All in Life
I believe endurance is the most critical ingredient of success.
Conventional thinking, fueled by everything we read in the media, suggests the key ingredients are far sexier: great ideas or talented teams or plenty of funding. Those are far more ‘romantic’ ideas and they certainly make for more enjoyable water cooler conversations.
Sports allegiances are, for the most part, irrational.
When we root for a team, we do so for reasons that typically have no objective basis. And on that emotional basis, we become “supporters” - and, for those of us who take our support seriously, proceed to entrench ourselves in the traditions of the team.
Today's podcast speaks to the perception that many of us have that we need to be (or at least show we're) perfect in front of those we live and work with.
The problem with this approach is that it's founded in insecurity and the idea that our vulnerability is something we should hide, when in fact, it's actually our strength.
It’s generally difficult for us to hold two contrasting ideas in our heads.
We have a tendency to move towards a specific interpretation, whether it relates to events, places or people. Something is either good or bad, someone is either smart or stupid, people should or should not be trusted.
NOTE: There are no spoilers in this post, but if you’re someone who wants to know nothing about ‘Squid Game’ before you watch it, save this post for later...
In the blockbuster Netflix show, Squid Game, 456 contestants are pitted against each other (unwittingly, at first) in what is essentially a death match to see who will claim the $38 million grand prize.
If there’s one thing that’s facilitated our ability to keep functioning (as normally as possible) over the last year and half (Outside of the vaccine and the healthcare community), it has be technology.
From e-commerce to productivity tools, technology has helped keep us working, playing, consuming and communicating when physical interaction was minimal to non-existent.
If we think about situations or times in our lives when we’ve felt underwater, under pressure or simply out of pace with what’s going on, it’s quite probable that we’ve reacted to those around us in less than positive ways.
Perhaps someone asks us about our work and we lash out at them instead of giving them a straight answer.
Today's podcast talks about our ideas of perfection, specifically in people.
I relate a war story from my consulting days about how reputations of specific individuals can be both accurate and inaccurate at the same time. The quicker we learn that, the easier it becomes to forge solid working relationships.
So, up until roughly 15 years ago, if you were interested in music and wanted to really enjoy the work of an artist, you had to own it. In other words, you had actually buy the single or the album. Singles came relatively cheap (99 cents), while albums cost anywhere from $6.99 and up. Either way, if you were really into music, the numbers could add up.
As I write this post, I’m 30,000 feet in the air, on an American Airlines flight headed to New Jersey. The last time I was on a plane was, funnily enough, exactly a year and a half ago, to the day.
If you’d told me back then that it would be 18 months before I’d fly again, I’d have told you that you were nuts.
Today's podcast takes on the idea of having allies versus accomplices. That is, when we're growing something of consequence, social or economic, real progress is made when we have people willing to give - at some cost or risk to themselves - to further our collective goals. How they become accomplices is the real challenge.
Many times, we tend to think our problems emerge out of nowhere.
Suddenly, the growth stops as those sales meetings cease to convert. Or our quality issues become overwhelming as the returns pile up.
The last time Arsenal (the English football team I support) won the Premiership trophy was in 2004. It was the greatest title triumph in the history of British Football as that Arsenal team went the entire season undefeated - a feat no other team in modern football has achieved before or since.
It was the icing on the cake of years of continuous success and the expectation of us fans was that it was only a matter of time before we would win the trophy again.
Do you expect a musician to be good at financial analysis? Do you expect a financial analyst to be good to creative work? Of course not. Then why do we define "good" in our teams in specific, narrow ways?
Today's episode speaks to focus on our colleague's strengths and not class people as good or otherwise based on preconceived notions.
OK, I’ll admit it. I have this problem.
Let me explain.
Some of you know that music, in particular playing guitar and songwriting, are passions of mine. I love the technical aspects as well as the pure musical, creative aspects of it.
As the podcast hits 100 episodes, I close out this month's focus on lessons from popular culture.
In particular, today's episode talks to the idea of putting our past in context. That we need to not only prize our prior experiences but also focus on moving forward. That our past doesn't define us - we continue to define ourselves.
We have these conversations with kids every now and then.
When they decide they want something, they’ll determine all the different benefits of having it. Solid benefits that are passionately communicated.
But what isn’t so well reasoned out is whether they need the thing in the first place. They just know they want it because their best friend has one, or all the kids at school are talking about it.
This week’s blog and podcast have been about this idea of leaving a legacy, and I’d like to tack on one last thought on the topic.
And that is that leaving a legacy suggests - at least to me - that we must become “enlightened” in some way. I’m using the term ‘enlightened’ not only in the spiritual sense, but in any context, including in our craft. There are those, for example, who understand their industry so well, who have ‘mastered’ their technical work, who are so well versed in their disciplines, that we might consider them to be enlightened in their specific domains.
This month's podcasts draw lessons from popular culture.
Today's episode is about legacy. I've always been intrigued by the fact that, when we leave, our world tends to go with us. So how do we leave something behind? How do we ensure that some part of our world, our experiences, remains well after we are gone?
I don’t think any of us want just to be visitors.
We don’t want to pass through our lives having simply gone through the routine, without having felt like we’ve contributed in some meaningful way.
Of course, ‘meaningful’ is different for each of us. Our scales will vary as will the nature of it, from the psychic to the economic.
