Your Uncanny Power to Know

The world is an ocean of information. Waves of it surround us. There’s knowledge everywhere. You just have go be able to read it, to connect with it, to take it in.

Most people float, or, at best, ride a wave now and then. As you swim in this ocean, you should take some time to dive deep. We can know much more than most people think we can know. You yourself may sometimes realize that you know things that may seem impossible for you to be aware of, at least, through "normal" channels. You have hints, glimmers, intuitions. Sometimes, you ignore them. Often, you just wonder where they're coming from.

What's important is to listen. Feel. Really look, deeply. And take the hints you're given.

How does this work? We don't yet know. But that it works, we do. Don't cut yourself off from the currents and eddies of insight you may most need right now. There's always a new tide. Be open. And do what every great religious tradition, at its heart, advises: Pay attention. Then act appropriately. You may be amazed at what can happen. 

The Dangers of Knowledge Without Wisdom

Knowledge can be dangerous. Smart people can do monumentally stupid things. Intelligence can be put to a bad use. But this doesn't mean that knowledge and intelligence are to be avoided. It means only that they need the proper accompaniment - wisdom.

I've written often recently about wisdom. And that's because it's so misunderstood in our time. Because it's misunderstood, it's severely undervalued. And there may be nothing more valuable, in business and life, than true wisdom.

Of course, we use the word 'wisdom,' and its adjectival form 'wise,' in two different ways. It can be used of a statement, an aphorism, or a book. "There is a lot of wisdom in that book." Or: "What he said was very wise." In this sense, the word wisdom means, simply, articulated insight.

But it's possible to know a lot of wise aphorisms, epigrams, and witticisms, while doing foolish things. There was a time in my life where I was a living demonstration of that possibility. And that leads us to an important distinction.

When a person, as distinct from a statement or book, is said to be wise, or to have great wisdom, we mean to refer not to articulated insight, but rather to embodied discernment. A wise person discerns good from bad, right from wrong, appropriate from inappropriate, better from worse, and favorable from unfavorable, as well as many other differences, in a way that foolish people can't. And that's a matter of judgment and understanding. But wisdom, when attributed to a person, has to be embodied in action of some sort, or it isn't genuine. There are, you see, two sides to personal wisdom, a side that involves understanding, and a side that involves doing. One side without the other isn't wisdom. Good judgment without good action is surely foolish. And the failure can go the other way, too. Good action that doesn't come from good judgment is just from luck or habit, and not a direct manifestation of wisdom. For true wisdom to be present, thought and action have to mesh.

Knowledge without wisdom, just like action without wisdom, can take a person, or an organization, off the rails as quickly as anything. Because of this, as well as for many more reasons, we ought to be hiring for wisdom, training for wisdom, promoting wisdom, and encouraging it in every way we can, in business, politics, and our personal lives. Any other course is, of course, unwise.

The Tent and the Tower

I wanted to share today a brief passage from one of my novels that I'm editing this week. It's all about outer things and our inner lives. The conversation is taking place in Cairo, in 1934.

The wise, older Ali Shabeezar is speaking to young Walid and his friend Mafulla. They're discussing a man who has immersed himself in criminal activity, because of a lifetime focus on the wrong things. Ali sees the man's life as a cautionary tale and says to the boys:

“One of the great surprises of life is that when you focus and fixate on external things like money, power, status, or fame as your main goals, your ultimate ends, the values that drive you, you diminish yourself, and to the point that, if you actually attain any of these things, you’ll be less likely to handle them well than a person who gains them almost by accident, as a by-product of good work well done. The individual who pursues things of the spirit, and the wellbeing of others, is different. If, along the way, any of these highly regarded external things comes to him, or all of them, for that matter, then he will much more likely be able to be their master, and not their slave. There will be healthy, and not harmful, results.”

“Why do things work this way, Uncle?” Walid was always curious to understand.

“Well, you see, the inner must be the foundation for the outer, or nothing really goes well. Any large building that’s without deep and solid foundations is unstable and can collapse in a storm, or when it’s otherwise pounded and stressed by external forces. A tent needs no foundation. It’s temporary. A tower does. In a similar way, if you want your life to rise high and last long, you must anchor it deeply. Dig down beneath the shifting sands of worldly fortune, glamour, and fame. Establish footings deep in the soul. That way, you can truly flourish. Then, all the riches of the world can come to you, and you’ll never be diminished as a result. You will, by contrast, flourish. A man or woman with inner strength can use all outer things for good purpose, and with beneficial consequences. The world works this way to help remind us where the most important things are to be found.”

Skill and Confidence

"Skill and confidence make an unconquered army." - George Herbert

Skill by itself may never accomplish much. Don’t you know very talented people who never manage to turn their talents into success? A skilled person with no self confidence will not likely try anything new and difficult. And every path to major success involves the new and difficult.

But confidence by itself can be downright dangerous. Confidence without skill is a recipe for disaster. It’s the combination of skill and confidence that makes for great achievements.

Make sure that the people around you understand this. Our skills and our attitudes are equally important for our overall success in life.

Making Your Mark in the World

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

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

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

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

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

1. Discovering your talents

2. Developing those talents

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

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

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

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

The Structure of Goals

Yesterday, I wrote a short blog post on having clear goals. I'd like to follow up on that today. The great novelist Dostoyevsky wrote:

Without some goal, and some effort to reach it, no man can live.

You certainly know the old story: Two college friends had moved to Los Angeles on a quest to become actors. But they couldn’t find work. Sitting around their dingy little apartment, hanging out with friends, they finally came to the conclusion that they needed something worthwhile to structure their days. Since no one would cast them in a movie, they decided they’d write their own screenplay. That goal, and their daily effort toward reaching the goal, put Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on the road to movie stardom, a life they continue to enjoy years later. Their film, Good Will Hunting, launched it all. They used their power of will, did some hunting, and good resulted.

And, of course, the great comedian and actor Robin Williams totally changed their lives by agreeing to act in the film, and thereby also gained for himself an Oscar.

So, yeah, Ok - it doesn't always go like this. Stardom, wealth, and fame don't lurk around every corner of goal-oriented activity. And some people preach the virtues of what they call "Goal-less Living" - as if it's their goal to convince the rest of us not to have any.

We need times of structure and times of no structure. We need time to just be, as well as time to do. But the doing should be congruent with our being, and it should be structured as such.

It’s often said that there are three kinds of people in this world - Those who make things happen, those who just watch things happen, and those who go around wondering “What happened?” Do whatever you can today to place yourself in the midst of that first category.  Focus your day and your week around some worthy goal or goals and the effort it takes to move in the right direction, making useful things happen as the result of your energies. It's indeed good hunting for the will.

Our Need for Goals

The great inventor of the essay, Michel de Montaigne, once wrote:

The soul that has no established aim loses itself.

Vagueness is a disease of modern life. We're surrounded with so many possibilities, we don’t know what to actually pursue. We may have a general idea, but But thoughts can't guide specific behavior. The actress Lily Tomlin once said, “I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” Doesn’t that capture the way so many people think, these days? They want to be somebody. They want to do something important. But they may have no clue exactly what.

The great thinkers from Aristotle to the present day have recognized that we are essentially goal oriented beings. Unless we have a clear target to shoot at, we quickly get lost in literally aimless living.

Make sure you're aiming at some clear and specific goals in what you do today, and this week. Also, take any chance you might have to engage in a conversation with a co-worker or family member about some new personal goal, or some shared goal you're both pursuing, or should be pursuing. Conversations can clarify. When we put things into words, we gain focus. In discussing something you've been thinking about, you can find a new sense of clarity and purpose that's so easily lost amid the demands of the day.

A Happy Life

What is happiness? What makes for a happy life? Go to any big bookstore, and you'll find lots of authors tackling the question. Ring all those books up at the register and you'll likely end up very unhappy at the total.

The roman lawyer and stoic thinker Seneca once wrote: "A happy life is one in harmony with its own nature."

An unhappy person is out of step with herself.  A happy person experiences a large measure of inner harmony.  She lives in accordance with her own highest nature.

In his strange film Zelig, Woody Allen long ago masterfully caricatured the chamelion-like tendency that many people have to fit in. We dress in the right style and eat at the right places, drive the appropriate cars, talk in the lingo of those around us, and do as we’re expected to do, all in a misplaced search for happiness. The only reliable formula, Seneca believed, is to live and act in harmony with your own best nature. He believed, first, that there is a universal human nature that should be respected in all that we do.  But he also wanted each of us to be true to who we uniquely are, at our potential best - with our own talents and abilities honed in a way that's right for us, but also put into service to others.

Where are the tensions in your life? If you take an inventory of your own obstacles to happiness, I think it's likely that you’ll find places where you aren’t being true enough to your deepest and highest nature. The good news is, you can make the changes you need to make to live and act in a way that is more natural for who you are and distinctively can be. It is, after all, your nature. Embrace it and work with it. That's the path to happiness, according to the philosopher.

Exceptional People Around Us

I’ve been exercising my memory for the past 6 months by memorizing Shakespeare soliloquies, mainly the famous ones. It all started with a short passage from Hamlet. I remember the day I had just learned it – it wasn’t easy – and I still had to practice it all the time.

So. I was in line at the grocery store, a Fresh Market near my house, and the lady in front of me turned around and apologized for having so many items in her cart. I promise I wasn’t counting. I said, “No problem. Take your time. I’m rehearsing in my head a famous literary passage I just learned.”

The man who was ringing up her items stopped and looked at me with an expression of appreciation, almost of deep brotherhood, and said,

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, the droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote.

Well. That was unexpected at a grocery store checkout counter. But, it was the slow line. So, the clerk went on for a few more seconds of recitation and then stopped and looked at me with a big smile, and I just had to say,

And smale fowles maken melodye, That slepen al the night with open ye.

The guy looked really surprised and said, “You KNOW that?” I said, “Yeah, Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Good job.” And a lady behind me gave me a look that “perced to the roote” because I think her ice cream was melting through all this.

Just two days later, I’m in a Harris Teeter, and the young lady checking out my groceries said something to me that I didn’t catch. I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. I was practicing a passage from Hamlet in my head.”

She said, “Oh! Really? I memorized Hamlet once.”

I said, “You mean you memorized a passage from Hamlet?”

She said, “No, the whole thing.”

“The whole thing? The whole play?”

“Yeah,” she said, “But not in English.”

“What do you mean, not in English? It’s an English play.”

“Yeah, I know, but I memorized it in Klingon.”

“The Star Trek Language?”

“Yeah, it was more fun that way. But it took, like, four months.”

Well.

And then, last week, a different grocery store cashier spontaneously performed a Shakespeare Sonnet for me. I mean, it was Senior Discount Day at the store, so I think she took off a few lines. But it was most of Sonnet 116. In case you’re interested.

Maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to leave the house. Strange things happen.

But I came away from these recent conversations with a new realization – and not just about where our English majors are getting jobs these days – the market for literature grads is surprisingly fresh.

My realization was, that we’re surrounded by exceptional people in the world. They’re all around us. And that’s easy to forget. But when we break through the background hum of habit, poke a hole in the ordinary, and really talk to people, and give them a chance, they can sometimes shine in unexpected ways. And then, we learn.

Break through that background hum today, in some way. Poke your own little hole in the ordinary, and see what you discover.

"We Forget How to Fall."

Reflecting on the fact that older people often sustain serious injury when they fall down, my workout partner mused one day that, "We forget how to fall." He's a lifetime surfer and skateboarder. At the age of 51, he falls all the time. And he heartily recommends it. "When you know how to fall, you don't get hurt so badly."

As kids, we fell down all the time. It was just a part of daily life. We fell down and we got back up. We fell running, and on our bikes, and in all kinds of ways. We didn't get discouraged, or distraught, or too badly bruised, at least most of the time. But, as adults, we forget how to fall, both literally and metaphorically, and so, when it does happen, we get seriously hurt, discouraged, and distraught.

Falling is, of course, a well known and much used image for failure. As kids, we tried new things all the time, and rarely got them right the first time. But, for the most part, we didn't let that bother us. We adjusted, adapted, and usually, after a time, prevailed. Sure, someone had to patch the knees of our pants, but that was almost a sign of honor, wasn't it? We were out there in the world doing things. We were active. We were brave. Falling down was just a natural part of it.

And it always is. Don't be afraid to fall down. In fact, try new little things so that maybe you can get some practice again at falling down, if you haven't had a tumble in a while. And then roll with it. Don't be tense. Be flexible, and go with it. Then just get up and try again.

The importance of those childhood lessons never goes away. Just remember: Falling is a stage of learning, and an early stepping stone to mastery. Fall often. And fall well.

Failure and Success

The pond guy, Thoreau, once said, "Men are born to succeed, not to fail," and he got it mostly right. But here's the problem. We're actually born to fail a lot along the way, because that's the only way we truly succeed. We have to take our lumps to learn our lessons. But that's not meant to be the end of the game. It's not meant to be easy, but it is meant ultimately to be about success, in the right ways.

Don’t we sometimes feel as if the cards are stacked against us in this life? Think about the obstacles you’ve had to face whenever you’ve tried to do anything new and different. It can sometimes feel like life itself is just one long uphill battle.

It’s interesting in this regard to look into the biographies of very successful people. What’s amazing is that there is a nearly universal pattern to so many of their lives. Talent and hard work initially get rewarded with encouragement and nurture, only to be set up for rejection and failure. Repeated rejection. And perplexing failure. The talented individual almost gives up in a Dark Night of the Soul. Any “reasonable” person would. But somehow, our hero shows an almost supernatural ability to stick it out though all the tough times, and finally emerges into public view as an overnight sensation.

You know the old saying: “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” The fact is that we're all born multi-talented. No one utterly lacks talent. And nobody has just one. We’re also born with the ability to discover our talents, along with the will power that it takes to develop them. If we don’t give up. If we stick with the process. We finally learn what we were born to achieve. And in that respect, Thoreau was right. It's ultimately not failure that's meant for us as the last verdict, but success - a form of success that is right for each of us. But it takes that ongoing process. And that process will involve lots of trouble along the way. Remember that today. You were born to succeed. After all that failure. So go do it.

Hearing No: Some Advice that Sticks.

This past weekend, I came across the story of Vera Stout. She was working at an ammunition factory during the second world war - not the safest of jobs - while her two sons were serving in the Navy. One day, she had an idea about how ammo boxes could be sealed with a cloth based tape that would allow them to be opened more quickly, ripped right off, and maybe that would save time and lives for troops under fire.

She took the idea to her bosses. They said no.

That happens a thousand times a day, or maybe an hour, around the world. Someone has a new idea about how to improve things, or a conception for a new product or business, and the gate keepers say no. The boss, the manager, the supervisor, the agent, isn't impressed. It won't work. No thanks. Sorry.

Too many people then just meekly give up. Vera wasn't the sort, so she wrote a letter to the president, not of her company, but of the United States, telling him about her idea. And within weeks, she got a letter from the Navy thanking her and saying that her invention would be rolled out right away. And many claim that it did save lives. Plus, what would the rest of us do without her creation - duct tape?

When you hear no, it's often more about the person rejecting your idea than the idea itself. Sometimes, the best thing to do is stick to your dream like the sturdiest duct tape.

Fame and True Success

Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle wrote long ago about fame. He said, "Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: It is an accident, not a property of man."

Fast forward to now, when fame bears almost no relation to merit. You can be an instant celebrity online with no more than a knack for getting people's attention. What's the relationship, really, between widespread attention and what we know, deep down, to be success?

True success resides, first and foremost, in who we are, not in what other people say about us, or even in whether they know we exist. The deepest form of success is always a result of three things: (1) Discovering our talents, (2)  Developing those talents, and (3) Deploying them into the world for the good of others as well as ourselves. I call this “The 3-D Approach to Life.” It's first about being, second about doing and becoming, and only third about getting or having.

We live in a culture obsessed with fame. It's the famous who get our attention and too often fuel our imaginations. But back in the nineteenth century, Tom Carlyle saw more deeply. Fame may or may not signal real accomplishment of substance, and even when it does, it does so accidently.  A person’s real properties, the accomplishments they truly own in virtue of who they are and what they’ve done, are always distinct from any recognition they’ve received. 

Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with fame, however heavily it may weigh on many shoulders. Like most things, it can be a resource or an obstacle. But it should never be pursued in absence of worthier aims that are more intrinsically within our control. In fact, the world is full of good things done to no acclaim whatsoever. And they are often the things that make the most difference. 

Today, think about doing something good anonymously, with no thought about how it makes you look, and however small it might be. There, as Carlyle might say, is where you'll find true merit, and a small piece of true success.

What Few Understand About Wisdom

Through the millennia comes a recommendation:

"Make wisdom your provision for the journey from youth to old age, for it is a more certain support than all other possessions."

That's a quote from the ancient philosopher, Bias of Priene. But maybe he was just biased, you could be thinking, if you're cleverer than it's good to be. No, he was simply right.

And many people these days don't quite get the importance of wisdom because they misunderstand what it is. It isn't the memorization and mental retention of catchy aphorisms or epigrams. The wisest among us isn't the person who can come up with the most quotes, like that one above from Bias of Priene. Wisdom isn't the same thing as recitation. A bird can be taught to recite quotes. It isn't even a matter of theoretical knowledge at all, as if there's a certain number of insights about life, a discrete number of wisdom facts, and to have wisdom is just to have learned them all.

And, most of all, wisdom isn't the ability to think and say obscure sounding things that can be interpreted by others as profound. What then, is it?

Wisdom is a skill set involving perceptive discernment, healthy emotion, and appropriate action.

It took me a while to come up with that, which is probably the wisest thing I've ever said about wisdom.

That's why it's impossible to come across a wise man or woman who always acts like a fool. If a person is foolish, then, to that extent, he or she isn't wise. But again, it isn't an all or nothing matter. It's not like the proverbial light switch, either on or off. It's more like a spectrum. You can grow wiser. When we call someone wise, we don't mean to imply perfection, only a preponderance of insight and appropriateness in judgment, emotion, and action.

The fact that wisdom is a skill set is good news. Any skill can be cultivated. Some people seem to be born with an innate endowment toward such skilled behavior, but hard work and practice can bridge the gap. And it's important for us all to cultivate this skill set throughout our days, because a fully good and happy life is impossible without it.

Wisdom, then, is not to be found just in words, but in lived insight. The words that best convey those insights are merely markers pointing to the skills we all need to acquire through their help. The sayings of the wise are our breadcrumbs along the path of full living.

Shocking News About Wisdom

There's some important news to share. I've blogged recently about wisdom. And, because of something that's pretty astonishing in recent science news, I wanted to highlight an important side of it today, or maybe a way of getting more of it into our lives.

Wisdom doesn't just come from sitting and thinking. And that's a good thing, because few people seem to want to do that now. Even the fact that you're quietly reading this blog post makes you a pretty remarkable person. In fact, the prestigious journal Science recently reported an experiment where people were given the choice to either sit quietly and ponder their lives, or else administer electric shocks to themselves, and a surprising (I should say shocking) 64% of men and 15% of women chose the voltage. Pain over pondering. Sit and ponder that for a moment. And, please, especially if you're a guy, fight off any urges to go stick your finger in a socket instead.

I'm not kidding. This is a problem. But, fortunately, to gain wisdom, you don't have to turn off the phone, put down the pad, and just sit alone and meditate on your life.

Wisdom is embodied insight about living, a form of deep, practical knowledge that will guide our paths in good times and bad. If we keep our eyes wide open, if we truly pay attention, and ponder a bit what comes our way, as we're out and about in the world, we can accumulate a bit of wisdom almost every day.  And especially on those days when we share a thought, a musing, a perplexity, or a question of wonderment with a friend. And here's the good news.

We often have our deepest insights in conversation with others. That's the way we're made. We're intended to share this journey of life together with fellow travelers. We're meant to learn from each other and with each other. So make it a point today or tomorrow to ask someone a question about something that really matters to you. Listen carefully to the answer. And then share your own thoughts. You may find yourself with a new insight, a new angle on an old insight, a bit of wisdom that will light your path, a possession of the heart that costs nothing and yet may pay great dividends for the future. 

Any day that you've accumulated a new piece of wisdom is a successful day, the most certain support there can be for a truly successful life.

In Praise of Hard Work. No. Really.

Ok. First of all, I have absolutely nothing against having a new idea go viral overnight and waking up to discover I have a new reality TV show, 5 million Twitter followers, a private jet, and a seven figure endorsement deal from the Library Association. That would be my definition of sweet (as defined also in dictionaries available nationwide in your local public library - I'd get 10K just for adding that little factoid. But I digress). Instant success has its charms. But, there is a nubby weave behind the smooth tapestry of most outsized success. And that, right now, is my concern.

Let me read to you from the actual paper version of today's New York Times Book Review. Turning through it, I came across a page entitled "Devilish Audacity" where John Simon reviews a new biography of Sir Lawrence Olivier (Olivier, by Philip Ziegler), who was said by many to be the greatest actor of his time (in addition to "the most dashing of actors" and "the most seductive of human beings" - among many other superlatives). Simon helpfully summarizes an important point in the new book about Olivier:

He was a tireless worker: It took him two years to learn how to move onstage, and another two, how to laugh.

That got my attention, and I would have laughed aloud, aside from the realization that I may not have worked hard enough as of yet on that particular vocal and facial expression of astonished surprise. Then, this:

On stage and on screen, he could give an impression of openness, brilliance, lightness, and speed. In fact, he was the opposite. His great strength was that of the ox. He always reminded me of a countryman, of a ... peasant taking his time .... Once a conception had taken root in him, no power could change the direction in which the ox would pull the cart.

Impressive. And suggestive. Behind many forms of flashy, flamboyant success, there is a lot of dogged, ox-like, hard work. Two years to learn to move on stage? Two years to learn to laugh? Yes. And as we go out onto our own dramatic stages, at work, or at home, or in the community, we should not allow ourselves to forget the hard work that alone will lift any performance to a distinctive level of power. In an age that celebrates the fruits of work without equally honoring or encouraging the work itself that typically makes those delights possible, we need to remind ourselves that the greatest never get that way without a lot of hard, hard work.

But if you love what you're doing, you can enjoy even the greatest efforts. The hard work itself can be a suitable and satisfying outlet for your energy. And - who knows? You can't really rule out that reality TV show.

Ideals and Obstacles

Kindness. Mercy. Encouragement. Generosity of spirit. These are all moral ideals that I've written on recently. But there's an interesting thing about ideals. We never embody them perfectly. They may be perfect. But we're not. We fall short.

The value of ideals in our lives is in how we use them. They should be inspirational and aspirational - they should remind us, encourage us in the right direction, and often correct us.

The proper response to an ideal is to remember it and seek to live it. But we all encounter obstacles to the perfect embodiment of any ideal. We have our own psychological quirks and wounds, and some are buried deep beneath our conscious awareness. We have drives, and ticks, and sensitivities, and felt needs that can make it difficult to satisfy the strict guidance of our highest values. Something you went through in your childhood, or much more recently, could make it difficult for you, in some situations, to act in accordance with the golden rule, or your own best aspirations, in your treatment of another person, in action, gesture, or tone. 

Does that make you a hypocrite, for not always living what you might espouse? No, it just shows that you're a normal, fallible human.

Some people get all tied up in self-recriminations and guilt because of this problem. And those things then can become further obstacles.

How then should we respond to our own failures?

The first and most fundamental applications of kindness, mercy, encouragement, and generosity of spirit are always to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be corrective and yet merciful toward your own failings. Encourage yourself along the path laid out by your ideals. And be generous to yourself as you seek and struggle and stumble along the road of improvement. Accord your own spirit the high value that you want and need to accord to others. That will create the conditions within you by which you can, increasingly, be these things to others, in even the most difficult of circumstances.

Love yourself properly, and you can then love others properly.

That's the real ideal.

The Philosophical Selfie

In our Age of Selfies, the most important kind, not to be overlooked, is the philosophical selfie.

Inscribed in marble at the holiest spot in ancient Greece, the Oracle at Delphi, was the advice: Know Thyself. It's probably the most famous piece of advice ever given, it could be the shortest, and it might even be the hardest. But it's the central key to living well in the world, and becoming the people we're capable of being. It's hard to get where we need to go if we don't know where we are now. And self-knowledge is the starting point for any GPS of the Soul.

Consider your soul, the deep you. Pick one of the options in each of these questions, and say why:

Are you solid, liquid, or gas?

Are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Are you straight-lined or curved?

Are you still or moving?

Are you music, painting, sculpture, or lit?

Are you mountains or sea?

Are you heart or mind?

Are you a stormy day, a gentle rain, or a sunny blue sky?

Are you summer, fall, winter, or spring?

Are you forever young, or mature beyond your years?

I've given you these questions, silly on the surface, but deeper as you probe them, almost as an act of stream-of-consciousness on my own part. I could have come up with others. You can, too. But these will do to make my point.

Self-knowledge doesn't just grow like grass, or hair. It's not a naturally occurring phenomenon, or we wouldn't have to be encouraged to make it happen. It requires reflection, examination, contemplation, and that can all take forms that are both serious and silly - as long as you're genuinely trying to dig a bit deeper in your own self-awareness.

You may come up with your own questions, or you can play with these. What do they tell you about you? Any serious answers you arrive at can help with your journey now, and next.

Knowing yourself may not be the easiest thing in the world, but it could be the most productive.

So, take that selfie now.

Be Like Water

The great Chinese philosophers have had a wonderful and vivid image for how we should deal with times of great change. They ask us to consider the element of water and the image, in particular, of moving water.

Here's the first question they pose: What happens to moving water when it comes across an obstacle? The answer is obvious. It most often goes around the obstacle, or over it, or under it. Running water can radically change its course in order to find a way forward.

Now, let’s consider a second question. It's one that I enjoyed asking my beginning philosophy students at Notre Dame long ago: What’s stronger: water, or stone? Many of my students would just look perplexed and answer without thinking: “How can you even ask that? Surely, stone is stronger. It’s heavy and massive, hard, dense, and solid. It has real substance. And water is just soft and liquid.” Indeed, you can throw a stone into a container of water and displace the liquid instantly, loudly splashing it out. But consider the issue more deeply. Dripping water can wear down a stone. It can cut completely through a heavy, massive object. A torrent of it can roll huge boulders out of the way, or eventually smash them to bits. Because of this, many Chinese philosophers say: Be like water.

Flow toward your chosen destination with the powerful flexibility and harmony of water. This is a trait of life’s most successful people, in every sense of the word. Be flexible, adaptive, and patient in dealing with and defeating, or circumventing, any substantial obstacles that might stand in your path. And by doing this, you can be a confident force for positive action in the world.

As you set goals and move forward, you should be prepared to change in many ways, and yet remain consistently yourself, as the person you essentially are. Consistency at its best involves both flexibility and firmness. Water does what it does because it is what it is.

This powerful image can be extended. Think for a moment about how much water can change in changing circumstances. When the temperature drops enough, this substance can transform from a liquid to a solid. It can also morph from solid to liquid to steam, when someone turns up the heat. And yet, throughout these astonishing transformations, it never abandons its true nature. 

The lesson in this is clear. We should change as circumstances demand, flex to overcome any obstacles in our way, even radically transform what we do and how we do it in order to take full advantage of new opportunities, but, in all things, we must also stay true to who we essentially are. We should always retain our true nature and fundamental character. And that’s fine, because we human beings are essentially flexible and resilient creatures at our core who, while we’re always at our best when we hold firmly to the best changeless ideals and principles, can creatively adjust and adapt as circumstances around us change. That is the form of consistency that counts the most.

To quote the late Kung-Fu expert and former philosophy major, Bruce Lee: "Be like water."

The Power of Mercy

My guess is that you haven't thought much about mercy recently. And it may be quite important, to be so overlooked.

In too much of our history, power has been associated with aggression, force, and revenge. On this perspective, the good avenge their friends. They take what they want, and they celebrate their own strength.

According to this view, the strong choose to take, and the weak are forced to give. In so many of our ancient stories, across cultures, a certain warrior ethic that draws this map prevails. And for those who incline to think that business is war, the same can be thought to hold true.

But there is another ancient ethic that's very different. It finds ultimate nobility lying deep within the unexpected sphere of humility, and presents the highest power as associated with kindness and mercy. In this vision, the sovereign is a servant. The enlightened warrior is a protector of all that should be safe. And love is what finally conquers hate. Justice is important, indeed. And so is mercy. In fact, within this other tradition, justice is understood in such a way as to involve, essentially, the powerful seasoning of mercy.

I'm sure you recognize right away that these are things we don't often enough think about in the context of our work together in the modern world.

In Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, Portia represents this second ethic, this alternative and powerful perspective, and says, quite poetically:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes 

The throned monarch better than his crown; 

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute to awe and majesty, 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway; 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 

It is an attribute to God himself; 

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice.

Mercy seasoning justice: What can this mean for our ongoing work with other people in a corporate context, or in our individual life and business dealings?

Are we as concerned about mercy as we are about justice? Are we able to forgive whenever we can, and allow the people around us some needed room to grow? Mercy never condones or coddles, but it's meant ultimately to enable the better things that are possible. It's a realistic approach to the imperfections of life in the world, and always sees the potential in people. It's never to be unrealistic or unjust, irrational or self-defeating, indulgent or dumb. 

It's a quality, or tonality of action, that we do well to remember, as we deal with the rough and tumble of life. And then, we and others can be doubly blessed.

Oh, and by the way, I wrote on this topic in some different but harmonious ways in the Hufington Post four years ago. For the meditation, click here.