Pretend for a moment that you’re a coach and someone approached you with an issue.
How would you help them? What would Coach You tell that other person?
Now, with that same mindset, imagine that you are the client with the same problem. Why would you tell yourself anything different?
Be the same coach for yourself that you would be for others.
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I’ve been spending an hour (sometimes more) each day learning to code for the last couple of weeks using Codecademy.
And from the beginning, I noticed something different about this learning experience…
It works.
Codecademy gets it right because it’s project-based, self-directed learning.
I don’t sit through lectures and get quizzed on my ability to recall information. I don’t memorize a bunch of facts only to forget them half an hour later.
Instead, I work out specific coding problems; I build projects using the coding languages I’m learning.
In short, I’m building and practicing skills.
We don’t learn by accumulating and regurgitating information. We learn by developing skills through constant, sometimes mundane practice.
That’s how da Vinci did it. It’s how Mozart did it. It’s how Steve Jobs did it.
How can you work projects and problem solving into your education?
I was leaving the gym this morning when I started checking my pockets for my car keys.
Then I thought, “Why don’t women’s clothes have pockets?”
Since I see the world through the lens of marketing, I came up with a theory:
Maybe women’s clothes don’t have pockets so industrialists could sell more purses.
Before there were purses, there were pockets in everything. You needed to be able to carry your stuff around with you.
I’m sure that didn’t sit well with the people who made and sold purses. When presented with a fancy new bag, I’m sure customers thought, “Why do I need a heavy, expensive bag to carry my stuff when I have pockets?”
But if you get rid of the pockets, you make things inconvenient. You’ve created a new need—the need to have something to carry your stuff around in.
(Let’s not even get started on all the accessories sold simply to carry around in a purse…)
If this is true, it goes to prove a great (potentially immoral) marketing point:
If you don’t have a problem, make one up, then sell the solution.
Marketers do this to us all the time. We need to be aware of it.
Are you actually being inconvenienced, or did a sly marketer make it that way?
The key in any endeavor from which you hope to profit, whether it’s creating a new product, learning a new skill, or starting a new service, is to first identify whether other people want what you are selling.
Contrary to the message in “Field of Dreams” (sorry, Kevin Costner), if you build or create something without first determining whether or not people want it, you probably won’t have anyone knocking down your door to get it.
Learning to be the best Fortran coding expert in the world is useless in today’s workplace because no one uses that coding language anymore. And don’t get upset if you spend 4 years learning puppetry only to find no one wants to pay you for it.
To make a living, you must serve other people. To serve other other people, you must find what people need.
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You must determine what problems other people have and how you can solve them. Perhaps the need is to be entertained (in which case learning puppetry might actually be profitable for you, if you can find a way to market it). Perhaps the problem is a lack of clean water to drink.
Regardless of what you do, the key is to first identify what others want, then create something that serves that purpose. The customer must come first if you desire to profit.
In his second great book, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, relates the story of Muhammad Yunus, an economics professor who founded the Grameen Bank – an institution that makes microloans to the impoverished citizens of Bangledesh. His story deserves to be quoted at length, but I will not do that here. What follows is a summary.
Muhammad Yunus earned a Ph.D. and began teaching economics at a university in Bangladesh. While he was inside lecturing on macroeconomic principles, the citizens of Bangladesh were struggling to survive in a life of abject poverty.
One day when Dr. Yunus walked out of class, he passed a woman making beautiful, handmade bamboo chairs. Upon further discussion, he determined the woman was making two pennies per day.
Why? Because she was in a terrible arrangement with her supplier who only allowed her to sell the chairs back to him. Dr. Yunus then discovered that the woman only needed $0.20-0.25 cents to buy the materials herself, then she would no longer be in bonded labor to the supplier.
He discovered that other citizens were struggling in much the same way. His assistant went around asking how much money different people in his neighborhood needed to make a living: he reported back that all together they needed $27.
TWENTY-SEVEN DOLLARS! Dr. Yunus took that money out of his wallet, gave it to his assistant, and told him to tell those who were receiving the money simply to pay him back whenever they could (which they all did, eagerly and quickly).
There is much more to the story than that, including a long battle with banks in the area who did not believe anyone would pay back the money that was loaned to them (which they did). Dr. Yunus discovered, simply by opening his eyes and talking to people around him, that while he might not be changing the world with a $27 loan, he was changing someone’s world.
Dr. Yunus went on to create and found his own financial institution, Grameen Bank, which specializes in making small loans to people all over Bangladesh so they can create businesses, making a living, and pull themselves out of poverty. To this day it has loaned billions of dollars in microcredit to hundreds of millions of citizens, and it changed their lives.
Why am I telling you this story?
Change how you move through the world. Today, and each day for the rest of your life, when you drive around town, walk outside, or even scroll through social media, pay attention to the people.
What are they doing? What are they posting on social media? Can you identify a need in what they are saying? Are they struggling to accomplish a task or project?
Are they asking a question to which you know the answer or have a solution?
Assume, as Dr. Yunus says, “a worm’s-eye view” of the world. Don’t look for huge problems to solve: look for small, everyday problems. Find someone in need, ask yourself if you have the will and the skill to meet that need, and then do something about it. Show up, solve a problem, and keep doing that over and over again.
Ask yourself if you have the will and skill to meet someone’s need today.
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You may not change the world, but you will change that person’s world. Do that enough times, solve enough problems for people, and you might begin to see a greater need that can be met by a business, service, or non-profit.
Find a need, meet the need, and make a difference today.
*Note: some links on my site are affiliate links which means I make a small commission for purchases made. This does not affect you in any way.
We would all like to believe that we are objective and see things as they really are.
We would all be lying if we actually believe we view things as they really are.
Stephen Covey wrote, “the way we see the problem is the problem.” One of his teachings was that we do not see the world as it is, but as we are. When something happens that causes us to see something in a new light, it’s called a paradigm shift.
I had one this morning:
I was driving to work and angry. I had been angry since the previous evening. Things had happened that were unplanned and unexpected, and I had hit my limit. I was at a point where I was essentially forcing my point of view on another person.
Then while I was driving, I used that wonderful human power of self-awareness to look at myself and my actions as if from an outsider’s perspective. I realized that, while I felt I was right and justified in how I was feeling and behaving, I was communicating to someone very close to me that I loved them conditionally.
I never said it, but my behaviors and actions were conveying a message:
“I will love you if you do things my way.”
That realization bowled me over: love is never supposed to be conditional. Once I had made the realization that I was unintentionally communicating this feeling, my whole frame of mind changed. I started to see the problem differently. I immediately apologized and let this person know that my love for them came without strings.
But words alone are not enough; anyone can say what I said. I had to go a step further and make it true.
I wasn’t just saying that would love unconditionally: I actually had to change myself and my feelings on the issue at hand. I had to genuinely accept that I was okay with a certain decision being made, even if I thought it was the wrong one.
That view, that I thought it was the wrong decision, was the problem itself. I realized that it was a decision, not a wrong decision; it was being made from a different point of view than my own. I had to genuinely accept the possibility of an outcome that I didn’t like because my relationship with another person was more important to me than getting my way.
This is one of the secrets to good living: look at the problem you are experiencing as if you were a stranger coming upon the scene. Imagine yourself as a third person looking in at an interaction between yourself and another.
To paraphrase Dr. Covey: how you see the problem is the problem.
*Some posts contain affiliate links, which means I make a small commission on purchases.
I had a moment of clarity today when I was re-reading a definition of proactive behavior.
This definition stuck out today because I read it right after finishing my lunch, which I had ordered with absolutely no forethought.
How many times have I walked into a restaurant and placed an order without thinking? How many times have I ordered something because that was what I had always gotten?
My choice of what to eat might be predictable – it’s what I always get – but it certainly isn’t predetermined. So this means I am not making a choice between stimulus and response.
Between stimulus and response is our greatest power–the freedom to choose. – Stephen R. Covey
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Stimulus: walk into a restaurant for lunch.
Response: order the thing I always get, usually with less than ideal effects on my health.
I have a moment, in between arriving and ordering, where I can make a conscious decision about what to eat. This means I can choose to add value to my body, or I can choose to indulge in something less than ideal.
This is not a discussion of nutrition – it is a discussion of problem-solving. Think of all the decisions you make automatically each day, then pick one and imagine how you can respond between the stimulus and your automatic response.
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Resilience is the ability to rebound from challenges, setbacks, and crises. When something happens, a resilient person is seemingly less affected by the event than a non-resilient person (not true).
Is someone born resilient? Doubtful.
Resiliency is a skill; it can be practiced and improved. It can be practiced by consciously choosing how to respond to a challenge, setback, or crisis. The effects of the event may indeed be negative: they might be seriously damaging to mind, body, or spirit. But that most fundamental human right, that of proactivity and the ability to choose, cannot be taken away by a negative event.
Resiliency, therefore, is practicing proactive responses in the face of negative events. It can mitigate the long-term effects of a difficult situation.
Is it easy? Of course not.
Is it necessary? More than ever. It will make you stronger.
Choose how you respond; become more resilient.
Imagine you are looking through a telescope. Is what you are seeing actually how the world looks?
What if the lens had a crack in it? The image is now distorted, but is reality actually cracked? Of course not.
Imagine a friend is looking through another telescope, and you are are both looking at the same thing. What if her lens had a higher zoom or some filter on it which changed the color? Or perhaps your friend has a degenerative eye disorder which makes it difficult to see.
Would the two of you disagree on what you were seeing?
Yet we do it every single day.
Each of us walks around using different lenses to see the world. Two perfectly rational people can look at the same issue and have completely different opinions about the “reality” of the issue. Stephen Covey would call these lenses paradigms — different ways of seeing the world.
Why does this matter?
We can only become truly effective when we realize that our ideas and opinions are not the only ways, the correct ways, to see the world. Seth Godin talks about each person having her own unique noise in her head. What she wants is different from what you want, at least in some minuscule way. Sometimes that way is vastly different from yours.
If, for example, you wanted to sell something to someone – an idea, a widget, or a plan – you would need to talk about it from the other person’s point of view. That person doesn’t care how you feel about it; they only want to know what it will do for them. We are selfish that way.
Be proactive when speaking with someone: consciously try to see the world through her lens.
Imagine a world where each person sought to understand the other person before arguing.
I came across a little maxim yesterday that got my mind going, so I wanted to share.
“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”
There is also a quote that pairs nicely with this maxim:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
– Aristotle
What is it that you repeatedly want to do? If you did it often enough, do you believe you would truly develop excellence in that habit?
Perhaps you should ask a related question: if what you are doing now isn’t something in which you want to develop excellence, what do you repeatedly think about? Once you have an idea in mind, you can then apply it to the maxim.
For example, let’s say that a person is constantly thinking about art, but only thinking, never creating any herself. We’ll start there.
“Sow a thought…” she is constantly thinking about and admiring the artistic work of others.
“Reap an action…” the aspiring artist decides to take drawing lessons and vows to draw a little bit every day, no matter how small it might be.
“Sow an action…” drawing each and everyday becomes second nature.
“Reap a habit…” she no longer even thinks about if she will draw today; the only thought on her mind is what to draw. A habit is developed.
“Sow a habit…” drawing has become second-nature to her now. It’s as habitual as brushing her teeth or eating.
“Reap a character…” she has become, intentionally or not, an artist. It is now who she is, a fundamental feature of her character. She is now one of the people she once admired.
“Sow a character…” you can see the rest. Her destiny is whatever she decides to make it at this point. She has already developed the skills and habits needed to carry her far down the path of artistic success, whatever she decides that looks like for her. Perhaps it is a career in art, or perhaps it is just a wonderfully enjoyable hobby. But it is now who she is.
So, what is it about which you constantly think? How can you turn those thoughts into action, and then practice those actions often enough until habits form and a certain character you want develops?
“We are what we repeatedly do…”
Decide and act on that in which you strive to be excellent.
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