There is exactly ONE THING that all human beings have in common with each other:
We are all completely different.
We all see things differently. We’ve all had different experiences, good and bad. We were born physically different. We were raised in different cultures.
And we’d be fools to believe this didn’t affect the decisions we make and the things we want.
Once we understand that, we can begin to work with each other to actually make things better.
I hope that I can inspire other people to find their voice and make the impact they were born to make on the world.
There are few ideas I’ve come across that have resonated more with me than Stephen Covey’s 8th Habit:
“Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.”
I want to help make people better. That is all.
Time for a math lesson! Bear with me—it matters.
The Transitive Property of Mathematics says this: for all real numbers x, y, and z, if x=y and y=z, then x=z also.
That makes sense, right?
Why am I telling you this? Because this same mathematical property affects all outcomes you experience in life.
Think about it: how you see an aspect of reality affects how you behave. How you behave affects the results you get. Therefore, how you see things affects the results you get. X=Y and Y=Z, so X=Z as well.
Dr. Stephen R. Covey called this the “See-Do-Get Continuum.” How we see the world affects what we do, which affects what we get in life. (You can learn all about it in his monumental work The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.)
Covey likes to say, “How we see the problem is the problem.” In this case, “seeing” could also translate into “believing.”
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you’re a manager and you’ve recently had a few millennials added to your team. If you believe all millennials are lazy and entitled, you’re going to treat them as such. This will so alienate them and undermine your relationship that pretty soon, they’ll start acting out.
Most likely they’ll rebel against you by doing the bare minimum, scraping by because in their minds nothing they do will be good enough to please you anyway. Why should they put out more effort than necessary?
How you saw them affected your behavior towards them, which affected how they behaved (your results). It’s the Pygmalion Effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Can you see how this continuum affects us when it come to things like race, gender, or religion? Our beliefs shape our actions; our actions shape our outcomes.
So what’s the bottom line?
If you want to change the world—or maybe just your situation in it—start first by changing your beliefs. Work first on how you see things.
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“You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”
—Ruth Smeltzer
Help someone today in whatever small or grand way you can.
Don’t do it as part of your job—do it because it (and you) are good and decent.
Give the gift of service—true service—where reciprocation is not possible.
A little old lady can never put a price on being helped across the street.
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I am in the second week of a leadership course created by FranklinCovey based on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.*
This week’s topic is Habit 1: Be Proactive. For those of you unfamiliar with the 7 Habits, the first habit is about personal responsibility. It posits that we are the creative force in our own lives. We can choose how we respond to stimuli in the world, and these choices drastically alter our results.
One statement this morning stood out more than others:
“Holding people to the responsible course is not demeaning; it is affirming.”
—Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
We show respect when we refuse to let others blame circumstances for their situations. Holding others responsible tells them “you are where you are because of the choices you’ve made.”
At the same time, we are communicating another message:
“You can make choices now that can lead you to a better situation.”
Of course, our environmental factors must be taken into account. Outside, uncontrollable forces definitely influence our lives. Our upbringing, sex, gender, or socioeconomic status can make things easier or harder. But they do not determine our lives!
Each of us has within us what Viktor Frankl calls “the last of the human freedoms.” We can choose our response to any stimulus. It may not seem like much to you, but this idea was incredibly liberating to me.
“Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.”
Show another person respect. Let them know they have the power to choose.
When you choose, you change things.
*If you want to level up your leadership skills, and earn an industry-recognized certification in the process, check out FranklinCovey’s LeaderU courses at leaderu.us.
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Dr. Covey taught me perhaps the most important and fundamental life lesson of all. It’s the idea of paradigms and the See-Do-Get formula.
Paradigms are our ways of seeing the world. As Dr. Covey describes it, they are maps of the territory we are navigating. As we know, maps are a representation of the world but not the world itself. These “maps” affect every aspect of our daily lives.
Our paradigms put us into a cycle known as “See-Do-Get”. How we see something (our paradigm) affects our behavior (what we do). Our behavior affects the results we get. These results then reinforce our viewpoint. They become a never-ending cycle that can only be short-circuited by changing how we “see”. We must examine the map.
I once knew a teacher whose students approached him about putting on a short play for the school. They saw this as a way to put the English literature they were studying into a fun and creative context. But this teacher saw his students as an uncreative bunch of hooligans with no talent. He did not believe them capable of staging anything worthwhile.
Grudgingly, he let the students “try” to put something together. Because of his mindset, he failed to encourage them, coach them, or help them in any way. His only offering was scathing criticism because he saw no possible positive outcome. The students became increasingly frustrated and unhappy with their efforts. They began to believe their teacher correct in his views and quit the project after a few weeks. Their “failure” further reinforced the teacher’s own paradigm.
I felt devastated when I found out about the situation from the students. Why did it happen that way? Because he saw them as uncreative, incapable, and without talent, he treated them as such. He failed to help or encourage his students and did nothing but criticize and condemn. This behavior led to the results he expected all along.
How we see a problem (or person, political party, or random happenstance) is a problem itself. It affects our behavior and the results we get, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Design thinking teaches us to reframe problems in ways that allow us to take positive action on them. Only by changing how we see something can we get to the root of the issue. If you want to make positive change in any area of your life, first examine how you see the problem.
What would have happened had this teacher been aware of the way he saw his students? What if he had taken a step back and seen them as young, curious, and full of potential? Maybe he would have treated them as budding thespians and offered encouragement. This change in behavior might have led to a fun, engaging, and successful student project. And who knows? It might have had lasting effects on all the students, even the ones who came to watch.
Instead, his negative mindset destroyed all hope of having any success at all.
I’ll leave the final word on this subject to Dr. Covey himself:
“If you want to make minor improvements, change your behavior. But if you want to make quantum improvements, change your paradigm.”
—Dr. Stephen R. Covey
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You’ve probably looked at someone who was in great shape and thought to yourself, “Man, I wish I could be like him.”
Maybe this thought crossed your mind soon after: “If I really enjoyed hours at the gym and grilled chicken and broccoli every night for dinner, I’d be fit too.”
Here’s the thing – fit people don’t necessarily enjoy spending 3-4 hours a week at the gym or eating simple, similar meals over and over again. It’s not a matter of enjoyment.
What they do is subordinate their cravings, emotions, and desires to a higher value system they establish for themselves.
People who are successful at anything do the same thing. Albert E. Gray said it best when he wrote:
“The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.”
–Albert E. Gray
One of the most important lessons I learned from Dr. John Berardi of Precision Nutrition is that when making change for your health and fitness goals, you are going to be tired; you are going to be hungry sometimes; you are going to be in a crabby mood and not want to do what is good for you. His response: “whoever said this was going to be easy?”
Successful people, whether they are successful in health or fitness, or successful in their families and careers, are just like you and me. They have the same cravings, the same desire to say “screw it all” or “I don’t want to do that” or “I’m scared I might fail/they might laugh at me/they might say no.” The only difference is they make the choice to act anyway.
They are able to do this because they want something more than the resistance is telling them they want in this very moment. They begin with the end in mind and act proactively, rather than living in and for the moment, reacting to whatever whim, craving, or feeling comes their way during any given moment.
This way of living–of choosing to do things that failures don’t want to do–can all be traced back to fundamental principles of effective living. They are embodied clearly and coherently in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Successful people subordinate their fears and momentary desires to values, principles, and a desired end-goal. They “begin with the end in mind” as Dr. Covey writes in the chapter about Habit 2.
A successful sales person probably doesn’t want to make another cold call and face the very real possibility of rejection. But she does it anyway because the end she has in mind might be a full sales pipeline, a good income to support her family, or the growth of her business (perhaps all three and more). She’s just as scared as anyone else; she still feels the butterflies in her stomach when she dials the number; but she chooses to act rather than react to the feelings of the moment.
You are a successful person already because you have the ability to do this with every task, project, and goal in your life. Realize that it’s all a matter of choice based on the end-result you desire. Envision the end you want to achieve, hold it in your mind in the moment of choice, and make decisions based on which outcomes get you closer to the end you want.
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Here’s a story:
A man is walking through the woods alone when he comes upon a lumberjack hard at work. The lumberjack is sawing with all his might through a very large tree, and the man can tell this worker is exhausted.
“How long have you been at this one tree?” the man asks.
The lumberjack replies, “About 4 hours now, and I’m exhausted.”
The man watches for a few more moments and realizes the saw has become rather dull from overuse.
“Why don’t you stop to sharpen your saw?” the man suggests to the lumberjack. “You will probably finish in half the time it is taking you.”
“I can’t stop,” replies the lumberjack. “I’m too busy sawing.”
This story is where Dr. Stephen R. Covey got the name of his seventh habit “Sharpen the Saw®” in his monumental work, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
In essence, most of us feel we are too busy to stop working long enough to revitalize ourselves in ways that would make us even more productive when we returned to work. We think the only solution to more results is more work. This, of course, leads to exhaustion, stagnation, and burn-out.
“The human organism needs an ample supply of good building material to repair the effects of daily wear and tear.”
–Indra Devi
What are you doing each day to supply that good building material you need? There are four dimensions to life–physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual–and each ones needs its own raw materials.
For the body: eat right and be active! This does not mean strict diets or multi-hour workouts 7 days a week. It means sensible eating and regular, quality movement throughout the day. I personally recommend Precision Nutrition for their quality (and free) resources, as well as their more expensive coaching options. Here is an article they released today on the benefits of small amounts of movement throughout the day rather than big workouts and nothing else each day.
For the mind: read. This is the simplest, smallest thing you can do each day to rejuvenate your mind and unleash your creativity. If you read only 10 minutes a day at an average speed, you will read approximately one book each month. 12 books a year will change who you are as a person. Start with this reading list here.
For the heart (social/emotional): read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. No other book will help you improve your relationships with others and develop the self-awareness needed to effectively conduct yourself in the world than this one.
For the soul: you don’t have to be religious or pick up a copy of religious text to rejuvenate your spirit, but you must invest in your soul somehow. Read inspirational literature or biographies by great thinkers and leaders who inspire you. Go for a walk outside (social distancing, of course) without music or podcasts or social media, and listen to the sounds around you. Let your mind wander when you do it.
Give yourself the right stuff today to keep your saw sharp.
*Note: I do occasionally use affiliate links on this blog, which results in a small commission for me if you purchase something. However, I only recommend products in which I truly believe.
When you are serving other people (i.e., working), there will be times when you don’t have the answer to the problem in front of you.
Perhaps you work in customer service, a retail store, or banking. Someone is going to ask you a question for which you do not have an answer. What do you do?
If you went to a typical school or were processed through typical corporate training, you might have a few possible answers immediately:
Do you see a better option?
You are surrounded by people that know more than you, have more experience than you, and do the same type of work as you, either in person or resources on the internet. Ask them for help, but take it one step further.
Learn alongside the person you are trying to help. It’s easy and has two benefits: 1) the person in need gets the help he or she requires, and 2) you learn something new that will be in your toolbelt for next time.
Here’s your answer when you don’t know:
“I don’t know the solution to this problem, but I guarantee we can find one. Let’s find out what it is together!“
Most of our education and training conditions us to work by ourselves, independently from everyone else, under an authority figure who has all the answers.
“Only raise your hand if you know the answer” becomes “never acknowledge ignorance in front of customers!” That will only discredit you. They will lose faith in you. You will be humiliated.
Actually, no – by being humble enough to admit your ignorance, they will respect you for not lying to them, not giving them bad information that will fail or hurt them in practice, and not wasting their time.
The real world is full of collaboration, synergy, and needs us to use all available resources to find the answers. The real world is an open-book group test.
It is not full of, nor should we encourage, independent work with no outside help, an authority figure with all the answers, or a lack of information that you are not allowed to remedy by looking up the answer.
If the real world isn’t like that, why are we training people to operate that way?
Be bold, be brave, and admit your ignorance. Then go find the answer using every person and resource at your disposal.
“I don’t know – let’s find out together.”
If you want to create lasting influence with others, or change for the better, there is really only one way to do it:
Praise the good.
“So long as a person did anything good, he would praise him and use him for the service in which he excelled, but to his other conduct he paid no attention…”
–Cassius Dio writing about Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius
When Emperor Marcus Aurelius wanted to influence other people, to reinforce the behaviors and actions he wanted to see, he would praise the person who did the good deed. This is actually quite Pavlovian in its execution.
Remember Pavlov from your introductory psychology class? Pavlov would ring a bell before he gave his dogs food; the food caused the dogs to salivate. Eventually the dogs associated the ringing bell with food and would salivate when the bell rang, even when Pavlov did not give them food.
Marcus essentially did the same thing with those in his service: whenever they did something of which he approved, he praised it. This constant reinforcement of the good conditioned his people to do more good work in the future. But there is a second part to Dio’s observation above…
Not only did Marcus praise the good, he ignored the behavior and actions he didn’t want to continue. Why did he do this?
There is a wonderful little book who’s first chapter discusses this at length:
“Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.”
–Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
How often have you had a positive outcome after you criticized someone for doing something? I would hazard a guess at 10%.
When you criticize someone, they get angry, defensive, and emotionally illogical. He or she will justify the action rather than accept that it was wrong. It’s a natural human response. We don’t like to be wrong, and we definitely don’t like other people pointing out our poor behavior.
Therefore, the only way to get the results you want from other people is to praise them when you seeing them do the good deeds you want done. Criticizing the bad doesn’t work: it only causes resentment.
“We are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures brisling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
–Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
(Of course, there are some behaviors that are dangerous, illegal, immoral, or that might harm others; these behaviors must be stopped immediately. Those sorts of behaviors are not the topic of discussion here.)
How do let others know what good actions or behaviors are? You must be a model. Do the things you want others to do; be the kind of person you want others to be.
Seth Godin likes to say, “people like us do things like this.” Invite people to be “people like us,” whoever you think “people like us” should be. Then, do the things you want others to do, and when they follow, praise them for it!
Model good behavior. Praise others when they perform good work. Ignore the rest.
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