Do Not Be Arrogant

The longer I have been on this earth, the more I have come to realize that the most arrogant people are often the most uncertain of themselves. Out of insecurity many people decide that it is important to project an image that they are better than others, and to come across as if they know exactly what they are doing at all times; nothing bothers them; and they know more than everybody else.

A few months ago I was at a seminar in Australia and there was a young man no older than 25 sitting behind me with his wife. I often try getting to know the people sitting around me at seminars and when I am out in the world in general, because I learn so much from every new person I meet. I find that most people are very eager and enthusiastic to meet other people, and it is always a great way to gain new perspectives.

What You Will Learn Arrogance is a sign of weak and insecure people. Arrogant behavior broadcasts to the world that you are weak and afraid, afraid for people to see who you really are. The worst thing you can do is act as if you think you are better than everybody else. It can be detrimental to your career as well as your personal life. You need to work to develop empathy amongst your peers, not resentment or anger. Exuding arrogance is an invitation to others to push you down and it is also a sign of weakness.

During a break in the seminar my friend and I went up and spoke to one of the presenters. We chatted with him and he immediately started telling us this or that about how his company was a leader in employee retention, the best at this or that, how incredibly important he was and what a leader he was. I smiled at the man as I listened to him boast about himself, and I complimented him for being so special and successful.  Then I said: “That is absolutely fascinating. I’d love to learn more about you and your business. May I have your card?”

I was doing some simple networking because I like to make friends and get to know people wherever I go. If truth be told, he was the biggest asshole I had ever met and I really was not interested in getting his card or learning more about him and his business at a later date.

“No,” he said matter of factly, “I do not have a card.”

I was taken aback, not by what the man said, but by how he said it–his tone; it was as if he had a business card but he was too important to give it to me. I do have a card but not for you … is what he was actually saying. My friend, standing right next to me heard it the same way.  I followed with a natural response:

“Excuse me?”

“No, you cannot have a card,” he said. He looked at me dead center and then turned around and walked away. I was pretty astonished by the man’s behavior and had never met anyone like him. He was, to be blunt, the biggest asshole I had ever met.

My friend and I puzzled over this for those few days at the seminar. The guy was Malaysian, perhaps he hated Americans. No, that did not seem right. What had we done? He ignored us anytime we were near him. When various groups formed he went out of his way to avoid us. I run businesses that count among their clientele out-of-work attorneys, and I have seen scores of angry people throughout the years–but this guy took the cake.

Our meeting really left a bad taste in my mouth.

Then, a week or so later I was on another small retreat taking a class from some Indian monks in Fiji, and the same man was at the seminar. One day at lunch I went up and sat next to him and a couple of his coworkers (who he apparently supervised) and said hello and smiled. Both of the coworkers looked at me and smiled and said hello and exchanged some pleasantries; one even attempted to start a conversation with me. Immediately, this guy (who had not said hello to me) interrupted and started lecturing his coworkers about something they needed to do for him when they got back to Malaysia. He refused to make any eye contact with me the entire meal. After around 15 minutes, his coworkers realized they were running late and quickly got up and left me and the asshole sitting at the table together.

I had heard him talking to them about some sort of meditation technique, so I proceeded to ask him about another meditation technique that I knew about, which I have been practicing for years.
“I really like this particular meditation technique,” I said trying to make conversation. “What do you think about it?”

“I think you’d have to be a complete dumb ass and idiot to use that technique. It’s been disproved.” He then got up and walked away.

I was feeling a little bad about myself after these bizarre encounters with the man.  Frankly, I was starting to be unsure of what I might have done to deserve such incredibly horrible treatment.  What made it more disturbing was that the guy appeared to have developed a little entourage that he palled around with consistently. Granted they were people who did not appear to have a lot of self confidence, but nonetheless, they all seemed to like him, so it must have been something I did wrong.  What had I done to provoke such rage?

I was about a day from the end of the trip when my wife told me that she had been speaking with a well known actor and actress during a diving trip that day, and that they had mentioned that this particular guy had been incredibly rude to them as well. In fact, they were both extremely puzzled because they were used to people kissing their ass all the time–but this guy went out of his way to be mean to them and make them feel bad about themselves. They both said something like they meet a lot of assholes in Hollywood and this guy takes the cake. Had we not been on an isolated island on Fiji, both these people would have been followed by a gang of photographers and reporters, watching their every move and making them feel really important. But here was this person doing everything in his power to make these people feel horrible every chance he got.

What I realized was that this particular guy had decided at some point in his life that if he felt threatened by anyone he needed to be rude and exude extreme arrogance in response. This man made clear to me that the nature of arrogance is nothing more than insecurity. The most insecure people also tend to be the most arrogant. This is just the way it is.

Obviously this guy was incredibly insecure. Fascinated still by his behavior, I kept probing to find out who he was and what he did. The more I probed the more I realized that he was just about all smoke and mirrors, and in reality not anyone of importance, wealth, or anything at all. He was on a retreat where there were a lot of very important people and he had cultivated an attitude in an attempt to really try and look important. I got the sense that he believed he needed to be something he was not.

One of the more interesting things to me has always been Hollywood and the way people often try to act important here. They believe that to be famous they need to show an attitude of incredible arrogance and to look better than people. Because there are so many films, shows and so forth filmed around Los Angeles all the time, we always list our house with location scouts. It is great money and in most cases they pay us over $5,000 a day for filming. I get up at 6:00 am for work and am back in the house at about 7:00 pm or so each evening and they have come and gone by that time. It’s great.

A couple of months ago they were filming this show Dollhouse for FOX at our house. I was at home that day and I walked right by the lead star of the show, a very beautiful woman.  I said hello to her and she literally walked right by me and did not say a word.  It was pretty remarkable how rude she was. My thought is that this woman will probably not experience long-term success because this level of rudeness is not something that will benefit her over the long run. People who use power to portray a “I’m better than you” attitude generally do not do well.

And this brings me to you. On the road to success the worst thing you can do is act as if you think you are better than everybody else.  I have witnessed so many people hurt themselves and others through arrogance. Arrogant behavior broadcasts to the world that you are weak and afraid, afraid for people to see who you really are. It can de detrimental to your career as well as your personal life.

If you hold yourself out as being on a high pedestal the first reaction that people will have is to wanting to push you down. If you do not hold yourself as being on a high pedestal you will not attract this sort of negative attention. You want to be supported, not pushed down. People do not hire people who try and act better than others. They hire people they want to help.

One of the greatest skills we can possess is the ability to make people empathize with us, sympathize with us and, most importantly, want to help us. Some of the most powerful people in the business world have developed an extraordinary ability to make others identify with them, and even feel sorry for them. There is no sense in being arrogant: If others want to help you the odds of success are going to be much higher. Developing a personality that makes people want to help you can reap huge rewards for you in every area of your life.

Work to develop empathy amongst your peers, not resentment or anger. The more people can empathize with you the better off you will be.  Exuding arrogance is an invitation to others to push you down and it is also a sign of weakness.

Rules, Your Nature, and Your Career

I went into the basement today, and without realizing it I pulled out an old list of goals and rules I created for myself around 15 years ago. I remember writing them down as I was completing a year long clerkship with a federal judge, and preparing to move to California, where I would take the Bar Exam.

What You Will Learn Rules are the most important aspect of any business and in any profession. You need to ensure that in whatever you are doing you know the rules – you are never going to succeed if you don’t. The best thing you can do is to put yourself in a situation where the rules are instinctive to you. Once you understand and feel the rules, everything comes together easier because you seem to be following your own nature, rather than going against it. By following your nature you will find success.

My entire experience in law school and working for the judge had exposed me to a profession with which I was not really that comfortable. The formality of law practice, the detail, working in an office and behind a desk, the degree of formality, and so forth were a lot for me to stomach. There was nothing wrong with this and there were certainly many nice people I had met while working for this judge and also practicing law. The thing is, I started to feel like it was not me. Since age 18 I had worked as an asphalt contractor. I experienced a ton of freedom, worked outdoors most of the time, and liked the job a great deal. I could swear when I wanted to, I could tell people who did not like to screw off, and I loved the trucks, crazy machines, smells of tar, bartering, the variety of people I worked with and more. The asphalt business was just way more fun–a total blast. The money was also pretty good, and I saw a future in it. Perhaps more importantly, I understood the rules.

The rules of being a successful asphalt contractor were pretty simple:

1. You would start out doing really small jobs (driveways), save some money, invest in equipment, and start working on larger jobs (small parking lots, etc.).
2. You would do good work on larger jobs, save some more money and invest in even bigger and better equipment, and do even larger jobs (auto dealerships, bowling alleys, etc.).
3. You would get bonded by an insurance company for even larger jobs and start doing work for cities (schools, small municipal roads), doing quality work. You would save some more money and buy even more serious equipment.
4. You would start bidding on asphalt jobs for states (roads and highways). From there you would eventually be bidding on work for federal highways and so forth (interstates).

I understood the rules of the game and to me they were pretty easy. I could always see where the next milestone was and I knew what I needed to do in order to get to the next milestone. I thought about the rules of the business every single day. You need to know the rules. The rules are the most important aspect of any business and in any profession.

Several years ago I got into the student loan business. I started doing all of these student loans and did not really have any idea about the rules. I knew that if I were going to succeed I needed to understand how everything worked. This meant learning things like how much to pay the people who worked for me doing loans. I also had to learn a certain order of progression for that career path. Every type of business or job has its own rules, and in order to do well you need to understand them.

There was a real easy to follow progression in the asphalt business, and none of it involved kissing up, political games or anything like that. For the most part, if you did good work and followed to rules in this you could do quite well. You needed to pay your taxes, pay your employees on time, maintain your equipment, make the payments on your equipment, and some other things; however, the path to success was pretty clear and the rules were not that hard to follow. There was no bullshit. If you could do the work according to specification, at the lowest cost, within the specified timeframe you would get the job and get paid. It was for this simplicity that I most appreciated the profession.

The thing about becoming an attorney for me was that it was just so backward seeming. There were dress codes. There was formality. You were judged on things like an absence of typos in your work, your seriousness and all sorts of other intangibles. Your job and security came down to whether or not people liked you. The economy was often a factor. You then had to make partner in a law firm and I would learn later that the prospect of becoming a partner is not secure. The entire profession did not make a lot of sense to me because I did not understand the rules.

So I started making list of rules the year I worked for the judge. I picked them up pretty quickly because there were certain behaviors that were obviously considered positive and others that were considered negative. Depending on how one looks at these goals, they can be perceived as either incredibly disturbing or inspiring. Here is the list as I originally wrote it:

• Act more professional.
• Become an ideal job candidate.
• Act more serious.
• Be a harder worker.
• Be more focused.
• Being serious will make me more respected.
• I must not talk about myself.
• Be good humored but taken seriously.
• I must put in a full effort.
• I must consistently study.
• I must be considered for promotion.
• I must be spoken well of.
• I must be respected by clients.
• I must have the respect of my peers.
• I must be highly esteemed.
• I must not make typographical errors.
• I must be extremely professional.
• I must appear and be extremely organized.
• I must be physically fit.
• I must fit in.
• Being thorough produces positive results.
• I must be a consistent thinker.
• I want to pass the bar.
• I want a good job.
• I want the respect of peers.
• I want to like what I am doing.
• I want to excel at what I am doing.
• I must learn to be more calculating.
• I want to make a good living.
• I want to feel that what I am doing is important.
• I need to believe that I really like the law and that it is the only thing for me and what I truly want to do.
• I need to have passion and enthusiasm for what I am doing.
• I must have drive.
• I must change because with no passion for the law I suffer in my daily life. If I do have passion for the law I will have limitless possibilities which are achievable.
• I would have to believe that the law has limitless possibilities and opportunities. I would have to believe that I can be respected, admired, and truly become happy practicing law.

Based on applying these rules and goals I was able to get jobs with two of the top law firms in the world. I worked at these prestigious firms for years, and I continued to get better and better at practicing law. A lot of it had to do with setting goals and carefully and aggressively identifying all of my weaknesses. Writing it all down helped. I knew exactly what it would take for me to get better at my job, and to continually rise above previous expectations. I often referred to my goals, which helped me improve over time. Without these goals and continually expanding on them, success would not have been possible.

Many of the rules and goals I set for myself represented everything that I was not. I needed to create goals for myself to become a completely different person than I in fact am. Truthfully, I was in a profession I had no business being in because this very concept goes against my entire nature. Nonetheless, I set a variety of goals for myself, all based on me being a different person than I really am. I had to refer to these goals often like a roadmap to reorient me. I was like someone in a foreign country using a map to get around. I knew the rules but did not like them. It simply felt all wrong.

And this brings me to you.

First, you need to insure that in whatever you are doing you know the rules. If you do not know the rules for what you are doing you are never going to succeed. Every job–and in fact every person, has a series of rules that need to be followed if you want to see progress. If you follow the rules you will do well and if you violate them you will not.

I remember my girlfriend in college had told me she no longer wanted to speak with me after we had broken off our relationship. We had ended the relationship just before her mother came to town. She was from a conservative Jewish family and she told me that due to my Christian religion everything was wrong with our relationship. Somehow I had an instinctive realization that I should go over to her dorm when her mother was there, and tell her that I loved her and would not allow the religious issues to keep us apart. I just knew I needed to do this in front of her mother. I did this and it worked and we got back together soon afterwards (right after her mother left town). See, she had a rule which I innately understood, which was that she could continue to date me, overlooking our religious differences–as long as I could stick up to her parents about the issue.

The thing about rules is there are certain professions and people whose rules we understand instinctively. There are also rules we do not understand instinctively or, sometimes, at all. These are the people we find ourselves having disagreements with out of nowhere, and these are the jobs that make us feel like we are so often completely out of place.

My parents are both artist/writer types, and I grew up with them constantly discussing literature and so forth. I always understood things that involved journalism, writing, art criticism and so forth instinctively. When I was in college I used to write papers for various classes without ever reading the book; I would turn them in and get good grades. I understood this stuff completely instinctively. I just knew those rules and how to do those things in a certain way.

You may understand accounting instinctively, architecture instinctively, carpentry instinctively, psychology instinctively, music instinctively and more. I know a guy who sat down at a piano at the age of five for the first time in his life and could play anything and any tune. He just understood music and it came from a deep visceral level inside his brain. I do not understand it, nor do I have to, but here is an example of someone who understood the rules.

I became a legal recruiter precisely because, like the asphalt business, the second I encountered it I understood the rules. Everything about legal recruiting made perfect sense to me. It came naturally. I understood the rules. Careers wherein you instinctively understand the rules will bring you a much higher chance of success.

The best thing you can do is put yourself in a situation where the rules are instinctive to you. Also, it can be extremely beneficial to make yourself a list of rules and goals like I once did, in order to learn the essence of your chosen profession.

Once you understand and feel the rules everything comes together easier because you seem to be following your own nature–rather than going against it. And if you follow your nature you will find success.

Feral Children, Puzzles, Jews, and Filters

I remember growing up around kids with books of puzzles and games in elementary school and junior high school; these were always the kinds of kids that did not fit in. They also got beat up after school, were awkward during gym class, got pushed around on the playground, and sat alone or in small groups looking like outcasts during lunch.

They would sit there all through the lunch hour screwing around with these little puzzle books. The kids doing the puzzles would draw the grimaces of other so called “cool” kids. On the weekends these kids who liked their puzzle books would spend time doing things like playing Dungeons and Dragons. I know this is what they did because I once spent the night at a sleepover with a puzzle kid, and he insisted on me being a Dungeons and Dragons character while he played the game against me. I had no idea what the hell was going on.

What You Will Learn Filters in your life limit you in many ways. Instead, the quality of your life is determined by the filters you use to view the world. Everything that happens to you and your entire response to the world is shaped by the filters that you use. Your life and career are influenced, by a set of conscious and unconscious filters, which you use to interpret the world around you and make decisions. The secret to a happy and fulfilling life is to have filters that empower your experience, rather than limiting it.

I went to a public school right outside of Detroit for a good portion of my early educational career. To my observation the smart kids were the ones who liked puzzles. There was always something very isolating to me about these puzzles and they seemed to make loners of the kids who enjoyed them. At a very early age I came to identify these puzzles with something to stay away from. Sometimes a couple of tough kids would approach these smarties and rough them up. I remember once witnessing a kid trying to unlock his bike from the rack, getting pushed to the ground, and punched in the lip. Things like this happened a lot.

I happen to know that most of the cool kids now do things like work in hardware stores behind the counter, or mow lawns, and shovel snow for a living, while most of the puzzlers are working in important jobs in major cities. It’s funny how life works out.

Looking back on all of this, I think puzzles are actually a pretty good thing. They stretch your mind and force you to think in new directions. It is like a healthy form of exercise. There are many studies that confirm the positive effects of puzzle play. For the past several years I have had a little Nintendo thing I carry around with me everywhere, playing all sorts of puzzles on it. My favorite games are Brain Age and Brain Age 2, which were developed by a neurologist. It is proven that playing these kinds of games regularly can actually make your mind much quicker, and therefore make you smarter. I play puzzles every chance I get.

I managed to avoid puzzles for most of my life; honestly, it was mostly out of a fear of getting my ass kicked. However, when I got into my early 20s I had to study for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). I enjoyed every single part of this test except a portion of the test called games. Games was a section of the test that presented me with various puzzles, having me put lists in order and so forth. I never did as well as I could have on the LSAT, and almost all of it had to do with the games section of the test, which was a complete disaster for me. Every other section of the test I aced or missed only one or two questions.

When I first saw there was a games section on the test I remember I looked at it with a certain amount of disdain. Everything about those puzzle playing kids who got their ass kicked on a regular basis came back to me. I did not want to be associated with the games. I thought they were ridiculous and beneath me. I did not put a lot of myself into studying for the games section because I had programmed myself to stay away from them.

For such a long time I had associated puzzles and games with so many horrible things–like the person I did not want to become. So, at some point I simply decided I was not going to apply myself to such a “waste of time” despite the fact that I needed to. The more I think about it, the crazier this now seems to me.

I had worked hard in high school to get into a good college. I was seriously self-disciplined in college, and after years of intensive study I remained one of the top students in my class. I had been involved in all sorts of leadership activities and other things that made me look good on paper, but when it came right down to the wire I refused to study and apply myself on this one portion of an incredibly important test. All because deep down it represented something that I absolutely did not want to become: One of the kids who get beat up on the playground.

I did not realize any of this at the time of the test, of course. In fact, I just realized this recently. At the time I just knew that I was not interested in the games section of the test, and that what it represented was not me. My aversion to the games was both for conscious and subconscious reasons. Suffice it to say, as a consequence I did not do as well on the test as I should have.

Now as you are reading this you might be saying to yourself something along the lines of “that is so completely messed up.” And you would be right to say so; it is totally messed up. This has literally influenced the course and direction of my life. However, my question for you is this: What sort of filters do you view the world through, which are influencing your life in the same way? I am sure you have a ton of filters about what things represent, which are influencing the choices you make and how much you apply yourself every single second of every single day. Many of these filters are not helping you at all.

Here is an example: Racism. When I was in college, during the school year I was dating a really nice Jewish girl whom I fell madly in love at the time. The Detroit neighborhood where I came from was almost 100% white and Christian. Out of the 25,000+ people living there I think there were a couple of Indian families who were also doctors. I never met a single Jewish family living in the area during my entire time growing up in this city. I had never known racism until I came home from college and announced to various people that I was dating a Jewish girl. The level of racism I encountered was unbelievable. There were people in the town (my age) who I am 100% confident would never be friends with a Jewish person, simply because of their preconceived notions about Jews.

“Why would you date a Jewish girl, they’re all slimy and greasy!” one girl I was friends with said to me.

“Why would you date a Jewish girl, all they care about is money!” another guy I was friends with said to me.

These people had prejudices about an entire group of people that makes up a decent portion of the population. Somehow these folks had decided, for one reason or another, that they would never have anything to do with this portion of the population. So they willingly deprived themselves from that type of experience, knowledge, and growth that can only be obtained by associating with different groups of people, of different religions and cultures. And it was due to some filters these people were using to look at the world.

Think about how limiting this is. All of their associations and friendships are centered around getting to know only people who are similar to themselves. Doesn’t this sound ridiculous? It is absurd and something that is shocking on many, many levels.

The same thing happened to me due to my own silly preconceptions; I missed out on potential opportunity. If I had chosen to turn off my filter, I could have done better on the test, which may have opened up new doors in my life and career at the time. However, preconceived notions ended up shaping my destiny on that fateful day of the LSAT test. It is crazy to think about, but it is the something that we all do. Our approach to the world is shaped by preconceived notions we have about this or that.

Everything that happens to us and our entire response to the world is shaped by the filters that we use. For example, if someone smiles at us we are likely to smile back. If someone yells at us we are likely to get defensive or yell back.

I read the most incredible story today in the London Times about a girl who was raised by dogs and cats. This is a real paper, not a tabloid, and I am confident that this is a true story:

A feral girl who has spent her entire life shut up in a flat in the company of cats and dogs has been taken into care by police in Siberia.

The child, 5, was unable to speak and acted like a dog when officers discovered her locked in a squalid, unheated flat in the city of Chita.

“For five years, the girl was ‘brought up’ by several dogs and cats and had never been outside,” police said in a statement.

“The unwashed girl was dressed in filthy clothes, had the clear attributes of an animal and jumped at people.”

Police said that the girl had had a lack of contact with humans, despite sharing the three-room flat with her father, grandmother, grandfather and other relatives, the Ria-Novosti news agency reported.

The girl, known as Natasha, is now being monitored by psychologists in an orphanage. She has the appearance of a two-year-old, although police have established that her real age is 5.

The child refuses to eat with a spoon, insisting on lapping up her food straight from the plate, and has taken on many other behaviours of the animals with which she lived, police said.

“When carers leave the room, the girl jumps at the door and barks,” the police said.

Her mother was taken in for questioning when she called at a police station after her daughter was taken away. Her father has not yet been found.

Feral children, the stuff of folklore all over the world, usually exhibit the behaviour of the animals with whom they have had closest contact.

The condition is known as the Mowgli Syndrome, after the fictional child from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, who was raised by wolves.

Such children have usually built strong ties with the animals with whom they lived and find the transition to normal human contact traumatic.

The girl could understand Russian but could not speak it and tried to communicate through barking instead. She was more comfortable with her animal companions than with her relatives.

She is being given medical and psychiatric treatment.

Police are treating the case as a criminal investigation into alleged child abuse.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6373089.ece

The quality of our lives is not determined by the things we own, the jobs we do, the friends we have, the city we live in, the vacations we take, or the world we live in. Instead, the quality of our lives is determined by the filters we use to view the world.

• In the extreme, people will look at the world like an animal would–barking at doors and lapping food off the floor.
• In another extreme, someone will blow the most important test of their life due to a deep seated insecurity that being good at puzzles will make them a loser.
• In yet another extreme, people will refuse to associate with a group of people, prejudging them based on their culture and religion.

And this brings me to you. Your life and career and being influenced, for better or worse, by a set of conscious and unconscious filters, which you are using to interpret the world around you and make decisions.

These filters and how we use them are probably the most important fuel in our decision making. I believe the secret to a happy and fulfilling life is to have filters that empower our experience, rather than limiting our experience. We should be aware of our filters at all times, as we think and feel our way through life.

Sharing of Information, Invention of the Internet, Parrots and Tool Rooms

What You Will Learn Entire careers, families and everything else have been changed by the sharing of information the internet. Sharing of information is what is winning in the world and it is where things are headed – this holds true for your career as well. The world values the sharing of information. What wins in the world and what will win for you is the sharing of information.

I have been having a recurring thought lately that is indicative of a transformation our world has undergone over the past thirty years or so. As a child growing up I observed that most older men I knew always had “shops” set up in their basements or garages. Whether rich or poor, this was something virtually every man I knew had as part of the home. It was a great source of pride. Inside the shop a man would keep his tools all neatly arranged, along with a work table, which was most often built into the garage, outfitted with a vice clamp and so forth. It was a man’s workshop–a place where women were not really allowed. Women also respected this unwritten law and would leave their men to work alone in that special designated space.

Virtually every man I knew in Detroit had a work space like this. Our relatives in Ohio all had them. My grandfather who was a newspaper reporter had one. During summer barbecues and other gatherings men would invite other men into their workshops and over beers, they would admire each other’s tools. Chances are if you go into the house of any manly man over 50 virtually anywhere in the United States you will still find one of these work rooms. It does not matter if he is an attorney, an accountant, or a factory worker; all men have these work benches and work rooms. And men often judge each other by the quality of their work rooms.

Most men who had these workshop areas in the home then probably also had fathers who themselves had work rooms. Men would teach their sons about how to use various tools, and would eventually hand down their tools to their kin. It still goes on to some extent, of course, but more on this later….

One of the first introductions that young men typically got to their father’s tool room was during the Cub Scout’s annual Pinewood Derby. Here, each cub scout was given a small piece of pinewood and four nails, along with some wheels, and with his father the scout was given the task of carving the block of wood into a car, which he would ultimately place on a wooden incline to race down. My father was never into these sorts of activities. My step father was; however, he was dying of cancer when we did this for the first time. I actually ended up doing very well in the Pinewood Derbies growing up. I would just put the wheels on the wood, some weights on the bottom, and some graphite on the nails to help the wheels spin. I remember one year I placed second in the competition. All the other kids had incredibly elaborate cars designed with spoilers, numbers on the side, etc., and they looked great. My cars always sucked and I usually made them just a few hours before the race, but somehow they always did well.

It used to be that a man who had great skills with tools could do so many different things, he was almost guaranteed to make a good living. In those times, there was an abundance of jobs for people who knew how to use tools because a good portion of the economy ran based on that kind of craftsmanship. But to my mind there was more to it than this: the tools represented something about progress, and forged a bond between men and their sons. In modern times, however, something seems to have happened to displace this.

It all started about 10-15 years ago. Today, when you go into homes, what you see are mostly computers. They may be in a corner of the basement, they may be in the kitchen and in all sorts of locations around the house but they are always there. Men now are more apt to show other men their computers and computer work area than their tools. Women also use the computer. It is as if the world has become more democratic and there are fewer secrets. Unlike the old tool workshop, the computer is now out in the open. Unlike the classic division of the sexes, which characterized the old tool work room, the computer workstation of present day is used by both genders–constantly.

Today, men do not teach their kids how to use the computer–the kids learn it mostly from other kids. There is an economic component to all of this as well: When children become adults they are much more likely to make money sitting in front of a computer than they are using tools. It is due to this tremendous transformation in the economy that the computer has taken on such importance. People now walk around with computers and laptops, even sit in front of the television while jumping online to check email. The computer has taken on far more importance than the tools of yore.

Our economy and society have also undergone a massive shift from being fundamentally manufacture-based to being fundamentally information-based. It has been an incredible transformation. And this brings me to my parrot, Penny:

Last Halloween I was in a pet store and I saw Penny the Parrot sitting in a cage outside of the pet store. She was situated on a sidewalk overlooking a busy road. When I first walked up to the bird I literally almost ducked for cover because she made the sound of a car screeching. It scared the hell out of me but I thought it was interesting. African Grey Parrots like Penny are really smart, and Penny undoubtedly had learned this sound by watching the cars day after day. And I would wager that she probably found amusement in the reaction that hearing this sound got from people.

I’d passed up the chance to own an African Grey Parrot years ago and had resented it ever since, reasoning that the animals can cost a lot of money and that they live a long time (longer than humans). So they are a lot of responsibility. Moreover, they can be taught to talk, which is entertaining to be sure-but I also figured the “beak service” may not always be expected or appropriate.

My ex-wife used to work for David Geffen, well known record producer, and a lot of her work took place on his Beverly Hills Estate. Geffen had an African Grey Parrot that he kept in the kitchen; however, he apparently rarely went into the kitchen. One day Geffen went into his kitchen for this or that and the parrot looked at Geffen and said to him in the same accent as Geffen’s butler:

“I’ll get you a glass of water you little shit!”

After this incident Geffen declared he no longer wanted the parrot, and he offered it to my wife and me. At the time we were living in a 400 square foot house in the Hollywood Hills, which also doubled as my wife’s office. The house was so small that we had no room for anything, and the thought of a parrot saying things like “Little prick wants a glass of tea!” all day was just too much for us at the time.

So now, in front of me was this beautiful parrot. The owner of the pet store took her out of the cage and Penny immediately hit it off. I decided right then and there that I was going to add her to my animal collection which includes:

• four ducks,
• three goats,
• four sheep,
• four chickens (2 of them roosters),
• two baby giant Russian tortoises who will grow to over 400 pounds,
• two salt water fish aquariums,
• and a dog.

I brought Penny home with me and announced that she was a present for my daughter for Halloween. I have never heard of a Halloween parrot; however, it seemed like something that would lessen my wife’s anger towards this newly imposed addition to our family. I set Penny up near a window in the kitchen so she could enjoy the view and watch people coming and going. Parrots apparently like a lot of activity.

“She loves to make the sound of cars backing up!” the man who sold me Penny told me. It was true. All day long we now hear the sounds of semi trucks backing up right in our kitchen, “beep-beep-beep!”

Penny had been brought to the pet store by the wife of a man who no longer wanted her in the house. She apparently used to sit next to the man’s bed all day long, and eventually he could not take care of her. I deduced a couple of weeks into my time with Penny that the previous owner must have actually been quite old and not in the best of health.

I was sitting having a very serious conversation with the husband of one of my wife’s friends. This particular individual is extremely intellectual, and he was sitting there dressed in all black talking about existentialism and how there is no point in life. It was mildly depressing just listening to him talk, and at times I found myself starting to drift off into space. Then I heard something really unusual:

“Oh my hemorrhoids!”

At first I was not sure what I was hearing but then I realized it was Penny. The guy was so engrossed in what he had just witnessed, that he completely lost his train of thought. Then a few minutes later it was something else:

“I wish the bitch would leave me alone ….”

And so it goes. During the day she makes sounds like cars screeching out and backing up. Then, each evening around 9:00 pm or so Penny starts making observations of a bedridden older man.

I have got a serious problem, though. Penny refuses to shut up. All day long she whistles about this or that and her random singing, accident sounds and trucks backing up have become way too annoying. My wife is starting to talk about keeping Penny in another part of the house. Like the closet. Okay, not really, but my wife definitely has a point. Something does need to be done about Penny–but what? I like to take naps during the day on Saturdays, which has now become a near impossibility. Penny is far too loud and obnoxious.

So yesterday afternoon I got on the Internet and started looking for information on how to stop parrots from screaming and making constant commotion. This seemed like the thing to do because Penny’s racket was just getting to be too much. After I spent about 30 minutes looking for helpful information, I gave up., because every single page I found on the Internet offered a cure–which would only be disclosed to me if I were to purchase an e-book, video course, or something along those lines. There were YouTube videos in the search results, and the same thing was occurring with the YouTube videos. Some guy would get up and start talking about how horrible it is listening to parrots scream all day, and then he would claim that I would need to sign up for his course if I wanted to solve the problem.

How could it be that no one out there was willing to help me solve this dilemma without promise of personal gain? All it required was a little basic knowledge, which I expected to find readily available online. Yet, after over a half hour of searching, it seemed that everyone was hiding the ball, that is unless I would commit to some stupid e-book or online course.

I am sure if I had searched more extensively for this information I could have found it without having to pay money; however, the experience of looking for a simple bit of information and finding nothing sent me a real strong message: Most people out there are hiding the ball.

In February of this year at the TED Conference I watched Tim Berners-Lee speak. He is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web, and at the conference he spoke about “linked data” and the importance of sharing information. Most businesses and people try to limit the dissemination of their data and certain information, whether out of selfishness or out of a motivation to maintain a competitive advantage. However, Berners-Lee believes that linking and sharing data is something that ultimately helps everyone. Here is part of his remarkable speech, in which he discusses how the web was founded:

So, going back to 1989, I wrote a memo suggesting the global hypertext system. Nobody really did anything with it, pretty much. But, 18 months later — this is how innovation happens – 18 months later, my boss said I could do it on the side, as a sort of a play project, kick the tires of a new computer we’d got. And so he gave me the time to code it up. So I basically roughed out what HTML should look like, hypertext protocol — HTTP – the idea of URLs — these names for things which started with HTTP. I wrote the code and put it out there.

Why did I do it? Well, it was basically frustration. I was frustrated — I was working as a software engineer in this huge, very exciting lab, lots of people coming from all over the world. They brought all sorts of different computers with them. They had all sorts of different data formats. All sorts, all kinds of documentation systems, so that, in all that diversity, if I wanted to figure out how to build something out of a bit of this and a bit of this, everything I looked into, I had to connect to some new machine, I had to learn to run some new program, I would find the information I wanted in some new data format. And these were all incompatible. It was just very frustrating. The frustration was all this unlocked potential.

In fact, on all these discs there were documents. So if you just imagined them all being part of some big, virtual documentation system in the sky, say on the Internet, then life would be so much easier. Well, once you’ve had an idea like that it kind of gets under your skin and even if people don’t read your memo – actually he did, it was found after he died, his copy. He had written, “Vague, but exciting,” in pencil, in the corner.

(Laughter)

But in general it was difficult — it was really difficult to explain what the web was like. It’s difficult to explain to people now that it was difficult then. But then — OK, when TED started, there was no web so things like “click” didn’t have the same meaning. I can show somebody a piece of hypertext, a page which has got links, and we click on the link and bing — there’ll be another hypertext page. Not impressive. You know, we’ve seen that — we’ve got things on hypertext on CD-ROMs. What was difficult was to get them to imagine. So, imagine that that link could have gone to virtually any document you could imagine. Alright, that is the leap that was very difficult for people to make. Well, some people did. Though yeah, it was difficult to explain, but there was a grassroots movement. And that is what has made it most fun. That has been the most exciting thing, not the technology, not the things people have done with it, but actually the community, the spirit of all these people getting together, sending emails. That’s what it was like then.

Do you know what? It’s funny, but right now it’s kind of like that again. I asked everybody, more or less, to put their documents – I said, “Could you put your documents on this web thing?” And, you did. Thanks. It’s been a blast, hasn’t it? I mean, it has been quite interesting because we’ve found out that the things that happen with the web really sort of blow us away. They’re much more than we’d originally imagined when we put together the initial website that we started off with. Now, I want you to put your data on the web. Turns out that there is still huge unlocked potential. There is still a huge frustration that people have because we haven’t got data on the web as data.

What do you mean data? What’s the difference — documents, data? Documents you read, OK? More or less, you read them, you can follow links from them, and that’s it. Data — you can do all kinds of stuff with a computer. Who was here or has otherwise seen Hans Rosling’s talk? One of the great — yes a lot of people have seen it – one of the great TED talks. Hans put up this presentation in which he showed, for various different countries, in various different colors – he showed income levels on one axis and he showed infant mortality, and he shot this thing animated through time. So, he’d taken this data and made a presentation which just shattered a lot of myths that people had about the economics in the developing world.

He put up a slide a little bit like this. It had underground all the data OK, data is brown and boxy and boring, and that’s how we think of it, isn’t it? Because data you can’t naturally use by itself. But in fact, data drives a huge amount of what happens in our lives and it happens because somebody takes that data and does something with it. In this case Hans had put the data together; he had found it from all kinds of United Nations websites and things. He had put it together, combined it into something more interesting than the original pieces and then he’d put it into this software, which I think his son developed, originally, and produce this wonderful presentation. And Hans made a point of saying, “Look, it’s really important to have a lot of data.” And I was happy to see that at the party last night that he was still saying, very forcibly, “It’s really important to have a lot of data.”

So I want us now to think about not just two pieces of data being connected, or six like he did, but I want to think about a world where everybody has put data on the web and so virtually everything you can imagine is on the web. and then calling that linked data. The technology is linked data, and it’s extremely simple. If you want to put something on the web for three-year-old first thing is that those HTTP names – those things that start with http: – we’re using them not just for documents now, we’re using them for things that the documents are about. We’re using them for people, we’re using them for places, we’re using them for your products, we’re using them for events. All kinds of conceptual things, they have names now that start with HTTP.

This talk was very inspiring for me because what Tim Berners-Lee is describing essentially is that the entire Internet was started and based around the idea of sharing information. Without the ability and interest to share information, the Internet as we know it never would have come into existence. This is an extremely powerful observation and something that has changed the way things are done. All of the incredible progress we have made in the United States with the Internet has been based on the importance of the sharing of information. Our entire careers, families and everything else have been changed by this sharing of information. We have computers in our homes. The tool work room is disappearing. Social networks have become incredibly popular and powerful, and these are all based on the idea of sharing of information. Our run away businesses, the ones that have become cultural icons: Google, EBay, Amazon, ITunes, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and so forth are all based on the sharing of information, and the human desire to obtain it.

Sharing of information is what is winning in the world and it is where things are headed. This is why I was so pissed off that I could not find any information about how to stop my parrot from screaming yesterday. I found more people hiding information than sharing it and this disturbed me.

And this brings me to you and your career. The world values the sharing of information. Do not play games and waste your energy hiding information from others. In reality, the more you share, the more will come back to you. When you share information at work with your coworkers you will be respected. When you share information about yourself with your friends and others they will like you better. What wins in the world and what will win for you is the sharing of information.

Ask Others What Course You Are On

What You Will Learn Most times, you do not see where you are going because you are living in it. But others simply see where you are headed. It is extremely important to use this vision of others for your own benefit. You need to ask others around you about how they envision your life unfolding. Your allies will tell you if you let them.

Have you ever looked back at a picture or video of yourself from five, ten or more years ago and asked yourself “What was I thinking back then?” Have you ever looked at something you did several years ago and asked yourself the same exact question?

I have. I have done this a lot.

Sometimes when I look back on the person I was even five years ago I am amazed at how little I knew at the time, evidenced by the mistakes I made. Here are a few of the qualities that characterize me and my life right now:

• I get up early each morning and work.
• I exercise two hours a day.
• I meditate each day.
• I rarely worry.
• I love my job.
• I do not use tobacco.
• I do not drink alcohol.
• I love my job.
• I watch my diet and am at my ideal weight.
• I love my wife.

Ten years ago?

• It was hard enough just to get out of bed each morning.
• I never exercised.
• I never meditated.
• I worried all the time.
• I hated my job with a passion.
• I chewed tobacco from the moment I got to work until the moment I left each day.
• I would smoke when I went out with friends.
• I loved going out to bars with my friends and did it at least twice a week.
• I was at least 25 pounds heavier.
• I was going through a divorce.

These are two very different people I have just described. If I look at the guy from ten years ago I would say he is pretty close to the edge, and in a bad way. Where would you think each person is headed? I can tell you that the people who are now still as I was ten years ago are not doing all that well. I have been lucky enough to change; however, if I had looked at that person from ten years ago, at the time, I am not sure I would have foreseen what an incredible change he could make. I would not have believed in the possibility.

How did I change direction like this? Well, I was fortunate enough to have a friend at the time who sat down with me one day for about 90 minutes and told me exactly where I was heading if I kept on the path that I was on. That was what it took. 90 minutes, and a hard dose of reality. I knew this person was right, and slowly I started to alter my own course.

I am sure you may have had a similar experience as well. Or have you? When we look back at ourselves several years ago most of us realize how little we knew at the time, and how many mistakes we made, which we could certainly avoid today. It can be frightening looking back at our past, and the people we were. The pain we might have caused ourselves or others. The opportunities we might have missed. I know this is frightening to me.

Several times throughout my life I have had people tell me what I would be doing and who I would become in ten or twenty years (or more). This was always something that amused me to ponder at the time; but then, I would often realize later in life that the people who told me these things ended up being right. Looking back on this is really odd for me. Many of the people were much older than me, and probably could see from their own experience what others become. And surprisingly some of these people were the same age as me, and could also seemingly predict my future.

Do you see where other people in your life are headed at the moment? And perhaps more important: Do others see where you are headed at the moment? The chances are pretty good they do. If you were to ask them they would probably tell you, although you might have to push the issue a little bit.

Do you think it would help to know where you are headed?

I do. I know it would help you.

When I was in fourth grade, I had a girlfriend named Tina who was a really nice girl. My best friend, Jimmy DeYonker, was dating Tina’s twin sister. None of this amounted to much. We basically would go over to their house and stand around on the front lawn talking about nothing. Sometimes we would sit in the basement on pillows watching television. We did this just about every single day. It was a fun time of my life in many ways because it was so innocent and everything was so new and exciting. The twins lived in a very nice house and it was in a different neighborhood from where I lived.

Jimmy was fascinated with girls and seemed to worship them. He talked about girls all the time and his entire life seemed to revolve around his girlfriend and talking about how beautiful she was. In fact, Jimmy was completely obsessed with female beauty. He always talked about how he wanted to be surrounded by beautiful girls when he grew up. I would say to him: “I bet you’re going to make movies about girls when you get older!”

One day I realized that my girlfriend was a bit too much of a follower, and I decided that she would probably become one of the girls who stood around in the back of the school in tight jeans, with big hair, smoking cigarettes, skipping class, not involved in much and all run down by the time she got into junior high school. God only knew what would happen to her in high school. I do not know why I formed such strong opinions, but I made the mistake of telling Tina this and it really pissed her off. She never spoke to me again.

The thing about her was that in fourth grade Tina was just as clean cut, cute and nice as could be. I just saw something in her, a melancholy and darkness, that led me to believe she would follow the wrong crowd when the time came. She did not believe the image I saw of who she would become back them but I was certain she would become that person.

A couple of years later I changed schools and I have literally not seen Jimmy DeYonker in probably over two decades. I have never heard anything about him whatsoever.

But several years later, when I was in high school I heard about my fourth grade girlfriend, Tina, and what I had predicted about her had come true. Nothing horrible had happened, but my original prediction had proven true. Then about 15 years ago I was in a restaurant in Michigan and I happened to be seated at a table right across from Tina. She was sitting there smoking and looking all disheveled, talking with a group of friends. I realized she too had seen sitting across the way when I heard her say:

“Do you believe I dumped him in fourth grade because he told me I would smoke!? ” She and her friends started laughing.

I find it fascinating that Tina could not have imagined the person she would have become if she had looked into the future back in fourth grade. Imagine what it would be like to step into a time capsule and look at the person you were back then and who you would become. This could be a positive or it could be a negative.

Incredibly, I was watching an episode of America’s Next Top Model a few months ago with my wife, and the girls on the show all went to meet a famous fashion photographer. Guess who it was. Jimmy DeYonker. I saw him photographing all the girls on the show. His obsession with girls had literally carried over into his career some 30 years after I had first noticed it.

As interesting as these anecdotes may be, I do not claim to have some unique ability to make accurate predictions. After all, other people have correctly predicted my future as well. We can all see some aspects in others that are indicative of who they are likely to become in the future. We can sense it and see it with everyone around us.

We know the path they are on.

There are few surprises that we are likely to witness in the lives of others, because we can often clearly see where people are going, even before they can. And this brings me to you. If you ask the people around you where they see you going, they will tell you if you prod them. Most of them already see it. You do not see where you are going all the time because you are living in it. You are also denying it. But others simply see it. And they take it for what it is. It may sound daunting, but it is important to ask the people around you about how they envision your life unfolding.

Where are you headed? Are you headed for something positive or negative? Your allies will tell you if you let them. And If you are at all in trouble as I once once, there is no stronger catalyst for change in your life.

Stay on Track

I have been interested in self improvement and the process of growing spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually for most of my life. For the most part I believe we are all interested, to some degree, in growing and getting better at everything we do.

If you go to any bookstore, you will undoubtedly encounter thousands of books all claiming they can help you improve in all areas of your life. There are gurus and similar types of people throughout the world who will tell you how to change or improve one thing or another about yourself. For example, if you want to lose weight you are going to find plenty of experts who will help you work towards your goal. There are books, self help programs, seminars, personal trainers, retreats, surgeons, hypnotists, psychologists, drug companies, food companies, dietary supplement makers, and all sorts of other people out there waiting to tell you how to lose weight.

What You Will Learn It is extremely important to stay focused. Staying on track can make a giant difference in the quality of your life. You have to stay focused even amidst the myriad distractions of people and life. Everyone has a spirit within, which drives him or her to do great things. You need to run the race, and once you start running you need to stay on track.

If you adopt the advice of any one of them the chances are pretty good that you will lose the weight you want to.

Losing the weight is not the problem, though.

The problem is keeping the weight off. None of these people and programs is going to spend the next 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years by your side, coaching you on how to stay fit. Instead, they are most likely going to take your money, help you lose the weight immediately–and then disappear into the wilderness.

In order for you to lose the weight you want, your challenge is going to be maintaining a diet over time. You are going to be tempted on a daily basis every single time food is put in front of you. Sometimes you may feel as if you are getting tempted each moment of every day. In fact, the environment, your metabolism, and a variety of other factors are all seemingly going to conspire against you to make keeping the weight off increasingly difficult.

You are not going to find a lot of books out there such titles as How to Deal With Peer Pressure to Keep Weight Off. Instead, most of the content you will find is about getting you started on the right track, but not necessarily taking you to the finish line.

It is the same thing with achieving success in your career and life. You can read everything that I and others interested in your welfare write, and it may get you started on the path towards success. But you and I know too well that anyone can get started on the path to success–however not everyone can run the entire race. Running the entire race is about the most important thing you can possibly do if you want to succeed. Because running the entire race, and staying on the track no matter how difficult it may become, is something very few people can do. Most people start something knowing what it takes to reach their goal, and then they get distracted and dissuaded along the way.

Or they realize that success brings with it its own special set of unforeseen challenges: for instance, one thing about finding personal growth and progressing towards your goals is that you are not necessarily going to be met with a parade by the people around you–even by those who love and support you the most. Success breeds envy and envy breeds all sorts of problems.

Anyone can get started on the road to success and a life of fulfillment. The real task is staying on the path of success. Because once you get on the path there are always multitudes of people out there who want to knock you off of that path. This is just unfortunately how it works. The more successful you get the harder and harder it gets to stay on the path, and the easier it is to go astray.

No one is going to be there to keep you on your mission and this is the most important thing you must realize. You have to stay focused even amidst the myriad distractions of people and life.

In my neighborhood growing up, most of my friends had parents who did things like working as waitress in restaurants, work in factories, and other similar jobs. As I got older, I began to associate with kids whose parents did far more impressive things like run banks and auto companies. But because I had spent so much time growing up with the people I did, I ended up spending most of my time with the kids from the “old neighborhood.” The thing about these kids, however, was that as I got more and more successful in school, in colleges, and so forth, they developed a resentment towards me. Even now after many years, I sometimes wish I had kept my freaking mouth shut about what I was doing. But since I did not, I paid a price in my friendships.

People do not like other people who could possibly be perceived as better than themselves. People generally want to knock people off that pedestal, even if it does not really exist in the first place. The second you start trying to better yourself, you may notice this occurring with just about everyone around you.

My wife and I were discussing this issue yesterday because we went to a beach club down the street and saw a girl she recognized from her “Mommy and Me” class. My wife goes to this class with a bunch of girls she grew up with. She is extraordinarily proud of our daughter who, to our astonishment, ended up advancing far more quickly than the other kids in the class. For example, our daughter started talking, walking, and so forth months before many other kids of the same age. My wife made the mistake of being incredibly enthusiastic about our daughter’s accomplishments in the class, and this ended up alienating my wife from many of the other women in her group. Instead of being happy for my wife, these women started excluding her from various events, which understandably hurt my wife’s feelings.

The second you try and show you have a strength or stick out from the pack, others are going to be around to knock you off your horse. They will do it by excluding you. They will do it by defaming you. They will do it in virtually any way you can. Keep this in mind, those of you who wish to succeed: if you do extremely well in anything, you will need to be prepared for resentment, and for dealing with others who are going to try and knock you off your path.

One of the hardest things for any of us to do is to stay on course. This is something that I have thought about for a long time and this is also something that I think can make a giant difference in the quality of your life. Self improvement is a fine idea and all, but staying on course is what it all comes down to.

Recently I came across list called “The Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership,” which was so powerful I want to share it with you:

1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self centered. Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
6. The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
7. People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

These commandments are valuable on many levels because they can drive you to do exceptionally well in everything you do. They were originally written by Kent Keith in a book called, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Counsel. At the time he was only 19, a sophomore at Harvard.

During his time as an undergraduate, Kent visited numerous high schools, lecturing young students about leadership and giving workshops. Many of the students wanted to change the system; however, Kent noticed that they most often gave up when they faced any sort of difficulty:

“I saw a lot of idealistic young people go out into the world to do what they thought was right, and good, and true, only to come back a short time later, discouraged, or embittered, because they got negative feedback, or nobody appreciated them, or they failed to get the results they had hoped for,” recalls Keith. “I told them that if they were going to change the world, they had to really love people, and if they did, that love would sustain them. I also told them that they couldn’t be in it for fame or glory. I said that if they did what was right and good and true, they would find meaning and satisfaction, and that meaning and satisfaction would be enough. If they had the meaning, they didn’t need the glory.”

Each of these commandments is about the importance of staying on course and really addressing the issue.

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. Most people out there are thinking only about themselves the majority of the time. If you do well at anything they are not necessarily going to be happy for you. They are going to think about how your success makes them look. They are going to think that if you are doing too well, you are not going to like them, and that you will not want to be friends with them anymore. These same people are going to discourage your ambition and everything you hope to accomplish because of how it is going to make them look. I read an interesting quote recently in a book called The Best Damn Sales Book Ever:

You know them. The coffee cup brigade are the sales people who walk around all day holding a coffee cup, telling anyone who’ll listen the right way to do things (according to them); what’s wrong with the company, the boss, and the product; and how, if they were running things, it would be different. The only problem with the coffee cup brigade is they never do anything, and because of that, they look to drag you down with them.

People are self centered. They think about themselves first–always. Do not worry about it, though. Love people; do not hate them. Their reasoning for being competitive with you, undermining you (or whatever) may be illogical, but it does not need to concern you or command your attention.

I cannot even begin to tell you how many illogical and nonsensical people I have encountered in my career. I used to tell people I thought they were completely off their rocker, yell at them and so forth, but now I do not even allow problematic people to affect me that much. I have learned that a substantial portion of the population is completely off their rocker. I love them anyway. Rather than being negatively affected by how nuts so many people seem to be, I have just decided to embrace everyone.

When you start doing really well you begin to see a lot of people close to you acting very irrational. A lot of this is due to the fact that your success is threatening to them. Love them and do not fight them. This is the best way to deal with this. Allow them to be irrational but do not allow it to drive you nuts.

You are going to see the worst side of people very quickly the more successful you get. Whether it is your parents, other relatives, your coworkers, or others around you–people will very quickly show their self centered side to you. Do not stress about it. Just love these people anyway. You can analyze it all you want, but just know that they are acting the way they are for reasons which are more about them than you. Love them anyway. Stay on track.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. When I was in law school I used to attend church twice a week and I went on my own. My girlfriend would not go with me and I did this every week. On one Ash Wednesday I saw one of the most inspiring sermons I can remember. It dealt with the fact that if you do good you should not tell others about it. Meaning, you do not want to draw attention to the good you do. The purpose of your good act should be only to do good, not to gain praise or otherwise draw attention to yourself.

Since hearing that sermon I have done a lot of secret charity acts that I simply do not talk about. My wife does not even know everything I do. I am simply constantly doing this or that and little charity things off the radar. I am very glad that I keep a low profile with my charity work, although it is not nearly as significant as it should be–but I keep doing it. What I notice is that this secret work that I do has never gotten “sidetracked” by other people’s negative opinions. Keeping out of the limelight has made it easy for me to continue my charitable work.

The public work I do is different…

However, one of the more interesting things I have seen is that the work I do publicly often gets attacked and criticized. For example, I like to write about how to get jobs, which I have been doing for years. Nevertheless, there are people out there who ascribe selfish motives to this. My life mission is to find people jobs. I have been doing this with an incredible amount of enthusiasm my entire career. Some people claim this is selfish too… In fact, in just about everything I do there are people who ascribe selfish motives to it.

Notwithstanding all the criticism, I have continued doing everything I do because I believe in it. I will always continue, despite the criticism. I believe in who I am and what I am doing and I will continue to do good regardless of what the cynics may say.

If you are doing something worthwhile then continue with it and do not give up. Who cares what other people say about you? What is the alternative they are offering? Who cares if the work you are doing provides you with economic rewards? This does not make you evil. Do good anyway and do not allow people to dissuade you. Stay on track.

If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. I cannot tell you how many people will be there to be your “false friend” and “true enemy” once you become successful. This will amaze you.

In most cases the “false friends” you meet when you become successful will be people you may admire and look up to. They will realize your success and very quickly start calling you “a friend” in a superficial sort of way. You will spend very little time with them and they will suddenly be your friend. Your friendship and their “false bond” with you will be based largely on your success and nothing more. There will not be a deep bond to go along with this and the friendship will most likely be based on what you can do for them, how you make them look, and so forth.

You need to be incredibly careful. I cannot tell you how many stories I have read about boxers, overnight music sensations, and others being preyed upon by more powerful people the second they became successful. When you are successful, you are going to find yourself increasingly isolated in some respects, and you will have a difficult time telling your real friends from your fake friends.

My wife’s family used to be very wealthy and then they lost all their money some time ago. My wife has told me numerous stories about how when this happened many of the family’s former friends were suddenly no longer friends. The family was left with a small core of friends and not many more. Many people are superficial and this is a real shame.

This is just the way it is. Realize you will have numerous false friends and leave it at that.

The real danger of success, however, is that you are going to win a ton of enemies. People will become extremely jealous and simply not like you by virtue of your success. It is really odd to me how this works. You will suddenly have people around you who hate you. Former coworkers you were promoted over and other people who are threatened by your success.

It is always interesting for me when I go to trade shows in the employment industry. I will be standing around doing nothing and competitor will walk up to me and say something like: “You think you are a big deal because your site has more jobs than ours but we still value relationships with employers. If you got off your ass and met more employers perhaps you’d see that your business model is ass backwards!”

BOOM! Out of nowhere someone I never met will walk up to me and start hurling insults at me. When I look into it, it is almost always a competitor who is threatened by our company, or something along those lines. Who cares? Everyone has enemies. You are going to gain enemies when you are successful.

In my case, my companies have employed literally thousands of people throughout the past decade. Not everyone has had a good experience working with me and I am sure some previous employees even dislike me. Our companies have had hundreds of thousands of customers. Not every one of their experiences has been the best. Try as you may, you are going to make enemies just by being successful. Do not take this personally and do not let it make you quit! It is the same process for everyone. Stay on track.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. For the most part, most people are not going to care what you did a month or a year ago. Most people will judge you on what you can do today and the most recent thing you did.

One of the biggest ways this comes out is in helping people. For years I have helped people that were chronically unemployed get jobs. I have taken a personal interest in numerous people throughout the years and have done everything within my power to help them get jobs. After getting these people jobs I rarely hear from them again, and they rarely credit me as the one who helped them get a job. I do not care. I help people anyway and continue to do so.

In my companies I have helped numerous people by giving them massive raises, promotions and so forth. Once people get this the next step for them is often wanting more. Instead of being happy with what they have gotten they very quickly forget everything you have done and want more. Who cares? It is important to do good anyway.

One of the most amazing things to me is when I watch young attorneys. Some of them will work 100+ hours in a week rarely sleeping. Then when business slows down in the firm they will lose their job within a few months. The good they did is quickly forgotten, or so it seems. I am sure you can come up with similar experiences you have had with your own previous employers. You work really, really hard and then people forget about it later on. You help someone, offer something, or make some sort of contribution and it is quickly forgotten, as if it didn’t matter at all.

Do good anyway.

When you are constantly focused on doing good and working hard, these attributes become part of your character. It comes across in how you look, the way you talk, and what others say about you when you are not around. No good that you do ever goes unrewarded. Continue doing good–there is no reason not to.

Many people are constantly evaluating each good action they do, expecting to get a corresponding return. There is much more to it than that and you need to continually be doing good regardless of your expected outcome. You are not going to get an instant return and reward from every good act that you do, but you will be rewarded in your character and reputation. Do not get detracted from people who tell you that your efforts are in vain. Stay on track.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. One of the biggest challenges that people have is continuing to be honest and frank. Most people want to remain strong at all times and to continually project an image of confidence, strength, and power. The truth is that the more honest you are, the more powerful you become. Allow me to explain:

When you try to hide the truth people do not know who you are. Being vulnerable is actually a positive thing because it allows you to be human and for others to care about you and identify with you and your weaknesses. No one expects you to be perfect. Admitting your failures and lapses is one of the more important things you can do, and not doing so can get you into trouble.

I knew of an attorney once who had worked incredibly hard for over 8 years as an associate in two law firms. He was notified that he was a couple of weeks away from being made a partner in a major American law firm. One day a partner in the law firm asked this man if he had sent a letter to client about a matter. Knowing full well he had not, the associate wanting to look good said he had sent the letter the previous day. The associate then went into his office, drafted the letter, and sent it out postdated for the previous day. It was not a big deal and the letter that was sent late was not that important. Somehow, however, the partner that had asked him to send the letter found out it had been sent late, and found out the associate had drafted the actual letter after speaking with him. The associate was fired from the law firm on the spot. Because of his lie, I believe he ended up not getting another job for over a year. This talented and hardworking young man literally destroyed his career over this one incident.

Tell the truth. Just be honest. People will respect you more, people will identify with you more, and you will feel better about yourself. Stay on track.

The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. If you go around telling people you want to lose weight, improve in your career–or whatever it is you are trying to do, you will be absolutely amazed how quickly numerous people will appear to tell you what you are trying to do is impossible, it cannot be done, you cannot do it, you are not skilled or whatever.

This has happened with every single thing I have ever done that has some significance. Do it anyway. The ideas you have are likely to threaten other people, who will come up with one reason after another why something cannot be done. A quote from The Best Damn Sales Book Ever is instructive in this regard:

If you let them, salespeople (and most people, for that matter) will come up with every excuse in the book why it can’t be done. Why? Because they have no vision. They don’t see themselves as successful, they only see themselves failing. In order to fulfill this prophecy they need a reason. So what do they do? They prejudge (most salespeople call it “qualifying”) almost every prospect they come in contact with and decide ahead of time he or she won’t buy.

People will do this with you too. They will prejudge and tell you why you cannot do well. Do not let people shoot you down or destroy your dreams. Small people attack other people’s dreams. You need to be strong; do not ever let others dissuade you. Stay on track.

People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. Most people, you included, I am sure, favor underdogs. We do it in sports, we do it in work.

Fighting for the underdog is a matter of character and spirit. You too are an underdog, or were an underdog. Appreciating the weakness in others makes you stronger and hoping and working on behalf of the good is something that adds to your character. Few people have the sort of character needed to not simply follow the crowd, which follows the top dogs. When you allow yourself to follow underdogs, you show yourself as a leader, and you strengthen your character. This helps you stay on track when people try and push you off the horse, as you take other actions to improve yourself and the world around you. Stay on track.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. I was in a restaurant several months ago and there was a man standing at the bar who was drunk out of his mind. He looked quite respectable but he was acting like a buffoon. He was telling the bartender how he had lost everything–tens of millions of dollars in property. He was upset and said he felt like everything he had worked for all of his life had not been worth it. He was complaining that this all happened because he did not get a certain bank loan.

You can lose everything you have worked for in an instant. It happens. This is not an excuse not to keep trying. Life is based upon forward momentum. Just because something bad could happen in the future, or has happened in the past is not an excuse to give up. People spend years, or decades, building relationships with others and then inevitably, someone dies. It all comes to an end some day, but this is not a reason not to try. You need to constantly be building despite the fact that doom may lie over the hill. Never give up. Stay on track.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. One of my favorite shows on television used to be the show Intervention. In this show, people with drug problems, eating disorders, and others would face interventions, wherein their families and others would intervene–often saving their life.

You want to help people even if they attack you for it. I have been attacked by people I have helped get jobs and others. Who cares? I help people anyway and keep doing my job. Stay on track.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway. If you look around you’ll see the most successful people are the most criticized. All you need to do is pick up any newspaper or magazine to see this. The better you do, the more opposition and criticism you are going to face. This is what happens. You need to always give your best anyway. Stay on track.

Yesterday one of the most remarkable things happened. Our maid announced that she needs part of the day off today because she is running the Los Angeles Marathon. This in and of itself may not sound unusual; however, this woman is in her mid-50s, quite overweight, and recently had a gall bladder operation. I have also never seen her exercise a day in my life. Right now as I write this she is vacuuming and later she will be running the race.

My first reaction was that the idea of this woman running in a marathon was insane. But, of course, I did not tell her this. Everyone has a spirit within, which drives him or her to do great things. It is those naysayers around us, and the prospect of something bad happening that often keeps us barred back, and on the sidelines.

But there is nothing glorious, fulfilling, or memorable about spending your life on the sidelines. You need to run the race, and once you start running you need to stay on track.

Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome

The word “narcissism” comes from the Greek character Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection and was made famous by the Greek poet Ovid. The story is one of great psychological complexity. In the story, Echo falls in love with Narcissus and gets rejected. The story makes it clear that Narcissus is only able to love himself and not others. Conversely, Echo completely loses herself in her love for Narcissus and has no sense of self at all. At the end of the story, Narcissus tells Echo, “I would die before I would give you power over me,” and Echo responds, “I give you power over me.” Both Narcissus and Echo die because their love is unattainable. They, like many of us, cannot find a balance between themselves and others.

What You Will Learn The Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome (NES) plagues a lot of people in the job market today. People with NES see themselves as special, believe they should have whatever they want, and continually inflate themselves while putting others down. People who have NES are likely on a dangerous collision course with failure. Even if the persons with NES do not fail, the chances are great that, they can negatively affect you if you work with them. You need to avoid people with NES.

One of the greatest problems facing many people in the job market today is what I call Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome (“NES”). This is especially prevalent among the younger people of this generation. I would also argue that it is a reason why the United States of America is experiencing an overall decline in terms of economic productivity and its contribution to the world. I first started noticing NES several years ago amongst recent graduates of elite law schools. Over the past five or six years I have watched NES infect a large proportion of younger workers in the United States, and spread beyond this to many seasoned members of the job market.

People who suffer from NES often find themselves out of a job very quickly-whether they quit, are fired, or simply move between employers to deal with their disorder. I need to be clear that this, in my opinion, is an extremely serious subject, and something I believe probably more than 10 percent of the workforce suffers from. I am talking about a disorder I see virtually every week in my conversations with young workers in the job market-and older ones as well-and it is something that can cause your career to self destruct.

NES is something that is not easily defined but, in its simplest form, it is demonstrated by a person being inwardly focused and oblivious to the people and organizations that he or she are supposed to serve. I link the concepts of “entitlement” and “narcissism” when discussing this syndrome because the sense of entitlement most often has classic narcissistic undertones. People with NES see themselves as special, believe they should have whatever they want regardless of the feelings of others, and continually inflate themselves while putting others down. There are five major characteristics that people with NES often exhibit:

First, they are generally preoccupied with fantasies of limitless brilliance, power, and success. While these types of thoughts may occur from time to time even amongst healthy people, the person with NES will generally be quite consumed by these fantasies. Advancement and achievement are extremely important to them and they envision the environment around them as one where they should be the center of all others’ attention due to their achievements.

Second, people with NES generally have an exaggerated sense of self importance that is not commensurate with their actual level of achievement. They expect to be recognized as superior to others without a corresponding level of achievement. People with NES will also generally exaggerate their achievements to those around them. Indeed, people with NES like to speak about their achievements (and do) quite frequently. As a product of these fantasies, the person will often possess a very arrogant attitude. People with NES believe they are “special,” and that they should only associate with and work for other high-status people and institutions.

Third, a person with NES generally lacks empathy and is unwilling (or unable) to identify with the needs or feelings of others. Interpersonally, they are often quite exploitative, taking advantage of others in order to achieve their own ends. In this respect, people with NES often view those around them as objects to be manipulated in service of their ultimate fantasies of power.

Fourth, people with NES are most often very envious of those around them, particularly those who have advantages they themselves do not. At the same time people with NES believe that others are also envious of them.

Fifth, people with NES require excessive admiration. They need constant approval from those around them. People with NES believe that they should be constantly admired by others.

While the psychological underpinnings of all this could certainly be explored in great detail, the narcissism is usually something that the person has developed as a façade and coping mechanism to deal with underlying feelings of defectiveness and isolation. When such people and their work are criticized, they often react with great internal rage because they believe their self image has been deflated. Their response is often to further isolate themselves, and they may do so by leaving the profession they are in, switching employers, or simply directing their rage at those who have criticized them.

There is a difference between healthy and unhealthy narcissism within a company. It is, of course, healthy to have a basic sense of your rights. You have a right to be treated fairly, and you also have a right to be proud of your achievements and to tell others about them. Narcissism becomes unhealthy, however, if you become obsessed with having people think you are special, and if you have not just a sense of your own rights–but no regard for the rights of others.

In an essay, “Working with Problems of Narcissism in Entrepreneurial Organizations,” Richard Ruth of the University of Virginia writes:

Contemporary practitioners, both clinical and organizational, are faced with the pervasive presence of narcissistic disorders in those who consult us. It is a disquieting encounter, because–even as we recognize that our work to understand and assist persons and organizations with narcissistic pathology has increased the reach and efficacy of our interventions, and the lessons of this work in turn have transformatively impacted psychoanalytic theories-there are particular qualities at work with narcissism that are painful to work with analytically, perhaps in significant part because they militate against a defensive introduction of non-analytic methods into analytic work. It is in the nature of narcissistically organized persons, and perhaps also, I will argue, narcissistic organizations, to deny the reality of the other (i.e., the analyst), to wrench the analyst into playing a hated but necessary part in the patient’s internal drama, to try to disable or destroy the analyst in the service of a soothing return to a narcissistic self-sufficiency, and to project onto the analyst, with resentful hatred, a whole internal world of persecutory and toxic part-objects, as the first step toward eventual understanding, health, and wholeness.

While this quote may seem overly complex, it does elucidate a final characteristic of NES that I believe merits consideration: that a person with NES will not confront his or her weaknesses because doing so would interfere with his or her inflated sense of self. Instead, institutions and individuals that call into question that sense of self of the person with NES are perceived by the person as toxic objects. As a final point, this explains why people with NES may change employers frequently or leave their chosen profession.

I realize the picture painted above of NES may appear extreme, however it is important to note that NES is s quite common, especially among the highest performing people inside most organizations. Again, I would estimate that over 10 percent of people starting their careers in major firms have NES and will have more difficult careers for that reason.

People with NES are generally the people who have come from the very best schools and have had a historical pattern of academic achievement that is nothing short of extraordinary. NES is something that can actually create the sort of super achiever who shows up to work and truly excels. In a scholastic environment, where such persons have the luxury of choosing most of their courses, working hard, and getting immediate feedback via grades, and in conditions that demand performance at a high academic level, persons with NES are likely to thrive.

It is very easy for me to pick up the signs of NES when speaking with young people in the job market and others. People with NES generally believe that they should be given the type of work that they want. They also tend to believe that they are extremely intelligent and valuable to their employer. In addition, these sorts of people tend to be very calculating, analyzing most situations vis-à-vis whether or not they are getting the upper hand. If they are criticized by their employer, they may simply leave, rather than facing the possibility of any shortcomings in ability or performance.

As a recruiter I can tell you that I see this occur frequently. Because our firm solicits telephone calls and interest from the highest caliber people on a daily basis, the NES person is one of types of people we often speak with. The following similarities generally define the people with NES whom I speak with:

-They generally have not worked at a “real job” before starting as a first-year associate inside a law firm;

-They generally did exceptionally well in college and attended a top 10 law school (NES, in fact, appears to be more likely to occur in a person who has attended better law schools);

-They generally come from a sheltered, upper middle-class background, or their parents are academics;

-They generally believe they are smarter than the people they are working with.

In essence, people with NES would likely never have made it into a prestigious law firm had they not been sheltered by school, parents, and others for so long. The artificial academic environment, the home environment of privilege, the constant positive feedback from academic institutions (where social dynamics are not as emphasized as much as common academics might have been), and the lack of prior work experience all serve to isolate the person with NES, allowing their condition to grow in the absence of a “real world” environment. While I would be the first to argue that a law firm is not necessarily a real world environment, it is much more like the real world than a school or a sheltered upper middle-class upbringing is.

The issue with NES inside a law firm and other organizations is that the persons with this disorder are primarily in service of themselves. For the most part, working for an organization is something that is not going to quickly lead to massive glory, riches, or fame. Instead, employees are hired to work hard to make money for their firm. There may be little opportunity for the sort of continual positive feedback and the kind of reassurances the NES person needs, and may be used to from his or her upbringing.

What usually happens to the NES persons is that he or she does not hold up well against the initial criticism that all new workers in most companies receive–no matter how constructive the criticism may be.  The person do not take orders well, nor do they understand why others are considered to be their peers. Such people most often leave the employer quickly with fantasies about achievement in a much higher caliber work environment. Or, they may switch between firms for a few years. Some start their own businesses-most of which fail. A few stick with it and become better employees.

While this topic has gone largely unexplored, it is very real and it affects numerous people-especially the ones who appear strongest on paper. I do not pretend to know the answers. Certainly, the inability to find a balance between one’s self and others is a serious condition. Recognizing the presence of a problem like this is usually the first step. The second step, then, would be correcting the problem by getting help. The biggest challenge in dealing with this condition, though, is that those who need help are not likely to ever realize or admit they have it.

If you have completed reading this article, you most likely do not have NES because, if you did, you would not confront it by reading all the way through. You would have stopped several paragraphs ago. What you should understand, though, is that the people you work with who have NES are likely on a dangerous collision course with failure. If the NES person does not fail within your organization, the chances are great he or she can negatively affect you if you work with him or her. Do your best to avoid NES people.

Sick Crows, Your Attitude and Being on the Winning Team

What You Will Learn Everyone wants to associate with winners and hire winners, and everyone runs from losers. The smartest employers typically hire based on attitude. There is nothing more important to an employer than a right attitude. The right attitude is crucial for success – if you have it then everything will fall into place. You need to constantly look like you are on the winning team and show yourself to be a winner.

Over the past week I have been witnessing something extremely unusual in my backyard.

There is a crow outside who appears to be ill’ he’s not doing well at all. The crow appears to be infected with West Nile Virus. He wanders around appearing drunk, frequently falling over. He stands in one place most of the time. The interesting thing about this crow, however, is that all around him there are a multitude of other crows cackling and cawing at him, almost as if they are supporting him–cheering him on. So many crows perched high up in the trees are making noise all day long, looking down upon him.

Anytime I go outside the crows go crazy and warn their sick friend that I am around. They fly close to me overhead if anyone walks near the crow. My family and I have been doing what we can to help, offering him water and so forth. However, the crow appears to be too out of it even to drink water.

The crow spent his first several days wandering around the garden. More recently, he has taken up residence on some wooden steps. When humans are not around, groups of crows congregate around this particular crow keeping him company. All of the steps near the crow are completely covered in bird droppings.

Having never seen animals act like this, I am absolutely astonished by how supportive these other crows have been. Typically when an animal is dying other surrounding animals leave it to die. However, here the crow has a huge audience of supporters cheering for him, hoping he will get better. These crows are really showing a ton of solidarity for this cause.

Most people do not want to be part of a losing situation. Being part of a losing situation makes us extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable, and it is something that we want to avoid altogether. In fact, this is almost a law of the world: Most people, animals and others will do what they can to avoid a losing situation. That is what makes the situation with this crow so remarkable.

I spent a lot of time visiting relatives and others in hospitals growing up. Hospitals to me are about the most depressing places on earth. There are people who have lost their mind. Other people are writhing in pain. Some people are dying. The food is horrible. The surfaces are so hard, often cold. Most of the people are very impersonal. There is a lot not to like about hospitals.

I remember sitting in the hospital once with one of our old family friends when he had come to visit a very sick relative of ours. He was in his 40s at the time and had spent his life in a “hard charging” way having all sorts of adventures and mishaps. He drank a lot and used drugs. He had slept around a lot. He wore leather and rode around on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. He had inherited a lot of money and did not need to work.

But when we saw him that day, within a few moments of entering the hospital it appeared that everything had changed with him. I saw his entire face frown, his body slump, and he broke out into a sweat. I am not sure if it was that he was confronting his own immortality at the moment, or what it was. What I do know, however, was that the sight of the hospital made him physically ill. He excused himself and went to the bathroom where he must have thrown up.

We had walked through the corridors on the way to visit my relative, and the doors to all the individual patient rooms were open. Our friend had looked in each room and each room seemed to hold something that was more disheartening than the last. A man on a lung machine. Someone in another room who looked over 120 years old. Someone in another room who was bandaged from head to toe.

This friend visited my relative for only a few minutes, just enough time to turn down some warm apple juice that was offered him by an orderly. This person had been close to our family, and specifically this relative for his entire life. But after that hospital visit, he just dropped off the face of the earth. He did not even attend the funeral a few years later.

“I haven’t been in a hospital in 20 years!” I remember him exclaiming as we had walked through the automatic doors of the hospital entrance, with a smile still on his face.

But then, within a matter of moments, suddenly he was confronted with his own immortality, with losing and with death. And he simply could not bear it.

None of us want to be associated with the losing side.

When I was growing up my best friend lived with his grandmother, who had gotten multiple sclerosis at a young age, and eventually confined to bed. When I used to visit my friend, his grandmother loved to sit and talk for hours on end. She was a nice woman and I would often sit and chat with her. However, I am ashamed to admit that sitting with her for long periods of time often made me uncomfortable. Looking back I think it was mostly because I was afraid of being sick myself. You might call me a horrible person, but I often feel uneasy when I am speaking with people who are sick and dying, because it reminds me that I too will not be around forever.

I also feel uncomfortable when spending time with people who are losing and doing horribly. For example, on the school playground when kids would pick each other for teammates, the children who are picked last are 99 out of 100 times not the most popular kids. The kids who are bad at sports also typically experience a spillover effect, wherein they also become unpopular with the other kids, due to their lack of athletic ability. The other kids do not want to associate with losers.

I think this is something in our genetic makeup, which helps us with survival. If we associate with people who are losing we are likely to lose as well. We want to stay on the side of the people who are winning. We know that being around winners is most likely to make us a winner as well.

If a man wants to attract the most desirable mate, he does not say to himself: “I am going to fail at everything I do, be unemployed and lose at everything. I am also going to let my body go and get really depressed.”

No. Generally, the man will do what he can to better himself and be as attractive as possible, as powerful and happy as possible and as wealthy as possible. The goal is to always be, or at least appear to be on the winning side. In order to impress a woman, a man does not walk up to her and start explaining what a loser he is, and how he fails at everything he tries. Instead, he does the opposite. When you hear about the most desirable people getting married they are generally not marrying the weak, down on their luck and depressed people out there. They are pairing up with those who appear to be on the winning side.

Did someone ever recommend a bad doctor to you?

“Hey, this guy is horrible and he will really misdiagnose and mess you up. He’ll hack you up real bad. You gotta check him out.”

Of course no one has ever said this to you. Instead, the doctors you get recommended are usually people who are “the best in their field” and the top of this or that. Every time someone has recommended a doctor to me they have told me how the doctor won this or that award–i.e., that the doctor is on the winning side.

In the practice of law, no one ever recommends attorneys to others with a recommendation like:

“You need to use this guy. He lost the case for me and has lost his last several cases. Almost all of his former clients are in jail!”

We simply do not receive these sorts of recommendations from people. Instead we hear about the attorney who wins all of his cases–the best in town.

If a sports team is losing and doing horribly its attendance will sag and go down. Some will go to watch the games, but far fewer people want to go watch a losing team than a winning team. We want to associate with winners.

In school growing up, and out in the adult world, you never see a group of happy people standing around talking to someone who is depressed and complaining. Instead, the person they are attracted to is the one who is positive in nature, smiling and excited about the world. This is the person who attracts friends and followers.

Advertisers do not hire as spokespeople the athletes who have lost more than they have won; they hire the people who win and are constantly exuding excitement about what they are doing.

And this brings me to you: Everyone wants to associate with winners and hire winners, and everyone runs like hell from losers. The smartest employers out there typically hire based on attitude. The best people I have hired in my life have not had the best educations, the best families, or even the best experience: They had the best attitude. A great attitude is the most important possible quality you can possess, and there is nothing more important to an employer.

With very limited exceptions, almost any skill can be taught on the job. You could learn to fly and land a 747 airplane with 500 passengers on it in a week with no previous flight experience if you needed to. A surgeon could teach you how to remove a gall bladder in a week. A lawyer could show you how to write a brief in a week or so. Almost every skill is teachable but the one thing that is not teachable is your attitude. A winning attitude is what people want to associate with, and it will attract others to you.

I remember several years ago after I had been practicing law for a few years, I went out on some interviews. In virtually every instance where I was less than 100% enthusiastic about practicing law, my previous job, and law firm experience in general, I did not get the job. All it took was me offering up a couple of things I did not like or that rubbed me the wrong way. By contrast, In virtually every instance where I was 100% enthusiastic about practicing law and working in a law firm, I got the job.

You see, law firms like people who they can associate with the word ‘positive.’

One of the strangest things about law firms is that if someone has been laid off from their previous position they have an extraordinarily difficult time getting hired by law firms of the same prestige level again. The reason? Because the next law firm who interviews them knows that the law firm did not lay everyone off and wonders why the law firm decided to lay this person off and not others. The implication becomes, almost immediately, that this particular person was not on the winning team. Law firms do not want to hire losers.

I have noticed throughout the years that when people have been fired from their previous job, or if they left a law firm under bad circumstances, they will almost never get hired by another law firm if they talk about this in the interview. Instead the smart ones bat around the subject, or make it sound as if they did not do anything wrong, and they somehow make everything seem as if they are on the “winning side.” Then they end up getting the job. But a top firm will not hire a lawyer who dwells on the negative, even for an instant.

Neither would you. Smart employers simply do not want any sour grapes when they are interviewing people. Negative people will almost always bring that negativity with them and infect those around them. This is just how it works.

As someone in the working world, your attitude is crucial for your success because this is largely what employers buy. If employers buy bad attitudes then they are going to hurt their organization. If employers buy good attitudes then they are going to help their organization. The right attitude is crucial for success.

If you have a good attitude then everything will fall into place. You need to look like you are on the winning team and constantly show yourself to be a winner–even if times are tough. People do not want to hire losers or people with bad attitudes.

You Are Just Fine the Way You Are

What You Will Learn You need to accept yourself the way you are. Most people are not confident that they are good or capable enough – because of this, they always feel a sense of lack. The most important thing you can ever do for yourself is overcome this sense of lack. Believe in yourself and your worth: you can accomplish all those things about which others would have you believe differently.

I was sitting in a sales seminar several months ago and a well known sales trainer got up and started speaking to the audience. He is considered by many to be one of the better salespeople in America, and I was hanging on his every word. The man was describing how he went into meetings in corporations to sell things, and how he always was able to close. His entire strategy was based on what he called “finding the pain.” “You need to find the pain! You need to find the pain!” he kept shouting as he paced back and forth on the stage. By “finding the pain” what he meant was taking what someone thought was okay with their corporation and making it seem awful–as if the company had something horribly wrong with it, which could lead to its imminent collapse. Basically, this entire strategy is based on scaring corporations and other buyers about whatever they are doing at the moment, and convincing them that if they do not change soon disaster will strike.

For example, if this man were trying to convince someone to list a building for sale he might (over the course of a 45-minute presentation) show the owner of the building various flip charts and other information about:

• Declining commercial real estate values in the area;
• More and more people working at home, not in offices;
• Rising commercial vacancy rates;
• The fact that the geographic area where the real estate is located is losing population;
• The increasing difficulty for people to get financing;
• The fact that commercial real estate has consistently underperformed at the stock market.

I am just making up this stuff (I do not know if these items are true or not), but it should give you an idea of how people can be “put in pain” by a salesman. None of this should come as a surprise to you, though. Everywhere around us there are people, businesses and others trying to put us in pain so that we buy what they are selling. This is how the sales world often works.

One of the biggest mistakes that people, corporations and others can make is consistently believing they are not doing enough, which comes as a response to those around them who “put them in pain.” In fact, our entire economic system is based on businesses and people around us putting us in pain:

• The face lotion company implies you look too old and need a face cream to look younger.
• The vacuum cleaner salesman makes you think your carpets are too dirty due to the shortcomings of your existing vacuum.
• The car salesperson makes you feel that you are not complete unless you get more options for your car.

Most of us continually feel there is a “hole” of sorts, and we simply are not confident that we are good enough, or capable enough. This is the game the world plays with us every second of every day. Because of this hole within ourselves, we allow others to help us when we do not need help, fail to consistently feel content with our lives and accomplishments, and neglect to feel satisfied with who we are. We always feel a sense of lack.

If you have some sort of weakness and believe that you are not okay, an entire world is there to solicit you (for a charge), to help fulfill your sense of lack. In fact, I would argue that our entire economy revolves around people preying on our inherent sense of inadequacy. Personally, I cannot pick up the paper, pick up my phone, turn on the television, read my email, or drive down the street without being solicited and reminded about what I lack:

• Advertisements for books in the Wall Street Journal remind me about what I did not know each day.
• Roadside gyms remind me that I need to start lifting weights again and they beckon me with specials.
• Schools advertised on television remind me about all of the things I could learn.
• Car ads on television and in magazines remind me that I probably should have a more fuel-efficient car.
• Salespeople call me daily to try and sell me various products or solutions for one business issue or another.
• People call me on the phone wanting to be my partner in business all the time.
• People come by my house to fix things that need repair, and then they try to upsell me on something bigger, or better (whatever it is) when I am in the middle of my work.
• I am solicited hourly for one self improvement course or another by email.
• A good portion of the searches I do on the Internet return sponsored results that tell me I need to buy something.

I am replacing my lawn at the moment and the person doing the work has tried to sell me a lot of things so far. Most recently he tried to tell me I should invest in an outdoor fire pit/barbeque, and he offered to build one for me–for a mere $16,000. He has been leaving catalogues and pictures of outdoor fire pits and barbecues all over the house for the past several days, and every time I look at those glossy photos I admittedly feel like buying. But it’s $16,000.

“Having a new lawn is nice, but it would really be great if you also had an outdoor barbeque pit,” he tells me.

I am extremely motivated in business and daily I receive tons of emails from various people, promising to teach me one skill or another. For a guy like me, these emails are very enticing. I want to respond and sign up for every single one of them. I do not, of course (if I did I would go broke), but I would like to.

All the time I encounter people that want to be my partner in business, and their pitch typically is based on trying to identify the things they feel I may lack. For example, if they believe I am not detail oriented enough they will tell me that they can bring detail skills to the equation, and that I will do better if I enhance marketing side of my operation. If the person believes I am not a good enough promoter, he tells me he can bring promotion skills to the equation. People around me are constantly trying to identify my weaknesses so they can capitalize on them for their own self interest. People are also doing the same with you.

We are all constantly solicited by various advertisers, who convince us that we are simply not enough. I remember when I was in college I refused to smoke pot with my fraternity brothers because I did not think doing so would serve me well. I was so motivated that I did not want to slow down the littlest bit. Our fraternity house was essentially split up into two groups of kids: there were those who smoked pot a lot, and then there were the others, who did not really mess with the stuff. One day I was sitting in a room with a bunch of the guys who liked to smoke pot. Suddenly somebody pulled out a giant bag of grass, and a group of about 10 guys got ready to smoke. I got up to leave.

“We’ll be better friends with you if you get high with us,” one of the guys said as I was walked out of the room.

I have always remembered this instance. These guys were trying to “rope me in” and sell me on the fact that I was not good enough friends with them at the time. They basically were promising that I could be better friends with them if I used drugs with them. They identified a sense of lack within me and tried to exploit it. But I didn’t bite.

In virtually every city in America there are numerous schools. The idea is that we do not know enough and the schools can teach us what we need to know. There are public schools. There are continuing education schools. There are for-profit schools. There are local community classes about this or that. No matter where you turn, there are people eager to teach you what you do not know. I cannot turn on the television these days without seeing tons of ads for all these various schools. Now there are online schools.

In my grandmother’s last years of life I used to visit her regularly at the nursing home, with my father. In the home they had classes virtually every day of the week about various topics. Incredibly, people who barely had use of their minds and bodies were being wheeled into classes in diapers in wheel chairs where they would sit straining to hear what they would be taught that day. I went to one of the classes once. It was surreal watching classes filled with people at death’s door sitting around learning in a complete stupor. We are continually filling ourselves and others with one form of knowledge or another, right up until death.

Think about what you see when you go to most bookstores. A good portion of the books inside of bookstores are about how to do this or that, be this or that, or become this or that. In fact, most books are a form of self help. When you get to the fiction books, there are myriads of stories that allow us to live exciting, romantic and other sorts of lives in a vicarious way through the lives of others. I absolutely love books; however, most bookstores are filled with books about how to learn this or that and become this or that.

I have been doing a lot of studying of the Internet lately and have managed to get myself on numerous spam lists for various Internet training products, seminars and more. Unlike most people, I actually do not mind receiving more forms of spam because I am fascinated by the amount of things I do not know how to do. Every hour I am now assaulted by emails for e-books, courses and all sorts of things that promise to give my companies a #1 ranking on Google.

I remember when I started a recruiting firm, BCG Attorney Search, back in 2000. Because my greatest interest at that time was in recruiting, I decided from the outset that I needed to do everything I could in order to insure I had others address the financial aspects of the business. In my opinion, healthy finances are the most important aspects of any business.

My first employee was a bookkeeper and I insured that she was given as much support as she could be given from an accountant I had been using for a while. I called the accountant and told him I wanted to insure that my bookkeeper would do everything according to his satisfaction so it would be easier for him to file taxes when the time came. I also explained that this was not something I wanted to spend a lot of time worrying about. I expected him to provide very good oversight, so I could concentrate my efforts on recruiting.

“Don’t worry, we’re happy to offer any help we can.”

Throughout the day the bookkeeper would call the receptionist of the accounting firm for sometimes an hour or more. Their conversations were always initially about accounting; however, only for the first 1 or 2 minutes of each conversation. Since my bookkeeper had never used a modern accounting program called QuickBooks, she had many very simple questions about which button did this and which button did that on the computer and so forth. After a few phone calls, the conversations turned to things like the results the receptionist was getting from classifieds she was posting on Match.com, the dates she had, favorite recipes and more. I knew this because I was sitting in the same room as the bookkeeper. I should have said something about this but I did not. I figured it was good for the accounting firm and the bookkeeper to be on good terms, and I convinced myself that their exchanging information was a positive thing.

A few months into my bookkeeper’s time with us she brought me a check for something like $5,800 to sign made out to the accounting firm. The bill was itemized and contained over $5,000 in charges for speaking with the receptionist billed out at $125/hour. It was a total scam, of course. The receptionist I am sure did not even make one-tenth of that amount, plus in reality there probably had not been more than a couple of hours spent on actual accounting-related discussions.

I fired the accountant.

The accountant had tried to take advantage of me in response to my having exposed a weakness. And when you show a weakness, people may offer “help,” but they will often go too far in a direction that serves their own interests best. The world exists and functions in many respects on people preying on others’ weaknesses.

It is difficult to admit this and to be so direct about it; however, for several years I believed that there were parts of me that were simply not enough. The mistakes I have made as a result of this belief are some of the worst mistakes I have ever made, and have led to my being taken advantage of many times. One of the biggest mistakes that most of us make is that we think that we are not good enough. By this, I mean that we do not have the skills to accomplish things on our own.

The most important thing you can do for yourself is overcome the sense of lack, which we all experience. You should believe in yourself: you may be able to accomplish all those things about which others would have you believe differently. You do not necessarily need others’ strengths and various offerings in order to complete yourself. You are most likely just fine the way you are. The return expected by others who are “helping” you often far outweighs the value of their contributions. Ultimately you may find this disparity is a great deal larger than the very lack you saw in yourself to begin with.

Planning, Grass Seed, Saunas, and Your Career

What You Will Learn In order to really do well at everything you undertake, you need to prepare. The more time you spend on planning before acting, the less time you will ultimately need to spend time fixing things. The advantage is that you are often able to do tasks once and then not have to go back and fix them over and over again. Nothing is more important than planning what you are going to do before you act. The more you plan, the smoother your life and career will be.

We are always fixing things.

Always.

We are always doing everything within our power to fix this or that, and we are continually trying to improve things because nothing is ever perfect for us. However, one of the biggest explanations for this is that we often fail to plan and obtain more information before we act on anything. This puts us in a situation where we end up having to do some clean-up of sorts, or worse yet, all-out damage control. In contrast, the people who plan properly and who relentlessly seek out information seem to be the ones who do the best in everything.

• They spend less time fixing what they have already done.
• They do not worry about things breaking.
• They put their energy into new projects instead of old ones.
• There are fewer kinks along their way.
• They are generally more at peace with everything around them.

There is a huge case to be made for planning and making sure that everything you do is thought out ahead of time. In order to really do well at everything we undertake, we need to prepare, which means to gather information, first and foremost. The more time we spend on planning before acting, the less time we will ultimately need to spend time fixing things. It just makes for a smoother ride all the way around.

I am replanting the grass in my lawn and have been working on it for weeks. Several months ago I was in Home Depot and, while my wife was looking for light bulbs I noticed that they were having a huge sale on something called “winter rye grass.” I thought about our lawn and how it looked really bad, and decided to spend $200+ purchasing several bags of this seed. When I got home I spread a bunch of the seed around. Within hours our entire lawn was covered with seagulls and crows who were feasting on the seed. This continued for a few days. I asked the guy who mowed the lawn about it and he told me I needed to plant some mulch. I went to Home Depot again and got some mulch, in this case known as manure. I spread this all around over more grass seed that I purchased. The crows and seagulls stayed away but within a few days the entire yard was infested with flies. I told someone else about this new dilemma and she told me that I needed to use a different type of mulch, something other than manure. Here, for weeks we had been unable to open the windows of our house. It was like a scene out of Amityville Horror outside because there were flies everywhere.

Nevertheless, within a few weeks my new grass was finally growing and I was very happy about it. There were some close calls, however, because for one thing, I did not realize the grass needed to be watered every single day in order to survive. I had not planned on watering the lawn every day, and a result the grass almost died.

It is only recently that I realized I have planted a winter grass, which will die under summer conditions. How stupid. Now I am faced with having to get more new grass, since I did not plant grass that would last permanently. This lawn venture has turned into a long term project, and I should have thought it through before getting started in the first place.

Now I have had a chemical sprayed on the grass to completely kill it so I can put in the right new grass. My entire yard is brown and I have hired a landscaping company to dig up and remove the old grass. There are actually some grass farms down the street, and I am going over there in a few weeks to pick up a new lawn and have it delivered. I hope it works this time. What all this is about, however, is planning. If I had planned this correctly from the outset, none of this would have happened. I have wasted many frustrating weeks on a seemingly simple, straightforward project, due to a complete lack of forethought. I mean what a complete disaster.

I also like old cars. I have two old Aston Martins I have been working on for about five years now. They have spent years collectively sitting in repair shops around the country. I have fixed their electrical systems, their switches, and just about everything about them. They still keep breaking down. Every single time I try to take one of the cars out for a spin, almost without exception, it ends up breaking down. My wife refuses to allow our daughter to even ride in either car. I am continually doing one thing or another to fix these old cars, whether it means replacing batteries, sending the vehicles out of state to special mechanics, working on them during the weekend. The last three times I have taken my wife out to dinner in one of these cars, once we arrive at our destination, we can’t get the car to start up again. We end up taking taxis and riding home in tow trucks. It is ridiculous. Some of the same tow truck drivers have taken us home more than once. I pay AAA extra money so I can get longer tows. This is how it works: When you do not plan your life you end up like one of these old cars. You never can go that far.

I also drive a truck, a Ford F-450 dually. The truck has never broken down because it is well made and new. Luckily, when I bought the truck I did not have to factor in seemingly limitless trips to the mechanics, and extended AAA coverage. The point is, this truck could take anyone anywhere. This is what planning can do for your life: It can take you anywhere.

When I think about my life and the lives of people I know, I am astounded to think about the lack of planning I see. Our lives and our ability to thrive and do well in the world are in large part determined by our ability to plan. The advantage is that you are often able to do tasks once and then not have to go back and fix them over and over and over again. Planning means spending a few minutes or hours, or possibly even weeks, depending on the scope of a project, before you start a task; you spend this time deciding exactly what you are going to do, and how you are going to do it before lifting a single finger. This is the smart way to accomplish things, and in my mind it is the proper way to do things. However, most people, myself included, prefer to be impulsive most of the time. And impulsiveness usually leads to things not being done correctly, and all of our energy being redirected into fixing what we did incorrectly. In carrying out new tasks it is simply better to plan.

Last night my wife and I had a nice woman over for dinner. She is Irish Catholic, having grown up in a small town in Ireland. In Ireland there apparently never used to be such a thing as divorce. You planned to get married around a certain age; you got married; and then you basically stayed married forever. That was always the plan. Apparently, this woman had gotten divorced, which was a huge deal to the people she knew, because divorce simply is not acceptable where the woman was from. People just planned to stay married forever. In contrast, many people in the United States seem to go into marriage with an opposite idea in mind and end up bouncing around a lot.

When I finish planting the new lawn, I know that I am going to be interested in getting new flowers, bushes, and so forth to place around the lawn. In a sense, I will never be done with my little landscaping project. I will probably go to the Home Depot and see some new plants I like and then select and plant them. Based on how things have gone so far, they will probably be the wrong plants and I will repeat this process over and over again. That is, unless I plan, or else hire a landscape architect or someone who knows something about these things.

The idea is that we should always try to plan out what we are going to do.

And then there is the matter of what I do for a living. I spend 12-15 hours a day finding this and that wrong and then fix the things that go wrong with the businesses I run. My most successful businesses are the ones I spent the most time planning before I started. For example, I run a site called LawCrossing.com, which I spent two years planning before launching the site; it is very successful. Another site called Hound.com I spent a long time planning as well, and this site also does very well. These are just two examples of how planning pays huge dividends in everything we do.

Our company has a guy who goes around doing various types of maintenance work for us. When the air conditioning goes down in our office he will repair it. If we need painting done he will assist us with this. Yesterday the guy came out to my house and was installing an old steam unit I have in my shower in our bathroom for me on his day off.

I am all about leisure products. For example, my favorite past time is to sit in the sauna and then jump in the pool. I keep my pool as cold as possible in order to make this more and more enjoyable. I have been going in the sauna daily for years and I love it. My first sauna I put in my garage and over the years I have become an incredible connoisseur of saunas. For example, I have a special heater that heats the sauna instantly. I also have a Jacuzzi and despite the fact that my pool has one built in, I have a separate portable one that sits outside by my pool because it has more jets and is more enjoyable. I have a trampoline in my yards. A machine that inverts me so I can hang upside down. Another machine that claims I only need to work out 4 minutes a day if I use it. Another machine called a Power Plate which vibrates with a lot of intensity to tone my muscles while I stand on it.

I have been working from approximately 6:00 am to 7:00 pm or so for years and when I am not working I want to chill out in a fast way and there is no better way to do this than by hanging out in the sauna. I cannot recommend this enough. It’s great. I have had parties that revolved around people coming over and sitting in the sauna and jumping in the pool. This is the sort of thing I enjoy and it is highly recommended. Steam rooms are great as well. That is why I was so enthusiastic about having my shower also turned into a steam room.

Without going into a lot of detail, the project has been a complete disaster. He has cracked the tile in the bathroom, broken through walls and there is plaster tracked all over the house. The steam unit is not hanging from the wall in the garage.

The job was supposed to take a few hours and he is already on day 4 and still does not have it hooked up properly. My wife is pissed. My daughter has a huge hole in her bedroom wall they used to access some water pipes and the whole thing is a mess.

This could have been handled simply through planning.

And this brings me to you and your career. Nothing is more important than planning what you are going to do before you act. The more you plan, the smoother your life and career will be.

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