one night @ the call center

While I was in the Kolkata airport, I bought a book called one night @ the call center by Chetan Bhagat (later turned into a movie called "Hello").  Here is the description on the back of the book:

In the winter of 2004, a writer met a young girl on an overnight train journey. To pass the time, she offered to tell him a story. However, she offered to tell him a story. However, she had one condition: that he make it into his second book. He hesitated, but asked what the story was about. The girl said the story was about six people working in a call center, set in one night. She said it was the night they had got a phone call. That phone call was from God.

Given the description, I was expecting a much more spiritual book than it turned out to be.  So I was a bit disappointed but the novel was still entertaining.  Probably the most interesting part of the book was an exercise the author has readers go through at the very beginning:

Before you begin this book, I have a small request. Right here, note down three things. Write down something that (i) you fear, (ii) makes you angry, (iii) you don't like about yourself. Be honest, and write something that is meaningful to you. Do not think too much about why I am asking you to do this. Just do it ... okay, now forget about this exercise and enjoy the story.

At first, I was at a bit of a loss on how to respond.  As I thought about it more, here is what I wrote down. I fear not living up to my potential and not doing what God would have be do in life.  I later amended this to also include a fear of being stung by bees/wasps and using toilets in public bathrooms.  What makes me angry is illogical and irrational behavior.  And what I don't like about myself is my shortness of temper with my kids sometimes and also being "yahoo serious" most of the time (well, really all the time).

The Marshmallow Test

In one of the venture blogs I read, there was an interesting post that referenced the "marshmallow test". Specifically, there was a test done back in the early 1960s by Walter Mischel with 400 four-year olds at Stanford University.

Children were put in a room by themselves with a two-way mirror and filmed. On the table in the room was a marshmallow. The researcher then told each child that, “I’ve got to leave for about 10 minutes. You can eat this marshmallow now if you want. Or if you wait till I get back, you can have two marshmallows when I get back.” Some of the kids were pretty determined to wait; one child actual licked the table all round the marshmallow but avoided the marshmallow itself. Some could wait a few minutes only. Others gobbled it down immediately. The researchers continued to track these children throughout their school careers and into early adult life.

The results were dramatic. Those who had deferred eating the marshmallow for 15-20 minutes in order to get the bigger prize just a few minutes later were more socially competent, personally effective, self-assertive and better able to cope with the frustrations of life. They were less likely to go to pieces, freeze, regress under stress or become rattled and disorganized when pressured. They embraced challenges, and pursued them instead of giving up even in the face of difficulties; they were more self-reliant and confident, trustworthy and dependable; they took initiative and plunged into projects. This group even scored on average 210 points higher on their SAT.

I doubt the marshmallow test was ever administered to me when I was four years old but I suspect I would have been one of the kids that would have waited it out and gotten two marshmallows at the end. Sometimes I worry I'm a little too focused on delayed rewards, that I'm always investing for the future (for monetarily and career-wise) rather than enjoyed the present. But I suppose that's just how I'm wired.

I'm kind of tempted to administer the marshmallow test on my kids. I'm pretty sure JD would wait (even a year ago when he was four). I'm less sure about AJ but he's only three right now so it's a little hard to judge. That being said, he does pretty well with delayed rewards (e.g., if you do X now, you'll get Y tonight) so he'd probably be in the same camp as JD.

Borat

I went to see the new Borat movie yesterday afternoon. I thought I'd take advantage of the brief time off before I officially start my new job. Everyone who had seen the movie described it as both (a) "extremely funny" and (b) "very offensive" and/or "very disturbing" . I can confirm that's all true. I think I found the most interesting about the movie is how willing Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) is to put himself out there and do ridiculous stuff. Sometimes I wish I was more like that. I was a bit during the talent show that I mc'd awhile ago. But not nearly to Borat's level. When I first started in marketing five years ago, my manager would always encourage us to be in "the bozo zone" when we presented. The idea was that you should push yourself way out of your comfort zone ("the bozo zone") because, to the audience, it would only appear that you were being energetic or passionate about what you were saying. Having seen this movie, perhaps I'll rename that being in "the Borat zone".

Speaking of putting yourself out there and overcoming fear, Michael Neill has a new book out called You Can Have What You Want. In a newsletter that I subscribe to, Neill suggests that people try the following experiment:

For the next week, live as if fear is completely unnecessary. Don't worry about it if you feel it - a lifetime of conditioning tends not to disappear overnight. Just notice when you are about to do something if it is coming from fear or 'not-fear', and if it's from fear, don't do it. Any time you aren't sure what to do, ask yourself what you would do if you were not afraid and do that.

Be kind to yourself along the way - the path of not-fear is not always easy, especially at first. But after you've been on it for awhile, you may find it difficult to go back to living the other kind of life.

If that's a scary thought for you, ponder these words of Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and the president of Burma who has lived under house arrest for many years:

"Fear is a habit. I am not afraid."

Between presenting at a board meeting on Friday and starting my new job officially on Monday (see post regarding how much I need to learn), I'll have plenty of opportunities to conduct this experiment over the next week or so.

CAR Aquathon

This morning, the whole family swam in the CAR Aquathon. It was our third time participating in this fund-raising event. Each team does as many lengths of the pool as it can in a 30-minute period. We were part of the first heat and did 46 lengths. The winning team did 130 lengths (roughly 3 times as many as we did). The last two years, our performance really bugged me (we did 24 lengths my first year and 33 lengths last year ... at least we're improving). The other teams would come over to the scoreboard and wonder aloud how they did 100+ lenghts and we did only a quarter to a third of their total. I'd want to justify our performance ... we have little kids who can't swim, we have a paralyzed guy, we have some old ladies. This year, I was feeling the same way. But, then it got worse. I started taking comfort in the fact that we beat (by 8 lengths) the team of retarded kids who also had a member with a prosthetic leg. What's wrong with me? Am I really that competitive? I didn't think I was. Perhaps I was just feeding off the competitiveness of some of the other teams. Perhaps I have some deep character flaw. Perhaps I need to rent The Ringer. Who knows. At least we raised some money for a good cause.

Band of Brothers

About a month or so ago, I borrowed the mini-series Band of Brothers from a co-worker. I ripped through the 10 hours of DVDs in a weekend - it was that good. The mini-series tells the story of Easy Company - a paratrooper division that sees its first action in WWII on D-Day but then endures the challenges of war all the way through the fall of the Nazi regime in Germany. Whenver I see movies like this, I wonder how I would have reacted in those types of situations in my late teens or early twenties - seeing friends die, facing your own likely death, killing others, integrating newcomers into the company, coming back from injuries, holding the line in the dead of winter, seeing a concentration camp, etc. I want to believe I would have risen to the challenge but I'm not so sure. I think I would have been fine laying down my own life but it would have torn me apart to see others in my company (especially close friends of mine) die. I doubt I could have taken that for long.

Myers-Briggs

I've taken the MBTI personality test a couple of times now. Each time, I've gotten a different result. My first year of business school (roughly 8 years ago), I was ISFP. The following year, I was INFP. When I took the test today, I was INFJ. You could either say that the test isn't particularly good at pinpointing my type - with the only commonalities across all three tests being I(ntroversion) and F(eeling) - or that my type has changed over time. I actually believe the latter since everytime I've done the test the results have resonated with me at the time. If you have a moment, read through the description of INFJ and let me know if you agree with the assessment.

Expectations

Expectations are a dangerous thing - the expectations others have of us, the expectations we have of ourselves (and others), and the expectations we have of the future. While these many forms of expectations deserve attention, let me concentrate on the last one for a moment - expectations we have of the future. I took my kids to a (minor league) baseball game for the first time this past weekend. We watched the San Jose Giants play the Stockton Ports and the kids got to go down to the field and run the bases afterwards (it was a promotional evening). It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and this is one of the things I decided I wanted to do to celebrate. The other thing I wanted to do was take the kids to a movie. Rather than go to the theater, we borrowed Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird from the library and watched it at my work (in a large conference room with an overhead projector and ceiling-mounted speakers).

I had such high hopes for both events. I envisioned the kids being all excited about the special activities, sitting through them without too many interruptions, and remembering the events fondly afterwards - real father/son bonding moments. I think the events took on even more significance in my mind since it was the kids' first time doing either activity and since my family never did this kind of stuff when I was growing up.

In hindsight, it's not surprising that neither event lived up to my expectations. Charlotte Bronte said that "life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation". In fact, I can't think of a single situation in which I got my hopes up for something and the actual event met or exceeded my expectations. There are plenty of times where my expectations were low and I've been pleasantly surprised. But not a single event that I've expected to be off-the-charts good has lived up to that billing. I guess Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift were right when they said "blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed". I've often thought that I shouldn't get my hopes up since I'll only be disappointed in the end. But that seems like such a pathetic way to go through life that I haven't been able to fully embrace it.

I came across an interesting book the other day that sheds a little light on this. My friend GC is part of the TED book club and had Stumbling on Happiness sitting on his desk. It looked good - endorsed by Malcolm Gladwell (Blink), Steven Levitt (Freakonomics), and Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) - so I asked GC if I could borrow the book. As the author explains in the foreword, "this is a book that describes what science has to tell us about how and how well the human brain can imagine its own future, and about how and how well it can predict which of those futures it will most enjoy." Given the frontal lobes of our brains, human beings are the only animal that think about the future - not just predicting what will happen next (e.g., "last time I smelled this smell, a big thing tried to eat me") but genuinely imagining the world as it isn't and has never been, but as it might be. This is a mixed blessing...

What is the conceptual tie that binds anxiety and planning? Both, of course, are intimately connected to thinking about the future. We feel anxiety when we anticipate that something bad will happen, and we plan by imagining how our actions will unfold over time. Planning requires that we peer into our futures, and anxiety is one of the reactions we may have when we do. The fact that damage to the frontal lobe impairs planning and anxiety so uniquely and precisely suggests that the front lobe is the critical piece of cerebral machinery that allows normal, modern human adults to project themselves into the future. Without it we are trapped in the moment, unable to imagine tomorrow and hence unworried about what it may bring. (pg 14)

Human beings actually spend about 12% of their daily thoughts thinking about the future. It's pleasurable to daydream about the future since we tend to imagine ourselves achieving and succeeding rather than fumbling or failing. As the author points out, though:

Although imagining happy futures may make us feel happy, it can also have some troubling consequences. Researchers have discovered that when people find it easy to imagine an event, they overestimate the likelihood that it will actually occur. Because most of us get so much more practice imagining good events than bad events, we tend to overestimate the likelihood that good events will actually happen to us, which leads us to be unrealistically optimistic about our futures (pg 18) ... In fact, the one group of people who seem generally immune to this illusion are the clinically depressed, who tend to estimate accurately the degree to which they control events in most situations. (pg 22)

Can't wait to read the rest of this book. I'm only 26 pages (10.9%) of my way through it so far but I think it will be a really worthwhile read.

Can't stop working

I just read an interesting article on ExploreFaith.org called "The Lord's Picnic". I can certainly relate to this paradoxical observation:

Sometimes you just can't get away. Everyone knows the odd combination of longing and dread with which overworked people anticipate their work holidays - longing to be at leisure for a week or two, dread at the pile of work that will await them when they return. It's not worth it to take a vacation, more than one person has told me. I'd be better off not going away at all.

There is more to it than the dread of the accumulated work though. A perverse momentum takes hold in some of us when we are in need of rest: we can't stop working. We don't take it easy - we take it hard. It's as if we were afraid to leave the very thing from which we need a break.

Most exhausted people I talk to go to work earlier than they need to and stay later. Work much more, and accomplish about the same as they would have if they worked normal hours. Maybe less. Their world shrinks to the workplace and the workplace alone. No other arena of their lives command their attention.

Sometimes they think other people would be critical of them if they took it easy, as if there were some moral high ground of martyrdom demanded of them that is not expected of everyone else. Sometimes they think terrible things will happen if they aren't there. They may hate it, but they can't bring themselves to stop.

The truth is, terrible things will happen whether you're there or not. The escalating hours of work, the inability to do anything else - these are symptoms of depression, a loss of self and perspective on the world so profound it can paralyze and even kill if it is not stopped.

I'm improving along this dimension but I have noticed that when I need rest the most, I often press forward the hardest - as if one final burst of energy will magically get me across the finish line and allow me to rest (guilt-free) for as long as I want/need. But it doesn't work that way. As soon as I finish one task, there is another one waiting. There's no end to it. Also, you get into a vicious cycle. You stay up late one night to get some extra work done but that makes you tired the next day. Being tired leads you to be less focused and productive at work which causes you to get less done which causes more work to pile up. Faced with the growing pile of work, you stay up late the next night to "catch up" but the cycle simply continues and gets worse over time. In the end, you're burnt out and no further ahead work-wise than if you had just gotten a full night's sleep to begin with. Also, the consequences of not getting work things done - or at least done on time - is often much less significant than we convince ourselves they are.

That all makes rational sense to me but the irrational part of me still hangs on to its old ways. It wants to believe that I am indispensableble at work, that others are depending on me to get my stuff done on time, and that loyalty to my coworkers dictates that I (automatically) go the extra mile even if I'm not really up to it. It's hard to let go of old ways - they've worked so well for so long. But strengths during one stage of our lives can become Achilles' heels at the next stage of our life (see this post). Things change - hopefully for the better.

Eccentricity

I've always wanted to be more eccentric. It seems that most successful and/or powerful people are eccentric in some way - some more than others. I randomly came across this post on 43 Folders in which the following question is raised: "In my quest to become more distinctive, I’m looking for suggestions of harmless eccentricities to adopt". The series of comments is very funny. My two favorites are: (1) "I label all of my white socks to keep the pairs 'monogamous' throughout their lives. I feel it leads to a more even wear." and (2) "My wife knew a German girl who kept a peach pit (stone) in her mouth at all times. The same one. All the time." In my case, perhaps I should demand that people call me "Notorious" from now on (see this post). I do sit on a balance ball at work instead of a desk chair. That's kind of eccentric. A coworker suggested that I grow a beard and mustache on the right side of his face and keep the left side unshaven. That would certainly be eccentric (possibly scary). But I do hate shaving and it would have the upshot of only have to shave half as much. Perhaps I should consider it. If you have ideas for other harmless eccentricities I can adopt, please let me know.

The Jester

I revisited C.G. Jung's work on “archetypes” the other day. The last four archetypes are part of "the return". Specifically:

When the archetypes of the return are activated, people and organizations know who they are at a deeper level than they once did. Now they are motivated to seek out ways to use their gifts and perspectives to make a difference in the world. They no longer yearn to be taken care of, and they do not blame others or find excuses. Rather, they live and work in ways that express their values, commitments, and talents in a socially responsible manner. These archetypes generally are awakened and in balance within psychologically mature individuals and organizations able not only to benefit from the rights of living in a free society, but also to undertake the responsibilities of active, engaged citizenship.

In the context of Jung's journey, this would seem to be the life stage I'm entering. One of the archetypes in this stage is The Jester - "The Jester archetype urges us to enjoy the process of our lives. Although the Jester can be prone to laziness and dissipation, the positive Jester invites us all out to play - showing us how to turn our work, our interactions with others, and even the most mundane tasks into FUN."

I can definitely say that I'm trying to have more fun - especially at work. I did a post a couple of months ago about and LED belt buckle I got. I've done a number of movie events - including an outing to DaVinci Code. I was the voice of a phone application called "Karaoke Trax" (including singing such classics as "YMCA" myself). I even played a relatively elaborate practical joke on my boss and another co-worker - complete with cryptic clues as to the identity of the perpetrator.

Three other recent events highlight my emerging inner-Jester. Two weeks ago, a close co-worker of mine was leaving the company. After almost seven years of service, he moved to NYC so his wife could pursue a brain cancer research fellowship there. A number of us were disappointed to see him go and wanted to send him off in style. So we (mostly the "me" part of "we") organized a surprise lunch for him complete with Irish food, a roast, and a singing telegram by a Leprechaun (yes, he is Irish). Although I had asked others to speak at the roast, most of them backed out moments before the event. So I quickly repurposed a Powerpoint presentation he and I had worked on regarding a "Product Lifecycle" for the company and changed it into a "Roast Lifecycle" - basically doing a search-and-replace on "product" for "roast". Then I made up the rest as I went along. I've never had to think that quickly on my feet before from a comedic / performance perspective but it came off very well.

A couple of days ago, I was up in Anchorage, Alaska for a pledge-brother's wedding. The reception was held at a golf course and the room had a patio on one side. The patio was pretty narrow and then had a steep drop-off. Part way through the evening, I decided we should sled down the hill. A friend and I found a flipchart pad and we were off to the races. A number of people (including the groom) followed suit. The groom was so into it that he decided we should tumble down the hill. So he and I took off our dress shirts and rolled down the hill. I wasn't expecting to go so fast or be so dizzy at the bottom but I made it through just fine. I also tried to sled head-first down the hill but missed the flipchart and ended up with grass stains on my navy dress pants (hopefully the dry-cleaners will be able to get them out).

The third event is actually a work-in-progress. I'm organizing a talent show at work and will be both a performer and the MC. My act is still taking shape but will include some combination of stability balls and the song "Eye of the Tiger" (from the movie Rocky). I have lots of fun ideas for other acts but the real trick will be getting others to agree to perform in front of a number of co-workers. More info on this as it unfolds. The big event is Thursday, August 17.

My point here is that I couldn't see myself doing any of these things 5 years ago or really even 1-2 years ago. I like the change and hope it continues.

Winners & Losers

For Father's Day, my sister-in-law HG gave me a book called winner & losers by Sydney Harris. Published in 1973, the book is a collection of observations regarding the contrast between winner and losers. Examples include:

A winner
makes commitments;
a loser
makes promises.

A winner
isn't nearly as afraid
of losing
as a loser
is secretly
afraid of winning.

A winner listens;
a loser just waits
until it's his turn
to talk.

You get the point. It's a quick, interesting read but hard to turn the sayings into action. But the book could be a good source of quotes and/or inspiration in the future. Thanks, HG, for the gift.

Killing dragons

Last Sunday was Father's Day. In explorefaith.org, I read an interesting essay entitled "A Father's Day Card From My Son". This was the most relevant excerpt for me:

A few years ago, I received a Father’s Day card from my son Tim. On the front of it was a picture of a little boy sitting up in bed. Terror was written on his face. His hair was standing straight up, and the card said, "Dad, I want to thank you."

Well, I wondered, a Father’s Day card with this boy terrorized, had I done that to my son?
I opened the card up and it said, "I want to thank you for helping me kill all the dragons of my mind so I could go out and fight the real ones."

You know, we all have our dragons of the mind. My old professor, Conrad Sommers, the psychiatrist whom I trained under in St. Louis, said, "There are five drivers that get in the saddle and drive us. They’ve got spurs on their boots and they kick us, and all of our emotional miseries come from being dominated by one of those drivers."

Here are the drivers he listed: Be perfect. Please everybody. Try harder. Be strong. Hurry up. Have you got any of those driving you? At one time, I had them all.

These dragons of the mind keep us from going and fighting the real ones. They keep us from living in our humanity or experiencing God’s grace, and they certainly keep us from the joy of growth. We can’t take time to grow. We have to do it now. We’re driven by pleasing everybody and doing everything perfect. These are dragons of the mind.

Right now, I'd say all five dragons are driving me - especially "hurry up". With all the stuff I'm reading on global warming and nanotechnology, I'm quite eager to start doing something about it in a major way sooner than later. That's not realistic or prudent on a couple of different levels but it still really bugs me that I'm not going faster on all this. I was talking to someone about this the other day and made the observation that it's taken me 14 years (perhaps longer) to get to where I am in my current field (including four years of college study). So it's not surprising that it might take longer than 3 months to make the jump to an entirely different field. My rationale mind knows that but my irrational heart doesn't want to hear excuses. It wants action and it wants it now.

Anger management

My wife recently attended a talk regarding anger management (see handouts). She said that the main takeaways were to prevent things from escalating and to talk things through. For example, putting into words why you're angry can help you cope with the anger better and also give others greater insight into why you're mad (and also make it less scary). I know one of the things that triggers my anger is when I have something in my head as going one way (particularly in terms of getting things done or having time for myself) and then things turning out completely different. In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (via Screwtape) observes:

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at this own disposal unexpectedly taken from him ... Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.

This is definitely my #1 anger trigger. There are so many things I want to do and seemingly so little time to get it all done.

Dawn Treader

About a year ago, my therapist recommended that I read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. It's part of the Chronicles of Narnia series. I was visiting my sister-in-law SG's library today and I saw some of the other Narnia books on the shelf - which reminded me of this book and one passage in particular. In the book, Eustace (an annoying little boy) gets turned into a dragon. The experience gives him a better appreciation for his friends and for the importance of being nice to them. After Eustace becomes a boy again, he tells Edmund (one of his friends) about his transformation from dragon back to boy. Note: It's a lengthy passage so I created a seperate page rather than post the text here.

Aside from the obvious Biblical allusions (which permeate all of the Narnia books), the thing I found significant about this passage is that as part of our personal transformations, we must strip away multiple layers of imperfections. Most of the time, we think we've made a lot of progress and then discover that we didn't tear deep enough. On some level, we probably know we should go deeper but it's too painful so we just scratch the surface. Genuine transformation, however, requires the courage to go "right to [the] heart" and have "it hurt worse than anything [you've] ever felt". Kind of reminds me of Wilber and his opinions regarding transformation.

I'm done

I need more and better sleep. Between work and the kids, this is getting ridiculous and I don't think I can take it any longer. In the Screwtape Letters, there is a relevant excerpt on fatigue:

The paradoxical thing is that moderate fatigue is a better soil for peevishness than absolute exhaustion ... It is not fatigue simply as such that produces the anger, but unexpected demands on a man already tired. Whatever men expect, they soon come to think they have a right to: the sense of disappointment can, with very little skill on our part, be turned into a sense of injury ... To produce the best results from the patient's fatigue, therefore, you must feed him with false hopes ... Exaggerate the weariness by making him think it will soon be over; for men usually feel that a strain could have been endured no longer at the very moment when it is ending, or when they think it is ending. In this, as in the problem of cowardice, the thing to avoid is the total commitment. Whatever he says, let his inner resolution be not to bear whatever comes to him, but to bear it "for a reasonable period" - and let the reasonable period be shorter than the trial is likely to last. It need not be much shorter; in attacks on patience, chastity, and fortitude, the fun is to make the man yield just when (had he but known it) relief was almost in sight.

Perhaps relief is in sight, perhaps not. There are plenty of people worse off in this regard than me - including my wife, my sister-in-law NGR, and her husband TR. Honestly, that doesn't give me much (if any) comfort. Clearly they are better people than I am in this regard. I'm at my breaking point. On this count, the Devil appears to have won since my "reasonable period" came to an end last night. I'm not sure what to do. Physically and mentally I feel defeated ... I'm done ... game over.

Cruel irony

I was reading this article from HBS Working Knowledge earlier today. Research (and personal experience) show that managers have to change their decision-making styles as they advance in the organization. What makes a first-line manager effective, for example, does not work when that person becomes a director. And what makes a director effective does not work when that person becomes a VP. This got me thinking about this topic more generally since it certainly applies outside of work. For example, what makes a person an effective parent of a toddler does not make that person effective as the parent of a teenager. I find a cruel irony in all of this. Just when you feel you have something mastered, that you have things figured out, the game changes on you. What used to be a strength becomes your Achilles' heel.

I've known this for awhile (we discussed it in my MBA program) but the HBS article reminded me of this principle. In the context of my post last night, it got me thinking about the "cruel" irony of my current situation. Take pride, for example. For a variety of reasons, I've never really been proud of my achievements in life. And just when I do begin to take some pride in myself and my accomplishments, I feel that God is telling me to be humble. Honestly, I'm not ready to let go of that sin quite yet. Now, generalize this a bit more. When I was growing up, I felt that I needed to adhere to my father's plan for me. Now that I'm older and taking control of my life, I'm faced with whether I need to adhere to my Heavenly Father's plan for me. When I was younger, I felt I could never meet my father's expectations. Now I worry that I'm not meeting my Heavenly Fathers expectations. Unbelievable. Just when I thought I had things figured out, the game changes on me.

Admittedly, I opened this Pandora's Box. But it's a cruel irony nonetheless.

Mid-life crisis?

Sometimes I wonder whether I'm having a mid-life crisis. I always thought it would happen early for me but 31-going-on-32 is a little too early in my opinion. Perhaps it's a pre-mid-life crisis and I still have the real one left to look forward to. Then I could have an excuse to do a GNP 4.5 blog - or whatever the new technology is 14 years from now. =)

In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (via Screwtape) talks about the "law of Undulation". Specifically:

Their nearest approach to constancy is undulation - the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life - his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth, periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty ...

Now, it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.

Perhaps this "mid-life crisis" is really just a temporary "trough". And perhaps its length and depth are some indication of favor from above. That last statement's a little uncomfortable. A part of me really wants it to be true and another part of me is ashamed of the lack of humility in that statement. Of the seven deadly sins, pride is by far my biggest challenge. For the moment, I can't get past it. Even when I am humble, I take pride in it. As Screwtape says:

All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being humble," and almost immediately pride - pride at his own humility - will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tried to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt - and so on, through as many stages as you please.

Chapter XIV of the book (of which this is an excerpt) does an excellent job of discussing pride. My other favorite quote from this chapter is the following (related to people trying to downplay thier talents in the interest of humility):

By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty woman trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it, and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.

Lewis (via Screwtape) goes on to say that "when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours."

What an interesting post. Mid-life crisis, the law of Undulation, deadly sins, and love for thy neighbor all rolled into one. I didn't see that coming but that's the beauty of this blog - at least for me. It forces me to put my thoughts down on paper and that leads to some unexpected connections.

Pretend to become

In the Screwtape Letters, this observation really reasonated with me: "All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be." It reminded me of a passage from the Book of Mormon (Alma 32:27) that my wife is fond of:

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

In business school, we did a case about a person who, early in career, observed effective behaviors in certain executives and then tried to apply them in his own job. When presented with a challenge, he would ask himself how would so-and-so act in this situation or how would so-and-so think about this problem. At first, he was just pretending to be like these executives but over time he internalized their behaviors and made them his own. Hopefully I can do the same. If I pretend to be the person I want to become, perhaps I'll actually become that person in time.

Got the A

I checked my grade last night for my online religion course. I got an A. I actually got 253 points out of a possible 250. The only thing I didn't get the highest possible score on (or higher) was the Judiasm Part 2 reflection that I got 8/10 on. I have to admit, I was genuinely excited when I saw my score on the final paper/exam and my score/grade for the class. But, the more interesting question is why? I don't need this class credit for anything. No one will ever see my transcript for this class. And most people will never know I even took it. So why would I care about the grade at all? Isn't my newfound knowledge of the world's religions sufficient reward for taking this class? Isn't it enough to know that I did a good job without needing a grade to prove it?

Part of the answer is that there was a time when my grades really did matter - and it's hard to turn off that instinct now. As I put it in an earlier post, I am a "recovering perfectionist". In a larger context, however, when I was younger, I constantly sought the approval of others - particularly my father. There's still a part of me that does that today. I want the gold star and the pat on the back. I want someone else to tell me that I'm good even I already know it. That's not entirely a bad thing but it's probably more bad than good. In the language of a self-assessment course I took at HBS, I need to continue to move from being "other-directed" to being "self-directed". I've made some solid progress in this area - especially since high school - but the process continues.

Notorious G.N.P.

My previous post reminded me of something that happened at work recently. A different person just joined the finance team with the first name as me. This presented the obvious dilemma of how to direct a question at one of us when the other is present. Many alternatives were bantered about including using our last names, G1 / G2, etc. Ultimately the folks in our HR department settled on calling me “Buddy”.

Now, there's nothing wrong with "Buddy". I actually like it. But I decided to have some fun with this so I explored hip-hop alternatives. If Sean Combs can go by “Puffy”, “Puff Daddy”, “Diddy”, “P. Diddy”, etc, I figured there must be plenty of options for me too. Here are but a few that came to mind (that I sent around via email for others to vote on):

• OG – either Original Gangsta or Original [first name] depending on your preference


• Finance Gangsta


• P&L Hustla


• Notorious G.N.P.


• Phat Margins


• G Unit


• Ice G

To complete this "hip hop transformation", some members of my crew (department) generously offered to purchase this essential hip hop fashion accessory for me. It arrived two days ago but the belt is still missing so I haven't premiered it at work yet. To the extent you're in the market for an LED belt buckle, please note that this one is incredibly hard to program.

With all the votes in, Notorious G.N.P. was the most popular hip-hop name followed by Phat Margins. Most people agreed, though, that Notorious G.N.P. is a mouthful so some folks said they'd use OG or Buddy for short. One person even suggested Piggie (since Notorious B.I.G. went by Biggie).

Believe it or not, there is a reason I'm sharing this with you (aside from the fact that I find it personally amusing). It relates back to my comment about being worried about being judged by others and about being worried about what other people think of me. Especially at work, I've found that I've been reluctant sometimes to be myself. I feel like I need to live up to some image of how business people do or don't act - or at least some image that others have of me. And that doesn't, for example, include listening to hip-hop music on the radio or having a nickname patterned after a rapper.

For those of you really into business, this reminded me of an interview I read on diversity. In it, the HBS professor said:

Whether you have ten employees or ten thousand employees, all of those people must feel comfortable bringing forward their unique perspective on a problem and explaining to others where that perspective comes from instead of hiding their true feelings. Their perspective could be grounded in something as simple as being from a certain community and realizing that people in that community will think about the company's product in a certain way. But if they have to hide that aspect of their background, the company can not be effective.

My whole point here is that I'm slowly becoming more comfortable being myself and letting my true personality shine through. It's actually quite liberating. The next time you see me, feel free to say "wuz up Piggie?" and, if you ask nicely, I might even let you borrow my new belt buckle.