Follow Your Passions

Like a boat moving through the water, each of us creates a wake. In the organizations that form the communities of our lives, our wakes have important consequences. In our businesses, on our teams, with our associates, in our communities and homes, we want a positive wake—one that lifts others but does not capsize them.

A positive wake is critical to our success, to our relationships, to our leadership. But there is only one way to determine the impact our wake has on others. They must tell us. That’s why feedback is a gift.
- Stephen C. Lundin, Ph.D. and Marshall Goldsmith, Ph.D.

Two of the greatest skills you can build to enhance your communication skills with others are related to the concept that feedback is one of the most precious gifts another human being can give us.

I worked for a company for five years once, and during that time I received one review from my manager. He never gave more because money was tight and people tended to associate reviews with monetary increases, but I genuinely just wanted to know if I was doing a good job or not, what I could work on to improve the company, etc. Nuthin’. I didn’t leave that job, I escaped. Psychologically, the lack of knowing whether the work I did made a bit of good was surprisingly important to me. At the next company I worked for, my manager was always there with answers to questions, and gave me constant praise and constructive criticism in the time I was there. Receiving the occasional pat on the back, or assistance in steering my work so it provided the most value, was as important to my job satisfaction as getting a paycheck every two weeks.

I’ve since become a feedback junkie. Sometimes the constructive criticism sort of feedback can be difficult (both to give and receive), but I’ve learned that in many cases it is also the most valuable. I’ve learned to identify those rare individuals that I can count on to poke holes in any theory, project, or idea I run by them - and once I identify them I make sure it’s a relationship I hold dearly, because it is unfortunately rare.

I should add one caveat to the concept that feedback is a gift. The type of feedback that is not particularly helpful is the opposite of constructive criticism, destructive criticism. If the intent of the person providing the feedback is to attack and harm rather than to be helpful, their words are generally valueless and can be quite poisonous if taken to heart.

So seek out opportunities to provide praise or assistance to your fellow coworkers or friends, and do so with a helpful heart. Like many things that are of a rare nature, your words can be of significant and lasting value to others. By providing others feedback, you are working to build empathy for others, a skill that will be of often unsung but still significant value to you in your life and career. And by listening to, and truly considering, what constructive advice people have for you without immediately going into defensive mode, you can increase your capacity for patience and humility. I am convinced that a consistent trait of a great leader, in virtually any situation, is the ability to simultaneously exhibit unwaiveringly confidence and unquestionable humility.

If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path. - Buddhist saying

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody. - Chinese Proverb

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. - Anne Frank

Our friends should be companions who inspire us, who help us rise to our best. - Joseph B. Wirthlin

Listen to people as they talk to you through out your day, and you will quickly find that they all have problems. Colleagues who keep complaining about the way something never works right, or how a process doesn’t make any sense. Friends who are trying to improve their careers, or go back to school. In fact, you don’t have to listen to them to find out something is amiss - just watch your manager’s body language, or note a family member’s mood being unusually negative. Someone who is normally talkative and outgoing being reserved and quiet instead.

The signs are all around us, and where there are signs, there are opportunities to help. Of course, the person has to want the help or you can’t get very far in your efforts. But I have found that once I changed my approach and thought process when it comes to acting on opportunities to assist others, people were generally not only open to having my help but were very grateful for it.

My natural tendency used to be that I was being respectful by just butting out of issues people were facing. If I met a coworker for lunch, and she told me about something she just couldn’t find the answer to, or a project she didn’t know how to take the next step with, I would listen with a caring ear and process what she had said, but then drop it there and move on. It occured to be at some point, though, that some of the times people were telling me these things, they were either consciously or unconsciously asking for help to get past their problems. So I’d get back to the office, pop onto Google or some internal resource, and look up the answer to what they were looking for. If someone was trying to figure out the next step to a project, maybe I know someone who would be good to point them in the right direction and make that connection for them.

These are both small gestures, don’t take much time or effort, but could make a huge difference to someone’s day. Expand this to a way of thinking, of viewing the world, and suddenly you are helping lots of people every day, in both small and big ways. You may be thinking that this sounds like you’d spend a lot of your time helping others and not be able to get your own work done in the process. Allow me to suggest that you will find you can get more of your own work done by doing more for others. By helping others, you are building connections, and those people you are connecting with and helping have skills and contacts that can likewise help you get your projects done and your questions answered. Ever hear the phrase “it’s not what you know, but rather who you know”? This is how to really put that quote into action in a huge way.

Keep the circle going. Help others, and when others help you thank them for it. Heck, send them a little thank you card just for something small someone did for you every once in a while. Think how you would feel if someone took the time to do that for you, how great it would be to find that in your mailbox. Actually hand-write it yourself on real paper rather than an e-mail (e-mail is fine but lacks the feel of that personal touch for most people still).

You’ll be astounded at how enriched your own life quickly becomes if you have a small filter in the back of your mind constantly sifting interactions with other as they occur and looking for the gems of opportunity to show themselves.

A friend of mine got a tee shirt for me recently that has a picture of a TV set and says “Think outside the box.” If you have watched television in the last several days, you have very likely seen a saturation of news about what is happening with Anna Nicole Smith. I don’t want to be insensitive. I’m not sure if her life or her death was more tragic, but clearly she has become the focal point of a lot of negativity and turmoil. I only hope the child involved will end up in a relatively good environment to grow up in, though I’m not sure the current scenarios favor that.

But I would like to suggest that there is a much bigger issue, a much deeper tragedy entwined in the stories being portrayed in our media. To explain, let me take you back to 1994. I was in my Sophomore year of college and had just arrived to Arizona State University to earn myself a degree in Journalism. Writing and covering stories that impacted our world and communities, delivering the truth to the masses, maybe framing the news in a more positive light - these were the goals of a twenty year old Iain Hamp.

About the same time I began to dive into the start of my journalism education, the OJ Simpson trial was in full swing and a media frenzy. It had bugged me a bit that there was so much coverage of the trial, when so many other things worth talking about were going on in the world, but I tended to just laugh at the absurdity of it more than anything else.

I was working as a security guard near ASU when I wasn’t in class, and a friend of mine was doing the same and lived in the same apartment complex as me. One day, in the Phoenix heat of summer, as we were walking home, my friend collapsed on the ground and had to be taken to the hospital. It turned out his lung had collapsed. I went to the hospital and waited around in the waiting room to find out what was happening with him, and the entire time life was happening around me, the OJ Trial was on the TV. People were coming in and out of the hospital for all sorts of things that needed healing, and yet we were all so worried about whether or not OJ was lying. It was a surreal moment, I turned away from the TV, and my heart swelled with empathy for the stories happening all around me.

That was the last summer of my journalism career. Of course with the advent of blogging, I can write the sorts of uplifting things and deliver the building messages I want to send out to the masses (all fifteen of you). But the mass media still delivers more and more of the same thing - news about people we don’t personally know, detailing parts of a stranger’s life I have absolutely no right or interest in knowing. And I guess I just have to ask - what good can come of it? What can we learn from it, what positive can we take away from knowing the mess that is the Anna Nicole Smith custody battle, or who Britney Spears is married to this week, or even whether or not OJ did it. At the end of the day, has it enhanced your life in any way?

Maybe I’m missing it. But I don’t see the point in me paying attention to any of it, and I found a great way to get away from paying attention to it. When the news starts talking about this sort of story, I turn it off, and I immediately go spend time doing something I absolutely love to do. Maybe that’s listening to my favorite music, or reading a few pages in a favorite book, or going for a walk, or calling a friend I haven’t talked to in a while…

Or, as was the case when I started this post, getting online and writing a blog post. Have a great week folks. You get better at anything you practice, so practice attracting positive things into your life.

I had the opportunity to get involved in pursuing one of my main goals this evening, mentoring others. Three hours of being able to directly connect with people trying to take the next transitional step in their careers. It was… awesome. Phenomenal. It also meant shifting my time around a bit and making some short term sacrifices, one of them being I will likely not have time for a post on Thursday. I will do my best to be back on track for Friday - Thursday night will be the Social Media Club meeting and between that and tonight’s experience, I will be bursting at the seams to share with you all.

I love my job, I love my life. Have a beautiful day.

“The future influences the present just as much as the past.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The moment something occurs, it has occured. It’s not going to occur, it already has. That places it in the past. You can’t influence it, you can’t change it. Sometimes you can take action “in the now” to mend something that is broken, or affect a better situation for the future, but you can’t alter the fact that what was done, was done.

I know people, people I talk to every day, who spend a lot of time being concerned about things they have no ability to influence, because they were in the past. They had a “bad day” where many things didn’t go right, and they are spending their “now” fretting about it, being downtrodden about it. If I may be so bold, this is not a particularly productive approach to looking at the past.

Now, what I don’t mean to imply is there is no value in considering the past. There is a great deal we can learn from the past so that we can apply that knowledge to bettering our now and our future. Whereas you cannot influence the past, there is little else you can do with the future but to influence it so that when it influences you as it approaches your present, it does so in a way more in line with your passions in life.

Let me share a rule I live by. If you desire something more than everyone else combined desires the opposite, then your desire is significantly more likely to come to pass. By desiring it, you are influencing the future. But others can do the same. So your desire has to be strong, and it has to push you to take action in the now, learn what you need to and can from the past, and apply your desire as much as you are capable of to the future. Live this way, keeping a positive attitude while avoiding wasting energy on negative thoughts about things you have no ability to control (like the past), and you will find your future filled with more and more of the kinds of things you wish to reap.

Think about your day, and the people who are a part of it. I don’t just mean the ones you interact with on a regular basis or have formed some sort of relationship with. I’m talking about that girl up there in the front row of your class, and the guy with the graying beard sitting three cubicles down from you at work. I’m talking about the woman behind the counter at the convenience store you buy coffee from every morning. Yes, I’m even referring to the stranger driving by you in the other direction down the road you live on, the one you pass all the time on your way in and out from home.

Who are these people? What are their backgrounds? What can they do, what do they do, what are they passionate about? You don’t know? Then what’s stopping you from going up and asking them? You literally never know what sorts of things they might know that could directly impact your personal goals in huge ways, or what people they know who could be your next best friend, or accountant, or mail carrier. Think about all the things you know, all the people you know who have a lot of skill in different things - how might you be able to positively impact the right person’s life?

You’ll never know until you ask. If you’re a bit timid about going up to a stranger and introducing yourself, here’s how to get over that feeling: go up to a stranger and introduce yourself! Ask them a general question about who they are, what they do, let them know you’re just curious about them. People love to talk about themselves, so you won’t have to work too hard to get the door open so that your next encounter with that person will be easier and more fruitful. Do that a few times, and you’ll find meeting new people is remarkably easy. Sure, some people just want to be left alone, at least when you approach them, but I doubt they’ll do worse than just seem a bit preoccupied and wanting to get back to what they are doing. And that’s okay, you just move on to the next person for now.

Here’s a challenge to you: make it a habit, a goal, a true focus, to introduce yourself and ask a non-evasive question to one new person every day, just to get the ball rolling. “Hi, hey, I come in and buy coffee from you all the time but I’ve never introduced myself - my name’s Iain. Has it been a busy morning?” Next time you talk, maybe ask if they go to school, or maybe something they are wearing will give you a clue to a hobby or interest. they might end up not being someone you connect with, but they might hold the key to an important goal you’ve been working on.

Connecting with other makes us feel good. I think you’ll be surprised how positive an impact it would have on your own life if you did it more often. It may require you to get outside of your comfort zone a little, but let’s not assume that’s a bad thing.