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The Lessons We’ve Learned as Entrepreneurs

May 21st, 2010

I’ve been going through a difficult period myself. There are some tremendously positive qualities about being an entrepreneur – being your own boss, setting your own agenda, and creating your own path, but it can’t be done alone. It is a process that requires collaboration and working with other people who you enjoy sharing ideas and creating content with. That’s what I miss most about my previous job. I’ve recently added some great people, and this is what excites me. As I said before, every step is an important part of the process. The things I took for granted 2 years ago, I don’t take for granted now.

Someone once told me, “you put two people in a room together – a man with experience and a man with money – and the man with experience ends up with the money and the man with the money ends up with the experience.” It’s great to be getting all these lessons, but at some point, I want to see some more results – and greater profits. But profits are not just monetary – they are spiritual and educational too. And herein lies the conundrum of the entrepreneur.

I met with Tony Hsieh out in Vegas last week and he told me that it really isn’t about the money. It’s about what makes you happy. Companies that put long-term happiness, culture, vision, and higher purpose before all else (so long as they have a business model) are the companies that thrive in the end. Research supports this – Good to Great by Jim Collins, Tribal Leadership. I have to trust this message as I’m learning it firsthand from others who have experienced it and are living it now as successful builders of businesses. But it takes time and patience, and patience can be a difficult quality to honor always. It’s not that I’m impatient, it’s just that I’m coming to realize that perhaps I’m not patient enough for the process I’ve created to work, so I have to speed up the process. Urgency is very important value to embrace.

It is about “showing up,” but it’s more about showing up to the thing that makes you happiest. Not what you think will make you happy, but what actually makes you happy, and sometimes it takes a lot of “showing up” to get to that point of realizing what makes you happy, as often what we think will make us happy isn’t what will actually make us happy. (And at least you’re figuring that out for yourself and not letting someone or something else determine that for you.) Hence, why you’re able to narrow in on what you’re really passionate about. Getting from A to C requires landing on B, and sometimes B is unpleasant, harsh, painful, but an integral part of the process and helps you understand which “C” you really want to land on. There is beauty in the difficult times, however. They make us stronger and more resilient.

At the end of the day, we want results. I want the best results possible as do you. So it really is about putting all the pieces together and understanding what results you want and the process that you want to take, create, be a part of to produce those results. Nothing is ever perfect or 100%. The 100% comes in knowing that you can’t control events, but that you can control the meaning of those events. Somewhere out there, there’s a great, happy, fulfilling and lucrative medium that is really more within than it is without, and that is what this entrepreneurship process is all about. That I have to believe.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Stay hungry, focused, and don’t be afraid to adapt and change. Know that nothing is a lost cause. You might not want to do your current project forever, but if you hadn’t done it, you’d never know, and I’m inclined to believe that you wouldn’t be able to get to where you go next if you hadn’t done it, because if it hadn’t been right for you, you would have never done it to begin with.

Be where you are now because where you are now will help you get to where you want to be – which is right here.

Posted in Author's Favorites, Spiritual, Wealth | 1 Comment »

Time – Use It Wisely

May 12th, 2010

In life we do not have equal opportunity. There are numerous resources to which many have lesser or greater access than others; there is no disputing this. What is equal in life is not opportunity, but time; however, we can create opportunity through our use of time. Theoretically, we all have 24 hours in a day. No more, no less. So why is there such disparity of productivity between capable people? It comes down to how we choose to use our time. This one quality can determine the quality of one’s life and has the ability to narrow the gap of inequality and expand opportunity. It is time for all of us to begin to use our time more wisely and to our own and society’s advantage.

I will break down our use of time in two categories: doing things now, and doing things tomorrow. We all need to get in the better habit of doing more things today that we know we should do and using our time to cultivate the skills that will benefit our futures and the future of our communities. There is no denying that we are facing some significant challenges today economically, socially, environmentally, educationally – to name a few. The way I see it, many of these problems are solvable. We just have to use our time better and apply ourselves to solve them.

Let me give an example. It’s a Tuesday night around 8pm and after a day at work, you sit down on the couch, pour yourself a drink and turn on the TV. You spend the next three hours of your time unproductively when you could have spent that time reading a book, volunteering, going to the gym, picking up a musical instrument or learning a new artistic skill. You don’t have to do this every night, but think of the difference it would make in your life if you improved your level of productivity by a few hours a week. What could you accomplish in a month or a year? What momentum could you create that would lead you to a greater vision and higher purpose for your life? It all comes back to how we use time.

What can we do to turn those down hours into hours of productivity? Most of us know what we need to do, but we don’t actually do it. So it’s not a matter of knowledge, but a matter of consequence. We need to make the consequences of inaction greater than the consequences of action. And in fact, those consequences of choosing unproductivity over productivity in life are immeasurably greater, but the problem is that they’re not visible in the short term. Years and years of compounded unproductivity leads to a highly undesirable state, but this state is highly ambiguous in the short term; it is difficult to see how three hours of inaction on a Tuesday night after a long day’s work could be problematic. But it is because it’s about habit. It’s not about the three hours as a standalone event (we all need time to unwind and relax) but the three hours over the course of a year, or a decade, or a lifetime is years of creativity, solutions, and innovations lost that could very well improve life for yourself, and perhaps even for humanity.

The question then becomes, how do we break this pattern of inaction and replace it with its more productive counterpart? The answer lies in mindfulness and consequence. First, you must bring attention to yourself when you are engaging in activities that are unproductive when it is in your capacity to be productive. At those times when you believe that it is in your capacity to be productive and pick up a hobby or solve a problem that needs a solution, then it is your responsibility and privilege to do so. I often look to people with years of experience in living fruitful lives in determining the best way to live. T. Boone Pickens is a man who has seen and experienced a lot. He says, “Every person who can work and stay active has an obligation to do so.” He is a man who as accomplished a great deal and who has also created a sound philosophical framework for himself about how to live a productive life. He finds many answers through his work; but not just his work, rather his purpose. As long as he is capable, he will contribute through his physical and mental efforts. He takes action through being mindful.

Second, you must ascribe consequence to your action – or inaction, for that matter. A poor use of time in the short term leads to a great disadvantage in the long term, both for yourself and for others. Think about all the time that you could spend on something productive or accretive to your life or society. Do you really need to watch the entire game on TV? Do you really need to go out and party every weekend? Is there a time when you can perhaps put a longer-term vision of what you can create in your life and in the world ahead of your short-term needs for pleasure? Choose your destiny wisely, or it will unwisely choose it for you.

Lastly, this is not about creating a life of rigid austerity. I often emphasize an idea to make a point because I think we need to push ourselves to grow and push the limitations of what we believe is possible. As Adidas says, “Impossible is nothing.” It is really about how we have dangerously created a convenient belief about our ostensible inability to accomplish a difficult task. Its achievement is fully within our grasp, but it will most likely take time to reach. Life is therefore less about monumental efforts everyday and more about doing little things well consistently. It’s about balance and understanding that it is in your favor to use your time as best as you possibly can. Time and the ability to use it well are incredibly powerful resources that we all have the ability to maximize.

When it comes down to it, we all want happiness, but there is often a misperception about those things that we think will make us happy and the things that will actually make us happy. Hard work and progress will make us happy. Procrastination – while comfortable in the short term – will not. If we want more money, a great relationship, a vacation, or more recognition, it all comes down to our need for arriving at happiness. But will these things – in and of themselves – give us happiness? I’m doubtful. That begs the question, how can happiness be best achieved? It comes down to progress. We are happy when we make progress, both in the physical act, and in the immediate comprehension of it upon achieving it. Happiness is not a static state; it is not found in a perpetual place of certitude. Rather it comes from process. Why is this helpful? Because progress comes from taking action, and if progress gives us happiness, and taking action gives us progress, then we all ought to be taking a lot of action to make us happy.

Rise up to the challenge and use your time that you have. The use of it will answer for you whether being more productive will add to your feeling of purpose or whether it takes away from it. And that is a great quality of taking action: it removes uncertainty because the very act of taking action creates certainty about an event whose result we were uncertain about before we resolved to take action. Use your time to enhance your life and create opportunity. Perhaps it will even lead to an innovation, an idea, or an action that ends up benefiting society – and that would certainly be a favorable consequence of time better spent.

Posted in Scott's Favorites | 1 Comment »

The 5 Books that Will Change Your Life

April 13th, 2010

In writing AIMbitious: A Life of Enlightened Self-Leadership over the last year and a half, there were numerous books that I read that added great value to my work and life. In a blog post called The 5 Books that Will Change Your Life I catalogue some of the best and most enlightening books I’ve read over the last eighteen months and highlight some of the key principles that make these books as powerful as they are. I’m confident that reading even one of them will give you new insights for all the creative ways to create more excitement and enhance the results in your life.

1) Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl

A story about a PHD psychologist who uses the power of his mind to find meaning in his life and ultimately survive Nazi Germany. It is a harrowing account of survival and mental perseverance. Frankl, who had a chance to flee Nazi Germany for the U.S. to pursue his psychiatric work, chose to remain with his parents and family amidst the backdrop of one of the most repressive and destructive regimes in human history. This book made me feel as though if a human can withstand years of unprecedented suppression and create conditions within his mind of optimism and opportunity, then there’s no reason that any of us can’t find optimism in our lives too.

Frankl’s psychology is called logotherapy – the importance of finding meaning in one’s life. So much of our quality of life depends far more on where we live mentally than physically. It is not the reality of the external world that determines the value we give to our lives, but the reality we create from an empowering internal psychology. The capstone quotation in the book, which Frankl borrows from Nietsche, is, “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” When we search for the Why in life – that is, when we understand what our purpose is – life becomes meaningful beyond measure, and physical circumstances – however difficult – prove inadequate contenders of the mind.

2) Success Built to Last – Porras, Emery, Thomson

Success Built to Last captures the essence of what it takes to create an enduring successful business and teaches how to practice rituals of meaningful entrepreneurship and creativity. The bottom line: love what you do and do what you love with passion and intensity. In interviewing hundreds of successful business owners, from billionaire CEOs to small business execs, the authors concluded that, “although popularity and affluence, for example, are nice outcomes, people prefer to define success as the ability to make a difference, create lasting impact, and being engaged in a life of personal fulfillment.”

We are at a clear turning point in the economy and our business lives where we need different and more enlightened standards and definitions of success. It is not enough anymore to merely create profit. Creating bottom-line wealth at the expense of social well-being undermines the purpose of an economy and capitalism. We are not always meant to live at the irreversible edge of avarice and greed. Success Built to Last shows how you can turn your passion and vision into a business and lucrative career that not only allows you to make a good profit, but that creates a positive contribution to the economy and society. Business at its core is about relationships and serving others. When you can focus on those two principles as the core of your business, the profit will follow. For anyone looking to start a business the right way – to ensure that your business lasts and makes a positive impact – this book is a must read.

3) Four Hour Work Week – Timothy Ferriss

Tim’s book reminds us that we have to take risks in our lives and that very few things are as irreversible or permanent as we believe. If you leave your job to pursue a once-in-a-lifetime travel opportunity, chances are you’ll be able to get another one. The leading ambassador of lifestyle design, Tim offers practical guidance for how to start a business that allows you to travel six months out of the year, outsource most of your responsibilities, and focus on enjoying life rather than living in a hamster wheel of success.

Life is short – but working only 4 hours a week is shorter. There’s no longer a need to put your dreams on layaway for “someday” to arrive. That day is now. Tim teaches you to be the master architect and sculptor of your own life and through his insights and experiences is able to condense into days what took others decades to achieve. Lifestyle design allows every one to become their own Picasso of the moment while living with passion, and where everyday can be a new, interesting adventure rather than mere routine. If you want to become fluent in a language in three months, create automatic cash flow through internet and outsourcing techniques, or are someone who has a dream life waiting to be created, this book gives you the tools – and the reason – to get started today.

While I always knew intellectually it was acceptable to take time off and pursue my own lifestyle, 4 Hour Work Week provides the mental and physical template to go out and experience the world and understand that your lifestyle and business need not be a mutually exclusive partnership.

4) The Art of Loving – Erich Fromm

Fromm’s Art of Loving provides keen insight into relationships and loving as an art. For a book written almost sixty years ago, it is extremely prescient and effectual in addressing contemporary issues of love and how we can all create more meaningful relationships with others and with ourselves. One of Fromm’s most poignant remarks is found in his commentary on love not receiving proper respect in the society’s hierarchy of values. “And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art [of love], in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power—almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.”

There is a balance. We clearly have to pursue financial success, but we can do it with a more open heart and mind. Fromm shows us how – philosophically, emotionally, and practically. Love is one of those spiritual currencies that is at the root of so many issues in society – both good and bad. If we can learn to love others more openly and honestly, and start to use love not as something that is shared abstemiously based on condition, but rather as a reflection of the celebration of life and the human spirit, then perhaps love is something that will command greater value in the social economy. Either way Fromm provides a guide to understanding love, what true love is, and how to incorporate it healthfully into your life to create increasingly holistic and meaningful experiences.

5) What If? & Why Not? – Jen Groover

Groover’s book is the complete underdog in this category. I had never heard of her before I picked up her book, but I was perhaps most impressed with her message. She provides sound advice for how to start a business and how to get yourself over those mental hurdles that prevent you from getting what you really want in business – and from your life. As Jen says, “Remember that a business is nothing less than a reflection of you. The company’s development will follow the same arc as your personal growth.” One of the greatest elements of starting a business is that as much as you’re building a company, you’re also building yourself. When you’re in charge of your business, the success you achieve is a direct reflection of your input and how you grow with the company – because the company is you.

Jen also debunks many myths about the fail rate of starting a business, explaining that far more than 20% of companies that launch succeed and last beyond the five-year mark. By focusing on the realities of starting a business, and the potential rewards, she helps us discover that it is perhaps riskier – financially and emotionally – not to start a business than to take the risk and start the company of your dreams. Following Jen’s methodology will help any aspiring entrepreneur position a business for success. She also provides a detailed roadmap of emotions that entrepreneurs inevitably face in starting a company so that you not only know when to expect them, but also know how to handle them and move forwards.

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The Riches of Travel

April 4th, 2010

Buenos Aires has a distinct smell. Much of the air is permeated by diesel fuel, fried food, and the condensation of smog. But love, too, seems to fill the air here with a sense of sweetness that overshadows the less savory scents. It goes to show there are things that we can smell if we just open up our hearts and take a deep breath in.

Much of life is a balancing act of opposites and compromises, but being in Buenos Aires has reminded me that the goodness in life typically overshadows that which is acrimonious, bitter, and harsh. I walk down the streets and see couples embracing one another, parents who seemingly have very little material wealth turn into royalty of parenthood: they love their children. As dirty as the streets may appear and as heavy as the air may seem, you can taste the sweetness of the bond of community, of boyfriend and girlfriend, chicos and chicas, tango partners. There is something so innocently beautiful and pure in a photograph of two people in love caressing each other, looking at each other with smiling faces, and loving lips. The paradox of life is that nothing can be everything when you have love; and everything can turn into nothing without gratitude. Be grateful for what you have and humble in your assessment of what others ostensibly have to offer. Underestimating the nuance of another culture could prove costly in understanding the world and our place in it.

Take time to travel. Find the time to get outside of your own world and enter the world of other cultures that have hundreds of years of history and have different lenses through which they view and assimilate with the world. The importance that we place in one thing others invest in building another; others might give you key insights into how best to live, but only if we are open to nuance and experience. The most marked difference I’ve noticed in living standards (both economic and emotional) is in countries that seek to pursue wealth and those that seem to pursue love. The countries that pursue wealth and achieve it seem often to have far less than those places with fewer riches but increasing love. I always place an emphasis on the importance of this dichotomy because I find it fascinating to study the way we view wealth. Wealth ostensibly raises our living standards, but what about our standards of emotions? Are we purely physical beings that are capable only of measuring their worth based on our balance sheets; can we not have an emotional balance sheet by which we measure our success: of happiness, love, and our emotional productivity. How about a metric such as GNL (Gross National Love) or GNE (Gross National Emotions) rather than a purely quantitative metric of output such as GDP?

Life is surely more than mere dollars and cents, and traveling to a place that values differently the things that are supposed to be the most important elements of our life force us to question – healthfully – what we choose to value. As stated above, life is a balance. It is important that we continue to balance out the circle of life with an awareness and appreciation for the cultural offerings of places different from our own. They just might have the key ingredient to give us that extra perspective that allows us to experience life and love more fully than ever before.

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Welcome to Aimbitious!

March 27th, 2010

Welcome to Aimbitious. I created Aimbitious to form a community where people can inspire each other to become their best selves. As a member, you will be able to set goals, connect with successful individuals like yourself, and celebrate your victories along the way. In my mind, it is important that we take care of ourselves and also contribute to those in our communities, so I encourage you to link up with one another to achieve your goals and find time to give back to those around you.

I also wanted to create a database of inspirational media. I think we can collectively benefit from a greater awareness of all the positive events in our lives and gain a heightened appreciation of all that we have to be grateful for. We often hear about what’s wrong with the world, but there’s also so much that’s right. We strive to provide enlightening content that highlights how to live a fulfilled life by showcasing others who have created lives of success and fulfillment for themselves, families, and communities. What we focus on we will find, so it is important to find and feed our minds with media that will inspire us to create lives of empowerment and opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »

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Life’s Fountainhead: Love

March 23rd, 2010

Times are tough. They’re tougher now than perhaps they’ve ever been. And while love and inspiration aren’t what make the world go round, per se, (in the parochial economic sense of the world) they are what get us through the tough times. The love of our friends and family, and the guidance from our mentors, peers and parents: this is what is ultimately important in life. While times without money can be saved with love, times without love can never be saved by money. Never forget the power of love and inspiration in your life. Seek it; find it; cherish it. They are the emotional beams upon which lives are resurrected and miracles are made.

Posted in Aimbitious Missives, Spiritual | 1 Comment »

Leveraging Your Resourcefulness

February 16th, 2010

Webster’s online dictionary defines leverage as, “the action of a lever or the mechanical advantage gained by it; power, effectiveness; the use of credit to enhance one’s speculative capacity.” I think of leverage as the use of a portion of something to gain a disproportionate effect. In employing leverage, you are essentially using a small part of something to gain a result that could typically not be had under normal circumstances. The volatility is greater, that is to say, the dispersion of results around the mean are greater, but so is the potential for high reward. The time to use leverage is when your conviction about an event unfolding in a certain way is so strong that the only possible result you can achieve is the way you see it unfolding.

The reason for my description of leverage is twofold: first, I want to explain how we can use various parts of the resources that we have access to in order to produce great results for ourselves. We can use leverage to achieve greater results in our lives by borrowing part of something to which we have limited access to gain a result as if we had full access to it. And second, I want to use the definition of leverage to make a point about definitions. Webster defines leverage in one way, while I define it in another. While I understand the Webster version, based on my own experience, the definition I have for leverage is one that is more relevant and speaks better to my experience. There are many definitions that get pushed upon us – of happiness, success, fulfillment, fitness, beauty – that might not be serving us. Therefore, it is up to us to reconstruct those definitions to make them more relevant to the context of our lives. A definition is just a guide; it is there to help us come to terms with something that we might not be particularly familiar with. But once we’ve had enough experience with something in our lives, then it is up to us to update definitions to better fit our own blueprint of the world and that allow us to take ownership for our own emotional relationship with that term. We might have grown up thinking that success was a high-paying corporate job with a pension plan, but if after following that model of success for a certain period of time, you decide that you have a better definition that is more effectual for your life, then that is the one that you need to use.

Back to the use of leverage. We can create maximum effect by leveraging our resources to produce a desired effect with minimal up-front capital – whether it be monetary, social, or intellectual. I believe that the greatest source of leverage – and the greatest resource, for that matter – is one’s own resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is the greatest resource because it implies creativity and making the most of what you have. When you make assets out of qualities that most people take for granted, that is called resourcefulness – in effect, leverage. As I’ve stated in previous articles, wealth is not so much about what you have, but how grateful you are for what you have. You can be the richest man in the world, but if you don’t value what you have then you are bankrupt. However, a man with gratitude can be wealthy beyond belief, because in many ways, wealth is all in the mind, and how you feel in your mind is how you will interact and take action in the physical world. Whether it is the ability to get out of bed and walk to the kitchen in the morning, speak the English language, know how to do simple multiplication, or read and write, these are all tremendous resources that can either be huge assets if we recognize them as such, or be completely useless if we take them for granted.

In thinking about resources, think about becoming more resourceful. How can you leverage the contacts that you have, the knowledge you’ve gained, the experiences you’ve cultivated to produce a greater result for yourself than the one you are currently achieving regularly. The days of waiting for someone else to do something for you are long over. Businesses are struggling, government has tremendous liabilities, but you have your creativity and ability to do what you can with what you have and turn it into a tremendous advantage. Is there someone that you can call who has a job that you want and get advice on how to start a career in that industry? Is there a language skill you can learn, a class you can teach, or a blog you can start that will allow you to turn your passion into a calling that allows you to earn income and change people’s lives? We have to be willing to understand that the single greatest resource that we have is our own resolve to figure out problems and create opportunities out of situations that might seem bleak and fallow, but that are actually fertile in promise. Never let any definition dictate your life experience. You are ultimately the one with the resourcefulness to create a definition that serves you better and to leverage your resources to make the prospects for something that seems so small produce a return that is disproportionately powerful and gradiose. This is leverage and this is what happens when you come up with a definition that is comprehensible to others, but that resonates most loudly and clearly with you – and your heart.

Posted in Economy, Spiritual | 1 Comment »

The New Value of Money

February 8th, 2010

Money clearly plays an important role in our lives. We need it in order to survive, and we also need it to thrive. But in my mind, it is not money that we’re after, but rather the experiences that we believe money can offer. First of all, money is not wealth. Money is just a commodity that stores value and that gives us purchasing power, but wealth is spiritual. Wealth is about gratitude and is not about what you have, but how grateful you are for what you have. We often grow up with beliefs about the importance of money, but how often do we question how we value money? I think many of us are living with a value system that ascribes the wrong sense of understanding about what money is meant for in our lives. Money in many ways allows us to grow through our ability to use it to accumulate growthful experiences. The flow of money has a rhythm, and if you study that rhythm, you can make a lot of it. But the goal is not to make more money just for the sake of making it, but for the belief that when we make it we will know how to use it responsibly, both for our benefit and the benefit of others. Money is required for survival, but once those needs are met, it is far more important for the experiences that it allows us to purchase in the physical world that make us more complete spiritually, which is what provides us with fulfillment and meaning. And many of those experiences that we need can only be attained when we put our money at risk.

We have to create new associations with risk because what we risk in financial terms we stand to gain in spiritual ones. There is opportunity cost in everything. My decision to sit here and write this article means that I don’t get to do something else that could have the benefit of adding to my life in some way. But I assessed my options and am making this investment of my time because I enjoy writing and because I feel it’s important to share a message. I use this example to explain further my point about taking risk. What we gain in one area, somewhere we are giving up in another. That is to say when you choose not to take a risk, you might preserve the physical amount of money that you have, but compromise your spiritual sense of wealth, which could end up making you more money in the long run – not to mention increasing your sense of self.

Many us are so afraid of losing money, and the very fear of losing it inhibits our growth because it prevents us from cultivating a repertoire of experiences that will give us the skills to make more money in the future and develop the experiences that give our lives texture and meaning. Sometimes when you lose, you actually win. Just know that sometimes no matter what the physical scorecard shows, the emotional scorecard is the one that is the better gauge of success because it carries with it a sense of spiritual fulfillment not just prosaic return.

We have to start thinking of ourselves as the best asset that we have. Our portfolio is us, which comprises all the experiences that we accumulate throughout our lives. No matter how great of a stock you pick, or bond you buy, there is a high probability that that particular asset will fluctuate in value. Investments in this sense are able to deliver one form of appreciation: pecuniary. But you as a person have the ability to appreciate emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually, economically – a much more dynamic proposition. So think of taking risk not as a potential sign of what you stand to lose, but as the ultimate gain, because it delivers for you an experience and an opportunity to grow. When you take a risk by investing in a business, seminar, or vacation, you are providing yourself with a new toolkit and perspective that will enrich your life in some way, a way that no stock or bond is capable of adding value to your life. Sometimes your net bank account balance might have declined, but your spiritual account will have multiplied immeasurably. We all have to pay for our education at some point. Too often we just think of education as taking place within the confines of an academic institution, but sometimes we need to pay for our education by investing in other areas in order to learn more about it until we are in a position to earn healthy economic profit from it.

Life is not merely about accumulation. There is value in simplicity. As Bruce Lee once said, “One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” If the purpose of our financial lives was just to gain always and end up with more money than when we started, then we should just invest in long-term bonds that pay us interest and hold them to maturity until we get our principal back. But I think we can all agree that there is an opportunity cost for doing this. Not only do we face inflationary concerns, but also concerns that our money could be better spent or invested elsewhere, whether it be in equities, real estate, a car, or a trip around the world. Let’s bring a greater sense of awareness to the way that we let money govern our lives. We should be governing it and not the other way around. We should be seeking to earn it for the benefits we know that it will afford to us, our family and those that are less fortunate than us, and for the experiences that will allow us to grow into more complete human beings with a greater sense of historical perspective, vision for the future and humanity. We need to come to better terms with the why, and the how will always be accessible.

Money is not the issue; it’s our underlying intentions for the acquisition of money that is. After all, it is dollars that buy cars, TVs, and clothes and also dollars that build schools for underprivileged youth, are used to restore communities such as New Orleans and Haiti, and provide college scholarships to give students the priceless gift of education. It is not the dollars that are different, but the intentions of the person using those dollars, and that’s where a greater sense of awareness about how we value money comes into play. Let us resolve to raise our standards and challenge ourselves – and one another – to come to terms with money that are going to be both more spiritually and financially rewarding. Money is not just about the physical world. There is a spiritual relationship that we have with money too, and the more attuned we can be to it, the more potential there is for economic profit and profit of the soul, which is the real return that will allow us to experience a greater sense of fulfillment in our lives and allow us to make a bigger difference in the lives of others than ever before.

Posted in Author's Favorites, Spiritual, Wealth | 1 Comment »

Resolve to Deepen Resolutions

January 10th, 2010

Every time right around the New Year, we start talking about resolutions. These are all the changes and improvements that we want to make in our lives that we didn’t get around to making the previous year. But I have a problem with resolutions, or at least the way that many of us use the term, because it connotes a condition that we’re hopeful for receiving rather than something we are committed to creating. Resolutions typically don’t work because we view them as fleeting – they lack substance. What we need are not resolutions, but goals, a vision, and a plan. There’s a big difference between approaching a goal as something that you should accomplish versus something that you must accomplish. Resolution implies should, whereas goal implies must. Resolution is a whim, whereas goal is strategic and implies commitment. We must pay attention to the language that we use because failing to use the right words can actually prevent us from achieving the outcome that we want before we even start.

One of the keys to a successful life is depth. We need to commit ourselves to a cause, a vision, a plan and work at it every day. You do not become expert in something by dabbling in it. Expertise is developed through commitment and consistent practice of your craft. Resolutions are not deep because they inherently focus not on a strategy, but on a wish. They are a quick fix in a world that needs long-term strategies not short-term solutions. In many ways, we have become accustomed to always look for the quick answer to the problem that is more a palliative than a wholesome solution. But when we don’t approach problems with depth and only treat the surface, then we achieve a cosmetic burnishing, but not a profound resolution. We want permanence, not evanescence.

Creating depth in life is where richness and texture are found. You learn not only a lot about yourself, but about the people or the subject that you commit yourself to. Whether it is a discipline in school, a career, or a relationship, all of these areas can benefit dearly from depth. Just to be clear, let me focus on what depth is. I view depth as focus, intention, and commitment. In education, for example, depth is reading a book and trying to understand the author’s position, the language she’s using and how that book fits into the greater context of the field, and even more broadly, the world. You don’t just read the words on the page for the sake of reading words; you view them as a lens through which you gain a greater understanding of the world and your place in it. Depth is determined by focus because it’s the way you approach the subject that you’re interacting with; it’s intention because it’s dependent on what you want to get out of your interaction; and it’s commitment because in order to go deep, you need to commit to a topic and get to its core to learn about its essence and not merely how it appears artificially on the outside. In relationships for example, depth requires presence – of heart, mind, body, and spirit. This does not mean deep relationships can only be those that you’ve been involved in for a long time; it means that you must bring your soul to the person that you are communicating with and connect not just with their mind, but also their heart.

I advocate taking the deeper path to your life’s desires. If you want to improve something in your life, commit to mastering it. If you want to have better relationships, treat people with care and sensitivity and listen to every word that they say. First understand, then be understood. When was the last time you just listened to someone intently without trying to communicate your own agenda. When was the last time you just graced someone with your presence and attention and really listened to what they were saying and tried to receive not just their words, but their spirit or soul? This is depth, and when we employ it, we come to greater terms with ourselves, others, and the richness of the world and forces of nature. Richness is nuance.

There is so much inherent power, beauty, and complexity in nuance. There is a true art to “reading in between the lines” and this paradigm can be applied to numerous situations in life, not merely to the written word. I recently read a book by Daniel Pink called A Whole New Mind, and the premise is that right-brain thinking – thinking that is governed by creativity, artistry, and empathy – is becoming the prevailing mode of problem-solving in business, education, and leadership. He introduces a concept called “white space” that he learned about in a drawing class. White space is essentially space that does not appear to be part of the picture, but actually frames an important component of the picture and adds to its cohesion. Essentially what he’s talking about when he refers to “white space” is nuance. If you only focus on the charcoal drawing and fail to concentrate on the space around the drawing, you might miss out on an important part of the artwork that the charcoal is unable to depict or delineate.

In anything that we do, let’s commit to focusing on the depth of the situation – the nuance or “white space” – and learn how embracing the long term and subtlety of life will leave us all feeling more fulfilled. We will achieve a greater sense of accomplishment through depth than if we are merely to look to resolutions to bring us to the profound points in our lives at which we really desire to arrive. We must resolve to go deeper in our resolutions and apply greater focus, intent, and commitment to turn them into the goal and favorable achievements that we all really want when we subscribe to formulating New Year’s resolutions in the first place.

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The Eternal Home of Happiness

December 3rd, 2009

We have become a culture of people who are taught to believe that we must be happy; that to be unhappy is wrong. In our own need to fulfill a happiness that isn’t fertile and has not yet ripened, we seek to gain short-term pleasure, which actually causes us to be less happy than we would be had we embraced our suffering and learned from the experience that only unhappiness can afford us. To think that only happiness is capable of making us happy is a fallacy. It is not the feeling of happiness that we are after, rather the process of self-transcendence that we experience when we learn to treat each experience as a unique and invaluable lesson that contributes to the texture of our lives. Happiness in and of itself is not what makes us happy otherwise people wouldn’t be able to find happiness in sadness; it is rather the evolution of man’s inner discipline and leadership of his life that allows him to find the positive meaning in each experience that leads to his happiness – for once he realizes that he can find positive meaning in each situation, he realizes that he controls the meaning of any situation, and happiness becomes not an event, but the medium of response to the event that he experiences. Every emotion has a place in our lives: happiness, joy, elation, sadness, depression. What is important is not the feeling itself, but how we choose to handle that feeling and what we determine it means to us. It is the meaning that matters.

We’re often so caught up on the concept of loss that it prevents us from truly living and experiencing life to its full capacity. We must realize that what we should fear most is not loss of material goods or financial resources, but loss of self – our own true identities – which occurs when we do not honor our natures: what we are about as human beings, not as material earners, but as everlasting souls. The greatest loss of all is not to have given yourself the true gift of fulfilling the true you by fearing that you need to become someone you’re not, or to have wasted time pursuing endeavors that fulfill the image of yourself that you don’t create, but that someone imposes upon you.

It is transitoriness that makes us make the most of our lives. It is the paradoxical energy that acts as a catalyst for us to find meaning – in knowing that this moment will be here only for a brief period and that we have to find a way to make the most of it.

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