Connecting the Dots in Our Life

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them. - Dalai Lama

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others. - Albert Schweitzer

I have long been fascinated with the notion of significant people / events in our lives, how they come to be, whether we choose them or they are chosen for us, how we measure their effect / influence, what their cumulative effect is, whether the order that they appear in our lives is significant, etc.

I have mused about such things many times and in many ways in my blog, including but not limited to the following popular posts:

• If You Could Have One Question Answered, What Would It Be?
• When Your Purpose Is Closer Than You Realize
• Are You Out of Time?
• The Reality of Statistical Improbability
• The Four Cardinal Virtues–Which One Are You?
• Who Defines Your Reality?
• Connecting the Dots – Valuing the Connections In Your Life

With this idea in mind, I drew a series of mind maps to express some thoughts around the significant “dots” in our lives.  I am publishing these mind maps for others to comment on, criticize or make additions to.  The content is copyright the author as noted unless otherwise indicated.

The Connect the Dots mind map series can be found on my primary site and on my mobile site.

I invite people who may have thoughts on these diagrams to email me at info@harrytucker.com and I will give them consideration for future releases.  I may consider a wiki as well if the traffic is significant.

Many thanks for your interest and to all of my many readers over the years, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart.  I am a better person for my interaction with thousands of you over the years.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Connecting the Dots–Valuing the Connections In Your Life

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Steve Jobs

After a high-energy, frantic pace over the last couple of months (apologies to those who enjoy my musings, I’ve been light in content these days), I found myself reflecting on the nature of the “dots” in our Life - the significant events in our Lives that shape who we are, the results we produce and the legacy that we leave behind.

Many who strive for success believe that those who have found it have followed a Life journey that looks like this:

Others will tell you that the journey looks more like this:

In truth the journey theoretically looks more like the following, where the dots in our Lives and the dots of the Lives of others overlap for a duration that varies from brief to a Lifetime, with the overlap changing each person’s Life in known or unknown ways in regards to scale, duration and results:

In reality, the Life journey looks more like the following, with the “dots” of many people overlapping ours, enhancing or impeding our Lives as other people collaborate or interfere with us:

So what are the odds of two dots connecting?

I sat down the other day with someone and calculated, based on their Life experiences and mine, factoring in significant Life events such as surviving life-threatening illnesses, serious accidents and the like, that the odds of both of us surviving long enough to meet each other and being in the same place at the same moment to actually meet each other were approximately 1 in 38,500,000.

When I reflected upon that statistic, I compared the result to these observations:

1. I need to buy more Canadian lottery tickets, with the odds of winning the big prize being approximately 1 in 14,000,000.
2. I need to stay indoors during thunderstorms as the odds of being struck by lightning in a lifetime is only 1 in 3,000.

I could say that I need to stay away from airplanes, with the odds of dying in a plane crash being 1 in 11,000,000 but I have survived 4 airplane incidents in my lifetime so I will ignore that statistic.

The Bottom Line

While not every connection has the outrageous odds against that I calculated above, if the odds are slim that you will come into someone else’s Life (or that they will come into yours), I would think that such reality places an extremely high value on the coalescing of two people’s “dots” whether the “dots” overlap for a moment or for a Lifetime, since the result potential, good or bad, is not likely to be produced in exactly that form ever again.

If the potential for a unique lesson or result is that rare, I would think that such rare odds of meeting should serve as a reminder to each of us that each interaction has unlimited potential in value if we are open to seeing it, embracing it and exploring it.

And finally, I think if you have lost sight of the value of a relationship, you should dust off your old high school mathematics textbook and recalculate the odds that the relationship exists and having done so, rethink what this means in your Life.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS For those who prefer my very serious strategy, biz, Poli Sci and #1206 musings, I will return to them soon.  You’re not forgotten.

A Gift From the Past

Today was one of those days where few things seemed to come together as hoped or desired.  We all have days like this, try as we might to avoid them.  The events of the day weighed heavily on me as I traveled home, unaware that a gift was waiting for me at home.

The gift was in the form of a message from a friend and client of mine in New Jersey by the name of Lucky P. whom I have not seen in almost 20 years.

What was funny about him calling is that I had been reminiscing a few days earlier about the great clients I have been blessed with over the years and I had named Lucky as one of my top three favorites.  This is no small feat, given that my career spans almost 30 years, covering almost all of the Fortune 50 and includes some of the most powerful and wealthiest people in the world as clients and colleagues.

And yet, several days after I have been praising this man as being extremely influential in my Life, here he is calling me because I am on his mind.  That’s the way my Life has always been – a sequence of serendipitous events that people find hard to believe until they witness it first hand. 

I called Lucky back and had the extreme delight and pleasure of getting “caught up”.  There were the usual niceties – family, career, home location, and such.

But there was an underlying theme in our conversation that took me back 20 years when I worked for Lucky and which made the last 20 years melt away.

When I worked for Lucky back in the early 90s in Neptune, New Jersey, there were a couple of things that struck me about him.

He treated everyone with deep respect.  Not just a cursory, obligatory, professional respect but a deep respect that made you feel like you mattered.

He also lived a life filled with gratitude – gratitude for his family, for his co-workers and for the abundance around him.  It was his deeply ingrained sense of gratitude for everything that opened my awareness to the importance of feeling and expressing gratitude, even in difficult times.

As I spoke to Lucky this evening, we effortlessly switched from one subject to another like it was only yesterday that we worked together.  As we did so, I noticed that the themes of respect and gratitude are still reflected in everything he thinks, says and does.

In fact, they seemed more ingrained now than ever … a true gift to have in the uncertain world that we live in.

When I worked for Lucky, the brunt of my career was still ahead of me - the difficulties, challenges, successes and victories that awaited my discovery.

But much of what guided me through those years to come was heavily influenced by people like Lucky – people who arrived at the right time in my Life and exhibited behaviors worth modeling.

And so as we talked, I was once again filled with gratitude for him and for the influence he had on my Life.

At a moment when I was ruminating over a difficult day, Lucky reappeared and again filled me with gratitude – gratitude that there are people in the world like him who remind the rest of us that respect-filled, gratitude-filled, heart-filled people still exist in the world.

Twenty years later, he is still teaching me but is probably too humble to take credit for it.

His call today reminds me of something else.

Each of us has an opportunity to change someone’s day (and maybe their Life) simply by reaching out and telling them that we are thinking of them.

We may have NO idea about the impact of such a call on the other person.

But they will know.

And that’s what matters.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Random Connections … Or Are They?

It’s a quiet afternoon at Starbucks store #4853, in a community within Calgary, Alberta known as Copperfield.

It’s rarely this quiet, although I savor the moment and reflect on the time I have spent here, Starbucks being my office away from the office when I am not with clients. 

I am reflecting on the Life stories of everyone here, whether it be the GREAT staff or the customers who come and go in a steady stream.

I find it fascinating to see how the Life stories of people are brought together randomly in places like this, sometimes for a brief, temporary moment and sometimes planting a seed for a lifelong relationship.

These connections are random, aren’t they?  What value would there be in assuming they are anything but accidental, meaningless interactions? 

Assuming they are merely a collection of chance encounters, wouldn’t it be a tremendous waste of time to bother attempting to create anything from them?

Perhaps.

But imagine, just for a moment, that none of them are random, accidental encounters.

Imagine if we were privy to the secret that every random encounter was a gift, a chance for us to create something of unlimited potential between two or more individuals.

Maybe the encounter was put before us to create a new friendship.

Maybe we are being offered a new business opportunity.

Maybe we are being offered a chance to learn something or share knowledge with someone else.

Maybe we are being provided with an opportunity for us to lend an ear to someone who needs it.

Maybe the connection has been created so that someone may lend an ear to us just when we need it.

I can’t help but think that if we looked at every chance encounter as a gift of unlimited potential, we might look at every encounter a little differently.

I’m not suggesting that we start passing out business cards to every stranger that we meet.

However,  if we were more open to hearing the “quiet voice” as we go through our busy lives, we might allow ourselves to be open to the fact that every person who crosses our path has done so for a reason.

We may not know the reason right away.  It is possible that we will never learn the reason at all.

But to acknowledge the gift of connections opens us to new possibilities that we may have closed the door on before.

When we have an opportunity to look back through our memories, every connection seems to be anything but random.

Recognizing this should remind us of the potential gift in every connection that we make.

Such a gift only matters if we accept this gift with gratitude and do something to proactively acknowledge and nurture it.

Otherwise, we may be saying “no thank you” to the most profound potential imaginable in our lives.

And who wants to do this?

So if I see you in a Starbucks (or anywhere else), please forgive me if I say “hello” and strike up a conversation.

By doing so, I am simply acknowledging and exploring the miracle of our seemingly random connection.

And the miracle of our unlimited potential.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My Musings-in-a-Minute entry for “Random Connections … Or Are They?” can be found here.