There are probably many widespread misconceptions about excellence, but I will just address two of those here this week. The first of these fallacies is that excellence can be measured along the yardstick of average. This may stem from the classroom and good ol’ standardized tests. If you score a 50, you fail, but if you do a little better and score a 70, you are average. If you do a little bit better still, you score a 90 and are rewarded an A for your excellence. But life isn’t a standardized test. And it can’t be simplified into a nifty little bell curve with a crowded middle and thin tails. Average and excellence are rarely separated by incremental improvement. They are often worlds apart and can sometimes not even be described in the same terms. An excellent basketball player isn’t just slightly better or even twice as good as an average player. In fact, they don’t even let them play together on the same court. That is why they have professionals who play on TV for m...
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It’s been said that the perfect time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. I suppose that’s true. But I also think people can get so caught up in regret, lamenting what they didn’t plant two decades before, that they neglect to plant anything today. They miss the importance of now. Woulda-coulda-shoulda can be a dangerous game. We look back in hindsight and think we can identify what might have been “perfect timing” for a significant life choice or a major decision. Then we get upset for having neglected to see or act on what seems so obvious now. This can lead to thinking current decisions should appear to be just as clearly black and white. We wallow in regret while we wait for “perfect timing” to make up missed opportunities of the past. Perfect timing only happens in the land of fairy godmothers, unicorns and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing, but it likely won’t be an easy choice. And it may not pay off right away...
We’ve already established humans don’t handle risk well. We worry about plane crashes and tsunamis while stuffing our faces full of butter and sugar on the fast track to diabetes and heart disease. And it’s not just probability we struggle with, it’s impact. We don’t do a good job weighing potential consequences of unknown outcomes. Consider a game where you have two dice, and every time you roll them, there is either a payoff or a loss. Let’s pretend every time you roll double sixes, you get paid ten dollars. But anything else costs you ten cents. Any other outcome outside of double sixes is a loss. While the odds of rolling doubles sixes are low (1 in 36), the cost of the loss is relatively low, and the payoff for a win is disproportionately high. (Statistically, every $10 win “costs” you about three and a half bucks in losses.) You would lose far more than you win, but the rare wins would more than make up for the many losses. However, the tangible cost of the losses p...
If you needed a heart transplant, you probably wouldn’t want a physician on his first day out of fellowship. You would want someone with experience. If you were having a custom home built, you wouldn’t choose a builder beginning his first house. We all value experts with experience. But the problem with experience, at least how we generally measure it, is that we look at it quantitatively rather than qualitatively. There’s a big difference between someone with 20 years of experience and someone else who essentially has one year of experience 20 times. The world is full of “experts” who have their experience on repeat, not learning or growing or improving, just replaying similar circumstances and using cookie-cutter solutions over and over. We must each be careful to not fall into the same trap. Just because we have done something for a long time does not ensure we are improving in that craft. Development and mastery don’t simply come with age. We don’t grow by default s...
We are wired to think in linear terms. A little bit more effort yields a little bit more reward. Incremental returns for incremental investment. If I sacrifice a little more today, I will benefit a little more tomorrow. But that isn’t how life works and it messes with our feeble human minds. Outcomes in real life are rarely linear. Think of an aspiring doctor who goes to school for a better part of a decade before becoming a physician. But she hasn’t “made it” yet. She must now enter residency where she will work 100 hours a week for what is effectively minimum wage. Then, all of the sudden, she will sign a contract for what could potentially be several hundred thousand dollars a year in salary and may earn more in the next twelve months than she did in the previous decade combined. Years of incremental sacrifice and effort with a balloon payoff. Or consider technology. How many thousands of years did it take to produce the chariot? And how many thousands more between the...
Some people respond well to criticism and correction. Others seem to react better to praise. While the perfect mix of praise and encouragement versus correction and criticism may vary from person to person, there should be a healthy balance of each. We all need both cheerleaders and critics. Think of praise and criticism as opposing pedals on a bicycle. If one or the other is emphasized too heavily, the bike won’t maintain balance and will eventually crash. The balanced but opposing forces of each are what propel the bike forward. You need the uplifting encouragement of the praise to keep you optimistic and positive. You need the correction of criticism to repair mistakes and keep you humble. Balance your bicycle. Search out both cheerleaders and critics who genuinely have your best interests at heart.
As Hitler and the Axis powers continued their world conquest, it became clear to the Free World that war was inevitable. It would be the only reasonable solution to stop the destruction and violence being unleashed on the world. There would be no deals, no negotiations, no appeasement. War would be the only way to bring peace. We wrestle with the same dichotomy within ourselves. Each one of us has destructive tendencies and predispositions. If we appease them, ruin and pain typically follow. Neither can we ignore them nor negotiate. We must go to war within ourselves. We must war against greed. Against pride. Against lust. Against selfishness and laziness. Against bitterness and hatred. We must war against fear and anxiety. Against doubt. We must actively fight against urges, impulses and our own personal weaknesses. If we battle diligently, we may find tranquility and inner calm. If we submit to their demands, there is only destruction and turmoil. Sometimes war is...
Renown neuroscientist, Joseph LeDoux discovered that our natural fear response can travel one of two pathways through the brain. The faster pathway is our automatic, primary fear response that helps us react quickly to a threat. It travels a direct route between the thalamus and the amygdala in the brain. It thus can be thought of as the “low road” as it sends signals through the lower portion of the brain. Although it’s the quicker path to action, it sacrifices reason and thought for speed. The slower path begins at the thalamus as well, but it takes the “scenic route” through the neocortex before reaching the amygdala. Although slower than the first path, the detour allows thought and logic to enter the reaction process. This is the “high road.” In short, the Low Road is designed to help you survive, but the High Road allows you to thrive. In the last few months, our world has been rocked by tremendous levels of fear and uncertainty. While we have little or no cont...
Personal growth is a lot like climbing a mountain. Sometimes the trek is steep and the pace grueling. Then we may plateau for a bit, allowing us to acclimate. If there is not a natural plateau, we may need to rest for a moment and take some preemptive downtime. This allows us to consolidate the lessons from the most recent climb and recharge our energy levels for the next ascent. Sometimes we lose our footing and slip back a bit. Other times we must hike back down a ways so we can climb higher later. At times we walk down into a valley so we can continue our ascent in the future or seek out a better long-term path. All of this is a normal part of the climb towards personal growth. Not every step will bring us higher, and plateaus are natural and necessary. But issues arise when we neglect to climb out of the valleys and plateaus. They should be a typical experience on our journey, but also a temporary one. If we ever neglect to resume the climb, that’s when we become old,...
In Greek mythology, there is an evil and deceitful character named Sisyphus who angers the gods with his unforgivable deeds. Eventually, Zeus punishes him by forcing Sisyphus to push a boulder up a steep mountain. Every time it neared the top, the boulder would slide back down, forcing Sisyphus to begin the process all over again. Zeus cursed him to labor in this hopeless and futile task for all eternity. Sometimes you may feel like Sisyphus, intensely laboring in tasks that slide backward leaving you with a feeling of futility. No matter how hard you work, things just seem to roll back to how they were. Maybe it’s a struggle in a relationship, and regardless of how much kindness and love you show, that person responds negatively. Perhaps it’s a project or proposal at work that seems to have gone nowhere despite tremendous energy and effort. It could be the seemingly endless sacrifices you are making to get in shape, but your weight loss has stalled out anyway. Maybe it’s th...
Pessimism and negativity don’t need much of an opportunity to take root and flourish. This is especially true in volatile times such as we find ourselves in now. In this respect, pessimism and negativity are much like weeds. You don’t have to plant them. You don’t have to care for them. They just show up and start spreading. Just as an empty field will naturally become overgrown with weeds, negativity seems to be the default setting for the landscape of our minds. While we can try to uproot these weeds and “spot treat” as they spring up, this is a laborious and tedious process. It is better, rather, to prevent them. By planting and cultivating a healthy mindset full of appreciation, gratitude, love and altruism, we can crowd out the negativity and prevent them from taking root in the first place. Just like a beautiful lawn full of lush, green grass, there is little room or nourishment left to sustain the weeds. Nurture the healthy vegetation within your frame of mind and ...
I want to add just one more thought to the message from last week, Cementing Habits. Temporary becomes permanent if we are not careful. How we sometimes act might become how we always act without deliberate effort. This does not just apply to our habits, but also how we allow others to act around us. It is also relevant in the world we choose to live in. Passing circumstances may be here to stay if we do not do anything to change them. Toxic relationships and friends or acquaintances who bring you down are no different either. The longer we allow the negative and destructive to persist, the more solidified they become. We must be mindful of what we accept for our lives in passing, as those elements can become permanent in the future. Temporary may only be temporary for a while.
Life isn’t fair. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but the fair only comes once a year and it’s probably going to be canceled anyway. There is certainly not an even distribution of many important resources. Some folks are smarter than others. Some may have to overcome learning disabilities. Some of us had supportive parents and others may not even know their parents. Some are well-connected, others aren’t. Some had access to a top-notch education, but some barely had an opportunity for a bare-bones high school education. There never has been and never will be an equal sharing of resources, and much of that is out of our control. But while talents and means are important, they are simply isolated aspects of potential. And potential alone doesn’t mean much. Every lump of coal has the potential to be a diamond, but I don’t see a lot of women wearing coal in their rings and necklaces. But what you can control is effort. Effort is the great equalizer. Properly applied wit...