Month: June 2017

Money changes the interactions we have with people.

We keep an eye on what is exchanged from one hand to another, what is moved from one pile to the next.

If you have more, I must have received less.

It’s business. It’s cold and calculated.

When we pay for something to someone, we are done. Fair and square. Even Steven. No one owes anyone anything.

But when we give something to someone, that form of exchange brings us closer together.

We leave an imbalance, a tipping of the scales. Trust and attention grows. A connection is made.

And then we do it again. And again. Growing with each interaction we make.

But, if today we could feel the consequences of tomorrow, would you change the decisions you are making?

The safe thing used to be keep your head down, don’t cause a ruckus, and management will pay you in exchange for your compliance.

A day’s work for a day’s pay.

But are we really willing to sell a whole day of our lives for so cheap? Are we really going to give up eight hours of our precious time for a few measly bucks?

The alternative is to unlock your genius.

Unlocking your genius is not reserved for someone with exceptional intellect. No, unlocking your genius is for anyone who is willing to share their gifts.

It is doing your best work, giving us your best insights, making something that needs to be made, helping someone who needs to be helped, standing up, standing out, leaping. It is about being artistic. More importantly, it is about generosity and respect.

Your genius is valuable and it is worth getting paid (a lot) for.

One hour of labor for one hour of pay, not so much.

I was recently approached to join a real-estate investment group/education program.

After doing some research, I was able to find that the Founder’s last company was shut down for defrauding investors and was forced to pay $5 million in damages. The company he built before that was a MLM scam that was also intentionally built to defraud investors.

I presented the evidence to my friend who asked me to join.

To my surprise, he said the skills he would learn were a proven method to make money and that he was not stupid and would not shell out tens of thousands of dollars to buy in.

It was an overreaction.

The thing that stood out most was my friend’s story. His internal narrative about money overpowered him to see the facts presented. He did not attempt to acknowledge that the Founder had ripped off people in the past and that this was his third attempt at building such a company.

The bottom line: We cannot underestimate our biases, prejudices, and stories we tell.

If we are wrong, we would have to admit that the path we are on is wrong. And if we have been going in the wrong direction, we have to acknowledge we have been wasting resources (time, energy, capital).

It is natural to defend our actions in the face of truth, evidence, and facts. We don’t want to deal with the shame. But it is much better to admit we are wrong often and early before we get in over our heads.

[How you play the game is just as important as winning.]

How much more effort does it take to go from 90% proficiency to 91%?

Attention, focus, and energy are all finite resources. We have to spend them wisely and decide which goals are worth pursuing.

But, on the other hand, Olympic Athletes spend 4 years making small, incremental improvements for that extra 1%.

By saying yes to some things, we have to say no to others. Every job worth doing is sometimes worth doing well. Which ones worth doing is up to you.

There is no vault or cloud or account to place it in. You can’t compute or calculate emotional labor onto a spreadsheet. At the end of the month, it doesn’t get billed or paid in full.

Generosity doesn’t go empty either. It is instantly replenished for anyone who uses it.

Not everything needs to be commoditized, but everything we do can be generous.

Fear of the future causes people to cling onto the present.

On one hand, you have people who see the world good as it is.

And on the other, you see people wanting it to radically change.

We have seen social and political movement’s move as technology. You have your innovators (radicals), early adopters, early majority (masses), late majority, and laggards (fundamentalists).

The fundamentalist is stuck in a previous time period. He is nostalgic. He is comfortable with his surroundings and wishes the world to stay the same.

The problem is that the world, and people, and cultures are constantly changing. They are trying to progress forward. There are people who are frustrated and living on less than $3 a day, and are denied access to healthcare, education, opportunity, sanitation, etc.

The answer then is figuring out how to give more opportunity for those who do not have it, better distributing ever abundant resources, and solving real complex social, political, health, environmental issues.

There is no one idea, no one solution that everyone can embrace. If it is for everyone, it is for no one. Even building a park for an inner city community has resistance. Who is going to fund it? Or build it? Or maintain it? Who is liable if someone gets hurt?

“What if” scenarios slow progress. Your job is not to make everything and everyone okay and happy. Your job is to make change happen, not to win popularity contests. Too many political leaders have forgotten this principle. And too many fight for things to stay the same.

There are over 180 million unique visitors going to Indeed.com every month. Your resume is a needle in a haystack.

Your education? The thing that you went to school for and spent tens of thousands of dollars to give you an edge, well, one-third of the adult population in the US now has an advanced degree. Your education is unlikely to help you stand out. Especially since Google now hires people without degrees.

What would a recruiter find doing an internet search of your name? Are you the first person to pop up? What kind of embarrassing photos are they going to find? More importantly, what contributions have you made and shared with the world?

What if instead of having a resume you had your name on a huge, successful project in your field, online, with your name on it? Or a blog that generated tons of traffic? What about 10 recommendation letters from prominent members of your field?

You might say that you do not have those things. That is the point. Maybe you are not as interesting or remarkable as you think you are. Yet.

Make no mistake; every person’s worth is beyond measure. Every single human being has talents, gifts, and insights waiting to be shared with the world. It is a choice.

One easy way to start today is to sit down and write one thank you card to someone. Share your gratitude. Make a connection. No tricks, nothing is expected in return. Generosity is a practice.

You can always go back to playing the lottery of job searches or copying and pasting the words off the job description so that the computers can pick it up, but I doubt that has worked well in the past.

Wait to be picked or do something interesting. You decide.

Of course, small, micro decisions made every day over an extended period are no longer small or inconsequential. They shape us for who we are and the type of person we are going to be.

We do not look at the consequences of today actions if we can push them out to tomorrow. Well, at the very least, we do not worry enough to do anything about it until New Year’s or birthdays.

It is easy to fall into the trap of narrow thinking. When we enlarge our scope, we see that these small decisions made every day keep us from being the person we want to be.

Scott McCloud gave us a truly brilliant insight in how all the action in comics happens between the panels. Superman flies in, we do not see how he got from Panel A to Panel B, only that he was here but now he is there.

We do not see much action in our day in and day out routine. All we see is that we started here and now we are over there. Until, one day, you have finished your first marathon or started a new business or wrote your first book.

Instant gratification is instant. There are no short cuts to long-term prosperity.

It’s innate in all of us to blend in and do what’s safe, to keep quiet, do your job.

We work to drive safer cars and to live in safer neighborhoods. We don’t make eye contact with a presenter when she asks a question because we don’t want to be judged for giving the wrong answer.

There is an alternative. Instead of working to make things safer, we can work to make things better.

Better starts with people, like you and me, who have the guts to stand up and say, I’m going to change this. Better doesn’t happen by accident. It happens with your generosity and contributions. It’s about making a connection and giving us your insights.

Better is a choice.

If we were all better people then the world would be a better place.