samng.me

Posts tagged with #Learning

Intentionally unproductive

My sons,

Human beings are wired for play. In our earliest years, life basically consisted of eating, sleeping, and learning through play and exploration. If you walk into homes with young infants or toddlers, you will commonly hear the sound of laughter, of bubbly little voices excited about the brand new discovery that squishing the plastic giraffe causes it to emit a squeaking sound (both of my children grew up with Sophie the giraffe teething toys).

But something strange happens in elementary schools all around the world. We begin to change the daily environment of our children from one dominated with play and exploration to one filled with learning, memorizing, and study. Once they hit middle school, daily scheduled play time (aka recess in America) gets eliminated altogether. Free play time at home after school gets replaced with extracurricular activities and more homework. Even volunteering, which used to be a self-initiated activity stemming from the goodwill of one’s heart has become a required prerequisite by our educational systems.

By the time that child graduates from college, free play, which used to consume the majority of their days, has been transformed into something that we relegate to our 3 weeks of vacation a year if we’re lucky. That child now lives in a culture that serves the god of progress and achievement, a god which happily will take any and all time that we do not fight to hold onto. They are told that excessive play is immature, and are in an environment that regularly reinforces that their only purpose in life is to make progress.

The benefits of progress

Let’s be clear - I’m not advocating for us to play constantly and to ignore our responsibilities in favor of that play. Our world is increasingly complex and requires increasingly dedicated, educated, and creative people to continue to make it better for us all. And let’s make no mistake about it - our world is infinitely better than the one previous generations lived in, across any and every measurable metric.

Average lifespans worldwide are longer. Many deadly diseases have been either eradicated or made treatable and non-fatal. More people are being educated. There is greater (although not perfect) gender equality. There is less violence and crime. The number of people in the world who have electricity has increased from 70% in 1990 to 90% in 2022.

I know there will be some that argue that the world is a more dangerous and terrible place than our past - to those I will highly recommend two books: Steven Pinker’s ~The better angels of our nature~ and the late Dr Hans Rosling’s ~Factfulness~.

On a more local scale, we have persistent access to the internet. We have a plethora of options of electric cars and carbon-zero household products. We have the ability to say goodnight to our home assistant and have her turn off all the lights, close all the garage doors, lock all the doors, lower all the shades, and turn off the bed warmer that was keeping our bed at a balmy 80 degrees for us to climb in. (Okay, maybe that last one was just princess Sam in action).

No matter how you dice it, that progress has many benefits.

The evolving conditions for progress

Unfortunately, our conveyor belt approach to equipping our children to carry on that mantle of success is in need of an update. While it is true that decades ago our assembly line approach to education produced workers skilled enough to work the machines of the day that propelled our world forward, our world has evolved, and the needs and conditions for that progress have changed.

As our world continues to move from physical and manual work to knowledge work enhanced by greater automation, the need for creativity, imagination, and ingenuity have become the new baselines for advancing our world forward. And as it turns out, creativity cannot be taught, it must be fostered and nurtured.

Intentionally unproductive

As a child, I found myself constantly bored. Whether it was sitting in a boring Canadian history class (I must have read about Vimy Ridge, the one important thing Canada did in WWI a thousand times) or sitting at home after school with no access to video games and on-demand TV/movies, I was constantly bored. I strongly believe that that boredom played a huge part in helping me achieve much of what I have accomplished in my life.

That boredom was the fertile ground that enabled my brother and I to invent games to play. It gave me the time and space to dream up worlds and explore them in my mind’s eye. It gave me impetus to read, to imagine, and to dream. It allowed my mind to wander into all sorts of places and situations.

Granted, there were down sides as well. I got myself into a lot of trouble because of that boredom (my mom and my principal were on a first name basis…), and I found myself more often then not finding creative ways to be mischievous. While running around with a can of WD-40 and a lighter lighting spiderwebs on fire and flushing out ant hills wasn’t particularly useful (or safe, really), that time of non-productivity was a launch pad for all sorts of creativity.

It turns out that our subconscious minds are much more capable than our conscious ones. It also turns out that our conscious minds are much louder than our subconscious ones, so if we’re constantly engaged, our subconscious minds have little time to be active and to make connections on our behalf.

DaVinci knew this. Excerpts from his recovered notebooks showed that not only did the grand master paint and create timeless works of art, but he allowed his mind to wander to all sorts of unrelated and fanciful topics. In 1485 for example, he imagined the first parachute three centuries before an actual parachute was made and deployed successfully, and he detailed out specifications for it in one of his notebooks. It was constructed in 2000 and demonstrated to work successfully at 10,000 feet! He also imagined a submarine, a helicopter, and solar power among many other things.

How did he do all this?

He had intentional unproductive time. He knew that his mind needed rest, space, and margin to do its best work, and he actively created time to daydream. He would often go for walks with nothing on his mind and nothing in his hand but a pencil and a notebook and presently realize that he had filled many pages with seemingly unrelated thoughts. In 1994, Bill Gates bought one of DaVinci’s notebooks for $30M. Other notebooks have gone for $5M or more.

Creating margin

I will never be a DaVinci or a Gates. Neither will you. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the greats of our world and integrate some of their practices into our lives. It turns out there are many studies that show a plethora of benefits of having margin and allowing ourselves to daydream. A few benefits:

1. We become more creative. When we daydream, our subconscious minds make connections between seemingly unrelated topics, letting us maximize the learning and benefits we get from our experiences.
2. We can build better relationships. Something my college advisor told me that has stayed will me to this day is the truth that if you want to make connections with people, you have to make space. People don’t have crisis moments when it is convenient for you to show up for them. They don’t have breakdowns, epiphanies, or life changing events happen to them on your schedule. If you don’t have space for them, they will find someone else that does.
3. We become more interesting. By giving ourselves margin to daydream, to pursue hobbies and interests, and to explore and experience without agenda or purpose, we become more interesting! No one is interested in a cookie cutter person that just eats, sleeps, and works. People are intrigued by those who go off the beaten path and explore!

My sons, I know that there is great pressure for you to be always productive. I know you’ve been told that the stakes are high. I know that without a doubt those things were told to you with the best intentions. But they don’t tell the whole story. Be productive, yes. But also make sure you spend time to be intentionally unproductive - I guarantee you won’t regret it!

What makes a good culture?

My sons,

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about culture - team culture, family culture, friend group culture - and how much it impacts our lives. In his book Wanting, Luke Burgis explains how much of what we think we want is not actually intrinsic to us but is rather a product of us mimicking those around us, mimicking the culture we have. If that’s the case, culture is an incredibly important thing for us to think through.

What is culture?

Culture is not what we desire to do. It is not a set of principles or values that we print out and put on the walls to inspire our teams. It is not “the way we’ve always done things”, nor is it what our founders had in mind.

Culture simply put, is the way we do things today.

That means culture changes with each new day, with each new person that joins the team, with each new adjustment to the daily norms that we introduce. It means that culture shifts and grows as we do.

Culture is the way you spend an extra 10 seconds to say “hi” to everyone on your way in. It is the way we gather everyone on the team to go to lunch everyday. It is our willingness to speak up in meetings, our courage to express our opinions, and our trust knowing that those opinions won’t be slammed down by our peers. It is how we utilize documents or presentations, what our expectations are of instant messaging and email, and how much information we share with or withhold from our partner teams.

And it is what every new person gravitates toward when they join us.

An intentional culture

The thing with culture is that it can happen “naturally” (aka accidentally) or it can happen intentionally. Intentionality is better.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing many different types of leaders at work, each with a wide variety of skills and competencies. I’ve seen leaders that are hyper intentional about the culture of their teams, and I’ve seen leaders who simply accept whatever culture their team has as long as the leader is able to work in the manner that they prefer.

The leaders who had a firm understanding of the type of culture they wanted to cultivate on the team were not only more well-liked (turns out people like it when their leaders care about their experience), but their teams had more longevity. Regretted attrition rates were lower, team loyalty and ownership was stronger, and willingness to collaborate was noticeably higher.

Some of this is obvious - a leader that cares about culture naturally values people who care about culture as well, thereby building a virtuous cycle of people who are intentional about the environment, habits, and practices of the team.

Less obvious for instance, is the reality that leaders that cared about culture typically cared to see the impact of the culture they’ve created. They engaged themselves in inclusive behaviors, in learning from the team what’s working and what isn’t, in getting feedback, and in having dialogue and discussions with the team. These leaders cared about culture, and spent time actively crafting, refining, and sharing. They led by example, both in their communications and in their behaviors.

What makes a good culture?

There are a number of dysfunctional behaviors and norms that have permeated themselves into our world, with some much less obvious than others. Unfortunately for our world, there are still some very overtly dysfunctional cultural habits in the workplace today. Things such as blatant disrespectful and discriminatory behaviors towards women or clear minority groups unfortunately still happens today. Less obvious are things like CYA (cover your ass) cultures, cultures where bosses take credit for their team’s work, or hierarchical cultures where subordinates don’t speak up unless spoken to.

Healthy cultures on the other hand tend to balance productivity with fulfillment. Healthy cultures are ones where people can come as their authentic selves and do their best work together. They are cultures which enable and empower while keeping strong expectations and a high bar. They are cultures that elevate people and stretch people, allowing them to grow and develop, not just as workers but as people.

My SVP says it incredibly well. He says he builds teams of passionate and relentless people. I love that.

We want to create a culture where passionate and relentless people thrive. People who are incredibly passionate about what they do, about the mission that they’re on, about the impact that they have on the world, and about their craft and their role in achieving that impact, but at the same time are relentless in their pursuit of excellence, in their dedication to their craft and their learning, and in their desire to build the best thing for their customers, whoever those customers may be.

There are a few things that are essential to create a culture that fosters these behaviors.

1. Open communication. The most critical ingredient required for great teams is open communication. Any culture where a diverse set of passionate and relentless people can thrive deeply requires open communication. This is because people are different. When you’ve got a lot of strong people together with poor communication, inevitably one person ends up steamrolling the rest without listening to others and you end up with an adversarial and mistrusting culture.
2. Strong opinions, weakly held. Another key part of great team cultures is the ability to have weakly held opinions, to be convincible. The world is big. The amount of information, knowledge, and wisdom out there is astronomical. To think that one individual has it all, is always right, and knows best is not only improbable and naive, but just down right stupid. We therefore need to build a culture that recognizes that great ideas can come from anyone, anywhere. Have opinions, yes, but be willing to be convinced of other viewpoints as well.
3. Regularly revisiting cultural norms. Great teams need to regularly revisit their cultural norms and reevaluate whether adjustments need to be made. Our world changes - new technologies develop, the business landscape changes, societal trends shift - and if our teams wants to stay relevant, we need to change along with it. In order to ensure we do that well we’ve got to regularly revisit our norms to decide if the patterns and practices that have served us well in the past will continue to allow us to excel in the future.

Whether we like it or not, whether we’re conscious of it or not, and whether we have input into it or not, culture affects each and every one of us. It is the set of norms that we automatically take on whenever we enter the sphere of any group that we’re a part of, whether that’s work, friends, church, or even family. The more awareness and thoughtfulness we have the more we’ll be able to help craft and shape our cultures to be healthy and empowering places for all of us.

We are not mind readers

My sons,

I am not a mind reader. I can’t read your minds, can’t predict what you’re going to do next, and can’t know how you’re feeling or what you’re actively concerned about. ‘But of course,’ you say, ‘no one can do that.’

And yet that’s often the unspoken expectation in many of our relationships.

Take a minute to process that. While I’m sure everyone would agree that they themselves cannot read minds, but we often expect others to read our minds. Sure, we may disguise that desire in cliches. “If she really knew me, she would know what I think about this thing”. “I’ve raised him and lived with him for his 25 years. He should know what I want”. “We’ve been married for 10 years. He should know what makes me happy”. “We grew up together. She knows me like the back of her own hand”.

Bullshit.

This type of thinking is not the mark of a mature adult. It is unrealistic and impractical. It typically indicates that the individual has not spent the time to learn and understand the depth of relationships and the work required to attain them, and by extension that they do not and cannot experience the richest depth relationships have to offer. More on that later.

Why we expect people to read our minds

At a young age, we were taught that when we cry, mommy and daddy know what we want and give it to us. While they may not be right on the first time, they generally get it within a few tries. This is easy when you’re a newborn - all you do is eat, sleep, and poop.

However, many of us have not progressed past that. Once we mastered language, we were never taught to rewire our actions and our expectations to incorporate advanced communication. The Good Book provides some instruction here:

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” - 1 Corinthians 13:11

To certain degrees, we have all done this. We’ve grown, we’ve developed the necessary communication skills to get by in professional and many social settings. We’ve learned to give presentations, to send and respond to party invitations, and to communicate with kids’ teachers and counselors.

And yet when it comes to communicating about our feelings, our desires, or our fears, most of us still follow the ways of childhood. We expect others to extrapolate from a small statement about putting a plate in the sink that we feel uneasy without a spotless kitchen at the end of the night. We demand perfect recall from our partner of every comment we’ve made in passing about our desires. How dare they not forget? Do they not love us or care for us?

We are not mind readers.

We desire to be known

Some of this stems from our desire to be known. As people, we need connection. We were built for relationship. We thrive in community. We need diversity. We need novelty, new inputs, and different perspectives in our lives.

This need to be known is natural, and is a great thing. Human connection is strongest and the most uplifting when we are wholly known. Collaboration is at its maximum, motivation and inspiration soar, and sparks of new ideas fly when we deeply and completely connect with someone, know, and are known by them.

But we’re also lazy.

We desire to be known without wanting to do the work required to build the type of relationships that allow us to be fully known. We have some notion that the level of connection we’re looking for should happen without our need to learn about it or to apply any effort to get it. We believe that time should be sufficient. That the simple fact of being childhood friends, of being married for a decade, or of having grown up sharing a room (and some hand-me-down clothes) should be sufficient and should automatically make us known.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way relationships in reality work. That level of connection requires one very important thing that most of us are quite poor at: being vulnerable.

Being vulnerable is a skill

When we were young, vulnerability came easily. We had few desires (eat, sleep, poop) and were quite ready to communicate (cry, wail, tantrum) them to anyone that would listen. So far so good.

But then as we grew, we developed more awareness of ourselves. We began to understand and feel embarrassment. We were taught about propriety and civility. We began to see the complex social systems around us. And we began to feel fear.

So much so that by the time we grew into our teenage years, most of us retreated into the recesses of our being, determined to avoid the embarrassment that comes from having the spotlight shone on us. Our bodies were changing - our hormones and thought processes were continually evolving, adapting to the new situations we found ourselves in. Our physical discomfort was made worse by our mental and emotional discomfort, and so we employed self preservation mechanisms.

Unfortunately, most of these mechanisms created separation and isolation. We expressed apathy towards things. We retreated to our rooms behind closed doors. We resorted to hiding behind the facade of a well-curated social media persona that we carefully crafted for ourselves.

As we reached adulthood, we came horribly unequipped and ill prepared for the type of vulnerability required to build the deep relationships that we crave. To add insult to injury we even began believing that this is simply the way things are, and that this level of arms length relationship is all that is possible and feasible as adults.

Thankfully we are wrong. It is possible to enjoy a deeper closeness than many of us grew up believing. It is possible to be in an environment and relationship where one can express themselves wholly and not be judged, and in fact be accepted, celebrated, and valued. But we must work on it. We must learn, we must experiment, we must take risks. To get the attainable amount of closeness we desire, we must develop the skill of vulnerability.

Learning to communicate

Arguably the most important skill a human being can ever develop, communication is the very core of any society, modern or ancient, and is the key to creating the environment of trust and vulnerability that we need to flourish. We must learn to skillfully communicate our needs, desires, and fears in a way that invites positive reciprocation and deepens relationship. To do that, we need to realize a few things.

1. Being vulnerable is a risk. By definition, it is taking the risk to put oneself out there without defenses, with nothing but the hope that we will not be attacked while our guard is down. But there is great reward as well. If we put ourselves out there, and the other party reciprocates and instead of slamming us nurtures and loves us, our lack of defenses actually multiplies and intensifies the closeness experienced, and by extension the strength of the relationship built. As such, it is important to be judicious about who you are vulnerable with, and who you bring into your inner circle to share yourself with.
2. You will most likely have to take the first step. Bridges are built from both ends, but getting to mutual agreement on the bridge often requires one side to start building first to demonstrate commitment to the investment. Which side starts is of no importance; it therefore might as well be you.
3. In any communication, how you communicate matters as much (if not more) than what you communicate. This means things like tone, body language, choice of words, facial expressions - all of these matter as much as the message itself.

So how do we improve here? A couple of quick thoughts.

1. Read. There are tons of books that provide great perspectives on communicating and how we can learn to be more effective at it. Books like Nonviolent Communication, The Charisma Myth, and the classic How to win friends and influence people to name a few are great resources that expand our understanding of communication.
2. Take a small, calculated risk. Small victories where we can expose some vulnerability, can communicate some small facet of ourselves unknown to the other will lead to larger risks and larger victories. Going big to start is a surefire way for you to go home immediately after.
3. Be persistent. Know that just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, a deep and vulnerable relationship takes time to build. Because they are rare, your relation may not be immediately receptive. Stay the course.

In learning to communicate, in learning to create spaces of trust that promotes vulnerability, we remove the need for our partners, friends, and colleagues to read our minds. And so my boys, my hope for you is that you will develop the skills necessary to have relationships and partnership where not only do they not need to read your mind, but you also do not have to read theirs.

Lifelong learners

My sons,

If there’s one thing in the world that I wish to be known as, it’s this; to be a lifelong learner. Over and above every other possible thing, I hope to be remembered as someone who was always learning, always looking for great inputs, always considering those inputs against his current perspective, and always willing and ready to have a mind shifting conversation. No matter what the realm we’re considering; be it relationship, engineering, management and leadership, spirituality, or even health or politics, I hope to have the attitude and mindset of one that is learning, all the days of my life.

This is because the world we live in is incredibly vast, and gets increasingly more complex with each year that passes. So much so that it is impossible for any one person to see it all, know it all, experience it all. The wealth of knowledge and wisdom that is collected, refined, and passed down through generations is awe-inspiring. There is much richness contained there that we ought to tap into in order to further accelerate our experience.

We were all born with an innate drive for progress. Whether you’re a creationist that believes that this is the breath of God in you or an evolutionist that believes that this trait is what made our forefathers fittest to survive, it is undeniable that we each have a spark; a special, mystical force within us that compels us forward.

And learning is the very core of that.

So then, if it’s so important, why do so many of us struggle with it? Not only in our formative years where we’re expected to learn, but in our later years where we have choice and as such choose not to continue? Why have we been so ill-equipped to truly be lifelong learners?

How we were trained to think about learning

When we were young, our education systems taught us that learning was for a purpose, and that purpose was the same for each of us. We were taught that learning was for the purpose of passing exams. Because ultimately, if you do well on exams, then you’d have a leg up on life, and you’d be able to succeed and have a great life.

And so everything we did at a young age revolved around this simple idea that the goal of learning was success. The process was laid out simply as learning -> acceptance to a good college -> get a good job -> have a good life.

That simple idea framed everything. It impacted what we read and how we read it. It caused us to think of writing as a means to that end. It changed how we research and expanded on our ideas. It engulfed the first 20+ years of our lives with an all-consuming requirement that most of us don’t realize is wrong until much, much later.

Allow me to restate the obvious just for completeness: the goal of learning is not to pass exams.

Why we learn

There are many intermediate goals that we may have in our lives for which learning is a required part of the journey (yes, passing exams is one of those). However, I would propose a more lofty goal.

The goal of learning is to gain wisdom, knowledge, and perspective that we can then apply to every facet of our lives.

Each of us has our own path to forge, our own destiny to follow, and our own legacy to leave. We each want to live a great life. We desire many things for ourselves; success, love, greatness, wealth, happiness, relationship. The list is long but distinguished for each of us, but at the end of it all, we each want to know that we lived a rich and full life.

At a young age, we believed that life to be about maximizing self, especially in comparison to others. We strove to be on top, to beat others. We loved (and for many, still love) being right a lot. This is because being right has a lot of beneficial side effects.

Not only do we get the pleasure of knowing that we were right and did the right thing, but we get reinforced by a number of forces both internal and external when we’re right. We may get praise when we’re right. We may be rewarded. We may gain trust and earn respect from our peers. We may be seen in high regard in our community.

Taken with the right attitude, there is nothing wrong with being right a lot. In fact, society on a whole moves forward by people striving to be right and to do the right thing. However, there are two ways to be right a lot. One is to learn a lot. The other is to never leave your niche.

It is good to leave your niche.

Disagreement as you learn

Only a fool assumes they know everything. Wise men know the limits of their own knowledge and are thirsty for more. They leave their niches in search for more wisdom and knowledge. They endeavor to learn; from experiences, and from others.

It is human nature to think about ourselves. Everyone can do that. However, it is unnatural (ie not sinister, but simply not natural) for people to think about others, to see things from their perspective, and to thoughtfully disagree in a way that encourages communication and facilitates joint learning.

As such, we must learn to appreciate (and develop!) the art of thoughtful disagreement. When you are able to find someone that can disagree with you thoughtfully and unemotionally, hold on to that - those people are rare!

Remember that it is pointless to be angry at a disagreement. Disagreements should not be seen as threats but rather as opportunities for learning and for refining one’s perspective.

How we learn

Ultimately, learning boils down to taking in new inputs, analyzing those against our current system of thought and belief, and determining how we adjust those beliefs in response to the input. These inputs can be new experiences, new ideas, or new rumination and insights gained about existing ideas.

There are three major ways to get new inputs: reading, ruminating, and living.

1. Reading

The traditional method of learning has us reading a text in order to strengthen a given argument. It starts with the assumption that the argument is true and then leaves us to confirm that. If you want to learn to be a better leader, read a book on how to lead. If you want to learn to cook well, read a book on how to cook.

As simple as this approach is, it’s insufficient at best and outright wrong at worst.

There is so much more to reading an article, book, or passage than the singular idea that one is trying to develop. With this top down approach, we throw out other sub themes that may be incredibly insightful for us.

A quick example that many of us have done. You’re reading a leadership book. Why would you care about the author’s anecdote about social justice? Just skip that and move on.

This type of top down learning is incredibly inefficient, and promotes echo chambers of confirmation bias.

Learning and insight must come from the bottom up. It is done by developing many ideas bottom up and seeing which ideas and arguments develop naturally, and then following those threads to their natural conclusion. It is from those naturally developed arguments that our thinking evolves and our beliefs and convictions are shaped!

As such, we should read for the sake of discovering something new. If we approach our reading as an act of discovery, we not only remove that confirmation bias, but we welcome diversity. Finding contradictory points and arguments now becomes exciting, because the our approach values and promotes diversity. This then impacts our enjoyment and subsequently our desire to read more, which impacts our opportunities for greater learning.

2. Ruminating

What do you think about when you think of the term ‘ruminating’? If you’re like me, my mind conjures up images of standing at some great height, with the camera angle pointing upwards at me as I stare reflectively off into the distance. Some pensive soundtrack is playing, like Debussy’s Clair de Lune or Bach’s Cello Suite in G Major.

Of course, life doesn’t actually happen that way.

Much of the time, ruminating can be tough. For even the most well-intentioned ruminator, this endeavor if left undisciplined and untrained can quickly devolve into an aimless wandering of the mind, much akin to a daydream.

Enter writing.

In his book How to take smart notes Sonke Ahrens describes a wondrous system that utilizes the discipline of writing as a refining tool for our thinking. At a young age, we were trained to write for the purpose of validating learning. We wrote exams and papers to demonstrate that we indeed learned the topic at hand.

Ahrens argues that we have to change our mindset to one that views writing as a generator of learning. Writing causes us to learn, causes us to study, causes us to debate, converse, and participate in the public realm of knowledge. When we write, our brains think about what we’re attempting to write about, and formulates connections with all the other inputs that we’ve got floating around in there.

It is this act of synthesis that accelerates our learning. In order for the brain to write down a tangible and meaningful statement, it must consider our vast amounts of inputs on a topic and summarize it into something useful to be written. This is the very act of focusing our ruminations. It is directed. It is intentional. It is disciplined.

3. Living

We often overemphasize this one by chalking everything up to “learning through life experience”. Yes, life experience gives us many inputs. It gives us many opportunities for which new ideas may be encountered. It provides many challenging situations for us to endeavor to overcome.

But all of these opportunities require the right framing. They require the right mindset. They require courage. They require us to lean not on the understanding of others.

We must have the courage to use our own understanding. We cannot truly learn and understand if we are always applying knowledge only in the fashion by which we are instructed! Life experience allows us to extrapolate our knowledge into real experiences, and to learn how we can continually do better.

Have an open mind

I’ll leave you with one final thought; approach life with an open mind.

Often, the most profound lessons in our lives come from the most unlikely places. Remember that there are lessons to be learned everywhere. Having an open mind allows us to learn from anything and anyone, to take the lifetime of learnings from others and to add those to our own journey.

And that ultimately allows us to be the best selves that we can be.

Making hard choices

My sons,

Life is full of choices. Some are easy and seemingly insignificant (what should you eat for breakfast?). Some are harder (should you go to Vancouver this weekend?). Some seem huge and very hard (which college should you go to?). No matter what aspect of life you consider - be it work, relational, academic, medical - we will have hard choices to make. These decisions are hard because they are by definition not simple (ie there is no objectively measurable way to decide) and because the impacts of these choices will typically have a pretty large impact and reach on our lives.

Studies have shown that the average adult makes 35,000 choices a day, around 250 of which are made on just food alone (Wansink and Sobal, 2007)! As a result, it is in our best interest to ensure that we deal with these choices well. To do that, we need to consider a few things.

Understanding the role of emotions in our decision making

For the majority of people, whether we admit it or not, our emotions play a large part in our decision making. There are many that want to believe that they are completely logical, and that emotions don’t play a part in their decision making, but the reality is that we are an emotional and relational species. It is almost impossible for the average person to completely remove emotion from their decision making.

The exception of course, is the clinical psychopath, who actually has deficient emotional responses and a lack of ability to apply empathy to a given situation. Since the majority of us are not psychopathic, we need to understand that the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions. Whether that emotion is fear, anger, pain, or shame, strong emotional reactions left not checked are a great threat to our decisions and to our learning.

First, we need to realize this. Many don’t have the self awareness to realize that their emotions are actually playing a large factor in their lives. For much of my life, I prided myself on the ability to think logically and make decisions based on that logic. As a computer scientist, that was an incredibly valuable trait. Personality tests also confirmed this bias (the typical software engineer tests as an INTJ as their Myers-Briggs personality type). It took much learning through painful trial and error and several rude awakenings for me to realize that I in fact am a highly emotionally oriented person that masked (and rationalized) much of that in logical thinking.

Next, we need to understand that these strong emotions prevent us from learning. Learning is often greatest in pivotal/crisis moments, and strong emotional responses left unchecked will push us quickly into fight or flight mode instead of allowing us to learn from the experience. Remember that the important thing is to acquire knowledge and have it paint a true and rich picture of the world in which you need to make decisions. That requires an open mind, something that harmful emotions prevent.

Learning before deciding

Once we foster an environment of learning in our lives, we can freely realize and accept that learning must come before deciding. In order to make the best decisions for our lives, we must realize that decisions ought to be the process of choosing which knowledge should be drawn upon from the variety of inputs and alternatives that we’ve thoughtfully considered, and not solely based on how we feel at a given moment. If we do not learn, then our pool to draw from is very shallow, and our decisions will be reflective of this.

Learning is the act of taking in many inputs, thoughtfully considering them, weighing them against our values and principles, and creating a strong basis for us to make decisions. The stronger that basis the greater our ability to not only consider first order consequences but second and third order ones as well, which in turn allows us to make better decisions and allows us to have more confidence in them.

This is why we need a range of experiences.

From having a diverse group of friends to being exposed to a wide array of ideas and thoughts, from trying new foods, sports, and experiences to spending time reading about topics that you’re not immediately interested in, building a wide range of perspectives allows us have a larger pool to draw from when we consider our options. This in turn allows us to make better decisions.

Have the courage to make the choice

It’s not enough however, to just know what the right decision is. Often the case with hard choices is that the thing we don’t choose has a negative impact on our situation, so we must be ready for that. The reality is that there will be benefits and consequences to every option that we consider, and often the best decision is one that comes with a lot of cost.

The second order implication is that not making the right hard choice may be less painful at the onset but often has a much more painful outcome in the long run.

And therein lies the rub.

We often think only about first order consequences to things and make our decisions based solely on those. The problem is that the second and third order consequences often not only have a more lasting impact but a larger magnitude of impact as well.

Consider an example.

You have a friend who has done something to upset or offend you. You have the opportunity to discuss the situation with your friend and share with them how you feel. What do you do?

The first order considerations for dealing with the situation is to consider the immediate conversation. This will be an awkward conversation, and may hurt your friend’s feelings. However the second order consideration is to think about the long term health of your friendship. Despite this being a difficult conversation to have in the immediate term, the long term benefits are that you will build a stronger friendship based on trust and honesty. The converse is that your friendship will suffer without the conversation, and will eventually fade into another one of those acquaintances that we all have many of - you know the type, where you politely say hi and make small talk when you occasionally bump into each other and avoid all depth and meaning in the relationship.

It takes courage to make the right decision.

And so my boys, I pray that not only are your lives characterized by much learning and a diverse range of experiences and inputs that lead to great decisions, but by the courage and fortitude required to make those decisions in spite of the cost of not choosing the alternatives. May you find the strength needed to choose well, and may you find the comfort and support needed to support your decisions.

There is no 'them'

My sons,

We live in a world filled with conflict. Whether we’re talking about global conflict between countries, national conflict between two parties, local conflict between two rival groups, or personal conflict between two spouses, our world is full of conflict that happens at every scale at every second. Much of that conflict, unfortunately, is handled poorly and causes divide.

We grow up being taught that there are two sides to every conflict, that conflict must be adversarial, and that there are winners and losers. We glorify that concept and even create such lasting impressions in movies, literature, and eventually in our minds.

Glorious scenes like the one from The Rock where Major Baxter (played by David Morse) points a gun at the head of General Hummel (played by Ed Harris) and says, “like he said General, you’re either with us or against us”. Even the Good Book highlights this in Romans 8:31 where Paul writes “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

As a result, this “us vs them” mentality is rampant everywhere from our schoolyards to our political systems. While this may be a useful psychological technique to generate polarization for furthering one’s end, I would argue that this is an unhealthy way to live. Instead, I’d challenge you to reframe your thinking and instead internalize the belief that

There is no “them”. Only “us”.

Since the days of Cain and Abel, our world has been divided. And since Cain and Abel our world has had much bloodshed, hatred, and poorly handled conflict at every scale.

Conflict isn’t bad

Now, I should start by stating clearly that conflict isn’t bad. Rather, I believe that conflict is very healthy and when handled productively is a huge benefit to humankind. But that’s a big condition, for us to handle conflict productively. There is no way to handle it productively if we believe that there are sides, if we believe that there are winners and losers. Instead, we should adopt the mindset that there is no “them”. The person sitting on the other side of the table isn’t our enemy. We shouldn’t be looking to win in our arguments with our spouses.

As a result, many of us try to avoid conflict. Because we’ve had negative experiences with conflict and don’t have great tools to resolve conflict productively, we try to avoid it. Our safety mechanism is to avoid and deflect. Even for those whose default is not to deflect, avoiding conflict tends to be a favored approach.

But there ought to be nuances there.

There should be a difference on what we’re having conflict about. There should be a difference when we can have conflict in a healthy fashion. There should be a difference when the thing we’re conflicted over is the pursuit of excellence. This type of conflict is good for us, and assuming we’re able to work through it well in a healthy, trusting, and communicative environment, we should not only not avoid conflict but should actively welcome it (and perhaps pursue it!) in this context.

We need to learn to see conflict as a healthy part of our growth, our development, and our learning. Because we know conflict is a regular part of interaction with others, we need to create an environment where vulnerability and honesty are prevalent, and we’re on the same side of the table. This is the first and foremost requirement, for without honesty and vulnerability there is no connection and real conversation. And disconnection brings about adversarial tendencies and perspectives.

Next, we need to be thoughtful about our conversation and our debates. We need to be willing to adjust, to accommodate, and to understand one another. This requires a degree of empathy, but it also requires patience. Patience to hear the other person’s point of view, as well as patience to thoughtfully consider whether or not the opposing view in front of you actually is something you can resonate with.

Lastly, we need agreed upon ways to decide if we can’t agree. This is critical for the long term health of the relationship. This agreed upon manner must be fair and equitable so that no one walks away with feelings of building resentment over time.

Being open minded

So how do we move to a place where we’re able to healthy sit next to one another at the table instead of at opposite sides?

By being open minded.

Open minded people want their ideas debated and challenged so that they can be refined. Open minded people realize that they don’t know everything, and in fact know very little and have a lot to learn. Open minded people view their lives as a journey with others; one where we’re all in this together to search for and discover the richest life possible.

Open minded people tend to:

1. Seek feedback regularly and honestly
2. Be vulnerable and humble in their approach and perspectives
3. Ask a lot of clarifying questions with the goal of furthering their understanding
4. Enjoy disagreements as an opportunity for learning
5. Sit next to someone and look for ways to expand their thoughts

Closed minded people don’t want their ideas challenged because they take them as idictments. Closed minded people tend to:

1. Get frustrated when they can’t get the other person to agree with them
2. Are more likely to make statements than ask questions
3. Focus on being understood rather than understanding others
4. Ask leading questions designed to trap others to see their point of view
5. Sit across from someone and look for ways to shut down their opinions

Value unity

Lastly, value unity. There is so much division and derision in this world without our adding to it. In my life, I’ve had my share of unifying moments and dividing ones both as the victim of those moments and the instigator. Sadly, in my youth I’ve too often been the instigator of dividing moments, most (if not all) of which are very regrettable. Many of those dividing events were driven from principle, from hurt, from self-preservation. It took a lot of pain and work to learn that whatever satisfaction I got from those actions was always short lived and ultimately not conducive to me learning to become the man that I desired to be.

Instead, I’ve been learning to see the value of togetherness, of building unity, and of being a peacemaker. Despite it being hard, unintuitive, and often very frustrating, I’ve learned that unity and connection is far better than being right, than being justified in my righteous indignation.

Turns out a life of togetherness is much happier, much richer, and much more fulfilling than a life that is proven right often but regularly lonely. Turns out acceptance, understanding, and compassion is far more rewarding than one of validation, vindication, and judgment.

And so my boys, I urge you to learn at whatever age you can that there ought to be no “them”. No matter who you imagine sitting on the other side of the table, no matter who you think is standing in the way of your goals, no matter who you believe has it out for you, I can assure you that you will have much better conflict resolution and lead a much happier life if you think of those people as “us”.

A balanced life

My sons,

We live in a world that is increasingly polarized and extreme, and in a time where everyone seems to have strong opinions that are strongly held (and unfortunately, usually weakly researched). Many folks with extreme thoughts are also closed off to other inputs and conversations from folks with differing perspectives. The unfortunate result of which is further divide and disconnect between people. Some of this is natural.

In the past century, our world has gotten a lot smaller. Air travel prices have drastically reduced such that the average person is able to fly and see much more of the world than ever before (in 2022 the Gallup poll stats show that the average American flies 1.4 times a year). Video conferencing technologies make it possible to talk to virtually anyone in the world in real time. The internet has made it possible to access news, research, and opinions from anywhere and everywhere in the world instantaneously.

In this environment, it is natural that those seeking to be heard and to build a platform would have to differentiate themselves. Since your local newspaper is no longer your only source for news, agencies and publications need to differentiate themselves. The media is shaped by “newsworthiness”, which is in turn shaped by what is trending on Twitter and Facebook. The easiest way to get things to trend? Toss outrageous extreme grenades at core beliefs and watch it rain.

This type of extremism, while being occasionally amusing at best and purposefully confrontational at worst, does not lead you to a great life. It does not bring people together. It does not create a better world. It does not bring the type of vulnerable closeness that we seek, and does not lead to great and long-lasting outcomes.

The pitfalls of extremism

There are many pitfalls to extremism of any sort, but that’s not our primary topic today so we’ll touch on this only briefly. In my mind there are two major downfalls of extremism as we see it playing out in our world.

The first is that it divides and does not unite. Having strong opinions is fine - great even. But those strong opinions must be weakly held, and must be fair game for honest and open conversation and debate, and must not close the door for collaboration. Remember that human life is created to move forward together. We were created for relationship.

Oliver Burkeman put it perfectly in his book Four Thousand Weeks:

“The truth is that almost everything worth doing, from marriage and parenting to business or politics, depends on cooperating with others.”

Put simply, extremism breaks cooperation.

Second, our current rendition of extremism is not open to other ideas. Rather than allowing new information from opposing opinions to change our minds and provide us perspective, these encounters tend to deepen our certainty about our own perspectives. This echo chamber is further amplified by social media’s knack for surfacing more opinions that are like ours (and slightly more extreme than ours - as we said above, grenades generate great click rates).

A balanced approach

In contrast, there is much beauty to be found outside of the extremes.

Consider a simple example. We hold in high regard the quality of courage. We make movies about men and women who demonstrate high amounts of courage. We give awards, commendations, and much recognition for courageous acts. It is a trait we believe the paragon of virtue contains.

Yet this trait taken to either extreme is bad. In extreme excess, this trait becomes rashness. In extreme deficiency, this trait becomes cowardice. We need the balanced middle; courage.

Another example. There is a fine line between neediness and vulnerability. It is perfectly fine to vulnerably express that things have been quiet of late and therefore one has been lonely. That is explicitly different than expressing that one is lonely and needs to never be left alone again.

Aristotle provides the following framework, for which we’ve filled in a few examples:

Our world is not characterized by balance. We all too often lean into either excess, and see examples of those all around us.

Learning through diversity

Why is it so common for people to lean into excesses? To address this, it’s useful to understand how our childhood programming around learning factors into all of this.

We were taught that when we learn, whether we are reading, discussing, or experiencing, we gather inputs in order to strengthen a given argument. We start with the assumption that our belief is true and then we seek to confirm that. We need to flip our understanding of learning so that we learn from the bottom up. We need to read, ponder, and process for the purpose of gleaning knowledge and wisdom from the text, not to reinforce an idea we’ve already held.

By adjusting thus, we not only remove that confirmation bias, but we welcome diversity. Finding contradictory points and arguments now becomes exciting because it gives us an opportunity to expand our thinking, and to gather more perspectives on a given topic.

Perspective matters

In work as in life, perspective matters. But more than that, knowing which perspective to adopt is essential, and our ability to find the right level of zoom and the right altitude to take will be critical to our continued growth along the path that we’ve intentionally set ourselves out on.

Let me unpack that.

First, it is good to understand that there are many different perspectives to any given situation. Having a good range of perspectives that you can understand so that you can pick and choose the right one to handle a given situation will be very beneficial.

Next, figure out the right zoom level. When you zoom in as deep as you can, many details emerge that you could not see at higher altitudes; perhaps you can see the details of the seashell in your hand, and its intricate colors and contours and textures. Zooming out, you are able to see that this seashell was sitting on a beach filled with many other seashells. Further still, you are able to see that this beach is a part of a river, lake, or ocean. Even further and you are able to see that this river flows from one large body of water to another.

We need to be able to discern when it is in our best interest to zoom in and look at all the granular details and when it is best to zoom out and look at the big picture. We need to determine which perspective and zoom level gives us the best perspective to make the best decision possible.

It is said that life is a series of individual moments that make up a larger path. Each of these moments requires us to pick the right perspective so that we can best stick to the larger path that we intend for our life progression.

Balancing impact and savoring life

We’re often told that we need to go big or go home. We’re trained to think about our careers as the thing of utmost importance. We’re pushed to be productive, to have lasting impact, to have great effect on our teams, our industries, and our world.

And somewhere along the way, we accepted that this came at the expense of savoring life.

But here too, it is possible to have a balance! The key is to think through what you want and how hard you want to run after each thing. We must realize that in life, as in work, there are skills to be developed, discipline to be employed, and learning to be had to savor and enjoy life to the full.

Yes, you read that right. We need to learn and apply effort to enjoying life.

We grow up believing we need to put effort into school, into learning new skills, into getting better at sports, at music, at art. But for some reason, we think that relationships should be easy. We think that enjoying life should be easy. We think that finding someone who you can spend your life with, and who you can squeeze every ounce of enjoyment and pleasure out of life with should be easy.

Wrong.

It takes as much effort, learning, intention, and instruction to savor life as it does to be highly impactful in our world. We need to therefore work hard to get as much of both as possible, and in doing so find the right balance for us at every given moment.

A final word on solutions

Something I’m learning is that there are no solutions, only adjustments for a certain time. Today’s solutions become tomorrow’s problems. As such, I want to encourage you not to think of any of this as a solution for how to live a balanced life. Rather, we make adjustments for a time, for a season, for a spell. And when it is appropriate to do so, we reevaluate and make more adjustments.

My sons, life is dynamic. It is free flowing. It is full of beauty, of joy, of sadness, of sorrow. It is rich with color, abundant in love, spotted with pain, with the occasional streaks of anger. It is best experienced together, with vulnerability and trust.

My hope for you is that you live lives that are not characterized by extreme behaviors but rather of balanced, thoughtful, mindful, and measured.

Bad situations don't get better with bad reactions

My sons,

Bad stuff happens. At work, at home, in our relationships, in our world. That’s just a simple, unavoidable fact. C’est la vie, as our French-speaking neighbors would say. That’s life. In fact, the Good Book clearly indicates that this is just the reality that we’re going to need to live with. Jesus tells us that “in this world, you will have trouble.” (John 16:33).

Bad situations are simply a given - there isn’t much we can do about that. Sure, we can try our best to avoid them, and we may even be successful for a time. But you can’t run forever, and you certainly can’t live a meaningful and fulfilling life by running away from anything and everything that could potentially turn into a bad situation.

How we respond then, is of critical importance.

We must realize that bad situations won’t get better with bad reactions! Unfortunately, left to our naturally selfish inclinations we will generally react poorly to situations that don’t match up to expectations. Put differently, if we don’t intentionally do something about it, we will all react poorly to bad situations. I’ll go further and posit that many of us actually go beyond reacting poorly to reacting terribly.

Think of the uncontrollable anger you feel when someone cuts you off, or abuses using the HOV lane. Think of your irritation when someone cuts in line in front of you, or when the last of the boba was taken by the order right in front of yours. Whatever your vice is, whatever the situations that set you off are, we all naturally react poorly to bad situations.

But those bad reactions don’t actually make the bad situation any better! In fact, they generally make things worse! Not only is the situation unfortunate, but now it’s an unfortunate situation with an ill-tempered (and often ill-mannered) person in the mix! To add insult to injury, once there is one poor reactor in the mix, their negative reaction will generally set off a chain reaction of negativity with others who have the unfortunate circumstances of being in those bad situations with them.

And then all hell breaks loose and you hate life for a while.

The beauty of humanity though is that we can train ourselves to respond differently. With effort and learning, we can develop the ability to interject in that split microsecond when our brain first acknowledges the unfortunate circumstance and our body flies into action.

But first let’s discuss a few less-bad but still not optimal alternatives to responding well.

Avoiding bad situations

We know that bad situations are hard. They can be painful, physically, mentally, or emotionally. They can cause strain on our bodies, on our relationships, on our productivity, and on any number of other dimensions. They can derail us and feel like we’re being slammed by a train that no one saw coming.

It’s therefore natural that people will try to avoid them.

There is a flip side however. None of us have crystal balls, and therefore can’t predict when bad situations will happen. Attempting to avoid them altogether then, will mean that we’ll end up avoiding a bunch of things that we think might turn into a bad situation, but may not. In fact, what we think could be a bad situation might actually turn out to be a life changingly wonderful situation.

By constantly choosing the path of avoidance, we inadvertently remove opportunities for greatness as well. We remove ourselves from opportunities to be loved. We preclude vulnerability. We trade a rich and full life, filled with ups and downs, for a mediocre one, filled with, well, not much to speak of.

Clearly that’s sub optimal.

Blaming someone/something else

Next, we can choose instead to blame someone else, to have a constant scape goat for the situation. “Oh if only Suzy didn’t set this up so poorly. Gosh I wish she was more competent”. “If only they increased the skill level required to have a license, there wouldn’t be these incompetent drivers all over the place. Stupid government.”

One American rock band sang that “everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people” in their 1995 one-hit wonder song, “Banditos”. So much easier to blame everyone else.

The problem there is that by blaming anyone and everyone for the bad situations that happen in our lives, we relinquish control of the situation, and therefore are unable to make the situation any better! If we ignore it, blame someone else for it, try to minimize our believed impact, or any other number of avoidance strategies, we position ourselves as victims with no recourse but resignation and resentment.

Clearly also sub optimal.

Working on yourself

Instead, we can work on ourselves. Rather than reacting instinctively, we need to respond thoughtfully and intentionally.

Let’s unpack that.

Reacting is what you do when a situation occurs and you simply let instinct take over. There are many instances where this is a wonderful thing, and training our reactions, lowering reaction time, and leaning into our natural responses is what we want to do: playing sports, driving, having a snowball fight, dodging stray shopping carts or snowboards barreling down the hill towards you.

However, there are just as many instances where reacting is not the right thing, where our fight or flight instinct will actually get us into an even worse situation. Conflict with spouses, being cut off by an unaware driver, receiving critical feedback, and many more.

Mindfully creating space

As a result, we must learn to be mindful. There are many benefits to mindfulness, and there are tons of articles, ted talks, books, teachers, and philosophers out there where you can learn more about that. I’m not going to cover that here. However, I will focus on one element of mindfulness that I think is apropos here, and that is the ability to create space.

Mindfulness creates the space for you to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting instinctively. It injects an imperceptible space in between which allows you to have the space necessary to be thoughtful about your response. It gives us the room and the tools to decide how we respond instead of reacting out of instinct.

By injecting a brief pause in between our brain’s decision to act vs our body’s reaction, we can rewire our actions despite our initial internal reaction. This allows us to respond in a way that is congruent with our beliefs and our values.

Using that space to your advantage

It’s not enough just to create space. We need to know what to do with that space. This is where learning comes in, and why it’s so critical to have constant streams of inputs into our lives.

These inputs - be they articles, books, TED talks, podcasts, videos, or even rich conversations - are the basis by which we learn to respond better. We need to ensure that our inputs expose us to a wide range of ideas and topics. In his book “Range”, David Epstein outlines why we need a range of inputs and experiences, what range does to our brains, and how range helps our responses in seemingly unrelated areas.

His premise is that the dynamic nature of the world that we live in requires a flexible and fluid approach. While the traditional thinking around 10,000 hours of practice at a single skill may hold true in a static environment (for example playing the piano; pianos haven’t changed substantially since early inception some 300 years ago), success in a dynamic environment requires flexibility and adaptability that can only be improved by a wide range of experiences and inputs.

Of course, it is not enough to merely have inputs. One must process them in order for them to be of any benefit. It is a widespread understanding that you haven’t really learned something until you can teach it to someone else. The reason here is that in order to teach, one must go beyond ingesting input to the place where one can synthesize their own output. It is this processing that allows true learning to take place, and allows our inputs to take a hold in our lives.

Taking responsibility

It is true that some of us have a natural constitution that causes us to be more impatient than others. Some are born into more patient and calm environments, some are born with genetic disposition towards calmness. But those are all starting points. We must go beyond blaming our circumstances and take responsibility for our own development.

We are no longer children. As such, we have the same 24 hours in a day that everyone else does, and the same ability to intentionally use those 24 hours for our own improvement, our own development. We all know people (or at least have seen characters in movies) that have poise, that are good in crises, that handle life like it’s easy, even when it isn’t. These people are able to do that not because they may have been blessed with a calmer constitution, but because they have also taken the time to learn and to train themselves to be calm and collected under pressure.

My sons, my hope for you is that you realize that bad situations get better only with good responses, and that those responses can be learned, can be trained, and can be improved upon. Like everything else, our ability to respond thoughtfully is a skill that anyone can learn and can practice. Let’s learn together.

Lean not on your own understanding... but have the courage to use it

My sons,

As a youngster one of my favorite Proverbs was Proverbs 3:5, which says “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding”. As a good Christian kid, this meant that there were things that I was taught to do that didn’t make sense to me yet, but I had the full belief that in the fullness of time they would. That didn’t stop me from learning though, and trying to further my own understanding of the world.

I enjoyed the debates, the reading, the studying, the ruminating. I enjoyed diving into many subjects - English literature, philosophy, religion, science and technology, leadership. As I moved through college life, that enjoyment strengthened, and I often found myself having conversations late into the night with groups of friends and other students about many of these topics.

When I graduated though, I discovered that debating about virtues and philosophy and all those other things was very different than applying those things to my life. I found that peer pressure didn’t actually fade away; rather, it morphed into an unspoken expectation of how I was to live my life. The more I settled into the routine of “the rest of my life” after college, the more I found myself swept away by the guidance of the crowd.

What happened?

Adolescence and the quest for knowledge

Our society has structured the first two decades of modern life around the primary goal of acquiring knowledge and skills. Once we enter into our school systems, we are expected to move along on the conveyer belt of knowledge injection until we graduate from college with enough retained knowledge and, hopefully, some small amounts of gleaned wisdom and understanding to enter “the real world”.

The problem is that society got more complex. With the dawn of the information revolution, the number of highly manual and physical jobs decreased dramatically and was coupled with an equally meteoric rise of knowledge worker jobs (a knowledge worker simply is someone who’s main capital and profitable resource is knowledge). This meant that our traditional schooling systems designed during the industrial revolution with a goal of churning out workers capable of operating heavy farm machinery needed to adjust to producing graduates armed with enough knowledge to work in the new space.

These institutions were never designed that way, and have had a hard time adjusting to accommodate. Instead of simply needing to graduate with the ability to drive a tractor or to repair an engine, graduates are expected to have a wealth of knowledge in math, physics, basic engineering, chemistry, and many more. As a result, schools (and many parents) attempt to jam an insane amount of knowledge into the student’s mind, requiring pages and pages of homework to be completed nightly with regular tests and evaluations to ensure the knowledge has stuck.

Goodbye real life application. Goodbye learning and understanding.

The need to have your shit together

Armed with our budding belief that knowledge is more required than wisdom, we enter the workforce where we’re confronted with terms like “imposter syndrome”, “meritocracy”, and “high potential employees”. The set of expectations placed on us increases exponentially and strongly incentivizes us to lean on the knowledge of others, to listen to mentors and managers, and to “follow the crowd at chow time”.

Socially, we want to fit in. We want to be liked, to be admired, and to be respected. When we’re first starting out in our careers, a lot of times that respect gets tied back to what everyone is thinking a lot about; our careers. And so we play the dance, and try to sound like we know what we’re doing, and that we’re advancing and making career progress. We watch instructional videos with titles like “How to sound like an expert” and “How to speak with confidence”.

Pretty soon, our time for, effort in, and motivation towards our own stream of learning and our own exploration of ideas dwindles down to a drip, and eventually may dry completely. Slowly but surely, we then begin to rely on the understanding of others. We begin to mimic, to follow in their footsteps, and to set out on the path that someone else has laid for us.

It takes courage to use our own understanding

Hopefully, over time, each of us realizes the folly of this path. Some realize it earlier than others. For some, it is an awakening that happens early into their careers. For some, it disguises itself as a midlife crisis. For others, it is a sobering reality realized at retirement. Whenever that realization hits, each of us hopefully realizes at some point that living a life where one does not fully express, does not feel agency, and does not use their own understanding is a very unfortunate state to be in.

In her book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, author Bronnie Ware shares that an all too common regret is the wish that one had the courage to live the life that they wanted, not the one that was expected of them. It takes courage to use our own understanding and to forge our own path because our world isn’t designed for it! Humanity has an evolutionary need to fit in, to stick together. But that needs to be balanced with a thoughtful and learned approach for applying our own wisdom and understanding.

A few thoughts as to why:

1. Living life according to the herd is great (and even necessary) when the herd is in survival mode. The penguins of Antarctica shuffle around in packs, huddling together and rotating which penguins are on the outside of the pack so that they maximize warmth for the pack. In order to survive, they have to live according to the herd. If you’re reading this, there’s a high likelihood that you are not (or desire not to be) in survival mode and should therefore make your life choices with a view towards thriving.
2. Growth, innovation, and enhancement do not operate at herd level. One cannot do the same thing day in day out and expect a different result. Therefore one must do things differently if one wishes to grow.
3. Every leap of advancement in human history began with someone questioning the norm. Is the world really flat? Can mankind really only travel on the ground? Is the moon really out of reach?

Everyone who has ever accomplished something great has run into resistance, and has had to reach deep to overcome those hurdles. Whether they be in the form of naysayers, political opposition, or financial barriers, each of these hurdles shouts the same message: stay where you’re at; don’t rock the boat. The Japanese have a proverb that says “the nail that sticks out gets hammered”. It takes courage to overcome the hammering.

Taking off the training wheels

When we were young, our parents made many decisions for us. As we grew, we ought to have learned to develop a framework by which we could make our own decisions. Ancient cultures had rituals that marked the point in a person’s life when their tribe believed them to have learned enough to decide for themselves. This rite of passage often marked the transition to adulthood, where the individual was able to transition from being led to being guided.

For a variety of reasons many have not made that transition and still rely on parental leading instead of guiding and coaching. We must take off the training wheels. We must learn to have the courage to use our own understanding without the guidance of others. We cannot truly learn and understand if we are always taking direction and applying the directed knowledge instead of figuring it out ourselves.

My sons, my hope as your father is for you to a beautiful transition, one which clearly marks your passage into adulthood. I hope that I can lead you when you need to be led, but teach you so that you can learn to make your own decisions, learn to build your own framework by which you evaluate the world. Remember that learning comes before deciding! So learn. Read. Ponder. And have the courage to apply all that you’ve gleaned!

A culture of learning

My sons,

I wanted to talk a bit today about our Amazon Leadership Principle Learn and Be Curious. The description of this LP is as follows: “Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.”

But what does that mean? How does that actually apply in our regular lives?

First, a few thoughts about learning itself. Specifically about our relationship to learning, how we approach it, and our mindset around it.

Learning ought to be a lifelong activity and endeavor. It is something that we expect of our children. It is something that we allocate the first quarter of our lives to. It is something that successful people do all their lives because it separates us from the rest. It is the thing that allows humanity to progress, to advance, and to have made leaps and bounds from our much more primitive ancestors.

And yet once we graduate from college, the majority of us have a sharp decline in the rate of learning, the topics which we learn, and the time we spent dedicated towards bettering ourselves. We leave our climate and environment of learning and are thrown into a fast paced delivery-driven culture that more often burns out our college grads more than it teaches them.

That in turn begs the question of environment. Do we have an environment where people can learn? One that encourages the trial and error required for new neural pathways to be created? One that rewards failure as much as it rewards successes, knowing that failure is but a step on the path to progress and victory?

In a candid fireside chat in San Diego earlier this year Bill Gates suggested that there are certain conditions that which, if not met, make it incredibly difficult - even impossible - for an individual to learn: confidence, curiosity, and constant feedback. Let’s talk about each of those.

Confidence

People need confidence to learn. They need confidence to know that they can get this, that they are able to progress. They need to believe in themselves, that they are capable of change, of improvement.

Confidence is built by successes, by cheerleaders, by supporters, coaches, and mentors. The more we craft an environment where these things naturally happen and are praiseworthy the more confidence we will see among those living in it.

Curiosity

When we were young, we were curious about everything. The quintessential example is the kid that asks “why” one too many times that it sends their parents over the edge. We each have a natural curiosity about the world, a spark of joy at discovering something new, something novel, something wonderful.

And yet that curiosity gets beat out of us. It begins in adolescence when the desire to fit in (and the awkwardness of not fitting in) begins to pick up steam. And then responsibility kicks into full gear, whether from owning a home, being married, having children, having family responsibilities thrust on you, or a myriad of other things.

Slowly but surely our natural curiosity shrinks until we become caught in the rat race of the mundane.

We must craft an environment where curiosity flourishes, where people are able to explore, to try new things, to fail at things, and to share those learnings with others. We must give people the time, the physical space, and the mental headspace to venture out, to ask questions, and to stick their finger into the proverbial socket to see what happens.

Constant feedback

As leaders one of the most important things entrusted to us is the care for our people. As General Stanley McChystal puts it in his book Team of Teams, leaders must take on the role of the gardener. The gardener has no direct ability to make plants grow. However, they do have the ability to cultivate the plants, to prune as needed, to till the soil, to water and provide nutrients, and to provide an environment that is ideal for growth.

So too is it with leaders.

We need to create the right environment for our people to grow in, and need to trim and prune where necessary as well. This means providing consistent and constant feedback as people learn and grow. Without a tight feedback loop, people will be left wandering and reinforcing bad habits that should have been pruned early on.

Learning to learn

So how do we create this environment where people can flourish in their learning, and how do we create that desire for learning, that mindset for growth, that joy that comes from making progress?

A few practical things we can do.

1. Reward learning. When I was a new parent I was told that we should praise our children for the learning process, not for the accomplishment. In her book Mindset Carol Dweck argues that praising results creates a fixed mindset in our children who are hyper focused on results and not on the growth or the learning. We obtain what we measure and reward.
2. Lead by example. When I was at Microsoft, Bill Gates used to take what he called Think Week. It was a week where he would go off the grid and allow himself to learn. He would read. He would think. He would ponder. He would ruminate. And in doing so he set the example for his company that reading and learning were highly valued activities.
3. Play the long game. Learning takes time to come into fruition. As teams and leaders, valuing learning from our people means that we need to have the patience for that growth to pay off. We have to invest in our people and have the mindset of long term benefits. When we are short sighted, when we become too caught up in tactics and immediate results, we stifle our people’s ability to participate in and to value learning.

One of my lifelong mentors taught me that we don’t build teams for a reason or season, but for life. That is long game thinking. That is the type of thinking that encourages growth, fosters curiosity, and values learning. And that’s what I desire to do - to build teams for life; teams of lifelong learners who are excited to learn together and to apply our learnings to the problems of the day.

Learn and be curious

My sons,

One of the most beautiful things about the human race is that we have infinite potential. Throughout the ages we have faced seemingly insurmountable problems, only to have those problems solved and conquered. Time and again the next generation of our species is able to push the limits of what is currently believed to be possible and launch us into yet another age of hyper growth.

The reason we are able to accomplish so much as a species is because of the men and women who have an insatiable curiosity and propensity for learning, for experimenting, for getting a grasp on the current limitations of thought and then pushing beyond. These men and women change our world because they are curious, because they refuse to accept the status quo, and because they deeply believe that there is more.

Arguably the most important of DaVinci’s 7 principles, curiosità is defined as

an insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for learning.

It is the foundation of progress and advancement, and is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of what it means to be human. It is a trait found in every meaningfully influential person in human history, and is at the core of being able to empower people.

What does it mean to be insatiably curious?

One of the worst sayings in our recent history is this: curiosity killed the cat. It didn’t. Stagnation did. Laziness did. Stubbornness did. An inability to adapt to the changing environment did. Curiosity is the life blood that sustains us, that pushes us to be better, to learn, to discover the boundaries, and to push through.

Being curious means to wonder, to go about one’s day and have questions pop into consciousness. Most of us do this without thinking about it. “Why did that rude driver cut me off?” “How do they make this tea taste so good?” “I wonder what my manager thinks of my performance right now?” These are harmless (and unimportant) questions that often don’t lead to anything other than a brief pause of consideration.

Being insatiably curious means one continues down the rabbit hole to ask question after question until clarity finally dawns. It means one asks bigger and broader questions until the underlying themes emerge. It means one is unwilling to accept unsatisfying answers and instead puts in the hard work to discover the truth.

And that, is the definition of learning.

What does it mean to learn?

At Amazon, one of our most important leadership principles is the principle to learn and be curious. It is one of the most important because without learning we cannot make progress. It is also one of the hardest to measure, as learning often begins with an internal shift in mindset, in approach, in perspective.

When we are unwilling to accept unsatisfying answers and are unhappy with our limited cursory understanding of a given topic, we begin to dig. We pull on threads. We follow trails. We ask questions. We seek experts.

We do all this so that we can update our mental models. Our brains create models that we apply to every action and interaction that we have. These models are used to frame the way we understand the world, the way we interpret information. As we learn, we refine these models and sharpen our focus to see our surroundings more clearly.

How to instill curiosity and inspire learning

To be quite honest, I don’t know the answer to this one. I suspect there is no one size that fits all, as what inspires each of us is different. So in an attempt to start the conversation here, I will share a few things that have inspired me over the years and attempt to draw some conclusions from them.

As Luke Burgis describes in his best selling book Wanting, much of what we desire is actually a mimetic (aka copied) desire and not a self-initiated one. We are not as original as we believe ourselves to be, and instead inherit many of our desires from the models that we have in our lives.

Something I have been very blessed to have in my life is a number of great models who have modeled curiosity, learning, and deep thinking to me. My father instilled this in me at an early age, and I often remember him at his desk reading, studying, learning. My older brother continued this model for me into my teenage rebellious years, and as an adult I have had the distinct pleasure of being mentored by several lifelong learners.

I have also had the great advantage of resources. Never in our world’s history has access to information and knowledge been so easy! Public libraries, 2-day shipping on practically every book still in print (and many not), access to podcasts, docents, and other experts are all things that are widely available to many.

While it is true that there is an overwhelming abundance of noise in our environment, with a little effort one can distinguish the signals of learning amidst the noise and can discover the voices of the truly curious. Fostering curiosity and learning therefore must consist of providing both motive and opportunity. It is our job to lead by example, to demonstrate curiosity and learning in all that we do, and to create an environment in which those we lead can have that curiosity encouraged and explored.

A cursory study into the great minds of our era will uncover their insatiable curiosity applied to a variety of topics. Einstein. DaVinci. Edison. Gates. All of these intellectual giants applied their significant mental prowess across a vast array of topics and subjects and as a result were able to draw across a wide range of learnings as they slowly but surely changed our world.

Let us follow in their footsteps and inspire (and be inspired by) others to be curious, to learn, and to slowly but surely change our world.

Building confidence in others

My sons,

I love to travel. I love the feeling of waking up in a place that isn’t home, hearing sounds, seeing sights, and smelling things that are completely new and beautiful in their uniqueness. Whenever I travel, there are always three things on my list that I can’t miss that to me give me a snapshot of culture: food, architecture, and art.

Each new city I visit and each new country I step foot in, I always make sure I experience their food - both modern and traditional, from holes in the walls to fancy fine dining. I always spend a day with my camera capturing snapshots of their architecture. And I always find some way to experience their art, be it museums full of paintings and sculpture, opera houses, symphony, or local theater. I firmly believe that there is so much beauty in the vast numbers of cultures out there, and while I have been blessed to experience many, there are still more that I have yet to discover and witness.

But of all the wonders that I’ve seen, of all the sights, scenery, and marvels that I’ve been blessed to experience, there is nothing more beautiful than the human spirit. No created thing, no picturesque landscape, no natural phenomenon can quite compare to the beauty of that spark that is within all of us. There is nothing quite like the shine of that spark when it shines, nothing quite as bright as seeing the dignity, honor, and nobility of the human spirit.

Conversely, there is nothing so heart breaking as seeing that spirit stamped out, restricted, and silenced. As Al Pacino famously pronounced in his legendary speech,

“There is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit; there is no prosthetic for that.”

So how do we ensure we combat this? How do we lift people, elevate their spirits, and enable them to be their best? We’ve been discussing what it means to empower people recently, and I would posit that empowering people is synonymous with enabling the human spirit to be its best.

An external lift

We all begin life with the same small spark, that same thread of humanity that is characteristic of our species. In the beginning, that spark is fragile. It has infinite potential, but needs nurturing, needs nourishing to be the best that it can be. It is strong but malleable.

At the start, each of us needs an external lift. We need an environment that cultivates, that nurtures, that fans that tiny spark into a bright light. Over time that spark will be much stronger and can sustain much, but each of us requires someone to lift us, to point our eyes upwards so that we can see our potential, can dream of the stars, and can have the confidence to reach out to grab them.

Whether this comes in the form of an involved parent, an inspiring mentor, an encouraging sibling, or a trusted friend, each of us needs has pivotal moments where we need someone to show up for us and to hold us up until we are able to stand on our own again.

Building confidence

As caregivers, coaches, and mentors, there are several key things we have to be aware of when we embark on this journey of building up others. First and foremost is that we have to care personally. This key element amplifies everything we do with those in our care. People look towards us for guidance, yes, but before they can gain anything from us, before they will listen to us, they need to know that we are in their corner. So if you’re reading this and the person in your care doesn’t deeply know that, then your first task is to drop everything else you’re doing and make sure that they are convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that you are for them.

Constancy

Constancy is defined as the quality of being faithful and dependable. As a coach, it is incredibly important for us to be a constant for those we are coaching. Remember that for many, there is much going on in their lives that we are unaware of. Those we coach need to know that this is always a safe place for them, and that no matter what else happens outside the sphere of our time together, this time, this place, this space will be constant.

This is one of the keys to the many wonderful and successful sports programs that help underprivileged children. For many of those children, seeing their coaches week to week is the only constant in their lives, and they are able to cling to that constancy and find strength in that. They are able to lean on these men and women who become pillars for them to stabilize their lives.

This trait applies to any kind of coaching we want to do! Whether we’re talking about career coaching, youth work, or even raising confident children, our ability to build confidence in them requires us to be a constant in their lives.

Consistency

Not to be confused with constancy, consistency is about providing the same message, the same set of values and principles in all our interactions. As coaches, our message needs to be consistent. We need to show those we are coaching that we apply the same standards to everything that we do.

People need structure. We need to know that the bar is the same for everyone, and that the same standards will be applied to everyone. In order for us to be confident, we need to know that we can meet or exceed the bar, but how can we do that if we feel the bar keeps moving? As coaches, we need be consistent in our application of our standards. Yes, we can acknowledge the fact that people may be at a different skill level, but accommodating a different skill level and lowering the standards are very different things.

A big part of growing, learning, and developing confidence is failing, and gaining wisdom and insight from our failures. Analyzing what went wrong and adapting our actions is a critical part of learning. Knowing that our adjustments will accomplish a better result next time is a key component of confidence. As Thomas Edison famously said,

”I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Yes, we need to support and encourage those we coach when they fail, but they need to know that we have not lowered the bar just to make them feel good. Remember that making someone feel better is just a salve for the current pain and doesn’t actually help them grow. As coaches, we need to hold the line and let them know that they have missed the mark. Be gentle, but firm. The message must be consistent.

Expect more

One of the best tools we have as coaches is setting the bar. In order to build confidence in others, we need to know what they’re capable of, and then we need to start nudging the beyond that. They need to know that we expect them to accomplish more, that we believe in them.

There’s a key nuance here though. We’ve all seen those memes and heard stories of parents, teachers, or instructors that set impossible standards that those in their care cannot reach. This is not that.

If our goal is to build confidence in others, then we first need to take the time to really understand their current capabilities. Not only that, but we need them to know that we truly understand where they’re at. To coach someone well, we need to earn their trust, and they will never trust us if they don’t believe we care enough to really know them and to know where they’re at.

Only when we’ve demonstrated that we care, that we understand, and that we are constant and consistent can we begin to raise the bar.

As coaches and mentors, we have the great privilege to help others grow and to confidently push the boundaries of their capabilities. We also have the great responsibility to be thoughtful of those in our care. Our words have the power to encourage, to lift, and to build confidence, but they also have the power to destroy and to tear down. Let us learn to build others up together!

Empowerment

My sons,

In our culture today empowerment has become a buzzword. Whether we’re talking about empowering women to learn and raise their communities out of poverty, empowering young children and students to reach for a better life, or empowering young employees to speak their mind for change, empowerment it seems is everywhere. And rightly so! Empowering others is a great thing. But what does it actually look like? What does it consist of?

In its formative years, empowerment tended to look like someone in a position of power - a manager, a parent, a mentor - simply expressing that they want the individual to feel empowered. I’ve heard many times in my career phrases like “I want to empower you to make this decision”, or “you should feel empowered to make changes here”.

Sounds great, but utterly ineffectual.

At Amazon, Jeff Bezos baked into the company culture the belief that good intentions, while noble and good, are alone insufficient. The intention needs to be there, yes, but that can’t be where it stops. There needs to be more - a follow up, a plan of action, a concrete mechanism that we can turn to that ensures the good intention happens.

What does feeling empowered look like?

For any individual to feel empowered, there are a few key conditions which need to be met. The individual must be in an environment or culture that is conducive to them taking action, making mistakes, and adjusting accordingly. They must have an internal confidence that allows them to strike out and act. They must have a curiosity and a desire to learn so that they can internalize the feedback that comes from their actions in order to change, evolve, and grow.

When people feel empowered, their eyes light up. They hold their heads higher. They stand up straighter. They maneuver within their environment without fear. They are focused on the future because they know that they can impact that future. They have hope because tomorrow is not determined for them; rather, it is dependent on them.

Let’s look a bit deeper at these conditions.

An empowered environment and culture

Whether we’re looking at a workplace culture, a family environment, or a group of close friends, an environment of empowerment is a life giving place that allows us to flourish and grow. Cultures that support empowerment do not place arbitrary restrictions and requirements on classes or groups of people dwelling in that environment.

This means that there are no criteria that exist that don’t provably impact the decision making process. For example, ethnicity, gender, and tenure at a company have no direct correlation to the strength of one’s ideas for a new product launch. Age, birth order, or position in a family tree have no correlation to the validity of one’s understanding of education. Religion, belief systems, or cultural background have no correlation to one’s ability to drive. A culture of empowerment does not have restrictions like these.

While these traits may appear to be correlated, empowering cultures dive one level deeper to determine what’s actually impactful. It used to be the case that tenure was a strict requirement for many things. However many empowering environments have recognized that tenure itself is not a key requirement. Tenure typically is correlated with experience, with wisdom, with knowledge, and with understanding, but it is not a strong correlation such that in many environments tenure has been removed as a criteria.

Environments that foster empowerment are ones where requirements are strongly correlated to the thing the requirements are applied to. It is our job as leaders and managers to regularly reevaluate our requirements to ensure the environment we build fosters the culture we want to have.

A few quick thoughts on how we can do that (more on this next time!):

1. Have believable people that you regularly get feedback from. Make sure that these people know that their feedback should be honest, is valued, and will not cause retribution. And make sure they have the context from which to provide that feedback.
2. Be transparent about the evaluation process. Share what people are being evaluated on. Provide them the details. Be honest. Stack ranks happen - let’s stop pretending they don’t. Treat people like adults and accept responsibility for when things aren’t fair.
3. Give credit where it’s due. A good rule of thumb is for each piece of recognition you receive make sure you’re giving at least 5 times as much credit to others. None of us are self-made, so if you believe you deserve that credit and no one else does, you’re wrong.

Internal confidence

People need confidence to learn. They need confidence to know that they can get this, that they are able to progress. They need to believe in themselves, that they are capable of change, of improvement.

It is not enough to put someone in an environment that is an empowering one. It is not enough to give them resources, to encourage them to speak out, and to create a safe space for them to do so. They have to believe that they can, and that they have something meaningful to offer. And we have to enable them to have belief.

The moment a person stops believing that things happen to them and starts believing that things can happen because of them, they begin to see the world in a different light. They begin to believe that they can shape their stars, that they can chart their own course, and that they can make the world better. It is that moment that Melinda Gates calls the moment of lift.

In her book with the same title, Melinda describes the moment of lift as

“a moment that captures grace. Something happens to relieve us, to release us from pain, from burden. It is extrinsic. We cannot lift ourselves. We must be lifted.”

Beautiful.

It is that powerful grace that has the ability to set us on a different course and to truly lift us out of our current circumstances. To truly empower people we must lift them up. We must move them into a place where they begin to believe in themselves. We must help them to see that when the tides of circumstance loom overhead that they can stand against them.

A few thoughts on how we can help build confidence in others (again, more on this in a future post!):

1. Be specific about praise. Saying “great job!” is absolutely useless. Tell them why. What was great? What did they do that was great? Why was it “great” and not “good”?
2. Hold people accountable. When someone makes a mistake, let them know you hold them responsible. When we are honest in our accountability, people will know that we are also honest in our praise.
3. Be generous with your time. Chances are people who you give feedback to don’t fully understand it. Take the time to explain it to them thoroughly. Remember that just because you’ve been thinking about it from many angles for a long time doesn’t mean that they have the same context. Be patient and walk them through it. Make sure they really get it before you move on.

Curiosity and learning

An unfortunate reality of our world is that our education systems are broken. They incentivize the wrong things. They promote memorization, short term recall, and specific application of a concept to a specialized problem space. This in turn creates a culture where we dread learning, mostly because we have an inaccurate understanding of it.

Learning ought to be a lifelong activity and endeavor. It is something that we expect of our children. It is something that we allocate the first quarter of our lives to. It is something that successful people do all their lives.

As children, we are born with an innate sense of curiosity. From a young age we are curious about everything and anything under the sun. We stick things in our mouths, we put our chubby little fingers into wall sockets, and we’re mesmerized by anything new. We want to be like our older siblings, our parents, our role models. We want to progress forward. We are curios and want to learn.

And yet as we have gotten older, we’ve lost touch with that curiosity and have lost the sense of wonderment and joy at learning new things. Instead we prefer to fill our time with meaningless trifles such as celebrity gossip and the vast amounts of time-wasting things all around us. We’ve lost the ability to be in awe of things, to marvel at things, to be amazed by things, and to be infinitely curious about them.

So how do we spark curiosity in ourselves and in others? A few thoughts (and again, more next time!):

1. Build in time to slow down. Whether it’s meditation, going for a walk, or just simply dedicating time to sit and enjoy your morning cup of coffee, slowing down allows our minds to wander and wonder.
2. Don’t answer a question, even if you know the answer. Whether we’re talking about employees, children, or students, sometimes the best thing we can do for someone is to not give them the answer even if we’ve got it. Let them stew on it. Let them consider what they know. Let them surprise themselves (and maybe even you!) with their thoughts.
3. Put yourself in awe-inspiring places. Whether you’re taking the time to travel and see things or you’re surrounding yourself with some awesome people, know that your environment and your surroundings slowly but surely impact not just how you think, but what you think about.

By instilling a curiosity in people, lifting them so that they have the confidence to act on that curiosity, and putting them in an environment that values, supports, and encourages those bold and brave behaviors, we can create the necessary conditions for creating more empowered people. And this is a great thing, because empowered people are the ones that can change the world.