A Change of Plans

How do you react when all your plans have to be changed at the last minute? 

I made it to the airport in time for my 11:05 AM flight. I stood in line, went through security, got to the gate, and then looked up at the monitor to see "CANCELLED." I hadn't yet turned on my phone. It was a busy morning. So it was news to me. First and only big mistake of the day. I went over to the gate agent and waited my turn. "Hey, I've been cancelled and I have a talk in Charlotte at dinner."

"Oh. That's too bad." Clicking. Clicking. Clicking. Waiting. Endless waiting. More clicking. Bad Frownie Face. "Uh Oh. We can't get you there until really late tonight."

"What do you mean?"

"You're backed up, but all the seats were full on the next couple of flights out. You get in really late."

Nice face. "I can't do that. I have a talk at dinner. Can I drive to Raleigh? It's only 2 hours. I could fly to Charlotte from there."

Clicking. Clicking. Clicking. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Disappointed face.

"No, they're all full, too. Sorry."

"What should I do?"

Bright face. "We can get you to Atlanta, on Delta."

"You can?"

"Yes! I think so. But I'm not sure about getting you from Atlanta to Charlotte."

Ok. I thought to myself. If my roughly 200 Bank of America executives don't mind relocating to Atlanta in the next couple of hours, and finding a hotel there, then, we're fine.

In the old days, I would have been really worried. Now, when things change and there's a big challenge, I use what I have, stay calm within, and take action. I had an old car in the parking lot. It's my "leave outside at the airport car." Do I want to drive that to Charlotte? No. Maybe I have time to drive it back home and get a much better car. I think I can make it. Ok. Let's go. 

In the old days, I would have worried and fretted and DREADED a drive in the rain to Charlotte, which, in those days, was four hours and fifteen minutes. Now, thanks to road improvements, you can do it in under four hours. Maybe three and a half. Sorry, Officer. That would not have made any difference, though. I used to dread any big last minute travel changes. I used to hate long drives. Now, though, I'm learning to live in the moment, adapt, and adjust as things change. Who knows? I might enjoy the drive.

I did. I did enjoy the drive, as long as it was. I didn't have to listen to the radio, or anything. I thought. I pondered. I contemplated. I went all Zen-ful. I noticed stuff. I was still. I wondered: There's a thing called "Walking Meditation" - Is there any such thing as "Driving Meditation"? Or would that end up with you contemplating bent fenders and broken bones? 

The drive was fine. It was actually more than fine. It was nice. And I got to my destination, and even after getting lost in the city, having set the wrong address in my iPhone, I arrived in time to sign about 200 books, iron my shirt, press my suit, lie on the bed for a minute with my eyes closed, eat a snack, get dressed, and go speak. And it was great. Fun-Great.

But on the drive back, the very next morning, the pondering, contemplating, and Zen-ful mindset lasted only about half the trip. I listened to the radio for 15 minutes. Then I turned it off and started giving dramatic renditions, aloud, of Shakespeare soliloquies, and modern poems. And I had fun again.

So here's the lesson. When things go bad, use what you have, stay at peace within, as much as you can, and take action quickly. And be mindful. Live in the moment. And then, if you really need help, it can be good to have some stuff committed to memory. To be or not to be. That is the question. And yeah, the question goes on for hundreds more words - enough to keep you busy on the highway, or anywhere else, for that matter. And there's a lot of other good passages to memorize in the Bard, as well. It works for me. And I wanted to share. 

Cows, Chickens, and Taters

Did your parents, or any other significant adult during your growing-up years, have any favorite sayings that have stayed with you over time? Adam Grant recently interviewed CEO Susan Salka, of AMN Healthcare and asked a question like this. Let me share the brief exchange.

Any favorite expressions that your parents would repeat often around the dinner table?

My dad has 10,000 expressions. When he would say these things as I was growing up, I would roll my eyes every time, but I find myself using many of those same expressions today. One of them has to do with keeping things simple and making people feel comfortable around you. If somebody was talking over his head, using big words, being too complex, or trying to act too sophisticated, he would say, “Would you break that down to cows, chickens and taters?”

I used to think it was silly — what do cows, chickens and taters have to do with each other? But years later, I realized that the message is, keep it simple. Don’t overcomplicate things. As a leader, that’s something that I’ve really learned over time. The strategy and the business can be complex, but you have to explain them in a way that’s really easy to understand.

Cows, chickens, and taters. I like that. Even though I've never lived on a farm, that resonates with me. As a philosopher, I often know way too much about a subject, and I have to remind myself in many contexts to boil it down to its essence.

Simple focuses. Simple invites. Simple motivates. Complicated gets in the way. It's never necessary, until it is. But not until then.

So, whenever you're called on to describe what you do, or what your strategy might be, remember: Cows, chickens, and taters.

Letting Go of the Past

Imagine life in the present moment as a flame, a blazing fire that lights up the dark. The past is just all the ashes from what has come and gone and been transformed by the universal blaze of living. I don't know about you, but I suspect that, like me, you don't collect the ashes from your chimney, or any outdoor fire, pile them up, and spend time staring at them. By contrast, I can watch a roaring fire for a long time. It's mesmerizing. But ashes? No. not at all.

Trying to hold on to the past is like collecting the ashes from the fire of your life and grasping them in your hands, and watching them, and taking in their aroma. What's the point, or the enjoyment of that? We all have some memories of great things past. We also have recall of hurts and difficulties we've lived through. And such memories can often be a proper part of our present. But we should never allow the joys of memory or the rawness of some recollections to pull us back to times that no longer exist and things that are no more. We're meant to face forward in life, not backward. We're meant to let go of the past so we can embrace the present and reach out to the future. That's our calling, and our destiny. To do any differently is to impede our learning, and our growth. So, let go of the past. It was what it was. And now you have a present. It is what it is. Releasing what's gone allows you to relish what's here, or perhaps what's yet to come. The future is our destiny. But the only step we can take to get there is in our present.

Note: This is a second in a new series of blogs on topics of request. Have a concern for me to write about? Just let me know!

Embracing Change

The entire universe is engaged in a wild dance of change. In 500 BC, Heraclitus wrote, "Things are always changing." He was just echoing the Chinese I Ching, or Book of Changes, from much earlier in history. What would Heraclitus say now? Probably: "I told you so."

For so long, the nature of human life and civilization was mostly out of synch with the roiling reality of change below it, in the atomic and subatomic substructure of the cosmos. People lived much the same, day to day. There was an illusion of stability and solidity. Generations came and went in basically the same conditions. Even wars were all pretty much the same. But at some time toward the end of the last century, the mask of predictability slipped off, and we began to see the true face of change. And now, it just continually speeds up.

So, how do we embrace chance, rather than resisting it, resenting it, and then regretting it? We have to embrace a worldview that values growth and learning, second only to love. But of course, in order to live and convey love in the best ways, we need to learn and grow and ... change. Love isn't static. It's dynamic. Love is always changing. It either grows and flourishes in ever new ways, or it decays and diminishes. We know that, but we forget it. If you believe that nothing is more important than love, then you hold a worldview that requires you, for consistency, to embrace change.

"But not all changes are good." The voice in our heads will inevitably object.

A worldview that embraces change doesn't deny this at all. It just affirms that we can deal with any detrimental change by making our own healthy changes, in attitudes, actions, feelings, and thoughts. As long as we live, we can embrace change, either in a hug of affirmation, or as committed wrestlers twisting and turning it into something better than it at first presented itself to be. Embracing is engaging. It's sometimes about joy, sometimes about judo. But love can't just flee in the face of change. It always seeks to encounter the reality of what is and make the best of it. That requires always using what we have, being at peace within, and moving forward with courage and hope.

Things are not often what they seem. Neither are changes. Love will always caress or correct. It will embrace the realities of this dynamic world order and dance with the flux as it finds its way to the greatness that is its due.

How about you?

Note: This the first of a series of blogs by request. You guys have written me and suggested things to ponder. This is where it starts.

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.

Worry

It makes no sense to worry about what we can't control. But then it also makes no sense to worry about what we can control. So, therefore, as a philosopher would say, worry makes no sense.

I've never seen worry improve a situation. I've just seen it stress people out and drag them down.

You may think that it's your job to worry. I respectfully suggest you're wrong. Your job, whatever it is, certainly requires attention, awareness, and care, and perhaps even meticulous concern. It no doubt calls for diligence and foresight, checking, and double checking. It certainly benefits from backup plans and thoroughgoing prudence.

But worry, however natural, is never required. Never. At best, it's a redundant use of energy that would be better put to work in positive ways. More typically, it's a negative void that sucks energy away - energy that you could indeed put to a much more creative use.

So, if you worry, don't worry. Just don't worry.

The Storms of Life

What can we learn from the storms of life?

I've mentioned before that over the past four years, I've been on an unexpected and unplanned adventure of writing a series of novels set in Egypt in 1934 and 1935, a time and place about which I knew little, when on a cloudy day in February of 2011, a movie began playing in my head and I rushed to write down all that I saw and heard. 

This morning, as I edited a passage, I came across a statement on learning from life's storms that I wanted to share. An older man crossing the desert says this to his nephew, right after they've survived a big desert windstorm and the boy thanks his uncle for a lesson he just taught him:

The world teaches me something every day. When you pay attention to life, truly pay attention, many good lessons come your way. Some arise out of darkness and wind. A mighty tempest can teach us in unforgettable ways. I wager that you’ll never forget this brief and violent storm today, and what you learned about how to act quickly, to protect yourself, to stay calm, and endure. The most tempestuous things in life often carry with them the deepest and most useful lessons about our actions, and our abilities. If we use our minds well, we can learn from even the most fearful and difficult things. Often, we gain the best insights from precisely those events.

I hope this statement resonates with you like it does with me. We can't keep the storms from coming, but we can learn from them if we pay attention and use our minds well.

Meditation: A Dogged Pursuit.

Meditation. So: What do you do?

Just sit still, go blank, and stew?

Or breathe real slow and notice your breath

Until nirvana, or you’re bored to death?

Should there be incense, a candle - zen kitsch

to distract that inner voice wanting to bitch?

Or could it be simply about taking a break

to feel any itch and pain and ache

in a body at peace, or a state of release, 

that allows your mindfulness to increase?

Sure, zenned out bliss may not arise,

but I do grab a rest when I close my eyes.

All things considered, whenever I've sat

it's been much better than chasing some cat.

- Inspired by the travails of Dan Harris, in 10% Happier, and a meditating dog.

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.

A Great Meditation Book

In an airport bookstore the other day, I bought a book that ended up being much better and far more fun than I had hoped. It's called 10% Happier: How I tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, And Found Self-Help That Actually Works - A True Story. Maybe I was just impressed with the subtitle, that pretty much took up most of the cover. It's by a top network news guy named Dan Harris. And it's really good.

Dan is a highly competitive person in a crazy competitive business and he had gotten so accustomed to the unhelpful nagging critical and often angry voice in his head dogging him throughout the day that he just assumed he was stuck with its stress and negative energy. I won't give away the story, but he discovers the world of self-help and meditation and approaches it all as a very skeptical guy - very funny, and cynical to boot. At some level, he realizes that he needs some help with his inner stress. But he interviews several of the top people who claim to have the answers and comes away just perplexed. There's some great gossip in here, by the way, if you go for that sort of thing - some nice celebrity stories and crazy tales you can enjoy in addition to what you'll learn that's of value.

If you ever wondered about meditation as something you should maybe consider, but didn't know where to start or who to believe about it, then do yourself a favor and get this book. And when you're done laughing, just sit and think about your breath for 5 minutes, in and out. And repeat daily. And, if you're anything like Dan, you'll start noticing a difference, not consistently at first, but over time. And you may even write me a note to thank me for telling you about the book.

You're welcome.

Life is Art.

Life is art. We'd like to believe that life is science, that there are precise universal laws for everything and, if we can just memorize the laws, and act in perfect accordance with them, we'll know exactly the results we'll get. But we've been given a more interesting existence than that cosmic scenario would provide.

We're all living with uncertainty, always encountering the unknown. We have great advice from those who have travelled this path before us, but it won't guarantee us the results we want. It will just position us for better results. It's all an art, not a science. We can still falter and fail. But that's Ok. Everyone does. That's why life takes courage, resilience, and skill.

If you're far enough along in the great scheme of things to be reading a blog like this, then you know what I'm talking about. We'd all feel relieved if life and love could be accomplishments like chemistry: mix the right things together under the right conditions, and you always get the right results. But what we've been given is vastly more interesting and exciting than that. We've been given the chance for real risk and true adventure. We still need each other's advice. But we can't give or receive guarantees. Yet, that's Ok. We're all in it together.

So seek advice. Give advice. Cultivate your skills and your art. Help others to do likewise. That way, you play to win, and to help others to win. And that's exactly what we're here to do. If this is our attitude, then any loss can just be a step in the direction of a win, and of a worthy work of art.

An Idea is a Spark

An idea is a spark of possibility. But a spark needs proper tinder in order to give rise to a flame.

I was re-reading The Notebooks of Albert Camus for a bit, and I came across this passage:

For a thought to change the world, it must first change the life of the man who carries it. It must become an example.

I've long had a certain practice. I come across some new idea, or a set of ideas. I get excited about it. I want to pass it on, to write about it, and to speak on it. But first, I have to try it out. I have to use my own life as an experimental laboratory. Will this new idea spark a flame in the right way? Can I make use of it well? If I've tried an idea in my own life and it works as well as I had hoped, then I can tell others.

There are too many people in the world right now writing about, speaking on, and teaching ideas that they haven't really used themselves, because, if they had, they would know that those ideas don't work - or at least not in the way they're portrayed.

An idea is a spark of possibility. Is it a possibility in the actual world? Can it work? Have you tried it out before passing it on?

When you come across a great idea, and your life has ample kindling in it, you'll know by the flame that leaps high that you have something worth sharing. And others will come to your light.

Foolishness

One of life's secrets is learning to distinguish between fun and folly. Silliness is the spice of life. Fun can be a great. Genuine foolishness isn't. But of course, many of us have heard clever people refer in a silly way to something fun as mere foolishness. And of course, some real foolishness does pretend to be simple fun. But, just as obviously, not all folly masquerades as silliness or levity. Some genuine foolishness hides itself under the guise of ambition, or behind a total misunderstanding of what proper self esteem, or healthy self love, involves. Taken literally, foolishness, or folly, is a seriously detrimental phenomenon in our lives.

If we could rid the world of all foolishness, anger, and hatred, what a different place it would be! And think about this for a moment: If we could just cause all the folly in life to vanish, then it would, as a result, be extremely hard for any anger or hatred to get a foothold. There wouldn't be nearly as much to get angry about.

We praise wisdom and seek it. We need to equally criticize folly and shun it. And, by some strange turn of events, we don't even give much time at all to identifying or understanding it. The concept of foolishness has even become something of an old fashioned notion, like virtue. And that's ... foolish for sure.

What is foolish? What would be prudent, or wise, instead? We need to understand such things clearly, not merely for philosophical purposes, but for living a good life.

What have you done that you now think was foolish? Why do you think of it now as such? Don't you wish we talked about such things more? Isn't it foolish not to?

Encouragement

We need to encourage each other more. Life is often hard. Our work can sometime seems like a long march up hill. We need support. We need a little cheerleading. A kind word. A moment of praise. A big smile. We need the spiritual fuel of encouragement. We all need to feel like people around us believe in us and are cheering us on. But most of all, we need to do that for others.

Are you an encourager? That's one of the noblest roles in life. By encouraging others along their proper paths, we contribute to the best in the world. In modern life, we easily become so fixated on our own challenges, opportunities, and successes. But a great part of my success in life can be my aid to others in helping them along to success. And the same is true for you.

Let's all work on the habit of encouragement. No doubt, the world needs critics. But it needs encouragers even more.

And if you've read all the way to this point, I'm encouraged.

The Spooky Sense

Can we know in ways that go beyond our understanding? Can we be guided by some mysterious sense of what's about to happen?

My father was carrying heavy bands of ammunition strapped all over his body. He was already a big target, at six feet three or four, taller than most of the men with him that day on Okinawa. Or was it Saipan? It had rained the day before, and as he walked toward enemy territory, he noticed a deep tire mark up ahead that a jeep or truck had made in the mud during the rainstorm, and that the rut had dried. As he approached it, and was going to pass just slightly to the right of the hole, he suddenly shifted his movement and put his left foot into it, a few inches down, as he took his next step forward, but for no conscious reason. The split second that he did this and his body, as a result, tilted to the left, a bullet whizzed by his right ear. Had he not stepped into the rut, the bullet would have gotten him in the head and he would have died on the spot, and - to make matters even worse, at least, from my point of view as a boy first hearing this account - I would never have been conceived or born. He told me this story several times. He always asked, "Why did I step into that hole?"

Let me now quote three short paragraphs from the book American Sniper. Chris Kyle reports:

One time we were in a building and we were hosed down by the insurgents outside. I was out in the hallway, and as the shooting died down, I went into one of the rooms to check on some of my guys. As I came in, I jerked straight back, falling backward as a shot came in through the window at my head.

The bullet just flew over me as I fell.

Why I went down like that, how I saw that bullet coming at me — I have no idea. It was almost as if someone slowed time down and pushed me straight back.

What is this? How does it work? We have senses like sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. We also have one called proprioception - the sense that tells you the position of your body, the orientation of its parts in space, without your having to look, or run your hands over, say, an arm or leg to find out where it is. Every sense can be developed. Artists see in a distinctive way. Gourmet chefs taste with remarkable discernment. Great musicians can hear things that most of us miss. Top athletes and dancers and martial artists seem to have a vastly enhanced sense of proprioception. They are aware of the position and movement of their bodies in space in ways that escape the rest of us. 

But can proprioception go beyond the body? Can we sense the position of other objects in space around us, even then they're not connected to us in any obvious way?

I was eight or ten. My dad was throwing horse shoes in the back yard of our house. They were regulation iron or steel shoes. He had just thrown some down toward the stake in the ground farthest from the house, and I think he had gotten ringers. He then walked briskly down to fetch them and throw them back. He was about half way to the far stake, which was forty feet from the one where I was standing, when I reached down, picked up a shoe, and pitched it hard toward the other stake. Dad was off to the right about 4 or 5 feet off the course of the throw, as he was walking, so it was safe for me to pitch the shoe. But suddenly he crossed over to the left, not looking back to see that I had just thrown. It was going straight for his head. In that moment of my horrified realization about what was happening, he turned his head toward me, while simultaneously raising his left arm and hand ... and he caught the horse shoe mid air. No harm done. I was completely shocked. First, you don't catch flying iron horse shoes. But at that moment?

How does this spooky stuff work? There are some findings in the spookier areas of physics that seem to suggest that objects at a distance in our world are, however far apart, somehow also connected. Is there another dimensional grounding for everything, however different and distant things may seem in this realm of existence? Can we then put ourselves into a position where we are able to utilize this connection, perhaps through extended proprioception? And in other ways? Was that what my dad was doing? And Chris Kyle? But it's not always going on. Not even for the top champions, or for my father.

Scotty Pippin, or someone on the Chicago Bulls basketball team during their glory days with Michael Jordan, once was quoted as saying that during some rare games, time seemed to stand still and the ball would just go where it should be. No one was having to think to themselves, "Ok, Michael is about to get open, I should throw in about a second" or any such thing. There was this magical dance of perfect movement and timing and a flow experience of joyous participation which was almost indistinguishable from that of a spectator, but where looking and doing seemed to merge. It was all happening, as if by independent forces, and the players were caught up in a movement that just had its own flow. They knew without conscious awareness. They acted without deliberate effort.

What is this spooky sense that sometimes guides us, and positions us? And how can we gain more control over it? Is it possible to use it at will? Can this work in business? In life generally?

What do you think? Have you ever felt it, or seen it in action?

The American Sniper and You

A few days ago, I was flying to California for a talk in Napa Valley. I had a philosophy book with me to read along the way, but I wasn't really in the mood for analyzing and critiquing a complex argument. So I went into an airport bookstore in Charlotte, where I was changing planes. I had about 4 minutes to spare, so quickly scanned the nearest book table and saw American Sniper, the book on which the new movie is based.

I'm sure you know the story. Texas boy Chris Kyle worked hard and became a Navy SEAL, and ultimately the most prolific sniper in history. He was a legend. The book is his autobiography, with an emphasis on SEAL training, and his deployments into hot spots in the Middle East. It's a well written book, an absorbing tale, and a quick read, despite its nearly 500 pages.

The most surprising thing about the book is how much Kyle seemed to love his job, and, more generally, war. A sniper? Loving his job? But his job was killing people, right? Well, in his mind, his job was protecting his friends, and keeping the bad guys from killing the good guys. He came to see his adversaries as, for the most part, brutal, drugged up "savages" who seemed to have no shred of morality, civilization, or love for their fellow man. Their hearts had been so darkened by ignorance, ideology and violence that they could be stopped from their lust for killing in only one way. It was his job to see that this way was pursued vigorously and effectively.

I've written here before on what I've discovered about success in the works of the great practical philosophers throughout history and the fact that I've distilled their advice down to seven universal conditions. You may remember them. For true success in any challenging endeavor, we need (1) a clear CONCEPTION of what we want, (2) a strong CONFIDENCE that we can attain the goal we've set, (3) a focused CONCENTRATION on what it will take to get there, (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, and (7) a CAPACITY TO ENJOY the process along the way.

As you read American Sniper, it becomes clear that Chris Kyle lived each of these seven universal conditions, or what I call The 7 Cs of Success. The surprise to me was his wholehearted embrace of number seven, a CAPACITY TO ENJOY THE PROCESS. Initially, you say to yourself, "Who in the world could ever enjoy being a sniper? Aren't there just some jobs that can't possibly be enjoyed?" But then you read and ponder what Kyle says about his love for action, and battle, and doing his job well, and you begin to understand more deeply why he was the best at it who ever lived.

Now, if you're a pacifist, you may be insisting right now that no sniper could possibly satisfy the CHARACTER condition of The 7 Cs. But I'd take you back to Aristotle, who held that character involves such things as honesty and courage and a sense of humor amid difficulty. Chris displayed all such things. And you could continue through Aristotle's classic list of virtues and you'd still be able to tick off the boxes in this guy's life.

So if you are trying to live wisely and be successful and think that your job is so hard, or unpleasant, on some days, that you can't possibly satisfy the seventh condition of success, read this book and rethink it all. Like Marcus Aurelius once said, "Your life is what your thoughts make it." 

Excellence is hard. And it's tough to make it happen without commitment, character, and a capacity to enjoy the process, along with all the other conditions.

The Man in Black on Joy

I want to add something to what I wrote earlier this morning. First, again, one more quote from actor Will Smith:

The maximum joy that I have is when I can create something that makes someone else's life lighter, or brighter, or better.

To that, I can only say a loud, hearty, AMEN. 

I posted this earlier today, ending with the amen. I think I want to add a bit more. What Will Smith is talking about is creative love, or loving creativity, which I presented as the meaning of life in a chapter on Business and Meaning in the book If Aristotle Ran General Motors, back in 1997. You would not believe how many people have written me over the years about that chapter, saying that it's the most important chapter in any book on business they've ever read. Some say it's the most important chapter, period. And that knocks me out, and gives me a sense of great satisfaction. Because in that chapter, I was seeking to gather together what I considered all the world's best wisdom on meaning and dig deep to the root and then distill it all down to something that would be both simple and powerful. And that became:

Creative love. Loving Creativity.

That's why we're here. That's what everything we do should embody. And that's where joy comes from. It's all connected. If you want to ruminate on this more, If Aristotle is widely available in paperback, and the first edition hardcover is still floating around used, and there's an ebook available at Zolabooks.com.

Old Age: Sneak. Thief. Guide.

If you live long enough, old age will some day begin to sneak up on you. There's a pain here, a strain there. Some food you've always loved starts bothering you. Too much cabernet or champagne will suddenly make you snore. Or at least, if other people's reports are to be trusted. It doesn't all happen at once. And each thing, in itself, can normally be explained away. 

What makes old age such a sneaky thief is that when it starts to take things away from you, it typically most often brings them back - at least, at first, and for a time. You're hobbling around with a back injury, unable to do your normal stuff. And then a few days or a few weeks later, the pain goes away. The stiffness disappears. Oh, Ok. I'm fine.

Or age takes away, bit by bit, your natural ability to sleep solidly through the night. You have lots of fitful evenings. You're exhausted. And maybe cranky. And then you have one or two or more deep slumbers again. Oh, Ok. I'm fine. It was just the full moon, or the dog moving around too much, or those neighbors, or that spicy burger.

That's what makes old age so tricky. It takes away and then often gives back, and it's typically so subtle about its depredations that you can almost always, for a while, blame something else. 

Now, I'm saying this as a youth of 62. I'm stronger than I've ever been in my life, and vigorous and energetic in almost every possible way. And yet, when I go crazy in the gym, it's easier to mess up that rotor cuff, or those hip flexors, and then I'm semi-benched for a while, until I come back, full force, but a little more cautious. My greatest strength and weakness at once is that I'm a person of extremes. And youthful resilience will tolerate extremes that middle age, and the early onset of maturity may not so readily indulge.

I have a friend who at 92 just published his memoir and has been on book tour promoting the autobiography on most of the major talk shows. He gives me hope. But he may even slow down in ten or twenty years. Most of his peers are already not as full of life and energy.

It looks like old age is going to eventually take away pretty much everything we have. It will take away beauty and power and all sorts of possibilities. In some cases, it seems to rob people of most everything they are, at least in this world. And yet, that's an important qualification. There's a wild option here.

In the end, it may be that old age isn't just a liar and a thief of the worst sort. Maybe it's a teacher and a guide. We say it has its compensations. And wisdom can certainly be one of them. But maybe this thing called wisdom goes far deeper than we suspect, and part of the wisdom that age has to convey to us is the realization that we need to shed a lot of the baggage of this world before transitioning to a new adventure in the next one.

Some may object that part of the baggage that age has helped them shed already is such a belief that there is something more. And in their journey, perhaps, that shedding in its own way has helped in their preparation for what does indeed come next. But it's my view that they'll be surprised. They think nothing is on the horizon. I suspect something big is. And I realize we can't both be right. But I can't help but feel that I am.

Age. I'll still wrestle with the joker, while laughing at his pranks. And the more I fight him, the more I'll get of him, if I'm successful. But of course, in the end, I can't win, because there is an end. Or, wait. What if somehow we both win, in the end, age and I, if we do it just right? Maybe old age is the guide it needs to be, in many ways - if we take the right attitude about dealing with it.

I know, I'm still young. But we need to plan ahead.

Age well, my friends.

Will Smith, on Success and Love.

We've all seen him in the movies. We've heard his music. Some of us first discovered him on television. But now, as the new interview with Scott Raab in the current issue of Esquire makes clear, Will Smith has become a philosopher.

Reflecting on his career, he describes something that many of us have felt.

I always thought there was some place I was going, that there was some success or some achievement or some box-office number that was going to fill the hole. And what I realize is that life is a hole. It's a process of continually trying to find and reinvent myself. I'm the type of person who is always going to be somewhat dissatisfied with myself. I'm never going to be smart enough. I'm never going to be a good enough father. I'm never going to be a good enough husband. I'm never going to be a good enough actor for myself. I just never will be, and I have to get comfortable with waking up every day and trying to move some little increment closer to the person I have always dreamed of being.

Lesson Number One: Even being a huge star and celebrity, with great wealth and social power won't complete us. Yeah, we knew that. But we have to be reminded, now and then, to keep us from fruitlessly chasing our own versions of this, in our own efforts to "fill the hole."

Later on, he talks about a movie that failed at the box office and what he felt when he got the very bad numbers. 

And that Monday started the new phase of my life, a new concept: Only love is going to fill that hole. You can't win enough, you can't have enough money, you can't succeed enough. There is not enough. The only thing that will ever satiate that existential thirst is love. And I just remember that day I made the shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep, and beautiful relationships I could possibly have.

Lesson Number Two: If we define success in isolation from love and relationships, we'll never be satisfied or happy. We need to start at the core of who we are as human beings. And that core is supposed to be all about love. When we use that as our foundation, we can build a life that matters and a success that's not only real, but that feels deep and true and fulfilling.

A friend of mine named Matt Ham has just written a book all about that. It's called Redefine Rich, and is well worth a read. It offers a diagnosis and a reminder that we all need.

Love first. All else, second.