The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Richard P. Feynman, Nobel-Prize Winning Physicist

When my father was growing up, his father used to spend occasional Sunday afternoons driving him through expensive neighborhoods around Detroit and showing him the expensive houses in these neighborhoods.  My grandfather was a newspaper man and never made a lot of money.  When I was growing up, my father also didn’t make a lot of money and did the same thing with me.  It was often uncomfortable cruising three miles an hour down these streets.  A major reason I was uncomfortable with this had to do with the fact that I knew a lot of the kids living in these houses.  Although it did not happen often, when I would spot one of these kids, I would invariably slump down in my seat so I would not be seen. ”Wow, look at that!” my father might exclaim while looking at a particularly large home. I can remember being driven down these streets at slow speeds probably at least once a month for several years while I was growing up.  I never really understood the purpose of this exercise because it seemed as if the whole point of it was to feel envious about what someone else had and we did not.  It was always mildly depressing returning to an apartment or wherever we might go after these drives.  There was never any hint or hope that we would live like this.  It was just a drive down prosperity lane to look at a bunch of nice homes that our family would never, ever be able to afford. At the same time that I was being paraded by the homes of the rich, I was always being told to work hard in school because this was something that was open to all.  The competition to get into Ivy League Schools, for example, was just as competitive as it was for the rich as it was for the poor.  At least this is what I was taught growing up.  I learned later on that for various Ivy League schools, a lot of what happens has to do with connections and wealth, as well.  But in some respects, what my father had taught me about the democracy of most learning institutions was true.  This emphasis on education was almost to say: ”People in our family have never known how to compete with the rich in making money, but we can be equals academically.” One of the saddest moments of my father’s life, I think, was when I did not get into Harvard College.  There were a lot of schools I was interested in and people from that school had never been too nice to me anyway so I was not that concerned with it.  In fact, my first choice of college was actually the University of Hawaii and I was talked out of that by a legion of concerned school officials in the private high school I was attending. I had thought that applying to the honors program at Hawaii would make some sort of difference but no one seemed to care.  I was really looking forward to going to Hawaii and because of my dad’s work with Harvard I actually was given the treat of learning weeks before Harvard decisions went out that I would not be admitted.  My father had been involved in admissions work for Harvard and had seen the sons of other rich and influential men he knew get in with lower test scores than I had.  He must have realized that this idea of democracy did not completely hold true as he had preached.  My father was someone who had spent a lot of time in the military.  He got up at 6:00 a.m. each day and came home from work at exactly the same time, as well.  The day after I did not get into this school, I remember coming home for lunch and finding him sleeping at 12:00 in the afternoon.  I knew he had been so depressed at work that he had actually come home from work to take a nap.  The idea that there was no perfect democracy, that wealth and influence mattered more, must have really shook him to the bone. One of the easiest things for each of us to do is to believe that things are different than they in fact are.  We all have a model of the world and want to look at things in a certain way. In many respects, this is a protection for us against the pain we will feel if we need to change and step outside the box of comfort we are currently standing in.  One of the largest and most persistent hallucinations that we all experience is the hallucinations we create about ourselves and the lives we are living.

• We believe that our careers are different than they are.
• We believe we are more important than we are.
• We believe we are contributing more than we are.
• We believe that our careers are safer than they are.
• We believe we may achieve something that we never will achieve.
• We believe that we have made the right decisions.

Life, for many of us, becomes an unconscious process where we exist almost as if we are on ”autopilot” and end up going through the motions each day while making very few changes in our own lives. In fact, we do everything we can to insulate ourselves against any form of change and protect our own beliefs about the way things are.  This allows us to perceive the world in the way we choose without any interruption of our fantasy of the way things are. What I am talking about is a ”comfort zone” that many people spend their lives in that never allows them to realize what lies outside of themselves.  People need to know what they can, in fact, end up doing if they allow themselves to step through this comfort zone to an area which is uncomfortable.  People also need to show themselves what reality in fact is. One of the best ways of experiencing reality is when you are looking at homes and cars.  A couple of years ago, I was looking at new cars in Pasadena, California.  I initially went to the dealership to look at Auidi’s.  You can buy a nice Audi for around $40,000.  However, the particular dealership I was in also sold Porsche’s, Bentleys, Jaguars and Rolls Royces.  When I looked at the Auidi’s, initially I was amazed.  I had not purchased a car in years and could not believe how advanced the cars were.  There was satellite navigation and all sorts of other things that really made the cars special. After looking at Auidi’s, I went over to the Bentley and Rolls Royce dealership.  I started looking at the Bentleys and was very impressed with them. I noticed, however, that they seemed to be very similar to the Auidi’s.  I test drove a Bentley and could not believe how well the car drove. ”It is actually an Audi all dressed up,” the salesman explained to me about the Bentley.  Since Bentley and Volkswagen were the same companies, all that Bentley had, in fact, done was take an Audi and redo the engine and interior to create a different car (and charge 5x as much).  This was fascinating to me.  I then looked at the Rolls Royces.  Compared to the Audi and Bentley, the Rolls Royce was much nicer.  In fact, after test driving the Rolls Royce, the Audi and Bentley seemed like junk.  Suddenly, I noticed how much plastic was used in the Audi and Bentley.  I noticed where wood was and was not used on the two cars.  I admired how quiet the Rolls Royce was compared to the Bentley and more. The idea I am trying to make to you is that the contrasts between the cars made me realize that what I wanted to perceive (a $40,000 Audi as ”the ultimate car”) was, in fact, not at all true.  Instead, the $40,000 Audi was actually a piece of crap because there was something far, far different out there.  When you see the contrasts between what you want to perceive (the Audi as the ultimate car) and what in fact is (the Rolls Royce is much better), then you start to realize that you are fooling yourself when you perceive one thing. The crazy thing about living in Los Angeles is that there are so many ”open houses” every Sunday.  When you drive down the street in virtually every neighborhood, there are open houses.  You can just as easily go to an open house for a $500,000 house as you can go to an open house for a $20,000,000 house on a Sunday afternoon.  They will open up a $20,000,000 house to the public no matter where it might be, and you can just walk right into it and look around.  This is an incredible exercise in contrast, as well. Seeing what could be is an exercise that can also show us what is possible. In order for you to really be the person you are capable of being, you need to give yourself contrasts between what you are and what you can become.  Just as there are contrasts that exist between various materialistic things (cars, houses, watches, etc.), so too exist vast differences between people and their careers.  The only way you can understand these differences is to allow yourself to become aware of contrasts out in the world and start seeking out these contrasts.  If you are interested in really reaching your full potential and understanding what you are capable of, you need to seek out people who are working in the careers and living the lives that you want to live. Several years ago I was making the transition from running a fairly traditional recruiting company to running a recruiting company that also existed on the Internet. Instead of simply saying something like ”I need Google!” and advertising online, I started going to all sorts of technology conferences. I will never forget going to the first technology conference and being absolutely amazed and blown away by what was possible and what other people were doing on the Internet.  I was being introduced to an entirely new world in terms of the way things worked.  This contrast helped drive me forward and motivated me to incredible action. How do you do the same thing with your career? One of the most useful things you possibly can do is to seek out and research other people who are doing something similar to you in different companies.  Do not simply seek out people who are average.  Seek out people who are the best in the world at whatever you are doing and try and spend time with them or read about them.  When you investigate the histories of most great business people, current and former American Presidents, and others, you will usually find that they have studied in depth the biographies of countless other successful people in their field.  In the case of American Presidents, they often studied these biographies while they were in college, in their first jobs as politicians, and all along as they rose way up the chain to finally become President. Great people, in any field, have generally studied their predecessors at great length to learn what made them successful.  They never allowed themselves to feel content with who they were or what they had achieved and continued to fill their minds with images and stories of people who had achieved great things. Where do you want to go?  What do you want in your career?  The most wonderful thing to understand is that the road map to get you where you want to go already exists. It is in the biographies of other successful people who have risen to the heights you too want to go.  The biography may not be written, and it may be something you can learn about simply by asking, but it is something that you need to know about and need to learn about.  You should be consistently filling your mind with the images and stories of people who have managed to do incredible things with their careers and lives because this is going to motivate you to make the impact you are capable of making.  If you do not use the power of contrasts you will never become the person you are capable of being and have the career you could otherwise have. THE LESSON To reach the goals to which you aspire, you must compare yourself with people superior to you to motivate yourself to improve. Most people prefer to look at life the way they wish it to be, rather than at true reality; move out of your comfort zones and face reality. Do not seek out or compare yourself with the average people around you, as doing so will only mire you in mediocrity rather than pushing you forward.

• There are organizations in which style is definitely valued over substance.
• There are organizations in which substance is definitely valued over style.
• There are organizations in which people wander around in Birkenstocks and call each other “dude.”
• There are organizations in which employees are expected to call superiors “Mister” and “Ms.”
• There are organizations in which employees need to make appointments with superiors before speaking with them.
• There are organizations in which supervisors chew tobacco in the office and during meetings.
• There are organizations that value your having strong family connections more than your work ability.
• There are organizations that are extremely secretive with their employees.
• There are organizations that believe everyone who puts in a solid effort over the course of six or seven years should be promoted.
• There are organizations in which employees work around thirty hours per week, which is considered a good effort.
• There are organizations in which employees are hired and are then almost universally encouraged to leave after five or six years of service.
• There are organizations that have been collapsing for years, but that portray themselves to employees as strong and secure.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, however, that your success and happiness in your career may have more to do with your thoughtful and intelligent decision to join an organization that best fits you culturally. People simply want to be around people they like, and when people like each other in the workplace, both sides of the relationship benefit. OBSERVATION:

We all have certainly heard that Albert Einstein flunked out of grade school. Perhaps Einstein was too concerned with the theoretical rather than the practical. Whatever the reason was, Einstein simply did not experience success in the environment he was in at the time because the school and the people in it could not understand or appreciate where he was coming from intellectually. Do the employees in your organization understand where you are coming from? In a business environment, when the employee and the employer see eye to eye, success is far more likely than in situations where they do not.

Employees Often Fail to Give Strong Consideration to Culture When Choosing an Employer.

The problem with the way many employees manage their careers is that when choosing a job, they are motivated primarily by prestige and money, more so than by the cultures of the organizations they are considering. When an employee instead evaluates offers based upon where she believes she fits in the best, that employee is far more likely to find happiness and success in her career. The problem, however, is that most employees simply do not think this way, the reason being that employees are competitive by nature, and “fitting in” is not nearly as easy to quantify as things like money, company cars, and other perks. In almost all respects, it is most difficult to gain the best positions with the largest, most prestigious, and highest-paying employers. Yet, the pressure to join these organizations typically commences while an individual is in school. The problem with this type of thinking is that it can often lead employees to make horrible career decisions. If an employee is always thinking in terms of what he can do to look best to others, he will often neglect what is best for him personally. None of this is to say that there are not numerous advantages to come from being part of a truly significant organization. Nonetheless, this should not be the only consideration on which an employee bases his career choices. OBSERVATION:

Many people, in fact, have subordinated much of their happiness in life in pursuit of money, respect, power, and admiration from their peers. This leads many people to base their entire concept of happiness on things like having the largest house, the most expensive car, and other traditional accoutrements of the American Dream.

Failing to Consider Culture Ends Many Careers Prematurely–Careers That Could Have Otherwise Been Highly Successful.

It is easy to find out an organization’s compensation structure, but this is a simple and superficial distinction to make between organizations. It is not as easy to gauge an organization’s prestige level; however, it is much more difficult to evaluate a organization’s culture and whether that working in that culture will keep you happy over the course of your career. One of the most significant mistakes employees make when evaluating competing offers from organizations is believing that money is the most important factor they should be considering. While money is certainly an important component of any analysis, it is not the most important factor. Making any career decision solely based on money can be a horrible mistake. If you properly assess all variables, including culture, and you choose the right organization, you may have a stable career and life. If you go to an organization just because of monetary considerations, you may wind up so disgruntled that you are eventually not working at all. OBSERVATION:

On a day-to-day basis, in each of our offices, we speak with employees who began their careers with ultraprestigious, high-paying law firms. Many of these attorneys stopped practicing law two to seven years into their careers because they became disillusioned. Most of these lawyers say things like “I would never work in another law firm. I would only work as an in-house attorney.” The résumés of these attorneys are sometimes littered with one firm job after another, where the next and then the next firm were virtually identical in terms of culture to the very first firm that the attorney joined right out of law school. Of course these attorneys are not happy practicing in a law firm. They have only worked for one type of law firm during their entire career. The problem is that these attorneys have worked in a firm culture that was such a bad fit for them that they never got the opportunity to experience practicing law with a group of people they like, respect, and emotionally profit from. Not all law firms are the same. Fitting in with the community of lawyers that make up a particular firm is the key to long-term success and satisfaction in law firm life. Not fitting in is often the key to failure and can even lead to one changing career paths altogether.

Consider the choice of where to live, and compare the process of making that decision with choosing to join any particular firm or organization. Some people prefer the lifestyle in New York to Los Angeles, or prefer San Francisco to Seattle. Preference for one city or neighborhood is entirely personal and individual. The considerations are whether we feel accepted and appreciated in a community and whether we see people around us who share similar goals and aspirations. Whether that community supports and enhances your lifestyle becomes a driving force in your deciding where to live. And, just as you need to feel that you can thrive in the community in which you live, you should feel that you can thrive in the environment in which you work. You should constantly ask yourself these questions: Is this organization a place where I will feel accepted? Will I be surrounded by people with the same values and goals? Will this organization complement my lifestyle? Boiled down, what is the culture of the organization?

Making a Lateral Move Is Your Best Chance to Find Your Perfect Firm Culture

Many of our candidates, when preparing for an interview, want help identifying those questions that will help them unearth the true culture at a firm. In short form, the question that needs to be answered for each lawyer and every employee is simply, “Will I like it at this firm or organization?” Unfortunately, try as we might, we cannot always answer these questions as well as we would like. The culture of a firm may vary from practice group to practice group, and it is impossible to pin down with any meaningful certainty whether or not a good firm is always a good fit. Often, the only way to learn this is to actually go to the interviews and speak with the attorneys or individuals you may be working with. It’s important to remember that the interview process for a lateral move is much different from when a law student interviews for a summer clerkship. This is a plus. Unlike summer associate openings, which can sometimes number in excess of a hundred, when a law firm conducts a lateral search, many candidates are interviewing for one or possibly two available openings. In these situations, the law firm is not as concerned with competing for any one particular candidate. Conversely, when a firm is in a heightened state of competitiveness, it can sometimes be more difficult for the lawyer interviewing for the job to get a sense of whether the particular law firm is comprised of people with whom the lawyer would want to spend the rest of his or her career. But this is the kind of firm you should be seeking. Keep your best interests at heart, and do everything you possibly can to ensure that you find a good fit. Obviously, your task is to get the job; however, you also need to understand the firm’s culture. At BCG we have identified several ways in which you can evaluate whether a particular firm is right for you. Preparation Is the First Key to Evaluating Culture. You’ve gotten an interview. Before the interview, you should research as much as possible to determine the objective factors: How big is the office? What is the salary? In our opinion, this objective fact gathering is helpful in determining how well the firm or organization is doing financially and how it has grown over time. Diversity. It may also be important for you to look at the firm’s or organization’s commitment to diversity. We don’t know of any organization that doesn’t have an antidiscrimination policy. However, some organizations are more proactive in this area than others. Is it important to you that there are employees of color or of various sexual orientations? Location, location, location. Where is the office located? Of all these factors, we find that this tends to be the least important factor in evaluating culture. A California company known for having employees that wear Birkenstock sandals around the office might have a New York office with that same type of atmosphere. However, even in Hawaii or Miami, there are going to be radical distinctions amongst organizations. These distinctions are important. The city makes little difference in regards to the type of culture that exists within the organization. There are laid-back firms and organizations in Chicago that are down the block from offices where you wouldn’t think of entering without wearing your most formal business attire. The key is identifying and understanding the various cultures of the organizations themselves. Governance. How an organization conducts its day-to-day business is important. Employees have to run the business of their organization, and how they choose to structure the organization can say a lot about its culture. The business model often reveals the core values of the organization. Generally, organizations are governed in one of several ways: The democratic organization allows each employee to become involved in the decision making, regarding anything from new hires to compensation to long-term planning. For many organizations, the democracy may only include supervisors, so it is not necessarily realistic that a junior employee will be making high-level management decisions, or even weighing in with an opinion. However, many democratically run organizations do have some level of junior involvement within the organization’s governance, such as on pro bono committees or with respect to summer associate entertaining and recruiting. This type of culture is entirely inclusive, although sometimes it is the result of too much administration bogging down each individual lawyer’s already heavy workload. The values reflected here are participation and integration, which may come at the cost of expediency and/or consistency. Many organizations govern using a small, centralized committee of decision makers, which results in greater consistency, in terms of vision and management. However, this culture is more exclusive in terms of firm governance, which may turn off the young attorney or employee who wants to be a part of the decision making and planning efforts of an organization. In this system of governance, it’s important to find out how the leaders are chosen and the values they hold dear. At the end of the day, however, what is more important than the method of governance is why a particular organization chooses the business model it does. Asking an organization’s superiors why things are the way they are helps define an organization’s culture and vision for the future. If you hear that the goals of the business match yours, you have likely found a culture in which you will succeed and be happy. Word on the Street. You probably know the reputation of the organization where you’re interviewing. Is it known around town as a sweatshop or a quality-of-life organization? BE CAREFUL! Even if a reputation is mostly on target, you could end up joining a practice area or working with a partner that is decidedly unlike the overall firm or business culture. “Lifestyle” and “quality-of-life” are other ways the business community may refer to a certain organization. These terms have become somewhat hackneyed of late, but still have value in terms of defining a particular organization. A quality-of-life organization is fairly self-explanatory, which is to say that the organization has placed a premium on allowing associates to have lives outside of work. What does that mean? Sometimes it means a slightly lower billable-hour requirement than at other firms. Other times it may mean that the firm’s or organization’s management is more amenable to situations other than typical full-time associate positions, including part-time, telecommuting, flex-time, or non-partnership track. The popularity of this term has caused it to be somewhat diluted. Don’t take these types of labels at face value, and investigate what that term means within a particular firm. Again, be careful. Sometimes attorneys and job seekers interviewing for a position swing too far in terms of evaluating. Spending all of your time in this process wondering, “What can the law firm or business do for me?” will prevent you from showing a potential employer that you are a good match for it. This is a two-way street, so showing a law firm or other organization what you are made of is just as important during an interview as evaluating the organization.

Conclusions

The key to true job satisfaction is determining which organization’s culture suits you and your career. Finding the right culture will allow you to find a job that won’t feel like work. What is going to make the difference over time is not a $5,000 per year salary differential but whether or not you feel comfortable and appreciated in a particular environment. No matter what the reputation of the organization is, going through the process of discovering who the people are and what they think of you and your skills will be the best indicators of your potential long-term satisfaction and success. THE LESSON Just an ad for the Career Coaching Club.

• Organizing a sock drawer
• Cleaning out the garage
• Organizing under the bathroom sink
• Purchasing new dishes
• Cleaning out the glove box

The inability to keep small details organized in your life is often a reflection of your ability to master the details of your work.  If you cannot master the details in your own life or surroundings, it often looks to your employer and those around you that you will never be able to master the work you are doing. Several years ago, I was speaking with a management expert and he told me that he can tell a lot about what sort of employee someone is going to be by how clean they keep their office.  We have all seen offices in various states of disrepair, and I wonder if there is some truth to this statement.  Incredibly, this management expert would hold back certain employees from promotions and other advancements based on how they kept their office.  He did not go into a lot of detail about this; however, I instinctively got a real sense about what he was talking about.  There is something to this. I have noticed throughout the years that the people who tend to be the most organized also tend to be the same people who turn work in on time.  Everything about our work is really in the details.  We give people a good understanding of how good we are likely to be at something based on how many details we have mastered.  The more we have mastered the details of our work, the more it appears as if we have mastered the work itself. When I call various executives on the phone, I am always able to tell a lot about them based on the content of their voicemail.  For example, do you know people whose voicemails are like this: “Hello.  Today is January 19 and I will be in the office all day.  If I did not pick up the phone I am likely on the phone with a client or …” or like this … “Hello.  This is John.  Please leave a message!” The person whose voicemail contains a date and so forth sends the message that they are really on the ball and ready for business.  You sense that they have a routine that they follow every single day, and you also sense they are on top of whatever they are doing.  This person sends off an air of professionalism and attention to detail that most others simply do not.  For what it is worth, I have seen that people who are that on the ball with their voicemail messages are most often the best employees and do well with almost every employer they work with. It is all in the details. I work in a library of sorts, and am surrounded by thousands of books I have purchased throughout the years.  New books arrive in my office on almost a daily basis.  I have notes on my desk and stacks of books in various corners around me that I am waiting to review.  I am hardly someone who looks all that organized, but there is actually a method to my madness.  I keep one notebook on my desk, and one only, and I take notes all week long.  At the end of each week I make lists and deadlines from these lists and reorganize the books in my office and put them back in one place.  If I did not do this, I am not sure anything would get done.  One of the most important things for me, personally, is being incredibly well organized.  I never let any task I am working on slip through the cracks. Several years ago, someone I was working with called my mind “like a vice grip” and seemed to admire me for this.  I did not start out this way, and used to be horrible with details, but learned very quickly once I became an attorney how important the details really are.  The story I am about to tell you makes me smile when I think about it, but it is in actuality not really that funny.  My first job out of law school was working for a federal judge and as part of this, we were responsible for denying hoards of petitions by various prisoners in the federal system to get out of jail early or have their convictions overturned.  One day, about three weeks into this first job of mine, the judge I was working for called me into his office and closed the door.  He seemed visibly upset and I could not figure out what was wrong.  I got a strange “vibe” from him that I will never forget that seemed to be a combination of extreme fear and anger. “Do you realize that you made a typo on this order and almost let a bank robber out of prison?” he said. I looked at the order.  I had gone through probably 20 petitions of prisoners that morning and denied all of them.  For some reason, however, I had done a “search and replace” in an order I had worked on and replaced the word DENIED with the word GRANTED.  The judge had even signed the order and, only after reviewing all of the orders he signed, did he realize the mistake I had made.  The judge knew how to look at details and was extremely good at it.  In fact, he was a superstar, and to this day I respect him more and more each day for his incredible ability to control details.  Despite having the most cases of any judge in his district when I worked with him, he had the shortest docket (cases pending).  He had time for work, rest and relaxation.  He did not have to take work home with him every night.  He knew how to control the details better than any one else I have ever known.  Controlling the details has huge rewards. I never made a mistake like that again.  Incredibly, I had almost ended up letting a bank robber out of jail by not learning to control the details. Keeping your office and surroundings neat and organized is a sign of detail mastery.  There is a certain level of discipline that is required to keep things neat, clean and organized.  If someone does not have this level of discipline on their desk, in their office, in their home and even in their car, then people around them wonder if they can also organize other aspects of their careers and lives.  A career requires discipline and a life requires discipline as well.  Getting your surroundings organized is a metaphor, in my opinion, for getting your mind organized. For several years, the desk in my office was on the second floor of a building and faced a window right above a traffic light.  The street that my office overlooked was not that busy but was perpendicular to a street that was extremely busy.  Thus, most of the time the stoplight in front of my office was red and there were generally people sitting in their cars waiting for the light to turn green.  I would estimate that 90% of the time I looked up, I could see people stopped at the stoplight.  I could look down at people directly in their cars.  (A disturbing fact I am going to just get out of the way is that a lot of people pick their noses when they are sitting at stop lights.  For years I looked down out of my window and saw various people picking their noses.  Without going into detail, I would estimate approximately 20% of the people I witnessed on a day-to-day basis did something inappropriate with the products of their excavation.) However, one of the more interesting patterns I started to notice after some time was how people’s cars looked on the inside.  Some people have very clean cars that look well organized inside and others have cars that look very unorganized and are dirty.  People keep their cars in an extraordinarily different level of cleanliness on the inside.  Some people have a collection of fast food bags and so forth that probably have stuff growing in them together with years of newspapers.  It is incredible to me the level of disrepair that different people keep their cars in. One day I looked outside and I noticed one of our contract temporary employees had been pulled over by the police right beneath my window, and they were searching her car.  This woman had been brought in from a temporary employment agency to help us answer phones during a very busy time.  This woman was incredibly clean cut, very beautiful, very well spoken and appeared quite polished in all respects.  However, as they pulled stuff out of her car I realized there must be something terribly wrong.

• There were dirty blankets and towels
• Multiple hairbrushes
• Several gym sized duffel bags that appeared to be full of old clothes
• Rotten fruit
• You could see several empty packs of cigarettes
• A half full bag of cat litter

I had no idea why the police were searching her car, or what she had done.  What concerned me was her car.  From a psychological perspective, it seemed to me that what was going on in her car could only be a reflection of what was going on inside of her mind.  The mess inside of her car was shocking for its magnitude and was such that it probably would have taken her at least a year to allow the car to get to that point.  I filed this away in my memory and told myself mentally that the woman did not seem all there. Over the next week, it become obvious there were several problems with this woman related to her ability to get things done.  She was making incredibly inappropriate remarks to others and, although I was not involved in supervising her, the issues with her soon became profound enough that whomever was in charge of supervising her ended up telling the temp agency to send someone else.  On her last day of work, she went around the office telling everyone that her supervisor was evil because he was a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) which was definitely a first in my career.  In a word, the woman turned out to be quite crazy. I have noticed that the most psychologically unstable people typically have the dirtiest and most disorganized bedrooms.  The most disorganized offices.  The most disorganized surroundings.  When I was young, I was living in Spain with a bunch of young people one summer, and there was a girl in the room next to me.  One day, the person supervising the dorms walked past her room and saw that it was a complete wreck.  There were papers everywhere and the room was in very bad shape.  The most interesting thing to me about this was how he reacted.  Later that day he called her into his office and confronted her, saying that he thought she was using drugs due to the condition of her room.  As it turned out, he was right.  She gave him the drugs,and the next day they put her on a plane and sent her home.  She ended up getting expelled from the private school she was attending due to this. The person overseeing the dorms made this connection from nothing more that the condition of her room.  He had noticed it was clean for weeks and then suddenly went to hell. He said something I will never forget: “Our surroundings are a reflection of what is going on in our minds.”  For many people, doing drugs for your mind is like going into a home and turning over all the furniture.  When people’s minds are messed up, their surroundings go to hell as well. When I was growing up I lived with my mother, and she held a job which required her to leave for work every morning at around 7:00 or 7:30 am.  She would not come home each evening until around 6:30 or 7:00.  When she would get home, she would often spend an hour or two making dinner and then finally call me and my sister down to eat at around 9:00 pm.  By the time we all finished eating at around 9:30 or so, my mother would be far too tired to do the dishes and they would be stacked in the kitchen with all sorts of dirty pots and pans.  Because my mother tended to cook a lot, the collection of pots and pans would often be quite extensive and the kitchen would be a real mess. The next day I would invariably come home from school and see this giant mess.  The mess would be so huge that I would often decide to wash these silly dishes, rather than go out to play.  Given my mother’s hectic work schedule, the entire house would often be messy as well.  My room and my sister’s room would be messy. My mother’s room would be messy, and various rooms in the house would all be messy.  If I did not do the dishes, my mother might do them when she got home, or she might declare that we should all go out to eat.  This was pretty common.  She would take us all to a Greek diner called the Grecian Table up the street and, once there, we would sit there for an hour or more while she smoked cigarettes and drank coffee while eating and waiting for our dinner.  These dinners were so boring and long.  Typically I would go down the street while we waited for our meal to a little pizzeria, called Buscemies, and play video games. The plates would be back home piled up when we got there.  I always had a real dislike of all this mess, and it was something I found quite upsetting.  What I noticed was that when things were not messy around the house, everything seemed to be much calmer and happier.  A clean and organized house, in many respects, means a clean mind.  Your office and your surroundings should remain clean because this is often a reflection of your ability to master details.  What do we think about the person whose room may be clean but there is dirty clothing, papers and other stuff hidden beneath their bed?  What is our opinion of the person who had a clean house but whose closets are stuffed to the brim with junk? There is something to this, and we all sense it.  A messy closet can almost be like a messy area of our mind–it may be hidden from public view, but it is there. Many people are calmed by the serenity of zen gardens and its simplicity.  Steve Jobs, who has studied zen, has made an entire career out of doing small details well and keeping things uncluttered in his work at Apple. Around 25 years ago, I saw a fascinating presentation by a handwriting expert.  He was able to give in-depth psychological insights to people by only examining their handwriting and, in most cases, only their signature.  I did not know it at the time, but people’s entire psychological makeup can often be deduced from just observing nothing but their handwriting.  What was so interesting about this was that the handwriting expert provided in depth psychological profiles of people without ever meeting them.  After he had done this, a psychologist was brought out who had spent hours interviewing and testing these subjects and in every single case, the handwriting expert was right on.  The idea is that we can tell a lot about people based on what they put out there on the outside.  A handwriting sample that shows a lot of detail, for example, is a person who is typically very detail-oriented.  A sample that shows messiness–a person who is not and so forth. However, the most interesting part of all this was the the handwriting expert’s observation and belief that people could change by changing their writing style.  He believed that if people started paying more attention to their writing style, they could become more like the person they wanted to be based on mimicking the writing style of the person they wanted to be like.  I found this incredibly interesting at the time.  This is almost similar to the change I experienced psychologically when the house I grew up in was clean and organized. There is a way that I have noticed throughout the years to recognize people who will do well in their jobs.  It is in the details, and the details are evident in the way they maintain their work environment, cars and even homes.  The more attention there is to detail in these regards, the more likely the person is to be good at whatever it is they are doing.  If you have not mastered your mind, it is going to come through in the details. You need to understand that people are watching you and how you manage your surroundings as evidence of how you master details.  Your surroundings are a reflection of what is going on inside your mind.

• I had to be in the office all the time
• I could not take vacations without having to worry about deadlines
• I was always supervised and at the mercy of clients, courts, and higher up attorneys

This is the way of life for most attorneys in large law firms. They may make good livings, but it is very difficult for them to enjoy their lives and careers–or the fruits of their labor. Moreover, because they do not have other skills, they cannot seek other employment, and they go through life exceedingly unhappy. There are exceptions, of course, but many attorneys live like this. The thought that they need to be attorneys is what imprisons these people. If they thought differently, their lives would become different and they might be happier. Most people never abandon this thought process, however. They remained imprisoned, out of a fear of what might happen, should they deviate from the prescribed path. Our presumptions of what we should be doing imprison us; however, our presumptions of what we should not be doing also imprison us. Many people do not do the sorts of jobs they are good at and would like to do because they do not believe these jobs are respectable. Many people do not marry the sorts of people they would like to because of differences in social class or religion. Many people never come out of the closet, because they do not believe being gay is respectable. I cannot believe how much I enjoy my life and how different my life has become since I learned to think differently. For as long as I can remember I have done self-hypnosis to “charge up” my mind and convince myself on a subconscious level that I can do all sorts of incredible things and follow my dreams. I have programmed my mind to change my thinking for the better. This has made a huge difference in my life in all respects. Self-hypnosis has enabled me to go beyond the limits my mind has set for me and attain freedom. When you see the most successful people in any profession, you will generally find people who have dismissed the limits on what is possible for them, who worked on their minds to limit, or eliminate various mental barriers they once had. The fewer barriers we see, the more we can achieve. The more freedom we believe we have, and the more we believe we can do, the more we will achieve. Obligations to others is also something that often limits our freedom. These obligations could be to members of our religious group, our employer, our children, our spouse, or otherwise. Obligations to others are a necessary part of being a responsible adult; however, many people allow these obligations and commitments to control their lives altogether. They are trapped in these relationships. I once knew of a man whose wife would never let him leave home, except to go to work. When he would leave for reasons other than work she would feign some sort of sickness, or crisis, to keep him at home. The man scarcely was able to leave the confines of his house except with his wife, or from 9 to 5 when he was at his job. This is more common than you might think. A great many people find their freedoms limited by others. Financial obligations can also limit our freedom. Financial obligations may make it virtually impossible for some people to ever stop working–or take a simple break now and then. These people may take on giant mortgages, car payments, loans, and so forth, which limit their freedom. These obligations make it difficult for these people to do anything but their jobs, even if they would like to do something else. At the same time, a lack of money also limits our freedom. The more money people have to spend, the more they can do. If you have enough money you can retire from your job. You can start a business, or take a vacation. Lack of money for many people is a continual reminder that they lack freedom. Money buys freedom to some extent. Habits limit our freedom. Many people engage in substance abuse and have other problems that limit their ability to travel and do many things. Several years ago I wanted a friend of mine, with whom I had grown up, to come visit me from another state. He told me he wanted to come visit me but he confided in me before he took the trip: “Listen, can you get any pot? I smoke it every day and I do not want to travel with it on a plane because I might get busted.” When I told him I did not know where someone could buy this, he told me he could not visit. A few weeks later he called and said he found someone in Los Angeles who would meet him at the airport with some pot so he could come to visit. The reason this was so fascinating for me to hear was that he was literally grounded in a city–all due to his drug habit. I have known people who were alcoholics who refused to have dinner in restaurants that did not serve hard liquor. Imagine not having the freedom to eat at certain restaurants because of a habit that severely limits your freedom. Finally, many people are limited by geographic or physical constraints. If you lived in North Korea, this would be a geographic constraint that limited your ability to be successful. Similarly, if you are living in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and have incredible talent as an actor, music conductor, or otherwise, you are limited, and would have greater opportunity in a larger city. If you get sent to prison, you are of course, limited physically as well. Attaining psychological and financial stability and success in your career and life typically go along with having more freedom. Most people do not perceive they are free, and they constantly create barriers to their freedom, which limits them in everything that they do. Your ability to create a world around you that supports and does not limit your freedom will determine your ultimate level of success.