In what ways does your working life need ‘fixing’?
 

Is the pursuit of happiness the main cause of your problems and misery?

Our modern world is too attached to options, choices and preferences. Everything is ‘customized’ to your wishes—or can be, if you have the means to pay. People are obsessed with ‘having it all’—whatever ‘it’ is and however likely or unlikely it may be that they can ‘have’ it.

This goes well beyond material possessions. People demand to ‘have’ certain life experiences and emotional states. They want to ‘have’ a perfect life, perfect relationships, a perfect career—plus extensive wealth, mind-blowing sex on demand, perfect feelings of joy and happiness all the time and complete freedom from the ‘bad stuff’.

When this doesn’t come about—and how would it?—such people believe they and their lives are broken in some way. Now they want a cure—preferably one that is instant, low-cost, and requires little or no effort. Is it any wonder the world is full of snake-oil salespeople selling personal development and lifestyle ‘cures’ for lots of money? Read the full story

What understanding Stalin should teach us to avoid

In Arthur Koestler’s classic political novel ‘Darkness at Noon’,the old Bolshevik Rubashov falls foul of Stalin’s purges, and is accused, among other things, of economic sabotage for not meeting production targets set by Moscow. Rubashov tries to explain, to no avail, that these targets were never realistic in the first place, and that he did his best in the circumstances.

This whole episode has a resonance for us today that perhaps it didn’t have when the novel was first published in 1940, and it reminds us that Stalin, like a number of other leading Bolsheviks, was a great fan of the ‘scientific management’ theories of the American F.W. Taylor. If it’s an exaggeration to blame Taylor’s views (and generations of subsequent management consultants) for Stalin’s purges, then it’s not a very great one. Read the full story

Another podcast tale from Coyote and friends

Coyote meets a Jackalope, discovers the truth about the mythical beast (or at least this particular example of it) and gives an impromptu lesson about the importance of being authentic.

Here’s how the story starts:

When Badger told Coyote he’d just seen a Jackalope, Coyote laughed.

Soon other tracks began to converge on the same path: mice, rabbits, packrats, prairie dogs—even a fox and some deer. It seemed word had spread and the animals were keen to take a look for themselves. The path wound amongst the mesquites and saguaros, heading towards a clump of cottonwoods at the edge of a dry creek. As he got closer, Coyote could hear a low humming and mumbling, like hundreds of people whispering to one another. Whatever it was, it was drawing a crowd.

Instructions

You can listen to the story here, using this built-in, Flash MP3 player. (Length: 9m 56s)

Alternatively, you can listen to the audio files through your computer or by downloading them to another device. To listen to the audio files through your computer, use your mouse to left-click on the link below. To download the files, right-click, select ‘Save as’ or ‘Save link as’ and specify the destination to which you would like to save the file. Using Safari, you can right- or Control-click and choose ‘Download linked file’.

I hope you enjoy it.

Technorati Tags: authenticity, being yourself, coping with disappointment, Jackalope, Coyote Tales

Two Monday-morning haiku on the subject being yourself.

You are you.
No help for that.
Why not sit up, smile and enjoy the ride?

Being you is tough?
Being what you are not will be far worse.
Let go.

Haiku comments welcomed!

Technorati Tags: authenticity, being yourself, taking life as it comes

How do you know who you really are?

René Descartes, the French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer, known as the Father of Modern Philosophy, coined the phrase, “I think, therefore I am” (From the Latin: Cogito, ergo sum). Fast forward to today, and most people live according to a variation of this phrase: “I am whoever and whatever I think I am.”

On what basis are you who and what you think you are? Is it even true? Who is really pulling your strings?

Picture a mother-board or a system-board: the group of electronic bits and pieces that runs everything from cell phones to computers. It has numerous chips, circuits, nodes, diodes, and other small metal and plastic structures soldered to it which contain all the ‘working parts’ that allow an electronic device to function.

When you were born, your motherboard (your brain) had few of the necessary structures and working parts you need to function as an adult. So how did it happen that you now have all the thoughts, beliefs, world views, assumptions, expectations, inferences, biases, and most importantly, the values, that you use every day? Where did all your neural nodes, diodes and structures on the motherboard of your brain come from? Who installed your programming? Read the full story

“Hurry, Scurry, Worry, Work,” President Truman sighed during the MacArthur crisis. He concluded, “I guess that is the way it is.”

That was the way it is; but, even if many feel it’s still the way it is today, it is not the way it has to be in the future for people and organizations with integrity.

Truman spoke these words during a time of fear and uncertainty in a nation that was still licking its wounds from World War II. The United States was rocked internally by McCarthyism, the threat of the Russian nuclear bomb in Europe and the potential for World War III in Korea. Read the full story

How many times have you regretted an impulsive action — but realized the error too late?

Where’s there’s conflict to be resolved, a problem to be solved, or a dilemma to be unbundled, how often do you jump in, right away, with a quick solution, answer, or retort? How often have you found that, after jumping in like that, you maybe didn’t get the whole story or see the complete picture? What you did or said missed the mark because you hadn’t taken the time to understand fully enough first.

How often in such situations might you be hearing, but not listening?

One reason people have a tendency to jump in is because their minds are working at 90 miles an hour. They’re hyped up, used to making judgments on the fly, wrapped in their preconceptions and assumptions. “Quick! There’s no time. Get on with it!” So they plunge ahead, seduced into making judgments that are too often misguided, off-putting or simply wrong.

“Listen to understand before being understood” is a principle that is bandied about in the ‘effective listening’ literature. We all say we ‘get it’, yet nothing changes. Nearly everyone seriously over-estimates their capacity to listen. Ask almost anyone and he or she will claim to be good at listening. If that were so, many of the problems around us would disappear in an instant. The truth is that rather few people listen properly before reacting. Read the full story

Why do people believe that they can tell what secretly motivates or drives others?

Of all the topics that come up in the leadership and management media, one of the commonest is motivation: how do you motivate people? In my simple-minded way, the answer to the question of discovering what motivates someone else seems simple: you ask them. So why is so much ink spent on theories of motivation, motivation surveys and endless speculation about the topic, some of it rather ill-considered?

On the whole, I think I blame Freud. His notion of unconscious motivation may or may not be well-grounded in psychological understanding — I am not a psychologist, so I won’t get into that morass — but it certainly opened the door to a situation the Viennese doctor may not have intended: you don’t ask people what motivates them, because they don’t know — at least consciously.

This created an even more dangerous belief: that you, the observer, may know better than the person does him or herself why she does what she does, based on using pseudo-psychology to ‘explain’ the links between what may be observed and the supposed underlying or unconscious motivations.

The mischief this has caused! Armed with nothing more than prejudice and pop-psychology, hoards of people believe that they know why others do things, without the need to check. Indeed, if they do ask — or are told — that often discount the explanation given as an example of ‘avoidance’ or because (thanks to Freud) they assume what the person says consciously isn’t true. It’s the unconscious motivation that counts. Read the full story

The fundamental flaws of the conventional approach to getting things done

Image: © artSILENSEcom - Fotolia.com

The conventional way to achieve success, in your life or in a work project, is to start with careful planning. First you build your plan, then you track progress against it. If you’re in a business setting, you’ll add a detailed budget. Corporations especially measure someone’s success by how closely their results match the original budget and plan. The plan becomes a straitjacket on later action.

Don’t do this!

Using such an approach commits you to a path you almost certainly can’t follow. Events rarely, if ever, work out as you planned. Then you must either stick to the plan — and stray further and further from reality — or abandon the previous plan and put action on hold while you start planning again.

Detailed planning too easily forces you into dangerous actions, like remaining rigid in the face of life’s natural fluidity, or ignoring warning signs and trying to force reality into the path you planned for it. It blocks you from responding creatively to whatever comes along. You become an actor following a script, instead of responding freely to the ebb and flow of events; you judge progress against the plan itself, not against how well you’re moving towards to your final objective.

Even the best plans are only thoughts about what to do if things go as you imagine. Forecasting the future is a risky game with a miserable chance of success. Trying to make the future conform to your plans is downright foolish, since you have no control whatever over what will happen. Reality will run you over like a railroad train hitting a gnat. Read the full story