I’ve been told to lighten up on the blog so here goes.
Why can’t I be cool? Maybe the bigger question is why can’t I have the ability to totally block out reality when I look in the mirror and see myself?
Deep, I know. Let me explain by sharing this experience I recently witnessed.
I was at lunch at a sushi restaurant. While awaiting food a guy comes in with his wife. Somehow I knew they were married but I’m not sure how. But that’s not the point. Maybe they were dating. Whatever. I hope for her they were. The point is the guy somehow got up that morning, looked in the mirror and saw cool. The sad thing is the girl (probably his wife) thought he was cool too. And I can’t figure out how because he really was not.
She actually seemed normal and was dressed normal except that she bought-in to his attempt at cool and that just made me sad. Let me see if I can describe him because I am "positive sure" (as opposed to "negative sure") you’ll get my point.
Think Kevin James but not cool. The guy was a bit large but I’m sure he saw muscle. He wore knee-length shorts, brand spanking new white Adidas and Adidas white socks. I knew this because the socks said “Adidas” right on them, and were perfectly centered on the outside of each sock, both right and left.
So far the package was okay but clearly trending downward on the cool meter. He had on a black tee shirt. Still okay. But on the dome he wore a beret. Backwards.
Why? Who said that was cool? I can see a baseball cap because it keeps the sun off your neck. Theoretically. But a beret on backwards can only be so to make a statement that you are cool or have some fashion sense or something.
Also, who told him he could do it? Surely it’s not a personal decision one can make. Certainly someone has to authorize it, right? But that’s not the thing still.
He was wearing sunglasses even though he was now inside and outside it was overcast and the sun wasn’t out. I know, many that have gone before have made that statement but that’s still not the thing. He eventually noticed he couldn’t see and took them off and here is the deal: he hooked them on his tee shirt ON HIS BACK and not on the front like regular people do.
I know this wasn’t authorized and only a really, really cool person would be allowed to do something this aby-normal. He didn’t have anything else hanging on front so there was room. It had to be a fashion statement that was meant to tell people – cool person in the room, keep your distance, pay homage, keep the immediate area around him clear, give him room to operate and maneuver, and above all, pay attention, more cool stuff to follow. And there was.
He had this mannerism about him that said, "man of the world." He knew what he wanted to order and didn’t need to condescend to look at the menu. But his office was open to answer his wife’s questions about the various foodstuffs. She quiz him on different things and in a very detached manner he’d answer but you could tell his mind was on more important things like, “I wonder if I’d be cool if I turned my Adidas socks so that the Adidas wording was facing inward.” But he could muse these things and multitask by answering her. Worldly things were second nature to him.
She asked him stunners like, “What is tempura?” Oh, and she started every question the same way, “This is a dumb question but …” His answer, given far too loud but apparently he sensed his wisdom shouldn’t be limited to just her but the rest of the folk, “Tempara (yes he said it that way) is deep-fried but not as heavy.” Profound!
Eventually they ordered: him a chicken teriyaki bowl of rice and her a lunch salad with ranch. Did I tell you this was a sushi bar? Next came the coup d'état of all coolness. Let’s call it the too-cool-to-follow-the-normal-sequence-of-events move. He ordered without looking at the menu and answered all of his “sweethearts” cultural food questions but after ordering, as he prattling on about something, he picked up the menu and again multi-tasked by talking and perusing and then, I kid you not, in mid-sentence he all the sudden said, “GIVE ME A DOLLAR” as if the fate of the world hung in the balance and was contingent on this buck.
Clearly he was too cool to keep money and where would he put it anyway, you can't hang it on the back of your shirt. But everyone could sense the immediacy of his need for this buck. She didn’t question but yanked a dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to him. I suspect she had learned over time to not stop the creative flow of coolness when ordered to do so.
He grabbed it and bolted up to the cash register and told the girl staffing it, “Instead of chicken teriyaki I want the ‘cubbie beef.’” He then tossed the dollar bill on the counter and walked back to his seat. As he sat back down after this act of creation he told his girl that he loved the "cubbie beef" but it was an additional dollar. His explanation was accepted without comment and it was clear that his wife accepted these moments of profound and absolute coolness without surprise or even query.
I was nothing short of “bumfuzzled” if I may quote Chandler or Ross or one of the Friends. First off, the person working the cash register hadn’t taken their order so I’m not sure how that order change was orchestrated in this English as a third language environment. But I guess cool people don’t worry about those things.
Next, in this place you paid for the food after you ate. So what was up with the dollar? Too cool to follow the paying sequence I guess.
Lastly, "cubbie beef?" How can you be so far off on pronouncing Kobe Beef and still think your cool. If he’d ever heard it prounounced it surely would have resonated with him that it’s pronounced the same as his favorite basketball player, Kobe Bryant.
And that’s what I’m saying, why can’t I be cool like this guy?
I could never go out dressed like that and do those kinds of things in a public venue. I just couldn’t. I would be far too nervous someone would observe my faking and write it up on a blog.
My Procrastination Endpoint: Between books, chapters, pages and words... Between projects, chores, goals, expectations and living ... I end up here.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Kenny Rogers - The Last Ten Years (Superman) Video
Watch this. One of the best songs in a long time. We've all lived through all these things. Puts them in perspective.
Dignity: The Hard Way
Somehow, somewhere in life, and surely not intentionally (wink, wink), you will tick someone off who you really should not have; someone you need or are going to have to interact with in the course of your life. But that’s not the deal. The deal is that you didn’t mean to tick this person off but they zing you back real bad, and in public. How rude! You want to say something clever (or worse) back. Freeze that moment in time. What should you do (as opposed to what did you do?)
Unfortunately this happens far too often. The operative situation here is that you are a good person and doing the best you can in everything you do but somehow you angered someone unintentionally and they reacted by manifesting their anger with words or maybe even a little rage. You are on the receiving end of a verbal tongue lashing and it wasn’t in a private setting. Your instincts will be to react back with equal force but if you have that little compass you got when you raised your bar it will steer you to the better way to respond.
In college sometimes you’ll do almost anything to make a few bucks especially if you are married, have children, and bills. Once upon a time in that situation, living in a place we lovingly called, “The Ghetto”, a neighbor asked me while on a home teaching visit, if I’d be interested in some part time work. Turns out he was a Constable and wanted me to serve legal papers for him. So I became a Process Server. (I refer to it now as a “Brain Dead Process Server”, not that there’s anything wrong with it.)
The deal was, for every legal paper I served I got a fixed amount of money based on the nature of the legal offense. I gave it a try and found out I could make real good money in just a few hours a night. For some reason I had a knack. I think I looked young, naïve, and innocent (it wasn’t too long previously that I honed this great skill while tracting in the mission field) so people answered their door even when they were taking deliberate steps to avoid being served.
Legal papers that were real old and hadn’t been served were worth substantially more than new ones. I made it a point to take some of these old ones that had gone unserved for a long time and usually could place them quickly. I made good money and met good people and soon the Constable asked if I’d like to branch out to some things that made even more money. This was repossession and transporting bail jumpers back to the State. It wasn’t bounty hunting but it was badge carrying, gun toting, wannabe stuff. It was a world I didn’t know even existed and was amazed punks like me could be doing it with so little training with a guy who was only a couple of degrees shy of kind of scary.
The Constable was what you could call an irascible character. He had been doing this Constable thing for a long time, knew a lot about it, but thought he knew more than he did. Even I could see that, brain dead as I was. He was frequently on a cop-wannabe ego trip, short on temper, and usually picked public venues to air his anger at who ever dared cross him. So why put up with it? I don’t know, brain death, bills to pay, “easy” money. After a couple of years of it, it was getting old and he was getting old but like I said, the money was good and okay, I was afraid to tell him “I quit.”
One thing I found out the hard way was that he liked to pull over people who cut him off in traffic. He actually had a “cherry” (a portable red flasher thing he could stick on his dashboard like cops have) in his car and with the badges and stuff, he could get away with it though he had no police authority and only did it to yell at people because they ticked him off. If I only knew then what I know now. Yea, I probably should have ‘ratted’ him out but what did I know. I’m like twenty-two and he’s sixty and been doing this for thirty years. Plus we dealt with cops all the time so I figured he must have known what he was doing. But it seemed weird all the same and I didn’t like to be with him when it happened.
One time, right in front of the Century movie theatre on State Street and 3300 South, we were going somewhere and he had me driving. (Oh I forgot to tell you, he liked me to chauffer him when he took me on a job.) So I was driving and he was shotgun and someone pulled out ahead of us, cut us off, and sped through the intersection (north on State at 33rd) on a stale yellow light. He told me to run it as he lit the cherry and put it in the car window. I told him it was red as I hit the brakes and he screamed for me to run it. So I ran it. We lived.
Then he told me to catch up to the person so they’d pull over. I did but they weren’t pulling over. So he told me to honk the horn at them. Those that know me can testify, I hate honking car horns. It’s one of my deals. I started to argue with him and he reached over and laid on the horn himself. They kept going and he told me to pull up along side of them in the outer lane so he could flash his badge and waive them over. I said no, we were driving too fast and I wasn’t going to do it. This was all going on, mind you, while I’m driving and trying to maintain control of the car. He went ballistic so I pulled up along side of them and he tried to waive the person over. I noticed at this point the car was full of passengers; maybe six people or so. The driver still wouldn’t pull over so he told me to pull over in their lane, cut them off, and then block them in. All I knew of this maneuver was from what I’d seen on the TV shows so clearly I told him I didn’t know how. He grabbed the wheel and started yanking it toward the other vehicle so I had to speed up or hit them. When I got ahead of them, he yanked hard and we cut over and I hit the brakes. Both vehicles stopped and we had the other car blocked in just like he wanted. Problem was he couldn’t get out of his door because it was angled against the other vehicle so there wasn’t clearance. Plus he was a lard butt.
Adrenaline was running a little high now, as you can imagine, and he was yelling at me to move the car so he could open his door. There were other lanes of traffic, my adrenaline was making me hyperventilate, and the guy’s anger toward me was really ticking me off. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to back up or pull ahead. Both prospects had their downside so in the midst of his yelling I was trying to figure it out and probably went both ways before settling on backing up. Finally he got out and approached the other vehicle to yell at the driver. Keep in mind this all took place in about the same amount of time I am recounting it; only a half-a-minute or so.
So he’s out talking to the driver and I could hear him yelling at the guy and then he yells at me (I stayed in the vehicle, it wasn’t my beef) and asks me if I’m going to just sit in the car or if I had come to do some work. I got out of the car wondering what the heck I was supposed to do and the Constable was cuffing the driver like on Cops. I figured something else was up now and so I’m like, “What do you want me to do?” It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question for a brain dead process server but it just set him off and I got an earful in front of the driver, the five other passengers from the vehicle, and all the people walking down the freaking sidewalk wo had all stopped to gawk at us. He was colorfully screaming things like, “Do I have to do everything” and “Can’t you do anything without being told” and my all time favorite and I quote exactly, “Why don’t you put on a pair big boys, and help me out here!” Really!
As it turned out, I found out shortly thereafter, the car this fellow was driving happened to be a car he had been trying to repossess for months and could never find it and the driver was a frequent customer and had multiple warrants out on him. Further, it turns out, the Constable did have the power to pull over and detain in this situation (which doesn’t absolve him from some of the other things I observed.) Nevertheless, did I really have to stand there and hear about what a waste of space I was, and in front of all these people who were now standing around major gawking, while we waiting for the real cops to show up? Freaking really!
What would you have done or said? Instinctually when you get caught in these situations you want to either sneak out a back entrance and hide under a really big rock, or kick the person upside the head. I liked the kick upside the head one. But what should you do? (Did I tell you he also had a gun?)
My instincts told me to yell back at him, tell him what I thought of him, tell him I thought he was a big fat wannabe cop, tell him I had no respect for him and his game of pulling people over for their poor driving, and then get a few more shots in – maybe do a good one in relation to his “big boys” comment and make it about Depends or something age related. Something about Barney Fife would be good but the guy was way to fat. I didn’t though because I did have some respect for him, even though he had his moments, and like I said, he scared me. Plus, and I didn’t find out until later but it makes the point, he was in the right here (in the pull over) even though I had no clue what he was doing, he didn’t communicate it well, and probably went about it in a reckless manner. Also, I got half the booty and on a car repo’ and an arrest warrant, I’d make the Fall Quarter tuition and we’d eat.
Dignity. I love that word.
The biggest worry of a parent - after all the cuteness of their youth and the love you have for them that has no bounds which goes without saying - as a child leaves home is that they will behave appropriately in public. Of course you want them to be safe but you want them to also be responsible. You want them to not tarnish the family name; more, you want them to bring it honor. So what is it kids are always told. Walk away from bad things. Don’t ever do anything wrong. Know who you are and what you represent.
We all represent something and others and should only do things that bring honor to them. Never disgrace others by your actions. It’s just not cool. I like the motto of the Goodyear Corporation: “Protect Our Good Name.” Too bad Firestone didn’t have the same motto when they put out substandard tires a few years ago that killed people. Too bad Constables don’t know that. My boss embarrassed himself by the way he treated me. Everyone there and the Cops who came later while he was still ranting saw him as a pretty petty person (love that alliteration.)
I came away with my dignity because I didn’t sink to his level. I represented the County just like him and sinking to his level at that time could only harm the organization and bring tarnish to my family who raised me different. One of the cops later told me I did the right thing to ignore him; “He blows off steam but he means well.” It’s true. I think he lost his head and appreciated I didn’t. It taught me a lot that I would use later in dealing with elected officials and others who get full of themselves from time to time. I always walk away. My smart mouth instincts are on high alert but my compass tells me to walk on by. At least until I get to the car and roll up the windows.
Key to the whole point – as I see it:
Raising the bar means we walk away from confrontations. Always remember what your goal is and what the task is you are trying to accomplish. Fighting with Neanderthals who have no manners and who bring dishonor on themselves is not the right thing to do – probably ever. They will never get it and the heat of battle isn’t a learning moment. Stay dignified and others will see who the big person is and you will come away winning every time. You will also get the respect of others who will know who the buttheads are and who they aren’t.
Unfortunately this happens far too often. The operative situation here is that you are a good person and doing the best you can in everything you do but somehow you angered someone unintentionally and they reacted by manifesting their anger with words or maybe even a little rage. You are on the receiving end of a verbal tongue lashing and it wasn’t in a private setting. Your instincts will be to react back with equal force but if you have that little compass you got when you raised your bar it will steer you to the better way to respond.
In college sometimes you’ll do almost anything to make a few bucks especially if you are married, have children, and bills. Once upon a time in that situation, living in a place we lovingly called, “The Ghetto”, a neighbor asked me while on a home teaching visit, if I’d be interested in some part time work. Turns out he was a Constable and wanted me to serve legal papers for him. So I became a Process Server. (I refer to it now as a “Brain Dead Process Server”, not that there’s anything wrong with it.)
The deal was, for every legal paper I served I got a fixed amount of money based on the nature of the legal offense. I gave it a try and found out I could make real good money in just a few hours a night. For some reason I had a knack. I think I looked young, naïve, and innocent (it wasn’t too long previously that I honed this great skill while tracting in the mission field) so people answered their door even when they were taking deliberate steps to avoid being served.
Legal papers that were real old and hadn’t been served were worth substantially more than new ones. I made it a point to take some of these old ones that had gone unserved for a long time and usually could place them quickly. I made good money and met good people and soon the Constable asked if I’d like to branch out to some things that made even more money. This was repossession and transporting bail jumpers back to the State. It wasn’t bounty hunting but it was badge carrying, gun toting, wannabe stuff. It was a world I didn’t know even existed and was amazed punks like me could be doing it with so little training with a guy who was only a couple of degrees shy of kind of scary.
The Constable was what you could call an irascible character. He had been doing this Constable thing for a long time, knew a lot about it, but thought he knew more than he did. Even I could see that, brain dead as I was. He was frequently on a cop-wannabe ego trip, short on temper, and usually picked public venues to air his anger at who ever dared cross him. So why put up with it? I don’t know, brain death, bills to pay, “easy” money. After a couple of years of it, it was getting old and he was getting old but like I said, the money was good and okay, I was afraid to tell him “I quit.”
One thing I found out the hard way was that he liked to pull over people who cut him off in traffic. He actually had a “cherry” (a portable red flasher thing he could stick on his dashboard like cops have) in his car and with the badges and stuff, he could get away with it though he had no police authority and only did it to yell at people because they ticked him off. If I only knew then what I know now. Yea, I probably should have ‘ratted’ him out but what did I know. I’m like twenty-two and he’s sixty and been doing this for thirty years. Plus we dealt with cops all the time so I figured he must have known what he was doing. But it seemed weird all the same and I didn’t like to be with him when it happened.
One time, right in front of the Century movie theatre on State Street and 3300 South, we were going somewhere and he had me driving. (Oh I forgot to tell you, he liked me to chauffer him when he took me on a job.) So I was driving and he was shotgun and someone pulled out ahead of us, cut us off, and sped through the intersection (north on State at 33rd) on a stale yellow light. He told me to run it as he lit the cherry and put it in the car window. I told him it was red as I hit the brakes and he screamed for me to run it. So I ran it. We lived.
Then he told me to catch up to the person so they’d pull over. I did but they weren’t pulling over. So he told me to honk the horn at them. Those that know me can testify, I hate honking car horns. It’s one of my deals. I started to argue with him and he reached over and laid on the horn himself. They kept going and he told me to pull up along side of them in the outer lane so he could flash his badge and waive them over. I said no, we were driving too fast and I wasn’t going to do it. This was all going on, mind you, while I’m driving and trying to maintain control of the car. He went ballistic so I pulled up along side of them and he tried to waive the person over. I noticed at this point the car was full of passengers; maybe six people or so. The driver still wouldn’t pull over so he told me to pull over in their lane, cut them off, and then block them in. All I knew of this maneuver was from what I’d seen on the TV shows so clearly I told him I didn’t know how. He grabbed the wheel and started yanking it toward the other vehicle so I had to speed up or hit them. When I got ahead of them, he yanked hard and we cut over and I hit the brakes. Both vehicles stopped and we had the other car blocked in just like he wanted. Problem was he couldn’t get out of his door because it was angled against the other vehicle so there wasn’t clearance. Plus he was a lard butt.
Adrenaline was running a little high now, as you can imagine, and he was yelling at me to move the car so he could open his door. There were other lanes of traffic, my adrenaline was making me hyperventilate, and the guy’s anger toward me was really ticking me off. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to back up or pull ahead. Both prospects had their downside so in the midst of his yelling I was trying to figure it out and probably went both ways before settling on backing up. Finally he got out and approached the other vehicle to yell at the driver. Keep in mind this all took place in about the same amount of time I am recounting it; only a half-a-minute or so.
So he’s out talking to the driver and I could hear him yelling at the guy and then he yells at me (I stayed in the vehicle, it wasn’t my beef) and asks me if I’m going to just sit in the car or if I had come to do some work. I got out of the car wondering what the heck I was supposed to do and the Constable was cuffing the driver like on Cops. I figured something else was up now and so I’m like, “What do you want me to do?” It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question for a brain dead process server but it just set him off and I got an earful in front of the driver, the five other passengers from the vehicle, and all the people walking down the freaking sidewalk wo had all stopped to gawk at us. He was colorfully screaming things like, “Do I have to do everything” and “Can’t you do anything without being told” and my all time favorite and I quote exactly, “Why don’t you put on a pair big boys, and help me out here!” Really!
As it turned out, I found out shortly thereafter, the car this fellow was driving happened to be a car he had been trying to repossess for months and could never find it and the driver was a frequent customer and had multiple warrants out on him. Further, it turns out, the Constable did have the power to pull over and detain in this situation (which doesn’t absolve him from some of the other things I observed.) Nevertheless, did I really have to stand there and hear about what a waste of space I was, and in front of all these people who were now standing around major gawking, while we waiting for the real cops to show up? Freaking really!
What would you have done or said? Instinctually when you get caught in these situations you want to either sneak out a back entrance and hide under a really big rock, or kick the person upside the head. I liked the kick upside the head one. But what should you do? (Did I tell you he also had a gun?)
My instincts told me to yell back at him, tell him what I thought of him, tell him I thought he was a big fat wannabe cop, tell him I had no respect for him and his game of pulling people over for their poor driving, and then get a few more shots in – maybe do a good one in relation to his “big boys” comment and make it about Depends or something age related. Something about Barney Fife would be good but the guy was way to fat. I didn’t though because I did have some respect for him, even though he had his moments, and like I said, he scared me. Plus, and I didn’t find out until later but it makes the point, he was in the right here (in the pull over) even though I had no clue what he was doing, he didn’t communicate it well, and probably went about it in a reckless manner. Also, I got half the booty and on a car repo’ and an arrest warrant, I’d make the Fall Quarter tuition and we’d eat.
Dignity. I love that word.
The biggest worry of a parent - after all the cuteness of their youth and the love you have for them that has no bounds which goes without saying - as a child leaves home is that they will behave appropriately in public. Of course you want them to be safe but you want them to also be responsible. You want them to not tarnish the family name; more, you want them to bring it honor. So what is it kids are always told. Walk away from bad things. Don’t ever do anything wrong. Know who you are and what you represent.
We all represent something and others and should only do things that bring honor to them. Never disgrace others by your actions. It’s just not cool. I like the motto of the Goodyear Corporation: “Protect Our Good Name.” Too bad Firestone didn’t have the same motto when they put out substandard tires a few years ago that killed people. Too bad Constables don’t know that. My boss embarrassed himself by the way he treated me. Everyone there and the Cops who came later while he was still ranting saw him as a pretty petty person (love that alliteration.)
I came away with my dignity because I didn’t sink to his level. I represented the County just like him and sinking to his level at that time could only harm the organization and bring tarnish to my family who raised me different. One of the cops later told me I did the right thing to ignore him; “He blows off steam but he means well.” It’s true. I think he lost his head and appreciated I didn’t. It taught me a lot that I would use later in dealing with elected officials and others who get full of themselves from time to time. I always walk away. My smart mouth instincts are on high alert but my compass tells me to walk on by. At least until I get to the car and roll up the windows.
Key to the whole point – as I see it:
Raising the bar means we walk away from confrontations. Always remember what your goal is and what the task is you are trying to accomplish. Fighting with Neanderthals who have no manners and who bring dishonor on themselves is not the right thing to do – probably ever. They will never get it and the heat of battle isn’t a learning moment. Stay dignified and others will see who the big person is and you will come away winning every time. You will also get the respect of others who will know who the buttheads are and who they aren’t.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Questions
Are there stupid questions?
This always comes up and when it does someone nearby always jumps in before anyone else gets a chance to give thoughtful input on the subject and says, “The only stupid questions are the ones not asked!” End of discussion. Nobody gets a chance to rebut this type of well researched, definitive, empirical evidence. Bull freaking crap. We all know that is horse pucky. That is so far away from reality that only a complete and utter bonehead would believe it. We’ve all been asked dumb questions. And even if we want to look at the glass as having some liquid in it (though it’s far from being even half-full on this issue) and concede the point that is trying to be made - that a well thought out question is always welcome in a learning environment - or - if you are in charge of the button that blows up the world if pushed - then maybe it’s okay to ask a variety of questions about your duty, well thought out or not. But some questions just need to not be asked. Seriously. Even in a learning environment. And sometime we need to stop saying there are no dumb questions because when we say it we are teaching people to not think, to not take a moment and try and figure something out using reasoning or to peruse the owners manual for a moment (I’m not even asking that a person read it, just peruse it – look at the pictures if you hate reading that much – or listen to the manual-on-tape if you fear a disease from reading too much).
Here’s a situation to approach this from a different angle. You are asked to do something and you’re not sure you understand what it is you’re being asked to do. It can come from a boss, a parent, a neighbor, anywhere. You fear if you ask for too much clarification and direction you will come across as lacking ability. It’s a good fear and one we all have or should have have. What I’m saying is it’s normal to feel this way.
Let’s face it, we all want to do things confidently and be viewed by others as impressive. This is such a good thing it is a wonder that anything negative could possibly result from it. But it can. Sometimes it makes us not be thorough enough in understanding the task at hand. Our desire to appear on top of things and self-confident can make us jump to conclusions which can be more disruptive than doing nothing - regardless of our good intentions.
Let’s say we need to update information in a computer database. If we don’t have a clear idea of what we are doing, and we don’t find out, we risk not only failing to accomplish the task but we can mess up existing records which is even worse than not doing anything at all.
Trying to look good is a critical mistake and very different than actually looking good. We fool ourselves if we think nobody will ever find out when we’re faking it. Though it is possible to pull faking off, the risk is large if we don’t. Know when to hold and knowing when to fold is what Kenny Rogers tried to teach us in a song and a movie. Usually we engage in fakery when our internal compass is broken and our fear of exposure overcomes our desire to be right.
But in trying to become impressive and competent, don’t “wear the sign.”
Back to the, “The only bad question is the one not asked.” If it is true and we keep hearing people say it why don’t we all know it and why does it have to be said if it is so obvious? I think it’s because we don’t believe it. It sounds good but it is not true. It’s a bad cliché. In fact it’s usually said by someone who does everything they can to discourage any questions.
I recall a blatant example in a statistics class at the U. Unfortunately it was taught by a math rather than a business professor (No slam intended. I have the utmost respect and admiration for math teachers. But math professors??) and on the first day of class he told us the thing about the only bad question is the one not asked. That’s the last time any of us in the class saw his face. He turned around to the blackboard and from then until the last day of class he never faced the students. He just talked while he wrote on the blackboard - endless equations, vector valued functions, and hyperbolic derivatives. He was like the freaking rain man. But if we had a question, and some did and to no avail tried to get his attention, but he never knew it. Surely he knew his style before he said the question thing and surely he knew there would be no questions. Yet he took the time to tell us it anyway.
Also we know it’s not true because we’ve all been asked stupid questions before. Come on admit it.
Bill Engvall has a new sitcom on one of the cable channels with Nancy Travis and has made a career out of pointing some of these bad questions out. Awhile ago he went on tour with Jeff Foxworthy and the cable guy and did what they called The Blue Collar Tour. It’s hilarious and some of his deal goes like this:
Stupid people should have to wear signs that just say, "I'm Stupid." That way you wouldn't rely on them, would you? You wouldn't ask them anything. It would be like, "Excuse me...oops...never mind, didn't see your sign."
It's like before my wife and I moved. Our house was full of boxes and there was a U-Haul truck in our driveway. My neighbor comes over and says, "Hey, you moving?" "Nope. We just pack our stuff up once or twice a week to see how many boxes it takes. Here's your sign."
A couple of months ago I went fishing with a buddy of mine, we pulled his boat into the dock, I lifted up this big ol' stringer of bass and this idiot on the dock goes, "Hey, y'all catch all them fish?" "Nope. Talked 'em into giving up. Here's your sign."
I was watching one of those animal shows on the Discovery Channel. There was a guy inventing a shark bite suit. And there's only one way to test it. "Alright, Jimmy, you got that shark suit on, it looks good... They want you to jump into this pool of sharks, and you tell us if it hurts when they bite you." "Well, all right, but hold my sign. I don't wanna lose it."
Last time I had a flat tire, I pulled my truck into one of those side-of-the-road gas stations. The attendant walks out, looks at my truck, looks at me, and I SWEAR he said, "Tire go flat?" I couldn't resist. I said, "Nope. I was driving around and those other three just swelled right up on me. Here's your sign."
We were trying to sell our car about a year ago. A guy came over to the house and drove the car around for about 45 minutes. We get back to the house, he gets out of the car, reaches down and grabs the exhaust pipe, then says, "Darn that's hot!" See, if he'd been wearing his sign, I could have stopped him.
I learned to drive an 18-wheeler in my days of adventure. Wouldn't you know, I misjudged the height of a bridge. The truck got stuck and I couldn't get it out, no matter how I tried. I radioed in for help and eventually a local cop shows up to take the report. He went through his basic questioning...okay...no problem. I thought for sure he was clear of needing a sign...until he asked, "So, is your truck stuck?" I couldn't help myself! I looked at him, looked back at the rig and then back to him and said, "No, I'm delivering a bridge... here's your sign."
I stayed late at work one night and a co-worker looked at me and said, "Are you still here?" I replied, "No. I left about 10 minutes ago. Here's your sign."
This stuff is funny because we’ve all been there. That’s why we get self conscious about asking questions; we don’t want someone to ask us where our sign is. So how do we avoid the sign? Two things primarily:
(1) Patience. Sometimes we get so caught up asking questions and wanting to know everything all at once, we put ourselves on overload. Surely I’m not the only one who has been sitting there getting something ‘splained to me and I’m back at the first thought trying to figure that out while the ‘splainer is ten thoughts down the road. I’m still going “hmmm” and shaking my head positively and throwing in an “interesting” or “so that’s how it works” when my mind is thinking “I have no clue what they are telling me. I hear words and their lips are moving so why am I thinking these thoughts not having a clue about what anything this person is saying.” Then I make it worse because I sit and pepper the person with questions they have just explained and that I’m not even capable of retaining the answers about.
Break it down. The ‘splainer doesn’t know where we are at in our understanding. Think through the answer to each question and then try it on your own before you move on. If you still don’t understand then ask a follow up question. Then think about it. Take it out for a spin. Attempt to do the task. Then move on. Have the patience to listen, ask good questions, and learn.
(2) Patience. When someone asks us a question, answer it thoroughly and to the best of your ability. If you don’t know the answer then steer them to someone who does. If they ask again because they don’t understand, always take the assumption that there was something wrong with your explanation and then either elaborate or try explaining it from a different angle. Maybe we didn’t ‘splain it as best we could the first time. If you sense they are asking more questions than they can absorb, encourage them to try what you’ve just ‘splained first and then see if it clicks before bombarding them with additional information. All this takes place if we, the ‘splainer, have the patience to ‘splain and truly desire to pass on our knowledge and wisdom. Also, never tell someone something they can learn or think through on their own. Steer them to the answer or guide them to the experience that will let them learn it on their own.
If we were all a little bit more patient, there would be no need for the signs!
Key to the whole point – as I see it:
Improving our patience in attempting to understand assignments and to explain assignments will allow us to raise the bar. If we master this we’ll not only look marvelous, we’ll be marvelous. At the end of the day it’s always better to make sure we ask good, well thought out questions than do something wrong. What reputation would you rather have: to be known as a questioner or to be known as a mistaker. You should never be afraid to ask well thought out questions. But to ask a shallow and lack of thoughtfulness question as a way to avoid doing any work on our own is not what we’re talking about. The term posse incitatus can be translated from Latin to mean several things. I like, “When in doubt, reload.” Seems to fit here. You’ll have to think about it to see if you agree. But don’t ask me how it fits please.
This always comes up and when it does someone nearby always jumps in before anyone else gets a chance to give thoughtful input on the subject and says, “The only stupid questions are the ones not asked!” End of discussion. Nobody gets a chance to rebut this type of well researched, definitive, empirical evidence. Bull freaking crap. We all know that is horse pucky. That is so far away from reality that only a complete and utter bonehead would believe it. We’ve all been asked dumb questions. And even if we want to look at the glass as having some liquid in it (though it’s far from being even half-full on this issue) and concede the point that is trying to be made - that a well thought out question is always welcome in a learning environment - or - if you are in charge of the button that blows up the world if pushed - then maybe it’s okay to ask a variety of questions about your duty, well thought out or not. But some questions just need to not be asked. Seriously. Even in a learning environment. And sometime we need to stop saying there are no dumb questions because when we say it we are teaching people to not think, to not take a moment and try and figure something out using reasoning or to peruse the owners manual for a moment (I’m not even asking that a person read it, just peruse it – look at the pictures if you hate reading that much – or listen to the manual-on-tape if you fear a disease from reading too much).
Here’s a situation to approach this from a different angle. You are asked to do something and you’re not sure you understand what it is you’re being asked to do. It can come from a boss, a parent, a neighbor, anywhere. You fear if you ask for too much clarification and direction you will come across as lacking ability. It’s a good fear and one we all have or should have have. What I’m saying is it’s normal to feel this way.
Let’s face it, we all want to do things confidently and be viewed by others as impressive. This is such a good thing it is a wonder that anything negative could possibly result from it. But it can. Sometimes it makes us not be thorough enough in understanding the task at hand. Our desire to appear on top of things and self-confident can make us jump to conclusions which can be more disruptive than doing nothing - regardless of our good intentions.
Let’s say we need to update information in a computer database. If we don’t have a clear idea of what we are doing, and we don’t find out, we risk not only failing to accomplish the task but we can mess up existing records which is even worse than not doing anything at all.
Trying to look good is a critical mistake and very different than actually looking good. We fool ourselves if we think nobody will ever find out when we’re faking it. Though it is possible to pull faking off, the risk is large if we don’t. Know when to hold and knowing when to fold is what Kenny Rogers tried to teach us in a song and a movie. Usually we engage in fakery when our internal compass is broken and our fear of exposure overcomes our desire to be right.
But in trying to become impressive and competent, don’t “wear the sign.”
Back to the, “The only bad question is the one not asked.” If it is true and we keep hearing people say it why don’t we all know it and why does it have to be said if it is so obvious? I think it’s because we don’t believe it. It sounds good but it is not true. It’s a bad cliché. In fact it’s usually said by someone who does everything they can to discourage any questions.
I recall a blatant example in a statistics class at the U. Unfortunately it was taught by a math rather than a business professor (No slam intended. I have the utmost respect and admiration for math teachers. But math professors??) and on the first day of class he told us the thing about the only bad question is the one not asked. That’s the last time any of us in the class saw his face. He turned around to the blackboard and from then until the last day of class he never faced the students. He just talked while he wrote on the blackboard - endless equations, vector valued functions, and hyperbolic derivatives. He was like the freaking rain man. But if we had a question, and some did and to no avail tried to get his attention, but he never knew it. Surely he knew his style before he said the question thing and surely he knew there would be no questions. Yet he took the time to tell us it anyway.
Also we know it’s not true because we’ve all been asked stupid questions before. Come on admit it.
Bill Engvall has a new sitcom on one of the cable channels with Nancy Travis and has made a career out of pointing some of these bad questions out. Awhile ago he went on tour with Jeff Foxworthy and the cable guy and did what they called The Blue Collar Tour. It’s hilarious and some of his deal goes like this:
Stupid people should have to wear signs that just say, "I'm Stupid." That way you wouldn't rely on them, would you? You wouldn't ask them anything. It would be like, "Excuse me...oops...never mind, didn't see your sign."
It's like before my wife and I moved. Our house was full of boxes and there was a U-Haul truck in our driveway. My neighbor comes over and says, "Hey, you moving?" "Nope. We just pack our stuff up once or twice a week to see how many boxes it takes. Here's your sign."
A couple of months ago I went fishing with a buddy of mine, we pulled his boat into the dock, I lifted up this big ol' stringer of bass and this idiot on the dock goes, "Hey, y'all catch all them fish?" "Nope. Talked 'em into giving up. Here's your sign."
I was watching one of those animal shows on the Discovery Channel. There was a guy inventing a shark bite suit. And there's only one way to test it. "Alright, Jimmy, you got that shark suit on, it looks good... They want you to jump into this pool of sharks, and you tell us if it hurts when they bite you." "Well, all right, but hold my sign. I don't wanna lose it."
Last time I had a flat tire, I pulled my truck into one of those side-of-the-road gas stations. The attendant walks out, looks at my truck, looks at me, and I SWEAR he said, "Tire go flat?" I couldn't resist. I said, "Nope. I was driving around and those other three just swelled right up on me. Here's your sign."
We were trying to sell our car about a year ago. A guy came over to the house and drove the car around for about 45 minutes. We get back to the house, he gets out of the car, reaches down and grabs the exhaust pipe, then says, "Darn that's hot!" See, if he'd been wearing his sign, I could have stopped him.
I learned to drive an 18-wheeler in my days of adventure. Wouldn't you know, I misjudged the height of a bridge. The truck got stuck and I couldn't get it out, no matter how I tried. I radioed in for help and eventually a local cop shows up to take the report. He went through his basic questioning...okay...no problem. I thought for sure he was clear of needing a sign...until he asked, "So, is your truck stuck?" I couldn't help myself! I looked at him, looked back at the rig and then back to him and said, "No, I'm delivering a bridge... here's your sign."
I stayed late at work one night and a co-worker looked at me and said, "Are you still here?" I replied, "No. I left about 10 minutes ago. Here's your sign."
This stuff is funny because we’ve all been there. That’s why we get self conscious about asking questions; we don’t want someone to ask us where our sign is. So how do we avoid the sign? Two things primarily:
(1) Patience. Sometimes we get so caught up asking questions and wanting to know everything all at once, we put ourselves on overload. Surely I’m not the only one who has been sitting there getting something ‘splained to me and I’m back at the first thought trying to figure that out while the ‘splainer is ten thoughts down the road. I’m still going “hmmm” and shaking my head positively and throwing in an “interesting” or “so that’s how it works” when my mind is thinking “I have no clue what they are telling me. I hear words and their lips are moving so why am I thinking these thoughts not having a clue about what anything this person is saying.” Then I make it worse because I sit and pepper the person with questions they have just explained and that I’m not even capable of retaining the answers about.
Break it down. The ‘splainer doesn’t know where we are at in our understanding. Think through the answer to each question and then try it on your own before you move on. If you still don’t understand then ask a follow up question. Then think about it. Take it out for a spin. Attempt to do the task. Then move on. Have the patience to listen, ask good questions, and learn.
(2) Patience. When someone asks us a question, answer it thoroughly and to the best of your ability. If you don’t know the answer then steer them to someone who does. If they ask again because they don’t understand, always take the assumption that there was something wrong with your explanation and then either elaborate or try explaining it from a different angle. Maybe we didn’t ‘splain it as best we could the first time. If you sense they are asking more questions than they can absorb, encourage them to try what you’ve just ‘splained first and then see if it clicks before bombarding them with additional information. All this takes place if we, the ‘splainer, have the patience to ‘splain and truly desire to pass on our knowledge and wisdom. Also, never tell someone something they can learn or think through on their own. Steer them to the answer or guide them to the experience that will let them learn it on their own.
If we were all a little bit more patient, there would be no need for the signs!
Key to the whole point – as I see it:
Improving our patience in attempting to understand assignments and to explain assignments will allow us to raise the bar. If we master this we’ll not only look marvelous, we’ll be marvelous. At the end of the day it’s always better to make sure we ask good, well thought out questions than do something wrong. What reputation would you rather have: to be known as a questioner or to be known as a mistaker. You should never be afraid to ask well thought out questions. But to ask a shallow and lack of thoughtfulness question as a way to avoid doing any work on our own is not what we’re talking about. The term posse incitatus can be translated from Latin to mean several things. I like, “When in doubt, reload.” Seems to fit here. You’ll have to think about it to see if you agree. But don’t ask me how it fits please.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Stand & Deliver
For the sake of argument - and probably everyone thinks they are anyway - but let’s say you are a hard worker, you know your stuff, and you are highly motivated. Mainly, you deliver. But in spite of this, some boneheads still treat you like you’re Otis, the Mayberry town drunk (from the Andy Griffith Show.)
It doesn’t matter if we are talking about work, school, a social club or a church group. You prepare yourself, get educated about the work you do, have good experiences, and think you really know your stuff. One day a project comes your way that is right up your ally and it excites you so you dig into it.
This particular project, hypothetically of course, mostly affects other people that you are assisting. You jump on the problem, make contact with those who are involved directly in the issue, research the situation and then go out and show initiative by coming up with a real good potential solution and then go one step further and take steps to get the problem solved. Are you with me? Basically you see a problem, feel you are uniquely qualified to get it fixed, dive in, come up with a solution, and even start putting into place things that will fix it. Initiative, I think it’s called.
Since we all have someone that is the boss of us in every area of our life, this person at some point or other shows up on the scene. Our “solution” also affects them and maybe even more directly than it affects us. They want to be briefed on what’s up. So you brief them and tell them what you’ve done and the initial steps you’ve taken to solve this problem. As you do your update, the boss of us starts peppering you with questions about details of what you’ve done. You start getting nervous wondering what they are really after. So you restate the facts succinctly and end by explaining that you feel really good about what you’ve done and that you think you’ve come up with a real good solution. Then the boss of us asks a couple of questions you’ve already answered. This is starting to get irritating so you dig your feet in and reiterate what a great solution you think you’ve come up with.
The boss of us still seems unsatisfied with what you’ve done and asks you to compile some of the data involved with the project and look into some other aspects of this problem. Then they tell you they want to see some comparative information about how others are dealing with the same issues so we can verify you are on the right track. Aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh! When the boss of us leaves, you are irritated that you didn’t have all the information at your fingertips they wanted, you are frustrated that you maybe didn’t communicate it all a little better, and you mostly are just ticked off because you feel you just got jerked around and you don’t know why. In a nutshell you are a little angry and a little confused, to say the least.
This is all theoretical of course. It would never happen in real life.
When this happens all you can do is “stand and deliver”, like the movie title says.
Anyone risks making a bad impression because of failure to understand what is expected. For example, usually an inexperienced newcomer is not expected to make major decisions and change the direction of an organization. As a newcomer, a person usually does what the boss over them wants them to do. In this situation, if you want to make an impression, do what “the boss” wants done and tells you to do. Focus on collecting the applicable information on an assignment or an issue and presenting it in a way that an important decision can be made. Usually you won’t want to try and make decisions yourself or solve problems independently.
The flip side of this might be the situation when you have a lot of experience and are expected to make decisions and facilitate changes in an organization. The boss of you might be expecting you to solve problems and take appropriate action on your own and when necessary. In this instance, if you want to make an impression, you shouldn’t be bouncing every detail off the boss of you and asking others what you should do. Focus on the decision making process, make good decisions, and know how and when to present updates to the boss of you.
It really is all about service, isn’t it? The same principles that go into providing service to an outside person or group apply to how you provide service to those inside your group. With outsiders you have to manage expectations, so also with those inside. Any organization that produces a service that nobody wants is not going to have a purpose in life for long.
I will sum this up succinctly with the aforementioned movie title: stand and deliver. Deliver the bosses of you what they want, not what you want them to have, and while you do it, stand up and be confident and deliver the right thing for the circumstances.
The inability to figure out and then deliver what is expected is a byproduct of many things but the reasons are irrelevant because they still lead to “personal need” suicide or at the very least ruin your peace of mind. Shrinks attribute our helplessness in failing to understand expectations to part anxiety and part erroneous assumptions about productivity as the following examples illustrate. (I lifted them from a shrink handbook and put them into english):
Fear of failure can be real and causes us to not deliver correctly because we don’t want to look stupid. Wouldn’t we all rather be thought of as non-motivated rather than lacking in ability? Revealing as this is, looking back on school, I’d much rather someone think I didn’t study hard or long enough on a test than to think I needed some tutoring or extra help. We create defense mechanisms to avoid this tendency. Instead try to overcome it by simply being aware of it and avoiding the defensive behaviors. After all, now that you know we are onto you, being defensive isn’t very fun anymore.
Perfectionism is a great excuse to do whatever we feel like isn’t it? I know well that most perfectionists do so out of insecurity. (Oh no, what is everybody going to think of me saying that?) But we have to get over our insecurity if we truly want to do our best in every circumstance. We overcome it by taking measures to know beforehand what the expectations are in a situation and then focus on delivering them rather than critiquing expectations downward. You’ll have to think about the last part of that for awhile before you get it.
Self-control is the opposite of perfectionism (which is all about control.) If we are impulsive and lack discipline, I love unclear expectations. (I mean we love unclear expectations.) This allows us to ebb and flow wherever we want in or around assignments or projects or issues and never quite deliver exactly what is wanted or needed. What is needed in this situation is focus and self-discipline to do what is wanted.
False beliefs about what is wanted and needed can limit us. Couple this with false beliefs about what we can and do deliver will result in frustration and confusion. Finding out the expectations and being aware of the quality of our delivery will help us through this.
Sometimes we just enjoy the adrenaline rush of moving like a bull through a china closet. This is the roller coaster methodology and let’s face it some have a wicked joy in approaching life and work in this manner. Sometimes you will deliver in this manner but sometimes you won’t. It’s hit and miss many times because nobody catches up with you until you are a mile down the road. Either way you’ve left an indelible mark. Usually and fortunately this tendency will be beaten out of you soon on your journey through life.
Sometimes we are just being human which means we go to extremes to avoid being bored or to tackle the difficult. Whatever our reasoning, just like service, we have to get over all of it and deliver regardless of the consequences. We just have to.
Key to the whole point – as I see it:
Forget about your internal evaluation of how good you are. There is a time and a place for that (like a personal journal) but it’s not good to do in the heat of battle. Pay attention instead to what is really wanted and what is really expected. Many times the task at hand requires far less skills than we might have. Just because we can do something or are capable of doing something doesn’t mean we always need to do things at that high level.
Sometimes we need to be in touch with the realities of our organization and adapt our responses accordingly. We may be the most capable person on earth but if that is out of touch with what is needed or expected, it will be irrelevant and work against your success.
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you realized this after the fact, sit down with the boss of you and inventory the things you should pay attention to and the things that are truly needed from you. As far as I know, Otis, the Mayberry town drunk was the most likable guy on the planet but he never seemed to deliver anything and could seldom stand up. It wasn’t Andy's and Barney’s fault. It was Otis’.
It doesn’t matter if we are talking about work, school, a social club or a church group. You prepare yourself, get educated about the work you do, have good experiences, and think you really know your stuff. One day a project comes your way that is right up your ally and it excites you so you dig into it.
This particular project, hypothetically of course, mostly affects other people that you are assisting. You jump on the problem, make contact with those who are involved directly in the issue, research the situation and then go out and show initiative by coming up with a real good potential solution and then go one step further and take steps to get the problem solved. Are you with me? Basically you see a problem, feel you are uniquely qualified to get it fixed, dive in, come up with a solution, and even start putting into place things that will fix it. Initiative, I think it’s called.
Since we all have someone that is the boss of us in every area of our life, this person at some point or other shows up on the scene. Our “solution” also affects them and maybe even more directly than it affects us. They want to be briefed on what’s up. So you brief them and tell them what you’ve done and the initial steps you’ve taken to solve this problem. As you do your update, the boss of us starts peppering you with questions about details of what you’ve done. You start getting nervous wondering what they are really after. So you restate the facts succinctly and end by explaining that you feel really good about what you’ve done and that you think you’ve come up with a real good solution. Then the boss of us asks a couple of questions you’ve already answered. This is starting to get irritating so you dig your feet in and reiterate what a great solution you think you’ve come up with.
The boss of us still seems unsatisfied with what you’ve done and asks you to compile some of the data involved with the project and look into some other aspects of this problem. Then they tell you they want to see some comparative information about how others are dealing with the same issues so we can verify you are on the right track. Aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh! When the boss of us leaves, you are irritated that you didn’t have all the information at your fingertips they wanted, you are frustrated that you maybe didn’t communicate it all a little better, and you mostly are just ticked off because you feel you just got jerked around and you don’t know why. In a nutshell you are a little angry and a little confused, to say the least.
This is all theoretical of course. It would never happen in real life.
When this happens all you can do is “stand and deliver”, like the movie title says.
Anyone risks making a bad impression because of failure to understand what is expected. For example, usually an inexperienced newcomer is not expected to make major decisions and change the direction of an organization. As a newcomer, a person usually does what the boss over them wants them to do. In this situation, if you want to make an impression, do what “the boss” wants done and tells you to do. Focus on collecting the applicable information on an assignment or an issue and presenting it in a way that an important decision can be made. Usually you won’t want to try and make decisions yourself or solve problems independently.
The flip side of this might be the situation when you have a lot of experience and are expected to make decisions and facilitate changes in an organization. The boss of you might be expecting you to solve problems and take appropriate action on your own and when necessary. In this instance, if you want to make an impression, you shouldn’t be bouncing every detail off the boss of you and asking others what you should do. Focus on the decision making process, make good decisions, and know how and when to present updates to the boss of you.
It really is all about service, isn’t it? The same principles that go into providing service to an outside person or group apply to how you provide service to those inside your group. With outsiders you have to manage expectations, so also with those inside. Any organization that produces a service that nobody wants is not going to have a purpose in life for long.
I will sum this up succinctly with the aforementioned movie title: stand and deliver. Deliver the bosses of you what they want, not what you want them to have, and while you do it, stand up and be confident and deliver the right thing for the circumstances.
The inability to figure out and then deliver what is expected is a byproduct of many things but the reasons are irrelevant because they still lead to “personal need” suicide or at the very least ruin your peace of mind. Shrinks attribute our helplessness in failing to understand expectations to part anxiety and part erroneous assumptions about productivity as the following examples illustrate. (I lifted them from a shrink handbook and put them into english):
Fear of failure can be real and causes us to not deliver correctly because we don’t want to look stupid. Wouldn’t we all rather be thought of as non-motivated rather than lacking in ability? Revealing as this is, looking back on school, I’d much rather someone think I didn’t study hard or long enough on a test than to think I needed some tutoring or extra help. We create defense mechanisms to avoid this tendency. Instead try to overcome it by simply being aware of it and avoiding the defensive behaviors. After all, now that you know we are onto you, being defensive isn’t very fun anymore.
Perfectionism is a great excuse to do whatever we feel like isn’t it? I know well that most perfectionists do so out of insecurity. (Oh no, what is everybody going to think of me saying that?) But we have to get over our insecurity if we truly want to do our best in every circumstance. We overcome it by taking measures to know beforehand what the expectations are in a situation and then focus on delivering them rather than critiquing expectations downward. You’ll have to think about the last part of that for awhile before you get it.
Self-control is the opposite of perfectionism (which is all about control.) If we are impulsive and lack discipline, I love unclear expectations. (I mean we love unclear expectations.) This allows us to ebb and flow wherever we want in or around assignments or projects or issues and never quite deliver exactly what is wanted or needed. What is needed in this situation is focus and self-discipline to do what is wanted.
False beliefs about what is wanted and needed can limit us. Couple this with false beliefs about what we can and do deliver will result in frustration and confusion. Finding out the expectations and being aware of the quality of our delivery will help us through this.
Sometimes we just enjoy the adrenaline rush of moving like a bull through a china closet. This is the roller coaster methodology and let’s face it some have a wicked joy in approaching life and work in this manner. Sometimes you will deliver in this manner but sometimes you won’t. It’s hit and miss many times because nobody catches up with you until you are a mile down the road. Either way you’ve left an indelible mark. Usually and fortunately this tendency will be beaten out of you soon on your journey through life.
Sometimes we are just being human which means we go to extremes to avoid being bored or to tackle the difficult. Whatever our reasoning, just like service, we have to get over all of it and deliver regardless of the consequences. We just have to.
Key to the whole point – as I see it:
Forget about your internal evaluation of how good you are. There is a time and a place for that (like a personal journal) but it’s not good to do in the heat of battle. Pay attention instead to what is really wanted and what is really expected. Many times the task at hand requires far less skills than we might have. Just because we can do something or are capable of doing something doesn’t mean we always need to do things at that high level.
Sometimes we need to be in touch with the realities of our organization and adapt our responses accordingly. We may be the most capable person on earth but if that is out of touch with what is needed or expected, it will be irrelevant and work against your success.
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you realized this after the fact, sit down with the boss of you and inventory the things you should pay attention to and the things that are truly needed from you. As far as I know, Otis, the Mayberry town drunk was the most likable guy on the planet but he never seemed to deliver anything and could seldom stand up. It wasn’t Andy's and Barney’s fault. It was Otis’.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Forbidden Knowledge
Some things you are better off not knowing. If possible. Let’s call it forbidden knowledge. But in spite of knowing this, curiosity, loose lips, or having to know because of your job can place this information in your brain anyway. And then you have to deal with it. For example: I know what I make compared to some other people. Conversely I know how much I do compared to others. They don’t match. Sometimes they aren’t even on the same continent.
Having forbidden knowledge can eat you up. I’ve been there, done that, seen it up close and personal. Some get over it. Others don’t. It can be very upsetting when you find out someone less deserving is getting bigger rewards and more blessings. The more you think about these situations the more upset you get. It can keep you up at nights and distract you by day – maybe more than any other thing on earth.
To depersonalize the whole thing, let me tell you about two people I know. They both went into the same line of work. They sold drugs for one of the largest drug companies in the world. One sold a line of a dozen drugs for things like depression, asthma, and migraines. Whenever I saw him he always asked me if I needed anything. Yeah, right. I always gave him a list and never got me anything. He had been in the business and done well for a decade or so. The other person had only been doing this for about four or five years and sold a small line of oncology drugs; the ones for chemotherapy and cancer treatments. Both were paid salary plus bonuses based on sales volume. The first made a bigger salary but the second more than made up for it on bonuses.
I was with both of these folks when this revelation came to light and the one who’d been in the biz the longest almost blew a vein out the side of his neck. I probably talk to these folks four times a year and over the next month I spoke to the freaked out friend at least that many times. He was completely traumatized and tormented that the other friend was making so much. It ate and ate away at him and made him more and more frustrated. It was obvious to me that greed and envy are a real bad-boy combination!
The only advice I could come up with for my self-destructing friend was that he had to get a grip on understanding the forces at work on him; the forces that were invading his thoughts and destroying his happy place (the place with unicycles and little people.) Before the forbidden knowledge came to light, everything was fine. But once it surfaced, apparently my friend's compass was broken and had been broken and was pointed toward greed rather than thankfulness that he is able to do what he does and make what he made (which was not too shabby.) Both of them should have had pity on me, the poor public servant. The pain he was feeling ought to have been an indicator to him that he was off course.
This brings me to my point. Greed is a weed.
Weeds are considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome (except in the wacky world of zeriscaping), especially when they grow where they are not wanted.
Greed is undesirable, unattractive, and troublesome, especially when it appears where it is least needed. Greed is a weed.
Greed is a great big morning glory weed and if we don’t kill it, it will take over. Killing it, like morning glory you might know, can be tricky. It takes skill and perseverance. Until we kill it, though, greed makes us think we can’t move on unless or until we get what we want. In fact, it can make us think we want even more than we really do. Sometimes it can even trick us to thinking we can have whatever we want, even if it isn’t right for us.
I’m sure everyone caught the news story about the man and his sister who stopped at a McDonald’s in California while they were doing their Monopoly promotion? I think how it worked was you peel off something from your drink cup and you win stuff. I’m not exactly sure because I only go there to get the Happy Meals with Superheroes for my good-guy grandsons. In any event, somehow there are things you can win.
Well, this man in California peeled off his sticker and won $1,000 a week for the rest of his life. Not too shabby; $50,000 a year for as long as you live. What could be the problem? Nothing, of course, unless you worked for McDonald’s and you and your immediate family were thus ineligible. Well, guess what? He did and they were.
He and his sister hatched a plan though. He would give the ticket to his girlfriend and have her cash it in. The arrangement he brokered with her was that she would turn in the prize sticker and they’d share half of the winnings each. You can probably already guess the end of this story even if you didn’t read it. For six years it worked out fine to the tune of $330,409. But eventually they had a fight and were not getting along about something and the guy got ratted out. Ah, true love. What a beautiful story. Tale as old as time. The payments were, of course, stopped. And there was the pesky firing (why he stayed employed at McDonald’s is beyond me) and the court case to collect the winnings back.
Clearly greed got the best of this person and his friend and the sister. It trapped them and as the Greeks say, “Greed is like sea water. The more you drink, the thirstier you become.” True dat.
Key to the whole point – as I see it:
You’ve seen the oldie-but-goodie comedy routine where a man shows his doctor that every time he raises his arm in this unusual position, he gets a sharp pain. The doctor’s suggestion, “Don’t do that any more.” The point of the skit is that if something hurts, stop doing it.
Like with my friend, he just needed to suck it up and realize there is nothing he could do to change the fact that oncological drugs have a higher markup and are in more demand than his stuff. That’s life, dude. Get over it. If he focused more on his own great job and the good living he was making, he’d be much better off and would probably enjoy the time he spends out by his very nice swimming pool much more.
Having forbidden knowledge can eat you up. I’ve been there, done that, seen it up close and personal. Some get over it. Others don’t. It can be very upsetting when you find out someone less deserving is getting bigger rewards and more blessings. The more you think about these situations the more upset you get. It can keep you up at nights and distract you by day – maybe more than any other thing on earth.
To depersonalize the whole thing, let me tell you about two people I know. They both went into the same line of work. They sold drugs for one of the largest drug companies in the world. One sold a line of a dozen drugs for things like depression, asthma, and migraines. Whenever I saw him he always asked me if I needed anything. Yeah, right. I always gave him a list and never got me anything. He had been in the business and done well for a decade or so. The other person had only been doing this for about four or five years and sold a small line of oncology drugs; the ones for chemotherapy and cancer treatments. Both were paid salary plus bonuses based on sales volume. The first made a bigger salary but the second more than made up for it on bonuses.
I was with both of these folks when this revelation came to light and the one who’d been in the biz the longest almost blew a vein out the side of his neck. I probably talk to these folks four times a year and over the next month I spoke to the freaked out friend at least that many times. He was completely traumatized and tormented that the other friend was making so much. It ate and ate away at him and made him more and more frustrated. It was obvious to me that greed and envy are a real bad-boy combination!
The only advice I could come up with for my self-destructing friend was that he had to get a grip on understanding the forces at work on him; the forces that were invading his thoughts and destroying his happy place (the place with unicycles and little people.) Before the forbidden knowledge came to light, everything was fine. But once it surfaced, apparently my friend's compass was broken and had been broken and was pointed toward greed rather than thankfulness that he is able to do what he does and make what he made (which was not too shabby.) Both of them should have had pity on me, the poor public servant. The pain he was feeling ought to have been an indicator to him that he was off course.
This brings me to my point. Greed is a weed.
Weeds are considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome (except in the wacky world of zeriscaping), especially when they grow where they are not wanted.
Greed is undesirable, unattractive, and troublesome, especially when it appears where it is least needed. Greed is a weed.
Greed is a great big morning glory weed and if we don’t kill it, it will take over. Killing it, like morning glory you might know, can be tricky. It takes skill and perseverance. Until we kill it, though, greed makes us think we can’t move on unless or until we get what we want. In fact, it can make us think we want even more than we really do. Sometimes it can even trick us to thinking we can have whatever we want, even if it isn’t right for us.
I’m sure everyone caught the news story about the man and his sister who stopped at a McDonald’s in California while they were doing their Monopoly promotion? I think how it worked was you peel off something from your drink cup and you win stuff. I’m not exactly sure because I only go there to get the Happy Meals with Superheroes for my good-guy grandsons. In any event, somehow there are things you can win.
Well, this man in California peeled off his sticker and won $1,000 a week for the rest of his life. Not too shabby; $50,000 a year for as long as you live. What could be the problem? Nothing, of course, unless you worked for McDonald’s and you and your immediate family were thus ineligible. Well, guess what? He did and they were.
He and his sister hatched a plan though. He would give the ticket to his girlfriend and have her cash it in. The arrangement he brokered with her was that she would turn in the prize sticker and they’d share half of the winnings each. You can probably already guess the end of this story even if you didn’t read it. For six years it worked out fine to the tune of $330,409. But eventually they had a fight and were not getting along about something and the guy got ratted out. Ah, true love. What a beautiful story. Tale as old as time. The payments were, of course, stopped. And there was the pesky firing (why he stayed employed at McDonald’s is beyond me) and the court case to collect the winnings back.
Clearly greed got the best of this person and his friend and the sister. It trapped them and as the Greeks say, “Greed is like sea water. The more you drink, the thirstier you become.” True dat.
Key to the whole point – as I see it:
You’ve seen the oldie-but-goodie comedy routine where a man shows his doctor that every time he raises his arm in this unusual position, he gets a sharp pain. The doctor’s suggestion, “Don’t do that any more.” The point of the skit is that if something hurts, stop doing it.
Like with my friend, he just needed to suck it up and realize there is nothing he could do to change the fact that oncological drugs have a higher markup and are in more demand than his stuff. That’s life, dude. Get over it. If he focused more on his own great job and the good living he was making, he’d be much better off and would probably enjoy the time he spends out by his very nice swimming pool much more.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Fear Factor Rules
Continuing on the theme of raising the bar, we all sometime or somewhere have to cross the following bridge in life: Do you want to get a bigger reward for something you don’t like or a lesser reward for something you love? That is a situation we will all face one way or another.
Let me put it this way, would you eat a maggot for the chance at a hundred thousand dollars? Not me. Not even a million. I wouldn’t get in a tank of spiders nor would I put a worm anywhere near my mouth. And forget anything about rats; na-gon-do-it. But some apparently would if you’ve seen the reality show. Go figure.
That’s a severe example of boundaries we set on physical stuff but what about the things we do day-in and day-out? Are you okay being miserable about your work or other aspects of your life if you are well compensated or well rewarded with intangibles? Or would you rather have less income or accolades but do something you love? These are questions as old as time; questions that affect the very core of our existence.
Unhappy people line the corridors of therapists every day because of one thing; they haven’t figured out that we can’t always have everything we want. The cliché (sorry) that comes to mind here is “having our cake and eating it too.” Sometimes we want to land in a job that we love with a great salary and a great title and supreme power without paying the price or having to make any choices. It could happen, I guess, but usually it doesn’t. Usually you have to choose and there’s a journey associated with it. Usually there are dues to that club.
Having to make choices can make us ornery because we keep getting told we can have everything and so we wonder what’s wrong with the world or what’s wrong with ourselves. But have you ever noticed that those telling us we can have “everything” are usually those who have everything? If we dwell on the complexities of having it all, we can turn our life into a drudgery because we refuse to adjust ourselves to reality.
It’s back to the broken compass. If our compass needle is bifurcated and pointing in opposite directions, we won’t know which way to go. We have to make sure our compass needles only point in one direction and doesn’t give us conflicting signals.
How, you say? Funny you should bring it up. Two ways.
1. Claritize.
This is a new word I think I invented. Maybe I pilfered it, it’s all blending together. In any event it takes clarity and combines it with prioritize. Sounds like a detergent, doesn’t it. It kind of is.
We’ve all seen those tear jerker commercials. I hate it when a commercial makes me cry. One showed a mom driving her daughter home from school. She was telling this cute little thing that she had to go on a business trip for a few days. The little girl was disappointed because her mom was going to miss her school play. She was pouting – the daughter that is – and the mom was explaining something like, “but don’t you like all the good things we have like this car we are riding in (it appeared to be the Mercedes S430 Sedan) and don’t you want a bigger house?” After a moment of thought the little girl said sincerely, “Do we really need a bigger house mommy?” I know, Ohhhhh!
Food for thought and from the “mouth of babes,” etc. The kid apparently was able to reach a reality the parent hadn’t. The daughter was faced with two mutually exclusive choices and was willing to make the one that fit her priorities. The parent hadn’t reached that claritization yet.
2. Being versus Becoming.
I had a friend once who graduated from college with a master’s degree in education administration. Everything about him screamed teacher/principal, perhaps superintendent someday. He was the real deal. He began teaching and then we lost touch. A couple of years later I ran into him and he was a regional manager for Domino’s Pizza. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, he was doing well and on a different fast track, but it wasn’t his life dream. I asked him what was up with the change of career and the seeming “tossing” of a master’s degree. This was the story.
His brother went to work for Domino’s and was a multi-state executive. They had been talking and his brother convinced him that the corporate culture at Domino’s was the greatest thing on earth. It was all about being in a work environment that was fun and teaching was all about a lot of work and a lot of grief and a lot of underpaid thankless activities. Domino’s started out paying him what a teacher would never make.
Domino’s whole philosophy was about not playing it safe and putting it all on the line - for pizza. He was doing it. I still remember going out to dinner with he and his wife. He was the first person I knew with a pager. He was paged in the time we were at dinner about a dozen times. I couldn’t imagine what for? Did they keep running out of cheese and didn’t know where to get any? He seemed stressed and anxious about each call. I was having more fun in life than him and I was eating out of the public trough (government work if you hadn’t heard that one) which is notorious for underpaying. He was conflicted though, that much was clear. I felt bad for him. Fast forward many years and skipping particulars, he is now back in education and is an elementary school principal where he should be. He figured out after awhile that there is a difference between being and becoming, about doing and having, and he got back into what he was meant to do and lowered his material expectations. Getting back into the education business was difficult once he left it but he paid the price and did it.
His decision to do this reminded me of a statement I read a couple months ago when Red Adair died. Remember him?
He was the famous oil well firefighter who John Wayne played in the movie Hellfighters. He’d been around forever but maybe his greatest accomplishment was just back in 1991 following the first Gulf War when he and his team extinguished 112 burning oil wells ignited by Sadam Hussein as they retreated from Kuwait. Estimates were that this work would take five years to accomplish; his team was done in nine months.
The statement he made that reminded me of my friend was, “Life isn’t having it made; it’s getting it made.”
Whatever we do will require effort and will-power. Each time we make the effort, we move from being and we grow and are strengthened to becoming. And hopefully it will be doing what we love and the rewards will take care of themsleves.
The key to the whole point – as I see it:
If we are fortunate we will be in situations in life where we can experience work and play from a variety of angles. (I first mistyped this as angels and wouldn’t that be great to experience things from a variety of angels?) This will give us first hand knowledge of what it takes to get different rewards and to achieve particular accomplishments. This is great because regardless of what we choose, it will be an informed choice and not just based on the fear factor. It’s usually more difficult than that because we can complicate it with financial obligations or interpersonal relationships that are hard to unravel but if we find out what we truly want, we should be brave enough to follow our compass there and be satisfied with the rewards it brings.
Let me put it this way, would you eat a maggot for the chance at a hundred thousand dollars? Not me. Not even a million. I wouldn’t get in a tank of spiders nor would I put a worm anywhere near my mouth. And forget anything about rats; na-gon-do-it. But some apparently would if you’ve seen the reality show. Go figure.
That’s a severe example of boundaries we set on physical stuff but what about the things we do day-in and day-out? Are you okay being miserable about your work or other aspects of your life if you are well compensated or well rewarded with intangibles? Or would you rather have less income or accolades but do something you love? These are questions as old as time; questions that affect the very core of our existence.
Unhappy people line the corridors of therapists every day because of one thing; they haven’t figured out that we can’t always have everything we want. The cliché (sorry) that comes to mind here is “having our cake and eating it too.” Sometimes we want to land in a job that we love with a great salary and a great title and supreme power without paying the price or having to make any choices. It could happen, I guess, but usually it doesn’t. Usually you have to choose and there’s a journey associated with it. Usually there are dues to that club.
Having to make choices can make us ornery because we keep getting told we can have everything and so we wonder what’s wrong with the world or what’s wrong with ourselves. But have you ever noticed that those telling us we can have “everything” are usually those who have everything? If we dwell on the complexities of having it all, we can turn our life into a drudgery because we refuse to adjust ourselves to reality.
It’s back to the broken compass. If our compass needle is bifurcated and pointing in opposite directions, we won’t know which way to go. We have to make sure our compass needles only point in one direction and doesn’t give us conflicting signals.
How, you say? Funny you should bring it up. Two ways.
1. Claritize.
This is a new word I think I invented. Maybe I pilfered it, it’s all blending together. In any event it takes clarity and combines it with prioritize. Sounds like a detergent, doesn’t it. It kind of is.
We’ve all seen those tear jerker commercials. I hate it when a commercial makes me cry. One showed a mom driving her daughter home from school. She was telling this cute little thing that she had to go on a business trip for a few days. The little girl was disappointed because her mom was going to miss her school play. She was pouting – the daughter that is – and the mom was explaining something like, “but don’t you like all the good things we have like this car we are riding in (it appeared to be the Mercedes S430 Sedan) and don’t you want a bigger house?” After a moment of thought the little girl said sincerely, “Do we really need a bigger house mommy?” I know, Ohhhhh!
Food for thought and from the “mouth of babes,” etc. The kid apparently was able to reach a reality the parent hadn’t. The daughter was faced with two mutually exclusive choices and was willing to make the one that fit her priorities. The parent hadn’t reached that claritization yet.
2. Being versus Becoming.
I had a friend once who graduated from college with a master’s degree in education administration. Everything about him screamed teacher/principal, perhaps superintendent someday. He was the real deal. He began teaching and then we lost touch. A couple of years later I ran into him and he was a regional manager for Domino’s Pizza. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, he was doing well and on a different fast track, but it wasn’t his life dream. I asked him what was up with the change of career and the seeming “tossing” of a master’s degree. This was the story.
His brother went to work for Domino’s and was a multi-state executive. They had been talking and his brother convinced him that the corporate culture at Domino’s was the greatest thing on earth. It was all about being in a work environment that was fun and teaching was all about a lot of work and a lot of grief and a lot of underpaid thankless activities. Domino’s started out paying him what a teacher would never make.
Domino’s whole philosophy was about not playing it safe and putting it all on the line - for pizza. He was doing it. I still remember going out to dinner with he and his wife. He was the first person I knew with a pager. He was paged in the time we were at dinner about a dozen times. I couldn’t imagine what for? Did they keep running out of cheese and didn’t know where to get any? He seemed stressed and anxious about each call. I was having more fun in life than him and I was eating out of the public trough (government work if you hadn’t heard that one) which is notorious for underpaying. He was conflicted though, that much was clear. I felt bad for him. Fast forward many years and skipping particulars, he is now back in education and is an elementary school principal where he should be. He figured out after awhile that there is a difference between being and becoming, about doing and having, and he got back into what he was meant to do and lowered his material expectations. Getting back into the education business was difficult once he left it but he paid the price and did it.
His decision to do this reminded me of a statement I read a couple months ago when Red Adair died. Remember him?
He was the famous oil well firefighter who John Wayne played in the movie Hellfighters. He’d been around forever but maybe his greatest accomplishment was just back in 1991 following the first Gulf War when he and his team extinguished 112 burning oil wells ignited by Sadam Hussein as they retreated from Kuwait. Estimates were that this work would take five years to accomplish; his team was done in nine months.
The statement he made that reminded me of my friend was, “Life isn’t having it made; it’s getting it made.”
Whatever we do will require effort and will-power. Each time we make the effort, we move from being and we grow and are strengthened to becoming. And hopefully it will be doing what we love and the rewards will take care of themsleves.
The key to the whole point – as I see it:
If we are fortunate we will be in situations in life where we can experience work and play from a variety of angles. (I first mistyped this as angels and wouldn’t that be great to experience things from a variety of angels?) This will give us first hand knowledge of what it takes to get different rewards and to achieve particular accomplishments. This is great because regardless of what we choose, it will be an informed choice and not just based on the fear factor. It’s usually more difficult than that because we can complicate it with financial obligations or interpersonal relationships that are hard to unravel but if we find out what we truly want, we should be brave enough to follow our compass there and be satisfied with the rewards it brings.
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