No Map. No Guide. No Limits.

Today is Memorial Day–a day when we’re all supposed to stop and remember the high cost of war and those who sacrificed their lives, or the quality of their lives, in service to their country. I say “quality of their lives,” because in addition to the many who never come home from armed conflicts, or come home missing limbs or basic capabilities, there are many thousands more who become the walking wounded; veterans who struggle for years afterward to find a way to integrate back into a “normal” society after witnessing and experiencing horrors those of us who never served cannot even begin to imagine.
The emotional scars of battle trauma existed long before any psychiatrist came up with the term “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” or PTSD. World War I veterans came home with permanently darker views of the world, and many World War II veterans refused to ever speak about what they’d been through overseas. (A note on that: I highly recommend the 1950s film “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” as an early attempt to explore and publicize that struggle for returning WWII veterans). The difference now is that we talk about it more. And more mental health professionals are focusing on coming up with better treatment options for it.
But a New York Times magazine article I read this spring got my attention, because it described a different approach for coping with post-traumatic stress–one that not only resonated with my own experience and philosophy, but which also is very much in keeping with the message of this website. In the mid-1990s, two researchers at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, discovered that trauma could have more than one effect on individuals. Immediately, of course, it was, well … traumatic. Stressful, debilitating, painful and difficult. But they also discovered that many people who’d been through serious traumatic experiences also reported, down the line, that they had “a renewed appreciation for life, they found new possibilities for themselves; they felt more personal strength; their relationships improved; and they felt spiritually more satisfied.”
To put it in my own terms, what the researchers discovered was that the traumatic path those people had walked had, for them, been something of a hero’s journey: dark and difficult along the way, and scarring in ways that would never heal completely, but ultimately transformative in ways that vastly improved both their lives and their ability to cope with whatever came after that.
Interestingly enough, the U.S. Army has now integrated that approach into an official training program to try to give soldiers the psychological resiliency to look past the pain of trauma to the possibilities for growth the experience might also offer. The program was spearheaded by recently retired Brigadier General Rhonda Cornum–who many people would recognize as the Army flight surgeon who became a POW after her helicopter was downed in the first Gulf War, killing five on board. Cornum was pinned under the wreckage but managed to crawl out despite two broken arms, a bullet in her back, torn knee ligaments and numerous other injuries. She was then sexually assaulted on the way to prison. And yet, Cornum later told a TIME magazine reporter that while being a POW was “a rape of your entire life,” she said what she learned “in those Iraqi bunkers and prison cells is that the experience doesn’t have to be devastating, that it depends on you.” [click to continue…]

A couple of weeks ago, the Sunday business section of the New York Times ran an article about a popular class taught at Google, for Google employees, to help them deal with the stress of working at what is, if the article is to be believed, an incredibly stressful and demanding (albeit also incredibly creative) company.

Now, I’ve been to Google. I used to live 15 minutes down the road from its campus, and my brother worked for the company for a time. So on the one hand, I can attest to the fact that the campus is an energized place. Some of the people I’ve met who work there are compellingly bright, thinking individuals, with big ideas about changing the world. Who wouldn’t want to work in a place filled with optimism, a belief in possibility, and with people actively engaged in transforming the world? Not to mention the fact that the food options at Google really are impressive.

But the Times article–perhaps unwittingly–painted a different image of the place. It described a place where even people coming from “fast-paced fields, already accustomed to demanding bosses and long hours, say Google pushes them to produce at a pace even faster than they could have imagined.” It described 80-hour work weeks and pressure that led employees to go home and explode at their families.

Even if the article is–as journalistic pieces certainly can be–a skewed angle that suited the writer more than it reflected the “typical” reality of Google, my brother used to say that the reason Google provided such great food, recreation, and even “nap pods” (my term for them) was to encourage employees to never leave the place. And it does occur to me that if employees really are that stressed and exhausted, someone there might question whether the company’s “do no evil” philosophy should, perhaps, start at home, with the health, well-being and quality of life of its own employees.

Of course, from the company’s perspective, perhaps that’s where this particular class comes in. It’s called “Search Inside Yourself,” or S.I.Y., and its goals are to help individuals with “attention training, self-knowledge, and self-mastery, and the creation of useful mental habits.” Employees apparently rave about the class, and there’s a long waiting list. And, to be sure, some of the things it apparently teaches would be good for any of us to learn, such as stopping to breathe and really reflect on what someone is saying to you before responding, or being more “mindful” of how emails you send can be interpreted by those who receive them. [click to continue…]

One of the reasons I like physical adventure (and write about it so often), is that it provides such rich source material for important life lessons. Life lessons can be found anywhere, of course, and adventure comes in many forms beyond physical pursuits. But there’s something about a physical challenge that tends to present the lessons in a more visceral fashion, with tangible and generally immediate consequences, that makes the lessons harder to miss.
Last week, for example, I was flying with a friend in Northern California. She’s a fairly new pilot, with a Cessna 172 she keeps up at the Napa County Airport. We’d gone out for a fun lunch adventure and were returning to Napa in time to pick up her kids from school. The air traffic controller at Napa Airport put us on what they call a “straight-in” approach to the north-south runway there, landing to the south. So we were lined up with the runway several miles to the north of the airport but descending at a steady rate.
We’d already descended below the ridge line immediately to our left (east) and were about four miles from the airport when the controller told us to make a left 360-degree turn (or, a full circle to the left) to allow the controller enough time and space to land another plane in front of us. I looked to the left, where the ridgeline was pretty close.
“We’re not making a left 360 [degree turn] here,” I told my friend. “Ask for a right 360 instead.” She asked, and the controller agreed. So we did a complete level circle to the right, then rejoined our descent path to the runway again. We’d gotten a half mile closer when the controller called us and told us to make another right-hand circle. When you’re low to the ground and slowing up for landing, diverting from your path is a bit of a challenge. Doing it once is asking a bit from a pilot. Doing it twice is asking a lot.
But pilots are trained to please controllers. Our default response is to do what they ask, because that’s what we assume they need in order for traffic to flow smoothly and safely. Pilots also take pride in their competence. Like many professionals, we have a strong desire to prove that we can do what is asked of us.  So my friend and I did another right-hand turn and rejoined our descent path once again. [click to continue…]

So there I was, in sweats, covered in dust and cobwebs, attempting to make progress clearing out 50 years of accumulated papers and stuff in my parents’ house in New York (I’m working at getting them cleared out of there and moved up to Massachusetts, which also accounts for why more writing and posts and stuff like that isn’t getting done this spring) … and I get a message from the Canadian Broadcasting Company (which seems to be Canada’s version of CNN) saying they want to interview me on TV. In a studio. In 5 hours.
Seems I’d written a piece for TheAtlantic.com a year earlier discussing whether “visionary” leaders like Steve Jobs are born or created. My conclusion was that although some people are more naturally inclined toward creative vision than others, there are many factors in someone’s childhood and life experience that can make them more inclined to become a visionary leader or entrepreneur. What’s more, there are also steps adults can take to enhance our “visionary” ability, regardless of what influences we had as children.
The week that CBC called me, the two founders of the Canadian company Research in Motion, the company that developed (and still sells) the ubiquitous Blackberry phone/communication device, had been summarily fired by the company’s Board of Directors. The board felt that the founders didn’t have a vision that could compete with the iPhone revolution (and, indeed, the company’s market share was plummeting, even though the Blackberry was still better at secure communication than any other “smart” phone). The producers at CBC saw the piece I’d written for The Atlantic, and thought I might have something to say on the subject. [click to continue…]

One of the goals of this website is to encourage people to take a more passionate, adventurous approach to their lives and whatever paths they travel in the course of those lives. Of course, accomplishing that end can, and usually does, require some level of change–or at least openness to change.
I think there are actually two kinds of change: the kind that happens to you, and the kind you consciously will yourself to make. The challenge of the first is to adapt enough to make the most of whatever change is occurring. The challenge of the second is to follow through with the intent to change well enough so that the desired change (switch careers, lose weight, lead a more healthy lifestyle, dump some bad habit or relationship, bring more adventure into your life, take up some new activity or skill, etc.) actually happens.
Unfortunately, intentional change is incredibly hard to accomplish. In a post I wrote a couple of years ago called “Change or Die: Why is it so hard to change?” I talked about some of the reasons for that (courtesy of Alan Deutschman, who wrote a whole book on the subject).
Recently, a new theory has arisen about why change may be so hard to accomplish. John Tierney, a science writer for the New York Times, recently co-wrote a book (with social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister) called Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.
The book’s premise, backed up by social psychology research, is that willpower is actually a tangible–and limited–energy substance in human beings. According to this school of thought, we have “X” amount of willpower available to us. If we use up too much of it resisting, say, the purchase of non-essential but desirable items, we may not have enough left to resist that cinnamon roll, or to motivate us to actually go to the gym. [click to continue…]

The recent Facebook IPO focused much media attention on how, in the future, “we will share everything”–an end that Mark Zuckerberg, the young CEO of Facebook, believes he can make easier and more seamless … not to mention more profitable for himself.
Forgive my lack of enthusiasm. I understand that it is heresy to say anything that contrasts the latest buzz, but the only people I remember who had a need to share everything were college freshmen, whose insecurity in their environment led them to go everywhere and do everything as a group. Even, the upper classmen used to joke, using the bathroom. Thankfully, we all grew out of that stage as we gained more confidence in our ability to navigate the challenging currents of college and life with a little more balance between solitude and community.
The Facebook “gosh, isn’t it great to share everything” craze isn’t the first buzz concept that I’ve disagreed with. I remember arguing with friends who gushed to me, back in the dot-com craze, that the “New Economy” would be a party that never ended.
“Every party ends,” I said. “No spike continues forever. Just ask the barons of the 1890s, the 1920s, or any other giddy era.”
“Ah, but this time is different,” they argued.
“Sure it is,” I said. “And this guy really will leave his wife.”
I also argued with my magazine publishing bosses, back in the early 2000s, that if we gave everything away free on the website, there’d be no reason for people to subscribe to the magazine, our revenue would plummet, and there would be dire results for the magazine’s economic health. “But this is what everyone has to do, now,” they argued. One destroyed publishing industry later, I’m tempted to say “I told you so.” Except the damage that “information wants to be free” craze inflicted is really too severe to even joke about.
I also have the same reaction any time an aircraft designer comes us to me and says they’ve designed an airplane that flies twice as fast, on half the fuel, with no sacrifice in range or payload. It’s not that I’m some genius or am possessed with the ability to see the future. It’s just that when someone comes up to me with “THE ANSWER” that clashes with the entire history of commerce, engineering, physics, logic, or every common-sense instinct my gut knows to be true … I suspect I am facing the highly suspect phenomenon of buzz, as opposed to a lasting innovation or idea that might truly transform the world. In point of fact, very few of the people who design no-kidding transformative inventions (the automobile, the telephone, penicillin) went or go around boldly declaring that the rules have (or had) all now changed. And there’s probably a notable lesson in that, somewhere.
But I had the same reaction when I read an article last year talking about how creativity really works best in groups. Brainstorming, open office space, and sharing everything via electronic media, the article announced, was THE ANSWER to more creative innovation in business. (Seriously. Any time anyone announces they have THE ANSWER to anything … run, do not walk, as fast as you can in the opposite direction.) [click to continue…]

It’s easy to romanticize past eras, or other people’s lives and adventures, as far more wonderful and glorious than they really are, or were. The Wild West, from all I’ve read, was a really rough, uncomfortable place–especially for any women who tried to brave its dangers and discomforts. Venice, at the time of DaVinci, stank to high heavens from all the sewage. Even the “good old days” of the prosperous 1950s wasn’t all some people revise it to be. McCarthyism, segregation, and “mother’s little helper” pills for the legions of unfulfilled housewives all come to mind. And the glory days of Parisian artists and writers gathering in cafes and salons for soirees and artistic arguments about style, philosophy, literature and Great Ideas … well, they weren’t movie-set comfortable, either. Many of those writers and artists were living hand-to-mouth, in tiny, unheated garret apartments, which is why they spent so much time in the cafes, making bread, cheese and wine last as long as they could.
I found myself thinking about this difference between fantasy and reality, in terms of some of the life adventures we sometimes wish we were living, after reading a recent New York Times article about young struggling writers in New York City.
Unable to break into the traditional literary hierarchy (jobs at the elite magazines, and publishing contracts, are proving hard to find, even with masters’ degrees from prestigious universities), they are forming their own literary circles. The group profiled for the article meets regularly in an apartment/bookstore to discuss literature, philosophy, and Great Ideas.
Reading the piece, I had two thoughts. [click to continue…]

Just after finishing my recent post on  The Rebellion of Silence, I came across an article in The New York Times that reinforced one of the points I was making; namely, that happiness doesn’t necessarily come from being the toast of the town, or on the cutting edge of new trends and “buzz.”

In the article, Jane Brody wrote about a new book that’s been published by Cornell University researchers who’ve compiled “30 Lessons from Living” from “more than 1,000 older Americans from different economic, educational and occupational strata.”

Among other things, Brody noted, “not one person in a thousand said their happiness accrued from working as hard as you can to make money to buy whatever you want. Rather, the near-universal view was summed up by an 83-year old former athlete who worked for decades as an athletic coach and recruiter: ‘The most important thing is to be involved in a profession that you absolutely love, and that you look forward to going to work to every day.'”

Another reason to shed the guilt of disconnecting from being in the center of such a fast-moving information cycle, if that’s what your heart really wants to do. Even if it means someone else grabs the brass ring of the moment’s attention, you aren’t really missing out on anything that matters, in the long run.

I haven’t read the book Brody was reviewing, but the book (30 Lessons for Living by Karl Pillemer) or the website about the research project itself  might be well worth checking out.

Ever since I saw the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, the significance of February 2nd has changed for me. While most of the world still looks to Groundhog Day as a harbinger of whether winter will be long or short, I look at it as an annual reminder of the value of a little uncertainty in life.
Groundhog Day, for anyone who didn’t see the movie, tells the story of a man (Phil) who finds himself repeating the same day of his life, over and over and over again. The same things happen at the same time, with the same people, to the point where he knows exactly who he’s going to run into, and when, and what they’re going to say before they say it. The awful monotony and predictability of that kind of existence, where nothing is unknown or uncertain, and therefore nothing surprising can ever happen, is so unbearable to Phil that he finally tries to kill himself. (Even that doesn’t work. He still wakes up the next morning, condemned to repeat the day over again.)
Eventually (spoiler alert –if you haven’t seen the movie and want to, skip this paragraph), Phil finds a way to break the pre-programmed course of events by altering his own behavior within that day … which slowly changes the responses of those he meets and, finally, the outcome of the day.
There are all kinds of lessons and intended parallels in that story line … including the fact that, in the end, all we really can change or control in the world is our own behavior and response to the people, events and circumstances around us.
But for me, the story is also a cautionary tale to be very careful what we wish for–even when we’re wishing for predictability or security in our lives. Ideally, of course, we’d like a life with just enough uncertainty to make it interesting, but enough security that (as in a standard Hollywood movie where we know they’re not going to kill off the hero) we don’t have to worry overmuch about how badly things might turn out. But life isn’t perfect. Whether it’s in a job, a spouse, a place to live, or even in the amount of uncertainty we have in our lives, we don’t always get the ideal mix and ratio of ingredients.
When we’re in the midst of upheaval, it’s easy to wish away all that uncertainty. And … to be clear … there are times when life careens into bona fide nightmare levels of uncertainty (war, natural disaster, personal tragedy), where our focus, quite rightly, becomes getting a little more certainty and security into the mix. But Groundhog Day is a reminder to me that uncertainty is not all bad … and we can benefit from embracing it, or at least coming to some kind of peace with it.
In fact, I’m getting ready to release a new edition of Surviving Uncertainty: Taking a Hero’s Journey, which is the e-book I opened this site with, three years ago (yes, it’s been that long!). It offers some advice, and hopefully some inspiration and perspective, on not only how to survive uncertain stretches of life, but how to actually thrive in them. In addition to some new material in the book, I’m working on making it available in several different versions, including ones for Kindle and iPad, as well as–finally–a print version!
Stay tuned for more information on that, coming up soon. In the meantime, have a Happy Groundhog Day–and remember that without uncertainty in life, there’d be very little reason to go through the effort of living it.