The LifeMaven

In his book, Small is the New Big, Seth Godin, talks about zooming in one of the sections. Zooming as he puts it, is doing what you always do, but a little different. It’s about stretching your boundaries, getting outside your comfort zone, and expanding your horizons. The trick is to do it in a way that you’re anchored by the comfortable (what you always do), but you grow by trying something new (done a little differently).

That’s always been a lofty ideal for me and one I haven’t quite reached without realizing why.

Well I finally found out!

Scott Young ran this post today about being on the edge of incompetence. The theme is similar, you want to be constantly learning new things and mastering new skills to grow and succeed in life. But Scott takes it one step further in a tactical sense. He explains that we need to challenge ourselves so that we’re growing, but not too far so that there’s no positive feedback. We need to feel progress.

This is a true epiphany for me. (Forgive me, if I’m not a genius who already knew this xP) I can think of countless examples where this is true. Scott uses the case of running with someone slightly faster than you, but not an Olympian. You want to push yourself without being demoralized.

Some examples I’ve thought of:

-Playing slightly harder songs on an easier difficulty or easier songs on a harder difficulty in Guitar Hero (or Rock Band, your preference)

-Playing against opponents slightly above your rank in any ranked game. (Madden, Halo, chess, etc.)

Again, the lesson for today is:

Challenge yourself by trying things you might not be good at, but make sure you can learn from your failures.

(I started writing this post Friday night after i got home. But to use a term from the book, The Resistance kicked in and stopped me from posting it. NO MORE!)

I saw Seth Godin at The Linchpin Session at FIT this morning. To me it was well worth it, just like all of his other talks. (Even though I never paid for those.)

He talked about the new economy and how we don’t have to be cogs if we don’t want to. Instead, we are artists. Every positive aspect of our actions that isn’t defined by a job description is our art.

He talked about how we need to be generous with our gifts, and share them with the world. And how school forces us and endoctrinates us into taking orders and not showing initiative.

All in all, another life changing talk. I saw someone recording it from the front row so i’m hoping it’ll end up on TED or Youtube, because there was just so much good stuff there (like there always is) that I don’t think I truly absorbed all of it at once.

I had my book signed by Seth, (swoons) and he left me with a simple message.

Make something happen.

That’s the true essence of the entire book and speech. Be like Nike and Just Do It. Share your gifts with the world and worry about the results later. Just get them out there! Change someone’s life! (For the better.)

PS: Seth is compiling a list of posts and interviews on the book here. Check it out for another look.

Question: How can you call one of your own children a failure?

This is the situation that my girlfriend has found herself in recently. On numerous occasions she has heard these dreadful words either directly from her parents or indirectly through her younger sister.

Rant alert! My personal reply to her parents.

First of all, what is your definition of failure? Because she’s unemployed, didn’t pass her CPA exam on the first try, and not working for a Fortune 500 company? Goodness, you need some perspective on life.

Second, this is your daughter we’re talking about. How can she be a failure? You raised her! If you’re not pleased with the actions she has chosen for herself, you need to take a good hard look in the mirror.

What values, beliefs and morals have you instilled in her? What opportunities did you offer her?

You chose the college that she went to and she had no say in the matter! How can you expect her to reach the same heights as a graduate of a more prestigious school when you sent her to a school barely above a community college?

What are you doing with your life that makes you such a great judge on the matter? It’s not as if you’re the CEO of one of those companies or a CPA yourself. No, you’re just a mid-level civil servant, so who are you to pass judgment of success or failure.

It’s not for a lack of trying on her part. She studied her butt off for that exam! How do you think she feels knowing that she gave it her best effort and didn’t pass? And you want her to hold down some fantastic job at the same time?

End rant.

This is not a constructive environment. This kind of thinking leads to shattered families, depressed children, and suicidal adults. People who live in these kinds of expectations are setting themselves up for great disappointment and are never satisfied with the success they do have.

There’s more to life than just working for a big name company or making lots of money. There is health, there is love (unfortunately, there’s little love in this family), and there is artistic and natural beauty. There is so much more in the world than being just another cog in the machine making 60K a year plus benefits.

In this very inspiring Steve Jobs speech at the Stanford commencement (embed at the end of the post), he says he would look in the mirror every morning and ask himself if “I die in a year, would I still want to be doing what I’m doing.” When the days where he answered “no” got too numerous, he made a change in his life.

I think this is very important, as so many of us focus on the wrong things in life. Like my girlfriend’s folks, we focus on money, status, and having brand name material goods. (Ironic considering this is the head of Apple.) We get so caught up in the race for these things that we forget that we’re going to die eventually, and all of those things will have been for naught.

We don’t receive a score when we die; based on how much money we made or what socioeconomic class we belonged to.

No, those things do not last beyond our mortal lives.

What matters instead, is our reputation and our character.

Did we help people? Was the world a better place thanks to our contribution? It can be as large as the acts of Mother Theresa, or it can be as insignificant as reading a bedtime story every night to your child.

What matters is that you made someone else’s life better.

You were able to put aside humanity’s selfish instincts, and do something for your fellow man instead of just for yourself.

That is what I think life should be about. And no, you can never be a failure.

“You’re only a failure in life when you fail to live.” – By me

It’s been two months since I lasted posted here.

And of course, life can teach you a lot in two months.

For starters, I’ve reaffirmed my distaste for traditional, big corporate America. I’m tired of working hard, being positive, bringing a good attitude, going above and beyond the call of duty and not being adequately compensated for it.

This doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing those things. No, not yet.

But I’m just dissatisfied with the whole experience. That if you work hard and don’t make too much noise, maybe upper management won’t notice you and will instead force you to work from a space the size of a single desk.

My co-workers know how hard I work. They know how good my attitude is and how much better I make their work lives. And yet, I am still an intern, graduated from college, no benefits, a passing wage and minimal hours.

But hey, at least I have a lot of time to myself still. :-/

I’ve learned how much I agree with Seth Godin and dislike the traditional interview process.

Speaking to big corporate America:

Skills are learn-able and teachable, why not focus on personality like you secretly are anyway. Why not just take five minutes to make a judgment about a person and then decide to give them a shot?

No, not a job for life, but a shot!

An internship, a true internship, where we’ll do real work, with real teams and make real contributions. And if we’ve done a good job during that time, why not bring us on full time? Not just leave us to rot under a minimal salary while you benefit from our hard work, with the ever constant and false promise of “temp to full time.”

On a more positive note, one great thing about living in New York City is the library. I am a new, huge fan of the New York Public Library. Prior to this, I had only had a Queens Library card.

(Queens public library is a separate entity from New York’s, don’t ask me why, I have no idea. Separate libraries, separate library cards, etc.)

I finally fully activated my NYPL card and have been astounded with the variety of choices and wealth of knowledge at my disposal. I can place books on hold and pick them up at the nearest branch, a convenient one block walk from my job. I can access a fairly decent array of WMA audiobooks for free download online. Great authors such as Seth and Malcolm Gladwell fill my ears and intellect instead of my traditional rock music commute.

Wow! My thirst for knowledge and greater mental stimulation has returned!

And so, I return to you once again dear reader, from another long hiatus. Hopefully, I’ll be able to regain some momentum and keep the words, ideas, and posts coming. In the meantime, thanks for listening. And enjoy!

A simple epiphany for me.

One of the reasons for my current situation is my disdain for corporate life and traditional jobs.

I had felt that I would be happier if I had more free time and tried to build my own business on the side. It would allow me to both enjoy myself and create my future.

The past few months have taught me a lot:

1) It is difficult to start a business that your heart is not entirely in.

(Follow your passions)

You have to really love what you’re doing. If you spend hours working on your business/project and forget to eat or wonder where the time went, then you know you’re on the right track.

2) Just as hard, is finding a business model that works with your passions.

(How will your passion make you money, who will pay and how much.)

3) Set your own goals for what you want in life.

(Your list of things to do before you die. )

Make sure these are your goals and not just what society or your peers think should be your goals. They should speak to you on an emotional, deeper level. Your heart should race with excitement as you think about them!

4) Based on those goals, how will you achieve or finance them.

(Small business or corporate?)

The last point brings me to my intentions for this post. I realized that by working part time and trying to force myself to come up with a business, I was not getting any closer to my goals.

Much to my disbelief, taking one of those traditional corporate jobs would give me the funds much faster and make it much easier to get started on my goals. The only problem would be if I fall too into the other extreme and forget my goals entirely. Otherwise, a job will simply be another means to my ends.

On my list there are some things that I want to experience before I die. Things like drive on the Laguna Seca or the Nurburgring. These are both very achievable if I only had the finances. It is not something that I need an overwhelming amount of time for. A week maybe? I could use vacation time from said corporate job to do it.

Am I selling out? Vaguely.

It depends on the corporate culture that I join. If the values are right, and the environment is good, then I won’t have a problem.

But I won’t get stuck in another unhealthy corporation, just for the money.

(Disclaimer: The company I’m at now wasn’t always this bad. But in the year and half I’ve been there, I’ve seen it go bad. Firing good people, under paying others, all in the name of cutting costs and maintaining profitability and the salaries of those in managerial positions, while the front line staff are marginalized and forgotten.)

The corporation I join has to do their part. They need to reward their employees’ efforts and truly practice the cliche that employees are their best asset.

If they do that, then I can join in peace.

I am unhappy because I am not meeting society’s expectations for me.

I work part time as an intern and am not wholeheartedly pursuing a full time job.

I majored in computer information systems in college, but am not interested in being a developer or programmer.

I spend my free time playing video games by myself or with my girlfriend. Or reading about gaming or football.

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By society’s definitions I am a failure. I’m a bum who’s leeching off my parents and girlfriend.

I am defined by my lack of a well paying, steady “job”, and my time wasting pastimes.

All of which detracts from the fact that I’m actually happy like this. If it were not for these feelings of failure, I would be enjoying myself quite contentedly.

I have loving parents, a wonderful girlfriend. I have enough food to eat, clothes on my back, a roof over my head. I have enough disposable income on my own to waste on gaming, but not enough to quite pay the rent. But we have enough savings to make due for a few months.

I have enough time to enjoy the many games I spend money on.

And yet because I fail to meet society’s expectations I am deemed a failure.

As much as I would like to avoid it and deny it; it does weigh on me. That I am not meeting these expectations.

I should be content with who I am and not who society wants me to be.

But the beliefs of society are insidious. They permeate the subtle inflections in others’ voices when I talk about where I am in life. Every exaggerated pause or raised eyebrow contains the disappointment of a society whose approval I should not care for.

It includes my parents, my girlfriend, my friends, and my coworkers. Even the bloggers I follow, maintain that I am failing them.

It is very subtle. But the fact that I choose to use my free time unproductively seems to go against one of the blogosphere’s own values. It is not direct, but hidden, beneath every post of eliminating distractions and increasing productivity.

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So where does this leave me?

As of right now, still in square one. Vaguely depressed without any real reason that I should be.

What am I going to do about it?

For now, I’m just going to keep working on this blog, skimming job postings and entertaining fleeting notions of writing an ebook.

All the while I will not change my lifestyle. I will try to enjoy the luxuries that I am afforded and remember that this is who I am.

A gamer. Not quite ready to change to meet the expectations society has put on me.

If you are under enormous peer pressure to do the wrong thing, and are away from your regular support network, will you have the strength of will to still do the right thing? Or do you cave to the pressure?

I know that me personally, I believe I wouldn’t cave. But I have yet to actually be in that situation.

Is it because I don’t put myself there or is it because of pure chance and meeting good people instead?

Again, I believe its because I don’t put myself into situations like that.

It is our own responsibility to not put ourselves in situations where we won’t have the same willpower that we normally do. It is our personal responsiblity not to put ourselves in bad situations. Not to make bad choices and decisions in the first place.

Of course, this is all very easy to say in hindsight. But what if we don’t know how the situation will play out?

In that case, its important to weight the risks and the rewards of the two decisions. What do I have to lose and what do I have to gain? And in any form of gambling, you don’t play with more than you can afford to lose.

For some people, this is quite obvious. They have such a strong sense of ethics and sound judgment that they would never give in to pressure and temptation.

For others though, if the rewards are great enough and the risks low enough, they willl cave to the pressure. They will be unethical and give in to temptation.

I’ve gained a strong sense of ethics, mostly from my parents and several very embarrassing downfalls in my past.

And therein lies the trick. Some people can be taught ethics and good judgment simply by telling them about others’ mistakes. Others actually need to experience the pain, punishment and embarrassment of actually making a poor decision for themselves.

If you’re a parent, a mentor, or older sibling to someone, how do you teach them this lesson? How do you grow a strong personality, a strong sense of ethics and sound judgment?

Thinking about the idea of outliers, can you be successful if you are missing key opportunities?

I believe you can, but the road is very difficult and it would take a great deal of willpower, heart, and passion to do so.

For example, say you want to be a football coach. (A recent dream of mine). If you live in a big city without high school football, haven’t played a real down of football, and don’t know any other football coaches, how are you going to succeed?

The answer is that you have to really get out of your comfort zone and think outside the box. Maybe you write some letters to the closest (geographically) football teams. You buy your own football films and run an analysis of them and include them with your letters to show what you can do.

The trick though, is that you have to be a lot more passionate about it than most other folks who get into coaching. You can’t just sit back and expect to get there, you really have to go out there and seize it and make it happen, because you weren’t given the same opportunities.

So if you want to become as successful as an outlier without the same opportunities, you have to have an extraordinary passion for your field for you to reach the same levels of success.

I grew up in a household with the lottery. Every week my dad would play his numbers in the hopes of hitting that one big jackpot. My mom would get tickets too, but only when the prize was really big. We would win a few small prizes, but never that really big one that would change our lives.

In retrospect, my parents’ lotto habit may have been one of the few flaws in their generally thrifty habits. I mean we would always buy things on sale, try to avoid big purchases we don’t need, didn’t take extravagant vacations, or move around a lot.

The lotto is one of those things that seems innocent enough, like bargain stores or 99 cent stores. The incremental cost is very low, but the long term cost is signficant.

Take my father as an example. He would play the lotto once a week, playing maybe about $14 worth. Multiply that by 52 weeks and you get $728 a year. That’s a good chunk of change. Money that could be put in a savings account, invested in the sotck market (ha!), used to pay off our mortgage or just to buy other things we wanted.

But ultimately the motivation was hope. Hope to hit that one big prize that would make us rich and change our lives.

And that’s what makes the lotto dangerous. It offers people the hope that they’ll get really rich, with low incremental cost and almost no effort.

PS: The reason for the sudden lotto musings? Gregg Easterbrook over at ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback wrote about a new program with NFL themed lotto tickets. His thoughts on it are here. A great football themed column with a little political views mixed in. Still, very worthy of my recommendation.

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” – Shakespeare

All the world’s a game. We define the rules and the victory conditions.

If you don’t believe that last one, you are still under the influence of others. It means you are letting someone; the media, your friends, or your parents dictate what success is to you.

If you don’t define what you want from life, or what you think being successful is, then how will you know if you ever reach it?

Or if you let others define success for you, you will never be truly happy. What then becomes success may not actually involve true passion. Sure, you may be distracted by the money, the perks, or the status. But on some level you will be yearning for something more. Something meaningful.

The popular example is someone who abhors finance, but becomes an investment banker purely for the money and force feeds themselves the training and instruction to get such a job. Eventually this person will crack and realize that this is not really for them. They’ll wake up one morning after another 14 hour day and realize their kitchen is a different color.

Why?

Because their spouse had the kitchen redone two weeks ago!

This kind of mindless drudgery can suffocate a soul. We become machines working untold hours to churn out carbon copy outputs.

And for what?

So we can afford the newest car or newest designer handbag. Meanwhile there are people suffering on the otherside of the world that could for years on that same amount of money. (Seth Godin tells more.)

Ridiculous huh? Yeap. But a constant.

Back to my original point.

We can live our lives fueling the capitalist dream, working harder and harder for more and more wasteful junk. Or we can redefine our lives and actually seek to make a difference in the lives of others.

Its your choice. You decide.