Stay authentic

One of the most hated descriptions you can apply to another is “hypocrite”.  The simplest definition for this characteristic is probably someone who says one thing and does another.  Nobody likes a hypocrite.  Nobody respects a hypocrite.

Hypocrisy is alive and well in every generation.  It’s in the rock star who trumpets a message of urgency to save the starving in some foreign country, yet dedicates little of his own money to the cause.  It’s practically every politician, comparing their pre and post election message.  The person who denounces materialism, which admitting that they still cling to their own particular indulgences.

Aside from the undesirable peer status, hypocrisy is just a draining experience.  It’s a constant set of doubletalk sent to your brain, reinforcing opposite ideals that simply leave you without a real ability to define yourself or your  core beliefs.  And if you can get to a point where you no longer sense the conflict, you’ve just developed something of a sociopathic relationship with yourself that can never be relied upon to guide you, chasten you or bolster you.

Unfortunately, it’s an easy trap to fall into:

• You publicly acknowledge the need to help others, but can’t seem to let go of your own time or money
• Your heart calls you to spend your life in work that helps people, but you can’t let go of a meaningless corporate career because it pays so well
• Your relationship is stagnant and unfulfilling, but peer pressure, an aversion to conflict or need to cling to routine keep you from breaking it off
• You cling to the politics/social structure/religion of your childhood, although your ideology doesn’t really line up with it anymore

If you’re in that situation, you know there’s a little voice inside you that comes up in times of reflection and tells you that you need to make a change.  Be assured, the older you get, the voice only gets louder.  It’s your conscience building on a lifetime of experiences that tell you to pursue what’s in your heart.

Make your best efforts always to pursue only what truly matters to you – the things that are undeniably a part of you.  To make the values in your heart the values that guide your life.
Stay authentic to yourself.

 

Be rich

I want you to be rich.  Rich beyond your wildest dreams.  Because when you are rich, you will be happy.

And this wealth has absolutely no dependency on your bank account, investment portfolio or retirement plan.

We live in a materialistic society.  You are bombarded daily by messages from TV, movies, magazines, peers… most every source available with the idea that material gains bring happiness. And that’s easy to buy into when you’re young.  You think “if I could just have that car, or those clothes – I’d be happy”.  As you get a bit older, maybe it’s even more abstract.  “If I just had x amount of money, I’d be happy”.

You can validate this in your own life.  Think of the last thing you absolutely had to have in order to be happy.  Maybe it’s a piece of clothing, or a car.  It’s great when you first get it, but very soon the luster wears off.  Soon, it’s an everyday object and you’re looking lustfully at the next thrill.

That cycle doesn’t end.  As long as you convince yourself that material wealth is your key to happiness, you’ll keep looking for the next stage up.

But there are a lot of other ways to be rich.  Ways that are much more valuable than having a particular bank balance.

•  You can be rich in relationships.  A person who cultivates friendships and is great to be around can have many good friends.  Many people with lots of money often find themselves very lonely from the process of focusing on wealth and alienating people in order to get ahead.
• You can be rich in health.  A person who takes care of himself by eating right, exercising and keeping himself strong can have a wealth that the migraine-plagued, stress ridden, overweight executive would kill for.
• You  can be rich in family.  Devoting your time to spouse and children and building a healthy history together can enjoy those bonds to their dying day.
• You can be rich in knowledge. Devoting your time to reading, studying, practicing skills and growing as a person finds that the pursuit never gets old to them.
• You can be rich in character.  A person who is honest, truthful, loyal and shows integrity can build a reputation that people respect, trust and value

The funny thing about these kinds of investments are that most often, they lead to material wealth as a side effect.  When you are vital, knowledgeable, stable and well-liked, the doors are going to open for you to pursue whatever you want.

Be sensible.  We are all bitten by the materialism bug from time to time.  And it’s OK to indulge it occasionally.  It’s good to want a healthy financial future and to have the freedom to do what you want.  But if that’s your focus, you’re going to miss out on the wealth that life can really offer you.

Be rich.

 

Never discuss the money

Never disclose how much money you have, earn or spend to anyone but closest family members and financial professionals.

I can’t tell you how many times I see people do this and do harm in the process. There is zero good that comes out of disclosing your financial situation. One way or another, someone gets hurt. Share your salary with a co-worker and one of you is going to feel undervalued and discontent and a little bit angry. Share your income with your friends and one of you is going to be jealous. Share it with a used car salesman and you’ve just lost bargaining power. Mention how much you spent on an item and you either inspire jealousy.

This is not something you usually plan out, it just happens. You accidentally mention to someone the $2,000 desk you bought and then realize that the person you shared with is having financial problems and you just made them feel a little worse about their situation. You share a comment on salaries or perks with a friend and suddenly they’re jealous.

Make it a habit to never mention specifics. Never tell a friend you made a $5,000 commission – just say you made a “big commission”. What’s “big” to you and them stays flexible and feelings are spared. You didn’t buy a $2,000 desk, you bought a “really nice desk”. Even if someone asks “how much did you pay for those shoes”, respond with “well, I probably spent more than I should have on them, but I think they were worth it.” It just seems to work much better when actual amounts are left out. You don’t want to devalue someone by revealing that you receive bigger rewards than they do.  Though we know it’s not true, everyone wants to live under the assumption that we’re all operating on basically the same level.

Share it with your spouse. Share it with parents on a very limited basis. Keep things vague with siblings and even vaguer with everyone else.

There are some exceptions here and there, but they are few and far between. Trust me, things will be much better in the long run if everyone doesn’t know the specifics.

 

Dealing with Attacks

No matter how well you treat others, or how diligently you seek to be liked by others, you’re always going to have to deal with people that don’t like you. And sooner or later, you eventually have to deal with people who attack you verbally.

Dealing with insults is a really difficult task. Your immediate reaction is to strike out, to strike back. To vindicate yourself, or put someone else in their place. But this kind of confrontation is never productive. And it gets more difficult to deal with as you become older. The punishment for striking back, physical or verbal, gets worse and worse the older you get and always becomes a bad reflection on you.

Just picture the situation. Perhaps someone insults you and you reward them with a knuckle sandwich. Maybe you get a brief moment of intense personal satisfaction, maybe a few people admire you for doing so. The downsides?

• Punishment usually follows retaliation. Depending on your age and location, this could mean you receive punishment from parents, expulsion from a school or jail time.
• Retaliation always escalates. This person will seek to exact his pound of flesh from you; if not at present, at the first opportunity. They may follow up with subtler actions that are even more harmful than a fist.
• A tiny crowd of small minded people may think this is an admirable response. The people you want to impress, the ones who can do things for you just see it as a loss of control and your value goes down in their eyes.

Even if you retaliate with words, it’s just a matter of escalation. The same consequences will follow, just in different degrees. And it’s very very hard to draw a line from the physical once the retaliation escalates.

There’s a better solution.

Instead of taking your adversary’s anger on the chin, use his energy against him. Kind of martial arts for the mind.

Don’t make your goal “winning” the exchange. Make your goal to remain calm while forcing him to own up to their own negativity. Listen to what’s being said and what that says about them, not you. Don’t defend yourself and launch your own attack. Just redirect their force back to them. Force them to take ownership of their own feelings. Remember that the negativity is not about you, it’s about your adversary.

Think about it. If someone calls you a dirty S.O.B., the problem is not that you’re a dirty S.O.B. There are millions of dirty S.O.B.’s in the world this person chose not to address. And why should they really care what kind of person you are? The real problem is that your adversary has been hurt in some way and they feel you are responsible. Your job is to help them see that the problem lies with them, not you.

If someone tries to attack you verbally, respond with questions. “Why do you feel like that?” “What does that have to do with me?” “Do you feel like I’m responsible for this in some way?” Usually the responses come back as “Because you…”. The goal is to work to get them to focus on themselves and change the responses to “Because I…” When you can get the person to own up to their responsibility, it becomes evident that it’s up to them to solve their problems, not you.

Let’s have a little example of an exchange between adversary “A” and “B”, you. Handled inappropriately:

A: You stuck up jerk, you think you’re better than me?
B: Yeah, I do. Everybody else here does too.
A: How about I come show you just how good you are
B: You think you’re big enough?

I think you can see where this is going…

Let’s try again…

A: You stuck up jerk, you think you’re better than me?
B: Why do you feel like I would think that?
A: Because you’re always walking around here like you’re something special
B: I don’t think I’m something special. Do you think I’m better than you?
A: No I don’t. You’re no better than me
B: I don’t think so either. Did I do something to make you think that?
A: Yeah, you just looked at me funny
B: And you thought I was insulting you, personally
A: I don’t know. You just need to quit acting like you’re better than everybody.
B: Look, I don’t think I’m something special. I don’t have anything against you, either.
B: Maybe you thought what you saw was something it wasn’t.
A: You calling me a liar?
B: I’m just saying nobody else thinks I was insulting them. Why do you?

At this point, the fault is off you and on them. You can choose to find out the root of this person’s grievance (and explain why that isn’t your fault or better yet, help them with their problem) or if they’re unreasonable, simply leave it as a draw. Most people want to feel justified in their actions, and since you’ve gotten them to admit it’s their problem, they are more likely to just drop it.

It really can get hard when you’re insulted. Just remember that an insult only becomes harmful when you accept it. Someone can call you a dirty S.O.B. all day – but it won’t make an impact until you accept it as truth. Just remember that it’s not about you. It’s about a person having problems they can’t deal with who is looking to redirect them somewhere. Help them to see that they have to deal with their own problems.

It may be that you are at fault to some degree. That means this person has done you a favor by helping you see the problems in your own life. Be grateful to that person. Whether or not they intended to, they’ve made you stronger. Don’t dodge fault when it’s yours. Embrace it and fix the problem.

You never win when you escalate an argument.

 

Dare Mighty Things

It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that know neither victory nor defeat. –
Theodore Roosevelt

Some great advice that I’ll leave as is.

Forwarded to you by someone who has sometimes been in the arena, many times more in the stands, but always aware of where the credit’s due.

 

Responsibility for your own actions

There’s a whole subculture in this (and likely every) generation that seems to have an inability to take responsibility for themselves. So many people seem inable to accept their shortcomings and intend to somehow offload responsibility on a third party. These people are not that difficult to spot:

• The ethnic, religious, sexual or economic minority that blames their alienation on bigoted attitudes
• The friendless people who convince themselves their unpopularity is the result of someone’s antagonism
• The emotionally handicapped who are convinced they are driven to their withdrawal by the pressure of society, responsibilities or specific scapegoats they can scrape together

The list is easily extendable, easily recognizable. The man/woman tagging all their failures on their spouse, or their children, or their parents. Or society or government or choices they made or choices made for them.

Certainly there are situations that cause problems for people. Certainly there are those who find themselves handicapped in some manner, or behind whatever curve they are addressing in some manner. And the situation may or may not be their fault.

The greatest shame is when these people decide they’re found their excuse to keep from moving forward in life. That they are lazy enough to determine that they’ve been cut short, can never catch up and will thus be less than they could be for the rest of their lives.

At least in my generation, the most obvious subculture is the “welfare crowd”. These are persons that prefer not to do any work and instead work toward acquiring some sort of situation that will allow them to receive a subsidy of some sort to allow them to avoid getting a job. Either with an injury or handicap that gets them a physical disability subsidy through the government or a private lawsuit, or having multiple children to receive a childcare subsidy, or the like. These are people that have consigned themselves to live on a substandard income, in substandard living conditions, with no hope for advancement outside of charity. It’s obvious to the outsider what has transpired. But querying them, the resounding answer comes back that they “had no choice” or “I didn’t ask for what happened to me”. A classic example of people that just refuse to take responsibility for themselves.

Understand, children, that I’m not referring to the genuinely needy. Certainly “the poor are with us always” and you should, as a responsible person, have compassion for them and seek to provide for their needs wherever you can. And occasionally it’s a bit tricky divulging the needy from the hucksters out there. You have to find the trustworthy out there to trust.

But the thrust of this letter is not about everyone else, but yourself. Take responsibility for your own actions. Everyone makes mistakes. Live up to them, learn from them and move on. Resist the temptation to take the easy way out of situations – you almost always find yourself with something less than what you want and something completely unsatisfying. Understand that you are in control of your destiny; you can achieve whatever you want. You may have a harder or easier path than others who have sought to do the same thing, but very few things in this life can be denied for those who are willing to seek them.

Keep in mind:

• A teacher cannot “keep you” from succeeding in a class. Their bias may be in your imagination. It may be able to be cleared up by approaching them on a friendly level. You may be able to take the class under another teacher, or at another school, or through an alternate education program.
• A supervisor cannot “keep you” from moving up. If the problem is your qualifications, you can improve them. If it is a personality conflict, it can be worked around or you can find another supervisor, or another company, or another revenue opportunity.
• A person with which you have a personality conflict cannot “keep you” from having friends, joining a group, enjoying your life, etc. You can commit yourself to the people you do not conflict with and exclude this person’s influence from your life.

Of course, going about things like this are not always easy. You may very well decide that changing schools, jobs or social circles is a greater handicap than the original problem; that it “just isn’t worth it”. And that’s fine, if you so choose. But understand that this is the limitation you chose, not the one you have to live with.

Doing this helps you in a couple of areas. First, it builds integrity by reassuring you that you control your own destiny. It gives you a feeling of control over your life and situation and often helps you deal with your problems emotionally – because you understand you’ve accepted the situation of your own free will. And most importantly, it means that if it was the wrong decision, you’re free to change it.

One of the greatest gifts we have as human beings is free will. Don’t sell out that priviledge for an easy out. They’re never satisfying.

 

Keeping an Open Mind

People are very open-minded about new things – as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.
Charles Kettering

People are creatures of habit. From your earliest stages, you’re prodded along the way to establishing fixed patterns of behaviour, of getting into a routine. Not that the approach isn’t beneficial – it’s not that difficult to see the necessity of routine in toilet training, bedtimes, cleaning your room, etc. Good personal habits will help establish you and provides a familiar base to work from.

One of the problems of getting older is that you rely more and more on those routines. They’re familiar, comforting, trustworthy. As you grow and learn about all the hazards life can throw at you, you yearn for those familiar patterns. Some idolize them. Most will settle firmly into more and more of them as time goes on.

But a lot of times, reliance on those patterns keep us from giving new ideas a fair shot. Sometimes “it’s always been done this way” becomes less of an analytical tool and more of a defense mechanism against anything unfamiliar. You do see it in older people a lot, but it’s far from uniquely a product of age. Talk about religion, politics or any other topic that people feel strongly about and you will very quickly catch wind of people who have their minds made up, despite anything new they may learn.

Certainly the old “tried and true” approaches have value, or they wouldn’t have lasted as long. Certainly there are basic components to your character and goals that are non-negotiable. But learn to have an open mind; to give new ideas a proper evaluation without immediately passing judgement upon them. This is the mental policy that lies behind dogmaticism, fundamentalism, sexism, racism and a whole host of world-blighting emotional ailments.

At your current age, you believe quite wholeheartedly in Santa Claus. I expect at some point you will begin to see the evidence, start asking questions and eventually admit that your benefactor is not who you originally conceived him to be. That’s normal, and part of growing up. The surprising thing you will learn is the number of people who stop using that approach as they grow older. I could detail for you instantly a number of people I know who are suffering from that approach today:

• Friends who doggedly support the political party they’ve always affiliated themselves with despite the fact that its agenda is completely out of line with my friends’ current beliefs
• Friends shackled by a religion that they are unwilling to question, and completely unwilling to see that it doesn’t live up to the standards they hold other religions to
• Friends stuck in low-end jobs because they can’t conceive of themselves finding a better opportunity
• Friends living in deep debt because they assume this manner of living is the accepted norm

Don’t ever stop learning, stop evaluating what you encounter in life. Put things to the test and learn which ones stand up over time. The world changes, your life changes. If you’re not changing, you may be falling behind.

Keep an open mind.

 

Trust

We’d all like to believe that the world is an idyllic plane, where everyone greets their neighbor with a smile, democracy pays off for all involved and any boy can grow up to be president. The truth is far from it. The sad fact is that in today’s society (as most throughout time), people are looking out for themselves, taking every advantage possible to improve their station. Many are blessed with an innate sense of fair play that regulates that behaviour to support their contemporaries in everything they do. Yes, there are Good Samaritans. There are those who remember their own times in the gutter and are moved to keep those around them from making the same mistakes. There are many more who fall far short of that goal.

My generation saw a revolution in public spectacle of political, spiritual and civic leaders and organizations caught with their pants down. The first generation where the government was completely content to lie, get caught lying, and basically respond – we lied, so what? It would suit itself well to sketch comedy if it weren’t the truth; a truth destroying the lives of thousands.

The greatest problem with this state of affairs is that trust is critical to relationships. While the most fragile keystone and the most difficult to repair, it’s nevertheless necessary to get anything out of your relationships. You find yourself at an extreme disadvantage when you choose not to trust. Your marriage, friendships, relationships with parents, your career advancement, your waning years all depend on trust for a rich relationship. It’s truly a requirement; cradle to grave.

So how do you deal with it?

First of all, put your trust in the trustworthy. People of integrity make trustworthiness a core of their personality – it carries over to everything they involve themselves in. If someone you are considering dating or otherwise getting involved with “cheated” on someone before you, they’re more than capable of doing the same to you. Someone who has stolen from others is capable of stealing from you. Anyone who gossips with you will likely gossip about you. The employer who ignores promises made to you earlier is likely to continue that trend. The government that lied about its exploits in a particular situation will probably find that skill useful again. Give your trust to people who have proven themselves capable of honoring it.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to have ties with people that fall short in the integrity category. Being a technology related person, my policy has always been to have good backups. Cover yourself. If you have an unfair employer, document your work. If you have to deal with the school gossip, don’t share anything you don’t want everyone to know. Make sure you take care of your own healthcare/retirement/etc. if your providers haven’t been forthcoming.

In doing so, you can give your trust to the people who deserve it. Those who will make you proud for opening your lives to them.

And when you make a mistake (which happens to everyone), be satisfied in the knowledge that you went into it with the best of intentions and modify your gameplan.

It’s a great feeling to know you’re sharing with people who will build you up while protecting yourself from the unscrupulous out there. Trust me.

 

Happiness vs Pleasure

“A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one’s life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.” George Santayana

One of the hardest lessons for people to learn is the distinction between happiness and pleasure. Many go their whole lives without making the differentiation. Solomon dedicated the whole book of Ecclesiastes to it. At any point in history there are marked examples in humanity of those who seem to have it all and find no satisfaction in it.

Happiness and pleasure aren’t the same things. If forced to define it, I’d say pleasure is the result of something you do; happiness, the result of something you are.

Pleasure is the joy of a cold lemonade on a hot day. The intense experiences of sexuality. The high of a drug. The adulation of the crowd. It’s something you do, or take, or experience that makes a moment in time a little more joyful.

Happiness is more of a state of contentment. Happiness is understanding your reputation is paramount. Seeing your children and knowing the part you’ve played in their development. It’s taking a snapshot of your life and knowing you want to reproduce it. It’s an earned satisfaction that validates you as a person and your life as worthy and acceptable.

Of course, the two often intertwine. The immediate act of pleasure in performing an act of charity is validated over the long term. It feels good while you’re doing it, it’s something you can be proud of, and it contributes to your being a better person.

On the other hand, a lot of people make the mistake of embracing activities that really aren’t valuable in the long term just for the quick high. Drug/alcohol abuse is an obvious. Abuse of sexuality is another. Pursuing superiority in material possessions, positions of power, popularity and other shallow pursuits often contribute to making yourself something you can’t be proud of; a person you’re not satisfied with.

It seems so cut and dried on paper, but in real life it’s often hard to see the difference. Pursuing wealth definitely satisfies the quick ego fix, but what about long term? Are you doing this to secure a financial future for your loved ones? Whose respect are you attempting to cultivate? Is a solid material foundation a fair trade for the time away from family? The answers aren’t always evident. And no one can answer the question for you definitively. Despite all the advice, you have to make it yourself.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from Steven Covey, who encourages you in “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” to imagine the scene at your funeral. What do you want to be said about you? It’s a bid morbid, but that picture visualized eliminates the pleasure principle from the question -> you can’t really experience pleasure at that point. What kind of person do you want to be remembered as? What kind of life is truly valuable and worthwhile?

Live in a way that you can be happy with the results.

 

"To thine own self be true"

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Hamlet
William Shakespeare

I think if there’s one piece of advice I want to pass along it’s this. Maintain your integrity. There are core values you’re going to develop, both those passed along and those you forge yourself, that define you. A lot of things will change as you grow up; your interests and goals will shift, but there are some unchanging principles you will grow into that are non-negotiable, that you will always find peace in.

But life is never black and white. It gets confusing when your goals come into conflict. You may feel the need to go against your principles to gain popularity. Or put off your dreams to support a family. Advice will flow like a river from churches, parents, friends and most anyone you’ll share it with.

Violating your own principles is one of the most crippling mistakes you can make. Once you’ve compromised yourself, there’s a part of you that’s broken and very difficult to repair. It’s hard to have confidence in yourself when you’ve done so and failed in the past.

I have a friend who was determined to escape his middle-lower class background at any cost. To him, that meant money and power. He neglected a family, fought a war he didn’t believe in and put himself permanently in a social structure that he didn’t enjoy, his closest friends people he didn’t believe in. Everyone I know criticizes and berates him behind his back. He got the money, he got the authority. But it’s not fulfilling him now. He traded a life that could have made him very happy for an artificial view he constructed as a child. That’s looking very plastic to him right now.

In my college years, I had some aspirations of being a professional musician, and had a decent enough shot at it. But the more our group spent on the road, the more I considered exactly what I’d have to give up to maintain that lifestyle. Chief among those was a strong family life, which had always been my greatest support in growing up. The pull of the stage was strong, but in the end I decided that what was really important was a group of people that valued me for who I am, not for how I could entertain them. Friends of mine took that route and became very successful, and occasionally there’s a twinge of “what could have been” when I listen to their albums or see them perform. But it only takes a few swapped stories with them these days to understand I made the right choice. Thinking of all the things in your development I’d have missed. Knowing that you’d only see your daddy irregularly and that those visits would always be a somewhat uncomfortable “play day” instead of the nourishing we both needed. The question was hard to answer and it took years to resolve to my satisfaction. But in the end, I knew what was really valuable to me, and I didn’t compromise. It was the right decision.

Nobody is going to make the right decision all of the time. It’s granted that you’ll make mistakes, and it’s part of the learning process of growing up. But you can live with the mistakes if they were made in good conscience. Never go against what you think is right. Never compromise the greater for the lesser. If it means giving up something pleasurable, taking the road less taken or becoming something noone anticipated, go ahead. Selling yourself out is never the right choice.

Make the choices you can live with.