Climate change. Peak Oil. Nuclear disasters. Political dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction. Murder and war…
From watching the news, you would think we were all going to die by tomorrow at the latest — possibly before the clock ticks away the rest of this very hour.
I used to be fully immersed in this kind of gloom-and-doomerism. During that time in my life, a few things happened:
My finances went to hell, and I racked up over $100k in debt from a failed business (along with other debts from personal spending).
My relationships with friends, family, and colleagues degenerated — in some cases quite seriously.
My living environment went downhill substantially as junk I thought I might need “in case the world ends” piled up around me.
My work nearly stalled out, because why push anything forward when the world is about to end?
Fortunately, I’m well beyond that phase now, and I’m happy to report that each one of those things has seen a dramatic turnaround. The debt is largely paid off, my living situation is far better, my relationships are healthier, and work is progressing with FUN at a phenomenal pace.
It is now only an occasional interaction with someone that reminds me about where I used to be just a few short years ago, totally immersed in doomerism.
Yesterday was just such a day.
I had a conversation with someone who wanted to improve her life but still had two feet firmly planted in the doomer camp, not to be uprooted by even my best efforts. She was sure the world was going to hell because of climate change. It was so clear to her. We were all going to end in floods, fire, and brimstone, and only cockroaches will survive to eat the plastic scraps off of our discarded electronics and mutate into giant monsters. OK, she wasn’t THAT gloomer-istic, but she was negative enough to remind me of those old days when I was in that mode. It was a cynical, depressing mode to be in.
As your thinking goes, so goes your life. If you focus on all the things that can go wrong, are going wrong, and will certainly go wrong, guess where your own life goes? You guessed it: it goes wrong. That person’s life will not improve until she gets “de-doomerized.”
So how much doomerism and fear are you practicing in your own life? Where is that taking you? It’s a question worth asking.
Don’t worry, climate change IS happening. Absolutely.
I do not deny that climate change is happening. Climate change is always happening. It is the natural order of things. Ice ages come and go. Continents move. Sea currents change. Gasses accumulate then get absorbed. Solar output waxes and wanes.
While the theoretical debate rages on about what the human involvement in this change was, that debate is irrelevant, because…
Change is inevitable in everything in our world.
I don’t know how we as a species got to this point where change freaks us out so much. Change is the order of the day in life. Your body is changing constantly. Politics are changing constantly. Even rocks change constantly as the atoms whir and spin, bonds break and regroup.
Amidst all of this change that is always happening, each one of us gets to make a daily choice. That choice is simple: What part of the change do you focus on?
If you focus on all the bad aspects of change, such as the myriad ways in which our species is quite likely to die off, you will only amplify that stuff in your own life. And understand that you cannot improve your health, your well-being, your impact, or your wealth while you’re focused on this stuff. It will cause exactly the same kind of downward spiral that I found myself in from 2007-2010.
On the flipside, you can focus on the positive aspects of change. Take the fossil fuels and global climate change example. Has the overuse of fossil fuels motivated some positive developments? Hell yeah. I drive a Chevy Volt electric car, and it is way more fun to drive than any fossil-fuel-powered beast. It has instant torque, it is zippy, it is tight, it is totally quiet. There’s nothing like pulling up to a stop light, having some driver look over at me with the clear intent to zoom ahead of me, and when the light turns green, quickly and silently disabusing them of their silly notion that electric cars are slow. It is FUN! Would such a car have been built if people weren’t trying to move beyond fossil fuels? Quite unlikely.
There are two sides to every change: the positive side and the negative side.
Change is like a coin, and our work as humans is to decide which side we want to focus on. I can tell you that once you start focusing on the positive, exciting side of the coin, life becomes a wonderful, expansive, fun-filled place of growth, adventure, and excitement.
So I ask you to ask yourself: which side of that coin ARE you focused on? Is that focus serving you? If you don’t like your answers to those questions, remember that change is simple. Just change your focus. Look at the good that’s coming out of changes, and focus on contributing to that good part! Your life will expand in great, positive ways you probably couldn’t have imagined.
Isn’t it funny how the more we try to have control — swatting at negative emotions and demands like buzzing flies — the more frustrated we get and the less in control we feel? That’s because when we’re reacting, we’re giving up control. We’ve decided to let an outside force set our agenda for us.
Now, that doesn’t mean we should stick our fingers in our ears and go through life singing “I can’t hear you” to anything unpleasant that comes along. Control isn’t about tuning out the un-fun stuff or having things go our way. It’s about getting in touch with what we do want. That takes practice, and patience, and relaxed time spent thinking about what you want to be doing and why.
Turn off your phone, give your “glowing rectangles” a break, and listen for that voice inside that says “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” The more frequently you listen for it, the louder it gets. Pretty soon, you’ll feel inspired to do something about it. The steps you take from there are your most powerful.
I’ve been writing this and my other blogs for a while, but that doesn’t make me immune from making stupid mistakes.
In this case, my mistake got me unfriended and blocked on Facebook. It got me no perceptible forward movement on anything I truly think is important in life. It got me wrapped up in turmoil. It got me writing long blog posts with little response.
It was a waste of time and energy.
As with any negative thing that happens in life, it’s always vital to ask: what’s the lesson? What was I meant to learn? There’s always a lesson. In this case of getting unfriended and blocked, it took me a while to discover. When I did it was profoundly powerful.
The realization was that I had gotten into a mode of reactive, knee-jerk thinking rather than proactive thinking. It was reflecting in my posts on Facebook and on my blog. They were reactive posts. They were against stuff I don’t like rather than towards stuff I want or like.
It is never a way to build towards anything good in life. It is a step backward, and that’s why I’d been feeling so poorly. It’s why I felt stuck. (Which doesn’t happen often these days, fortunately!)
One of the most negative modes of habit that any of us can get into is reactive mode. That’s a mode where we are emotionally reacting against stuff we don’t like, rather than working towards stuff we like.
What is reactivity?
Reactive is defined as showing a response to a stimulus. It is the process of observing or seeing something in the outside world, then having a knee-jerk response about that thing (which might, for example, including writing a blog post about something one doesn’t like – no, I’ve never done that… wink, wink).
The opposite of that state is proactivity. Proactivity is acting from an internal motivation to do something positive, good, and forward moving.
The past few blog posts that I wrote were all written from the reactive standpoint. They were responses to things that I didn’t like or agree with that I’d seen in my outer environment.
This blog post is the (re)starting of a new direction – something that comes from that inner drive to move forward, and to help others in doing the same. It’s not that all my blogs in the past have been reactive. They haven’t been. It’s been an unconsciously planned mix of both proactive and reactive writing. A random mix is not good enough. Not to create massive success, that is.
The mix
That’s how most of us operate in our daily lives. We have this blend of reacting much of the time, with the occasionally inspired proactive thing that we do.
But that’s not enough. If you’re going to do anything great in this world, you can only do it proactively. Whether your greatness lies in inventing, discovering, writing, building great wealth, or whatever…. it can’t be done in reactive mode. It can only be done proactively.
This is one of the biggest shifts that I’ve made over the past 4 years. I’ve gone from someone who reacts nearly all the time, with only occasional proactivity, to someone who is proactive much of the time, with occasional reactivity. So for me, this “month of reactivity” that I fell into last month was a good reminder of where that leads: on a road to nowhere.
Emotion is bad… no… good… no… which is it?!…. (aaaahhhhhhhhhh)
There’s a lot of confusion about emotion and feeling, and it’s role in a productive life. Some would have you turn all your emotion and feeling off, and to become a mindless robot just going through the motions. These are the people who believe that all emotion and feeling is bad and leads to sin, temptation, and downfall.
Others (like me sometimes) claim that you “have to listen to your feelings” to move quickly and intuitively towards what you want out of life. Are you confused by that?
Most people are. Let me attempt to de-confusify things:
If an emotion (or feeling) comes from reactivity towards something you’ve seen or experienced – especially if that thing is negative – in all likelihood it isn’t going to help you one little bit to act upon it. You will find yourself just making the situation worse – as I experienced with my reactive blogging. For example, let’s say you see a mouth-watering piece of chocolate cake on the counter, and it tempts you to “eat me now!” Let’s say you’re reactive, so you do exactly that. Where does that get you? Heavier and less healthy.
If a feeling (or emotion) comes from an internally generated desire for something positive, such as “hey, I want to share this great idea with people” or “what if I call up Fred to tell him about this idea I had” or whatever – then in all likelihood you will help yourself move much more quickly towards what you want. In contrast to our chocolate cake example, let’s say you want to get fit. So you proactively feel like going for a run. Where does that get you? Feeling even better, building muscle, and getting more fit. It’s the opposite of the reactive chocolate cake eating.
We get out of life what we focus on (and therefore act upon). If you are focused on these proactive feelings and emotions, you are acting upon something very different than if focused on the reactive stuff.
If you are acting reactively, you are by definition acting behind the curve. If your action is proactive, you are ahead of the curve.
Leaders, innovators, and successful people are always acting ahead of the curve, which means they think and take action proactively.
Commit to being proactive, and get success in return
If you want to be a great success in whatever you do, make this one commitment: to become proactive at all times.
Is it easy? No. You will be tested and challenged on a regular basis to get sucked back in.
Is it worth it? Yes. The world will open up to you in proportion to how much you act and think proactively, rather than reactively.
Once, a long time ago in a place not so far away, universities and research institutions were the shining beacon of hope for our society.
They were going to cure cancer.
They were helping send us to the moon.
They were discovering penicillin and the polymerase chain reaction (which allows us to sequence DNA).
We had high hopes, so we invested in them heavily.
We believed in them, and they in turn opened their doors to our masses.
Giving nearly every kid the opportunity for a college education, we thought our future was bright.
Then something happened.
I’m not sure exactly what it was. I can come up with some smart-sounding theories, but in the end they matter not.
The only thing that matters is where we’re at, and what to do about it.
As our colleges and universities go, so goes society. As much as I love entrepreneurial activities and my own current independence from academia, we as a society need these institutions to carry forth the great intellectual traditions that have led to so much advancement for our species.
So, let’s start with the present tense. Let’s look at two examples of the lunacy that seems to be spreading throughout our halls of higher ed.
Example 1: Get Grants Or Be Fired
“If you don’t get at least one federal grant in the next six months, you’ll be out on the street, jobless, sweeping floors at the local burger joint… so get your butt in gear writing grants!” This is a proclamation handed down by an administrator to more than one researcher I know lately. In each one of these cases, the recipients of the proclamation were already working blood, sweat, and tears on grants, but that is not enough. The proclaimer felt like adding some pressure to make sure that the “lazy” researcher in question got the message loud and clear.
A bit of background for my non-academic readers. When you get hired to do research, you are expected to go out and get money to pay for your research. This usually comes in the form of grant money from various federal and state agencies, along with foundations. Grants come in all shapes and sizes, from small $5,000 grants to buy a piece of equipment to some that pay as much as $2,000,000 per year or more to support a whole team doing research on a topic like cancer.
It’s always been a challenge to get grant funding. I remember back in the 1980’s when my father ran a science lab, how much he’d stress out about writing grant proposals – these thick stacks of paper justifying every little detail of a project that hadn’t happened yet. I’d see him up late at night and then up again early, with circles drawing under his eyes, as he’d finish up one of these things for submission.
Yet, in the past few years, it’s become a whole new ballgame, kiddos. The new ballgame is definitely a pro’s only sport. For big grant-giving agencies like the National Institutes of Health, less than 1 in 10 proposals get funded. It takes months to hear back whether you’ll get funded or not, and if you get a rejection, reviewer’s comments are generally cryptic and don’t really help much.
Throwing Young Faculty Into The Ring With Pro Fighters
So here we have in one corner: new faculty who’ve never had grants before, never had any deep training in persuasive writing, being hired by big universities and thrown into the ring to duke it out.
The all pervasive mantra is “just fight more fights!!!”
As if getting knocked out and bloodied frequently is a substitute for real training. (It’s not).
In the other corner, we have university administrators. They’re coming out of their corners with gloves swinging, sweat dripping, and a big hard-on for grant money. Their fight is driven by the mantra “we need more money to pay the bills! so YOU are going to fight, whether you’re prepared or not!”
The bizarrely stupid thing about the threats I regularly hear lobbed at faculty over the need to get grants “or else” is that those doing the threatening are ignoring the very clear research that’s been done on human motivation.
How to Motivate Workers in Modern Enterprises (or… Not)
Dan Pink summarizes this in his book, Drive. If you put more pressure on people using a carrot and stick method, it works okay for simple mechanical tasks like assembly line work. You can use the carrot and stick to get more “productivity” out of those “damn workers.”
BUT: If you use this kind of punishment and reward scenario on people involved in complex cognitive tasks that involve creative thinking, forget it. The more you incentivize, the more you get just the opposite of what you want. It takes people longer to solve those big problems that need solving.
So let me riddle you this: Is writing a grant proposal an assembly-line job, or a complex cognitive task requiring creative thinking?
If you answered “assembly-line job” you joined the chorus of those misguided souls who think that grant proposals can be written by robots (robots that happen to be of the skin and bones variety). Last I checked, nobody has been able to build a grant writing robot.
No, grant writing – like much of what professionals and business owners do, involves complex thinking. It can’t be carrot-and-stick’d into happening faster or better.
The Creation of a Robot Monoculture
As a result of this pressure, there’s a sort of “natural selection” that’s going on in these institutions. It is weeding out the creative thinkers, the innovators, and the future Nobel laureates to produce a monoculture of pseudo-robots that follow orders blindly and manage to just scrape by though a process of sacrificing family time, sleep time, and even their own health in the name of satisfying the hungry dollar-sucking institutions they work for.
Sadly, there seems to be a nearly limitless supply of such robots, so that when one of the monoculture succumbs to cancer, another steps up to gladly take the place of the fallen ones.
Yet, lest ye think this is sustainable, think again. As has been discovered with agricultural crops, growing monocultures is a fragile situation. It’s susceptible to breakage if anything unexpected happens, such as pests or bad weather. In academia, the precise nature of future shocks can’t be predicted, but we can know for sure that they will happen. The unexpected is part of life, everywhere and every time.
I am honestly sad for these administrators. I think at least some of them are well-intentioned. But they find themselves in a situation that requires true leadership and vision, without the skills and tools to exhibit leadership and vision. So they resort to carrots, sticks, and “incentives” as a substitute. And they don’t realize that they are doing the opposite of leading in the process. True leaders inspire (think of MLK, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ganhdi, etc…). False leaders cajole.
So let’s consider the second scenario, again from a recent interaction within academia:
Example 2: The Only Real Way To Succeed Is To Join an R1
“You’re about to get your PhD, and to be a success you have to take a serious research job at an R1 institution. If you take that teaching job you want from that small college, you’ll be relegated forever to that third-tier, stuck in the backwaters as a nobody. So, c’mon, ignore your distaste for the direction research is going in the field, get with the program, do some fundable research, and start applying for real jobs at real universities!”
I remember the cliques in high school. If you weren’t part of the clique, you were a “nobody.” Well, I wasn’t part of the popular cliques – the jocks, the cheerleaders, the A-students. I have yet to return to a high school reunion, but I may do so someday to see what has happened to all those folks.
I suspect this: that 1) I earn more money than most of them; 2) I have more free time than most of them; 3) I spend more quality time with my family than most of them; 4) I am doing what I love unlike most of them; 5) I am having a positive impact in the world unlike most of them; and 6) that almost none of them has all of 1-5 going on in their lives. (I know this because it seems like less than 1 in 1,000 that has all this going for them).
No, I didn’t get to where I am by listening to the “advice” of the cliques. It’s a damn good thing that I never was really a part of one, so I got spared that kind of mind-numbing groupthink.
Sadly, much of this cliquey groupthink has now infected academia – and our world. If you’re not part of the “R1 clique” you are a “nobody.” (R1 refers to the exclusive group of 50 or so top-tier, well funded research universities, including those brand names we’ve all heard). Forget what you’re good at, your individual talents and contributions and join us in the “IN” group.
OMG. Gag me with a spoon! No, wait… gag me with a bucketful of stupidity!
It’s not that the individuals in a clique aren’t smart. Sometimes they are. But groupthink is almost never smart. So when one subsumes her own smartness to the groupthink, it produces an immediate 30 point drop in IQ.
That’s what is happening in this highly toxic advice that someone gave this soon-to-be-minted new Doctoral researcher.
What’s so sad about this groupthink-spawned advice to our erstwhile PhD is that I think these folks giving the advice actually believe that there could be nothing better than life at an R1 research institution. They seem to actually believe that the sacrifices of family, free time, and health are worth it. They seem to believe that the constant treadmill of robotic grant writing and “publish or perish” is just a fact of life. Worse still, they actually believe that the current funding system leads to the best research being done, when it is just the opposite. The groupthink that happens in grant review committees usually produces a lowest-common-denominator approach to research progress that stifles creativity and innovation (how else can you explain the billions spent on cancer and no big cures to date?)
No. It is a case of the blind leading the young off the cliff into oblivion.
Do. Not. Listen. To. Groupthink.
Listen to what’s right for you. That should be the only criterion for any decision, ever. Sadly, we’ve programmed ourselves to listen to others, to follow orders, and to totally ignore our inner wisdom and intelligence.
And people ask me why I left academia… maybe a picture is emerging?
When this kind of terrible advice being doled out to our students is par for the course, it’s a sign that the system is more and more bent on breeding clones instead of creative, innovative researchers who could actually make a difference in the world.
It is truly sad, this state of affairs that’s represented by these two brief glimpses I’ve shared with you here.
It’s sad because I have so many friends and colleagues still in the system, trying to survive with some sense of self retained. It’s sad that it’s getting harder and harder to do.
The solution
I could write a lot about all the things that need to change, but in this case I think simplicity is the best policy.
The solution is the epitome of simple: we need leaders to stand up and step up, facing off with these negative forces, and saying “enough is enough! no more stupidity will be allowed in our halls of higher education! let’s start living sane lives again!”
I saw this recently happen with a PhD student whom I inspired, who then went and stood up to a borderline-abusive supervisor.
I don’t think unions are the answer. The only time, ever, that unions have made a difference is when they have strong, inspiring leaders. But unions bring lots of baggage with them – including the very groupthink that’s part of the problem. You can’t fix a problem by substituting it with another equal (or worse) problem!
Great leadership is a solution, always and every time throughout human history.
I just got an email from someone I have worked with. This person decided to walk away from a faculty job next year – disgusted by what’s been happening. (Like most sane people are).
While I applaud the decision for the person’s own sake, it is sad that some of the best and brightest are choosing to leave rather than to stand up as leaders to fix the problem. (mea culpa, I am one of those who left, because I didn’t know how to stand up to it at the time – I didn’t have the skills needed).
These academic institutions are like a car on the road that’s just run out of gas, and which is now coasting on momentum end elevation gained during better times. If we don’t start seeing some real leadership, these institutions will soon run out of momentum and come to a jerky, shaking halt.
Are you ready to step up and be a leader, be a visionary?
Because if our instituions of higher learning are going to live up to our belief in them as great institutions, then things need to change. We need leaders who are willing to step up and take risks, change the way the model operates, and CREATE a vision of an institution that is not just spewing out well-trained robots who join the existing rat race of chasing money.
And if these institutions fall, then what does that mean for the rest of us? Where will intellectual traditions be fostered? What will we look towards for the future of progress?
If you aren’t willing to step up, then you are participating in a slow-but-sure death of the system. Rest assured that things will get worse before they get better.
If you are, be prepared for a difficult but rewarding journey of change and struggle. Leadership is never easy, yet it is the only thing that brings true success. It is leading by example, leading with love, leading with a vision and passion. If you choose this path, you may be like a real-life Frodo Baggins, with dark forces amassed against you – but you will ultimately prevail.
According to a recent post by my friend Chuck Rylant, it does:
When considering hiring someone for example, if they say they will call at 3:00 PM, when they call at 3:10 PM, I terminate the business relationship immediately.
It is interesting that Chuck chooses to be so black and white about it. I mean, what if he was hiring Donald Trump to speak about investing… if Donald showed up 10 minutes late, would that be it, finito?
This highlights an issue that drives me bonkers about our modern society. We expect it to run like a big clock.
Live by the clock, die by the clock. Really.
I don’t wear a watch anymore. I try as hard as I can to forget what time it is because I enjoy life more when I’m not focused on the clock.
For all of the millions of years of human development, we’ve had accurate handheld clocks for about 20 of them. That’s a tiny, tiny little slice of history. And suddenly, these little devices are making the BIG decisions for us, like whether to have a business relationship with someone?
When you’re hiring, it pays to be picky
I get it. When someone shows up late for a job interview, that is a really bad sign. There better be a very good reason. And, it better be clear that the person making the excuse is not just an excuse-maker in general.
However, just this one thing doesn’t say anything about whether that person is the best for the job. I’ve employed many people throughout my life, and some were more punctual than others. This was not always a direct correlation with who was more productive.
Clocks kill creativity (mostly)
Creative thinking is nonlinear. That means it is not predictable exactly when or where it will happen. It means that, even if you’re working around the clock, you may not get that idea you need to move the project forward. You may only get that idea when you take a day off and go to the beach.
When we try to box our creative thinking into little slices of time that are available during the working day, we limit it, we contain it, we corral it.
Maybe that’s why so few people call themselves “creative!” It may be that they’re simply doing things – like living and dying by a clockwork model of our lives. If they loosened up a bit, maybe the creativity would start coming, naturally.
Do what you say you’ll do, and do it with excellence
If I’m faced with a choice of whether to delay a project and make it far better, versus being exactly on time but delivering something sub-par, the automatic answer is not to always be on time. If someone needs something by a deadline, then being on time is more important. But in most other cases, actually taking a bit of extra time (a few hours or days) to do something that’s higher quality is always better.
The best of both worlds is, of course, to deliver on time and with excellence, every time. This is the gift of masters. There are very few of them who truly exist in our world – and they can charge insanely high prices because of it.
But for the rest of us mere mortals, let’s not try to live our lives exactly by the precision of the clock. We do not live in a precise world, no matter how much we want to try to slice and dice it into one.
I was watching a presentation by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len on their concept of “Zero Limits” and it had me irritated.
They wrote a book on the concept, titled Zero Limits. The idea is this: that at the core of all of us is the divine (call it God, the Universe, or whatever you’re comfortable with). Everything else – our bodies, our thoughts, our fears – these are layers on top of this divine core.
It’s a bit like a chocolate truffle – there’s the soft core, the divinity inside of there, and surrounding it is a thicker, protective layer of harder chocolate.
Their point is this: to live a truly good life, you must be in contact with your core at all times, by erasing away the layer after layer that we’ve added on throughout our lives.
In their view, the divinity, or “zero” – a state of no fear, no worry, and no “information” is where it’s at. You live a pure life of inspiration and action in line with the Divinity.
I agree with them, to a point. Their concept of Zero is very similar to my Stage II of the Creative Pipeline, where Intuition and Inspiration comes from.
In order to have that intuition and inspiration flowing for you, you must have clarity. Clarity means letting go of the memories, worries, and all that over stuff that comes from Stages III and IV of the pipeline.
When you get tapped into this, it becomes almost miraculous in how easily good things (and more importantly, fun things) happen. You quickly achieve the things you want to achieve in life, and most importantly, you enjoy the process of achieving it!
But they are oversimplifying
The presentation I watched was filmed in front of a live audience. The audience had a ton of questions about this concept of Zero.
When someone asked a question, it was always answered with some variant of this:
“Your question is ‘data,’ you must not question, just let go of the data and get back to Zero, where all is good.”
Every. Single. Time.
Have you ever had one of those slivers in your foot or hand that’s so small you can’t see it, but every time you push on it, it hurts?
That’s the kind of irritation that was growing in me as I saw them answer one after another person with this same answer.
Of course, Dr. Hew Len would say that I need to “clean and to clear” on this irritation, but I don’t think so.
Instead, I was inspired to write about their wrongness on this particular point, rather than to just “clean and clear.” Writing about it is way more fun.
So, back to my reaction. As I watched, I kept thinking to myself: then if all it is, is going to Zero at all times, why not just kill myself?
That will take me back to Zero far more quickly than all of this “clearing” stuff will. If I truly want to be zero, without any data or information, then why be in this world at all?
And that is where me and Dr’s Vitale and Hew Len diverge, massively
Their concept of Zero is quite useful. But… their idea of why you must get to Zero is very different than mine.
From several comments he made, Dr. Hew Len’s idea seems to come from a place similar to that of many religions over the ages.
It’s a place that says this: we are all sinners. We are all impure. We have taken the purity of “the Divinity” and muddied the waters with our impure filth, our dirt. To become pure again, we must get rid of all the dirt and the filth.
So: we are here on the planet to prove ourselves, as a test of worthiness, to see whether we can get rid of our dirt (or not, in which case we’ll have to come back again…!)
I don’t agree with that. It is a jaded and cynical view that comes from many religions over the ages that have seen humans and our purpose here on this planet in a very negative light.
We aren’t here to “prove ourselves” or to “right some wrongs from a past life” or any such nonsense!
Instead, we are here to enjoy, to experience, and to create!
We have brains and bodies for a reason: to use them to their fullest.
We don’t enjoy life when we’re not using this marvelous equipment we are all born with.
When was the last time you saw a truly happy and glowing couch potato? (I’ve never seen one)
So, when Dr. Hew Len kept telling questioners to stop questioning and to start cleaning, I believe he was doing them a disservice.
Questioning is a natural part of using our minds and enjoying our experience here on this planet.
Sometimes our minds get clouded and our pipelines get clogged. That’s when we need to get clarity and “go to Zero.”
There is a time and place for it, but it is just one stage of the Creative Pipeline, and the other stages are equally important to living an engaged and fun life.
It is not the only thing we should be doing, all the time, every day. How gawldamn boring!
This, my friend, is why I developed the Creative Pipeline. There are so many philosophies and perspectives out there about how to live a more fulfilled and successful life – and many of them seem to have nuggets of truth.
Yet most of them ultimately fail, because they only give one little piece of the puzzle, like this “Zero Limits” stuff. It’s like trying to complete a Jigsaw puzzle with only half the pieces. You get awfully confused.
That same thing has happened to many people who are genuinely seeking personal development, and get trapped in these limited systems where they don’t have all the puzzle pieces. It happened to me, for many years.
How To Learn More About The Creative Pipeline, In Order To Get More Out Of Life
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Yesterday I was on Facebook, and a very successful fellow entrepreneur posted something that shocked me. It was on a discussion of feelings of entitlement in society, and how many people have an undeserved “feeling of superiority” to their peers – especially in Gen Y.
To paraphrase the response:
I feel superior to my Gen Y counterparts because I work harder than they do. I have worked 100 hour weeks, consistently, and that’s what’s led to my success.
It took me aback to have this otherwise very smart and successful entrepreneur espousing such a simplistic formula for “success.”
I’ve seen plenty of entrepreneurs who “work 100 hour weeks” who don’t have anywhere near the kind of success this person has had in her business. I was one of them. Back when I had my bike shop, I was driving myself into the ground, working 100+ hour weeks between my day job as a faculty member and the “side job” of running that bike shop.
What happened when I did that?
I made lots of poor decisions – decisions that cost us 10’s of thousands of dollars.
I rushed into things, because I always felt “behind” and “hurried.” That made the bad decisions worse.
I pressured employees and my business partner (who was also a family member). The relationship became strained and she became supremely unhappy with the business. She started self-sabotoging success, by making really bad choices.
After doing all that, I eventually burned out. I just got sick of that way of being, and resented that bike shop for “doing it to me.” It wasn’t long after the resentment crept in that the business started going downhill – fast.
That “hard work” wasn’t a recipe for success. It was a recipe for disaster. I still am paying off the loans from that failed bike shop (even though I’ve been very successful with my new business that was founded from the ashes of the bike shop).
Look – if you just think that “hard work” is all it takes, then I suggest you go out and get a job digging ditches. There will be plenty of hard work for you – as much as you could possibly want.
I’m not saying that entrepreneurs should never “work hard.” There are times you’re going to have to do that. There are times in a business when you have to give birth to a new project – a campaign, a product, a book, or whatever. When you’re giving birth to something big, you will have to put in some long hours.
But the key lies in what you do after you’ve given birth to that big thing. Do you relax and recuperate (like a mother does after giving birth to her baby?) Or do you jump right back in to hard work, thinking that if you don’t do that, then you’re going to fall behind?
There’s a big difference between episodic “hard work” and chronic “hard work.”
Episodic hard work – if directed with clarity and good decisions – can yield incredible fruits. (I’ve built a multi-multi-six figure business very quickly with that kind of work).
Chronic hard work, while it may yield fruit short term, over the long term only yields stress, ill-health, and burnout.
Do not follow the advice of those who would tell you that to succeed you must work 100 hour weeks (chronically). It’s counter productive.
My own situation is proof: just contrast the failed bike shop where I regularly worked 100 hour weeks, versus my present business where the 100 hour weeks have only happened sporadically, followed by recovery periods.
My present business is more fun, more successful, and having a greater impact on the world.
All because I have a lot more clarity about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. That clarity doesn’t come from being overworked and overstressed.
If you want more help – if you feel chronically overwhelmed, stressed, or exhausted – then I’ve got some good stuff coming to help you. I’ll be making a series of brand new videos on über-productivity for you. Just sign up for my newsletter (below) and I’ll let you know when they’re ready.
ps – if you want to read a related blog post I wrote on this topic for scientists, you can check it out on my morganonscience.com blog. I have some specific pointers there that you should find immediately helpful.
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