Overcoming challenges and obstacles is what makes life meaningful. I hope your dreams and visions are big enough to be difficult.
“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better”
Jim Rohn
This video is about superman. When superman was first developed as a comic book character, he was so strong and powerful that he overcame all obstacles easily. It was only when the authors made him weaker that the stories became interesting.
In our own lives, it is not the easy path that makes for a meaningful life – it is the hard path, and having to become a better, stronger, more resilient, more resourceful person that makes for a meaningful life.
David Brooks has career success, but in this TED talk he shares how he found himself empty. 5 years ago, his wife left, his kids had moved out… and he discovered he had nothing to do outside of work. He had mid-week friends, but he had no weekend friends.
Success in career is not success in life.
Individual happiness is transient and empty.
David’s 2 antidotes:
Commit to People. Achieving individual freedom is nice, but the our life needs committed connection to others… to not be free.
Chase Joy not Happiness. Joy comes when our ego dissolves in the pursuit of something bigger.
“Suffering breaks some people, and breaks some people open”
This post-divorce loneliness crisis led David to explore a deeper way of connecting to others. He began to lose his individual freedom in order to commit to other people.
Our society is in the midst of a social crisis: we’re trapped in a valley of isolation and fragmentation. How do we find our way out?
“Joy is not the expansion of self, it is the dissolution of self.”
I was in Boston to teach on the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation EMP (Entrepreneurial Masters Program) this week. MIT Endicott House is one of the most beautiful locations for leadership retreats and programs. I brought my drone to capture the scenery around the main buildings. You’ll see the drone shots right at the beginning of the video below.
Why Do We Need to Clarify our Purpose?
Dandapani in Barcelona, 2016
Dandapani was one of the speakers at the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation Masters Program event this week at MIT Endicott House, outside of Boston. Dandapani spent 10 years as a Hindu monk, meditating with his guru on the purpose of his life.
Dandapani spoke about the importance of consciously deciding what is important and what is not important in your life. Why?
A short story from the mountains about how removing drag can be more effective than increasing power. Many times we could improve our life by cleaning up the things we do that actively damage ourselves: eating poorly, drinking too much, complaining, remaining angry, holding grudges, positioning myself as a victim.
Game of Thrones is back for its final season this week. This video comes from the beautiful city walls of Ávila, about 100kms to the west of Madrid in Spain.
I used to think that it was enough to be good at your job, and to be nice to people… and money, success and power would come. How wrong I was. The Game of Thrones makes it clear: if you have something of value, someone stronger will take it from you. You must be strong or be protected.
“All my daughter really wants from me is a few minutes of my undivided attention… the richer people get the more money they spend trying to “
Dorothée Loorbach
I am bad with money
It has taken me many years to admit this to myself. It was only by admitting it that I have been able to take the steps to put my family on a path to financial freedom.
I have a long standing belief that if I am a good person and do good work, the “money thing” will sort itself out. This has proven to be a poor approach to a well balanced life.
I still have had a lot to learn about my relationship to money. Many of the lessons shared in this video resonate with my own (poor) relationship to money. I am so optimistic that the future will be better that I don’t hold myself to the discipline of saving and investing my money. It has taken several business failures and a clear objective reflection on my poor money decisions to start to accumulate money over the last few years.
10 lessons about money from Dorothée Loorbach
Dorothée was “successful” in her job and made a lot of money… and then she spent it all… until she was broke, unable even to bake her little daughter a birthday cake. She had to face her own flawed beliefs about money and how they were damaging her ability to live a life that matters.
This video comes from the foothills of the Wicklow mountains, near my parent’s house in Dublin. I was teaching at the UCD Smurfit Business School and then spent the weekend down in Wexford at the opera festival. My parent’s have been big supporters of this festival over the last 20 years and it was important to me to see it with them.
What Lesson Have You Learnt?
I ask a question: What is the most important lesson you have learnt in life? I’d love to hear from you. What would you say is the most important lesson you have learnt about living life well?
In his TED talk, Stephen Duneier explains that what defines him are not titles, but an approach to decision making that transformed him from someone who struggled with simple tasks to a guy who is continuously achieving even his most ambitious dreams.
For thirty years, he has applied cognitive science to investing, business and life. The result has been the turnaround of numerous institutional businesses, career best returns for managers who have adopted his methods, the development of a $1.25 billion dollar hedge fund and a rapidly shrinking bucket list.
“Every one of my report cards basically said the same thing: Steven is a very bright young boy, if only he would just settle down and focus.”
“What they didn’t realize was I wanted that even more than they wanted it for me, I just couldn’t. And so, from kindergarten straight through the 2nd year of college, I was a really consistent C, C- student. But then going into my junior year, I’d had enough. I thought I want to make a change. I’m going to make a marginal adjustment, and I’m going to stop being a spectator of my decision-making and start becoming an active participant.”
“And so, that year, instead of pretending, again, that I would suddenly be able to settle down and focus on things for more than five or ten minutes at a time, I decided to assume I wouldn’t. And so, if I wanted to achieve the type of outcome that I desire – doing well in school – I was going to actually have to change my approach. And so I made a marginal adjustment. If I would get an assignment, let’s say, read five chapters in a book, I wouldn’t think of it as five chapters, I wouldn’t even think of it as one chapter. I would break it down into these tasks that I could achieve, that would require me to focus for just five or ten minutes at a time. So, maybe three or four paragraphs. That’s it.”
“I would do that and when I was done with those five or ten minutes, I would get up. I’d go shoot some hoops, do a little drawing, maybe play video games for a few minutes, and then I come back. Not necessarily to the same assignment, not even necessarily to the same subject, but just to another task that required just five to ten minutes of my attention. From that point forward, all the way through to graduation, I was a straight-A student, Dean’s List, President’s Honor Roll, every semester.”
“I then went on to one of the top graduate programs in the world for finance and economics. Same approach, same results. So then, I graduate. I start my career and I’m thinking, this worked really well for me. You know, you take these big concepts, these complex ideas, these big assignments, you break them down too much more manageable tasks, and then along the way, you make a marginal improvement to the process that ups the odds of success in your favor. I’m going to try and do this in my career. So I did. I started out as an exotic derivatives trader for credit Swiss. It then led me to be global head of currency option trading for Bank of America”
Mr. Duneier teaches graduate courses on Decision Analysis in UCSB’s College of Engineering. His book, AlphaBrain is due for release in early 2017 from Wiley & Sons. Through Bija Advisors, he helps business leaders improve performance by applying proven, proprietary decision-making methods to their own processes. His artwork has been featured around the world and is represented by the Sullivan Goss Gallery. As Commissioner of the League of Professional Educators, Duneier is using cognitive science to alter the landscape of American education. He is the former Head of Currency Option Trading at Bank of America and Emerging Markets at AIG International.
The secret to a good life? No, just a simple reflection on the nature of things. The important gestures you can make each day that really make an impact on others over the long time, are often so small that they are easily forgotten each day… but over 10 years the presence or the lack of a couple of small gestures makes a huge impact on your relationships and what you can have achieved in life.
An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
Ancient Wisdom
This video comes from the beautiful location of Villa Ottoboni, on the outskirts of Padua in Italy. I had the privilege of teaching an interactive workshop on “The Psychology of Leadership” with the Ambrosetti organisation today.
