok, not the cat, but you know what I mean. Read better stuff. Take care what you watch continually on tv. As a result, you may not only act better, but feel better, "almost like magic."

Peace Like a River.

Peace. Tranquillity. Equanimity. Unperturbedness. Zen Calm.

We can picture it by imagining the surface of a pond on a windless day. No ripples. No movement.

But then, a famous Christian hymn features the interesting phrase, "Peace like a river." And that's surprising. A river isn't still. It moves. It flows.

When I hear the word 'river,' I immediately see in my mind's eye a wide expanse, big rocks, and hugely turbulent rapids throwing white spray high into the air, and a large raft of unsuspecting tourists screaming for their lives as they're tossed around like a toy, while the fast current takes them toward a quickly approaching abyss, a massive waterfall they'll never survive ... Ok, maybe I've watched too many action movies. I admit it. I can even see the helicopter swooping down to pluck the desperate people from their doom. Peace like a river? No, I'm sorry.

So why do we have that phrase?

Calm water can soon become stagnant. Moving water is always renewed. And that's the key to this image. I live near a big river, the only large river in North Carolina that empties directly into the ocean. There aren't any rapids in sight. There's a calm flow forward. And that's what matters here. A river brings fresh waters, constantly. A river is ever-renewing. A river flows through any point along it. It nurtures and feeds all life along it.

What we want in our lives is renewable peace, a flow of inner tranquillity that will nurture us, no matter what's going on. We need an ever fresh source of inner flow that can't be stopped by worry, anxiety, anger, or fear. The old hymn says, "I've got peace like a river in my soul." So it's possible to get that. And here's my advice during this holiday season. If you have this sort of peace within you, then savor it. If you don't, then seek it. And when you find it, then share it.

Trust the Process

Every effort toward something important, every quest, every goal-centered pursuit, is a process. And one of the toughest challenges in life is to trust the process as it unfolds.

Good things rarely happen as quickly or as easily as we'd like. Time passes. The horizon recedes. We begin to wonder. Certainly fades into maybe. And our confidence lags, along with other emotions. We're tempted to jump ship, give up, and go on our way.

But this is so common a scenario that we ought to recognize it as such, and approach it differently. Delay is natural in the world. The timing we want is not often the timing we get. So patience is needed, but even more so, trust. We need trust. We need faith. 

There's an old adage (Ok, it's my old adage): Plan your work, and then work your plan. Every good plan needs an investment of trust, of commitment, of hope and realistic optimism.

Then, when the time has fully come, things happen. When the time is right, the process comes to culmination, to fruition, to completion. Would you want it sooner than when the time is right?

If you've chosen the process, if you picked it because you believed in this way of working, then one thing only remains. Trust the process.

Today.

What Makes Your Life Feel Rich?

On Thursday, November 20, 2014, a great teacher left this life. David Menasche had taught eleventh graders at Coral Reef High School in Miami for 16 years. In 2006, at the age of 34, he was diagnosed with a fatal form of brain cancer and told he had months to live. But he fought on for 8 more years. 

Right after the diagnosis, he returned to the classroom, which he called his “sanctuary,” and told his students that he wanted to spend the time he had left with them. Early this year, he explained his choice to continue to teach by saying:

For me, teaching wasn't about making a living. It was my life.

Nothing made me happier or more content than standing in front of a classroom and sharing the works of writers such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jack Kerouac, Tupac Shakur and Gwendolyn Brooks and watching my students "catch" my passion for language and literature.

I loved watching these 15- and 16-year-olds grapple with their first major life decisions -- future careers, relationships, where to live, which colleges to attend, what to study-- at the same moment they're learning to drive and getting their first jobs and experimenting with identity and independence.

No matter how sick he felt, he was in the classroom. He was in these kids’ lives. But in 2012, he had a major stroke, or catastrophic seizure that left him partly crippled and mostly blind. He had to retire from the work he loved. But he didn’t have to abandon his students. In fact, he hatched a plan to visit former students around the country, to see what, if any, impact his work had effected in their lives. He announced his plan on Facebook and immediately had 50 invitations within 48 hours. He ended up traveling more than 8,000 miles to visit hundreds of his former students. And they shared with him their memories from class. His teaching had mattered. It had touched their lives. But most of all, they remembered the personal conversations they had shared with him while in school. He wrote,

As I had hoped, they recalled favorite lessons and books from class, but, to my great surprise, it was our personal time together that seemed to have meant the most to them. Those brief, intimate interludes between lessons when we shared heartaches and vulnerabilities and victories were the times my students remembered. And it was through them I realized that those very human moments, when we connected on a deep and personal level, were what made my life feel so rich, then and now. My students had taught me the greatest lesson of all. They taught me that what matters is not so much about what we learn in class, but what we feel in our hearts.

David wrote a book full of the lessons he learned and taught along the way. It’s called The Priority List: A Teacher’s Final Quest to Discover Life’s Greatest Lessons. It will be soon made into a movie, and Steve Carell will play the teacher who cared so much.

In this Thanksgiving Season, I urge you to think about what makes your life feel rich, and to cultivate more of those moments. Teacher David Menasche learned that it’s all about the very human moments we share and that can resonate for years. His realizations are confirmed and deeply reflected in another book just published by one of my good friends, Matt Hamm. Matt’s book is entitled Redefine Rich, and is available early in a special first release edition through his website, www.MattHam.com. Go check it out. Read. Reflect. And perhaps, this holiday season can be one in which you deepen your life with the things that matter the most, the priorities that will make you feel richer than ever.

Thankfulness and Thanksgiving

Thankfulness is a perception, and then an attitude, and then an emotion. It’s first a form of awareness, or recognition, and then a sense of appreciation. It's a deep and layered thing. Thanksgiving is the act of expressing that inner recognition and gratitude.

We’re surrounded by blessings all the time, things to be recognized as such, and appreciated. At its best, thankfulness is a joyous response of gratitude to these things. It's a recognition of goodness that then makes more goodness possible. So it’s not just responsive, it’s also creative. Let me say that again, and with feeling.

Thankfulness is not just responsive. It's also creative.

In fact, it could be that thankfulness is the most deeply hidden source for creative love, and loving creativity that exists.

What do you have to be thankful for today? How many blessings do you enjoy?

Conscious life itself is the primal blessing - a metaphysically rare and wondrous thing. We had no claim on this life prior to existing. It's the ultimate product of grace.

Be thankful, then, for your life, whatever it may look like at present, for it is always a journey in transition and motion that makes possible great things yet to come. 

Be thankful for your blessings. They help you to experience the nurturing side of love. 

Be thankful for your trials. They help you to experience the challenging side of love.

Both blessings and trials can be doorways into a fuller life, if used properly.

And that just means that even our trials can end up being blessings.

Thankfulness can be spontaneous, or it can be a choice. Either way, it will enhance your life, and your day. It will also touch those around you.

If you don't feel it naturally welling up in you each day, choose to embody it. Choose that way forward. It alone creates the best.

Joy

Joy. It's a big concept bottled up in a little word. It's a big thing available to each of us.

One of the major surprises I had when I was studying the stoic philosophers, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, years ago, in preparation for my book The Stoic Art of Living, was that they were so different from what 'stoic' and 'stoicism' has come to mean in the popular mind. Most people think that being stoic is all about not feeling anything - that it's almost like philosophical anesthesia. But it's not.

The stoics wanted to help us to keep from being disturbed by fleeting emotions so that our natural joy could rise to the surface and be experienced and lived. Negative emotions like resentment, and bitterness, and anger can obviously prevent an experience of joy. But the additional insight of the stoics was that unreasonably strong positive emotions could, too, like that "irrational exuberance" that can come from hearing what we think is great good news. When we get too worried, or too excited, we can become unhinged from reality and our own inner poise and healthiness. The stoics seemed to think that if we could avoid such unsettling emotions, negative or positive, we could become peaceful enough in our surface consciousness as to allow a deep joy that is our birthright to bubble up into our souls and truly bless us.

Joy is not the same thing as happiness. It's not giddiness. It's not mere pleasantness. It's deeper and higher and more abiding. Most of us have felt it, at some time, if only in a momentarily taste or touch of it. But some seem to live it enduringly. Do you have it in your life right now? If not, why not? What's getting in the way? What obstacle to your joy could be removed or eliminated?

At its best, therapy removes obstacles to joy. At its best, self examination prepares the soil for joy.

What gives you joy? Can you integrate more of that into your life this week? Or even today?

It's meant to be yours. And it can enhance everything else you feel, and do.

"Working for the Mob was Great." A Reflection on Modern Business.

Here's my best recollection of a conversation the other day in Las Vegas. My conversation partner was an older man, a well spoken and intelligent individual with a natural ease and friendliness, who was taking me to the airport in a new black luxury SUV. He pointed to a building.

"That's where I used to work, over there, long ago, and for many years. It's the Venetian now, but it used to be The Sands and the Desert Inn. Back in the old days, you'd see all the great stars there - everybody who was anybody."

"What did you do there? What was your job?"

"I was a casino dealer for the first few years, and then walked the floor. Those were the days."

"Really?"

"Yeah. That was when the mobsters ran everything. They built Vegas. And they knew what they were doing. Working for the mob was great."

"Wait. What do you mean?"

"They treated you like family. They cared about everybody who worked there. I mean, you had to sign a one page paper when you got your job, and it had that picture of the monkeys on it - you know, the famous 'See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil' - and you had to sign it and promise your silence. But, they really took care of you. You got paid really well. And the boss, a well known underworld guy, he'd call you at home every week. I mean, every week. 'How ya doing, how's the family? You got your rent covered, or your payments? You got enough groceries in the house?' And if anybody got pregnant, or if your wife got pregnant, he'd phone and say 'Congratulations on the news. And, hey. Don't worry about it. It's all paid for. The doctor visits, the hospital, everything. No worries.' And then the corporations took over, and they didn't care about anybody. Cut the costs, do your job, get lost. In the old days, it was like a big family."

"So, you're saying that working for the mob was better than working for the modern corporations that have taken over?"

"Yes, sir, that's what I'm saying. They cared about you. They wanted you to be happy."

"They cared more about their people?"

"Totally. And they knew that happy people do better work."

"Well, that's true. But let me make sure I'm clear on this. You're sure that it was really better working for the mob than for a modern company?"

"Yeah. No question."

"Wow."

Corporate leaders and wise guys, take note.

Inner Conditions for Knowing

Some people will just never understand you, no matter how hard you try to make yourself known.

There are personal conditions, requirements, preliminaries, for understanding and knowing. And, conversely, there are inner obstacles to both. On one level, this is obvious. There are things that little children can't know or understand. We can teach a four year old to say, "Business can't be about just profit maximization." But she won't really know or understand what she's saying. Likewise for "Mommy's a comptroller."

What we often forget is that we've come across here a universal truth. Throughout life, there are conditions for knowing. Not everything can be gotten from a book, or the internet, or an app. If you've never been to Manhattan, or Helsinki, you can't really know those places. You can read about them and gather endless facts. But there is a different sort of knowledge that only being there confers. At a certain level, you can understand a lot about tennis or golf through just reading enough books and watching the sport played. But there is a form of knowledge you don't have unless you've played a lot. There's other knowledge you can access unless you've played really well. The top pros understand the game in a way that weekend amateurs can't.

I'm convinced that there are also spiritual or moral conditions for knowing. We interpret the world, in part, through who we already are. A thoroughly selfish person can't recognize and know real altruism when it's staring him in the face. A person suspecting enemies and jealous detractors everywhere finds it nearly impossible to experience real friendship. An angry person sees life through a different lens than the one used by a happy person.

At different stages, and in different conditions, we have access to different things about the world. Technology will never provide universal access to all truth, no matter how much can be encoded. Our own growth will give us a form of access that can't be replicated in any other way.

So, we should remember that growth brings access. There are plateaus in life, and we can easily forget that, no matter where we are now, in our own inner lives and personal accomplishments, further growth is awaiting us, and it will bring greater knowledge and understanding. We shouldn't expect to have it all figured out already. There are endless adventures that await us.

So: Think growth today. And seek to develop, however slightly, the inner conditions for new understanding. Expand your existential territory. That's a good part of why you're here.

The Tools of Success

There are certain universal tools for success in any task, job, or role we play in our lives. I've been speaking for 25 years on a framework of such tools that I long ago isolated and extracted from the world's wisdom literature, with a focus on the insights of the most practical philosophers who have contemplated the contours of our lives. I've also written often on what I call The 7 Cs of Success. And, in brief, they are:

The 7 Cs: For true success in any challenge or opportunity, we need:

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

3. A focused CONCENTRATION on what it takes to reach the goal

4. A stubborn CONSISTENCY in pursuing our vision

5. An emotional COMMITMENT to the importance of what we're doing

6. A good CHARACTER to guide us and keep us on a proper course

7. A CAPACITY TO ENJOY the process along the way

This simple framework of seven universal conditions was initially fairly difficult to identify and articulate, in all its proper details. I was looking for universality and logical connectedness. But understanding it is far easier than applying it effectively, which is really 90% of success.

Ideas and implementation are both important. But, ultimately, it's the implementation of ideas like these that makes all the difference. The tools of success, like any tools, have to be used in order to facilitate real world achievement, and they have to be used well. Plus, what results is just as much reliant on the materials of construction as on the tools used. 

Imagine yourself a carpenter. Your tools are the universal conditions for success. Your materials are your talents, skills, knowledge, and opportunities, as well as your relationships. What you create from those materials will demand a good use of appropriate tools. And that's up to you. 

Using the 7 Cs well involves understanding your situation, and also deeply understanding your self. We all have various strengths and limitations within us, obstacles and facilitators of some of these universal conditions. What holds you back? What drives you forward? Knowing yourself well positions use to use these tools well. That's why the philosophers have always encouraged self-knowledge, without which we end up without the particular structures we need for full and happy lives.

The Road to Greatness

This week, I've written an earlier blog post on the idea of greatness. A friend read it and told me something interesting. He said that his son had once been at a school where he was surrounded by mediocrity, and then switched to another school in the same town where he encountered the quest for personal greatness, left and right. My friend went on to say that the new, more challenging environment, had a decidedly uplifting effect on his son, right away, and that the results of this got him into a top university, where the level of expected excellence increased again. 

It's amazing how often we've been told by philosophers that we become like the people we're around, and how commonly we forget to use this important truth to our own advantage. During my years at Notre Dame, it astonished me to see that, no matter how good our football team might be, when they played a bad team, they played badly themselves. The sloppiness and mistakes they showed could be truly perplexing to witness. And yet, when they played a top five team, they'd play them toe-to-toe, and often win.

We're so often like thermometers, rising or falling with the temperature around us, and yet we'd prefer to think of ourselves as thermostats, determining it, instead.

There are a lot of deep evolutionary reasons, related to survival, for our unconscious need and drive to fit in with the people around us. We need to be accepted. We need to be liked. And so, below the level of awareness, we conform in many ways. We become like our tribe.

But we also have the gift of free will. And that allows the possibility, within limits, and sometimes even apart from any limits, for us to choose our tribe. Who do we want to hang around? Who do we want to be like? Who do we most admire?

And yet, here's the apparent dilemma: I want to be like people who are a lot better than me. That way, I can grow into my own form of greatness, encouraged by my environment. But if they're at least as smart and ambitious as I am, they'll want to be around people much better than them, which clearly excludes me. Remember Groucho Marx, who said he'd never want to belong to a club that would have someone like him as a member? That's sort of the problem.

But there's the secret. If I want to be around people significantly better than I am in all the right ways, they will be people of great kindness and curiosity - two very different virtues. And yet, either of those qualities will open them up to my company. Problem solved.

So, why not aim for the stars? The real stars, I mean, not the fake, manufactured ones. When we associate with people of real wisdom and virtue, real accomplishment and knowledge, we're encouraged in our own adventures with greatness. The path is much easier.

Why, then, should we ever settle for less?

Kindness

Kindness is something that, in small doses, can have big results.

Harshness is something that, in a glancing blow, can do great damage.

Full attention is a tremendous gift that we can give another person.

Inattention and indifference wound us deeply.

We were born to care, and to need care.

We should cultivate caring connections whenever we can.

The more we give, the more we get.

But we all know that. Yet, we often forget.

Every life is a doorway into the mysteries and depths of existence.

Every person bears witness to something vital.

When we treasure people more, when we live with kindness, we flourish.

Greatness

Do you aspire to greatness? Or does that question just strike you as silly, or almost embarrassing? 

One of my favorite books in the late '80s was Attaining Personal Greatness, by Melanie Brown. It's actually one of my favorite success and personal growth books of all time, and I bet you haven't heard of it. That's too often the way things go. It's great (appropriately) but not well known. You can buy it on Amazon now for a penny. I quickly learned not to carry it around with the title showing, lest I elicit comments like "Oh. Have you attained it yet?" Or, "How's that going?" (with a raised eyebrows and a finger pointing toward the title).

Can you even imagine the concept broached in a speed dating situation: "What are your interests and plans?" - "Well, greatness. I'd like to attain personal greatness." - "Ok. NEXT!"

I did a podcast interview yesterday with a great guy who seems to be a real kindred spirit, Jay Forte, author of the book The Greatness Zone, and proprietor of the website named, appropriately, The Greatness Zone. He said that when he told his kids about the book, they advised him that he desperately needed a different title - that nobody is going to go around googling "greatness," or even binging it, or Yahooing, or whatever.

But I did. A quick google of the word 'greatness' reveals that it got used a lot in the year 1800, but that since then, it's been on a long downhill decline, which has only recently begun to reverse. The word 'awesome' by contrast had almost no usage in 1800, but experienced a marked increase of usage beginning after 1900, and spiking in the 1990s, until relatively recently, when it slowly began to become "not so great, or awesome, after all."

Our word 'great' has an interesting ancestry. In Old English, it was pronounced like "Greet." In Dutch, the root was 'groot.'  In German, 'gross' - but we'll pass over that one. In Old Saxon, it was 'grot', meaning, of course, something very different from 'rot'. These terms each tended to imply "big" or "tall" or "thick" or "stout." They were words of distinctive magnitude. In Middle English, there was a related verb, greaten, that meant "to grow, to increase, to become larger, or develop." And that's a key to the modern meaning.

Greatness is the result of a proper development, or appropriate growth, far beyond the norm. We speak of great musicians, great painters, great leaders, a great product, great service, and great art. The great is the wonderful and rare, the exceptional, the extraordinary that's far beyond the range of the ordinary. Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with what's ordinary, except when that word far too often comes to mean mediocre, subpar, poor, or even not really that good.

Nobody's born wanting to be a failure. Few people aspire to mediocrity. But is it Ok to shoot beyond good? Is it fine, or even commendable, or rather, obnoxiously elitist, and even narcissistic, to strive for greatness?

I happen to think that, in life and in the many roles we play within it, greatness is first and foremost a spiritual condition, an expansion of skill, ability, and performance that involves bringing something or someone to a special form of heightened completeness. It arises from innate gifts but develops through passion and persistence and a refusal to be stopped short of what's possible. Greatness is an achievement and pinnacle concept. And it's a realizable ideal.

Greatness isn't the same thing as perfection. Great men and women often have great flaws, or imperfections. But greatness requires the ability to learn from mistakes and challenges and failures along the way. And its measure is context relative. A great hotdog doesn't have to compete with a great painting in the realm of the aesthetic. Great work in college may be judged differently from great work in a professional context at the apex of an industry, or discipline. 

Perhaps, we can each aspire to our own personal form of greatness, at any given time, dependent on our talents, interests, values, and opportunities. Your proper greatness now, or in ten years, need not get you on the cover of Time Magazine, or invited to a sit-down with Oprah. But it will ennoble and elevate you and those around you, when it's done right. And it could even be what you're here for.

Just be careful how you talk about it, if you're first aspiring to it, or well on your way.

Who Will Cry When You're Gone?

Who will cry when they first learn you're gone?

Ok, I don't want to be the philosophical version of Debbie Downer here, but we need a second day on the topic of death, I think, but only obliquely, and as the source of a question. Yesterday, I mentioned an announcement in church of a great man's impending departure. Immediately, tissues and hankies were visible all over the sanctuary, as people dabbed their eyes. And that caused me to reflect on a very sad fact. There are top leaders in the world of business who seemed to have nothing more than an acquaintance relationship to their own family members. Their time is always spent elsewhere, and their energy. And at work, they're all business. They don't go around touching the hearts of others.

The people who will cry when they first learn that you're gone will be the people whose hearts you've touched with kindness and love, with affection and concern, with support and encouragement. How many are there? That, to me, is a measure of a life well lived. And we don't all measure up as we would like. But as long as we're still here, we can do something about it.

I think it's interesting to use what I like to call "The Inner Circle Principle." Your life can be imagined as contained within concentric circles. Family and best friends are the closest, innermost circle. Then, there are increasingly remote orbs of friends, co workers, neighbors and other acquaintances who also surround you. Ideally, you should be touching people's hearts in every contact you have. They deserve that. And so do you. But as a practical matter, it can help to concentrate first on the inner circle of people in your life - family and close friends. Are you acting toward them with kindness and love, affection and concern, support and encouragement? Are you paying attention, and doing the little things that will help them and touch their hearts? Or are you always in a hurry, distracted, and needed elsewhere for "important things"? These are the important things.

Give people what they most deeply need while you're here, and you'll make them wish you would stay on and on. And then, when they do learn that you've left for a distant shore, some tissues and hankies will likely appear to signal the good memories that you've left in their hearts.