Tools For The Self Directed Life

Yearly Retrospect: How to Maintain Focus of Your Life

Focusing on Life

by Calvin Harris H. W., M.

As we are in the third quarter of 2018, and before the holidays fast forward us to the end of the year, Now may be the time to consider planning and directions for 2019. Let’s take a moment to look over events and activities to see what this past year in retrospect, has indicated to us about being on course with our strategic plans and goals.

For many, it was not a year with a lot of forward movement. Experiences and activities throughout the year seemed tempered with a “watch and see undercurrent”, as if to say be patient. For others,  whose ideas, creativity, political and business plans, all seemed ready to launch, yet, somehow fail to launch fully, or the trajectories where off.  

Decisions to Reflect

Looking closer at this dilemma, of the pass year’s progression, it could be an indication to slowdown and to re-align habits for normalization. Sometimes life moves at such supersonic speeds, we get so busy, that we stop thinking, become automatons in our thought s and actions. An entire year can go by without us taking a moment to think deeply about whether we are following the right course, or if we should turn off to a new direction. This slowdown could be the move needed to rethink, research, and re-calibrate who we are, where we are going, and what we want to achieve and the Habits we have in place to do it.

A book out right now that you may want to read is called Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin. Ms. Rubin indicates to us that Habits are the invisible architecture of our lives, and she provides an analytical and scientific framework from which to understand these habits--as well as change them for good

Personal and professional life compete for priority, meaning clarity of objectives and focus will be needed in finding a balance going forward. If we are looking to make a change, then slowdown, reflect on what we identify as important to achieve. Build habits aligned with what can produce that goal. The results can come later as we perfect our presentation.  As a result, what we manifest, call our outcomes, cannot be imagined, because they happen by paying attention to habits aligned with core values and then out of the blue, there is achievement.

Habits moving you forward

Blogger James Clear reminds us “Motivation is fickle. Willpower comes and goes. Mental toughness isn’t about getting an incredible dose of inspiration or courage. It’s about building the daily habits that allow you to stick to a schedule and overcome challenges and distractions over and over and over again.”

Advertising, Gender, and A New Masculinity

A poem by a man, a mechanic by trade and  poet/writer  by vocation Jim Storm, his poem  says a lot about the month of October and the uncovering of the new masculinity within all people: “October is about leaves revealing colors they have hidden all year. People have an October as well.”

In a blog that I wrote (April 2018 - SOC) entitled “Masculinity Is It the Problem or A Programed Expectation?”   What is Masculinity? How is it measured? What are its demands? And how is that person meant to look, think, act, and feel? and should that be according to the mores of society?

This is a continuation of that conversation, and to somehow navigate  that  storm of debate on the subject of Masculinity successfully using a compass with an edge, and that edge is composed of paying attention, and preparation gathered from how the storms behaved in the past, there in is the edge.

We looked at how common nursery rhymes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from Europe and America had negative descriptors of Masculinity, and the male gender described as slugs, snails, snips, and frogs depending on where in the world the rhyme was told.

In today’s society, Advertising has played one of the important roles of carving out either negative or positive representations of gender and masculinity of late. But with a focus on women’s empowerment dominating the  cultural landscape, Producers keen on selling their brand and products are forgetting their role in shaping male identity as a consequence.

Suzy Bashford, international journalist in her article for the online European business  marketing website called The Drum (July 2016) wrote:

“A growing global ‘boy crisis’ suggests that we could be, in fact, empowering the wrong sex…. The difference is that we are all now familiar with the narrative around [women’s issues] and tackling these issues, thanks in no small part to groundbreaking campaigns such as ‘Like A Girl’ by Always, Sport England’s ‘This Girl Can’ and Dove’s ‘Real Beauty ’ [ad campaigns]…..

We are much less equipped to talk about the issues affecting boys. There’s an unconscious bias that males should simply ‘man up’ and deal with any crisis of confidence themselves…Yet, the reality is that men commit suicide more than women, and are more likely to drop out of education and get involved in crime, drugs and binge-drinking. Moreover, as women are increasingly empowered, many men feel increasingly dis-empowered, accentuating these social problems.”

Vintage Advert remixed

Unilever known as Lynx, owner of “[Axe] deodorant brand who wants to become the number one male grooming brand in the world. Had to realize that their marketing strategy failed when sales slowed dramatically from when they’d first entered the market with the “alpha-male” concept. Lynx/Axe admits it had been relying on assumptions before its repositioning. It was only when sales growth slowed that the brand decided to invest in some proper research, leading to a 10-country study of 3,500 men, and consultation of experts such as neuroscientists, to find out what men are really thinking. The results shocked the brand explained Stephanie Feeny, head of strategy at 72&Sunny Amsterdam’s An Advertising Agency used by Lynx to research and reform marketing strategies. “Ideas of masculinity had changed and it recognised it wasn’t quite keeping pace with culture. Lynx/Axe found men are craving a more diverse definition of what it means to be a ‘successful’ man.”

One of the sectors most impacted by this insight is FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer daily used Goods). With analyst from FMCG buying practices, gender role assumptions were most challenged. It was found the person who wins the bread and the person who buys the bread isn’t down to gender these days, for example,

It is often now that the advertiser discovers that in some country’s men are doing 40 per cent of the supermarket shopping. That in the US men have been running household budgets. If producers of goods don’t recognised this, they are going to lose out because they’re increasingly ignoring their potential biggest audience. We hear a lot about women’s voices needing to be heard, but when it comes to men, it becomes strangely silent.

Campaigner David Brockway, who manages the Great Initiative’s Great Men project, urges the industry to be “more revolutionary”,

The Lynx /Axe global brand repositioning had been a “difficult”, steep learning curve admits Fernando Desouches, brand development director, he argues that he learned “men are actually more emotional than women” and that they need more empowerment than women. Desouches says, “you’ve got to ‘set the platform’ before you explode the myth.”

the Argentinian’s voice is tangible when he says” “Women have feminism. But men don’t even know they are sick. This is why we need to put men alongside women, not move them to the side to give room to women. Both genders need to be in the center.”

The Gender divisive issues are certainly at the center of the storm, and will subside through guiding principals of compassion and compass points like attention, and preparation to steer you through the storm. At the end a truly equal future, when sex becomes a far less defining characteristic than it is today.

Suzy Bashford puts it this way:  “After all, you cannot fully empower either gender if by empowering one you are creating divisions and disempowering the other.

As Nobel peace prizewinner Malala Yousafzai puts it ‘we cannot succeed when half of us are held back.’ A statement that is equally true of women, as it is of men.”

Tools for the Self Directed Life

Things to Do to Move You Past Self-Doubt

by Calvin Harris H. W., M.

Photo by Scot Williams

In our August 2018 issue of SiteOfContact, we discussed the importance of ‘Mental Toughness’ as part of your Life - Skills Tool Box. We talked about such tools as imagination, grit, consistency, and re-tooling habits to move you towards your mastery in life, even in a transitional economy.

An issue we all deal with from time to time, is this post's focus: Not being able to Get Started, and or Indecision, and or Non-actions caused by Self- doubt.

Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, founder of logotherapy, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning suggest: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

I am reminded of a story my teacher, Thane, the Master Teacher of an Esoteric School (called The Prosperos) use to tell. 

Horse Photo by Angi Carelli

A blacksmith, a man that made and repaired horseshoes, was being squeezed out of business due to the invention called the Automobile.  Cars were replacing the horse, and the need for his craft was dwindling down to nothing.  He had to re-imagine himself,  he had to see himself, not in the ‘horseshoe’ business, but in fact, in the ‘Transportation’ business if he were to survive.  To understand this new business model,  would take for him to open up to new possibilities for his skills and craft in expanding his business options. 

Car Part by Jason Beamguard

A client I was coaching years ago in the auto repair business, complained that his competitors were getting more of the business in his area than he was and because of that, he may have to close his doors. His focus was so much on his competitors rather than on his business that he was unable to take actions, or to make the needed changes to keep the business solvent due to his indecision and self-doubt. That's when he came to me. In the course of our session, I asked him: Who is your biggest competitor? While he was thinking about it I held up a mirror and said, "there in the mirror."

I pointed out his biggest challenge was the thoughts that he allowed to run wild through his own mind, such as his competing with time running out and his preconceived ideas of how things should be. Once this was understood, a shift in his thinking took place, he relaxed. Then we began to brainstorm on how to lower his pricing, also bring his cost down and profits up. He focused in on the business, how that ran compared to others operating in that business. He came up with a plan, customers would bring in their own replacement parts, and he would perform the service and labor, but where he would differ from his competitors who offered similar service was that he would offer a customer satisfaction guarantee on work or service,  his competitors had no such warranty package.  

In that moment, he had gone from an embittered competitor, crestfallen in confidence and a failing balance sheet to a self-empowered master of his own fate.

John Herschel the famous mathematician, astronomer, and inventor is reported as saying: “Humans always have fear of an unknown situation – this is normal. The important thing is what we do about it. If fear is permitted to become a paralyzing thing that interferes with proper action, then it is harmful. The best antidote to fear is to know all we can about a situation.”

The moment you find yourself challenged in your head, stewing in doubt or overwhelmed  I suggest taking this actions:

Statue called Anguish

1. When you slip up, get help to get back on track as quickly as possible.

Ask someone you trust to listen and advise on how, if they were faced with a similar situation, would they get back on track. This can have benefits by offering you an objective perspective on the issue and help to get you out of your preconceived thought loops, and perhaps into a brainstorming mode.

2. Do an On-line inquiry into the problem. 

A search engine like Google can search Case Studies; Creative Marketing; Growth Strategy; or Success Stories. You may be surprised at how fast you find ideas that can help solve your challenges and erase the self-doubt.

3. Road-test the advice and data you receive. 

The world is your oyster —Once you've determined your real challenge and the new model for action, then use them to your advantage, getting out of your own head. Your task is to see yourself in a whole new way, creating a new narrative beginning with the idea of you as a Conscious Creator and Observer of your circumstance; you want to observe those concepts that seem to control, drive, and sometimes divert your life and then use it for an alchemy of change.

The beauty in the consciousness of these new components, these new models, is that they lead to a boost in imagination. and building our skills. These areas begin to strengthen each other, and  this new looping  model of intelligence becomes seamless. As this process grows and improves upon itself, it becomes easier for meaning and empowerment to manifest in our lives.

The Layers of Being William Floyd

 The Meaning of Life is to give Live Meaning.

"I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Living Your Priorities

Prioritizing Your Life And The Work You Do In IT.

Photo Artist Jason Beamguard Working Metal

I was recently approached by one of my Clients, who said to me “I don’t know what to do, all of my time is going into putting out fires and these urgent situations keep happening. It's leaving me exhausted and frustrated.”

It became clear that he had forgotten how to know the difference between what is necessary and what is expendable according to his life plan. Which is not hard to do, when our lives go on autopilot under the pressures of being expected to be available 24/7.

We all have priorities. For some Identifying them is the place to start. However, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Misdirected intentions, some disguised as urgent issues, can get in the way of what really matters to you, and in no time flat, you are wondering why you’re unfulfilled or sidetracked.

Melinda Kennedy, an organizational development consultant and trainer at Caliper, an employee assessment and talent development firm puts it this way. “Whether this is a product of our working environment, our own personality, or our home life, we may find ourselves struggling to prioritize what is most important and most urgent,” she says. “As a result, we feel overworked, undervalued, and completely exhausted.”  

To identify or re-acquaint yourself with your priorities, crave out some time to be alone with your thoughts.  Ask yourself if money was not an issue for you, you were in good health, and you did not need to work…What would you do to fulfill your dreams?

 From that list, if you can narrow it down to one or two items to accomplish, then compare those items with your daily activities, what of those daily activities are bring you in line with your planned goals? Here is one way you can know the difference between what is necessary and what is expendable.

Tim Elmore Book Marching Off the Map

Tim Elmore, author of Marching Off the Map and president of Growing Leaders, a nonprofit leadership training and development organization says. “Most leaders start well, but eventually just react to what others want,” he says. “We focus on getting through the week instead of planning ahead and reaching a goal.”  Knowing your priorities moves you from being reactive to proactive. A shift in Thinking, in Habits, enabling you  to Living Your Priorities.

Tools for the Self Directed Life

Developing Mental Toughness. 

Under my other voices heading I present to you an article,  brought to my attention by one of my clients on obtaining objectives and success through consistency. 

The article or blog was called "The Science of Developing Mental Toughness in Your Health, Work, and Life."  by blogger James Clear. whos work and be read on JamesClear.com
 

Have you ever wondered what makes someone a good athlete? Or a good leader? Or a good parent? Why do some people accomplish their goals while others fail?

What makes the difference?

Usually we answer these questions by talking about the talent of top performers. He must be the smartest scientist in the lab. She’s faster than everyone else on the team. He is a brilliant business strategist.

But I think we all know there is more to the story than that.

In fact, when you start looking into it, your talent and your intelligence don’t play nearly as big of a role as you might think. The research studies that I have found say that intelligence only accounts for 30% of your achievement — and that’s at the extreme upper end.

What makes a bigger impact than talent or intelligence? Mental toughness.

Research is starting to reveal that your mental toughness — or “grit” as they call it — plays a more important role than anything else for achieving your goals in health, business, and life. That’s good news because you can’t do much about the genes you were born with, but you can do a lot to develop mental toughness.

Why is mental toughness so important? And how can you develop more of it?

Let’s talk about that now.

Mental Toughness and The United States Military

Sun Run  Fort Bragg, N.C., Army photo by Sgt. Gin-Sophie De Bellotte

Each year, approximately 1,300 cadets join the entering class at the United States Military Academy, West Point. During their first summer on campus, cadets are required to complete a series of brutal tests. This summer initiation program is known internally as “Beast Barracks.”

In the words of researchers who have studied West Point cadets, “Beast Barracks is deliberately engineered to test the very limits of cadets’ physical, emotional, and mental capacities.”

You might imagine that the cadets who successfully complete Beast Barracks are bigger, stronger, or more intelligent than their peers. But Angela Duckworth, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, found something different when she began tracking the cadets.

Duckworth studies achievement, and more specifically, how your mental toughness, perseverance, and passion impact your ability to achieve goals. At West Point, she tracked a total of 2,441 cadets spread across two entering classes. She recorded their high school rank, SAT scores, Leadership Potential Score (which reflects participation in extracurricular activities), Physical Aptitude Exam (a standardized physical exercise evaluation), and Grit Scale (which measures perseverance and passion for long–term goals).

Here’s what she found out…

It wasn’t strength or smarts or leadership potential that accurately predicted whether or not a cadet would finish Beast Barracks. Instead, it was grit — the perseverance and passion to achieve long–term goals — that made the difference.

In fact, cadets who were one standard deviation higher on the Grit Scale were 60% more likely to finish Beast Barracks than their peers. It was mental toughness that predicted whether or not a cadet would be successful, not their talent, intelligence, or genetics.

When Is Mental Toughness Useful?

National Spelling Bee

Duckworth’s research has revealed the importance of mental toughness in a variety of fields.

In addition to the West Point study, she discovered that…

• Ivy League undergraduate students who had more grit also had higher GPAs than their peers — even though they had lower SAT scores and weren’t as “smart.”
• When comparing two people who are the same age but have different levels of education, grit (and not intelligence) more accurately predicts which one will be better educated.
• Competitors in the National Spelling Bee outperform their peers not because of IQ, but because of their grit and commitment to more consistent practice.

And it’s not just education where mental toughness and grit are useful. Duckworth and her colleagues heard similar stories when they started interviewing top performers in all fields…

Our hypothesis that grit is essential to high achievement evolved during interviews with professionals in investment banking, painting, journalism, academia, medicine, and law. Asked what quality distinguishes star performers in their respective fields, these individuals cited grit or a close synonym as often as talent. In fact, many were awed by the achievements of peers who did not at first seem as gifted as others but whose sustained commitment to their ambitions was exceptional. Likewise, many noted with surprise that prodigiously gifted peers did not end up in the upper echelons of their field.

—Angela Duckworth

You have probably seen evidence of this in your own experiences. Remember your friend who squandered their talent? How about that person on your team who squeezed the most out of their potential? Have you known someone who was set on accomplishing a goal, no matter how long it took?

You can read the whole research study here, but this is the bottom line:

In every area of life — from your education to your work to your health — it is your amount of grit, mental toughness, and perseverance that predicts your level of success more than any other factor we can find.

In other words, talent is overrated.

What Makes Someone Mentally Tough?

1936 Olympic workout of Jesse Owens and Frank Wykoff

It’s great to talk about mental toughness, grit, and perseverance … but what do those things actually look like in the real world?

In a word, toughness and grit equal consistency.

Mentally tough athletes are more consistent than others. They don’t miss workouts. They don’t miss assignments. They always have their teammates back.

Mentally tough leaders are more consistent than their peers. They have a clear goal that they work towards each day. They don’t let short–term profits, negative feedback, or hectic schedules prevent them from continuing the march towards their vision. They make a habit of building up the people around them — not just once, but over and over and over again.

Mentally tough artists, writers, and employees deliver on a more consistent basis than most. They work on a schedule, not just when they feel motivated. They approach their work like a pro, not an amateur. They do the most important thing first and don’t shirk responsibilities.

The good news is that grit and perseverance can become your defining traits, regardless of the talent you were born with. You can become more consistent. You can develop superhuman levels of mental toughness.

How?

In my experience, these 3 strategies work well in the real world…

1. Define what mental toughness means for you.

For the West Point army cadets being mentally tough meant finishing an entire summer of Beast Barracks.

For you, it might be…

• going one month without missing a workout
• going one week without eating processed or packaged food
• delivering your work ahead of schedule for two days in a row
• meditating every morning this week
• grinding out one extra rep on each set at the gym today
• calling one friend to catch up every Saturday this month
• spending one hour doing something creative every evening this week

Whatever it is, be clear about what you’re going after. Mental toughness is an abstract quality, but in the real world it’s tied to concrete actions. You can’t magically think your way to becoming mentally tough, you prove it to yourself by doing something in real life.

Which brings me to my second point…

2. Mental toughness is built through small physical wins.

You can’t become committed or consistent with a weak mind. How many workouts have you missed because your mind, not your body, told you you were tired? How many reps have you missed out on because your mind said, “Nine reps is enough. Don’t worry about the tenth.” Probably thousands for most people, including myself. And 99% are due to weakness of the mind, not the body.

—Drew Shamrock

So often we think that mental toughness is about how we respond to extreme situations. How did you perform in the championship game? Can you keep your life together while grieving the death of a family member? Did you bounce back after your business went bankrupt?

There’s no doubt that extreme situations test our courage, perseverance, and mental toughness … but what about everyday circumstances?

Mental toughness is like a muscle. It needs to be worked to grow and develop. If you haven’t pushed yourself in thousands of small ways, of course you’ll wilt when things get really difficult.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Choose to do the tenth rep when it would be easier to just do nine. Choose to create when it would be easier to consume. Choose to ask the extra question when it would be easier to accept. Prove to yourself — in a thousand tiny ways — that you have enough guts to get in the ring and do battle with life.

Mental toughness is built through small wins. It’s the individual choices that we make on a daily basis that build our “mental toughness muscle.” We all want mental strength, but you can’t think your way to it. It’s your physical actions that prove your mental fortitude.

3. Mental toughness is about your habits, not your motivation.

Photo Artist Jason Beamguard during  his Book Challenge 2018

Motivation is fickle. Willpower comes and goes.

Mental toughness isn’t about getting an incredible dose of inspiration or courage. It’s about building the daily habits that allow you to stick to a schedule and overcome challenges and distractions over and over and over again.

Mentally tough people don’t have to be more courageous, more talented, or more intelligent — just more consistent. Mentally tough people develop systems that help them focus on the important stuff regardless of how many obstacles life puts in front of them. It’s their habits that form the foundation of their mental beliefs and ultimately set them apart.

I’ve written about this many times before. Here are the basic steps for building a new habit and links to further information on doing each step.

1. Start by building your identity.
2. Focus on small behaviors, not life–changing transformations.
3. Develop a routine that gets you going regardless of how motivated you feel.
4. Stick to the schedule and forget about the results.
5. When you slip up, get back on track as quickly as possible.

Mental toughness comes down to your habits. It’s about doing the things you know you’re supposed to do on a more consistent basis. It’s about your dedication to daily practice and your ability to stick to a schedule.

How Have You Developed Mental Toughness?

Artist Juan Coronado photo of Actor/Model Jimmy Flint-Smith

Our mission as a community is clear: we are looking to live healthy lives and make a difference in the world.

To that end, I see it as my responsibility to equip you with the best information, ideas, and strategies for living healthier, becoming happier, and making a bigger impact with your life and work.

But no matter what strategies we discuss, no matter what goals we set our sights on, no matter what vision we have for ourselves and the people around us … none of it can become a reality without mental toughness, perseverance, and grit.

When things get tough for most people, they find something easier to work on. When things get difficult for mentally tough people, they find a way to stay on schedule.

There will always be extreme moments that require incredible bouts of courage, resiliency, and grit … but for 95% of the circumstances in life, toughness simply comes down to being more consistent than most people. 
 

Tools for the Self Directed Life

Activating Your Mission, Meaning, and Mastery

by Calvin Harris H.W., M

I suspect the College education model as practiced today, as the best means to secure wealth and fame, is fading as a goal for many young people. Even the famed ‘SAT’, or other IQ Tests used as barometers of intellectual superior advantage and the indicator that one is on the fast track of wealth and success, may not be holding up factually as better living.

A Wall Street Journal correspondent and author of the bestselling book “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.”- Dan H. Pink has been quoted when asked of what portion of our career success does IQ account for? His answer: “between 4 and 10 percent.” Which has been backed up by Researcher Daniel Goleman and the Hay Group.

The first step in gaining the tools for a self directed life is then to begin activating your mission, and getting clarity on some of the contradictory data that we have. Data that acts as models or guides to what you believe to be better living or success and how to get it.

IQ testing for some when going through school became a worry and an impediment to setting a life course decision and a delay in trying to craft their innate mission. A struggle waged over would they be good enough to achieve the outcomes in life they set out to do? A struggle waged in the mind.

I feel we all live in our heads so much of the time that when we are faced with the circumstance that forces us to acknowledge that we also operate in a three-dimensional world and navigate through it by our somatic body, a body many times driven by unconscious decisions, this can be a shock to us.

We look to models as the guidepost along our journey in life to help point our way through. One guidepost often forgotten, but that has the propensity for success, is how we spend our time. If we would observe, we would find we spend most of our days in random thought and to a lesser degree imagining outcomes to situations that may or may not take place. In fact this process is the mechanism for life long learning. This process of our consciousness, is an alchemy of emotions, rational mind and our analytical capacities that act both as our allies and as obstacles. In our endeavors to live successfully, they can greatly move us forward in life, if focused with clear accurate data, barring that, then an acute observation and courageous adaptability must be developed. These qualities move us forward without trying to second guess ourselves or worse diverting ourselves away from our mission-meaning in life.

A second model or concept that needs reviewing is the idea of Education and the potential of learning. We are life long learners. Education is not a series of memorized pieces of data that we recite back for a short time and then forget. Nor is it the striving for the goal of coming up with a high test score from an intelligence test.  Education is learning and engaging with information useful to our life, that when implemented, moves our life course forward. So many think of their education as acquiring a piece of paper that says ‘Degree’ on it, thinking this is the magic key to immediate success and fortune. So many, because of buying into just getting that paper, that degree, and perhaps not comprehending all of its variables, are left with a Degree, debt, and having feelings of disappointment and /or betrayal.  

I am reminded of Chad Grills, the writer of the book “College or Not” when he was purported as saying “It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if we don’t have a high IQ, brand name college degrees, or a high GPA, we don’t have a propensity for meaning. Or, we worry that because we don’t have a sufficient degree of these (old) measures of intelligence, our ability for growth and service will decrease (an impediment to meaning). The reality is, science and research increasingly show that these old credentials and measures of intelligence don’t matter that much.”

To gain meaning in your life today, one must overcome outworn definitions and measurements of yourself.  Your task is to see yourself in a whole new way, creating a new narrative beginning with the idea of you as a Conscious Observer, you want to observe those concepts that seem to control, drive, and sometimes divert your life. It’s not necessary that you completely discard information found within concepts, but it is important that you examine the messages you accept from the information, especially those with a negative bent, thereby lessening negative effects to your talents and your overall success or mission. ⁠

Researcher Daniel Goleman and the Hay Group have shown that IQ placement accounts for a baseline of intelligence, therefore for a person to have mastery in life, would be more a matter of that person working with that baseline to create a mindset, and exercise  the ability to do critical examination and the agility for correction on faulty conclusions. Allowing them to hone and strengthen their natural abilities and talents to consciously move in the direction of their innate and chosen path in a way that leads to the intersection of where preparation, talent, and opportunity meet.

So, if the old Learning-to-Success model components are changing, what does one use as guidepost or indicators of attributes and skills needed in the new model for success? What traits, abilities, and skills can you emulate that can activate your quest toward meaning, success, and mastery now?

I suggest the concepts of Grit + Imagination + Skills as basic components of the new model. We are at a time in history were some of the world’s most innovative companies are looking for people driven by the new model to drive their missions and success. Why not use them to drive your own mission and success?  What do these new skills or traits look like?

Grit

Wikipedia defines grit as:

“A positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or end state, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective. This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie within a gritty individual’s path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization. Commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include ‘perseverance,’ ‘hardiness,’ ‘resilience,’ ‘ambition,’ ‘need for achievement’ and ‘conscientiousness.’⁠”

We talked earlier about 'courageous adaptability.' Call it a short hand to describe  Grit.

Grit has in its makeup, conscious regulators,  such as patience and a unique attitude perspective in any given situation. Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, founder of logo-therapy, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, flushes out for us a key perspective on 'attitude,' with his words: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

If we can become conscious of our 'spaces between', our ‘timing’, and patience, as we endure what life throws at us, we’re well on our way to building grit, and from those experiences to make us stronger and also more compassionate of others.

Imagination

Imagination is that alchemy between our emotions, rational mind, and our analytical capacities, aka Creativity: once harnessed it is unmatched as a talent. Creativity harnessed is one of the most sought-after commodities in the world today. It has become a innovative and integral component of the new technologies that is needed to evolve, and propagate the many new products and services on the horizon. The alchemy of creativity becomes the futures great bastion of human expertise to perfect and master.

Building creativity skill can start as simply as by writing down ideas every day. Harnessing it can take longer. Needed then is the conscious awareness, the perception, and emotional balance brought into action during development, and implementation, of new ideas and products. Creativity coming forth as ideas are worked from good to desirable, to beneficial, and on to lucrative. Strategic thinking becomes then part of the blend in the creativity equation to produce better solutions and resources to problematic situations.

Skills

The one skill that will be prized above others will be the mastering of our emotions. Emotional mastery can be tricky for it is the practice of observing our thoughts and feelings as they arise and determining from what sources they spring. Choosing the ones that serve us and dismissing the ones that cause pain or frustration.

This is necessary in setting a life course and move us to our innate mission. Along the way, we find we produce marketable skills and our creativity builds value, in some cases where none previously seemed to exist. These marketable skills of the future may fall into one of the categories for: Art, Business, Engineering, Design, and Science. 

The beauty of these new skill sets is that they’re all self-reinforcing. That means that if you’re willing to build grit by operating in uncertainty, you naturally start to develop ideas to solve your challenges. This leads to a boost in imagination. As our imagination increases, we’ll have to find an outlet. Searching for an outlet to channel our energies will lead us towards wanting to build our skills. These three areas begin to strengthen each other, and the process of increasing this new type of intelligence becomes seamless. Once we are self-taught in one skill or field of study, we can repeat the process again and again. When we’re growing and improving, it becomes easier for meaning to manifest in our lives.

So in conclusion, I want to give you some insights from one of the ‘New’ industry leader’s thinking on the ideas of the new models of  Learning-to–Business success by Lazlo Bock.

Laszlo Bock is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of the Company named Humu, in Mountain View, California. He is the author of "WORK RULES! Insights from Inside Google to Transform How You Live and Lead", (which has been named one of the top 15 business books of 2015). He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and on the PBS Newshour 

Bock's marketing slogan for Humu is: “Making work better for everyone, everywhere, through science, machine learning, and a little bit of love.”

Bock's previous job was as the man in charge of hiring at Google, and this is what he had to say about the skills he looked for when they wanted to hire under his watch:⁠

“For every job, though, the #1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.”

Laszlo went on to say “the second most important thing they’re looking for: …is leadership — in particular emergent leadership as opposed to traditional leadership. Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? We don’t care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power.”

We’ll uncover more about these attributes and traits in-depth in future articles. In the meantime think on these words

I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life". - Maya Angelou

So if you need to get a handle on this or in moving forward drop me a note. We can go over or discover activities, habits, and techniques, without harassment or harsh judgment that is advantageous to a solid re-invention of a successful you. 

A Conversation On Masculinity, Society, and Change Neither is Static

THE KEYS TO WORRY-FREE CHANGING NOTION OF GENDER, MASCULINITY, & SOCIETY -  THE EDGE COMES FROM KNOWING 'What’s Behind the Curtin'. By Calvin Harris H.W., M.

The Life and Age of Man: The Stages of Man's Life from Cradle to ...
FAMSF Explore the Art - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

This post is written to give a ‘Breathing space’ or a broader view to men when issues come up in the matter of Gender identification, the notions of your sexuality vs gender or in the matter of having to defend or change in a time of Societal change. I will start with the comment that if changes are demanded of you and you did not instigate the change, then make note someone else has an agenda or profit to be gained by it.  

The impetus for writing this post began with a call. I got this phone call about an article that was to appear in the March 1st or 2nd, 2018, edition of TheNation.Com, in its SOCIETY Blog Column. A post titled: "Do We Need to Redefine Masculinity—or Get Rid of It?", written by one Collier Meyerson, a Knobler Fellow at the Nation Institute, where she focuses on reporting about race and politics, as well as an investigative fellow at Reveal. Even before the articles came out a call came to me to be on the lookout for it and a request for my reaction to the article. Since its release, I have had a barrage of calls with hot opinions about it, more than any article (to date) generated from any posts that I had written myself. (Well, it is my own fault for encouraging you all to read more, and then to dig deep for understanding.)

I feel, to meet a storm successfully you will need an edge, that is, a preparation and / or history of the behaviors of the storms and how they behaved in the past: that is where the edge to success is found. So for all of you who are ready to Take Action one way or another, let me play devil's advocate here and let’s start with the meaningful action of an investigation. This investigation may seem a bit around the bend but hold fast, for the future is at stake.

Be pre-warned this article, may have intellectual and emotional undercurrents for some; those of you that take the time to digest and discern what is being offered will find it well worth the read. I welcome your comments and for those of you having regular scheduled session with me, I welcome your phone calls regarding personal issues brought up by this post.  

Also, contain at the end of this article is a link to Ms. Meyerson's article for your perusal and consideration.

I am a believer in having a shameless array of ‘Conscious’ emotions, considered in this conversation when the goal is to lead to a compassionate solution. Yes, even the emotion Anger, if that anger is self-possessed within an idea. The goal then, as Thanissara Mary Weinberg expresses it, is to have - “Anger . . . traditionally thought of to be close to wisdom. [To be used], When not projected outward onto others or inward toward the self, it gives us the necessary energy and clarity to understand what needs to be done.”
Now, I, in fact, was happy to see an article on masculinity in a publication like ‘The Nation,’ in light of my post last year in SOC on 30, June 2017, titled “A Man Is Expected - New Pathways of Being.” Yet, I was surprised by the title implications to Redefine Masculinity or get rid of it. Let’s face it, there are not too many women nor men that really want to get rid of Masculinity. So let us knock off the nonsense of getting rid of it and try to reason to the core of the matter.

It's clear when you look out into society that masculinity is a tough subject to approach for many people, regardless of gender, but it seems it is popping up in one form or another and therefore it wants to be addressed.

 I'm afraid beliefs about male and female, that is humans and their rights are being turned upside down and that some of the discussions of the new masculinity reflect more theory first than any real consideration of human progress or history on the subject. I don't think it's the wisest move to redefine what it means to be anything beyond Conscious Beings right now. Radicals could easily turn beliefs about humans and unalienable rights they possess upside down especially in a climate demanding change. 

It may surprise some to know in a very short number of years it will be a moot point.  The rage and outcry in the courts, will be about abuse in the use of Robots and Inanimate Objects and there again the consideration for redefinition.  This time for Robots being Sentient Beings, that means beings with consciousness, or in some contexts life itself. Sentient beings for the longest time where considered primary a state belonging only to Humans.  To be Sentient you needed to possess five aggregates: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. As technology and science progressed as rapidly as it has identification of sentient beings have been extended to animals and plant life and will in time move to our machines. At some point, regulated behavior in the use or misuse of Robots and inanimate objects as Sex objects will prevail. 

What it means to be a man or a woman can be reduced to just saying  ‘Human.’ We have the capacity to think, feel, perceive or experience subjectively and with empathy.  When we go beyond that, then we start to get into trouble when like the Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to separate, distinguish as it were the ability to think from the ability to feel and maybe where we start some of the modern divisions of men and women. Humans are carbon-based communal societal creatures that have empathy and justice called Love within their somatic DNA and within their shared blood, they as for now, come with a knowledge of an expiration date.

Photo by Jason Beamguard

 The Blade Runner movies and the book that they were adapted from,  “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by writer Philip K. Dick, first published in 1968, explored issues of “what does it mean to be human.” The fallacy the book tried to point to was the belief that Androids, unlike humans, are said to possess no sense of empathy or compassion in the future, and the question did humans still contain humanity. I would start the conversation here because for some folks The concept of masculinity mis-seen is the belief that masculinity in the male gender has no empathy or compassion. And thus masculinity in the male gender is a mechanical apparatus that can be turned on or off at will. Rather than it being an evolutionary engineered process once geared to the benefit of family,  community or humanity and has historically been manipulated but yet is always evolving.

Man as Machine

There is a book mention in Ms. Meyerson blog by Gail Bederman: her seminal book is on the issue, "Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917." Author Gail Bederman writes: “I don’t see manhood as either an intrinsic essence or a collection of traits, attributes, or sex roles. Manhood—or ‘masculinity,’ as it is commonly termed today—is a continual, dynamic process.” The first thing we need to do, according to Bederman, is stop arguing that masculinity has traits that are inherent. “Gender,” she writes, “is dynamic and always changing.”

Book Cover of Gail Bederman  Book

Between 1820 and 1860, according to Bederman, more and more white men were beginning to identify as middle class: entrepreneurs, professionals, and managers. And with that distinction, there came about a new and important gender identification for men, one that centered around civility. As opposed to brutishness or violent tendencies, manliness during this period was focused on a civilized character, holding off on marriage to accrue wealth. And then a man should focus on providing a good life for his wife, his children, or his employees.

Between 1879 and 1910, the number of middle-class men who were self-employed dropped, from 67 percent to 37 percent, prompting another a shift. “Middle-class Victorian men were obsessed with manhood at the turn of the century,” writes Bederman. They became “obsessed” with cowboy novels, and hunting and fishing. At the same time new epithets, like “sissy,” “pussy-foot,” “cold feet” and “stuffed shirt, ” emerged, indicating “behavior which had once appeared self-possessed and manly but now seemed over-civilized and effeminate,” writes Bederman. Around 1890, a noun defined as “the essence of manhood” took hold for the first time—now, manhood was called “masculinity.”

The idea, Bederman says, was that being “manly” had a “moral dimension,” and was defined by a dictionary at the time as “possessing the proper characteristic of a man; independent in spirit or bearing; strong, brave, large-minded, etc.” But then, when the economy tanked between 1879 to 1896, and with it the whole middle-class white-male “civilized” identity, the concept of “manliness” shifted again. After that, Bederman says, when men wished to invoke a male power they used “masculine” and “masculinity” to describe it. “The adjective ‘masculine’ was used to refer to any characteristics, good or bad, that all men had,” she wrote. The element of morality had been left behind.

The shift in white middle-class American male identification at the turn of the 19th century was also a way to justify white supremacy. “Linking whiteness to male power,” Bederman wrote, “was nothing new.… during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, American citizenship rights had been construed as ‘manhood’ rights which inhered to white males, only…Negro males, whether free or slave, were forbidden to exercise ‘manhood’ rights—forbidden to vote, hold electoral office, serve on juries, or join the military. The conclusion was implicit but widely understood: Negro males, unlike white males, were less than men.” But once “masculinity” came around at the end of the 19th century, and black men were fighting for “manhood rights,” a new idea had emerged. White middle-class men were starting to see themselves as maintaining a universal male quality: savagery. But the way they separated themselves from their black counterparts, was to articulate that they had evolved more. Bederman uses the example of National Geographic, which was first published in 1889 and gained popularity “by breathlessly depicting the heroic adventures of ‘civilized’ white male explorers among ‘primitive tribes in darkest Africa.” Similarly, she writes, “Anglo-Saxonist imperialists insisted that civilized white men had a racial genius for self-government which necessitated the conquest of more ‘primitive’ darker races.”

America’s new definition of masculinity was cemented during the 20th century. Though black men gained the right to vote, under Jim Crow laws, which last well into the mid-20th century, they continued to be subjugated by white men, who restrained black men’s economic possibilities and frequently portrayed them as uncontrollable rapists. From early westerns to the action films we watch today, white cis men overwhelmingly were cast as leads in the mass entertainment our culture consumes; guns became a rite and plaything of young white men in our country. And masculinity became a made-up excuse to dominate.

In his essay, Michael Ian Black. an American comedian, actor, writer, writes: “I believe in boys. I believe in my son. Sometimes, though, I see him, 16 years old, swallowing his frustration, burying his worry, stomping up the stairs without telling us what’s wrong, and I want to show him what it looks like to be vulnerable and open, but I can’t. Because I was a boy once, too.”

Black can’t show his son what vulnerability looks like not because he is biologically incapable of doing so. The block is one formed by habit, culture, and American history predicated on white male domination—which produced a masculinity predicated on white male domination. Who says we have to hold onto that? It is only with the understanding that gender identification is moveable, malleable, and worth undoing that we can begin to make the boys all right.

A change of Role

Tim Marshal & Son

Modifications to masculinity should be a personal and individual choice, to be made by the male or female in their own exploration of their life. Based on their journey to discover their innate self and to get their answer to the great question Who Am I. No one should decide but that individual themselves. They will need of course historic and scientific facts, to be able to look behind the curtain, as well as support both for their spirit and their bodies by their communities. To find that innate self and then to offer their unique contribution to family, community, society and the world.  

This would mean no more expectations of a  cookie cutter assembly line version of masculinity, or of what it should look like or do. No more of a one version fits all.  More of a self-made version of what I call male on man(kind). In my work, I look for the essence in each person I interact with, people to engage their individual merit, on a person by person basis. I have found it seems to work better than applying labels - at least for me.

Freedom to be You

See the Nation article by Collier Meyerson

A hiki i kekahi manawa  =   Until next time
 

The Odd Way We Define Success

By Calvin Harris, H.W., M.

Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, and Gary Merrill in All About Eve (1950)

How often do we hear about successful people, then imagine we fall short by comparison?

In my coaching practice, when Clients ask me how they can become successful? I reach for one of several canned questions to create a dialogue to an answer:

• Short and sweet: “Do you work for yourself?”
• Ambitious: “If you did not have worries about obligations or money what would you do?”
• Mysterious: “Is there a difference in focus in a man of success. Compared to becoming a person of value?” 
• Awkward: "Your focus is it chasing the money or chasing the passion?"

If I’m lucky, the conversation moves the other person to return to their inner dialogue of themselves, to uncover more of the root cause for the question, and to help them frame an answer to their vague subjective question or at least see the underpinning or gauge to their unsatisfied state of being.

Tesla car

I half joking say to them, Oh I can understand your feeling, because on the one hand, I am a successful entrepreneurial mentor, life coach, writer, and more. But on the other hand, I’m none of them, if I used your gauge, because based on your gauge, then shouldn’t a writer have a large following of loyal fans? Shouldn’t a life coach have only high paying clients? Isn’t an entrepreneur supposed to make deals while whipping along in his Tesla through the fashionable sections of SoCal’s Coast Highway?

That’s success, right? And if not, why do you seem to think it is?

Here’s the thing. I’ve noticed that everyone I read, listen to, or follow on social media is unusually accomplished, if only in hype. This is bound to happen. The most prolific people, even if not talented, will get the most attention.

I mean, they’re the best at getting promotion. It’s no surprise they have a large following.

But what then happens to most of us? We hear about these promoted “successful” people, then imagine we fall short by comparison. I call this the Comparing Mind.

How do you respond to others' lives? Have you felt compelled to look over your shoulder and compare yourself to family members, best buds, classmates, neighbors, or someone you've read about, and believe that you have to equal whatever they did in their lives?

The first thing to understand is to know that to some degree the Comparing Mind switches on in all of us. Like it or not, our comparison software will always be running in the background. Now to mediate the absurdity of the Comparing Mind, we want to be mindful and with a lightness of humor, that our lives require a rigorous discernment of which voices to listen to: those coming from our own depths of purpose, or those which are received from the promotional blast of the world around us.

I recall a conversation that took place during a business meeting, that you might find interesting, it was said: In the business world, this phenomenon, of the Comparing Mind doesn’t care about the size of a raise. It only cares if it’s bigger than their co-worker’s raise. For instance, when a CEO’s pay was made public in 1992, it triggered the Comparing Mind in thousands of executives across America. “Wait, she’s making what??” As a result, CEO pay spiraled upwards like a whirlybird.

The takeaway is that the Comparing Mind thinks in terms of relative or equivalent achievement, not in significant or absolute achievement. In other words, if we are not conscious of the other person, we don’t even make the comparison.

Model Jimmy Flint-Smith Photo by Juan Coronado

The point is when confronted with Comparing Mind, it is helpful to put things in perspective. The Comparing Mind is blind. It’s blind to the fact that “successful people” are just people. Beneath all their outward success, they’re as flawed as the rest of us.

Tim Ferriss, for example, author of the “4-hour Workweek”: in 2016 his The Tim Ferriss Show was considered the #1 business podcast on all of iTunes and was ranked #1 out of 300,000+ podcasts, so when you talk about social media success, his name is one that would come to mind.  

Interestingly enough, Tim Ferriss, is purported to have written a revealing blog a few years ago. In the article, Ferriss purportedly wrote that he often struggles to get out of bed in the morning and that he was seeing a therapist. Therefore successful superstar or not, we don’t always have it easy. None of us have it easy all the time.

But, one thing we can do to keep down the stress, is to become conscious of when the Comparing Mind is in action and to develop a sense of examined mindfulness about it.

And when you catch the Comparing Mind doing its thing, remember to flip your focus, stop and check, is your attention on the relative or the significant efforts to your achievement success? It doesn’t matter what other people are doing. It does matter what you are doing, and how you feel about doing it.