The Energy of Passion

Last night, Rick and I were watching the Cubs game (Go Cubs!!). Tommy Lasorda did the 7th Inning stretch and then he spent some time in the booth with the announcers. When I saw him, I thought "Wow. He hasn't changed a bit." I had the same thought as I listened to him passionately talk about baseball. He has such an amazing feel and knowledge of the game. He understands and talks about all those little intuitive things about baseball that the casual fan would likely miss. It's not surprising since he spent 59 years with the Dodgers.

What did surprise me was when they said that he was 80 years old. Here is someone who is helping to re-define age. He didn't look like nor talk like someone who is "old." As I listened to him, it occurred to me why: he is so passionate about what he has done -- and is still doing -- in life. That passion brings vibrancy. Vibrancy has nothing to do with age.

Or does it? Perhaps vibrancy can only come when you've experienced enough of life -- the ups, the downs, the challenges, the heartbreaks, the joys, and the realized dreams -- to truly be engaged and passionate about what it is that you do? Does the range of emotions that we experience in our lives allow us to enjoy, at a much deeper level, those things that we love? I don't know. What I do know is how inspiring it is to witness someone who is so engaged and passionate about what it is that they are doing. Maybe that is the elixir for vibrancy?

The perception that stunk up the farm!

Years ago, my Dad had a favorite cat, Kitty Mow-Mow (he named it!), who was a pure black cat. She would sit out in the barn in the early morning and wait by the door for my Dad to come in. When he would come in, he would always bend down and pet her for a few minutes. One early Saturday morning, while it was still just a little dark outside, Dad walked into the barn, bent down and started petting Kitty Mow-Mow. After a couple of minutes, Dad noticed that Kitty Mow-Mow had a white stripe running down her back. It was at that moment that he realized that this wasn't Kitty Mow-Mow. It was a skunk. He jumped. The skunk jumped. And the whole farm stunk for the next few days.

It's always been fascinating to me that the skunk allowed my Dad to pet it. In fact, there wasn't any problem at all until my Dad realized it was a skunk and he jumped (which startled the skunk). So, in a sense, when my Dad's perception of the situation changed, the situation changed.

How many times do we allow our perceptions to shape our reality? Often. Our perceptions filter the things that we experience and the thoughts we have about those experiences. More than that, our perceptions also shape our actions.

Back in 2003 when I got sick and collapsed, the doctor gave me the diagnosis and said that only about 5% of the people ever experience a full recovery. He urged me to think of myself as being in that 5%. To me, there was never any doubt that I was in the 5%. The truth is that I don't know if I was in the 5% or not. But I learned what the people who had recovered had done and I was intensely disciplined in doing what it was I had to do in order to recover.

It gets tricky, doesn't it? Was I just lucky and was in that 5%? Or did my hard work, discipline and my belief that I was in the 5% lead to my eventual full recovery? (Or more accurately, did my belief that I was in the 5% lead to my hard work, determination and discipline?) I tend to believe that it was my perception and belief that led me to not give up. The full recovery took about five years. At any point along the way, it would have been so easy to give up. To think that I would never really be well again. Instead my doctor urged me to view any relapse as just a temporary set back.

Certainly, just believing in the positive outcome alone probably wouldn't have done the trick. Like so many times in our lives, it is that powerful combination of belief and smart, hard work that ultimately leads to the positive outcome we desire.

Assume Positive Intent

Fortune Magazine had their "Best Advice" issue (May 12, 2008). While there were many great pieces of advice, one really stood out for me. It was by Indra Nooyi (Chairman and CEO of Pepsi): "Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent . . . . When you assume negative intent, you're angry."

This is a behavior that I need to improve on. It's so easy to see a behavior and assume the worst -- or even just assume that we know that person's motivation. However, by following Nooyi's advice and assuming positive intent, we allow ourselves room to explore (and, at the very least, we save ourselves from some unnecessary anger).

When I was in Missouri when my mom was dying, my sisters and I took shifts at the hospital with mom. I had left the hospital around four in the morning. At 7:30 that morning, my sister called and told me that I needed to get back -- mom had taken a sharp turn for the worse. I jumped in the car and started driving. As luck would have it, the town was having it's city-wide garage sale. This meant that a number of the streets were blocked off and that people were driving very slow so that they could peruse the different sales from their cars. I was frantic! I had the misfortune of getting behind one pick-up truck who was going very, very slow and who was driving in the center of the road. I tried tapping the horn and trying to signal that I needed to get around him. That just made him slow down. It's entirely possible that he thought I was just being an impatient, obnoxious driver. He had no way of knowing that I was desperately trying to get to my mother's side before she died. I am remembering that as I am driving in the city: when someone cuts me off or is driving impatiently, I remind myself that I don't know where they are going or what their circumstances are. It allows me to be a little more patient, a little more forgiving. It also saves me from expending -- and wasting -- energy on being angry.

You need more than a hammer

Several years ago I read a book called In Harm's Way by Doug Stanton. It's the story of the USS Indianapolis and is a fascinating and horrifying read. One of the stories is about two survivors, McCoy and Brundige, who, along with several others, floated in a damaged life boat for over four days waiting to be rescued. As the hours went by, they watched the sharks attack others and they watched their friends die. They didn't have any food or water and the sun, during the day, was blistering their skin. At night, the temperature dipped and their core body temperatures fell dangerously low. As the hours turned into days, other boys would give up, take off their life jackets and dive into the water, knowing that the sharks would come for them and end their pain. When the third day rolled around and they were both severely dehydrated and burned, they started betting each other who would die first. They each swore that it would be the other one because they each claimed that they were the toughest and strongest. From that point on, giving up wasn't an option. They had something to prove, something to live for. Mercifully, they were rescued on the fourth day.

This story is a powerful reminder that in communication, in relationships, in leadership, there is never just one way to do anything all the time. Whereas early on in the disaster, McCoy would seek to reassure the other boys that help was on the way, there came a point where reassurance and comfort wasn't going to work anymore. That was the time to challenge their pride or their toughness. Too often we rely on what we know best or what feels best and we fail to recognize that we need to use a different tool.

This is when our empathy makes a massive difference. We need to able to understand what the other person is going through and what they need to hear at the time, instead of simply saying what we need to say. Sometimes that might be support, sometimes it might be comfort and sometimes it might be a challenge. The key is that we have to pay attention. We don't get to operate on autopilot. I know we've probably all heard this quote by Abraham Maslow, but it is extremely wise and bears repeating:"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail."

Yesterday's War

I have been reading Who Says Elephants Can't Dance by Louis Gerstner, Jr. It's the story of how he turned IBM around. It is a fascinating book. He discusses the strategy that they used and something he said caught my eye: he said that they had to stop fighting yesterday's war, they had already lost that and it was time to move on. How many times do we do that in both our personal and professional lives?

It might be some injustice that we suffered or some hurt that someone caused us. Months and even years after the event, we sometimes find ourselves still suffering or fighting that war. It's over. There is nothing to be gained by continuing to fight once you've lost the battle. As George Patton once said, "When the horse is dead, dismount." So, why do we continue the battle? I think that it's because we can't stand that someone hurt us or treated us unfairly and we weren't able to prevent it. For me, I've often wondered who I was more upset with: the person who trespassed or myself for not preventing it?

I remember a conversation I had with my Mom years ago. She had been deeply hurt by her sisters. She held on to that pain for decades. That didn't hurt her sisters -- it only hurt her. One day (years after the event) she was worked up about it and obviously in pain over it. I took her hand and I said, "Mom, let it go. You are only hurting yourself. Yes, what they did was wrong and I know that it hurt you. But now you are hurting yourself." I am sure that there was probably a more skilled way of saying that and I don't think I helped her at all. But I remember witnessing her turmoil and seeing that while her sisters had perpetrated the first offense, she had continued to cause pain to herself by holding onto it. It was a really sad example of yesterday's war being lost but not over -- and she was the only one still fighting it. I try to remember this incident and use it as a yellow flag to myself when I find myself ruminating over stuff that is in the past.

Creating opportunities where others see problems

In the March 31, 2008 issue of Fortune Magazine, there is a fascinating article about Target. There is one incident, in particular, which I found intriguing. Back in 1998, Target had donated money towards the renovation of the Washington Monument. When one of the Target executives, Bob Thacker (who was then the VP of Marketing), visited the site. He found the Target logo next to some rotting scaffolding and ripped plastic. This was unthinkable for the sacred logo: it wasn't the right public image for the logo (which represents the brand) to be associated with decline and decay. It was the right public image to be supporting the project, however. Target came up with a brilliant solution: instead of pulling their funds or creating a stir, they decided to sponsor a contest for architects to see who could come up with the best and most innovative design for scaffolding (which, of course, would look appropriate next to the Target logo). Guess who won that competition? Michael Graves. Upon winning the competition, Graves met Thacker. Graves pulled out a large binder -- full of product designs -- and asked Thacker if Target would have any interest in them. It's still a partnership which is going strong. It's a partnership which may or may not have happened if Thacker -- and Target -- hadn't engaged in turning what could have been a problem into an opportunity.

I think that for us to be able to re-frame problems into solutions, we need to understand our own past, our own successes. Winston Churchill once said that "The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope." By identifying challenges that we have already overcome, we gain confidence in facing and overcoming new challenges. A helpful exercise that I did years ago was to sit down and write about the five to ten biggest challenges that I had faced and how I had overcome them.

A key to being able to harvest courage -- and wisdom -- from our past is accepting and facing our past instead of hiding from it. What I mean by that is sometimes when we make it through a dark and challenging time, we do the equivalent of wiping the sweat from our brow, exhaling and saying "Whew! I'm glad that's done!" And then, because the challenge or the struggle was painful, we do our best to forget it. We cheat ourselves when we do that. There is learning to be gained. I like to think that the challenges I face are there to help me grow and learn and become a stronger, healthier and better person. In order for challenges to have that rich pay-off, I have to be willing to reflect on the experience: What happened? What did I learn? What did I do well? What would I change? What can I take with me for next time? This doesn't have to be a long, drawn out process. In fact, the more you do it, the easier and faster it becomes (thank goodness!). But there is courage, wisdom and future opportunities to be gained for such a small investment.