I feel like I have stumbled upon a great and secret key to unlocking the mystery of existence. Well, I actually found it on the web. The key is this simple concept: true love is love that is given without attachment. No need for reciprocation. No thoughts about the outcome. No desire for something in return. Even to love a dear friend or spouse or sibling because of their special relationship to you is short of true love. True love electrifies our spirits and the spirits of others because it is love without attachment. Love others because they are fellow humans, living beings with the right to transcend suffering and achieve enlightenment just like you. Love all things, and love them without attachment. Supposedly, that kind of would keep me from getting irritated with my kids when they interrupt me or getting pissed at my wife when she…well…pisses me off. That sounds like a good deal to me and an even better deal for them, so I strive… This is a new labor for me, a vision of great clarity that pervades my thinking these days. My mantra when I become troubled, when ego steps in, when distraction threatens to overtake me is simply “Be here without attachment.” Now I see that this is the essence of impactful leadership. I cannot anticipate the outcome. I cannot impose my desires. I cannot seek to control. I can plan but must plan with others. I can envision but must share in the visioning. I can set direction but must take directions in the process. In every situation, what I lead is not my own. It does not belong to me. If it did, then there would be no one to lead, no need for my leadership. There would just be me and my desires. This is not leadership. Leadership is love for the vision that is co-created and shared with others. Leadership is love for the work without attachment to the work. Work that is free from attachment can become whatever the empty space needs for it to be. Only free people doing work that is free can fill the void. This is leadership without attachment.
Category: Uncategorized
Running
When I got off the train today, this kid…about 12 or 13 years old…came bursting out of the door ahead of me and start running. He took off. He had a smile on his face. He was dressed in his school uniform. A backpack was slung over one shoulder. A raincoat was slung over the other. He tore off down the ramp and was up the road and out of sight in a matter of seconds. He took off running. Running.
Running. Frickin’ running.
He ran with purpose. He ran with complete commitment. He ran because…well, shit. He ran because he was 12 years old, and he freakin’ could.
I walked.
Once, long ago, I wan. At some point, I stopped running. I stopped running long before the dress shoes and the khakis and the Land’s End Oxford, button-down shirt.
Running, of course, is a metaphor for the kind of wild, reckless energy that we put into the things we did when we were younger and believed in our own potential. It’s literal, too.
Something changes along the way, and we forget how to run. More accurately, we choose to stop running because, you know, running is what kids do.
Those kids are having fun. Watch them.
Life is simple. Just run. Run and run and run. Smile. Laugh. And run.
Whatever you do, wherever you do it, do it like that kid coming off the train. He had school trousers on. He wore a sweater and an Oxford. He even wore a tie. And he still ran. I bet you the little bugger is still running. I like to think that he’ll keep running for the rest of his life.
Wake up tomorrow, and start running. The rest will follow…literally and figuratively.
The Things Around You
What are the things around you? With what do you surround yourself?
Are you inspired? Or are you bored?
Awake? Or asleep?
Alive? Or dead? Ish.
Humans are hard-wired with vision as our primary sensory input. Lacking vision, our other sense kick in and fill the void. Regardless of which sense has taken the lead, our brains are stimulated by input from the physical world. Our cognitive processing is impacted by the degree of input: recency, frequency, intensity. Input affects how we think, so it affects everything that we say, do, and feel.
The things surrounding you, then, are vital to what you do and how you do it.
Once again, being deliberate is the key to unlocking potential. How you arrange your world of input can and will have an effect on the results you achieve.
So, take a look at the things around you…
When You Choose to Follow and Not Lead
When you choose to follow and not lead you spend the night at home. Spending the night at home isn’t a bad thing, of course, but it’s not a good thing when you could have and should have been somewhere else. I should have been somewhere else tonight, but I chose to follow and not lead. Because, you know, somebody else will always step in to lead.The problem with that logic is that sometimes nobody else chooses to lead. And then you just have to go home.Most of the time….most of the time nobody else chooses to lead.As I write this, Linchpins are enjoying the company of other Linchpins. As I write this, Linchpins in other time zones are looking forward to enjoying the company of other Linchpins later on tonight. In each of these situations, there was a Linchpin or two who decided to lead. They decided to organize. They decided to take charge. Thanks to them, great things will happen tonight. Deals will be made. Friendships will be born. Ideas will be shared.And then there are the rest of us who waited for someone else to lead. We’re at home watching reruns of “Friends.”When you choose to follow and not lead you take whatever programming somebody else came up with. When you choose to lead and not follow you get to decide. Period.
Ideas Like Napalm
Some ideas stick.
Some ideas burn.
The most lethal ideas stick and burn at the same time. They are ideas like napalm in your mind.
When trapped in the mind, they become the ideas that consume. These are the ideas that become obsession. They destroy. Life becomes a smoldering pile of ash with the glowing ember of the idea at the center, threatening to erupt into a conflagration all over again.
The only answer is to unleash the idea. There is a subtle line, almost imperceptible, at the border between obsession and commitment. The only thing that distinguishes those who lie in the blackened ruins and those who survive and thrive in the heart of the fire is the courage to set the idea free, to loose it upon the world.
The idea will destroy when left bottled up. If the passion is strong enough to ignite, then the idea deserves to be free. It deserves to spread. It deserves to stick and burn anyone willing to come close enough to it. Let them catch the fire of your idea and spread it again. Farther and farther from the center. Let the fire burn.
If you are committed, your ideas will stick.
If you are committed, you ideas will burn.
Your most lethal ideas stick and burn at the some time, and they can only do so when you are there, fully present, prepared to set the world on fire.
Your best ideas are like napalm in your mind.
Seeking Comfort
I am seeking comfort.
What I do, how I do it, why I do it…all meaningless. My job is meaningless. My hobbies are meaningless. My relationships are meaningless. None of it matters unless I am comfortable with who I am. That doesn’t mean that I have to fully understand who I am. No, that’s a goal, and a lofty one at that. It’s a goal, but it’s not necessarily one that I think can be achieved. I expect to wake up every day and discover something new about myself. I hope that happens for the next hundred years (or however many I have left). I am not seeking comfort in that regard.
Instead, I am seeking comfort with the path I have chosen to travel. Things will change and decisions will be made, but I want to feel good about the way I navigate through life. I think that’s the real goal.
I hope that you can achieve comfort, too. Not in the sense that you become complacent or shy away from taking risks in life. I hope that you achieve the comfort that comes with being confident in your ability to make the right decisions that align with your core beliefs. That’s the kind of comfort I am looking for: the confidence that my core beliefs drive my behaviors.
I am seeking comfort.
You, the Strong Link
Organizational trust is a function of the relationships between the individuals that comprise it. The stronger the individual bonds, the greater the likelihood that trust will flourish. That’s just common sense. What we tend to overlook is that the number of bonds is just as important as the strength of each individual bond. This is where the network you build becomes important. The more connections you make and broker, the stronger the foundation for trust within the organization becomes.
Reach out and nourish the connections in your network. It might take some extra work, but the relationships you create will serve not only the organization but you, as well. That’s a rant for another day, though. Today, focus on making new connections to widen your circle of influence. Be the person who can bring others together, the strong link that holds the chain together. The future of your organization may very well depend on it.
Hoy Te Extraño
A former coworker of mine found out that he is going to be a grandfather. He posted a jubilant note to broadcast the news to friends. In his post, he commented that he doesn’t care what sex the baby is nor what she calls him. He’s just so damn happy to be a grandparent!
That got my wondering what my brother wants his new little grandchild to call him.
That got me thinking about my own future grandchildren and whether or not they will call me “abuelo” or “abue” or “papa”…
Then I thought about my own roots, my own sense of “from whence I came”. I got sad because I do not feel like I can take my children to see the place where I grew up. I can’t show them the houses I lived in. I can’t show them the school that I went to. I can’t take them to places I hung out or the spots I took my dates. I can’t share that with them.
My wife can do all that. They walk in her footsteps all the time. We lived in her hometown before coming over here. So, they understand their mother’s past in a different way.
And that’s when I found the words: I am afraid of you, Mexico. Seems silly, doesn’t? Maybe. But I do not feel safe returning to see you right now. I do not feel safe sharing you with the people I love the most. You are out of my reach, and it is so unfortunate. It used to make me sad. It used to depress me. Now…now I just see it as so unfortunate.
I know that I am just one person. You won’t miss me. But I will miss you. I love you. Did you know that?
Who knows what tomorrow will bring. For today…pues hoy te extraño.
Interlude’s End
It is amazing how many of the keys to success in life are common sense but not common practice.
For my part, what I know and what I do are still a struggle to keep aligned, and that’s mainly because of how painfully shy I am and how insecure I can be about what people think about me, the person. That remains the roughest part of my life right now: figuring out how to “fit in” in a place that has become so familiar yet remains so foreign.
I’m reading “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi. It’s a bit much for me at times because he is so my polar opposite in some regards; he’s the consummate networker, the King of Small Talk, the Great Connector of People…and I am totally not those things! However, in many other regards, his philosophy is very similar to my own. Again, common sense, but I’ll state it this way: people just want to come to work, do a good job, and feel like they belong. Anyone who appears to not fit that very broad description has issues, and even they want those same things.
I try to keep the following things in mind at all times:
1. All life is interconnected, ergo all human beings are interconnected.
2. All human beings experience the same range of emotion. How we experience them and what triggers those experiences may vary, but the range exists in all of us.
3. All psychological mechanisms at work in children are at work in adults. Adults just build all kinds of fancy facades to confuse things. Anything I learn as a parent, I can translate to the workplace. The flipside is also true: anything I learn at work I can translate to parenthood.
4. You can never say “thank you” enough. In fact, you probably don’t. I know I don’t.
5. Finally, the essential guiding principle: Love is the answer. The question doesn’t matter because, in the end, Love is always part of the answer. Patience helps, but I’ll always argue that Love is the key ingredient!
The tricky part is making sure that I’m actually behaving in a way that reflects my beliefs. These are my beliefs; yours are probably different. The thing we have in common, though, is that we are on the same lifelong quest to keep our behaviors and beliefs aligned.
Good luck on your journey!
Hitting the Mark
“What’s that supposed to be?”Most artists don’t want to hear that. At least I don’t. When I conjure something up and put pen to paper (digital or otherwise), I sort of hope that what I create will be recognizable. If it isn’t, then I feel like I did a crappy job. That’s how I am.Of course, hitting the mark isn’t always a matter of the other person understanding everything that you did or why you did it so much as it is about them getting the feeling that you wanted them to get.”That’s disgusting. I can’t even look at it without getting sick.”At times, you couldn’t ask for sweeter words of affirmation.
Illuminate Possibilities 