Practice Makes Perfect

A year or so ago I was at a wedding, and a very successful doctor started talking to me. I was very impressed with this doctor and already knew of him through several people before our meeting. He was involved in some fascinating and cutting-edge research I found quite interesting.

I love meeting people who are passionate about their careers because they give off so much energy. People who achieve amazing and significant success in any profession always have a lot of passion for what they do. If you allow them to, these people will talk your head off about what they are doing. They will show you their collection of books about the subject, debate various philosophies about what they are doing, and more. People who commit to something are the most exciting people in the world. They provide me with an incredible education. I wish everyone was committed to what they do.

In speaking to this doctor, however, I realized despite his incredible knowledge of what he was doing, he was not satisfied. “What I really want to do is start a business,” he told me. “That is what being successful is to me. I have a friend who is doing very well in the manufacturing industry now that steel prices are up.”

The manufacturing industry? Steel? Why would someone spend years going to medical school and becoming a successful researcher only to go into steel manufacturing? I am not saying this is the wrong thing to do. But when you are an expert in something, it is not always in your best interest to switch jobs completely.

I spent many hours of my career going to various law firms and meeting with successful attorneys. I would say in at least 25% of these meetings, the attorneys I met did the same thing as this doctor–they started talking about how they wanted to pursue careers in completely different professions. One memorable meeting was with a famous attorney in Los Angeles who told me about opening a chain of ice cream parlors on the other side of the country only to see them fail miserably. Of course they failed miserably! The man running them was a famous attorney involved in all sorts of high profile cases. How on earth could he be expected to also run a chain of ice cream parlors?

At this particular point in history, I know many people who’ve lost all their money and life savings by investing in real estate. They bought homes in Arizona, condominiums in Florida, and other properties for little or no money down. They jumped face first into the real estate game because they believed they would get rich. Most of these people taught high school, sold cars, or were accountants, for example. Of course they lost money in real estate! This was not their expertise and they knew nothing about it. I saw the same thing back in 2000 with the Internet stock crash. Back then, all sorts of people aggressively invested in these stocks and lost their shirts. These people did things like sell insurance, or own auto repair shops. Of course they lost their shirts! None of them had expertise in the stock market.

The point I am trying to make is you can never be in two places at the same time. You need to choose who you want to be and what you want to do. You can never become an expert in multiple things. You need to concentrate on doing one thing.

An excellent book I recently read is called “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. Gladwell examines the people who are able to achieve incredible and massive success in various callings. He looks at people like Bill Gates, the best lawyers in the United States, chess grandmasters, Mozart, Steve Jobs, the Beatles, professional hockey players, and others. Gladwell cites study after study describing the fact that people do not get really good at anything, at a world class level, until they have been doing it at least 10,000 hours. According to Gladwell:

“The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert–in anything,” writes neurologist David Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, of basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

I get very concerned when I think about people vacillating back and forth between various skill paths. Instead of choosing to do one thing, so many people spend their careers floating from job to job – each one different than the one before and requiring a completely different set of skills. There is nothing wrong with changing careers, of course, but the most important thing anyone can do is ensure they choose something and then focus on it completely. If you continue to change your mind, you will never develop true mastery.

One of the most amazing things I have seen in my life is people who become incredibly happy, successful, and rich by seeking out and doing simple jobs to which they have committed. The universe rewards commitment. Warren Buffet has become incredibly rich committing to one form of investing. Some people make their fortunes doing simple things you would not expect.

When I was an asphalt contractor, I knew a man who’d built a giant company putting hot tar in the cracks in roads all over Michigan. I know of another man who became very wealthy building pallets for the automotive industry. In college admissions, people with stand-out interests always do the best. I remember a high school teacher who talked about his students who’d gone to schools like Yale and Harvard, and how those students all had incredibly focused interests. Some were interested in bug collecting, another liked translating Japanese poetry, etc. The world rewards people with specialized interests who nurture that interest and continue to get better at those interests year after year.

One of the most unusual things I’ve witnessed is that most people are flirting with life and their careers. Instead of committing to a career and something, these people continue to dissipate their energies in many different directions. As a consequence, they never achieve anything near what they are capable of achieving. What are your capabilities? How much do you think you can achieve? The sky is the limit if you focus and continue to improve at something.

Why do I call focus “a law of the universe”? In the family unit, marriages, children and so forth typically only occur when two people decide to commit to one another and get married. People choose to focus on one another. This is a rule in virtually every culture in the world. It is almost as if the rule is saying life cannot begin until two people choose to focus. In your life, your career will never really begin until you choose to focus.

As a legal recruiter, I very quickly get a sense after looking at an attorney’s resume of how long it is likely to take for the person to get a job, and where. The most important factor determining an attorney’s future employability is his or her focus, beyond where they went to law school, their previous employer, or specialty. If the person has had several jobs in a short period of time, then employers will stay away (they know the person is unlikely to commit). If the person has flirted with other jobs in addition to practicing law, a smart employer will stay away. Employers are looking for commitment, and they want to make sure people accepting jobs with them are going to be committed to their company. Employers want their employees to use their commitment to help the company grow. The level of commitment legal employers look for is the same as in other professions. People want to hire people who are likely to do a job long-term.

Your life and career will change when you learn to commit to something over the long term.

Get Security By Concentrating on the Needs of Your Employer

If there is a lack of any kind, whether it is need for employment, or for money, or for guidance, or even for healing, something is blocking the flow.  And the most effective remedy: Give!  Spiritual Economics: The Prosperity Process, Eric Butterworth

What You Will Learn For security in your job, you need to concentrate on yourself and the value that you can provide to your employer. You need to also concentrate on the needs of your employer and be exceptionally good at your work. Give your job everything you have and be seen as a productive unit that is working on behalf of your employer. Creating immense value is the only way to true security.

Several decades ago, people would start with an employer in the United States, and the chances were quite good that the person would be working with that employer for the majority of their career.  This was how it was for my parents for the most part.  It was probably also this way for your parents, as well.  Both of my parents spent the majority of their careers with just one employer.  There are still some pockets of this today; however, for the most part, this is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  Today, most of us will have had several jobs over our lifetimes.

While this means many things, its significance is that there is really no such thing as employment stability and certainty in your job.  In fact, with very few exceptions, no job is immune from going away.  Most of us crave stability in our lives.  Stability in our careers is an incredibly important thing.  People search for and get stability in their lives in numerous ways:

• They get married.
• The get educations.
• They participate in certain religions.
• They send their kids to certain schools in the hopes this will give them security.
• They follow a certain routine.
• They exercise because it makes them feel a certain way.
• They eat a certain type of food to get enjoyment.
• They use food for comfort.
• They read.
• They act sick or helpless.
• They smoke cigarettes.
• They control others.
• They show up for work at a certain time each day.
• They buy cars which are safer than others so they do not get injured.

Why do we all do one or more of these things?  We do them because we are seeking a certain level of security in our lives.  We want to feel secure, and we expect each of these things we do will give us that result.  Security is coming home to the same home each night.  It is about having a job to go to tomorrow.  It is about having people in your life who love you.  It is knowing you will be alive tomorrow.  It is about being comforted when you are tense and agitated.  How we define security is unique to each of us, but something we all have a need for.  It is among the most important needs we have as human beings.

The need for security in your career is real, and it is something I am sure is exceptionally important to you.  We need to have a purpose in the world, and we need to know that we are going to have the ability to make money and support ourselves in the future.  This is the reason people typically chose one profession over another.  This is also the reason people typically get educations, for example.

When I was growing up, the most secure career you could go into was medicine.  The reason for this was largely due to the fact that doctors typically were guaranteed a pretty good income if they managed to get into medical school and graduate.  They could count on making enough money to live in a nice neighborhood and drive a nice car.  They could send their children to good schools and be respected in their community.  Much of this has been shaken recently and, within the past several months, I have even read some incredible stories about doctors going bankrupt due to being unable to find work.  This is not the case everywhere, of course, but it is a sign that there is not as much security in this profession anymore.

The most secure job you could possibly get in the early 1970s in Detroit was a job with an automotive company.  If you got a job in a factory, you would get a good hourly wage, health benefits, and a pension.  This is, of course, no longer the case at all.  Life and business is a continual cycle of creation and destruction.  What is alive today may not be alive tomorrow.  What goes up often comes down.  This is what makes our careers so hard when we are seeking security.

Most people do not realize this fact, but in the Great Depression there was a severe crash with unemployment rising to 25% from 1930 to 1933.  These stunning unemployment numbers are a sign that we should never take our future security lightly.  Things can change, and any and all security you currently feel  could be gone in a heartbeat.  One of my favorite economists whom I have been reading for years is Harry S. Dent, Jr.  In his most recently book, The Great Depression Ahead, he writes:

Businesses need to understand that a “survival of the fittest” battle is coming between 2008 and 2012 that will determine the leaders for many decades to come.  The businesses with the largest market shares or niche dominance and with the lowest costs and strongest balance sheets and liquidity will grow stronger and gain long-term market share, but many more will fail and be taken over by stronger companies.  Banks need to understand that they haven’t seen anything yet when it comes it comes to home foreclosures and business failures.

This extreme shakeout process in business, along with the great over-expansion and credit expansion of the bubble, will cause this downturn to see much higher unemployment than in the recessions of the 1970s and the early 1980s; our best estimate is 12% to 15%.

I have been reading Dent for years, and, in my experience, he has always been right on.  I believe that there is a strong reason at the moment for you to pause and question whether or not your job, your profession, and your life is secure.  I am asking you to do this so that you can understand the forces that are acting on your career.  Regardless of how secure you think your job is, regardless of the quality of your education, you do have reason to potentially be concerned with what is about to happen in the economy.

Before I go any further, I want to be very clear about a few things that I believe have a major affect on your life.  With the Internet, population growth in various parts of the world, and more–the world is now wide open, and many of the jobs that we formerly did in the United States can be done anywhere.  These jobs can also be done much more cheaply and by people who are incredibly enthusiastic compared to many Americans.  The jobs can be performed with less bureaucracy and delivered to consumers more cheaply.  Businesses must operate as businesses, and the role of all businesses is to provide the best products and services they can at the lowest possible cost.  If the business can produce the product or service at a lower cost, then the business will also be able to sell more of the product by lowering the price.

In fact, in practically any office in the United States, most of this work could be taken and moved overseas to a place where the work can be done more cheaply.  This also goes for work that occurs in factories.  Call centers have been being moved overseas for over a decade.  Sophisticated accounting and tax work can be done at a fraction of the cost overseas.  Computer programming can be done overseas.  I remember 10 years ago, it was difficult for me to hire programmer in the United States because they were demanding incredible amounts of money and stock options–if they knew what they were doing.  My experience was no different than the majority of American employers.  A decade later, most companies I know have put most of their programming staff overseas in areas where it is much less expensive.

They would be crazy not to.

If you can have something done better and more cheaply somewhere else, why would you not do this?  This is something I am confident has eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs.  The same goes for manufacturing.  A tremendous amount of manufacturing in the United States (and throughout the world) has now been moved to places like China.  Even taking into account the costs associated with taking shipping containers across the ocean, China is still able produce goods at a much lower cost than in the United States and elsewhere.

Not too long ago, I was on vacation in Hawaii and shopping in a store which apparently had “authentic Hawaiian apparel.”  Everyone working inside of the store appeared to be genuine native Hawaiians.  I started looking at all of the labels, and, within a few minutes, I realized that every single thing in the store–whether it was a straw hat, or a flowered shirt, was from China.  There is nothing wrong with this.  The business was just doing what any smart business needs to do–it was getting its products from the lowest cost producer so it could make the largest profit margins.

What is going on is not just confined to products and programmers, however.  Legal work is now also being increasingly outsourced to places like India.  People can now have legal work done there.  Imagine what the implications are for the long-term job security of American attorneys due to this.  I have heard others say that the education industry is safe; however, this is now even being questioned.  I read recently in The Great Depression Ahead, that even this may not be immune:

There are likely to be big changes in education ahead due to this Shakeout Season over the next decade.  Just as with the housing or technoloy or emerging market or commodity bubble, there is an education bubble.  Does it make sense that education costs should be rising so fast when education is an information-intensive industry during an unprecedented information revolution?  Bureocratic management structures, real estate intensity, and tenure-based systems have sustained high costs, while high demand from frantic parents has exacerbated the price spiral.  Why can’t parts of education be conveyed online with greater access to experts and peers around the world?  Why do we need sprawling campuses with elaborate landscaping, buildings, libraries, etc., in an Internet world?  Why should students be restricted to teachers and experts in a local area when they can have video and interactive feedback from around the world from the best experts, peers and blogs?

Education can be delivered at radically lower costs through a combination of online programs, in-classroom programs, and internships with companies.  However, it will take a shock to the system to force such changes in the most complacent, academic and tenure-based system in our economy. Page 306.

My idea here is that no industry and no job will necessarily guarantee you the security you crave in the future.  One proposal being batted around is that the Obama administration may decide to create a massive number of government jobs.  This may very well occur, however, if this does occur, then even these jobs may not have a lot of security because they may be eliminated when a new administration comes in.  Everything goes in cycles of creation and destruction.

I believe the next 10 years or so in the present economy are going to witness a massive shakeout that is beyond anything we have ever seen before.  In a poor economy, businesses do everything they possibly can to cut costs.  This will mean that many of the jobs they have will be relocated overseas, where possible, and done in much cheaper ways.  In addition, I believe that productivity enhancing tools are going to increasingly put pressure on the human equation to lower wages.  I recently read a September 10, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal, “Retailers Reprogram Workers in Efficiency Push,” which I am confident is a huge indicator of what lies ahead in most retail jobs:

Retailers have a new tool to turn up the heat on their salespeople: computer programs that dictate which employees should work when, and for how long.

AnnTaylor StoresCorp. installed a system last year. When saleswoman Nyla Houser types her code number into a cash register at the Ann Taylor store here at the Oxford Valley Mall, it displays her “performance metrics”: average sales per hour, units sold, and dollars per transaction. The system schedules the most productive sellers to work the busiest hours.

Ann Taylor saleswoman Nyla Houser, a retired teacher, has gotten fewer work hours under a new ‘workforce-management‘ system.

“We are under the gun to be a much more efficiently running organization,” said Scott Knaul, director of store operations at the women’s apparel retailer, which said earlier this year that it is closing 117 under performing stores over the next few years. There was an initial “ego hit” for some employees, he said at a gathering of retailers in May. But the system, he said, has helped turn more store browsers into buyers.

Such “workforce-management” systems are sweeping the industry as retailers fight to improve productivity and cut payroll costs. Limited Brands Inc., Gap Inc., Williams-Sonoma Inc. and GameStop Corp. have all installed them recently. Some employees aren’t happy about the trend. They say the systems leave them with shorter shifts, make it difficult to schedule their lives, and unleash Darwinian forces on the sales floor that damage morale.

“There was a lot of animosity” toward the system, says Kelly Engle, who worked at an Ann Taylor store in Beavercreek, Ohio, until late last year. “Computers aren’t very forgiving when it comes to an individual’s life.”

Tools like this are enabling retailers to squeeze as much work as they possibly can out of their workers.  They are also shaking inefficiencies out of the system and making our jobs less secure and certain.  In this article it was discussed that this efficiency increasing tool is creating tremendous downward pressure on the wages of the most marginal sales people in the stores.

The quest we have for security is there because we are all trying to survive.  How do you do this, however, when the world around you is constantly changing?  We fight for security in our jobs.  Unions are there, for the most part, to give people employment security.  Most of the worry and anxiety people experience is due to them worrying about what may happen or not feeling secure.  There are a lot of ways people try and get security:

• They save money.
• They limit their relationships to people where they are not likely to be disappointed and continually experience security.
• They look for people, situations, substances and other things to calm their anxiety and make them feel secure.
• Some people consistently underachieve because they believe there is more security in being average than being extraordinary and taking risks.
• Many people isolate themselves.
• A salesperson does not take risks and make certain calls to get new clients for their firm so they do not have to feel rejection, for example.
• We do not take the risks we should in meeting as many people as we should so we do not experience rejection.
• We do not apply for jobs we are likely to be rejected for so we can experience security.
• We do not follow up with applications we have submitted because this makes us feel more secure.

Not all of these things may apply to you, but I am sure many of them do.  You know that you have a need for security.  The problem with this need is that you should understand that there is no such thing as security.  Every inefficiency in every business and job you could possibly have will eventually be eliminated.  This is especially so in the current economy where employers will do everything within their power to reduce and eliminate unnecessary expenses.  This is something that happens in all recessions, and it is happening at the moment, and is likely to be severe.  Many people you know are about to lose their jobs if they have not already.

Where does this leave you? What about your security?

You are not going to be able to find security in almost any career you go into.  I do not say this to you to frighten you, but it is a stark reality.  Concentrating on security and searching for this is the wrong approach to your career.  What you really need to be concentrating on is yourself and the value that you can provide an employer.

• How you can reduce your employer’s costs.
• How you can make your employer more money.
• How you can create efficiencies where you work.
• How you can present a better image for your employer.
• How you can outsource work and save your employer money.
• How you can look out for and defend the employer’s interests.
• How you can improve your skills in your chosen profession for the benefit of your employer.

All of these ideas (and I could write them down all day) are things that you can do that are meant to give someone else (i.e., your employer) security.  When you concentrate on the needs of your employer and being exceptional at your job, very good things happen to you.  I have been faced before with the choice between letting one or another person go in our company during cutbacks.  If there is someone out there I know is always trying to cut costs and increase the revenue of one of our companies, then I will do everything within my power to save this person’s job.  Other people do not seem to care, and these are the people who are let go.  People who are constantly improving themselves are also kept around over those who are not.  People who are aware of inefficiencies in various operations and point these out to the employer are valued.

In 1927, Bruce Barton, the co-founder of the BBDO advertising agency wrote: “If a man practices doing things for other people until it becomes so much a habit that he is unconscious of it, all the good forces of the universe line up behind him and whatever he undertakes to do.”"

In order to experience the security you are seeking, you need to focus on the needs of others.  Focusing on your own security is something that is often counterproductive.  There is a chance you could lose any job that you are doing, even after having done the job for decades.  We are going into a frightening economy where a lot of bad stuff is about to happen.  It will be, in many respects, a true survival of the fittest.  The fittest are, and always have been, the ones who are providing the most value.  They are anticipating and catering to the needs of other and, due to this, they are staying ahead of the game.

This is what I want for you as well.  You need to give your job your all and be seen as a productive unit that is working on behalf of your employer and creating immense value.  Not the opposite.  This is the only way to true security.

The Most Important Person You Communicate With is Yourself

“The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven”

-John Milton

What You Will Learn You life begins and ends in your mind – master your mind. You need to know how to communicate with yourself. Not communicating with yourself will keep you continuously under stress. Communicate with yourself in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, not bad. Master your communication with yourself and you master your life.

Several years ago, I was home after graduating from college and I met a guy who was friends with my girlfriend’s brother. He had graduated from Yale University a year or two before and was driving a truck all around Detroit delivering meat to restaurants. He typically drove this meat truck from 4:00am until noon each day. He got paid in cash at the end of each day by his boss. He had been the first person from the public school he had attended to go to Yale in three decades, had been a star football player in high school and college, and was an all-around great guy. What I noticed about this guy was that he was probably one of the happiest guys I have ever encountered. He did not drink or use drugs and he worked out every day. He had lots of friends and got along with everyone extremely well. When this guy saw people he beamed a smile at them and made them feel very good about themselves.

As I got to know this guy, I realized most of his friends from college were currently off at law school, or medical school, working on Wall Street, or pursuing higher degrees. I found it incredible that this guy was so happy driving a meat truck. He seemed to have absolutely no ambition to do anything else. He loved driving the meat truck. In fact, I would not be surprised if he were still driving a meat truck to this day. This guy was very interested in other people and seemed to love to sit down with me and discuss my goals and what I wanted to do with my life. He would then offer me very intelligent insights into various career paths and moves he thought I could benefit from making. Whenever I saw this guy he beamed. He appeared to love everyone in the world.

What was so amazing to me about this guy was that he was driving a meat truck. A couple of years later when I ran into one of his friends he was still driving the meat truck. He loved driving a meat truck. This is what made him happy. Based on the kind of people he went to college with, I am confident that no one else in his class ended up driving a meat truck (much less around Detroit). But this guy loved driving the meat truck.

I can imagine what people must have been saying about this guy’s career choice of meat truck driver:

1. You have more potential.
2. You are wasting your talent.
3. You should go to graduate school.
4. You should find a normal job.
5. You should at least be a supervisor of meat truck drivers.

This guy was having none of that. He was listening to his heart and doing what he wanted to do. What made him so special in my mind was the way he communicated with himself. For him, driving a meat truck was a huge victory of sorts and something that really represented what he wanted to do and be at that point in his life-or permanently, for all I know. He was not allowing what other people undoubtedly thought to influence him. Instead, he was influenced only by what he felt was the best use of his time and what made him happy.

When I look back on this guy and the people I have known who have gone on to do incredibly important things, I think that he is probably one of the more successful people I have ever known. The reason I think he is so successful is because of the way he communicated with himself. He communicated with himself in a way that made him happy. I have no idea what was going through his mind; however, I bet his thought processes went something like this:

1. I love being outside when it is cold in the morning and there is no one else out there.
2. I love being able to be at peace with my thoughts when I am driving.
3. I love not having to be involved in office politics.
4. I love getting the opportunity to lift things and exercise.
5. I love the people I work with and talking about simple things.
6. I am so grateful I am not sitting in an office every day.
7. I cannot believe how much fun this is compared to hanging around with a bunch of boring intellectuals.
8. I am so lucky to be getting paid in cash.
9. Driving a huge truck like this is a blast.
10. I am so lucky to be able to have my entire day free after I finish work each day at noon.

You can see what this guy probably thought about his situation. I am not sure of this because I never did ask him. But the power he had that so many people do not is that he knew how to communicate with himself in a positive way.

One experience that offered one of the most stunning contrasts I can ever remember was when I started operating my asphalt business in college out of the inner city of Detroit. For one summer I had hired all of my workers out of a drug rehabilitation center in Detroit where my mother’s boyfriend sat on the board. Through the people I met at this center I started to meet many other people around Detroit who were not affiliated with the drug rehabilitation center but who came to work for me. I became so attached to the area that I actually moved down into one of the worst areas of Detroit and lived there for several summers. Incredibly, I actually believed that it was a happier place in many respects than the all-white, middle-class suburb of Grosse Pointe not too far away where I was from. In contrast, Detroit was almost 100 percent black. These were completely different worlds.

The level of poverty that I saw in these families in Detroit was not extreme–people were just very poor. Most of the houses that poor people around Detroit live in are houses that were probably pretty nice in the 1950s and 1960s but had not been painted or worked on since that time. There is a lot of peeling paint and gutters falling down. Inside the house, the carpet is worn through in many spots. Holes are patched in walls. Buckets sit beneath various areas of the room. Window coverings are torn but still there.

When I would meet these families I was always amazed that the people seemed so happy. I worked seven days a week in my asphalt business and spent 12-14 hours a day with the people I worked with from Detroit, and they all seemed very happy for the most part as well. In fact, the people I was meeting around Detroit seemed in most respects a lot happier than the people I was meeting from the suburb of Grosse Pointe.

I realize that this may seem a little difficult to believe; however, I largely felt this was true. The people I was meeting in Detroit lived in neighborhoods where everyone seemed to know one another and socialized a lot. They were not ashamed of being poor, and they typically moved around from family members’ houses to friends’ houses at night. It was a completely different culture. Everyone knew who the bad people were– the drug dealers and the gangsters– and most people were removed from that. This is a different story and not something that is important, but I would say that I believe the people that I met there were more connected in many respects than the people I met in the suburbs. They did not seem to worry about stuff as much.

What I saw in Detroit was that, like the guy I met from Yale, people were not looking to assign a negative meaning to everything. They did not have as many rules about how life should be, and they did not judge themselves by those rules. Surrounded by poverty and a lifestyle that most people in America would abhor, the people I met were happy, always laughing, and close with each other. I think the people who had the fewest rules about how they should be living life, were the happiest. People became unhappiest on the street when they started believing they needed to be powerful or exceptional. The people who did this are the ones who became drug dealers and gangsters. In the area I was working in, the people who had ambitions like this were also the ones who almost always ended up either being killed or going to prison. Accordingly for many, a lifestyle of simplicity was far more preferable.

When you are spending your days working with people who socialize with people who make their living on the street, you start to pick up ways new ways of thinking. One of the things that I heard and learned was that when you start trying to be a big deal you often get smacked down (i.e., killed) or sent away. The drug rehabilitation centers, community groups and other organizations around Detroit were in many cases telling people how to communicate with themselves in the most effective ways in order to be happy. I think the people I saw who stayed out of the gang and drug culture had learned the way to really communicate with themselves most effectively.

What I learned back then was that a lot of the quality of our life is a product of how we communicate with ourselves. The quality of our life and our happiness is largely the result of the meanings that we give our lives and the things that happen to us. The more rules we have about the way things should be, the more unhappy we are likely to be. Rules are often our enemy.

The most unhappy people I have ever met in my life have most often been the most intelligent people. They see the world around them in a way which is not helpful to their happiness. If someone says something to them, instead of taking it as a positive comment, they will take it as a negative comment and get extremely angry and flustered. If they hear a piece of news that does not sound important one way or another, instead of not reacting to the news they hear they allow themselves to get flustered. All around them the world looks like a complete war zone and they are taking in peoples comments, looks and so forth and interpreting them in dangerous, harmful ways.

One time when I was in law school I took a course called Psychiatry and the Law, and I had the opportunity to work inside of a psychiatric institute where murderers and others were evaluated by a state psychiatrist to see if the State should put them on death row. I would sit behind a mirrored glass and a psychiatrist or team of psychiatrists interviewed a given murderer about his crime. What I noticed in my limited exposure to this was that when a murder was committed, the person often committed the murder for reasons that made no sense but were, instead, related to how they interpreted things.

For example, in one murder two men were sitting around the home of one of their girlfriends. They needed money to buy drugs so they went out and robbed a liquor store. When they got back from robbing the liquor store and buying drugs the girlfriend asked them where they had been and they told her they had been out buying liquor. Later that evening the three watched the news and there were details about the liquor store robbery. The woman watched with the men (not knowing they had been the ones who robbed the liquor store) and then went to bed. After she went to bed the two men continued to drink and do drugs and decided that the reason she went to bed was because the woman must suspect them both of the robbery. They believed she would report them to the police in the morning. They convinced themselves of this and then went and killed her with a baseball bat and bedpost, put her dead body in the trunk of her car, and drove her car into a lake.

The murderer I saw interviewed, had an exceptionally high, near genius level IQ. He admitted in the interview that what he believed at the time did not make sense. He was simply misinterpreting what something represented. This is craziness, but it is also the exact same type of craziness that many of us communicate to ourselves on a daily basis. We tell ourselves that something represents something that it does not. This is a serious issue that holds us back to an incredible and profound degree. It is our communication with ourselves about what something represents that often makes us unhappy and prevents us from making the absolute most of our potential.

Imagine what your life would be like if you took every slight (imagined or otherwise) and, instead of getting upset, interpreted it in a positive way. They way we feel about our lives and the world is 100% due to the meaning that we give to what is happening to us. If you master your communication with yourself, you master your life. You need to know how to communicate with yourself. People who do not communicate with themselves properly are continually in a stressed state.

You need to communicate with yourself in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, not bad. The reason I think the most intelligent people are most often the most unhappy is that they can see so much meaning in everything and they continually interpret this meaning in a way that works against them. Communication most often breaks down due to differing perceptions of what precisely is meant by someone.

In your job it is exceptionally important that you are consistently interpreting things in a positive manner and not a negative matter. And if you are having a difficult time finding a job you need to do the same thing. Positive energy begets more positive energy. I want so much for you to be happy and have the life you are entitled to and deserve. Your life begins and ends in your mind and how you communicate with yourself.