Category: Uncategorized

To say that I’m rusty is an understatement. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to hyphenated the word “understatement.” Auto-correct (hyphenated) didn’t automatically correct it, so I assume it’s valid.

What I think and know and believe are also valid, at least as valid as the operation of any human’s mind. I still think even if I don’t write. I think, therefore I am, right? Yes, I am. I still very much am.

Just because I am rusty doesn’t mean I cannot grease the gears and start again. This isn’t a promise of rebooting or recommitting or anything of the sort. This is just a (public) acknowledgement that I am still very much alive and still very much interested in making a difference in the world. It’s also acknowledgement that I cannot make a difference if I remain silent and keep to myself.

Here’s to not keeping to myself, rusty or not.

I don’t understand how my mother ever let me leave the house. Her faith in God and other people must be that strong. I know that if I was raising children in a country where they were the minority, where their skin color made them stand out, immediately, the moment they walked out the door…well, I don’t know if I would have ever let my children leave the house.

I spent a lot of my childhood afraid. At home, we felt safe, of course, but that was at home. As I got older, though, I heard more and more stories about families like ours attacked in their homes. Women…mothers and daughters…raped as acts of violence against not just them but as warnings to all of us, those who were different. Men kidnapped at gunpoint as a means of extorting money and to satisfy a sick need to punish everyone like us. Boys killed on the street because of physical characteristics outside of their control. These things happened, and as I grew into a young man, my parents shared more and more of them. We needed to understand what we were up against, what kind of danger we were in simply because of what we looked like, the language we spoke.

When I was a small boy of maybe eight years of age, I got lost after getting off the school bus. We were still relatively new to the neighborhood, so I got off at the wrong stop. I knew was my address, but I could not find my street. I wandered for a while, slow dread rising inside me. I panicked when an aggressive dog in the street barked at me and started coming my way. I ran. Dread turned to terror. It seemed like the streets were deserted because I didn’t see a single person. If was just a labyrinth of roads, twisting and turning in ways I didn’t understand. I burst into hysterical tears. I walked for what seemed like hours to my young mind.

Then, a man approached me. I don’t know what he was really thinking, but I froze in terror. He was very different from me. His skin was a different color than mine. He spoke to me, but I could not understand his language yet, not entirely. He took a few steps closer, and I lost my shit.

That’s when he took a step back, and his entire demeanor changed. He must have understood how utterly terrified I was because he gave me my space and spoke to me more slowly, with compassion. Then I understood: “Where do you live?” I told him the street, not the home number as I’d been trained. He pointed. “That way,” he said. “Just walk that way. You will see it.”

Later, after I found my way home, I thought about that scary, different man. Different, I came to realize, does not have to be scary.

Over the years, I learned the language, the culture, and the customs. I learned to temper my own difference in an effort to fit in better. I made friends, had a few romantic relationships, and figured out how to navigate my world. But, always there was fear, just under the surface. The truth of the matter was that they weren’t different, I was different. It was their country, their culture, not mine. I was never allowed to forget that.

My parents knew a family that were burglarized, the wife and daughter both raped. Another family experienced a botched carjacking. Another man was kidnapped at gunpoint as he got out of his car to open his garage. A young man at my high school was shot dead in the street as the result of an altercation with another teenager. A group of friend witnessed a hit and run and watched the victim die in the street as the car that hit him sped off. I lost count of the number of times my school bus was attacked: rocks thrown at the bus; bus windows smashed with bricks; a man reached through an open window and punched a girl…a girl…in the face while the bus was stopped. For 11 years, we simply lived with these things.

When I turned 18 and graduated high school, I returned to the United States. For the 11 years I spent in Mexico, I longed for few things more than to simply return to the United States. Home. My country. Where I belonged.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t really belong here, either. I faced violence when I attended university in Miami, Florida. It was the early 1990’s, and Miami was a cauldron of racial tension the summer I started school. Although I spent only a semester in Miami, I witnessed racism aimed at black Americans, discrimination against Hispanic Americans, and, more intimately, was the victim of what we would now refer to as a hate crime because I proudly wore a flag around my neck that some local thugs confused with the Cuban flag. In Miami, the only thing worse than a black person is a Cuban, at least in certain parts of the city. At the end of that semester, I left Miami and did not return for over 20 years. Those few months in Miami caused me a lot of pain. It kept me away.

That pain was born in large part from confusion. I was confused. So confused. I grew up in a country, Mexico, that resented me and did not want me there. I was discriminated because of my skin color. When I returned to what I thought was my home, the United States of America, people seemed to resent me and did not want me in their community. I was discriminated against because of my ethnicity. Foreigners rejected me; my fellow patriots rejected me. I did not know how to react. I did not know what to think. I did not know how to feel.

I still don’t know how to feel.

I don’t know how to feel about my past and this present moment in my life as an American. My skin is white. I can hide in plain site. I walk in the room and maybe I’m Greek or maybe I’m Italian. Maybe I’m just a guy with dark brown (and graying) hair and, when the sun shines bright, olive skin. It’s easy to not notice me. I blend right in. Eyes sweep past me and focus on someone else, maybe someone who is black. Definitely someone who is black…

So I hide.

Hiding is painful.

On paper, though, I cannot hide because my name is undoubtedly Hispanic. Even my middle name screams “Mexican.” But I’m not Mexican. Remember: they didn’t want me? Besides, my family comes from somewhere else.

My blood is Boricua.

My island is Puerto Rico. I never lived there, but, right now, it is clear to me that this little Caribbean island is the only place I can truly claim as my own…and that can truly claim me. I would fit in there. The language, the food, the music, the people…the very earth of the island itself is familiar to me. I could buy a house, move in, and just fit in. Yes, the island is a cauldron of racial tension. There is extreme poverty. Black skin and white skin and brown skin clash regularly. There is violence. Nobody is really safe. However, there, more than anywhere, there is a vital piece of me that belongs. My story would weave easily into the larger tapestry of the island. Those are my people.

This planet is covered in places where people feel they belong. Some places are far more dangerous, some places are far better off. All places, though, especially those with other humans, are flawed and full of risk. We are hardwired to seek out “same” and keep our distance from “other.” People say hatred and racism are learned. This is true, to an extent. We are taught who to hate, what to hate, but the wiring for hatred? It’s there at birth. It’s primal. It comes from fear. It comes from an instinct to seek protection from our kin, our kind.

Love is there, too. We are wired to love. Our first love is family, the essence of “same.” But we can also learn a greater love, and this is the point I wish to make. Love is in the wiring, but it is learned just as much as hate. Our jobs, then is to teach love. Love family. Love same. Love the tribe. Love the village.

And “other” because this is where the power, real power comes from. Love in the face of difference. Love in the face of hatred. Love in the face of hatred. I once heard a question asked of a Tibetan Buddhist monk who spent over 20 years as a prisoner of the Chinese government. The interviewer asked, “What was the one thing you feared most during the years you spent in prison?” His response was immediate, “I feared losing compassion for my captors.”

Compassion is love. If you want to know what you can do when you sit in a position of power and privilege, I think the only real answer is to love. When you are angry at injustice, love. When you are furious at racism, love. When you want to tell someone off because of how ignorant they are, love. Love and choose a better path.

I used to think that the best thing I could do for my teams in the workplace was to inspire and influence so they could innovate. For years, the words embedded in my email signature were simply: Inspire. Influence. Innovation.

There is a better option: Inspire. Influence. Love.

Beyond fear, beyond anger, beyond hatred, there is love. When other emotions burn out, there is love.

In all things, love is the only path.

I’ll admit, I’ve become a sucker for the idea of resetting for a new year.

Yeah, I know it’s the way we track time using this Gregorian calendar of ours is arbitrary in so many ways, but it’s there, with clearly delineated markers of progression through the time-stream. Why not just take advantage of it?

I don’t have a good answer for “why not,” so I’ll just go with it.

2020 is a new year, filled with new possibilities. This year, my vow to myself is to think about things less and do things more. Sometimes, I simply take too long to make a decision. Soul searching and serendipitous learning over the last several years lead me to the conclusion that there are many legitimate reasons to plan and not do, but there seem to be far more…illegitimate?…reasons to stall, postpone, and defer action rather than face the proverbial music. This year, I aim to face the music more often than I have in the past.

Here’s to more condensed periods of consideration in an effort to ship more good stuff out into the world.

“Who’s it for? What’s it for?”

I could hear Seth Godin in my head. He challenges us to ask those two questions of ourselves and the work we do frequently, especially in his podcast, Akimbo. They are great questions. I am glad that he asks them and that he asks us to ask them. I find myself coming back to these questions often these days, and I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of them when talking to others. Internally, those two questions are on high rotation.

It’s no surprise that they come to mind when I overhear conversations, especially in corporate environments. So many times, it seems to me that a lot of what goes on happens without a clear understanding of who it’s for and what it’s for. I’m not implying that nobody knows the answer to those questions, but I think that, more often than not, the people doing the work are unclear as to what those answers are. It makes it hard to do the job and do it well when the who and the what are unclear. It seems unforgiveable to me that most people don’t know because it’s their manager’s job to make sure those answers make sense to the people they are entrusted by the organization to lead.

Decades of experience and research have taught me something that I am heartened to see appearing in popular business literature with greater frequency now: the employee’s experience in the workplace is largely dependent on their manager. We’ve known this for years, but the language today is clear and the research to back up the idea is plentiful. In May 2019, Gallup released the book It’s the Manager by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter. Gallup’s research has shown for years that there is a relationship between manager quality and employee engagement, organizational effectiveness, and business performance. They are not the only ones, either. The idea is not novel.

And yet…and yet here we are. If Gallup is supporting a book on the subject, the market must be there. If the market is there, it’s likely because, collectively, we still have an issue. Managers matter, and we still can’t figure out what to do with that.

Who’s it for? What’s it for?

Managers need to be able to answer those questions, and they need to be able to answer them for more than just themselves. From their direct reports to their customers to even their peers, leaders should know who it’s for and what it’s for. Whatever “it” is, the mystery should never, ever exist in the manager’s mind. If it does, then something is wrong.

Answer the questions, and you’ll probably wind up finding the answers to a lot of other questions.

The gift doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do with it. Not everyone who succeeds has a gift, but everyone who succeeds did something with whatever they had at their disposal. And not everyone who is given a gift does something worthwhile with it.

What you do with your gifts matters more than what you were given. Do something worthwhile.

Seth Godin often talks about the “race to the bottom.” For a business focused on doing everything possible to reduce cost and come in as the cheapest in their sliver of the market, achieving that goal generally requires giving up an awful lot along the way. The worst part about that race? Someone wins. They often win by stripping away the very things that once made them special. Is that really a race worth winning?

In the same vein, I’ve learned that hiding, the quest to become invisible, to go unnoticed so as to avoid ruffling feathers or making waves, is, as a goal, a pyrrhic victory, at best. At worst? It robs the individual of everything that makes them special, that can differentiate them as unique human beings capable of contributing in astounding ways. And it kills the spirit. It absolutely destroys it. Like the race to the bottom, is this a goal you want to achieve?

Recent research conducted by Imperative revealed that people who do not engage in work they believe has an impact have a 2% chance of self-reporting themselves as fulfilled. Without personal and professional growth, they have a 1% chance of reporting themselves as fulfilled. By making themselves small, by dulling their luster, by retreating in shadow, people attempting to hide will sabotage their ability to find fulfillment in their work. I’ve heard people say, “This is just a job, a paycheck. I come in, do my time, and get a paycheck. I live my life outside of these walls.” There are two problems with this logic.

First, we spend so much time at work that, following this approach, we would spend most of your day suffocating who we really are as living, human beings. Nothing healthy can come of filling eight hours a day, likely half the time one is awake, with meaningless, unfulfilling work. The second problem with this logic ties back to Imperative’s findings: not having meaningful work and not growing through work experiences all but assures that people who hide at work will not feel fulfilled outside of work. There is no real separation of work and home; there never was. We are human, and we are whole. We integrate whether we believe we need to or not. We cannot spend half of our waking hours in drudgery and expect to switch gears and find fulfillment in the hours before and after work. No matter how hard we try, we’ll always fall short. We will always rob ourselves of at least some of the happiness that is our birthright.

The first step is to stop hiding. Raise your hand and participate. One day at a time, little by little, step out of the shadows and let us see you.

We want things “our way,” but within limits. That’s kind of the gist of how most people handle customization. The deep pool of seemingly limitless possibilities is intimidating, so when presented with infinite depth and breadth, most of people opt to just lounge at the water’s edge.

Defining a section of safe waters and a curated selection of potential activities makes the murky, unfathomable depths far less threatening. Most people respond better to parameters within which to make their choices. A customizable menu at a fast food restaurant is less daunting than the open-ended question, “What do you want for lunch?”

Customization, then, is a double-edged sword because most people want the opportunity to choose but want those choices to be manageable. Too much choice can shut a person down. This makes applying for and getting a job with a large corporation easier than starting a solo venture from the ground up. It makes choosing a well-defined major and course of study at a large university a path of less resistance. It’s safer and easier to let someone else define the goals and rules of the game. That’s what most people want. Or is it?

Something is shifting in the world of higher education, and I think it’s worth taking note. Customization is becoming increasingly popular, at least among colleges and universities seeking to attract the brightest minds with the greatest potential. While “I’ll tell you how this degree curriculum works” is predominant, more and more institutions not only offer but promote and sell the idea that the student can customize their education. They are free to follow a core curriculum with a few choices along the way, but they also have the option to completely customize the college experience. Interested in Physics and Music? At the University of Illinois College of Engineering, a student with such interests can create a specialized course of study unique to solving problems at the intersection of the two. At the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Stanford and many others, similar mindsets serve as the foundation for the guiding philosophy for developing leading engineers, doctors, and political scientists of the future. The message to prospective students seems to be that customization isn’t meant to be feared; it’s the way of tomorrow. It reminds me of how we used to talk about global change when I was in college.

Despite this shift, customization is overwhelming outside of higher education. Award-winning and prolific author Neil Gaiman recently made this observation: a page filled with writing, no matter how atrocious, can be fixed; you cannot fix a pristine page…because there’s nothing there. It’s time to take the fear of customization, of sullying the pristine and blank page, out of the equation. I believe the world we live in is optimized for customization. Technology provides us access to seemingly limitless possibilities, but having options is not the issue. Making choices is the issue. In order to make those choices, we need to narrow down the options. The first choice, then, is whether or not we believe it is worthwhile to define the options ourselves, then make a choice. The alternative is to continue living in a fast-food world and tweak the choices others make for us.

I’m ready to jump in the deep end. Are you?

I don’t have anything to say. Well, at least nothing that interesting.

I haven’t climbed Everest. I haven’t taken a solo sub to the bottom of the Marianna’s Trench. I haven’t survived an organ transplant. I haven’t overcome unsurmountable odds to learn to read and write. I haven’t escaped a civil war. I haven’t worked my way out of poverty.

My skin is white. My name is Latino. I went to college and got an undergraduate degree. I went to graduate school and got a graduate degree. I got an MBA, in fact. My employer at the time paid for most of it. My parents aren’t divorced. They love me dearly. They’re old, which is a good thing. I have two brothers, and they are good men. They love me, too, and I love them. We still speak to each other. And we definitely look forward to family gatherings with our wives, all of our children, and our parents. They might only happen once a year or so, but we look forward to the time together.

I met a great girl, dated her, and fell in love. I asked her to marry me. She agreed. Nobody called off the wedding. Nobody stood up towards the end of the ceremony and tried to stop it. Nobody was murdered at the reception. I don’t think anyone even got into an argument. Sure, we fight from time to time, but nobody hits anybody else. We don’t throw things or curse each other out. We’ve been married for over 20 years. I still like cuddling with her. We spoon just about every night. We might snore on occasion, but we still sleep in the same bed.

I have two sons. They are good, young manlings. They were born with all ten digits and all the right components in their nether regions. They are normal, healthy, smart kids. They play instruments (a couple each). They get along. They argue, but they always end the day saying “good night” to each other, often with a big hug and brotherly kiss. They respect each other, and they respect their parents. We can take them just about anywhere, and they won’t embarrass us. They are polite. They know how to behave in public. We’ve travelled all over the place with them, including to Europe, and they are the best young travelers a parent could hope for.

I’ve never been laid off. I’ve never lost a house to foreclosure or a car to repossession. We’ve never been sent to collections. My wife had her purse stolen once, and we once had someone open a credit card in our name, but we got that taken care of swiftly. I was on some sort of TSA watch list for awhile. Well, it’s more accurate to say that my NAME was on a watch list. I remember one time when I was compared to the photo they had on file on the watch list, it was clear to the TSA agents at the airport that I was not the droid they were looking for.

I don’t have a super power, extra appendages, mutant abilities, or interstellar/trans-dimensional technology to aid me in the fight against otherworldly foes.

I am pretty normal. I’m just a guy, a normal, American guy. No tragedies to speak of and no Earth-shattering accomplishments. Now that I think about it, I’m fairly boring.

The problem is that I think that assessment holds true when I compare myself to other, more interesting people. Let’s face it: some people are really, really interesting and have really compelling stories. There are too many examples to cite. Ok. Maybe there’s time for one. How about Nyle Dimarco? He’s the guy who won America’s Top Model and Dancing with the Stars, a year later. Double reality show wins. That’s pretty cool on its own, but, in case you didn’t know, he’s Deaf. Become America’s Top Model is cool, but you could see how he’d win, Deaf or not. He’s a handsome dude. But Dancing with the Stars? A dance competition won by a man who cannot hear? See? Compelling story.

To one extent or another, we all do this, though. We all select the brightest star in the constellation and say, “See? I’m dull. Duller than dull.” Of course, we overlook the fact that we’re a star in a constellation. Or that we’re an average person, living an average life in 21^st Century America. Or 21^st Century Europe. Or on 21^st Century Earth. Or that we’re alive in the 21^st-freakin’ Century, period!

I spent an hour not too long ago with my teenage son watching J-Rock videos on YouTube. J-Rock is a genre of music from Japan. We could have spent all afternoon watching videos and listening to J-Rock. He wanted to show me some K-Pop, Korean pop, videos, too, but we had other things to do. Music from Japan and Korea, at our fingertips. Hours worth of content. HOURS. From the other side of the world, instantly available. I hate to say it, but when I was a kid, that just wasn’t possible. I remember how hard it was keeping up with American music when I was a kid growing up in Mexico City. Even as US citizens who came back to the US once or twice a year, it was difficult to keep my collection of vinyl and cassette singles and albums current. Today? I could have been a US citizen, living in Mexico City, listening to J-Rock. The 21^st Century is pretty amazing. But only if you think about it. Otherwise, it’s “ho-hum, boring.” Like me.

Except, maybe I’m not that boring. I did grow up in Mexico City. I lived with my family in Mexico City for over 10 years. My dad was an executive with an American firm operating in the country. In fact, my dad was Vice President of Manufacturing for Latin America for a book publisher. He got to travel around Latin America. He had some corporate perks, too. We attended a private school that catered to international business people, wealthy nationals, and politicians from all over the world. The ethnic clicks in my school were legit: the Japanese click all came from Japan; the Brazilian click all came from Brazil; the American click all came from the US. The Japanese club pretty much conducted business in Japanese. The Brazilian kids chattered to one another in Brazilian Portuguese. Military brats, embassy kids, and preps made up the US contingency. Of course, there were clicks of kids from our host country, too. In that regard, kids were kids. Still, it was a rich, dynamic, horizon-expanding environment. I can’t think of a single person from my school that I still talk to who does not look back on our shared experience and marvel at how fortunate we all were. Truly.

We traveled back to the US at least once a year, generally twice. We took vacations to all the hot spots in Mexico, vacations that I now realize, through the eyes of an adult paying for his own family’s vacations, were very expensive. We had nice cars, nice clothes, and nice things. Our pantry was always packed with snacks and cereals and goodies from the US. My parents threw really great parties, often with live music and an open bar. I grew up privileged, but my parents still made us wash the dishes, dust our rooms, and take care of the family dog. They tried to keep us humble, but they also sent us off on some pretty amazing adventures. My older brother, for example, traveled to China, Japan, and Mongolia as part of a school trip. He studied abroad in Madrid when he was in college. I got to spend the summer between junior and senior year in high school in Moscow, as the guest of the Cypriot ambassador to Moscow. I visited them again at their home in Nicosia, Cyprus, when I was in college. I got to stay with my friend in their apartment in Larnaca. It was pretty cool.

When I left Mexico, I went to college. It took me five years to get through it, but I did it. I attended both the University of Miami in Florida and the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I met my wife there. A couple of years after we graduated, my wife and I got matching MBA’s. I worked in the corporate world, for the same company, for 23 years. I relocated from Texas to Illinois during that time. I took a seven-month temporary assignment to Belfast, Northern Ireland, and traveled with my wife and kids to Ireland, England, Spain, Italy, France, and Scotland. My kids attended a private school for most of their education in the US, and we home schooled both of our kids for 8^th grade in order to provide them a unique, tailored experience before they jumped into the grind of public high school. We live in a nice house, try to give our kids the best we can, and take family vacations every year.

See? Not a bad life. A little average, but, then again, a little not.

It comes down to perspective. Who are you? How often (and how harshly) do you judge yourself? Do you judge yourself relative to some ideal in your head? Or do you judge yourself relative to others? These are all important questions, but there is one that I think is far more important: are you kind to yourself? I think you should be because you can’t be kind to anyone else, not really, until you learn to be kind to yourself. Give yourself a break. You might be boring by someone else’s standards, but, to another, you just might be the luckiest person in the world.

As with so many other things, boring is a matter of perspective.

One of my sources of self-doubt involves assumptions. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that all of my sources of self-doubt involve assumptions to some degree. That’s because self-doubt is often associated with how we believe we are perceived by others rather than on actual information about how others perceive us. Most of the time, I can’t actually know what a person thinks about me or how they view me without them telling me outright (and even that can be unreliable), so all I really have to go on are my interpretations of things that happen and how others treat me. That’s an imperfect way to model the world around me, but it’s all I’ve got. It’s all any of us really have.

Rather than make assumptions about what others think, it’s likely healthier and more productive to work with the things I can know like how I feel about myself and my work, the results of my work in the world around me, and the impact I perceive my actions as having on those around me. I can also ask other people for their input. That’s a much better option than making up stories about what they think because those stories are often just reflections of the tapes already playing in my mind. As a result, the stories I make up about others are probably just reflections of my own inner dialogue, so it’s really not about the other person at all! It’s all about me and my own self-assessment.

While that could be confusing, it should be reassuring. Learning to focus on what goes on in our own minds and in our own hearts can help drown out invalidating stories about other people, their feelings, and the operation of their minds. Getting to know other people is important, and learning to give and receive feedback is vital if we want to adopt a mindset that allows us to continuously get better.  I know that, in my life, I am most productive and have the greatest impact when I focus on understanding the processes of my mind and my heart. What I think and what I feel are within my span of control and focusing on changing them, when needed, will yield far greater results than seeking to change what other people think. In addition, what others observe me do and the improvements they see making in my own life can serve to influence. Influence is how we make our way into the hearts and minds of others.

Homeostasis keeps us alive. It is the tendency for balance within systems, especially within the bodies of living organisms. Body temperature in mammals, for example, is regulated internally. A mammal works hard at maintaining a consistent internal temperature. In a human being, that temperature is approximately 98 degrees, give or take a degree of variance. Our bodies burn fuel in an effort to keep it within a certain range. When it’s cold, we shiver to burn more fuel and generate heat. When it’s hot, we sweat to give our bodies a layer of moisture that helps radiate heat through our skin. Shiver. Sweat. Shiver again. It’s all designed to keep that temperature stable.

There are countless systems and interactions going on within our bodies aimed at maintaining an overall, homeostatic state. Homeostasis also applies to systems outside of our bodies. Ecological systems can be said to be in homeostasis when the environment provides the organisms living within it everything they need to maintain stable populations. The ratio of predator to prey contributes to the homeostatic state of the ecological system, too. Too many of either can have a devastating effect, overall, sending the entire system into chaos. Pollution, rainfall, rate of growth, and rate of decay are other variables that affect these ecological systems. Balance between them all is essential.

Homeostasis, then, is a very good thing.

Until it’s not.

Homeostasis becomes an issue when it is applied to the inner workings of the human mind. Homeostasis is good for the biology stuff, for sure. It’s when the cognitive stuff kicks in that homeostasis can be troublesome. When we experience extremes in life, the tendency is to have extreme reactions to the experience. These reactions are both cognitive and emotional. I differentiate the two as process of mind (cognitive or what you think) and process of heart (emotional or what you feel). Regardless of terminology, they are extreme cognitive and emotional reactions to extreme stimuli. These stimuli elicit thoughts and feelings that fall outside our normal range.

If we won the lottery, we’d feel euphoric. If we lost a limb, we’d feel destitute. The influx of money would likely lead to weeks and months of “floating on cloud nine,” while the loss of function would likely lead to weeks and months of struggle and depression. However, what research has found is that people who experience such extremes tend to revert, over time, to a set-point, a level of cognitive and emotional being that is characteristic of the individual. In other words, once they get past the extreme reaction to the extreme event, they go back to equilibrium. It’s almost as if a sort of balance exists for our thoughts and feelings. There are peaks and valleys, but the inclination is to get back to “normal.” That’s homeostasis.

The problem is that homeostasis becomes a barrier to happiness and overall well-being when we look to change, to move outside our range of normal. As we attempt to change, something pulls us back to our old patterns, habits, and ways of being. Our bodies don’t like extremes, and our minds don’t like extremes, either. But extremes are what are required to move outside of comfort zones and effect real change.

As the calendar year winds down, our thoughts and feelings will likely move to extremes, potentially motivating us and hardening our resolve to do things differently in our lives. When the new year arrives, the bias will be towards action. The bias generally does not last long. Whether or not action actually yields results depends on the ability of the individual to overcome homeostasis. Knowing that, we can plan in advance and develop interventions to keep us from regressing to the mean.