Earlier this week, perhaps our most beloved client expressed the difficulty their organizational leaders have "incorporating strategic thinking into their daily routine."
Because this challenge is more universal than unique, I thought I would offer up some suggestions that might remind each of us how to do this&mdash;and more consistently.&nbsp; After all, it&rsquo;s tough to see "the theatre of war" within the fray and fog of it.
Attached is a <a target="_blank">seven-page, 3000 word summary with 15 recommendations</a> for how you can be Strategic...Now.
<a href="../../blogging/file.axd?file=2012%2f4%2fBeingStrategicDaily_v3.2.pdf">BeingStrategicDaily_v3.2.pdf (449.10 kb)</a>
Tally-ho!

Being Strategic—Now!

102 years after his death, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (&quot;Mark Twain&quot;) is still lecturing and teaching&nbsp;as effectively as if he were here.&nbsp; 


Sunday afternoon, I stumbled across Ken Burns&#39; 2001 PBS documentary: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/">http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/</a>


I finished watching it last night, and&nbsp;it&#39;s still reverberating.


I&#39;ve stood in his Hannibal, MO home&mdash;which is unfit for a hobbit,&nbsp;whereas his Hartford, CT home (splendid in every way) and&nbsp;Stormfield (the home of his passing in Redding, CT) both show how far he progressed.&nbsp; He began as a&nbsp;journeyman printer and cub-pilot on the Mississippi, then&nbsp;proceeded to become&nbsp;a&nbsp;reporter earning $25/week in Nevada, then $40/week in San Francisco...penultimately becoming&nbsp;the nation&#39;s most well-known writer (spending $30,000/year on household expenses at a time when most Americans earned less than $500/year) and&nbsp;ultimately the world&#39;s most well-known writer (the result of a &#39;round the world lecture circuit conceived to help him&nbsp;climb out from under $200,000 in staggering debt created through a number of ill-conceived &#39;get rich quick&#39; schemes and speculative NYSE investments).&nbsp; 


Along the way, he lost his infant son...his eldest daughter...his wife...and a second daughter.&nbsp; He is heralded today as &quot;The Lincoln of Literature,&quot; primarily because&nbsp;he stands (figuratively) head and shoulders above other writers.&nbsp; But I can&#39;t help but attribute a portion of this title to their shared number of tragedies.&nbsp; 


His work, as everyone notes, became darker and angrier and more bitter in his final years.&nbsp; Gone was the Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog author of 1865.&nbsp; 


The pen-name he chose for himself, &quot;Mark Twain,&quot; is a river term meaning &quot;two fathoms,&quot; or twelve feet...the depth at which&nbsp;a boat can proceed and&nbsp;safely navigate.&nbsp; But interestingly, the term can be looked at conversely, as well.&nbsp; Two fathoms is, depending on one&#39;s perspective, also the depth at which water becomes too shallow to navigate.&nbsp; After all,&nbsp;12&#39; is the demarcation and, depending&nbsp;on one&#39;s perspective, it&#39;s deep enough...or&nbsp;just this side of sufficiently deep.&nbsp; 


Were he all knowing, I&#39;m confident Sam couldn&#39;t have chosen a more perfect pseudonym for himself.&nbsp; After all, his writing, like his life, was a confluence of joyous highs and cataclysmic lows.&nbsp; On the one hand,&nbsp;his name was a household name the world over.&nbsp; At the same time, he was financially bankrupt.&nbsp; And one year, he, his wife and&nbsp;three of their four surviving children are celebrating a magical Christmas in their Hartford home, and the very next&nbsp;Christmas they are continents apart&mdash;and&nbsp;Camelot is lost.&nbsp; 


As a morality tale, Clemens&#39; life is rather banal. Sure, he had a volcanic temper, a&nbsp;frequently depressive mood, drank too much and smoked 40 cigars a day for most of his adult life. But other than losing his wife&#39;s inheritance and his own personal fortune through a handful of bizarre&nbsp;&#39;inventions,&#39; he was a straight arrow.&nbsp; 


More to the point, I believe, he is&nbsp;a reminder of&nbsp;the ephemeral nature of life, how elusive &#39;success,&#39; and how precious and fragile our time on this tiny orb.&nbsp;&nbsp;Though I might imagine he&#39;d remark, &quot;I&#39;m merely&nbsp;signpost&nbsp;1.75 billion, so far.&quot;&nbsp; 


I see the series re-broadcasts on Thursday, April 12th.&nbsp; Do yourself a favor and record it.&nbsp; Or, if so inclined and anachronistic enough to still own a player, snag&nbsp;yourself a copy of the DVD and enjoy.&nbsp; It&#39;s 3+ hours of brilliant quips and quotes that, with the exception of Will Rogers, are one of a kind.

Mark Twain: Still Teaching

The following comes to me via email from a dear friend and client.&nbsp; In the words of Mark Twain, &quot;I am&nbsp;repeating it word for word as I heard it.&quot;&nbsp; I hope it informs you as much as it informed me.&nbsp; Happy Reading, &mdash;blake.


-------------------


&nbsp;


Intriguing
piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day by Jonah Lerner, based on
a book he has written entitled &quot;Imagine: How Creativity Works.&rdquo;&nbsp; In
essence, he argues that &ldquo;Creativity is not magic, and there&#39;s no such thing as
a creative type.&nbsp; Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a
blessing bestowed by the angels.&nbsp; It&#39;s a skill.&nbsp; Anyone can learn to be creative
and to get better at it.&rdquo; 
 
Some excerpts: 
 
&ldquo;New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing
products and to solve the toughest problems.&nbsp; A surprisingly concrete set of
lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves
and our work.&rdquo; 
 
&ldquo;Imagination was once thought to be a single thing, separate from other kinds
of cognition.&nbsp; The latest research suggests that this assumption is false.&nbsp; It
turns out that we use &lsquo;creativity&rsquo; as a catchall term for a variety of
cognitive tools, each of which applies to particular sorts of problems and is
coaxed to action in a particular way.&rdquo; 
 
&ldquo;The new research also suggests how best to approach the thorniest problems.&nbsp; We
tend to assume that experts are the creative geniuses in their own fields.&nbsp; But
big breakthroughs often depend on the naive daring of outsiders.&nbsp; For prompting
creativity, few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination
with fields outside our areas of expertise.&rdquo; 
 
The story makes the point that there are different kinds of creativity&mdash;the
kind that comes from sweat and hard work, and the kind that comes suddenly,
without warning, because the person in question has put himself or herself in a
position to be receptive to inspiration.&nbsp; (Apparently, relaxation helps.&nbsp; So do
booze.&nbsp; Though the combination is not a guarantee of creative genius!) 
 
Indeed, Lehrer makes the point that the human brain is incredibly adaptable and
able to be creative: 
 
&ldquo;If different kinds of creative problems benefit from different kinds of
creative thinking, how can we ensure that we&#39;re thinking in the right way at
the right time?&nbsp; When should we daydream and go for a relaxing stroll, and when
should we keep on sketching and toying with possibilities? 
 
&ldquo;The good news is that the human mind has a surprising natural ability to assess
the kind of creativity we need.&nbsp; Researchers call these intuitions &lsquo;feelings of
knowing,&rsquo; and they occur when we suspect that we can find the answer, if only
we keep on thinking.&nbsp; Numerous studies have demonstrated that, when it comes to
problems that don&#39;t require insights, the mind is remarkably adept at assessing
the likelihood that a problem can be solved&mdash;knowing whether we&#39;re getting
&lsquo;warmer&rsquo; or not, without knowing the solution.&rdquo;




KC&#39;s
View:
I&rsquo;m particularly fascinated buy the 10 rules for lighting the creative spark
offered by Lehrer; apparently, one is more likely to be innovative if one is
relaxing in a blue room located in a big city,listening or watching stand-up
comedy, after having just come home from a trip abroad.&nbsp; Go figure. 
 
At any rate, it is a fascinating piece, and it looks like a great book. 
 
You can read the entire article <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_10_1">here</a>. 
 
And you can find out more about the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Imagine-Creativity-Works-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0547386079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1331615411&amp;sr=8-1">here</a>.

Igniting The Sparks of Innovation & Creativity

The following (also) comes to me via email from a dear friend and client.&nbsp; In the words of Mark Twain, "I am repeating it word for word as I heard it."&nbsp;&nbsp;I hope it informs you as much as it informed me. &nbsp;Happy Reading, &mdash;blake.
-------------------
&nbsp;
Fortune has good piece about Amazon.com, noting that &ldquo;If such a thing as corporate DNA exists, it has animated the rise of the last decade's most successful technology companies. Google had a relentless focus on data, Apple a Zen-like obsession with simplicity, and Facebook a world of social connections to mine.&nbsp; Amazon has relied on an altogether more prosaic trait: thriftiness.&rdquo; The theory is that by being frugal internally, Amazon can charge its customers less, which becomes one of its keystone competitive advantages. &ldquo;For Amazon, savings are more than a competitive matter,&rdquo; the story says.&nbsp; &ldquo;Indeed, the company holds &lsquo;frugality&rsquo; up as one of 14 leadership principles.&nbsp; (It &lsquo;breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention,&rsquo; the company says on its corporate site.)&nbsp; That goes back to 1994, when CEO Jeff Bezos jump-started the e-commerce company and jury-rigged a desk out of a door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Door desks&rsquo; became a popular staple within the company years after it went public, and remained &lsquo;the quintessential example&rsquo; of Amazon's frugality, ex-employee Greg Linden explained in 2006.&nbsp; The company still hands out the &lsquo;Door Desk Award,&rsquo; a title given internally to select employees who have a &lsquo;well-built idea&rsquo; that creates a significant savings for the company and enables lower prices for customers.&rdquo;
&nbsp;
KC's View: The complete story is worth reading by <a href="https://fortune.com/2012/11/16/amazons-jeff-bezos-the-ultimate-disrupter/">clicking here</a>. Frugality is not a new corporate virtue; it certainly has been a core value at Walmart for decades.&nbsp; But at a time when there are a lot of stories out there about companies where top executives seem more concerned with their own compensation packages and the trappings of office than they are with the people on the front lines and the very real day-to-day problems that they face, maybe it is fair to suggest that some folks ought to rethink their priorities.

The Power of Frugality

The Time (nearly) Every Man Faces

Not quite a wordless picture, but certainly&nbsp;paints a thousand words...&nbsp;


Provided by a precious client, it&#39;s my privilege to pass it on.&nbsp; You might choose to &#39;Save&#39; to your computer, so you can enlarge&mdash;and share.


Enjoy&mdash;&nbsp;

<img style="width: 686px; height: 572px" src="/blogging/image.axd?picture=2012%2f2%2fMaturityClimb.jpg" alt="" width="764" height="881" />

The Maturity Climb

This past week, as I&#39;ve spoken with several professional salespeople, I&#39;ve been ruminating on the importance of hope.&nbsp; Again.&nbsp; It&nbsp;seems that I&#39;m always coming back to it...


You know&nbsp;about hope, right?&nbsp; (It&#39;s much more than simply the birthplace of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee.)


Hope is the&nbsp;meme that undergirded the entire 2008 Obama presidential campaign,&nbsp;best captured&nbsp;when artist Shepard Fairey&nbsp;rendered that&nbsp;iconic, colorful&nbsp;poster.


Hope is the thing which animates, in large part,&nbsp;logotherapy as created, defined and lived by the&nbsp;inimitable Viktor Frankl.&nbsp;

<iframe src="http://seg.sharethis.com/getSegment.php?purl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blakeleath.com%2Fblogging%2Feditors%2Ftiny_mce%2Fblank.htm&amp;jsref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blakeleath.com%2Fblogging%2Fadmin%2FPages%2FAdd_entry.aspx&amp;rnd=1327015042238" width="0" height="0" frameborder="0" name="stSegmentFrame" style="display: none"></iframe>
<div id="sound">
Hope is the thing which, reliably, Shakespeare wrote about in his 29th sonnet:
</div>
<div>

</div>
<div>
When, in disgrace with fortune and men&#39;s eyes, 
I all 
alone beweep my outcast state 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless 
cries 
And look upon myself and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more 
rich in hope, 
Featured like him, like him with friends 
possess&#39;d, 
Desiring this man&#39;s art and that man&#39;s scope, 
With what I most 
enjoy contented least; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost 
despising, 
Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 
Like to the lark at 
break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven&#39;s gate; 
For 
thy sweet love remember&#39;d such wealth brings 
That then I scorn to change my 
state with kings. 

</div>


(I know what he meant when he wrote it) but hope is also the thing that Benjamin Ola Akande (economist, scholar and Dean of the Business School at Webster University in St. Louis) declared, &quot;Is not a strategy.&quot;


(I know what he meant when he wrote it) but&nbsp;it is also the thing that salesman Rick Page wrote an entire book about&nbsp;under the title&nbsp;Hope is Not a Strategy.&nbsp;


And yet today&mdash;and every day&mdash;to those who say, &quot;Hope is not a strategy,&quot; I say poppycock.&nbsp; Balderdash.&nbsp; Baloney.&nbsp; Hogwash.&nbsp; Hooey.&nbsp; Malarkey.&nbsp; 


Hope is THEE strategy.


Hope is THEE magnet that&nbsp;draws each and every one of us upward and forward day after revolving day.


Hope is&nbsp;THEE spark that ignites our fuels and energies, our passions, our meaning.


Hope is&nbsp;a common denominator in virtually every&nbsp;pure denomination, every thriving culture, and&nbsp;any thriving relationship.


There is more to life than &quot;hope,&quot; to be sure.


But in the words of Andy Dufresne (as written by Stephen King in&nbsp;the classic 1994 film adaptation of&nbsp;Shawshank Redemption), &quot;Remember, Red&mdash;hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.&quot;


Hope, unquestionably, is a formidable meme&mdash;a living, breathing, organic, transmitted, viral idea that infects and inoculates humankind.


Martin Seligman proved it (again) in his definitive masterpiece, Learned Optimism, when he documented that the single, most determinant attribute of successful salespeople is not experience, not competence, not discipline, not people skills, not technical prowess, not mastery of the features and benefits but is, instead, flat-out and simply:&nbsp;optimism.&nbsp; 


&quot;That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.&quot;


Hope = Optimism.&nbsp; 


So make your calls and fill your pipeline, but remember this: preceding and succeeding any great pyramid, project, process&nbsp;or plan is the utter hope of it.&nbsp; The dream of it all.

The Primacy of Hope

To Tweet, or not to Tweet, THAT is the question

For
this gorgeous Friday, I have four diverse quotes comin&rsquo; at ya&hellip;each of which, I
hope, speaks to the true heart of leadership, which is service.




&ldquo;If
anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Mark
9:35)




&ldquo;Everybody
can be great, because anybody can serve.&nbsp; You don&#39;t have to have a college
degree to serve.&nbsp; You don&#39;t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.&nbsp; You
only need a heart full of grace.&nbsp; A soul generated by love.&rdquo;&nbsp; (MLK)




&ldquo;The
first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.&nbsp; The last is to say
&lsquo;thank you.&rsquo;&nbsp; In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.&nbsp; That sums up the progress of an artful leader.&rdquo;&nbsp; (Max DePree)




And
to these, one might add, &ldquo;To succeed, assume the responsibility to communicate.&nbsp; To fail, presume it is others&rsquo; obligation to understand.&rdquo;




* * *

Leadership = Service

Cock-a-doodle-do &amp; Happy New Year to You!


This morning, five &quot;articles for 2012&quot; jumped out at me.&nbsp; Because I thought they might &#39;speak&#39; to you, too, I have assumed the responsibility of &quot;aggregator&quot; by combining them into one PDF.&nbsp; (I have made zero efforts to modify, clean-up, or edit any of them, of course, so caveat emptor.)


I believe you will enjoy them.


Reading them in one brief swath, you will see a common thread: more and more, the Customer-Client-Student is CENTER.&nbsp; Not peripheral, but front-and-center.


Now, of course, this is a multi-millenia reality, but never as focused as today.&nbsp; The magnifying glass has found the sun, and the diffused light has become a laser beam.&nbsp; I can see the smoke and smell the sizzle.


The first article, &quot;Physicists Seek to Lose the Lecture as&nbsp;a Teaching Tool&quot; describes the transition from &#39;Sage on the Stage&#39; to &#39;Guide on the Side.&#39;&nbsp; In short, students who are required to answer questions and wrestle with reason&nbsp;via &#39;peer instruction&#39; learn 3x more than those who sit idly by&nbsp;and listen to a professor pontificate.&nbsp; Historically (e.g., before Google... &quot;BG&quot;), the&nbsp;&#39;gathering of information&#39; was the hardest half of learning, when compared to&nbsp;&#39;making sense of information.&#39;&nbsp; Today, gathering information is easy--it&nbsp;almost happens passively, as we are immersed and&nbsp;awash in it hour by hour.&nbsp; This allows, therefore, professors to invest their time&nbsp;provoking, guiding and leading inquiry and understanding...rather than transmitting data.&nbsp; While this is no great epiphany, it will ultimately upend the teaching model as we&#39;ve known it, challenging all of us to &#39;adapt or become extinct.&#39;&nbsp; (Read it to see how the student, not the professor, should be at the center of the learning process.)


The second article, &quot;The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives&quot; speaks to the importance of humility (respect), boundaries (character), curiosity (followership), receptivity to disagreement (retention), authenticity (vs. attention), reality (vs. hype) and change (vs. worshipping the past).&nbsp; It&nbsp;is an interestingly nuanced and subtle&nbsp;juxtaposition to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451648537/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_g14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=center-2&amp;pf_rd_r=0031AAGVAN6CMZH4DPQA&amp;pf_rd_t=101&amp;pf_rd_p=470938631&amp;pf_rd_i=507846" target="_blank">Walter Isaacson&#39;s biography&nbsp;about Steve Jobs</a>, describing why&nbsp;(perhaps) several of Jobs&#39;&nbsp;core behaviors were&nbsp;exceptions--not&nbsp;the rule.&nbsp; (Read it to see a balanced view on market, customer, and leadership vision and strategy.)


The third article, &quot;Five Resolutions for Aspiring Leaders&quot;&nbsp;outlines simple-yet-transformative things you can tackle in 2012 to continue your&nbsp;professional development.&nbsp; (Read it to see how &#39;gaining knowledge,&#39; not &#39;defending it,&#39; will keep you&nbsp;front-and-center...and relevant in the months ahead.)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;


The fourth article, &quot;What Americans Keep Ignoring about Finland&#39;s School Success&quot; describes something I tackled in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cultivating-Strategic-Mind-Visionary-Architect/dp/0979883016/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1325784691&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">Cultivating the Strategic Mind</a>: the&nbsp;value of cooperation&nbsp;rather than competition.&nbsp; Equity vs. Excellence.&nbsp; I know, I know, it sounds heretical!&nbsp; (Read it to&nbsp;see &#39;the bigger picture&#39; and understand how--and why--putting EVERY student at the center of an educational process makes Finland a North Star.)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;


The fifth and final article, &quot;Five Predictions for Higher Ed Technology in 2012&quot; shows, by way of Stanford and MIT, that online learning is here to stay and, given that more and more college students are drowning in debt and questioning the value of diplomas in a soft economy, universities must find alternative delivery methods.&nbsp; From &#39;peer&#39; and &#39;distance learning&#39; to replacing bulky, back-breaking-backpacks&nbsp;full of&nbsp;anachronistic, outdated and overpriced textbooks with iPads and tablets, the future is here.&nbsp; And now.&nbsp; Once universities get their own act in gear, the dam will burst, the watershed will overflow, and those &#39;lockers&#39; we all experienced from K-12 will be about as useful as a hitching post at your local watering hole.&nbsp; (Read it to see why, once again, the customer--aka student--is king.)


<a href="/blogging/file.axd?file=2012%2f1%2f5ArticlesFor2012.pdf">5ArticlesFor2012.pdf (235.13 kb)</a>

The Student is Center

On this, the sixth anniversary of
your birth, you are on the hearts and minds of all who know and remember.


Thankfully, it was gorgeous today;
the sun shone brightly and warmly on our faces.















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<img style="width: 187px; height: 292px" src="/blogging/image.axd?picture=2012%2f1%2fWillLeath%2c01-04-2012.jpg" alt="" width="206" height="319" />

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&quot;Rejoice always, pray
continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God&rsquo;s
will for you in Christ Jesus.&quot;




&mdash;1 Thessalonians 5:16-18



</div>

Happy Birthday, Beloved

A couple weeks ago, I watched Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.
Talk about "Give a Mouse a Cookie!"
It's not really a movie.&nbsp; It's more an exposition on existentialism.
Sure, it's presented via film, but it's&nbsp;primarily a hallucinogenic journey from creation to destruction, with Texas and philosophy&nbsp;residing somewhere in between.
The early lines about two ways to live, via grace or nature, are breathtaking.&nbsp; And, as the journey unfolds, similarly heartbreaking.
But the film led me on a Terrence Malick bender, proceeding from The Tree of Life to Badlands, Days of Heaven and The New&nbsp;World (which was particularly rewarding because, after&nbsp;devouring A Land as God Made It and A Kingdom Strange [both by James Horn, about the Jamestown and Roanoke colonies, respectively], I had also just returned from an emotional day at Jamestown Colony).&nbsp;
After growing up in Waco, TX, Malick graduated from Harvard with a degree in philosophy.&nbsp; He then attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, but he did not complete his doctoral work, opting instead to drop-out, become a journalist, writer, itinerant professor at MIT&nbsp;and, surely, one of this century's most reclusive, enigmatic, brilliant directors.&nbsp; His personal story is marked by lows and highs, from his pianist brother's crippling his own hands and eventual suicide to Malick's three marriages and his ultimately directing what many regard as the finest film ever made, Days of Heaven, which proved that 'the magic hour' right before dusk can be the most gorgeous time to roll tape.&nbsp;
Malick's own inquiries, evident in everything he has touched,&nbsp;are about Being.&nbsp; In fact,&nbsp;one of his&nbsp;best known scholarly works is a translation of Martin&nbsp;Heidegger's (1889-1976) Vom Wesen des Grundes, published by Malick as The Essence of Reasons.&nbsp; Heidegger, a controversial figure then and now, explored the meaning of Being, determinism, our role in the world ("in situ," as it were)--and the extent (or limited extent) to which we can be, in short, "masters of our domain,"&nbsp;advocating instead that we are&nbsp;probably just&nbsp;"leaves in a stream."&nbsp;
These films by Malick, the books by Horn, my introspective&nbsp;day at&nbsp;Jamestown (during which, virtually alone for hours, I felt like an alien landing on earth some 300 years after it imploded)--coincide with my 42nd birthday--placing me (God willing and health permitting) smack-dab between my own creation and (carnate) destruction at the intersection of Texas and philosophy.&nbsp; Mid-life, to be sure.
<div><img src="../../blogging/image.axd?picture=2011%2f12%2fJamestownPort.jpg" alt="" width="877" height="570" /></div>
As I've written before, our daughter&nbsp;articulated her first, deep existential angst about one month into 1st Grade.&nbsp;&nbsp;As I lay&nbsp;her in bed one night, her heavy head on the pillow, tinkly music drifting in the background, she stared up at me with her big round eyes and inquired (God as my witness), "Daddy, is this all there is to life?"&nbsp; Perplexed, I asked, "What, Sweetie?"&nbsp;&nbsp;Sighing, she said, "You know...dressing,&nbsp;eating, sitting in plastic chairs all day listening to a teacher.&nbsp; Coming home to eat, undress and do it all again tomorrow?"&nbsp;
Needless to say, I was first taken aback.
Who spoke these words?
In return, I was speechless.&nbsp;
There is, to life, a number of days in plastic chairs.
And a number of hours&nbsp;standing in line.
Along with perhaps 87,600 meals.
And 29,200 showers.
And, if you want them and are fortunate, perhaps 2.5 kids, a couple cars, a house in the cul-de-sac, a few diplomas on the wall and all the rest.
Sure, yes, there is much about life that is pedestrian, pragmatic, prosaic.
As we spoke, for what amounted to perhaps one hour, we proceeded to move beyond these ideas though, at which point&nbsp;I tried (speaking to a six-year-old) to describe meaning, belief, service, faith, hope, love and all the rest.&nbsp; And, very briefly, to describe a sense of calling,&nbsp;living a life on purpose, and talents.&nbsp; (Hey, she asked.&nbsp; We're too far in to turn back now, I reasoned.)&nbsp;
Looking back over the nearly four years that have lapsed since then I can say, with a degree of shock, that it did seem to click.&nbsp; She was listening.&nbsp; She more than heard me--she somehow,&nbsp;through her tiny ears and wet eyes, understood.
And her journey, like mine--yours--ours, is often about Being more than Doing.
We are trained, most of us, to focus on "behavior," as it is, from a reductive standpoint, observable and, therefore, "measurable and coach-able."
But I must say, as I get older, that any worthwhile reflection on one's personhood begins much deeper.&nbsp; Not at the 'genetic' level, mind you, but certainly at the 'atomic' level of, say, one's Being and Beliefs.
To make this demonstrable, consider the hypocrite.&nbsp; The politician, for example, who Is and who Believes one way, yet consistently Behaves obversely.
More slippery still, consider the person who Behaves well toward you, demonstrating wonderful actions, when all the while a brew of anger, hate, jealousy or vengeance roils right beneath the surface.
Psychologists and philosophers have wrestled with and written about these "veneers" and "masks" for millennia, and they always will.
The questions of "Who am I" and "What do I believe" undergird and give shape to our very existence.
They precede Behavior and, to my current way of thinking, actually supersede it.&nbsp; True, I care about Behavior.&nbsp; I/we all do; should; will.&nbsp;&nbsp;Agreeing with the cognitivists (e.g., Maslow, McClellan, McGregor, Herzberg) more than the behaviorists (e.g., Pavlov, Skinner and all the rest), I believe that, while&nbsp;actions and reactions matter,&nbsp;behaviors are primarily symptomatic in nature, with&nbsp;one's&nbsp;starting disposition being more&nbsp;causal.&nbsp; (Yes, yes, there are limitless exceptions, from seatbelts and smoking to aromatic foods, ringing doorbells and vibrating phones, but these do not dissuade me from my 51/49 lean.)&nbsp;
As I reflect on Malick's films, the colonists who forged this nation, the founding fathers who (nearly 160 years later)&nbsp;canonized its liberties...and even David Fincher's&nbsp;interpretation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I am convinced&nbsp;beyond certainty that Being and Beliefs, while not quite prologue, are immeasurably paramount.
When I coach someone who has had "a change of heart," his/her ears and eyes are wide open.
When I coach someone who "intellectually understands," yet maintains a concrete bunker around&nbsp;his/her heart, we both fail.
I share these ruminations in the magic hour of 2011, as dusk is coming and, with it, the sun is slipping below the horizon.
All too soon, 2011 will be but a distant memory and we, like the rooster, will be crowing about 2012 and all that dawns ahead.
May this New Year be your best one yet, so abundant with blessings that your storehouse nails pop clean out, boards bursting at the seams,&nbsp;flat-out overflowing.
But more than this, much more, my hope and heart and mind and prayer is this: may you find and be at peace with your own Being and Beliefs.
So much that, should this or that be your last hour, you&nbsp;might rest&nbsp;your head on a soft pillow&nbsp;knowing, tomorrow and beyond, there is unquestionably Meaning, Reason and&nbsp;Hope well beyond the plastic chairs.&nbsp;
It is the way of grace.
<a href="../../blogging/file.axd?file=2011%2f12%2fJamestownPhotos.pdf">JamestownPhotos.pdf (12.52 mb)</a>