We can learn to be lucky

Learning only when we make a mistake is not enough.

Life is too hard. Creating value in enterprises is too hard. Marriage is too hard. Reaching goals and making our dreams come true is too hard. All these aspirations are too hard to only learn some of the time.

Some people say we learn more from failures than from successes, and that may or not be true. But the way I see it, that’s a misleading trade off: we can learn a lot from both.

However, what I’ve observed in organizations is that in practice teams usually learn much less from successes than from failures. It’s not that they can’t learn more, they just don’t.

This is for two main reasons. First, teams usually have less motivation to learn from success - why be a downer and interrogate our victory when we could be celebrating? Even when teams choose to debrief successes, they seem less willing to be introspective and self-critical so the debriefs they do are less fruitful. Moreover, most organizations have more systems that force debriefs of mistakes to happen.

The second reason why teams tend to learn less from success is a matter of technique. Learning from failure is a bit more familiar because it’s an exercise of cause and effect. We saw bad effects, and the goal of a debrief is to understand the root causes. By understanding the root causes we can make different choices in the future.

Learning from success is different (and perhaps harder) because it’s an exercise of understanding counterfactuals. What could we have done to obtain a better result? What aspects of our success were because of our decisions and skills, rather than good circumstances? The fundamental questions when trying learn from a success are different than those needed to debrief a failure.

When you’re doing your next debrief, try these three questions to get the most learning possible out of a success. I’ve included some rationale for the questions and some examples within each.

Question 1: What would’ve had to be true to have a 2x better result? What about a 5x or 10x better result?

This question helps us understand the money we left on the table. If we were successful it means we already had some level of competence or skill related to the challenge at hand. Could we have done better? Why didn’t we? Are we at a plateau of performance? How can we break the plateau and get to the next level? This is what this question gets at.

I thought about this question a lot when working on violence prevention programs at the Detroit Police Department. There were quarters and years where we had substantial drops in shootings and murders. A lot of time that was because the community-based gang violence prevention programs we launched were working. But in Detroit, even after those successes, violence wasn’t at an acceptable level for our team, our leadership, or our community.

When we asked questions like, “why can’t have a 30% drop instead of 10% drop” we thought about other avenues for reducing violence. We started to explore domestic violence prevention, partnerships with social service organizations and faith-based organizations, and other non-traditional avenues. Thinking critically about our success helped us to lean in harder to the problem.

Question 2: What was a near-miss? What almost was a big problem but we got lucky?

This question helps us understand where caught a break. Teams generally discount their own luck, and do so at their own peril. Because the next time around, we might not be so lucky.

I just experienced this at Thanksgiving. Our family’s tradition is to go to the Detroit Lions’ Thanksgiving Day football game, and we host an early brunch at our house since we live closest to Downtown Detroit where the stadium is. I make bagels & lox, a breakfast casserole, and coffee. My father-in-law makes bloody marys.

When he arrived, he asked, “do you have ice?”

We usually do not have ice in our house. Our refrigerator is old, and doesn’t have a built-in ice machine. But this Thanksgiving, we were lucky - we happened to have extra ice in the freezer from a party we hosted a few weeks earlier.

Even though our family brunch was a resounding success, I learned something important: make ice part of the plan for any party. I added “get ice” to the party prep checklist I keep on my phone. I also plan to look into a better set of ice molds to make it easier to have ice on hand all the time.

Question 3: What gifts were just handed to us that we did nothing to earn?

This question helps to understand and shape luck. Teams usually have some headwinds or beneficial circumstances that just fall into their lap without even trying. Usually, those headwinds aren’t a guarantee for future challenges. But if we understand what made us lucky this time around, we can actively try to shape those headwinds in the future.

I saw this happen on a project some of my colleagues recently completed. It was a data analysis to understand a large area of SG&A for our company. The project was a clear success because the insights uncovered will have a huge benefit for our company and our customer. By all accounts the team did a great job and they executed flawlessly.

But they did have a healthy amount of luck, too. The executive sponsoring the project had an incredibly clear and specific question they wanted to understand. The clarity the team received up-front led to a very focused analysis on a specific set of data. Many times people who request work of analytical teams have no idea what they actually want to understand, and that creates huge drag on an analytics team.

It was a big headwind to have a clear, and focused question from jump. That’s definitely not a given on any project. But what we learned is that in the future we can push for clarity and actively shape the question very early in any analytics project to create headwinds for the team. We can shape our own luck.

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Every team and every organization I’ve been part of underperforms. Even the best teams out there have even higher ceilings. We can and should learn from failures, but we can learn just as much from successes with the right questions and approach. And if we do that, we can learn to be better and contribute more to our teams, our customers, and our communities.

Photo credit: Unsplash @glambeau

We do not have monsters inside us

The first time I had the delusion, was probably around the time I started high school. I don’t remember what preceded it, I just remember thinking, “there’s something untamed and dark inside me.”

As I’ve aged, I’ve come to realized that I’m not the only man who has felt the grip of something inside them, small to be sure, but something that feels like evil.

For decades now, I’ve believed this about myself as a man: I have this tiny little seed, deep down, in my heart. That seed is a little root of evil and I must not let it grow. I know there is a monster within, and I must not let it out.

I don’t know from whence this deluision came. But it came.

The delusion reawakened when I started to seeing press about a new book, Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves, which is about the crisis among men we have in America. I haven’t read the book, yet, but here’s some context from Derek Thompson at The Ringer:

American men have a problem. They account for less than 40 percent of new college graduates but roughly 70 percent of drug overdose deaths and more than 80 percent of gun violence deaths. As the left has struggled to offer a positive vision of masculinity, male voters have abandoned the Democratic Party at historically high rates.

Or this from New York Times columnist David Brooks:

More men are leading haphazard and lonely lives. Roughly 15 percent of men say they have no close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990. One in five fathers doesn’t live with his children. In 2014, more young men were living with their parents than with a wife or partner. Apparently even many who are married are not ideal mates. Wives are twice as likely to initiate divorces as husbands.

I come away with the impression that many men are like what Dean Acheson said about Britain after World War II. They have lost an empire but not yet found a role. Many men have an obsolete ideal: Being a man means being the main breadwinner for your family. Then they can’t meet that ideal. Demoralization follows.

For more than a year, before this book was released, I’ve been grappling with some of its core themes. I might not call my own life a crisis, per se, but I struggle with being a man in America today.

I have been wanting to write about “masculinity” or “the American man” for some time, but have struggled to find the right frame and honestly the guts to do it.

A different version of this post could’ve been about how lonely, and isolated I feel and how hard it has been to maintain the ties I have with close, male, friends from high school, college, and my twenties. Or I could’ve written about the pressure of competition in the workplace and the way other protected groups are supported, but I and other males are not, though we also struggle.

I might’ve written about the confusion I feel - I am trying to operate in a fair and equal marriage with Robyn, but we have no blueprints to draw from because society today and what it means to be a man feels so different from the time I came of age. A different version of this post might’ve be political and angry, pushing back against the stigma I feel when I’m gathering with other men - for example, sometimes I feel like getting together in groups of men is something to be ashamed of because it’s assumed that groups of men will devolve into something chauvinistic or destructive and “boys will be boys” and masculinity is “toxic.”

[Let me be clear though: abusive, violent, exploitative, or criminal behavior is absolutely wrong. And the many stories that have been made public about men who behave this way is wrong. And I’d add, men shouldn’t let other men behave that way, toward anyone. I do not imply with any of the struggles I’ve referenced above that any person, man or women, is exempted from the standards of right conduct because they are struggling.]

What I do imply, is that the struggles that are talked about in public discourse about the crisis of men is real to me, personally. My life does not mirror every statistic or datapoint that’s published about it, but directionally I feel that same struggle of masculinity.

As I’ve searched for words to say something honest and relevant about masculinity, what I’ve kept coming back to is that delusion I’ve believed that there is an evil and dark part of me, even if it’s small and buried deep down, that exists because I am a man. The negative ground that all my struggles of masculity come from is the belief that there’s a monster inside me, and that the balance of my life hangs on not letting him out of the cage.

For me at least, this is the battleground where the struggle of my masculinity starts and ends. No policy change is going to solve this for me. No life hack is going to solve this for me. No adulation or expression of anger is going to solve this for me.

If I want to get over my struggle with my masculinity and difficulties I feel about being a man in America today, I have to dispel the belief that there’s a monster inside me. I have to prove that I am not evil inside and that belief is indeed a delusion. The obstacle is the way.

But how? How do I prove to myself that there’s not a monster, that I was born, inside me?

—

Our neighborhood is full of old houses, built mostly in the 1920s. And fundamentally, there are two ways to renovate an old house. You either paper over the problems, or you fix them and take the house all the way down to the foundation and the studs if you have to.

As it turns out, the only way you really make an old house sturdy is to take it down to the studs, and build from there. Papering over the issues in an old house - whether it’s old pipes, wiring, or mold - leads to huge, costly, problems later. The only way is to build a house is from good bones.

With that model in my head, I thought of this reflection, to hopefully prove to myself - once and for all - that I do not have the seeds of evil and darkness, sown into me because I was born a man.

The rest of this post is my self-reflection around three questions. I share it because I feel like I need to try out my own dog food and demonstrate that it can be helpful. But more than that, if you’re a man or someone who cares about a man, I share all this in hopes that if you also believe the delusion that you were born with a monster inside, that you change your mind.

For sure, every person is capable of terrible things. But we, as men, don’t have to believe the delusion that we were born with a monster inside us. We have to stop believing that. We can build our identity as men around the parts of us that are most good.

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What are the broken, superficial parts of me that I can strip away to get down to the core of the man I am?

I can strip away the resentment I have about being raised with so much pressure to achieve. I can strip away the bizarre relationship I have with human sexuality because as an adolescent the culture around me only modeled two ways of being: reckless promiscuity or abstinence, even from touching. I can strip away the anger I have because as a south Asian man, I am expected to be a doctor, IT professional, and someone who never has opinions, something to say, or the capability to lead from the front. I can strip away the self-loathing I have about being a man - I can be supportive of womens’ rights and opportunities without hating myself. I can strip back all the times I tried to prove myself as a dominant male: choosing to play football in high school, doing bicep curls for vanity’s sake, binge drinking to fit in or avoid hard conversations, trying to get phone numbers at the bar, or talking about my accomplishments as a way of flexing - I do not need to be the stereotypical “alpha male” to be a man. I can strip away my need for perfection and control, without being soft or having low standards.

I can strip away all pressures to prove my strength based on how I express feelings: I do not have to exude strength by being emotional closed, nor do I need to exude strength by going out of my way to express emotion and posture as a modern, emotionally in-touch man - I can be myself and express feelings in a way that’s honest and feels like me. I can strip away the thirst I have for status, my job title and resume is what I do for a living, not my life. I can strip away the self-editing I do about my hobbies and preferences - I can like whatever I like, sports, cooking, writing, gardening, astronomy, the color yellow, the color blue, the color pink - all this stuff is just stuff not “guy stuff” or “girl stuff.” I can strip away the pressure I feel to be a breadwinner, Robyn and I share the responsibility of putting food on the table and keeping the lights on, we make decisions together and can chart our own path.

Once I strip away all the superficial parts of me, and get down to the studs, what’s left? What’s the strong foundation to build my identity, specifically as a man, from?

At my core, I am honest and I do right by people. At my core I am constructively impatient, I am not obsessed over results, but I care about making a better community for myself and others. At my core, I am curious and weird - that’s not good or bad, it’s just evidence that I have a thirst to explore no ideas and things to learn. At my core, I value families - both my own and the idea that families are part of the human experience. At my core, I care about talent - no matter what I achieve extrinsically I am determined to use my gifts and for others to use there, because if the human experience can have less suffering, why the hell wouldn’t we try? At my core, I believe in building power and giving it away and I am capable of walking away from power. At my core, I care most about being a better husband, father, and citizen.

Now that I’ve stripped down to the studs, what mantra am I going to say to replace my old negative thought of, “I was born with a monster inside me that I can’t let out of the cage?”

I was born into a difficult world, but with a good heart. I am capable of choosing the man I will become.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @bdilla810

Our stories are about light

In his 2019 memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs, musician Ben Folds reveals the meaning of the title a few pages into the manuscript. It was a dream he had as a kid, where he would be in the thick of summer and with awe be catching lightning bugs in a jar.

But for Folds, catching lightning bugs is more than just a whimsical childhood dream, it became a metaphor for the meaning of his life. In the first few chapters, Folds explains that he sees his purpose to catch lighting bugs, through his music, and share that momentary wondrous glow with others. That’s what he’s here for, to catch and share the light.

I heard this story about 15 minutes into a run, while listening to an audiobook of Folds’ memoir.

Damn, I thought while trodding up Livernois Avenue, metaphors about light are so powerful and universal. Why is that?

When really zooming out, what are our lives, really, other than a sequence of concentrating energy, reapplying it somehow, and embracing its dissolution? And what is light, but a transcendent and beautiful form of energy? So much of how we understand our own existence, too, can be thought of as a relationship between light and it’s absence. In a way, all our stories, our most important ones anyway, can be understood as a relationship with light.

As I kept running, Folds in my ear, I continued to think. Folds’ deal is lightning bugs, but why am I here?

I’m not here to be a lighthouse, I need to be with people in the trenches, not guiding from a distance. I’m not here to be a telescope, pondering into the heavens trying to decipher the secrets of the faintest sources of light. I’m not here to be commanding the spotlight to bring voice to the voiceless. I’m not here to be a firework, illuminating celebrations with color and magic.

Why am I here? What’s my dream about light?

We find ourselves often, in a dark, wet, cave. As Socrates might argue, perhaps that’s the state we are born into. If that’s true, I think I am here to make a fire, creating a light. I’m here to transfer that light onto a torch and find the others in the cave. I am here to take my torch and light the torches of others, give light away as fast as I obtain it. I am here to leave lanterns at waypoints as we go, making the once dark cave, brighter. And maybe I won’t survive long enough to find the way out of the cave. That’s okay.

My dream is not one about lightning bugs. My dream is one of making light, and sharing it with others so we can all go home someday.

I think this is a belief I’ve held for a long time, without consciously realizing it. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been writing this blog for almost 20 years, for no money, and resisting click-bait topics to gain an audience - even though sometimes I feel like I’m singing into a dark, empty cave. I can’t help but share the little bit of light I think I’m discovering with others. It’s what I’m here to do.

It’s so audacious, I think, to engage in this enterprise of “purpose”. Figuring out why we’re here? Trying to understand what our life is supposed to mean? It’s heavy, big stuff. I don’t really have it figured out, and I think anyone who claims they have a magic formula to figure it out is probably lying.

But this exercise, forcing myself to examine my life and turn it into a dream about light was useful. It worked. I don’t have all the answers, but I do feel clearer, about what my life is not, at least. If you’re similarly foolish and trying to figure out why you’re here, it’s an exercise I’d recommend to you, no matter who you are or what your backstory is.

Because, at the end of the day, all our stories are about light.

This Is Soul Searching

In the waning moments of my life, what do I want to be true? If I do not die suddenly, and unexpectedly like my father and my others did, I know I will be taking stock of my life. What story do I want to be the real, true, story I am able to tell myself about my own life?

I want it to be true that I did not bring death, senselessly, upon myself. Whatever is left of me after death would be ashamed at my negligence if I was texting while driving, or accidentally injured myself because I was drunk. Similarly, if I died needlessly young because of poor nutrition, air & water quality, rest, stress, or apathy toward my own health, my lingering soul would be devastatingly sad. When my time comes, it will be my time, but I don’t want that time to be recklessly early. Our bones may break, but I do not want to break my own.

I want it to be true that I did right by my family, by other people, and by other living creatures. I would be so regretful if I had lived my life neglecting my family, by being untrustworthy to my friends, disrespectful to my neighbors, unkind to strangers, and insulting to life, as it came to my doorstep, in any form. How could I steal the opportunity for a good day from others? How could I take out anger on children, a dog, or other defenseless creatures? How could I pollute the water or air and bring suffering to living creatures 100 years from now? I cannot selectively value life - I’m either in, or I’m out. And I’m either honest, kind, and respectful of life or I’m not. I either did right by others, or I didn’t. Do or do not, there is no try.

I want it to be true that I used my gifts to make an impactful contribution. I think I have realized that it’s less important to do something “big” or “noteworthy”. What is it that I and few others on this earth could contribute? It takes a village to leave the village better than we found it. What’s my niche? What’s my lane? What’s the diversity of contribution I can bring to the table? Papa always told you that you were a capable person, Honor your gifts, Tambe.

I also want to be at peace with death itself. Some people call this being ready to die, or having come to terms with death. I think that means forgiving and asking for forgiveness. I think that means righting my wrong and accepting the wrongs I could not make right. I think that means having lived a life seeking out, learning from, and hopefully understanding something of the the natural beauty of this world and traveling graciously to experience the beauty of human culture. I think that means having my affairs in order medically, legally, and financially. I think that means having done the hard, spiritual work to be prepared for the unknown and undiscovered country. I think that means knowing that I’ve shared the good parts of life with the good people God has brought me to. I want to be ready. Live like there are 10,000 tomorrows, all of which that may never come.

Thinking through this has been a bit of a reckoning. Am I really living to these principles? I’m not 100% sure.

Do I really, truly, not drive distractedly? Is eating fish consistent with my perspective on respecting life in all its forms? Is working in business, or even public service, really the way to contribute my unique gifts? Have I righted the wrongs of my adolescence and been present for my extended, global family? I’m not quite sure about any of these. I think the exercise of reconciling life today with the person we are at death’s doorstep is what is meant by “soul searching.” And that’s what this is, soul searching.

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I have dedicated a significant amount of my life to understanding teams, organizations, and how they work. Understanding these sorts of human systems is one of my unique gifts. And one of the enduring truths of my study is that the way for a human to solve problems is to begin with the end in mind.

What this approach absolutely depends on is knowing what the end actually is. What is our endgame? What are we trying to achieve? What result are we trying to create? We must know this to solve a problem, especially in a team of people.

This post was inspired by a few things - a few conversations with a few members of my extended family at dinner this weekend, and finishing the book The Path to Enlightenment by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama - and it’s become a set of organizing principles of how I want to live. These four ideas: avoiding senseless death, doing right by others, contributing my unique gifts, and find peace with death itself, have been loose threads that I have been trying to weave into a narrative since the beginning of my time writing this blog in earnest, almost 15 years ago.

What I have been missing this whole time is that tricky question - what is the end? What we experience about death in our culture is truly limited. The end of life is not a funeral or a eulogy. The end of life is not what is written about us in a book or newspaper. The end of life is not our retirement party from a job or a milestone birthday in our late ages where everyone makes a speech and says nice things about us.

Those moments are not the end, but those moments are usually what we experience, either in movies, television, or our own lives. The end we have in mind when we tacitly plan out our lives is maximizing those moments. But that’s not the actual end.

At the end of life we are really mostly alone, mostly with our own thoughts. I have never seen dying up close, and I think most people don’t. I did not have grandparents who lived in this hemisphere. My father wen’t ahead so surprisingly. My surviving parents (Robyn’s folks and my mother), thank God, are not quite that old just yet. I have never truly seen the true end of life.

I think for most of my life I have been optimizing for the wrong “end”. I have been trying to design my life around having a great retirement party, or a great funeral. And that has made me put a skewed amount of emphasis on what others might think and say about me one day.

What is the better, and more honest approach is to organize life around the true end: death.

It is hard, but has been liberating. Imagining what I want to believe to be true has given me remarkable clarity on how I want to live. And that is such a gift because, thank goodness, I still have time to make adjustments. It’s not too late. And in a way, I truly believe it’s never too late, because we’re not dead yet. Even if death is only days away, or even hours perhaps, it ain’t over ‘till it’s over. We still have time to choose differently.

The Power of Goals We Can’t Achieve

The difference between non-verifiable goals and verifiable goals are the time-scales under which we’re operating. Verifiable goals are goals that we can measure and accomplish during our lifetimes. 

Non-verifiable goals are also measurable, but are intended to not be achievable until well after our lives have ended. Reasonable people disagree on the practical definition of concepts like “mission”, “purpose”, and “task”, but here’s an illustration to make the concept of a non-verifiable goal less abstract.

Because non-verifiable goals, by definition, are goals we don’t expect to be around to see the fruits of, some interesting things happen when we set them.

One, we can dream bigger when we set non-verifiable goals because we aren’t constrained by needing or expecting to achieve the goal within our lifetime - we’re free to swing for the fences. Two, non-verifiable goals tend to be other-focused because by assuming we’ll be dead by the time they’re achieved, we’re less anticipatory of the way our achievement will make us feel personally - we’re free to think about results, ideas, or causes bigger than ourselves.

Finally, we tend to apply more discretionary effort and act more courageously in pursuit of a non-verifiable goal. If we expect to be long gone we don’t spend our days worrying about being recognized for our work. people and teams accomplish incredible things when nobody cares who gets the credit. When setting a non-verifiable we’re free to focus on doing the work, and making as much forward progress as we possibly can - we don’t care as much about who get’s the credit if we know we won’t be around for the victory party anyway.

It is a bit morbid to talk about non-verifiable goals - death is an uncomfortable topic - but we should set them for ourselves personally and for the enterprises we lead. Non-verifiable goals obviously don’t replace verifiable goals that operate on shorter time-scales, but they are important complements.

As an individual, setting non-verifiable goals - that are so big that I can’t even hope to accomplish them on my own or during my own lifetime - is transformational. In a sentence, pursuing a purpose makes life feel meaningful. This is consistent with what’s broadly reported (and accepted) on finding meaning and purpose in our lives, so I won’t argue the point further here.

In enterprises, non-verifiable goals are also transformational.

Non-verifiable goals that transcend products, services, profits, and promotion discussions provide a “north-star” that all stakeholders in an enterprise agree on and care about. Once that north-star is clearly articulated, it allows every stakeholder to make decisions more autonomously and with greater confidence because there’s alignment on the bigger purpose everyone is striving to achieve.

Non-verifiable goals which appeal to something bigger than the enterprise’s products, services, and profits also tend to be more motivating - because they are of greater consequence than simply making money and skew toward being other-focused. As a result, a company’s stakeholders give discretionary effort beyond the bare minimum needed to avoid getting fired. The increase in alignment and effort that comes with setting a non-verifiable goal tends to makes enterprises perform better and people feel better about their contribution.

A relevant question is, “how do I set a non-verifiable goal?” Practically speaking, non-verifiable goals still benefit from generally being SMART (maybe not as time-bound, though), but it helps to ask a different set of questions. When setting a non-verifiable goal for ourselves as individuals those questions might be something like:

• What’s a result I care about so much that I don’t care if I get credit for it, as long as it happens?

• What’s something important, that’s so big that I can’t possibility be more than one small part of it?

• What’s something important, but so difficult that not even the most powerful person in the world could achieve it on their own?

• What’s something that will take decades, if not a century or two to solve? Of those challenges, which ones have I already made sacrifices for without even knowing it?

• What’s something important enough to try contributing to, even though I’ll more than likely fail?

• What is so important that I’m committed to not just doing the world, but mentoring the next generation that follows?

For enterprises the questions might be along the lines of:

• What a societal measure (e.g., murder rate, obesity rate, suicide rate) that we want to positively impact when we do business?

• What’s an ideal or cause we have competence in that all our stakeholders - employees, owners, customers, and communities - care deeply about?

• What’s an important challenge that will take the consecutive efforts of several CEOs/Senior Management teams to make a dent in?

• Does this enterprise need to continue existing for the next 100 years? Why? What contribution do we need to make to justify our very existence?

• What’s something that our stakeholders a hundred years from now will be grateful we started working on today?

• What’s something important enough to stand firm on, even if it meant a bottom-line hit in the short-term?

One of my favorite white papers, The five keys to a successful Google team, was published by Google’s People Operations group in 2015. The first key, psychological safety, relates strongly to the process of setting non-verifiable goals. In the paper, the researchers describe psychological safety in the form of a question, “Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?”

In my experience, it’s impossible to even contemplate a non-verifiable goal without starting from a place of psychological safety. If we’re scared - whether it’s because of uncertainty about our next meal, or whether our boss will harass us, or if the people around us will twist our words into a weapon - we focus on the tasks immediately ahead of us to survive. Only once we feel secure in ourselves and our surroundings can we contemplate what is worth contributing to beyond the timescale of our lifetime.

For me personally, getting to that place of psychological safety took trimming luxuries to reach a more sustainable household budget and convincing myself it was okay to not get promoted as quickly as my MBA classmates. It took having children and being forced to find simple joys in moments that my 23 year-old self would find boring. It took coming to terms with the grief of losing my father and retraining my mind to measure success by my inner scorecard instead of by what I thought society defined as successful.

In an enterprise, maybe creating psychological safety starts with getting profitable or reducing enterprise complexity so every day is not a fire drill. Maybe it means holding managers responsible for developing their teams and demanding that they don’t suck. Maybe it means ensuring hiring and promotions decisions are made fairly and with integrity. Maybe it’s exiting some non-core markets or categories so the enterprise can focus on more than just keeping the lights on.

You know your enterprise better than me, but the point is consistent - start with psychological safety before attempting to set a non-verifiable goal.

Over the course of years, I’ve talked to others about how they view their purpose in hopes of better understanding my own. I’ve come to see my own purpose as two-fold: creating generations beyond me that act with love and integrity, and, helping America become a nation where people trust each other.

And no matter who I’ve talked to, their experience with finding and acting from a place of purpose is similar to my own: discovering and acting on a bigger purpose is life-giving, motivating, and grounding. It’s hard, time-consuming work but worth the effort many times over.

Naming our holiness

My friend Nick was recently ordained as a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church, but fortunately for me, he’s been a spiritual guide to mine for a long time. He recently told me a parable he heard:

A man went to see a monk. And he asked the monk, “Brother, I have a problem and I seek your guidance. I am at a crossroads, should I become a doctor or a lawyer? What does God want me to do?”

The monk thought to himself for a quick moment and quickly replied, “God doesn’t care. Become a doctor or a lawyer, to God it doesn’t matter. But whatever you choose, be holy in it. That’s what matters to God. If you become a doctor, be a holy doctor. If you become a lawyer, be a holy lawyer.”

For me, it was providential advice. I have been focused on career in the wrong way recently. Instead of worrying about promotions and new jobs, what I should be worrying about is being holy where I am now.

But of course, that’s not easy. I do not know what it means to be holy. I am, quite frankly, not holy. And, the holy people I have seen, or met, seem like they are not quite of this world. When I think of “holy” I imagine His Holiness the Dalai Lama or Mother Theresa.

I am not holy like that. I am me, in a puddle of my imperfections and selfishness. After talking with Nick, I wondered - for me specifically, what does holy feel like and look like? What is my holiness? What is the holiest version of myself?

I found it helpful to do an exercise like this:

First, I thought of a few examples of when my attitude, mindset, and how I acted was at its peak of goodness. When I felt like my most pure and good. When I felt like something about my presence was transcendent in some way.

For me that’s when I’m dancing, when I’m lost in thought on a new idea, when what I’m writing dissolves out of my fingers like liquid lightning, or when I’ve had sublime, radically honest conversations around a campfire. There’s something about my mindset that’s been other-worldly, for brief moments at least, when doing those things.

And so I picked those moments apart. What was happening in those moments. How did I feel? What was unique about just those times?

How would I describe the way my mind was in those moments? Intense. How would I describe the way my body was in those moments? Graceful. How would I describe the way my heart and spirit were in those moments? Joyous.

Joyous, graceful, intensity (The Ballet Mindset) is my holiness. That is its name.

I am a mortal man. Dealing with the reality that I will indeed die one day, has been one of the major pillars of my writing and reflection over the past 5 years. Which is why I need so dearly to name this holiness.

I am not perfect. I cannot meditate or think my way into holiness. I also cannot just mimic somebody else. Because I am not capable of being perfectly selfless or loving, I cannot just jump straight to absolute holiness. I have to struggle for it. And yet, holiness eludes me.

Which is why I think it’s so important to try to name our holiness. Like, give it something concrete to rest upon using adjectives of this world. Adjectives that regular people can be for at least a few minutes at a time. Something that we can know if we’ve found it.

I am not perfect enough to just be holy, I have to tag it with words. Most of us cannot be saints or prophets. But the rest of us can be specific.

We can put words to the embers of ourselves and our souls, capable of reaching transcendental states. We can give ourselves a few words to remember - joy, grace, intensity for me - so that when we’re in the throes of everyday life, dealing with difficult children or bosses, or stuck in traffic, or dealing with death and illness whatever, we can remember those words to help us remember what our holiness feels like.

If we can name it, we can get back to that holiness with practice. And maybe someday we will be holy enough to really feel worthy of our best moments. Until then, we keep at it, trying to be the holiness we named.

Moments from North Cascades

If you get a chance to visit a National Park - even if you’ve never camped before - I really recommend it. Here’s a series of reflections from our recent trip to North Cascades National Park.

If you’ve spent any amount of time hiking and camping these will probably feel familiar to you. If you haven’t been outdoors much before, I hope you find something in these vignettes that will make you want to plan a trip.

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I am angrier now than when we started the day. 

After all the difficulty in getting here - canceling the first few days of our trip because of a Covid exposure, the early flight, the late night packing, and all the frustration I’m already holding in my shoulders because of our daily grind - I wanted to be on the road out of the city already. And yet, the camping store doesn’t have fuel for my backpacking stove. And I feel like I’ve taken every left turn in Seattle to go three blocks. The kids are jet lagged and haven’t napped.

I have spent weeks anticipating the familiar, friendly feeling of hiking boots laced up around my feet, and having my breath taken away by the mountains, lakes, and forests I’ve been reading about. And we’re still hours away.

The drive was more spectacular than I even expected. This is one of my favorite parts of any trip to our country’s National Parks - the approach. I remember the desolate, exhilarating, trek across the Mojave into Death Valley. And the winding approach past Moab, ducking and dodging the towering rock faces into Canyonlands. And my favorite, the most beautiful drive I’ve ever done, through barely touched wilderness into Denali. Getting there is part of the dance, the adventure. It is a chase and a tease, building anticipation the further you go. And as we traverse each mile, the booming mountains and the songs of the whistling trees and lyrical creeks draw us in, luring us more deeply into the Cascades.

It is later than I hoped, but we are here. The tent we tested in our backyard just yesterday is ready for a crisp overnight sleep. We are dressed and have our supplies in the bright green day pack we usually only take to Palmer Park, Belle Isle, or Mayberry State Park, Bo is wearing the bright pink socks he picked out at REI for the trip. Myles is on my back in the baby carrier he’s almost too big for now. We are on foot, trying to salvage our evening with a short hike before dinner. I’m desperate to settle the itch for the trail I’ve had all day. We heard there was a short hike with a vista near the visitors’ center so that’s where we go.

And as we turn the last bend of the boardwalk, we see it - it’s the Pickett Range. Robyn and I see the boys - right as we get the same feeling of awe and wonder ourselves - experience the majesty and beauty of nature for the first time. We all exhale and soak in the full frame we have in front of us. I am starting to cry while I write down this memory, just as I did when we lived it a few days ago.

We just survived our first night in the tent with two kids, barely. We are on the trail for a morning adventure before nap time. I ask Robyn if I can take her picture. I want to remember being here together. I am thinking back to our honeymoon, when we spent 2 days - just us and the trail - at Mammoth Cave National Park before continuing to Nashville. I am grateful for our marriage, our family, and how we’re spreading our love of outdoor adventures to another generation. I always feel whole when we are together, but my cup is especially full as I snap the photo of her.

I did not grow up with siblings. But even though I forget it sometimes, our boys are brothers. I see it with my own eyes, vividly, as they scamper together down the trail hand in hand. I remember back a few days earlier, when Bo asked Myles: “Will you be my best friend?” We will have many moments during our few precious days here, to remind me of something important: this was worth it. All the setbacks, all the discomfort of travel, all the preparation - all of it was worth it for the three days we had. The chance to visit a National Park - the rare gems of our truly beautiful country - is always worth it.

For the first time since we arrived, we turn left out of the campground into State Road 20 - we are heading home. Robyn and I are holding hands as we weave west back to Seattle alongside the Skagit River. Myles points out the window and says his new favorite word, “mountain”. As we talk to Bo about the past 3 days and how we can plan another trip soon, he asks us, “Can we come back to Cascades National Park?” 

Robyn and I smile at each other and I remember something she said a day earlier, after we descended after only making it halfway up the Thunder Knob trail - “we’ll be telling stories about this trip for years.” In that moment I have an uncommon amount of gratitude - for nature, for our family, for our marriage, and for the National Park Service - because I know deeply in my bones that she’s right.

Surplus and Defining “Enough”

The idea of surplus is simple, you compare what you have to what you need. If you have more than you need, surplus exists. The concept of surplus is often linked to money or material resources, but I think of it in terms of time and energy.

I’ve thought about the question, “What am I doing with my surplus?” before. But I’m realizing that I’ve missed a more fundamental question: “How much do I need? How much is enough?”

To a large degree, how much we need is a choice.

If I wanted to live by myself and grow my own food off the grid for the rest of my life, I could probably retire tomorrow. If I didn’t want to grow in my job, I probably wouldn’t have to work as hard as I do - I could coast a bit and do the minimum to avoid being fired. If I didn’t care about the health of my marriage or raising our children, I probably wouldn’t have to put as much energy in as I do. If I didn’t have such a big ego, I probably would spend less effort trying to gain social standing. You get the picture.

Defining the minimum standard - after which everything else is gravy - is what creates the construct of surplus in the first place. Because if what I “need” only requires I work a job for 25 hours a week, I now have created 15 additional hours of surplus, for example. If it’s unclear what my bar is, it’s hard to know if I’ve cleared it. Until I define that bar, I have no basis for measurement. Defining what “enough” is is half of the surplus equation.

And I want to know if I’ve cleared bar. Because once I have, then I can use that surplus for things I care about - like traveling, leisure, writing, serving, prayer, time with friends and family, gardening, learning something new, exercising, whatever.

I’m realizing my problem is that I haven’t really defined my minimum standard, so I don’t really know if I have enough. And because I don’t know if I have enough, I am stuck in this cycle of grinding and grinding to get more even though I may not want or need to.

This uncertainly leads to waste. If I do have enough, but don’t know it, I might be wasting my time and energy working for something I don’t want or need. If I don’t have enough, but don’t know it, I am probably misdirecting my time and energy on things that aren’t high priorities.

Either way, if I’m not clear on what I need and how much is enough, I’m likely wasting the most precious resources I have - my time and energy.

For so long I’ve blamed the culture for my anxiety around career and keeping up with the Joneses. I figured that it was things like social media and societal pressures that made me engage in this relentless pursuit of more. But maybe it’s really just on me.

Maybe what I could’ve been doing differently all along is get specific about how much is enough. Maybe instead of feeling like I have no choice but to be on this accelerating cultural treadmill, I could really just turn down the speed or get off all together.

These are some of the questions I haven’t asked myself but probably should:

• How much money do we really want to have saved and by when?

• What is the highest job title I really need to have?

• How respected do I really need to be in my community? What “community” is that, even?

• How much do I want to learn and grow? In what ways do I really care about being a better person?

• What level of health do I really want? What’s just vanity?

• What creature comforts and status symbols really matter to me?

• At what point do I say, “I’m good” with each domain of my life? What’s the point at which I can choose to put my surplus into pursuits of my own choosing?

Only after defining enough does it make sense to think about the question of “what should I do with my surplus?” Because until I define “enough”, whether or not I have surplus time and energy isn’t clear. And if it’s not clear, I’m probably wasting it. And surplus is a terrible thing to waste.

Debrief questions for parents (and coaches)

I have been struggling for a long time thinking about how to teach our sons “character.” They won’t learn it from a book, nor will sending them to Catholic school magically make that happen.

What dawned on me this week, is that I can debrief with them. And really do that intentionally.

I attended a wonderful summer camp in high school, it was “student council camp.” And there were lots of character building-activities, that I still remember and think about often. 

When I become a camp counselor, I had the opportunity to facilitate those character-building activities. And what we always said amongst other counselors is that it’s not the activity that teaches anything, “it’s all about the debrief.”

Debriefing - the process of helping others learn from their own experiences - is a hard-earned skill. It’s not easy. But it’s essentially all about asking the sequence of questions that highlight the salient information which lead to a a novel insight.

During a debrief, the goal isn’t to tell anyone anything, the goal is to nudge them along by bringing relevant facts to the debriefee’s attention which causes them to have an “aha moment”. In those aha moments, so to speak, they learn a lesson on their own. Good debriefers don’t teach, they help others teach themselves.

Cutting to the chase, I started putting a list of questions that could be used to debrief, even with young children. I needed to write them down to debrief myself I suppose. 

I share that list here in case it’s useful to those of us that are parents or coaches. I also share it here in hopes that others share their own debrief questions. If you’re uncomfortable leaving a comment, please do contact me if you have a thought to share, I’d be happy to append it anonymously.

Debrief Questions for Parents and Coaches

• How do you feel right now?

• Are you okay?

• Can you tell me exactly what happened?

• Then what happened?

• What were you thinking right before you did X?

• How do you think this made [Name] feel?

• What can you do to make this right?

• Why didn’t X, Y, or Z happen instead?

• What were you trying to do by doing X?

• What could you have done instead of X?

• Was doing X okay, or not okay? Why?

• What else happened because you did X?

• Do you have any questions for me?

• What are you going to do differently next time?

• What happens next, right now?

Reflection Questions: NYE 2020

Robyn and I (and our families) relish the last week of the year as a time to reflect on the year past and upcoming.

Here are a few reflection questions, many that we’ve talked about in our household over the past week. I wanted to share them, since this year in particular warrants reflection and prompts can be helpful.

But whether or not you use these prompts, I do think reflection - whether alone, with a friend, a partner, or a notebook - during this time of year is well worth it. I highly recommend taking at least a few quiet, contemplative minutes before you return to your usual routine.

Happy New Year!

Reflections that look backward:

• What have you received this year?

• What have you given this year?

• How have you made life difficult or inconvenient for others this year?

• What did you intend for 2020, and what actually happened?

• What were your high points and low points? What emotions did you feel at those points?

• What do you now know about how the world works, that you didn’t before?

• What happiness or sadness are you still holding onto?

• In what ways is your relationship different, or stronger?

• How has your perception of life in your community changed this year? How has your view of the world changed?

• What activities or people did you find a way to hang onto in some form?

• What’s an event that you’d want your grandchildren to remember about this year? What lesson would you share with them?

Reflections that look forward:

• What about this year would you continue in the future?

• What about this year would you never opt to do again?

• What do you intend for 2021?

• How do you want to make your closest relationships, like your marriage, stronger in 2021?

• What outcome that you want to happen is at the top of your list for 2021?

• What’s a way that you want to behave differently in 2021?

• What’s something you want to spend more time on in 2021? Less time on?

• What phase of life are you transitioning into or out of?

• What hard thing do you intend to tackle in 2021, even though you may fail?

• What are some of the relationships you want to focus on in 2021?

• What’s something that seems urgent but is really just a distraction for your most important 2021 priorities? (Pair with this post on anti-priorities).

Finding peace with the starved twenties

I noticed something odd this week.

Most of my dreams, which are unfortunately always stressful, take place in my early to mid twenties. I don’t think I’ve dreamt about my kids, maybe ever. I hadn’t noticed the pattern until a few days ago.

Why oh why would my twenties be hiding and lurking in my mind?

Upon reflection, my twenties were a lot like this year. I went days, sometimes weeks, without giving a hug because I traveled for work and rolled by myself most of the time. I had fun hanging out with friends at the bar every weekend, but that rarely led to conversations requiring emotional intimacy.

I always thought my twenties were lonely. And they were, but they were more than that. They were starved. Not of nourishment, but of emotion and spiritual depth. And love.

Upon reflection, my twenties were a lot like this year.

It struck me though that lots of people have to live like it’s 2020, but every year. Can you imagine?

I think it was enough to just see the past clearly and more honestly. The moment I connected the dots, and understood the difference between alone and starved I seriously felt it in my abdomen, right below my sternum; a tension released.

Two nights later I had a dream, and my sons were in it. Imagine that.