The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

"Narcissists."

Next time you are in a conversation, pay attention. Are you REALLY listening?

Or, instead of creating an accommodating, listening space for others, are you waiting for the other person to stop talking...so YOU can say what you want to say?

As a sage and wise friend noted the other day, "We're all narcissists."

Our "look at me" culture is all about narcissism; being focused on the charm and splendor of our own voices, the beauty of our own gazes, and the richness of our thoughts.

But, you know what? Cooperative enterprise begins when we share in the experience of OTHERS.

Empathy is very little about YOU talking.  

So be aware. Take inventory. And learn to shut up, and listen.

This has been a public service announcement.

Do people feel BETTER about themselves or WORSE about themselves after meeting with you?

That's the question of the day.

FWIW, a friend of mine countered the question by saying, "Depends on whether you care."

My take is that in asking one's self such questions, it doesn't presume that we care about everyone equally, are always self-aware or that everyone even has the capacity to care.

The question is the answer.

Scratched Records: On Breaking Bad Habits

Bad Habits are like scratched records. They mechanically invoke undesirable behaviors to play out over and over again.

To break such patterns, first you must recognize their existence and trigger points.

Recognition gives rise to an intellectually honest reflection about the new outcomes desired, as well as the path (and constraints) to getting there.

On Lineages of Thought, Short-Termism and the Dying School of Apprenticeship

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures wrote a short post this morning on the role of lineages of thought.

I wanted to expand on this concept a bit, as lineage is a central concept in Buddhism as well, where a lineage, such as the Kagyu Lineage, is passed from one generation to the next. 

It is through this methodology that someone like the Dalai Lama can be "discovered" as a reincarnate, indoctrinated in the teachings of the lineage (over many years), and then emerge as a Master.

If you think about it, there is an interesting duality in the nature vs. nurture aspect of a lineage. On the one hand, a conscious effort is made to discover the flesh and bones individual that has the right DNA to be a great leader.

On the other, a deep, prolonged apprenticeship of training and practice is ensures that those raw capacities are forged in a predictable fashion into something "miraculous."

Sadly, our own societal embrace of the tyranny of short-termism has led to the demise of focused apprenticeship as a core part our how we convert our unpolished young adults into skilled craftsmen.

(FWIW, in terms of philosophical learning, I am a 15+ year devotee of Chögyam Trungpa, who was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages.) 

Related:

1. To Be a WINNER...Or, to Be GOOD? That is the question.
2. Four Realms of Discipline in a Standing Bow
3. Remembering Steve Jobs - The Candle that Burned Brightest

 

Remembering Steve Jobs - The Candle that Burned Brightest

There is a proverb that the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

If true, while tremendously sad, it provides some context for appreciating the beautiful life and legacy of Steve Jobs.

Gone way too soon, like the rock star that he was, but unsurprising when one considers that his candle burned brighter than all others.

Steve, we light a candle in your honor tonight.

Related:

• LEGACY: Ruminations on the Brilliance and Spirit of Steve Jobs (O'Reilly Radar)
  (PC, Mobile, Music, Film, Post-PC: Steve Jobs played an important part in disrupting them all)
• Steve Jobs is the closest thing to Walt Disney since Walt Disney
• Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish: Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech
• The Wisdom of Steve Jobs: Celebrating Apple as a Great American Company 
  
  

New Years Dharma: Sullenberger’s Moment - A life's grounding and a Bardo Realm

In a moment, it will all start to become clear. Whether a lifetime of training and preparation has made me ready for the moment that is upcoming.

As the Hudson River approached, Chesley Sullenberger (AKA "Sully") was, at that very moment, piloting US Airways Flight 1549 offshore from Manhattan, New York City.  His plane was rapidly fluttering back to Earth.

In that moment, he had one thought in mind.  Successfully landing the plane in the river below, and then getting everyone off the plane before they drowned.  If he failed, the lives of 155 people were almost assuredly over.

Now imagine that you are a passenger on that plane.  Alarms are sounding around you.  You can cut the sense of dread and fear with a knife.  

All that you can think about is the loved ones that you may never see again.  In such a moment, enduring truths emerge.

Then, time and space criss-cross. In a slow motion blur, your world reboots, and you miraculously don’t die. Suddenly, life is something to live and look forward to again.  

Forearmed is forewarned, if you are willing to own up.

Now, return to the present moment and riddle me this; If you were given a second chance, having survived because of Sullenberger’s readiness for The Moment, how would you live your life moving forward?  What would you do more, the same, less or differently?

Looking through the eyes of -- and exercising the perspective of -- a Beginner's Mind, spend 15 minutes and write "something" down.  Consider it your New Year's Gift to yourself.

Let me proffer up a Mandala, and say that if you do this exercise before the first anniversary of Sullenberger’s Moment (January 15, 2010), maybe the Gods will look favorably upon you, and you will realize your Personal Truth in the Year Ahead. 

Happy New Year.

What Makes Us Happy?

Being a bit of a Buddhist at heart, I subscribe to the axiom that experience "cuts."  Simply put, when you climb steep mountains, when you aspire to meaningful accomplishments, when you put yourself out there emotionally, with true skin in the game, you will get cut.  And being sliced up, hurts.  That's just the way that it is. 

Unfortunately, human nature is to convert the real "physicality" of pain into a confused state. We do this by attaching our egos to the suffering at hand, and giving birth to a discursive thought that begins with the question, "Why is this happening to me?" 

Given that, how is it that some of us come through the grist mill of life basically happy and contented, while others get chewed up, ending up as disconsolate, broken spirits?

In other words, is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life?

'What Makes Us Happy?' by Joshua Wolf Shenk (in the June issue of The Atlantic) is a thought-provoking article that tries to answer this question based on the conclusions of a multi-decade Harvard study, as summarized here: 

For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.

Here is excerpt that captures one fundamental element to being happy; namely that perspective is everything:

"Yet, even as he takes pleasure in poking holes in an innocent idealism, Vaillant says his hopeful temperament is best summed up by the story of a father who on Christmas Eve puts into one son’s stocking a fine gold watch, and into another son’s, a pile of horse manure. The next morning, the first boy comes to his father and says glumly, 'Dad, I just don’t know what I’ll do with this watch. It’s so fragile. It could break.' The other boy runs to him and says, 'Daddy! Daddy! Santa left me a pony, if only I can just find it!'"

So what makes us happy? Relationships (esp. with siblings), living a productive life, maintaining a healthy perspective, and beyond that, it's murky.

Read the full article HERE.  It's pretty illuminating.

Related Posts:

1. A Mantra on Illumination, Devotion and Faith: Replacing cynicism with spiritual faith, and a devotion to a life path.
2. Crazy Wisdom as Rome Burns: Achieving clarity in times of great chaos.
3. Hold a Picture in your Pocket:  Cognitive dissonance and manifesting change.
4. On Intellectual Honesty:  See things as they really are; act on that knowledge.

A Mantra on Illumination, Devotion and Faith

(Inspired by ‘Cynicism & Devotion’ from Crazy Wisdom - by Chogyam Trungpa.)

It is hard to earnestly pursue a path of truth; to be unflinchingly honest with one’s self and deal with the hard realities that that truth presents.

Along another vertices, we find Spiritual Materialism, a patina that obfuscates our connection with life, doing so by reducing the purity, simplicity and borderless-ness of direct experience, relegating it to a scarce, exclusive reserve designated for the anointed few. 

But the choice needn’t be as stark as choosing between dark truth and light “truth-iness.”  No. 

Having prepared the basic ground by retiring self-deception, we can now become spiritual and engaged.  We can foment a (re) birth of the romantic self, and outwardly begin (again) radiating warmth to others.

This is the path of fertile soil, where devotion and faith to others (more so than ourselves) gives rise to a harvest that is luminescent, precious and enriching.

But, more on that sentiment in a bit.

How the Bubble Burst Has Changed Us

Our balloons have popped and we are sullen.  

We have endured real confusion and personal struggle.  This is not abstract pain either.  It is the most direct kind of agony.

I don’t talk to one person who is unaffected; who doesn’t have the silent quid pro quo understanding of tangible loss; of financial freedom pretty seriously detoured. 

One foundational example: the certainty of rising markets has been shattered.  That alone represents a new road ahead for a lot of people; a road without a clear map, requiring a different vehicle and for many, a travel that begins with an empty gas tank.

Heretofore, we didn’t realize that RISK truly could be a four-letter word, but now we know...what we should have always known.

Cast in that light, The Panic was understandable.  That the ground could spontaneously come loose; that once trusted high-flying machines could – and would –  simply fall from the sky. Terrifying.

That after having come to expect the perpetuity of boom times, instead we would find ourselves infected, having been given a virus. That truth was beyond jarring.

Whether you are young, in your forties (raises hand), or in your 50s, 60s or older, you should carry in your front pocket forever more a cosmic picture of the still-shaking Earth.

Not as some vestigial organ to hinder future mobility, but rather, as a koan, so that you might better practice discriminating awareness, freed from the shadows.

What damage have we wrought upon ourselves and others? 

Picture entire geographic regions falling into a sinkhole, never to come out of that hole again (not the same, at least), as seems inevitable in much of the industrial heartland of America.

Imagine a steady parade of couples nearing retirement whose life savings were wiped out. 

Try to walk in the shoes of those that don’t have an obvious path to get back on their feet.

We have to live with that as a people.  The sustenance of the American ideal depends upon us at least owning up to this much.

Giving Rise to Devotion and Faith

Skepticism is the pragmatist’s path.  Via its abrasive qualities, we have scoured and finessed our sense of “the IT” down to its core essence (i.e., our life’s purpose, what matters, what is froth).

But skepticism is also cynicism’s cousin.  At a certain point, understanding ceases to be illuminating.  It just darkens the room and becomes heavy.

Embracing the fact that we can’t relate to life without giving more of ourselves, we therefore have a “come to Jesus” moment, where we realize that we have “no choice” but to soften our hearts and to anchor on the goodness, the preciousness of life, the fulcrum of devotion and faith.

Exhibiting a heightened state of hope and expressing warmth to others is not hokey. 

If anything, it’s a “survive to thrive” dominion for those who devote themselves to pursuing it.

Put another way, life is a big accident.  Fate plays its hand in the most unpredictable of ways, but we are empowered with the knowledge (if we chose to see) that within that domain, our Dharma path is specific and workable.

We have begun to come out the other side (the post-bubble US), and we must now devote ourselves to romancing earnest pursuits, nurturing them and practicing “knowing faith,” a faith that we will realize our aspirational destiny.

Rinse.  Wash.  Repeat.  It is a form of active meditation.

Related Posts:

1. Getting Real: On Doomsday, the Demise of So-Called Experts and the New Arbitrage.
2. Crazy Wisdom as Rome Burns
3. Eating Dog Food: On Safety Nets
4. Staring into the Abyss: What Really Matters
5. Getting Back Our Sense of National We-Ness: On Heroic Acts, Shape Shifting and Small Business Stimulus.

Crazy Wisdom as Rome Burns

There is a Buddhist axiom about Crazy Wisdom.  When you are standing on the edge and staring into the abyss, the pain, confusion and fear that surrounds you can actually be the catalyst for clarity and understanding to emerge.

Discipline and directness take the place of devil-may-care, willy-nilly-ness, and a new set of muscles manifest; Suddenly, you are able to ‘carve’ new paths and reach heights that heretofore were unattainable.

I believe that now is a time for Crazy Wisdom – when Rome is seemingly burning, when the stakes that we hold most dear seem most tenuous, and when the road ahead is cloudy and as confusing as it has ever been.

Time to develop a clear personal narrative of who you are, what your unfair advantages are, what you have to offer and what you require/are looking for in return.

Time to commit to practicing consistency, clarity and grace under pressure.

Time to concentrate, breath deep, relax and then faithfully walk through the fire to get to the other side.

(Side note: watching Obama and McCain the other night in the third debate was akin to viewing the yin-yang picture of consistency, clarity and grace under pressure, as contrasted by the NOT example. There is much worth emulating in Obama's deeply reasoned approach.)

Related Links:

1. Read Crazy Wisdom (the book): I have been a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism for ~15 years, and consider my virtual guru to be the late, great teacher, Chogyam Trungpa. This book is part of a series of books taken from seminars, and the structure is very powerful.  Each chapter starts with an explanation of the concept by Trungpa himself so you get the "official" explanation of the construct being covered. Then, in the next section you have questions (from the seminar audience) and answers (from Trungpa) on the concepts presented so you get another dimension of understanding. And of course, as the reader, you make your own analysis. I have found such an approach to be a great way to triangulate on informationally rich concepts. Be forewarned, though. These are serious, conceptually dense readings that take dedication, concentration and a 'one chapter at a time' mental investment to meaningfully get through.
2. Hold a Picture in your Pocket:  Cognitive dissonance and manifesting change.
3. On Intellectual Honesty:  See things as they really are; act on that knowledge.
4. On Life as Art Poetic Truths & Getting Rich: Read the poem at the bottom of the post - it's a classic from the book referenced in the post.

Staring into the Abyss: What Really Matters

There is a Buddhist axiom about Crazy Wisdom. Sometimes from standing on the edge and staring into the abyss, there is a moment of clarity and understanding.

From this place, catharsis can occur, new muscles can flex and the bearer can find themselves able to carve wholly new paths that heretofore were sight unseen.

What brings me to this sensibility are two articles.  One, a post written by my friend, Om Malik (of GigaOM), codifying lessons learned in the past 90 days since his heart attack. 

The other, a recent article by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who is dying of pancreatic cancer.  The article summarizes his ‘final lecture’ about what really matters in life.

Hopefully, none of us will have to find ourselves on such a finite dead-end road before we get clarity on what matters to us most in life; but, with that perspective in mind, put yourself in Randy’s shoes for a moment, and consider what HE considers the indispensable truths of life. 

(The video from the lecture is below this summary, and a link to the full article is HERE.)

Always Have Fun
I came to an early realization. Each of us must make a decision, best captured in A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh characters. Am I a fun-loving Tigger or a sad-sack Eeyore? It’s clear where I stand.

Dream Big
Give yourself permission to dream. Fuel your kids’ dreams too. Once in a while, that might even mean letting them stay up past their bedtimes.

Ask for What You Want
Ask. More often than you’d suspect, the answer you’ll get is, “Sure.”

Dare To Take a Risk
Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted. And it can be the most valuable thing you have to offer.

Look for the Best In Everybody
I got this advice from Jon Snoddy, my hero at Disney Imagineering. “If you wait long enough,” he said, “people will surprise and impress you.” When you’re frustrated with people, when you’re angry, it may be because you haven’t given them enough time. Jon warned that this took great patience, even years. “In the end,” he said, “people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.”

Make Time for What Matters
Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.

Let Kids Be Themselves
My job is to help my kids foster a joy for life and develop the tools to fulfill their own wishes. My wishes for them are very exact and, given that I won’t be there, I want to be clear: Kids, don’t try to figure out what I wanted you to become. I want you to become what you want to become. And I want you to feel as if I am there with you, whatever path you choose.

UPDATE (July 25, 2008): Randy Pausch passed away today.  Say a prayer for his family, and hope that he is in a better place.

Demonstration Logic

My Bikram yoga teacher recently said something worth noodling on as she was giving guidance on a yoga pose. 

She said that we should treat every pose as if we are giving a demonstration.

The point here is not to show off, be a phony, assert superiority or any such drama but rather, to practice what you preach with specificity, zeal and precision. 

This also recognizes the existence of group energy and how by striving to perform at a high level, you encourage others to do the same.

It hearkens me back to a great article that I once read about Ron Popeil of Ronco.  This is a guy that has built a number of products that have become part of our culture, in the process generating billions of dollars of sales. 

Part of his 'unfair advantage' is that he has always treated product MARKETING and product DEVELOPMENT as part of the same animal such that when it gets to the point of the actual infomercial, both the STEAK and the SIZZLE portions of the demonstration are synchronized from product to demo and back.

Can you think of any areas where there might be goodness if you embraced demonstration mindset?

The Internet is a blind five-year-old

A friend of mine specializes in the black art known as search engine optimization (SEO), as well as its sibling, search engine marketing (SEM).  He has a great analog for thinking about search engines and Internet marketing that I will call the “blind five-year-old” axiom.

Basically, he equates search engines to blind five-year-olds, which is to say that you need to tell them 3-4 times what you want them to do using simple, distinct, consistent terms, and you need to recognize that because they are blind, they don’t care about pictures.

More to the point, since the goodness of optimizing yourself for the blind five-year-old that is the search engine results in “free” organic search returns (versus “paid” keyword search returns via search engine marketing campaigns), unless you have an unlimited marketing budget, in many respects your primary audience is the search engine – not your human end consumer - since SEO is the cheapest lead generation strategy available to you online. 

This reality heavily instructs the type of content that you have on your web site, how information bits are structured and presented there, and equally important, your viral marketing efforts.

It is admittedly paradoxical to refer to a search engine as a ‘primary audience’ when ostensibly one of the greatest virtues of the Internet is about empowering the individual and niche interests via long tail, narrowcasting, one-to-one marketing, social networking building and wisdom-of-crowds methodologies. 

The ‘paradox’ topic as well as the best practices and outcome goals for SEO/SEM is for a different post, however.

This post is focused on the metaphor of the blind five-year-old and how embracing it changes the definition of the situation in thinking about your personal and/or professional communications and messaging imperatives.

What brought me home to this point was a book that I am reading right now called, “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” 

The book posits that sticky concepts are ones that are simple to the point of being stripped to their very core without being reduced to meaningless sound bite. 

Put another way, they do not confuse the tail with the dog or needlessly get sidetracked in describing the tail, other dog parts or dog-ness.

They rigorously focus on finding the ‘lead,’ or first sentence, that compels you to pay attention to the proverbial dog and more importantly, respond accordingly.

How do they do this? Beyond simplicity, they present something unexpected to the audience with a narrative that is concrete, delivered from credible sources, imbued with emotional value and which can readily be packaged up and spread via story-telling vehicles.

Simple and logical in concept, but like any discipline takes clear outcome goals, lots of trial-and-error and attention to detail to make actually work.

I am admittedly pre-disposed to a book espousing such concepts, being a student of Memetics (see “Virus of the Mind”), Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of mavens, connectors and salespeople in “The Tipping Point” and the power of identifying/preserving the core in building companies that stand the test of time (see “Built to Last”).

But the book is an engaging read, and being a fan of trying to boil things down to their core essence, take a picture of them and keep them in my proverbial front pocket, I will submit that you should wear the blind five-year-old axiom for a bit, and focus on defining your lead – be it your life purpose, career goals or unfair advantage that you bring to planet earth – and test out your core message repeatedly with the the blind five-year-old in mind.

The definition of a great man

Chuck Klosterman, writing in the Page 2 section of ESPN.com, has written a really interesting read analyzing why Phil Jackson, he of the many basketball championships, took on the mess that is the Los Angeles Lakers these days. 

Fundamentally, Klosterman argues that in order to become a great man, Phil Jackson must finally taste failure.

As a student of both sports metaphors and the pattern recognition of history, I found this a compelling read.

Here is an excerpt:

• As such, historical figures are remembered for the things they accomplish and the victories they win -- if life were a movie, the collection of those achievements would comprise the plot. But people are always defined by their greatest failure. You learn very little about a man's character from his success; truth exists only within adversity. And adversity is what Jackson needs to define himself as A Great Man; without it, he's just a tall dude from Williston High School who won a lot of games with a lot of talent.

Check out the full article HERE.

Fear, doubt and local max

Seth Godin has a nice post called, "Understanding Local Max," that does a good job of capturing the inherent peaks and valleys one must traverse to achieve breakout success. 

His timing is ironic because I was working on a short post about an axiom that coincides directly with what he is talking about. The axiom is: never confuse fear with doubt.

Why?  Fear can be a natural response to negotiating a treacherous climb. Absence of healthy fear, leads to not being prepared, which unfortunately often leads to death.

Doubt, on the other hand, is a formal belief that there may not be light at the end of the tunnel.

One is all about preparation (preparing the mind to work through fear, readying yourself to successfully negotiate the path).

The other is all about pragmatism (seeing things as they really are).

Never confuse fear with doubt, or vice versa.

Brain in the Jar

One of the things that keeps me connected to life and always striving for purpose, meaning and achievement is the self reminder that I/we have a finite amount of time on the planet as flesh and blood, and that time, once lost, is irreplaceable.

That awareness, like a splash of crisp water, awakens me and challenges me to not waste life. 

It challenges me to be a better husband, a better father, a more humble son and a truer friend.

It makes me want to realize and rise above my professional goals as an entrepreneur, an active investor and, hokey though it may sound, an artisan who is driven by ideals and optimism to build substantive businesses that matter.

On some level, I am also driven by fear.  Of sustainable mediocrity.  Of wasting days or weeks, or months, or ever finding myself on a path that is a dead end, or worse, no path at all.

As a student of buddhism and yoga, I am also cognizant of avoiding the traps of spiritual materialism, akin to the lead character in Philip K. Dick's, "The Man in The High Castle," for I have had friends that, while brilliant and enlightened, were basically glass vessels, nothing more than a brain in a jar, pontificating, understanding all, yet doing little to seize that moment that is NOW. 

As someone said to me many years back and has proven prophetic and true: you can't know what you don't know, and there is no substitute for doing, so if you want to get into a space, starting doing "something" in it.

This is one of those statements that is "obvious" and easy to dismiss in a second of knee jerk, so I would encourage you to wear if for a day or two as an article of faith in an area of your life where you feel unrealized and uncertain how to cross the line from concept and thought to flesh and doing.

It is my own personal recipe for manifesting and becoming, and it has carried me through two discrete careers, seven different startups, compassion, humilty and I believe/hope, a balanced life.