Building Foundations on Rock or Sand

“Leaders in business and government, who fail to see the holistic interdependence of our planet, are destined to cause its demise.”  - Said Elias Dawlabani, Memenomics: The Next Generation Economic System

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.  But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” - Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV)

The #1206 “fiction” series continues ….

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On a hot, sticky summer afternoon in Manhattan, I stood on the corner of Wall St. and Broadway and watched idly as people hurriedly went about their business.  “Everyone going nowhere in a hurry”, I thought to myself.

Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by a voice to my right as a deep, baritone voice said “It seems like everyone is in a hurry to go nowhere, doesn’t it?”.

Startled that someone had voiced the very sentiment that I was thinking, I turned to face the origin of the musing.

The tall, impeccably-dressed man facing me smiled amusingly, seemingly aware that his comment had startled me.

“You’re right”, I replied, “They are in total oblivion to what’s going on around them.  I guess ignorance is bliss after all.”

“Possibly”, he replied, pursing his lips for a moment. “However, even ignorance is fleeting. Every person is eventually forced to acquire wisdom or pay the price for their ignorance.”

“What do you mean?”, I asked.

“Would you walk with me for a moment?”, he asked.  Nodding my consent, we began to walk down Wall St.

“Imagine you have a dollar”, he continued as we walked slowly down the street.  “You lend me the dollar and I use it as collateral to borrow a second dollar so now I have two dollars.  I lend the two dollars to a friend and following the same process, he converts it into four dollars.  He buys food with some of the money and passes the rest on.  Some friends later, the current top person in the lending pyramid is now in possession of over a thousand dollars.  That person buys weapons with some of the money, sells weapons to make more money and then lends the rest.  A couple of friends later, the current top of the chain uses the money to buy political influence or power and sits on the rest of the money.”

“There is nothing strange about that”, I noted.  “Many of our investment vehicles work exactly like that.  That is how the world works.”

“Very true”, my companion nodded.  “Now let’s assume you have an emergency in your Life and you need your dollar immediately.  You come to me but I don’t have the money you lent me so I ask for it up the chain.  The guy I lent it to realizes that he will have to give up his food and is not happy with that and so he tries to get some of the money back from the guy who bought weapons.  That guy realizes he will have to give up some of his weapons in order to be able to satisfy the request and decides that that is not an option.  So he in turn asks people higher up the chain to give up some of their money so that someone can send a dollar back down the chain to you.”

He paused for a moment before continuing. “The people at the top, not wanting to give up the power they have bought with their money, decline the request and so despite a lot of perceived money in the system, no one is able to return a simple dollar to help you.  However, the person at the top decides he is willing to lend you a dollar with exorbitant interest if you are desperate enough.  While you have accepted this approach in the past, you now decide to exercise a legal process to force me to return your dollar to you and in the process, the pyramid collapses as people at various levels are forced to give up food, weapons or power.  This causes them to turn upon each other to protect what they perceive is their right to own.  Meanwhile, the guy at the bottom, you, just wanted your dollar back but in your inability to get your dollar back unencumbered, you are in the least powerful position of all and your world collapses.”

We walked in silence for a bit before he concluded.  “The person with the smallest ulterior motive is also the one with the least amount of power but the one who will be punished the most for merely asking for what was rightfully his.  Seems awkward or unfair, doesn’t it?”

“I guess”, I replied as I mulled over his words, trying to decide if they made sense or not and whether or not I had somehow contributed to this if true.”

We both paused for a moment before I asked, “But if that’s the case, who would benefit the most from such an arrangement?”

“Now that is an excellent question”, he replied.  “Seeking the answer to such a question would prove to be of great value for humanity.  Unfortunately, few have such courage to pursue it.  It’s like being the first family to settle in a neighbourhood that a city is rehabilitating.  Few have the courage to put their family at risk by being first but everyone wants to reap the reward derived from driving the bad elements out of a neighbourhood in order to reclaim it.”

He was silent for a moment, allowing his words to sink it, and then he asked, “What type of person are you?”

“I’m not sure”, I replied, “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

When my comment produced no reply, I looked around and my companion was gone.  Momentarily confused, I looked around me, knowing that he couldn’t have disappeared that quickly.

As I continued to look around in bewilderment, I looked up and realized that I was standing in front of the Federal Reserve ….

…. and I wondered.

To be continued.

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© 2014 – Harry Tucker – All Rights Reserved

Series Origin:

This series, a departure from my usual musings,  is inspired as a result of conversations with former senior advisors to multiple Presidents of the United States, senior officers in the US Military and other interesting folks as well as my own professional background as a Wall St. / Fortune 25 strategy and large-scale technology architect.

While this musing is just “fiction” and a departure from my musings on technology, strategy, politics and society, as a strategy guy, I do everything for a reason and with a measurable outcome in mind. :-)

This “fictional” musing is a continuation of the #1206 series noted here.

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Destiny’s Director

Man is supposed to be the maker of his destiny. It is only partly true. He can make his destiny, only in so far as he is allowed by the Great Power. - Mahatma Gandhi

Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny. - Carl Sandburg

The #1206 “fiction” series continues ….

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In a softly lit room on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, two men sat quietly, each studying the other.

“These dreams have been plaguing me for years and I couldn’t deal with them anymore.  That’s why I came to see you”, concluded the younger man.

“I understand”, replied the doctor.  “You did the right thing by coming to see me.  So let me see if I understand you correctly.  You claim that when you meet people in your dreams, that within a year or two, you actually meet them in person.  Is this an accurate understanding?”

“I know it sounds crazy”, the patient replied, “but I can prove it.  I’ve kept a journal of my dreams with complete descriptions of the people that I eventually meet.  Many of them whom I meet for real tell me that they feel like they have met me before.  But there are two things that are really bothering me about my dreams.”

“And what are they?”, the doctor asked in his monotone voice.

“Well”, replied the patient, beginning hesitantly.  “The first is that there is always a third person in the room who seems to be the one who introduces us.  Well, maybe introduces is the wrong word.  She is always present, she never speaks and she usually just stands there and watches us without saying anything.  She gives me the creeps.”

“Does this woman remind you of anyone you know?”, asked the doctor.  “Does she have any distinguishing features that make her stand out?”

“Her eyes”, replied the patiently nervously.  “She has very large eyes that look right through you.  They are not hostile, friendly, angry or anything else.  They are completely without emotion.  She just stares at us without smiling or anything.”

“That would seem unusual”, agreed the doctor.  “What is the other thing that is really bothering you?”

“Well”, the patient replied nervously, “The last person I met in my dreams where this large-eyed woman is also present was in a dream like no other.  In the dream, I was making love to this woman while the woman with the large eyes just watched.  She didn’t smile or say anything.  She just watched us.”

“Having dreams of making love to strangers is not unusual”, replied the doctor.  “Such dreams contain many messages about things the brain is processing.  Who or what do you think the woman you are making love to represents?”

“Represents?”, asked the patient incredulously.  “I met her for real two years later in a coffee shop and we hit it off as if we had known each other all our lives.  No awkwardness of any kind.  She even told me that she felt as if she had met me before and that she had known me for years.”

He paused before continuing.  “It makes me wonder if these are dreams or if they are really happening”, he said quietly.

“Well”, replied the doctor, “We must be careful that we don’t confuse dreams and coincidences or that we don’t accidentally retrofit the memory of a past dream to match a current event.  Such things are very common.”

“Maybe”, conceded the patient, “But I think there is more to it than that.  I wonder if someone out there is connecting me with others for a reason or purpose.”

“That is an interesting observation”, noted the doctor, “Why don’t we save that for the next session.”

“You’re right”, agreed the patient as he stood up.  Thanking the doctor for the session, he saw himself out of the office.

Two hours later, in the waning hours of the evening, he found himself reflecting on the conversation with his therapist as he drove down the quiet road to his home miles from the city.  Over his left shoulder, he casually observed a plane paralleling him and as he did so, confusion and then drowsiness suddenly overcame him.

He woke up startled and confused in a small room devoid of any furniture except for the small bed he was lying on.  Wondering how he got there, he stood up on shaky legs, walked slowly over to the door and opened it.

In the long hallway that stretched out of sight to his left and right, a flurry of activity attacked his senses, with people walking quickly in both directions.  He noted with curiosity that quite a number of them seemed to be in military uniforms.

As his confused mind struggled to understand what he was observing, he was startled by someone clearing his throat.  “I assume you have many questions”, came a voice to his left. “I will do what I can to answer them.”

As he turned, his eyes focused on two figures in front of him.

A short, nondescript man, clearly the one who had just spoken, stood before him.

But it was the other person that startled him.

The woman who had participated in the introductions in his dream stood before him, tall, unsmiling and with the same penetrating, emotionless eyes.

“Please step back into the room”, the short man said.  “Let’s talk about your destiny.”

To be continued.

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© 2014 – Harry Tucker – All Rights Reserved

Series Origin:

This series, a departure from my usual musings,  is inspired as a result of conversations with former senior advisors to multiple Presidents of the United States, senior officers in the US Military and other interesting folks.

While this musing is just “fiction” and a departure from my musings on technology, strategy, politics and society, as a strategy guy, I do everything for a reason and with a measurable outcome in mind. :-)

This “fictional” musing is a continuation of the #1206 series noted here.

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Time of the Season

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
      a time to be born and a time to die,
      a time to plant and a time to uproot,
      a time to kill and a time to heal,
      a time to tear down and a time to build,
      a time to weep and a time to laugh,
      a time to mourn and a time to dance,
      a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
      a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
      a time to search and a time to give up,
      a time to keep and a time to throw away,
      a time to tear and a time to mend,
      a time to be silent and a time to speak,
      a time to love and a time to hate,
      a time for war and a time for peace. – Ecclesiastes 3:18 (NIV)

The #1206 “fiction” series continues …….

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On a cold, dark night in an office lit by a single Banker’s lamp, he sat at his desk, quickly but unhurriedly cleaning up a few odds and ends.

Years of preparation and execution had come down to these final moments and his eyes scanned the information before him as he checked to make sure he had not missed anything.  Growing his network, penetrating the most elite cliques in the world and promoting his message had come down to these final points of execution and he wanted to make sure that nothing was left to chance.

Encrypted files of critical importance had been distributed around the world as well, awaiting the message that would both alert its owner as well as equip them with the ability to unlock its contents.

What would happen next depended on whether the recipients of the information chose to use it to create a better world or to destroy it.

Their choice wasn’t his concern.  His job was to distribute the information securely, arrange for its release and then move on.  Historians, if any survived, would offer many theories about what had happened and while history may be written by the victors, such adages assumed that any would be left standing.

He had watched with amusement over the years as various agencies and their targets had played cat and mouse, hiding information, discovering it, hiding it again and so on, each trying to outdo the other in an effort to win some meaningless prize.  While nations had spent billions of dollars in technology and PR self-promotion, they appeared to have missed a key strategic point - that the harder they tried to protect themselves against the perception of ever-increasingly complex issues in the world, the more vulnerable they left themselves to more simple approaches.  They had become so distracted by their game of cops and robbers that awareness of the real threat had eluded them.

His eyes scanned the screen before him to ensure that the content displayed was accurate and scheduled properly.  Clicking on the submit button, he waited for confirmation that all was in place and then he powered off his laptop.  He unplugged it, flipped it over, removed its hard drive and tucked the drive in his pocket.

Three blog posts had been scheduled to be released, posts which by the nature of their content would attract a broad range of readership around the world.  But they served another purpose unbeknownst to those who would delight in them, be angered by them and would thus share them with others as a result.

His blog was the ultimate one-time pad, providing the keys to unlock the encrypted data that had been distributed around the world.

“Things hidden in plain sight are often the most difficult things to see”, he thought as he turned off the light, leaving him sitting in total darkness.  All that remained was notification to specific readers that the one-time pad was nearing completion.

He stood up, walked carefully to the window and gazed up at the stars in the cold, dark night as a text message was being sent to thousands of cell phones around the world.

Its message was simple and innocent:

Auto msg delivery: 3 blogs remaining. Thanks for subscribing.

It was the time of the season.

To be continued.

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© 2014 – Harry Tucker – All Rights Reserved

Related Links:

I mused about the use of one-time pads and their use in encryption in this #1206 Series story – National Security – Arming Both Sides.

Series Origin:

This series, a departure from my usual musings,  is inspired as a result of conversations with former senior advisors to multiple Presidents of the United States, senior officers in the US Military and other interesting folks.

While this musing is just “fiction” and a departure from my musings on technology, strategy, politics and society, as a strategy guy, I do everything for a reason and with a measurable outcome in mind. :-)

This “fictional” musing is a continuation of the #1206 series noted here.

Killing the Heart of a Nation

Anyone who knows me knows how I treasure and value the importance of rural Canada and rural America.

As a businessman, I recognize that the larger centers, whether it be Toronto, New York or the like, provide the “energy” to drive nations.

However, I also believe that the rural towns are the lifeblood of nations, often providing the last vestiges of the morals and values of yesteryear that we lament have disappeared from the larger centers.  The rural towns provide the balance against the larger centers and together, we find a way to make the balance work to create as strong a future as we can.

As someone who grew up in a rural environment before moving on to success in larger centers, I recognize the need for both.

When the lifeblood of a nation is weakened, I wonder what happens to that balance and the future of the nation itself.

While my ancestral home is Bell Island, Newfoundland, Canada, I grew up in a rural town “across the bay” called Foxtrap.  In 1971, it had an official population of 971 souls so this is as rural as it gets.  Until the early 90s, the primary sources of income for the majority of residents was farming and fishing.

Today, with the amalgamation of some surrounding communities, it still has a population of under 3,000 and Foxtrap itself is now part of the larger community of Conception Bay South.

It’s still as small as it gets.

So you can imagine my surprise and disappointment when I heard that in this sleepy little ocean-side town, it was announced that a new cabaret was opening today.

Cabaret is usually defined as form of entertainment featuring music, comedy, song, dance, recitation or drama.

Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?  In fact, while being a strange place to locate a theater, perhaps they are introducing a little culture to the town of my upbringing.

But it does strike my interest to know that a nearby house was also purchased to house “the dancers”.  Intriguing indeed – I’ve never heard of such special care being given to thespians before.

As a result, I couldn’t help but wonder what else they might do in such a house.

And then I look at the owners of the facility.

They are also the owners of a facility in the nearby city of St. John’s known as Sirens.

What kind of facility is Sirens?

This picture on the opening page of their website speaks volumes.

It doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination, does it?

It doesn’t look much like cabaret either.

Now, I’m not a prude by ANY stretch of the imagination.

I have no issue with strip clubs or the more commonly used term “gentlemen’s clubs”.

However, I do have an issue with where they are located.

Sirens is located in downtown St. John’s in an area known for its mix of bars, pubs and gentlemen’s clubs.

The new “cabaret club” is smack dab in the middle of the small rural town of Foxtrap.  The club has an elementary school bus stop in front of it and will be open for business when kids are dropped off in front of it.

All of these facts create a toxic mix in my brain that is not sitting right with me.

Who approved this?

This brings me to the people who approved the development of a “cabaret club” in the middle of this sleepy town.

The Town Council of Conception Bay South and Mayor Woody French said they had no confirmation of what the building would ultimately be, which is why they allowed the club to be put there.

Here’s the problem with such a statement.

If the leadership of a town doesn’t know what is being put in the town, then they shouldn’t allow it until they know.

If they know but can’t be transparent with the people living in the area, then they shouldn’t allow it to happen either.

To do so anyway speaks volumes in terms of their competence level and their ability to run a town.

Or perhaps it speaks louder in terms of their inability to do so.

If our rural towns are going to be allowed to have their heart ripped out through incompetent or immoral politicians, I fear for the future of our nation.  Once our foundation of morals and values is lost, all is lost.

A Message to Our “Leaders”

As for the Mayor of CBS and any councillors who voted for this and slyly slid it by the local residents, I offer this musing.

Since we are on the subject of cabaret, let’s explore the root of the word “actor”.

The word “actor” is derived from the Greek word “hypokrites”, from which we get the modern word hypocrite.

Any politician who would thrust a “cabaret” upon the residents of a small rural town by either not telling them that it was coming or by saying that he didn’t really know what was going there (which somehow makes it ok), is a hypocrite.

Or perhaps they are just acting, pretending to be competent community leaders when they in fact are not.

Either way, in conducting themselves as they are, they are taking responsibility for ripping the heart out of a rural community and a nation.

I wonder if they already have a communications strategy in place for when the inevitable drugs and prostitution pop up in the same area.

Here’s a hint to them: You better prepare it now – you will need it.

Here’s another thought to the town council: Why don’t you licence the establishment on the same street that you live on so you can see how it “contributes” to your neighbourhood.

All that being said, if the residents of Foxtrap don’t want this to happen, they need to do more than complain on the local radio station.

As Moliere, the French actor, once said:

“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”

We all share responsibility for making our communities and our nation strong.

A nation is made stronger when we take action and is weakened when we choose not to take action.

I wonder how the home of my youth chooses to defend that which is important to them and to the nation.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question”.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS  Dear churches.  You claim to be the keeper of morals and values in society-at-large.  Your absence in this dialog speaks volumes in itself and is in fact, hypocritical. 

Lead by example or move out of the way and let someone else do so.

PPS I wonder what the Right Honorable Terry French, Member of the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly, nephew of the mayor of Conception Bay South and resident of the area, thinks of this also.  As the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation and with a young daughter, his thoughts on the matter would be interesting to know.

Economists, Weather Prediction and the Art of Alchemy

On Friday, my phone received an alert that dangerous thunderstorms were imminent with a 100% POP (probability of precipitation) of their occurrence.

Now, by my definition, 100% is pretty certain and so I was disappointed when the anticipated apocalyptic storm didn’t arrive.  At some point, the forecast changed to a 0% chance of rain and shortly thereafter, the rain arrived.

When the forecast was revised again to a 90% chance of rain and thunderstorms, the sun came out and that was the end of the rain for the weekend.

While I respect the science of meteorology, oftentimes the model that represents the earth’s weather systems is too complex for weather experts to predict with certainty.

A similar thought came to mind today as I watched an economist speaking with great certainty about how the global economic situation would play out over the next five years.

Unfortunately, like our complex weather systems our economic system is far too complex for a few models to properly understand and so when I hear an “expert” speak with certainty on where the economy is going, I look for something more realistic, such as the manner by which alchemists claimed to be able to transform lead into gold.

As this economist described his five year view, I was thinking “we can’t predict what is happening next WEEK and he has a five-year prediction”. 

Yeah … right.

Think of it this way.

Few experts foresaw the difficulties of the last four years (yes, SOME did see it coming and tried to warn the populace but they were shouted down by the recognized “experts”) and yet we continue to listen to how they believe they can predict the future. 

It’s like walking into an psychic’s office and having him / her ask you what you need and you think “You’re the psychic – don’t you already know?”.  

Oftentimes, we miss this important clue and rely on the self-described expert to continue to predict our future.

Meanwhile, in watching the performance of many economists over the last four years, the pattern has gone like this.

1. When monthly numbers come out, the “expert” extrapolates a trend from a single data point (which is impossible) and predicts that either difficulty will continue or that we are in the clear as far as difficult is concerned.

2. Political interpretation results in one of two options:

2a. If I am a politician in a governing party, I paint how the numbers project that recovery is underway no matter what the numbers really imply.

2b. If I am a politician in an opposition party, I paint how the numbers are taking us to doom and gloom no matter what the numbers really suggest.

3. When the following month’s numbers come out, they either exceed expectation if the numbers are good or are surprising if the numbers are bad.  Either way, the “experts” are surprised and extrapolate a new trend based on the new data point. 

4. Go back to step 2 and repeat the process.

When an expert is surprised once or twice, one can attribute that to lack of data, the need for improved models, etc.

When an expert is surprised repeatedly from month to month over the course of years, it then looks more like:

1. Incompetence

2. Excessive ego

3. Lack of real understanding

4. Inadequate models

5. Intentional misrepresentation, oftentimes to encourage spending and consumption, to reduce fear in the populace or to avoid difficult questions.

In any of the first four scenarios, it looks like no one is “driving the bus” and that the economic system, with a life of its own, will proceed in whatever direction its momentum is carrying it regardless of our efforts to predict or direct it.  The fifth scenario suggests an ulterior motive, which has its own complexities.

None of the scenarios is very comforting.

Unfortunately, people who don’t understand how the system works are at the mercy of advisors who make money no matter which way the economy goes.

Sadly, the same is not true for their clients who rely on these advisors.

Watching the Euro situation is a perfect case-in-point of how the experts attempt to predict things.

Experts who said that a specific result in the Greek election would be needed to hold the Euro community together applauded when they got the result.  Off hours trading went up as a result.  Then the experts realized that now that the right party had won, a coalition would be needed to actually make things happen and the market went down.  On top of that, once the coalition is in place, the actual difficult task of bringing major deficits under control would then have to be done and the market got even more jittery (especially given the fact that governments and effective deficit reduction plans are not common dance partners).

Throw in similar issues on a larger scale, like those in Spain, and the markets don’t know which way to turn.

Such lack of consistent, replayable, useful knowledge makes things even more laughable (and frightening) when someone appears on TV and claims to have the perfect crystal ball into the situation, especially when the word “bailout” enters the dialog.

Bailouts – The New “F” Word

Bailouts make the stock market happy.

Unfortunately, bailouts represent a deferral of a solution instead of a real solution and therefore should not be celebrated.  In fact, if the underlying causes for the debt issues haven’t been solved, bailouts should make people very nervous as the solution that will be required later will be more painful and complex than the current situation that was just avoided by using a bailout.

Bailouts in the 21st century have become the Hail Mary pass of the global economy.

Imagine if your favorite football team admitted to not having a game-day strategy outside of “we’ll do our best to hold on for dear life and go for the win in the final play of the game”.

That is a bailout.

Unfortunately, you don’t build many championship seasons when your primary strategy is the Hail Mary pass.

When the bailout comes, it’s like being maxed out on your credit cards and not being able to make a payment when suddenly your credit limit is increased.  You congratulate yourself for weathering the storm (even though you didn’t really do anything worthy of a reward) and you borrow money from your new-found credit to make your minimum payment.  Meanwhile, you live with the hope that everything around you will magically change so that the situation never happens again (even though you are not changing anything in regards to how you live).

You’ve not only not corrected what caused the underlying debt problem in the first place but in fact you have actually dug yourself deeper and yet you continue to hope that something will somehow change (with the exception of your own behavior and results) in order to create a brighter future.

When you find yourself in the same spot in the future, you act surprised and hope to get another credit limit extension and the cycle repeats.

Leverage or Be Leveraged

So when our economic advisor wins whether we win or lose, when economists can’t predict with certainty from one moment to the next what is happening and we can’t predict with certainty whether a politician is lying or telling the truth from one moment to the next, where can we turn?

We must take responsibility for understanding how the system works, to know how to maximize returns where possible (remembering that there is money to be made even in difficult times) and to learn how to mitigate risk.

Within the system, there are three types of people in the world:

1. Those who know where they are going.

2. Those who enable the ones who know where they are going or who benefit from their success.

3. The stepping stones, upon which the first two groups step on in order to manifest their destiny.

Which type are you?

How do you know?

If you are type 3, what are you doing about it?

When we rely on others too much, our future is tied to their intentions.

And frankly, I need more assurances of manifesting my future than to rely on that.

How about you?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Accountability and Authenticity

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version, please click here.

As I dressed this morning, I donned a pair of jeans and a yellow polo shirt and prepared to meet the day - nothing significant to report there.

However, to a small band of entrepreneurs in New York in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, Tuesday was Yellow Shirt Day.

I had forgotten about it until this morning.

The origins of Yellow Shirt Day were innocent enough.  One Tuesday, a member of my team, Narender and I wore a yellow shirt on the same day.  We laughed about it and said every Tuesday should be Yellow Shirt Day and dismissed the joke.

To my surprise on the next Tuesday, the entire team wore a yellow shirt.  Guys who didn’t own a yellow shirt went out and bought one just for the day.

The tradition being born, we embraced it every Tuesday.  On Tuesday, we would go for a walk during our lunch break and compliment other people who wore yellow shirts.  The reaction from strangers on the streets of New York covered a broad spectrum, ranging from humorous to angry.

The co-founder of Yellow Shirt Day, Narender Nath, was killed in the World Trade Center less than a year later during the horror of 9/11.

Narender came to mind this morning as I realized I was wearing a yellow shirt on Tuesday.

Narender was as close to a perfect human being as I have been able to find on this planet. 

He preferred humor over anger.

He chose directness instead of misdirection. 

He selected honesty over dishonesty.

He embraced transparency instead of being opaque. 

He wished people to be accountable for their actions and was quite direct about it.

He preferred to be proactive and to embrace his passion instead of being apathetic and indifferent.

He avoided being a one-man-band – he was a collaborator by nature.

He didn’t reinvent what someone else had already created.  He recognized the value of leveraging what someone else had worked hard to create.

He asked nothing of anyone.  He led by example.

As I thought about Narender this morning, I was wondering if we have learned anything as a society since he died.

Greed, apathy, indifference and corruption appear to be around us more than ever.

Deception seems to be the way the game is played in many levels of society.  The model of “say one thing and do another” seems to be commonly practiced by leaders and those who are led.

Senseless wars against “this and that” appear to be the preferred model of solving anything.  We have a war against terror, a war against global warming and a war against extinction.  We appear to always be fighting what we don’t like instead of embracing the solution we should be striving for.

Headlines of failure in the housing market, the financial market and the employment market hammer us daily.

The starving, impoverished, diseased and destitute continue to cry out for help.

The media encourages us to focus on the disaster all around us under the guise of informing us.

Many of us who are hammered by the media do the best we can, all the while struggling with our need to be more authentic to ourselves and to others.

If only we could get some breathing room, we reason, then we could be more true to ourselves.

We could then shake off the negative messaging from the media and truly discover the world for its beauty and potential.

Narender looked at this challenge differently.

He didn’t wait for the breathing space in order to create authenticity within himself.

He knew that if he waited for the opportunity to be authentic with himself and with others, he would wait forever and would be incredibly frustrated as he waited.

If you were to ask Narender what he saw in the world, you would swear he lived on a different planet.  In a world allegedly filled with collapse, Narender saw growth.

In a world of war and hate, Narender saw love and nurturing.

In a world of indifference and apathy, Narender saw the opportunities that lay before those who followed their passion to make a positive impact.

Our world is what we believe it to be.

The media wants us to believe it is all coming apart.

Narender believed it to be one of unlimited opportunity for living, loving, learning and leaving a legacy.

I know you believe this also.

However, when you find yourself in the structural tension between what you believe and what you manifest, remember this:

Each of us owns the responsibility for changing our own world and subsequently the world around us.

If we wait for the world to give us the opportunity to become self-enabled to the point where we can finally start living an impactful life we will never get there.

And that makes for a pretty depressing journey of wasted, unrealized potential

Don’t let this happen to you.

As many experts say and as Narender practiced:

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Yes, it is an overused statement.

But perhaps it is overused because we still haven’t learned the truth within it and so we need to keep hearing it.

How do you see the world today?  How badly would you like to see it in a different light?

Look around you – there are many people who are ready to collaborate with you to create that world.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

PS – A guy by the name of Mike walked into the coffee shop as I was writing this.  He was wearing a yellow shirt also and so I couldn’t resist introducing myself and telling him the story of Narender and Yellow Shirt Day.  As he left, he laughed and said “maybe we can start Yellow Shirt Day where I work”.  That would be cool, Mike!

It sometimes doesn’t take much to influence someone else in a positive way.

Simple actions touch hearts and in turn influence minds.  Whose heart are you touching today?

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version, please click here.

The Shadow Effect – The Inner Demon That Enables or Disables Our Life

For my Musings-in-a-Minute about “The Shadow Effect”, please go here.

I have seen a lot of self empowerment movies over the years, including the modern classics such as “The Secret”, “What the Bleep” and others. I enjoy and have been impacted by books such as the classic “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale and the powerful “Leading at a Higher Lever” by Ken Blanchard. They were all interesting, fascinating, positively disruptive and informative in their own ways.

However, when I watched “The Shadow Effect”, my personal definition of who I am and how I came to be was shaken to the core.

“The Shadow Effect”, like some of its contemporaries, sports an appealing cast, including Debbie Ford, Deepak Choprah, Mark Victor Hansen, Marianne Williamson and others. Many of these people are the current global leaders in the spiritually uplifting, motivational writing genre of authors.

The movie is based on the premise that each one of us has a shadow side to our life, a darker, potentially disempowering side that was formed early in our childhood through a number of less than positive experiences (at least as perceived by the child). This shadow plays a key role in determining your thoughts and actions through your life and therefore, many of the results in your life, both good and bad.

It’s not like some movies that suggest that if you think bad things, then bad things automatically happen because of some cosmic or karmic process. It is based on the medically accepted fact that any disabling thoughts in your mind will produce disabling actions. For example, if you grew up with a lack of self-worth in your life because you were constantly criticized or perhaps were abused, the shadow that results will cause you to not try as hard in life as you are capable of, since somewhere buried in your psyche you have the belief that you are not worthy of greatness anyway. Disabling thoughts produce a disabled result just as enabled thoughts produce enabled results.

This is also not a movie that you can just watch – watching will be insightful but not transformational. However, if you use the interactive version of the movie as I did and honestly perform the exercises that it presents, I think you may find the results profound.

There is a statistic that 85% of what is spoken to the average child before they reach the age of 5 is based upon things that they shouldn’t do or that they have done wrong. While children need to be taught, they are often not taught in a manner that is constructive. The destructive lessons create a shadow for many of us.

Try as we might to believe that we have no shadow, the movie posits that in fact everyone has one. Deepak Choprah notes

“If you don’t believe you have a shadow, then you are pathological”.

After watching the movie, I reached out to a number of people in the psychiatry, psychology and therapy industry and they confirmed that everyone has a shadow.

That’s not to say that everyone is disabled by their shadow.

In fact, that’s the point of the movie, the notion that once you have named your shadow, that it can be used to enable your life instead of unknowingly allowing it to disable your life. There is a great quote in the movie that sums this up perfectly:

"Our shadow - either we are going to use it or it is going to use you".

The shadow is a necessary component to create what Robert Fritz, the author of “The Path of Least Resistance” refers to as structural tension. Without this structural tension, pushing or pulling us internally and forcing us to grow as a human being, we would not have the internal motivation to grow, learn and produce the results that we are capable of.

The movie provides powerful information from experts in the space of understanding the origins of the shadow and how to bring it out into the open. It also contains compelling examples of people’s shadows and how, once they learned what their shadow was, they used it to make an incredible difference in the lives of many. If you aren’t weeping (or at least a little misty-eyed for us big, tough guys that only cry in private), then I would suggest that you need to get back in touch with your inner spirit.

I have been on a personal quest for authenticity lately and this movie arrived at a moment when I sought tools to help me explore my inner being; who I am, why I do what I do and what produces the results I produce (both good and bad).

And so I followed these exercises as recommended and the result was profound. My shadow stood out – stark, naked and in all its raw power. I was able to clearly define what my shadow is, what it’s source was and what feeds it to this day.

Of real importance to me, I was able to recognize it as the source for all the positive and negative results in my life, since it had formed the basis for my decisions and choices, which in turn have produced the majority of the results in my life. A lot of the inner turmoil that I had experienced in my life could now be traced back to this previously undefined negative energy.

The result of performing the exercises was so powerful that I promptly wrote a long note to my family and my closest friends. In this note, I was totally transparent and authentic about what my shadow looked like, how it came to be and how it impacted my life to this point (the good and the bad).

Having named the elephant in the room, I now have a chance to proactively embrace my shadow, to use its effects and its power to enable me to make better choices for myself and others.

How is this done? You’ll need to watch the movie to find out.

I will say this. To name and embrace your shadow takes a lot of courage. To not embrace your shadow is up to you but to not do so perhaps reduces the phenomenal potential of your life and with that, perhaps your sense of purpose, happiness and contentment.

Do you have the courage? I believe you do. I also believe that you deserve greatness in your life.

Embrace your purpose, your gifts and the lessons from your life.

Watch this movie and be prepared for a new journey in your life.

To purchase a copy of the movie, go here.

To watch it online, you can find it here.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For my Musings-in-a-Minute about “The Shadow Effect”, please go here.

A Quest for Authenticity – How Many Lives Are You Living?

For my “Musings-in-a-Minute” version of “A Quest for Authenticity”, please click here.

I am running into more and more people these days who are living two or more completely different lives.

One life is the life of their dreams – passionate and living on purpose.  In this life, they are living their dreams, creating their own companies, making a huge, positive impact on the world.  Many of them are best-selling authors, in-demand speakers or high-powered consultants offering advice to the elite.  Their home life is right out of Leave it to Beaver, the Brady Bunch or some other idyllic family experience.  They live in a world where they speak freely and passionately about their purpose, their faith, their ideals and core values and their vision of the world. It is a beautiful life without fear of anything.

What a beautiful image they weave.

The other life is the life the same people are currently experiencing.  They are frustrated with their boss, their business partner, their client, their spouse, their children, their President or Prime Minister or someone else.  They feel frustrated that nobody seems to care about their vision for the world.  They are afraid to expose their core values, their faith or their belief structure.  They are afraid to stand up and speak out when they witness something that is legally, ethically or morally incorrect.  With this in mind, they assume their own personality is flawed or unworthy and thus they create new personas based on the situations they find themselves in.

Life is challenging enough when you have one life to live.

How do these people manage when they are living two or more lives?  They live one in private, one at home, one with friends, one at work, one at church …. the list goes on.

No wonder people are more stressed now than ever – they are worn out trying to be something that someone else wants them to be.

What’s wrong with us just being ourselves?

As with many things in life, we are either all in it or not in it at all.  This applies to us living our life on purpose, embracing the talents, gifts, resources and dreams that each of us are blessed to have.

How can we expect to establish momentum and traction in life when we are living so many lives at once?  That’s a lot of traction to acquire and will result in a life of complexity and frustration.

Consider these examples:

1. The person who witnesses an illegal act in an organization and chooses to say nothing so that they will continue to be perceived as a team player or so that it doesn’t impact their ability to score some other position they are seeking.

2. The person who joins boards or organizations that are totally out of congruence with their own personal values, but they do so because it “looks good on the resume”.

2. The individual who has a strong faith in God or other Higher Authority but keeps it to themselves when amongst friends or coworkers so as to not be portrayed as a Bible-thumping proselytizer to be avoided.

3. The person who talks incessantly about the dreams they have for self-employment or rebuilding their organization – and years later are still telling the same story after having made almost no effort to put the dream into action.

4. The team leader or company owner who constantly complains about their team in private but publically praises them (praising them because they know that a team’s performance is a reflection of its leader).

5. The people that protect (or even promote) a “look the other way” policy, since they know if someone really knew what was going on in the organization, the person in charge would be questioned as to why such apathy and indifference have gone on for so long.

6. The folks who attain some level of public office and immediately focus on how to get re-elected, forgetting that they are there to represent a group of people.

7. The people who draw too much from their network, expecting everything for free but who feel incensed if the network pushes back and requests compensation for knowledge shared (or the network reaches out to them and asks of their time for free in return).

8. Leaders who hide behind complexity and noise on their projects because they don’t want people to see that there may be something they can’t do.

9. People who promote or teach the “miracle product du jour”, knowing that they are doing it for the money and that they don’t really believe in the value of what they are pushing.

Some people are oblivious of living multiple lives.  Many people realize the multiple lives they are living and for them, this adds extra stress, because they want to escape from those multiple lives – to get back to the core of what they are.

For some reason that escapes them, it is easier said than done.

However, as in many situations, they are driven by fear.

1. Fear of not being accepted.

2. Fear of having a dream that others may ridicule.

3. Fear of expressing an interest, belief or value that others may not embrace or support.

4. Fear of expressing their faith at a time when some people may not find it “cool”.

5. Fear of being perceived as not being in control of their life, be it personally, professionally or otherwise.

6. Fear that we have only one whack at something (as in political office) and so rather than being judged on our performance, we immediately set out to assure our continued re-election by becoming vague, fuzzy and not clearly aligned with any issue.

7. Fear of not being viewed as intelligent, good lucking, connected, skillful, empowered or anything else as our peers.

8. Fear of failure, thereby introducing the notion that it looks better to be thinking big all the time than to risk it all and fail. 

Since we are bound up by these and other fears, it is better to portray ourselves as the ideal person in the other person’s eyes.  That way, you feel more comfortable with the “new you” since it seems to draw accolades from others.

Guess what?

We will attract people much more in congruence with who we are when we express our true self – when we are authentic with ourselves and others.

After all, if we are not our true selves, how do we know that any of our relationships are authentic?  There’s a good chance that our relationships with different people are as artificial as the personalities that we created in order to be connected with them in the first place.

We discover how real or artificial our public personas are when we need help.  If people vanish when we need them, there’s a good chance we have not built our relationships on solid, authentic values and belief systems.

Why would we want to create a life that is that complicated?

Isn’t life complicated enough?

As Scott M. Peck wrote in The Road Less Travelled, the opening line is “Life is difficult”.

Given that life is difficult, why don’t we choose to live one life ?

One that allows us to embrace and maximize our gifts and talents.

One that allows us to live by our core values, not someone else’s.

One that will occasionally cause life to be pretty scary but will produce more powerful results, important learning lessons and rich memories.

One that will have a greater potential to leave a positive legacy on this planet, since I doubt that any of us are dreaming of a life of smaller results than we are currently experiencing.

One that allows us to live by our faith if that is an important part of our life.

One that may produce fewer relationships but relationships that will be stronger, higher quality and more authentic.

When we reveal our true self, we attract people and circumstances that are more in alignment with our core values and belief structures.

When we do this, we live one life, a much simpler concept than multiple lives.

That’s not to say that this automatically makes life easy.

However, when life gets complex, if we are living by our core values and are aligned with others with similar values, it helps to know that we should push through because the results are worthy enough to persevere for.

If we are pushing something that we are not in alignment with, then we often wonder why we should bother.  After all, we may be pushing for something important for someone else and not for ourselves – living a life for someone else.

If that’s the life we want to live, then we should select a person that we are living our life for and ask them if we can leave their name on our headstone when our end-of-days has arrived.

We might as well, since we lived their life based on their values, beliefs and expectations anyway.

Wouldn’t it better to be remembered for who we are and not for how we reflected the best of someone else?

Exactly – so what are we waiting for?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For my “Musings-in-a-Minute” version of “A Quest for Authenticity”, please click here.

Creating A Different Kind of Noise

What a cacophony we are bombarded with these days:

• increasing issues regarding global warming
• terrorism
• the Iraq war
• the war in Afghanistan
• coming soon according to some – the war against Pakistan or some other nation that displeases us
• an energy crisis
• a health crisis
• a financial crisis
• a public wave of murder / suicides related to the financial crisis
• swine flu (just when you thought you had reached your saturation point of bad news)
• a level of political correctness so powerful that we can’s say anything that might offend anybody (which means we can say very little)
• a level of political bullying, such that if you voice specific opinions on certain subjects, you are immediately publically vilified (meanwhile we say – it’s a good thing we aren’t as ignorant to the opinions of others as they were in the 15th century).
• an increased sense of paranoia that something or someone is ready to kill us at any moment unless we relinquish our freedom in exchange for security.  Interestingly enough, the people we are relinquishing our freedom to are the people who tell us we are in trouble.
• a litany of misinformation, including the soldiers of Abu Ghraib  prison who were punished as rogues that violated the human rights of Iraqis when we now discover they were acting under orders from the top of the US administration.

Is it any wonder that our minds don’t melt from an overload of such negative information?

I think they have melted somewhat – we just haven’t figured it out yet.  Some people suggest that our minds have melted so badly that we have lost the ability to self diagnose or that we have correctly diagnosed the issues but we are too tired or afraid to do anything.

I don’t believe this to be true – I believe that our passion burns hot and deep.  Many of us just need a little help bringing this burning desire to the surface.

When I write blogs or articles that reference the need to assert our passion more, to love others more, to follow our faith more (however we define it) and to make a greater difference in the world, hundreds of people privately applaud me but most are afraid to do so in public. 

They fear repercussions from family, friends and co-workers.  Some are politicians more focused on being re-elected than doing what they know is the right thing.  As one friend noted – '”Do you realize that your thoughts are needed but not welcome in the circles of authority?”.

How unfortunate.

In a part of the world founded on encouraging an exchange of thoughts (without necessarily having to agree with them), incubating a belief in the “American Dream” (or the Canadian equivalent), being passionate about the things important to us, holding civil and corporate leaders to specific standards of morals and values, and championing rights and freedoms important to our ancestors, it seems to me that we are losing the strength or interest to assert our beliefs, our passions and most importantly, our voice. 

Some of us have become intimidated to the point where many of us (not all, thankfully) fear for our reputation if we publically follow our heart.  Meanwhile, our spirits may feel crushed by the constant bombardment of bad news and we are caught in an internal tug of war, knowing what needs to be done but being afraid to do it.

Sometimes it is difficult to see that in this onslaught of bad news there are passionate people out there making a difference in the areas where we need it most – empowering us to effect positive change for our environment, promoting the health and wellness of people around the planet, building peace within humanity and strengthening the ecological / economical future of our planet.

We should be grateful for these people.

We should find a group that aligns with what we hold to be important for ourselves and our families and join that group.

Groups like Canada’s World, World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, Oxfam, the Clinton Foundation and others are leading the way to making a difference.

If you don’t know who to speak to, reach out to someone like me – people like me love to connect passionate people with other passionate people.

If you don’t like these organizations, don’t complain about them.  Use your energy to help them improve their offering and execution.  If you feel that you caught in a trap of excessive complaining without action, reach out to this group, A Complaint Free World.  They’ll help you get back on track.

If existing groups still don’t work for you, create a new group that makes a difference.

Whatever you do, find a way to help contribute to the needs of the world.  Don’t wait – many of the challenges on this planet are accelerating and need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Let’s create a different kind of noise – one built around making a difference instead of focusing on how things are allegedly falling apart.  It would be great if our actions spoke so loudly, that we would not be able to hear each other speak.

Many famous writers and philosophers over the years, going back to biblical times, note that we create what we focus on.

So let’s stop focusing on the end of times and instead, focus on a world filled with people aspiring to make a difference for others.

As the great Louis B. Armstrong sang in “What a Wonderful World”:

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are also on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin’.. how do you do
They’re really sayin’......i love you.

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more.....than Ill never know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world

It is indeed a wonderful world.

If we really love our children and our children’s children, we’ll keep it that way.

For those who follow sports, it’s like being up three games to nothing in a best of seven series.

It’s ours to win or lose.

What side do you prefer to be on?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Taking a Break – Recharging to Take Charge

I was recently reading about US military tests in the fifties where they would subject pilots to extreme g-forces to see what humans could endure and to determine what training could improve their endurance.

The tests went like this:

The pilot was strapped into a seat that was mounted on what was essentially a rocket on rails.  When the rockets were ignited, the whole contraption flew down the rails at breakneck speed (it had no brakes) with no guidance necessary as it simply followed the rails it was mounted upon.  At some point, the passenger passed out and was simply along for the ride.

After the motors burned out, the device then coasted for some distance before it came to a halt, the device and its passenger both completely spent.

The rocket motors were reloaded, the passenger rested and the process was repeated the next day.

I wonder if many people today feel like that person sitting upon this rocket on rails – flying pell mell down the rails at the start of the day, with no means to change the speed or direction and being exhausted by the end of the day.

Think of some of the challenges we are experiencing that create pressure in our lives today:

• We have a booming economy one minute (supposedly) and then it collapses the next minute (with some exaggeration, of course).   The people who either architected it or didn’t see it coming now tell us to trust their ability to fix it. 
• Ben Bernanke, top man at the Federal Reserve, tells us a couple of weeks ago that all the numbers look great and he sees the end of the recession in sight.  Two hours later, statistics regarding consumer spending, unemployment and such are released and suggest the complete opposite and that the end is nowhere in sight.
• Governments such as Canada have changed their strategy from economy stimulation to making sure that the employment insurance system can hold up under the strain.  This suggests that they have given up trying to fix it and perhaps want to hold on and hope everything works out. 
• Billions are spent on airline safety annually while some insiders suggest that this is a facade to make you feel comfortable about travel since weapons still routinely get onto commercial aircraft.  How about the armed hijacker who stormed onto a Canjet aircraft with 170+ people on it yesterday and held them all hostage before local authorities took the plane back?
• Billions are spent on the drug problem in the US while the flow of guns south and drugs north continues largely unabated.
• Unemployment and foreclosures are running neck and neck to establish new records of despair.
• War, pestilence and disease continues in the world.  We have it within our power to fix a lot of this but we don’t make as much progress as we could or should.
• Global warming is coming with a vengeance despite our meetings and conferences.  Here’s a thought – maybe just talking about something doesn’t fix it.  Action must begin with dialog. Dialog must result in action or it is just that - dialog.

Tough stuff.  Positive thinking experts say that we shouldn’t think about it because it will bring us down.  I think we’re already pretty low.

I wonder if sometimes we need to be brought down, to be grabbed by the throat, so that we can look some of this stuff in the eye, know it and understand it and then take responsibility for wrestling it to the ground.

Not thinking about it doesn’t necessarily make it go away.

Maybe we need to absorb all of this stuff and let it touch our holy discontent as Bill Hybels notes in his powerful book by the same name.  After it has percolated internally for a bit and really gotten us stirred up, maybe we can shake off the apathy we feel as we expect someone else to fix it.  Bodie Thoene noted “Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand”.

Maybe we can all work together to fix things instead of waiting for someone else or believing that we have the solution that no one else has, thus preferring to be a one-man-band rather than a collaborator.

I wonder if many of us would take more responsibility if we could only catch our breath from the wild ride that we call Life.

I think we would.  I believe that the average person would love to make a greater contribution to the greater good.

With that in mind ……

We need to recharge to take charge

Many of us say we can’t take any time off because we are needed for this, that and the other thing.  People who believe this who are forced for one reason or another to take some time off discover when they return that the Earth is still here and it is still running as well as it was before.

Perhaps our belief that the world won’t carry on without us is more ego-based – the hope or belief that being essential for the great machine of Life helps us to feel better about ourselves.

The truth is that each of us has an important role to play – none of us have the ONE role that keeps everything moving.

Maybe we need to take more breaks during the turmoil of the day to stop and ask, “How am I doing”?

How about asking this question.

What legacy am I contributing towards for the children of tomorrow and for their children?

I like to take a break several times a day and record observations in my journal about how I am doing in the following areas:

Faith – how am I doing in regards to my faith in God and my faith in the goodness and intelligence of people to create positive, long-lasting, sustainable impact on Earth?

Virtue – how well am I doing today in regards to adhering towards moral excellence (however I define it)?

Knowledge – have I learned something new today that I can apply towards improving my life and the life of others?

Self Control – how much self control am I exercising towards not being distracted by things that don’t bring myself and others closer to our purpose and passion?

Perseverance – am I still driving towards that which is important for my purpose and passion or am I just coasting along, wasting time that can never be recovered?

Godliness – do my thoughts reflect what I think God would think about?  In other words, if one thinks of the Great Compassion as those things that would make God cry or be angry, what am I doing to address them?

Kindness – what am I doing to grow my understanding of others and their actions and do my actions exemplify my belief in compassion and sharing?

Love – what have I done to share love today?  What have I done to welcome love today?  What have I done to encourage this in others today?

In other words, if I don’t stop a few times a day and perform this checkpoint, how do I know if I am on track or if I need to make a few corrections or improvements?

It is easy to allow the day to slip away in activity instead of productivity.

When I make a conscious step to assess how I am tracking and make corrections along the way, I feel like I have made a better difference to myself and others.

This brings a greater sense of fulfillment towards my purpose and with this, a reduction in stress – I feel like I am controlling my Life instead of my Life controlling me.

It helps me feel like I am making a difference for the children.

People criticized President Bush towards the end of his second term, claiming that his actions were digging a hole that President Obama couldn’t get out of.  Whether this is true or not is not the point.

Let’s make sure we don’t do this to our children.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

Coming Out of the Closet

…. or …. Living A Life of Authenticity.

Authenticity – The quality or condition of being authentic, trustworthy, or genuine. – American Heritage Dictionary

I’ve been wrestling with the notion of authenticity recently or perhaps it has been wrestling with me. 

I was listening to my parish priest the other day speak about parents bringing their children to the Church for baptism.  As he noted, we won’t seen them again until confirmation.  After that, we won’t see them again until they get married, they need to be buried or they run into trouble and seek the help of God (demanding instant help, of course).  Other than that, God has no place in their lives and yet they can be quite demanding when they are in need.  They also note on the census form that they are Christians, using their own definition.

Authenticity.

I was recently exposed to a group of speakers discussing personal empowerment.  Some of the subjects included how respect and honesty for fellow man were keys to success and that self-actualization techniques and a positive belief structure could manifest anything we want.

In private, the speakers admitted through action and word that respect and honesty for fellow man is a waste of time.  The real world, they believe, is a d0g-eat-dog world where you need to lift a dollar out of a gullible person’s pocket before someone else does anyway.  If you don’t like what they are doing, then you can “get over it” (a direct quote from one of them).

Authenticity.

I know of some people who recently started a new business about helping people become financially successful .  They cite their own success as the model they wish to teach to others.

Unfortunately, those of us who know these individuals know that some are in bankruptcy or are about to become bankrupt.  Keep in mind, they are not teaching people lessons learned from their experience, something that would be incredibly powerful and useful.  They are teaching people to follow their example to reap the result they have reaped.  Their unfortunate followers don’t know the truth about what their teachers have harvested.

Authenticity

Last week, I was in a coffee shop and sat next to the pastoral committee for a local church.  For the hour they were there, they discussed how everybody in their church are idiots (actually they used the F-bomb liberally) and complained about how these alleged imbeciles interfered with their plans to control the church the way they felt it needed to be controlled.  Excellent church leadership, I noted to myself – I wonder what model they were following!

Authenticity

Of all the wonderful business people I have worked with, I have also experienced some business leaders who publically wave the flags of teamwork, growth, learning and contribution and in private, lambast employees and share personal and private matters of their employees with others because it helps them feel important.  How about those leaders who set their team members up for failure before the employee exposes them for the hypocrites or incompetent leaders that they are?

Don’t get me wrong, there are great leaders out there.  However, we need a lot more of them.

Authenticity

How about the person who blows up an abortion clinic and kills some of the staff and patients there because the bomber believes that all human life must be preserved at all cost?

Authenticity

What about the person who feels compelled to criticize you incessantly under the guise of “I’m a friend telling you this for your own good” but when you return the “favor”, you are criticized for sticking your nose into someone else’s business or not knowing what you are talking about?

Authenticity

How about the politician that ……………….  Wait – let’s not go there (there are some good politicians also!)  :-)

Authenticity.

I wonder if many of the challenges we are experiencing right now in the world stem from a lack of authenticity.  We are too busy being one thing in public and another thing in private.

How difficult this makes our life.  For some of us, it means balancing the actions that we take against good, strong core values that we possess because we fear that if we follow our core values, it may cost us a job, a relationship, prestige or something else important to us.

For others, it means pretending to have good, strong core values in public while in private, wrestling with the frustration that strong values get in the way of everything.  For those people, they feel that the only way to be successful is to portray what they believe the public wants to see.

Either way, it means that a lot of us are off balance as we move through life at a million miles per hour and live a life out of congruence with our belief structures.

I am not criticizing the people in either scenario.  The reasons we do these things are based on our genetics and our life experiences.  If we had the same genetics and life experiences as someone we are criticizing, we would in fact be just like them.  This is a sobering thought that should lead us to respect everyone else a lot more.

So it is not the people who are inauthentic that is the issue – it is the act of being inauthentic itself that has become problematic.

It prevents us from being who we really are and thereby really unleashing our incredible talents and abilities.  As long as we are pretending to be someone else, then we are holding back something, living our life while holding back our reserves strategically “for the most appropriate time”.  Many of us go to our grave without having used many of our incredible gifts and talents.  As Wayne Dyer and others have warned us not to do – "”Don’t go to your grave with your music still in you”.

Someone once asked me what would happen if people could just be themselves and follow their heart.  I said there would be at least 10,000 more bad poets in the world.  We laughed at that but it occurs to me now – it would be better to have 10,000 happy (but bad) poets than 10,000 people who are unfulfilled and creating troubles for themselves and others because they are acting out of congruence with their core values.

Here is an interesting exercise I encourage you to try.  At the end of the day, write down a list of all the people who annoyed or disappointed you and how they annoyed or disappointed you. 

Take a close look at the list when you have finished compiling it.  After you have examined the list, it would be interesting to see how many of these things originate from others versus how many actually originate from within ourselves but we see them reflected in others.  It’s an interesting insight into areas of our own life that we might want to polish up a bit.

I recently disconnected myself from electronica for a couple of weeks to provide me with an opportunity to just be – to think about my life experiences in a number of areas:

1. the incredible gifts and opportunities I have been given
2. the strengths and talents I have developed
3. the areas where I need to improve and grow
4. my abilities
5. my personality
6. my preferences in just about everything
7. my education experiences
8. the places I have traveled
9. my friends
10. my work experiences
11. my family

I am grateful for the entire collection of memories, the good and the bad.

However, as I worked through this process, I realized I have been in a struggle for authenticity for a number of years and didn’t realize it until I took the time to slow down to just think.  I also realized that this lack of authenticity wasn’t allowing me to shine in all aspects of my life as my public and private personas clashed in a never-ending battle for supremacy.  There has been a inner restlessness that I have wrestled with for years as my public and private intentions and execution clashed.

I often danced with “who I want to be when I grow up” and made suggestions and hints to some people about the next phase in my life.  However, I never embraced the next phase nor followed through with it.

Today the battle ends as I embrace that which is important to me – the core values that permeate me and define who I am.

Today I dedicate myself to a life of faith and service to God, following a Path I believe God has called me to follow.  I am involved in a discernment process which I hope will lead me to a life of ordained service within the Church, bringing my skills, talents and strengths to a global organization that is empowered to help others but which needs an injection of new blood, broader life experiences and new thinking in order to achieve more positive results.

I believe that my life experiences have prepared me for this decision and it is a calling I am humbled and privileged to answer.  Maybe I should write a book - “From Wall Street to Ordination – A Journey of Gratitude”. :-)

Where will this take me ultimately?  I have no idea.  However, I do know that it will probably be the first time in my life that I have been 100% authentic with myself and frankly, I am excited to see what that produces.

How about authenticity in your life?  How is your inner dialog coming?  If you are in complete congruence publically and privately, I congratulate you – you are blessed. 

If you are experiencing an inner dialog similar to the one I have experienced, balancing your internal values and intentions with your external execution, I encourage you to take some quality quiet time to explore your inner self, “stick your toe in the water” and explore where your mind and spirit would like to take you.  

Even if you make no changes in your life, the experience can be profound and may provide a foundation for a future change for you or someone else.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

When the Student is Ready ....

... the teacher will appear.

So they say.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop, listening to people speak about the problems that confront the world - the economic crisis, poverty, disease, the homeless, depression in people, failing healthcare and education systems, crumbling infrastructure, global warming and whatever else they can think of that strains our confidence and faith in a positive future.

As I listen to this litany of concerns that would challenge some of the greatest optimists that have ever walked the face of the earth, I started to think about how well we apply what we have learned from the most impactful teachers and guides that have entered our respective spheres of influence.  I'm wondering what those teachers would say to us now if they were sitting at the tables around us, challenging us to apply our gifts to take on these global concerns.

From my own perspective, I'm not referring to the obvious list of teachers that come to mind:

• our parents, siblings, spouses, children or other members of our family
• God / Goddess / Allah or other supreme deity we worship
• Gandhi or any other brilliant mind that has walked the earth
• good friends who have been significant in our lives in other ways (that's a series of blogs in itself).

I'm thinking of the people we have encountered in our lives who, with no obligation to us as strangers, took the time to teach us by sharing their knowledge, life experiences and insight in a meaningful and impactful way.

We all have those teachers who arrived at pivotal points in our lives, made a long lasting impression and possibly moved on (or passed on to what follows after our time on Earth is complete).

Sometimes the lessons they taught us have had no perceived impact until we acquired enough life experiences to finally understand the lesson.

I'll share some examples from my life.  As I do so, I invite you to think of your own examples.

When I was in grades 1 to 3, Margaret R. introduced me to the love of reading and learning.  She created a joy of acquiring knowledge within me that burns strong to this day.  If a day goes by where I haven't learned something, then I try twice as hard the next day to make up for the opportunity missed.

Margaret also taught me something else.  One day when I would not stop talking, she asked me to come to the front of the class.  I was terrified - these were still the days when a nice "yardstick across the knuckles" was the common punishment for children who misbehaved.  When I quietly walked to the front of the class, she made me face the class and then informed the class that my punishment would be 5 kisses - the class deciding where the 5 kisses would be planted.

So after the enduring the tremendous embarrassment of being kissed on the forehead, the nose, the top of my head and on each cheek, I sat down quietly and was silent, my ears burning bright red with embarrassment.

It was a far worse punishment to a 7-year old than a whack across the hand.  I would have endured the whack across the hand, felt like somewhat of a hero and moved on.  To be kissed in front of my fellow classmates was dreadful.

Looking back on it as a 43-year old, I realize it was the best punishment I could have ever received.  In that simple lesson, she taught all of us that to make a point through violence was far less effective than to do so with love and humor.

The lesson is more enduring as well.  I may not have remembered the yardstick.  I do remember the love.

Some of the primers that we used back in those days had a lot of content written or edited by Emily H.  The flow of her work and the way it touched my mind and heart without being complex in nature sticks with me to this day.  Her work, which I still enjoy reading (both her new material and the material I read when I was 6, 7 or 8 years old) reminds me of the power of words to inspire, to motivate and to leave a life-long impression on the reader.

When I was in high school, I had a math teacher named Newton M.  Newton had a few simple rules - no gum chewing, no looking at your watch ("It's a lazy man who watches the clock", his voice would boom if he saw you) and if you were done with all of your work, you were to sit up straight and twiddle your thumbs.  If your thumbs got tired, you reversed direction and twiddled them in the opposite way.

Newton taught us that your culture and heritage are integral parts of who you are and that you must learn as much about your cultural history as you can.  "If you don't know where you come from", he reasoned, "how do you know where you are going?"

He also embraced the notion that respect is earned and not demanded.  While many of our school teachers at the time demanded that we respect them because of their title, he treated us like the young adults we were and we loved him for it and gave him equal respect back.  The toughest teacher in the school was one of the most loved. 

I found out after he passed away that he spent every spare dime he had on the kids whose families didn't have sufficient money for clothing, shoes or school books.  He did it without the need for recognition (in fact, he avoided it), he did it frequently and did it even when he had little to give.  He was despised by many teachers for doing it but did it for many years anyway.  This lesson of anonymous, unselfish service to those who need it (but don't request it) and against the beliefs of others who condemned him for it lives with me to this day.

Richard G. was a business associate and mentor of mine during part of my career on Wall Street.  I previously wrote about Richard back in November of 2008 - you can find this blog entry here.  Before he passed away, Richard taught me that even in the cutthroat world of business (and New York is as tough a place as any), good guys don't have to finish last.  He and Bruce P., who I had worked for a few years earlier, both lived by the same philosophy - "Take care of your people, take care of your customer and everything else takes care of itself".  Richard and Bruce also reminded me many times that successful people don't need to be callus, ruthless or cold.   To be successful, Richard and Bruce both insisted on:

• being in tune with your team members individual strengths, skills, talents, knowledge, passion and purpose
• knowing where your team members are in their life journey
• understanding how to find the best fit for each team member within the context of who they are and the needs of the organization they work for - failure to find a place where a team member fit properly was oftentimes more a failure of the leader than the team member
• knowing when to delegate and when to step in to guide (not to take control)
• living with transparency, honesty and humor
• not being afraid to ask for help or admit that a leader has made a mistake.

Richard would say that "applying these thoughts without fear can only produce positive results".  Knowing how to apply this correctly is a a gift that harvests the greatest results personally and professionally for an organization, its teams and the people and organizations they serve.  It's still the model I use when I help organizations rebuild their teams.  Jim, a friend of mine, reminded me recently that this model is not welcome in the corporate world.  He is right but I do it anyway. :-)

When I was working on some goal setting programs for inner city youth a few years back, I was extremely gung-ho to get out there and get stuff done.  I was in a hurry to make an impact, the need was great and so I reasoned that there was no time to waste.

I discovered that being in a hurry and seeing an urgent demand does not necessarily guarantee that things will happen quickly.  My belief that urgency of need guaranteed that everyone would climb on board with the same sense of urgency rapidly hit a brick wall.

At that time, Bret D. arrived in my life, bringing his business knowledge in the space, his passion for education and youth, his love for people and his life experience in the same arena I was working in.  With careful coaching, he was able to reset my expectations without quenching the fire that burned within me. 

He challenged every assumption and assertion in a manner that taught me how to refine my promotion and implementation, all the while increasing my passion instead of diminishing it.  It takes a real gift to guide someone without them feeling that they might as well give up because their initial assumptions needed strong refinement.  It also takes an incredible gift to encourage and teach without crushing the ego of the person who feels that they have it all figured out.  I had been successful in everything else, I thought - how tough could this be? :-) 

Today, I am making a transition from the business world that has provided me with incredible friendships, memories and abundance in many aspects of my life.  My Life purpose is drawing me towards a Life of deeper faith and service to humanity.  As I would expect, another teacher has arrived when I need it.

Dr. Carmel D., who is a chaplain and professor at the theology school where I have been studying theology part time for the past 8 months, brings an incredible calming presence and insightful mind to her students.  Her techniques for guiding students through a discernment process for defining a new path in Life are powerful.  Her strong faith in God and her belief that every person is important and brings God-given, God-inspired talent to Life is inspiring.  Her way of providing the student with the tools to discern for themselves how to bring their gifts to bear for the benefit of themselves and others is life-transformational.  Her relationship with her students is built on respect, love and God's purpose for each of us.

So when I think of these teachers and return my thoughts to the challenges I hear people discussing around me, a few things come to mind.

The teachers I described have taught me some significant things that have strong relevance to today's challenges and the role I can play with others in addressing these challenges:

• Know who you are and where you come from and love yourself for it.  If you can't get past this step, everything else can be very challenging and complicated.
• Loving others can help us overcome our apathy or indifference to what's going on around us - if we truly care for someone else, we know that we must help them.
• Love works better and faster than violence, distrust or dishonesty.
• Fear has no place in our life - we must push forward and expect positive results.  We live in a world conspiring to shower us with abundance - we will never partake in it if we are afraid to lift ourselves and others to share this abundance.
• Knowledge is important to solving many of the challenges before us - we must endeavor to be in a position that provides for constant learning.
• Sharing your knowledge unselfishly and in a way that moves the minds and hearts of others to action produces profound results.
• Give respect to earn respect - demanding respect for any reason is setting yourself up for some incredible disappointment.
• Give unselfishly to others and don't expect payment or recognition.
• Build your life around collaboration, honesty and transparency - it produces much more profound results and is much less complicated.
• Don't try to do everything yourself - there's lots of room to share the credit and provide for opportunities for growth in others. Besides - it's a lot more fun and more gets done when we work together with our respective gifts.
• Put your ego away - we are all equal in Life potential. 
• During times of struggle, listen to what your inner Spirit, your instinct or your faith tells you to do.  Move towards your Purpose without fear.
• Build up the confidence of others.  Breaking others down not only sets them back, but doing so brings you down as well.

In class yesterday, my classmates and I were asked what we would identify as the most impactful story or theme from the Bible.

Mine comes from 1 Corinthians 16:13-14

Stand fast in your faith.  Be brave and be strong and all that you do, do it in love.

I think this quote succinctly ties together the themes taught to me by the teachers significant in my life.  If I can live by this creed, I can proudly say that I did my best for myself and others during my time on earth.

Now it's your turn.

Think about the significant teachers in your life.  If they were with you right now, what knowledge or insight would they share with you about your life or the world we live in?

What would they see in you that needs gentle correction or refinement?

What gifts and talents within you would they praise and draw your attention to?

What action would they encourage you to take regarding challenges in your life, in the life of someone else or in the world?

What insight from them can you share with others, to continue the legacy of learning, sharing and loving?

What indeed .............

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

What Matters

I ran into a lady in the supermarket the other day who was cursing the food manufacturers for giving us so much to choose from that it added frustration to her life. What a dilemma to have.

Her comment, coupled with a powerful Ash Wednesday homily I heard the other day about giving to others got me to thinking about how we choose life priorities.

Imagine 29,000 children, the number that die daily around the world from preventable disease and starvation, standing in front of your home or place of business. As you watch them, they begin to die one by one. You and the people around you are horrified at the sight and look for ways to run to the children, to help them in any way you can. As you hold them, they die in your arms and your heart is filled with anguish as you seek ways to help them. Your adrenalin is pumping through your veins and you will do anything to make a difference - even if you can save only one child.

Now imagine the same scenario but this time you are blindfolded and restrained. You can hear the cries of the children as they die, their final moments filled with suffering and pain. You are told you can't help them and you hear yourself crying out to the children while cursing the people who refuse to allow you to help them. Your emotions are running high because you feel helpless to comfort the afflicted and you weep at the sound of their suffering.

Now imagine a third scenario. The children are still dying but they are not in front of you, so you can't see them or hear them. Perhaps your heart feels a little pain, sadness or pity at the thought of them suffering. Perhaps it doesn't. If it does, it is nowhere near the intensity of the first two scenarios that I described. You may not feel compelled to rush out to find a way to help them in an impactful way or if you do feel compelled, you probably schedule a contribution for some time in the future.

Where is the sense of urgency?

Is it like the old Zen riddle of a tree falling in the forest, where people ask the question "Does a falling tree make any sound if there is no one to hear it"?

Can you hear the sound of children suffering from poverty, disease and malnutrition crying out for help?

Can you hear the sound of battered women crying out for support and justice?

Can you hear the sound of the homeless, crying out for love and shelter?

Why not? To me, it seems that their voices are so loud I can hardly think.

Maybe if no one is around the tree when it falls, perhaps it truly doesn't make a sound.

But we know it does.

By the time you read this blog (assuming 10 minutes to read it), 200 children under the age of five will have died around the world from preventable disease and starvation (that's about 10.5 million children per year). At the same time, 67 women will have been beaten by abusers in the US alone (an estimated 3.9 million victims per year).

While all these things happen, more money will be spent on a cure for baldness and erectile dysfunction than on seeking solutions for the problems that afflict a great number of people around the world.

While it is true that conditions of the poor have improved over the years, they could improve much faster if more of us focus on what really matters.

Do we really know what matters?

We can be like the lady in the supermarket that I referred to earlier, complaining that we have too much to choose from.

We can agonize over the selections on a restaurant menu, wondering if it will be the lamb or the prime rib. During the 15 minutes you contemplate this important decision, 300 children will die of malnutrition, death bringing escape from the cruelty of one meal a day (or less than one meal for many).

We can spend a week wondering what color our next car will be and be in total angst over it, totally consumed by the unfairness of life that we should have so many options to choose from.  200,000 children will die from malnutrition during the week.

We can spend a month or more planning next year's vacation, making sure that every minute of every day is filled with the most bliss possible with the least amount of worry and downtime.  More than 870,000 children will die from starvation and disease during this timeframe.

We can spend a couple of years planning a wedding, knowing that 50% or more of them will fail anyway, making the money and time spent seem to be wasted.  If we take two years, more than 20 million children will die from starvation as we make plans.

Meanwhile, the pressure of these things bring real worry, sleepless nights, confusion and frustration.

How unfair life is, we think.

Meanwhile, the things in life that really matter will continue to not get our attention as much as they should.

The great irony is that much of what we enjoy in the 21st century has been built on the backs of the poor and destitute, either within their own country or after bringing them from one country to another.

Some of us look upon the rest of the world with a sense of "if they would only be more civilized, perhaps we could help them more or they could help themselves in a better way".

Meanwhile inside our own world, as the financial crisis hammers us, we worry about tough decisions before us:

• having to buy less food for entertainment purposes (as opposed to food for nourishment)
• being forced to make our car last another year - "oh the pain of this recession, I really wanted the car with the new satellite radio feature"
• being forced to wait for the $2 million home until the banks loosen up their credit restrictions so that we can max ourselves out - I guess we'll have to suffer through the home we live in although some of us don't know how we'll make do with such a small Jacuzzi
• maybe some of us will have to suffer through the 40 pairs of shoes we own
• what about this golf bag - I can't be seen on the course with this piece of garbage?

Oh, the injustice of it all, we think - why are we suffering like this?

Meanwhile, good people in the western world lose their homes, wonder where the next meal comes from, lose healthcare benefits and unwillingly take a step closer to the way some cultures have lived their lives for centuries.

The point is that you don't have to go far to find people who are in need while we lament the loss of luxury.

If by some stroke of poor luck, we lost our electricity in the western world, think about what would happen here.

• No fuel refining and therefore few usable vehicles once fuel stockpiles run out.
• No heat or light in our homes for most of us.
• Minimal healthcare.
• Minimal clothing manufacturing.
• Minimal food harvesting and distribution.
• Minimal clean water.

As our society sinks down into the depths of our worst nightmares, we would turn to the rest of the world and say "Please help us - kindness and love for fellow man is what is most important in the world.  You can't allow us to suffer like this - it is inhuman and indecent.".

Oh, the wisdom that comes when the shoe is on the other foot.

Indeed.

We can assume that someone else will help them.  If we all assume this, then there are very few people actually helping those in need.

We can say we don't know how to help them. However, we are extremely creative when it comes to solving any other problem that confronts us.

We are always creative when we need to be for the things that are important to us.

The question is .... do we truly know what is important? 

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry