Plans and Life Scripts

Whips ‘n’ Things, Part One

Since most of you have already read and discussed 50 Shades of Grey, I’ll fill you in on the other books I’ve been reading lately. All right, I’ll admit I haven’t read Grey yet. I’m waiting for the movie.

 

For now, my mind is spinning thanks to three business books I’m in various states of finishing:

The Sandler Success Principles: 11 Insights That Will Change the Way You Think and Sell by David Mattson and Bruce Seidman

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril by Margaret Heffernan

  

A person’s life script often determines the way he or she reacts when faced with problems and choices. The Sandler Success Principles explores the concept of The Child, The Parent and The Adult to explain how our attitudes are formed very early. The book uses comparisons to Transactional Analysis to explain how and why people make buying decisions and why we, as folks attempting to sell our product, tend to get in our own way.  

The Child and The Parent are the earliest inputs telling us what we like, what we hate, and instills the values that shape our lives. These scripts replay over and over again in our minds, filtering the emotions and attitudes that form our behaviors, and explaining why I still can’t pass up cotton candy at a carnival.

 The Adult is the rational and examining part of ourselves. It can enable or disable the natural instincts of us all so that we are not relegated to living a hard-wired life. We can will our Adult to grow, change, be selective, and to operate with or in spite of our inner Child and Parent.

 

Willful Blindness makes it apparent that the scripts we have imprinted in our minds lead us to be blind to many things. Thinking, Fast and Slow reveal that the scripts reside in our fast-thinking mind and can prevent us from applying constructive filters as we engage the "effortful mind." 

 

Attitude, behavior, and technique are the factors that make up effective planning. If you’re missing any of those ingredients, you’re left with a half-baked loaf of bread. Not unlike how some women describe men younger than 35.

 

Let’s define each factor through David Sandler goggles. Attitude relates to beliefs, outlook, and expectations. Behavior relates to goals and action plans. Technique is the way skill sets are brought to realize the goals that are shaped by our attitudes. It would be pretty foolish to plan to fail, but that is what so many business owners and individuals do when they are not attentive to each element.

What are the attitudes that you bring to the table when you plan? Do you really believe in the project or company you are thinking about? What are the limiting assumptions that you are bringing to the table? Can you imagine the company or yourself in a different reality?

 

Engaging your Adult in a “What if?” kind of exercise might open you up to new possibilities. Over the next few days, observe your thought processes and the scripts that accompany them. You may find doing so gets you to a completely different place. I’m hoping eventually this will take me to a place called Aruba.

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Plans and Life Scripts- Part 2

The Dirty Word

Be Here Now

THOUGHTS FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON

 I guess you can say I am a pushover for sentiment during the Holiday Season.  Note I use capital letters when I refer to this time of year because I think we all tend to be reflective not only about the past year, but also of the gifts we give to those we love and those gifts we receive from others.  I wanted to share an excerpt from a letter I received from our terrific friend and associate, Clara Mayer, our Director of Marketing.  She is a SURVIVOR!  She has fought off two bouts of catastrophic illness but still has a tremendous outlook.  Those that have the privilege to spend time with her can feel it.

With her permission to share this with all of you, I wanted to pass on her words about adversity and thankfulness.  I apologize to those of you who are not religious, as I realize that the mention of a divinity can be polarizing, but I think the unedited version is the best.  So here goes.

“I remember you and I sitting in your garage talking - you asked me why I had taken adversity and turned into a gift... What was inside of me that drove my desire of being a better person."

The answer is... DRUM ROLL PLEASE...

It's really three things:

1. ADVERSITY made me take a look at what worked and what did not in my life. At the end of my life, I didn't want to say that I wished I could have been a better ..... Mother, daughter, sister, woman, friend, lover, teacher, etc. So let's call adversity the interruption I needed to take inventory of my life and be truthful with myself.

2. I was ok, regardless of my situation... I was alive TODAY!  The end no longer scared me because the adversity in my life had shown me a bigger purpose, full of meaning. And most importantly, I had a vision - at last - of who I wanted to be to myself and to the people I love in my life - You being one of them!

3. My faith!  I'm not religious, but I know my purpose could only bring me closer to God. And that when I listened, really listened, I would find my way through life being able to recognize the messages from the universe. I'm open, therefore I'm always the student. His student - your student - my daughters student. After all, you guys have taught me more than I could ever teach you.”

So in the spirit of the Holiday Season, I want to declare two things:

I am grateful to our clients, associates and team members who teach me and my partners more than we could ever teach them.

I am thankful for the opportunity being in all of your lives and for the great gifts that have been provided to me, my partners and our families. 

We, at Rose, Snyder & Jacobs wish all of you the most peaceful and relaxing Holiday Season you can possibly have and look forward to serving, working and being with all of you in the coming year.

A Crazy Guy Taught Me to Be a Better Listener

Little did I know that I was going to learn how to be a better listener when I decided to watch Harvey with Jimmy Stewart …

Let me back up. I was flipping through the channels the other night when Harvey, a very old movie, caught my attention. Harvey is about a man, Elwood Dowd, who believes he hangs out with a 6’3’’ white rabbit named Harvey. Harvey even wears a bowtie. Classy rabbit.

I immediately related to this movie because I have an imaginary friend named Barney. He’s a 5’4” accountant, and an all-around normal guy. Maybe my friend isn’t as exciting as a rabbit, but he gets the job done in the imaginary friend department.

So Barney and I are watching Harvey, and there’s a scene where Elwood is sitting in the alley behind a bar, talking to his psychiatrist and his nurse. Both of them think he’s crazy, what with his imaginary friend/rabbit and all. But they are having a talk about what Elwood loves most in life.

He says that he loves talking to people.

He loves talking to people. In almost any business, this is what we do—we talk to people.

But how much do we really listen with both ears? A lot of us listen for what we need, but is this the same thing as what our clients, our friends and our family members need?

Back to Harvey.

Harvey loved meeting strangers in bars. Complete strangers would have friendly conversations with Elwood, and pretty soon they would be friends. Elwood’s new friends would tell him their problems—their troubles and worries about the future.

And as Elwood explains this to his nurse and psychiatrist, he says, “And to them, all of their problems and all of their hopes are big…they are BIG.”

BIG. It’s the same thing when we talk to people. Whether they are talking, joking, or complaining to us … everything going on underneath is BIG.

So if you want to know how to be a better listener, think about this: When you are talking to someone else, they are—and should be—the only thing in the world during those conversations.

Your clients don’t care if you have a deadline you are rushing to meet. They don’t care if you had a bad morning and got a ticket on the way in. They care about their big problems. And what will differentiate you from your competitors is if you learn how to be a better listener, and that starts with responding to your clients as if you think their problems are big.

I tried to explain this to my imaginary friend Barney, but he wasn’t listening. Maybe you can be a better listener …

As you interact with clients (or friends and family members for that matter), remember that your job is to make sure you understand that their problems are big. If you want to be a better listener, you truly have to understand that no matter how trivial something seems to you, it’s a big deal to the person telling you.

I have to go now. Barney seems to be getting really jealous of all the attention I’m giving you, so I have to take him out to get some Pinkberry.

Today’s “be a better listener” challenge: 

Treat everything your clients and friends tell you like it is the biggest thing in the world. Throw all of your attention on to them!

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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I can’t believe we have the technology that allows me to get swept up in a different world while I’m 30,000 feet in the air.  Movies on airplanes … what a thing!

Of course, most of the time, the movies are so bad that I want to get up and walk out — but I can’t … because like I already told you, I’m 30,000 feet in the air.

Luckily, this was not the case on my recent trip back from Copenhagen. I saw a great movie called "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel". What a great film. It had a terrific cast of seasoned actors, and it even had a Dame in it. (Dame Judy Dench).

Dev Patel, one of the young actors, said something in the film that struck me as very profound and worthy of thought.

“Everything will be alright in the end. If things are not alright, it is not the end.”  

Wow. Let that blow your mind for a few minutes.

I dug a little deeper and discovered this was a Rudyard Kipling quote. (Dude! Someone tell Rudy that Dev is lifting his material!)

At any rate, there are two ways to look at this profoundly optimistic view of the universe:

    You can actively seek that “alright end”; or

    You may choose to passively participate in the anticipated possible future.

Some people think that if you just wait long enough, things will work out. If you just sit back and wait, hopefully money will come to you. Hopefully happiness will come to you and the secrets of life will simply fall into your lap. Hopefully.

Wandering around aimlessly in life may work for some. In my experience, however, it works that way for very few of us. Anticipating a specific set of goals and knowing why those goals are important is probably the most important first step you can make.

But understand that the course you set toward that goal may not always turn in the direction you expect. Be flexible. That unexpected direction may be fantastically positive. Remember that everything will be alright.

It is those times when we trend toward the negative that separates the winners from everyone else. Consider yourself a winner when an unexpected negative result appears. Assess where you are NOW. You are alive. You are breathing. Come to your senses and ADJUST! You thrive with what life throws at you. You already know the end result. Everything will be A-OK. Move again towards your goal and modify your actions as the situation dictates.

You’re a sailor sailing the seas of your life. Sailors zig and zag to their final destination. Mid-course corrections and interim plans are part of the path of business and life. We are here to LIVE.  

Those who are active planners have a vision. If, during the course of the journey towards that plan, things are not alright, then you are NOT at the end.  

You see, in the end, things will be alright.

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TRANSFORMERS AREN’T JUST SPACE ROBOTS

There is a term for customers I would like to share that makes a difference in the way businesses think and how they should deal with people: aspirants. In The Firm of the Future: A Guide for Accountants, Lawyers, and Other Professional Services, by Ronald J. Baker and Paul Dunn, customers are not described as clients, but rather as aspirants. Individuals aspire to something. If a business is doing something other than just compliance work for people, those people are expecting something more than to be treated as basic clients. 

They want to be transformed; they want their situations to be improved (even if they were already doing well, they want better). Maybe they want to be protected, which means they want their situation to be transformed into something safer. Maybe they want to accomplish a business objective that will transform their life in a positive way, or perhaps they are trying to settle some kind of bothersome dispute. Positively or negatively, if you are involved in a dispute, it is transforming. If you assist someone in that process, you are a Transformer. With this in mind, every time you speak to a “client,” think about how you could transform them, either positively or negatively. 

What’s at stake isn’t simply doing the work. What really matters is what the work says to a person. How it is going to transform their life one way or another? Someone could easily make a bad decision based on a product that is not delivered correctly.

If you are an accountant and you simply fill out a customer’s paperwork before flinging it at them, you are depriving them of the transformation they are ultimately seeking from you. Most accountants don’t get this, and while that’s a good thing for those accountants who do, it’s very unfortunate for the customer sitting across from an accountant who just doesn’t care or understand.

I have a buddy who was saddled with an accountant who surprised him by letting him know that, oops, he owed $13,000 more than projected. As my buddy sat there shell-shocked, the accountant looked at him with a straight face and asked, “How are you going to pay this?”

When my buddy could not come up with an immediate answer, the accountant told him to give him a call when he figured it out and advised him to enjoy the rest of his day. That accountant belongs in accountant jail.

It’s essential to understand, whatever your profession, the services you provide make a difference in people’s lives. If an individual knows that you understand this, they will feel protected through the interactions they have with you and can be confident they are exactly where they should be. If you care, no one can compete with you.

The important question here is: When you talk to customers, are you in fact talking to a client, or are you talking to an aspirant? Do you understand what this person is aspiring to be or do? In all of your dealings with aspirants, remember that what you say to them really matters. Take your words as seriously as they do. Think before you speak. Make it a transformative experience for them. Never think about the amount of trouble, hassle or time it will take to accommodate your aspirant. Embrace it. Think about what you can do to make them feel safer, confident, optimistic, and that progress is being made to meet whatever the challenge. This is the kind of stuff they don’t teach in accounting school, or engineering school, or construction school, or any other schools.

A good way to start empathizing with the aspirants around you, is by making yourself your first aspirant. Take a look within, at your own life, and examine the goals you currently have on the table. Once you’ve identified and prioritized those goals, think about the motivation behind them. Maybe one of your current goals is to become a better salsa dancer. A worthy, understandable goal.

Ask yourself: Why is this my goal?

What are you aspiring toward by wanting to achieve this goal? You’re a very hard worker. You work so hard, lately you feel as if your life has become all work and no play. Having a balance in life is vital. You feel that learning to become an amazing salsa dancer will provide a great social outlet to create the balance you’re seeking in life. Rather than crunching numbers, eating ice cream alone and watching To Catch A Predator on MSNBC on Friday nights, you think it would be better for your psyche, to hit the dance floor, get some exercise, make new friends—maybe make new, more than friends—and in general, be happier. It’s clear the goal is to salsa dance because the motivation is to improve your social life, your health, both physical and mental, and to provide variety in your day-to-day life. You deserve all of these things.

And so do your aspirants. Think of your own personal goals when working with aspirants and remember, their goals mean just as much to them as yours do to you. Don’t ever just fill out the paper work!

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ARE YOU A SCARCICIST?

Whoa!  That’s the scariest cyst I’ve ever seen!

Oh, wait. I got confused. I’m not talking about scary nodules. I’m talking about people who have elevated topic of SCARCE-ness to a mantra …

A scarcicist.

To be clear, we hear scarcicists all of the time.

“If only we stopped this or that we would have enough of that of this.”

We hear this everyday from candidates on the campaign trail. We hear it from the talking heads and the pundits on the 24-hour news cycles. We hear that naughty corporations are to blame for using up all the stuff like plants, trees, land, air, water, gold, silver, zinc, oranges, apples, superheroes, clouds, etc.

We hear about all the evil countries stealing all the things from people.

We dare not keep using “stuff” and “things” because pretty soon we will be plum out of it!

Several weeks ago, Dan Sullivan, the strategic coach for entrepreneurs, sent me an email recommending that I read Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. The book points out that rather than living in a world of scarcity, we are actually in an age of abundance.

Some say we are straining the world’s resources, daring Mother Earth to burst at the seams, so you know what I say?

We now have a war raging between the scarcicists and what I will call “The Abundance Bunch®.” ( I am trademarking this name so don’t even try it).

Scarcicists tend to believe that things are finite. They believe that if you get something, I won’t get something.  If something is used, nothing will be left to take its place. They also tend to believe that the distribution of resources are allocated unfairly. They want outside rules put in place to assure fair distribution.

The Abundance Bunch® thinks differently. They believe that human innovation and new technologies will create WHAT we need WHEN we need it. If demand exists for something that is limited in supply, something will come around to fill the hole. Ingenuity will always triumph. Lastly, the connectivity of our world through technology will enable the sharing of thoughts and capabilities in such a manner that any challenge is surmountable.

You might be thinking this sounds a little hokey. You must also think that The Abundance Bunch is a horrible name. You are wrong on both counts. First off, great name. You are all just jealous you didn’t think of it first.

Secondly, I just think that all of us have a choice. We can wring our hands, blame everyone else, and wait for others to fix what ails us …

Or we can be a support-mechanism that creates a brighter and bigger future.

When you think about it, The Abundance Bunch® will never be below-the-liners (The Oz Principle - see my blog from March, The Dirty Word). They are looking for ways to impact and influence.

Today, I challenge you to join The Abundance Bunch®. No scarcicists allowed! 

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Are you Growing Older...or Aging?

  

I know it was a few months ago, but I’m still thinking about Angelina Jolie’s bare leg and that crazy Sacha Baron Cohen spilling ashes all over Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet.

But the most interesting part of the Oscars for me was who won Best Supporting Actor:  Christopher Plummer.  

Guess how old he is?  

82.

And he was nominated with 82-year-old Max Von Sydow, another octogenarian (I know, big words!).

In fact, the faces were all getting older. Good ol’ Michael Douglas sure ain’t a spring chicken, is he?

I half expected all these old fogies to reenact a scene from Cocoon. (For those of you who are too young for that reference, it’s a movie where older people find the fountain of youth in their retirement community’s swimming pool in the form of…cocoons.  As I type this, I realize the movie sounds ridiculous, but try watching it without shedding a few tears.)

All those old people got me thinking about my own age.  I realized that when I go out somewhere I’m usually the oldest person there, but I don’t really feel like I’m aging.

What is aging? (Maybe you think that’s a stupid question, but how many times do I have to tell you?  There is no such thing as a stupid question!)

All of us are getting older. Five seconds ago you were younger than you are now. I’m 10 minutes older than when I started writing this blog. And I’m 15 minutes older from when I tried to start cleaning my garage. That lasted all of five minutes, and I decided it was time to blog (I swear, though, that trying to clean my garage aged me three years).

But I digress …

Let me get back to my “stupid” question …

In my mind, there is a huge difference between getting older and aging.  Getting older is the inevitable process of walking through life along the time continuum. Aging, on the other hand, is the process of ceasing to progress.

I think of aging as a trajectory.  You will always get older, but you will only start aging once your trajectory begins to decline.

Now I’ve noticed two types of older people.  There are the people that become a little more infantile about things.  These people are aging.  They start focusing not on lifelong goals, but rather on small things that shouldn’t be important.

And then there are people who are simply getting older—people like Christopher Plummer and Max Von Sydow.  At least from where I’m sitting, these people don’t really appear to be aging. Their physical appearance, of course, shows age … but their minds and their spirits do not.

The difference between aging and getting older is state of mind.  It really is a case of mind over matter.  If you are open to learning new things, you are growing older, but you are also growing.

Let me give you an example by picking on my wife for a minute …

My daughter and I are mystified because my wife hates using credit card machines at the gas station.  In fact, she has boycotted the practice of putting her credit card into a gas pump.  It confuses her, and so she has gone on strike.  Heretofore, she pays inside, where she stands in line and hands her credit card to a fellow or a lady who runs it through a clunky old machine … just like they did in the good old days.

My wife just doesn’t want to progress … when it comes to pumping gas.

(To her credit, she did learn how to use an iPhone in one day, so I think we can call it a wash and agree that she’s not aging.  She’s standing still in time. )

What about you?  Are you open to learning new things?  Setting new goals?  Or are you just focusing on petty little things and letting age sweep over you? 

I know it is my intention to continue to progress — to continue to learn.  Just remember, if you cease to learn, you are aging.  So pledge to get better each day, like a great wine.

Today Challenge: Do everything in your power to learn something new and do something exciting.  There is no reason we shouldn’t all be Christopher Plummers. Who knows?  Maybe this time next year, I’ll be blogging about how old you look on that Oscar stage!

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