Commentary: "I Am" Vs "I Do"

Imran Rahman has a superb post at Dream Manifesto entitled “Two Simple Habits for a More Fulfilled Life”. It starts with a great quote from Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” The entire post is a must-read, but I think Rahman’s core concept is crucial. There is a difference between “I am” , which can be almost anything: a lie, an inflated self-concept, self-deception, a relic of misplaced, overindulgent parenting, or a vow that is not ever meant to be kept, and “I do”, as in “I pretty much do the same productive (and hopefully not unproductive) things day after day, week after week, year after year”. “I am” is waiting to be proved or disproved, "I do" is petty darn obvious to anyone who has known you for more than five minutes.

For instance:

I do… perform a Weekly Review every..well..week, thanks to David Allen’s Getting Things Done. This has led to much more serenity in my life. I know where things are filed. I know what is coming up for me next week, next month, in 6 months, etc. I know what my projects are, and what is the most important project to be doing right now.


I do... have a “Mindfulness List”, which I read every morning. Things to keep in mind. What I should be eating (and not eating). How I should be exercising. Reminders to try (sigh) to stop judging people so much. Reminders that “peace” is more important than winning an argument (sigh, again).

I do… Use checklists. Since I do a lot of trading, it is important to get it right over and over again. Exactly right. Some of what I do is very sequential and I have often got the steps wrong. The checklist is a lot better than my memory, and the results of the procedures are very satisfying.


I do… (thank-you Mathew Cornell ) keep a giant Personal Information Manager spreadsheet with every important site that I may want to revisit someday, or that I may want to refer a friend to. This has been extremely helpful.

I do… "debrief” myself after a particularly jarring trading experience, and I re-read these debriefs on a monthly basis, adding them to a “Lessons Learned” file. Thank you “Murph” Murphy .


I do… Write up monthly and yearly “Highlights” so I remember what worked, and what didn’t, reminding myself that assertiveness works and anger doesn’t, that praise always works and criticism never does, and, very often, reminding myself (with some surprise) that life is pretty good, and that I am truly blessed with wonderful friends and family.


These items have progressed from being what I do to being what I am. Five years ago I was not doing these things, and, thanks to this blog, and my intention to learn and grow, now I am doing these things. Aristotle was right. I now “am” these things as much as any other description of myself. And I like these things because I chose them. I chose them and I choose to keep doing them. Perhaps choice is partially the difference between the “I am” and the “I do”. Between “I can’t help what I am” and "I CAN help what I am". Of course, these actions I repeat so often are all means to an end, but they are also a “carving out” of the self. A rejection of entropy. A stand against chaos. Out of all the things I could be doing: sleeping, watching TV, engaging in “pity parties”, eating chocolate sundaes, I CHOOSE TO DO THESE THINGS INSTEAD. These items separate me from mere impulse. From unconsciousness. From drift (hah! Not enough). They make me who I am. They are who I am.

Who are you?

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Commentary: Are you "Too good" for Motivational Tapes?

Are you too good to listen to motivational tapes? Too cool? Too smart? Too successful? Immune to that kind of sincerity and challenge? That first question occurred to me for two reasons. First: I have a bookshelf full of motivational tapes (my favorite is Brian Tracy), but I had not been listening to them much lately. Around New Years, I put on some of Brian’s tapes again, and really enjoyed them, and, of course, focused on them with a whole new set of reference experiences than I had possessed a few years back. Secondly, I was enjoying an excellent Harvey Mackay podcast, when he mentioned the most interesting thing: Tiger Woods, he said, had been listening to motivational tapes since age six!!! I looked it up on the Internet. It apparently is true.
I have had a reasonably successful life, although I won’t be on the cover of Time anytime soon. But, looking back, I can trace some profound differences between my life and those of others I know, right back to those motivational tapes. To those tapes I owe the concepts that financial independence is/should be a major goal in everyone’s life; that a “workaholic mentality” is fit and proper , and not to be scoffed-at and snickered-at by folks who are “too smart” for that sort of thing. Or what about the idea of taking time every morning to do visualization, affirmations, and a review of your major goals? These behaviors are not “natural”. I learned every one of them (and dozens more) from motivational tapes.

Now, as I look around me, I wonder “why isn’t ‘X’ working harder? ..doesn’t he know he won’t be able to work forever?” Or “Why is ‘Y’ getting their investment advice from a talking head on CNBC instead of delving into what makes people really rich?” You see people literally shooting themselves in the foot looking for quick bucks. Equating income with wealth (and going broke in the process), and living in quiet despair, when merely putting on a tape or a CD could begin a transformational process, both inside, and, later, outside, that would imbue their lives with prosperity, excitement, and peace of mind far beyond what can be achieved by stumbling around, dreaming, whining, and, most likely, losing.

I challenge anyone who wants to accomplish more in life, who may feel that he/she is getting “passed by” in the great parade, to spend one year listening to the likes of Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, Harvey Mackay, or Dennis Waitley. You will immediately find that your daily actions have implications you never dreamed of. You’ll find you have “permission” to work harder, save more, dream bigger, move beyond the constraints of your peer group, and develop respect for individualism, determination, and excellence, instead of “getting along”, moaning about “the rich”, or looking for the next easy way out of a jam.

Some people had this kind of mentoring in their family. I , for the most part, did not. In the marathon of life, I was not first out of the gate. But my “coaches”, the above masters of personal success, really got me into some kind of shape. I am eternally grateful.





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Commentary: Major Definite Aim

I recently posted about Napoleon Hill’s concept of the Major Definite Aim, and how my own recent experiences with it have, for me, confirmed its value as one of the greatest success principles. I came across an interesting anecdote in Harold Evans’ book They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators, an exhaustively researched collection of biographies of the inventors and entrepreneurs that , innovation by innovation, created our modern world over the last two and a half centuries.

Leo Hendrik Baekeland was the brilliant chemist who created Bakelite, the revolutionary plastic that transformed industrial design in the first half of the 20th century. He was blessed with superb scientific gifts, and turned down the prospect of professorships in his native Belgium to try his luck in America.

But brains aren’t enough.

At one point facing isolation and ruin , seriously ill, and with growing debts, he was clearly facing utter failure. Then, in Baekeland’s words:

“..it dawned upon me that instead of keeping too many irons in the fire, I should concentrate my attention on one single thing which would give me the best chance of the quickest possible results”

That “one single thing” of course was the Major Definite Aim. Baekeland went on to make a fortune.

The instructive point here is that brains, hard work, or any other talent, are only a single component of the success puzzle. The Major Definite aim focuses the mind, and even the brightest of the bright can benefit immensely from it. We cannot merely work hard (a prerequisite, of course, for any achievement) , but we have to think about how to best focus that work.

One single thing.

So simple. So profound.



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Commentary: Denali , Entropy, and You

I recently watched a PBS special on a group of climbers doing scientific research on Denali (formerly named Mt McKinley) and ,coincidentally, I recalled that someone I knew while in graduate school had also recently climbed Denali. Now, I am no mountaineer, not even close. And I watched the TV show with great anxiety, as I realized that the lack of oxygen, fierce and unpredictable weather, and sheer cold, could (and does) kill many a climber.

Yet, it occurred to me that, in a sense, Denali is an example of the “entropy” we all experience in a quest for personal success. In a sense, climbing such a peak is “safer”, in a convoluted sense, than is our day to day journey toward our personal goals.

Why would this be? Because, on Denlai the forces of entropy, the forces of disorder, the forces that conspire to freeze you, starve you, and suffocate you are brutally obvious. Yet, in our daily lives, those same forces, just as powerful, are subtle, incremental, sometimes existing just below our awareness. Some of them are in the famous “important but not urgent” quadrant of our lives, where the fate of our wealth, longevity, and spiritual happiness reside. This is not a 10 day climb. This is a 90-year trek. It’s called our lives. But if we persist in ou rignorance of these forces, slowly, but just as surely as the gusts of Denali, we will freeze, starve, or suffocate.

Also, gladly, there is a high peak, with a breathtaking vista, which we all can reach on that trek. And we can be just as proud as the most heroic mountaineer, if we make it to the summit, having survived, planned for, adjusted for, improvised, and disciplined ourselves for that arduous ascent.

So, what are the forces of entropy that sneak in, unseen and unheard, to plague our own ascent of life’s Denali? Procrastination, refusal to save and invest, the lure of debt, refusal to study and learn, about our capabilities, our fitness, our nutrition, our abilities to relate to others. The climber, with a good team, knows what to expect. But so do we. Yet the climber is utterly sure of death if she fails, while we, lulled by our “safe” job, “never been sick a day in my life”, “what’s a little drink among friends” “new credit card” etc, face just as sure a demise, just as sure a fall into the crevasse of ill health, death, financial ruin, etc but, because our climb is long and the gradient easy, and we have seen such good weather in our youth, been praised by our parents, teachers, counselors, etc…we are in a much greater danger. The climber is absolutely certain of freezing to death. But we ignore the odds. We skip a day of exercise. We spend a dollar instead of saving it. We “wing it” at the major presentation. We cut class.

And we fail. Because we don’t see ourselves as on Denali. Because the metaphor of the relentless cause-and-effect , law-of-nature status of Entropy, this metaphor, I say, eludes us. At our peril.

You are on Denali, my friend. Not for 10 days, but for your entire life. But you are in luck. Hearty bands of climbers, the great authors mentioned in this blog and elsewhere, the Napoleon Hills, the W. Clement Stones, the Tony Robbins’, and all the rest, have climbed to the peak before you. They are throwing lines down. They have ample nourishment and warmth for you. They stand atop the summit, drinking in their glorious success, surveying the earth below, and they eagerly pitch in to help you, O weary climber, if you will but grasp a line, use their compass, see through their spyglass.

You can cheat the wind. You can prepare for the cold. You can find the key route. You can provision your camp. And you can gain the peak.

You can conquer your Denlai.

Incentive Cause Bias: Munger Writ Large

I have been “riffing” lately on the ideas of Charlie Munger (please check the Charlie Munger category on the blog) and a recent speech by Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, caused me to sit up and take notice. One of Munger’s categories of “human misjudgement” is the “incentive-cause bias” or, the tendency of, as Munger explains, salt salesman to tell you how much salt you need, or hammer-owners to see every problem in nail-like terms. Here is Bernanke, describing one of the key causes of the mortgage meltdown (italics mine):

The traditional model of mortgage markets, based on portfolio lending, solved
these problems in a straightforward way: Because banks and thrifts kept the
loans they made on their own books, they had strong incentives to underwrite
carefully and to invest in gathering information about borrowers and
communities. In contrast, when most loans are securitized and originators have
little financial or reputational capital at risk, the danger exists that
the originators of loans will be less diligent. In securitization markets,
therefore, monitoring the originators and ensuring that they have incentives to
make good loans is critical. I have argued elsewhere that, in some cases, the
failure of investors to provide adequate oversight of originators and to ensure
that originators' incentives were properly aligned was a major cause of the
problems that we see today in the subprime mortgage market (Bernanke, 2007). In recent months we have seen a reassessment of the problems of maintaining
adequate monitoring and incentives in the lending process, with investors
insisting on tighter underwriting standards and some large lenders pulling back
from the use of brokers and other agents.

In other words, there was no incentive for the underwiters to scrutinize the credit risks of the borrowers, and plenty of incentive to turn those mortgages around and get them out the door.

The incentive-cause bias is alive and well and has come close to toppling the banking system. Score another one for Charlie Munger.

Techtags: Charlie Munger Ben Bernanke Incentive bias

Commentary - How Many "Books Ahead" Are You?

Charlie Munger. Barton Biggs, Neville Isdell. What do Warren Buffett’s sidekick, a Hedge Fund Master, and the CEO of Coca-Cola have in common? They are passionate about reading, and feel it is the cornerstone of success for anyone. So… how many “books ahead” are you? Instead of measuring how many Plasma Screen TVs, cars, or houses you have, how about using the measure of what the most successful people use? How many books ahead are you?

How many books ahead are you in your field?
Everyone in your field is your competitor. How can you compete? Clearly reading will open the door to the advancements in your field, as well as to collateral advancements in other fields relevant to yours.

How many books ahead are you in Investing?
Do you want to leave your investments in the hands of your broker? A planner? Your accountant? The field of investing is changing day by day. Are you keeping up?

How many books ahead are you in business?
Are you aware of new worldwide trends? New lines of business you could be in? New styles? New standards? New worldwide markets?

How many books ahead are you in marketing?
If Search Engine Optimization complete changes every three months, how many people are reading what you neglected to read, and are beating you at your own game?

How many books ahead are you in personal development?
Who might be writing with a completely new approach to motivation? Interpersonal skills? Goal-setting? The ground is shifting under your feet. The answers keep changing.


How many books are you ahead of yourself?
Are you ahead of where you were last year? Someone once said “You are the same person this year as you were last year, except for the money you’ve saved and the books you’ve read”? How many books per year do you read? Did you know some people (very rich people) think in terms of how many books per week they read? Surprised? They find it crucial.

Human knowledge is exploding at an exponential pace. Much of this knowledge is immediately applicable to better our lives, our health, our finances, our relationships, even our souls. Are you “too smart” to read? Do you learn everything you need to know from drive time radio? Do you really think that will give you an edge? Do you really think there are no pieces of new knowledge you need to apply for the rest of our life?

Your competitors certainly hope so.

Note: This entry has been featured on Verve Coaching's Carnival of Powerful Living. Please visit their site and enjoy the other excellent articles!!

Techtags: Reading Success Career

Commentary - The "American Idol" of (Chinese) Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is the “rising tide that lifts all boats” , because growth and innovation brings prosperity to all. I recently posted about Paul Graham’s Y-Combinator, a startup firm that provides seed money to early stage companies, usually in the range of $20,000. Here’s a story I found at Rutledge Capital. In China they’ve done a sort of “American Idol” /”The Apprentice” combination in what must be the granddaddy of all business shows: a competition starting with 120,000 Chinese entrepreneur candidates on a show called “Win In China”. The winner gets approximately 1.2 milllion (US equivalent) to fund their dream. The scale of the vision is enormous. Clearly the Chinese are hungry for success in a big way.

Techtags: Entrepreneurshp Anna Wang John Rutledge Entrepreneurship Startup Y-Combinator Venture Capital

Commentary - The Costs of Entrepreneurship Continue to Plummet

100 years ago it took millions to start a company. Capital was scarce, and business was based on huge movements of products. Railroads, autos, foodstuffs, oil, coal ,the great electric power build out, all required stupendous amounts of capital and great masses of physical labor and materials to earn a return. Fast-forward to today. Techcrunch reports that Boulder-based Techstars is incubating 10 businesses for $15,000 each. No “good old boy” networks needed. No begging for cash. You could work a summer job and make enough money to start the next Google. You could sneak into your college computer lab and start the next Flickr. What is the “product”? Information! What is the capital going to buy? Smart people. So, any returns at all on such meager amounts of outlay have the potential to be stupendous. The leverage of the human mind has never been stronger. The downside risks have never been lower. The equation for success has never looked more soluble. Distribution is instant. Payment is in nanoseconds. Receivables? Zero days. Time to profit? Zero time. . Tools to create tools to create tools make development exponentially fast and intuitively easy. The greatest success tool in history may very well be this information economy. What’s the downside? There are no excuses left.

Techtags: Techstars TechCrunch Entrepreneurship Success Startup Capital

Affirmations

Great post on Affirmations in the Dilbert Blog. I have personally found repeated affirmations to be very useful. Doug Adams notes that affirmations can help train us to notice the kind of things we want. In that sense, we indeed "create our own reality"...and we don't need to violate the elaws of physics to do it

Commentary: The Iranians vs. Internet Access

The Iranians are limiting the speed of internet access for homes and businesses. Why is this important to a success books blog? Because success is built on a platform, in our case, free-market capitalism. If a phone or cable company attempted to limit access speeds here in the USA, the open nature of our markets would allow another provider to increase bandwith speed, thus potentially grabbing customers away from the stingy service provider.

This is true as a rule in any comparison between a free economy and a “command” economy, run by elitists. The Iranians decision is an object lesson in how elites, once given power, limit choice to only their solution, shutting off whole avenues of progress, especially unplanned progress.

I'm sure glad such micromanagement of the consumer can't happen here.