The Take Away

Harvard Business Review seems to devote a fair amount of ink to the “happiness at work” movement with yet another article appearing today on my LinkedIn home page. A simple Goog search of “happiness at work” turns up a load of links on all manner of well being in the workplace. We apparently want to be happy at work.

I know something about jumping up the juice at work since I spent most of a decade on the hustings for the Fish! Philosophy, a kindly video and books about the fishmongers at Pike Market in Seattle who have some good customer mojo. Great product, used by companies around the world, but turned out to be remarkably challenging for any organization to really implement. Happiness at work, it turns out, is more an individual phenomenon, choice, or way of being.

We all want happiness, man, that’s the scope of our lives, to be joyful, connected and just happy, man. But as most of us know, organizations have limited resources to generate happy happy for the unhappy few. What I mean is, if you’re already a whiner, or a belly aching windbag of toxic energy, no program, article, foosball table or casual Friday is going unlock your misery. Happiness at work is entirely different than happiness from our workplace. Sure, having free soda, bonus checks and a great health plan can generate momentary happiness, but if you’re prone to harshing everyone’s mellow none of this is going to matter, your just going to continue to rain on everyone’s parade.

If you want happiness in the workplace, hire people that are happy for crying out loud, and give them some freedom. Avoid weaponizing toxic people by giving them power over others, making them the overlords of the good and happy people.

If you work with a scumbag but you’re mostly happy, my guess is you’ll be happy most of the time. Sure, you can read all the articles and books on happy happy, or pay closer attention to the other preachers of jack-you-up like me, and some of it will stick and work. But if you really are happy, be f**$ing happy! Hold your head up and forward, continue to do fun things, mix it up, tinker around, and keep that goofy smile pasted on your face. THAT one.

Take some risks to stay in the happy, after all if you fast forward your life into the not so distant future, say 100 years, you’ll be 6 feet under and all the hand wringing in the world right now, won’t get you out of the ground later. Why waste it fertilizing the planet with negative s**t.

So, come on! Just be happy you’re here, now, alive and well…man.

I was talking with a young woman on Saturday afternoon about the condition of her life.  Her family is and has been in turmoil for the past several years and while mom and dad are in a cold war, she and her sisters have done their best to keep moving on with their lives, but it hasn’t always been easy. It has resulted in eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse and other “destructive behaviors”.

In the course of our conversation I became aware of how much her language was spiced with constraint, problems, issues and shortcomings. None of it seemed like her own language rather it sounded like therapy, counselor speak, group speak, god speak and a host of other channels not entirely her own. She was channeling from all of those professionals that had lined up to help to get better, to be sober, to get straight, to be real, grow up and get her act together. The problem was, at least as an observer, was that all of this language was in her way, all of the concepts she talked about assumes she’s emotionally club footed, that she is sick, that she’s always going to be on the edge of the next big breakdown, and so my friend lives in fear and anxiety that it all may be true, while at the same time wondering if it also might not be so.

I’m not a therapist, nor a chem-dep expert, I don’t know a lot about eating disorders and I’m certainly not any kind of trusted adviser on family dynamics. However, I do have a sense that language is often deployed in a way that can keep us in the fold of whatever we are struggling against. In other words, we may have issues to work through but at some point all of the “theraspeak” and mumbo-jumbo we needed to get through a rough patch can become part of our own self containing narrative.  I could be wrong.

In the course of the conversation I would ask her “Is that true?”, or “How do you know that is true?”  These questions were about testing the concepts that so many people had tied around her neck. It was clear before long that she was already questioning the limits and that she wanted to describe and re-create herself and to reclaim the language of possibilities rather than the language of handicap and disease. She is very smart and while she may indeed struggle with some afflictions, she is realizing she can claim a healthier approach of her own, one that allows for the very real possibility that much of what has defined her by others may no longer be true.

We can’t navigate our way forward if we’re walking backwards. The bad things that happen to us, or the crappy things we do to ourselves and our organizations, can turn into daunting and long shadows. We find ourselves looking behind us, keeping an eye on the shadow that is always following close to foot, making sure we don’t make the same mistakes, that we get a grip on ourselves so that we don’t self destruct. We grab on to books, programs, scripts, guru’s, prescriptions, steps, plans, groups and experts to help illuminate the shadows, to give us strength in the face of such challenges.

While we may need some support with programs and people that can help us conceptualize healthier choices, there is also great strength to be found simply by turning around and facing forward into the light of the future, rather than starring forever into the lingering shadows of the past.

We all need occasional help and support and sometimes that help is heavy handed and tightly programmed, and other times it’s just a few words from a friend. Whatever it may be, the well intentioned help can become a cane and crutch, and over time weaken our resolve and fortitude. If I don’t continually challenge myself to try new things, to cut through the thicket off the beaten path, my creative muscles atrophy and I forget how to jazz. But the more I tinker with new ideas, the more likely I’ve found them. 

To be successful we’ll have to balance the need for scripts and structures against the energy of discovery and adventure. None of our work will be perfect, but better we tinker and try-out new ideas, new innovations and insights than to always remain constrained by scripts we write, or that others have written for us. Better than we define ourselves imperfectly rather than letting others, no matter how well intentioned the voices may be, define everything for and about us. The future, thankfully, is just too big, too awesome and important to move forward feeling so feeble and small.

In all of the years I spent wandering around the Minnesota Renaissance Festival with a dirty face and shit-brown costume I am fortunate that I can count on one hand the number of times someone has threatened to kill me. Now, that may seem to be a roughly high number since I’m guessing few of you have had someone threaten to kill you as a result of something you said. Not so with me. Some things I’ve said have resulted in a bit of blow back, an unexpected rebuttal to what I believed was a joke. I don’t believe I had necessarily said anything wrong, but that I said it to the wrong person. Got it.

My risky brand of performing is one in which the “scene” is not figured ahead of time, not really, it’s mostly a series of improvised provocations designed to incite. I gather a crowd by harassing them with a sort of free association, comedic rant on everything around me. My personae is the Rat Catcher, a kind of medieval Don Rickles lambasting everything and everyone around him. I’ve performed for hundreds of thousands of people over the past 47 years (Yes..I started as a kid), and in only a few instances has someone objected to my comments in a potentially violent way, and most of those happened in Texas. Surprise!

The most caustic of them was an oddly shaped guy (See…already you know this is going in a bad direction) who was ordering pasta from one of the festival food booths. I was sitting on the ground near the counter of the booth, and as he waited for his food I might have mentioned something about his bulging gut and overworked duodenum. He ignored me, which is appropriate in most cases but seeing as this is “interactive theater” I was inclined to follow up on my opening salvo. Just as I stood up, this enormous bowl of hot pasta with red sauce appeared on the counter. I said something that included “shoveling” and “fat, obnoxious ignoramus.” But, I delivered it with a smile.

Much to my surprise, it turns out, a plate of hot pasta and red sauce in the face followed by a verbal threat that my life was in danger of coming to a hasty close, was an early curtain due to bad reviews for those of you familiar with the nomenclature of the theater. The man was quickly escorted off the site by a couple of beefy, thick necked cowboy security guys who were fans of my performance style. I was told later that the man got a little rowdy on the walk out and the cowboys had to “set him straight”. I never found out what that meant…somethings are better left alone.

The fact that I’ve only had a handful of troubled moments given the enormous number of people that I have interacted with as an “improvocative” performer, tells me that most of us have great leeway in how we approach encounters with others. Certainly there are a different set of social rules when performing, yet, playing and engaging others creates a great deal of space for exploring and tinkering with the moments. Regardless of what you do, in most instances if you’re paying attention, you can engage with others with far more vim and vigor than you might think. What’s more, if you do it with patience, love and kindness, you’ll find that others not only want to play with you, but they’ll pay extra to get it.

Okay, I know you can’t go around yelling at others or provoking pasta eaters, but you can move boldly in the world by inviting people to play with you, to engage with them wholeheartedly and to do so not because it’s a strategy for getting something, but that it raises the level of good for you, for them, and for this bruised and battered world.

Besides having been a walk about street performer, I’ve also spent a great deal of time working in and around motivational speakers, a group I’ve come to call the “preachers-of-jack-you-up!”. It’s a big revival tent of well manicured individuals, some of whom have a tin stamped story about overcoming insurmountable challenges to becoming the fantastic, super awesome mega best selling whoopty doo they just knew they could be, and a few even sell formulaic tincture to aid with the affects of being a lowly loser in life. Some of these programs are designed to make life effortless, or at least sell something to you effortlessly, and others will give recipients that permanent cat eating crap grin that is so oft pasted upon the faces of the temporarily jacked up. Whew, say amen!

Contrary to my opening stanza, I love motivational speakers and the industry for which I derive a portion of my living. While I remain skeptical of some of the long term value that motivation brings to a group, in the short run it can leave people feeling jacked up, juiced and ready, it can open thinking to new ideas, and even offer (**GASP) a positive balance to the bitching bummer of the daily grind. There isn’t a thing wrong with this, because even though the net gain may sometimes be short lived, some of the ideas tossed about casually can actually stick. I know about this industry, because I’m a semi-reluctant member of this good vibe tribe.

The trouble with the motivational speaking industry is that some members seem to jump on trendy ideas and turn them into shallow fodder for sale.  Take, for instance, the research that seems to support the obvious notion that laughter is good for us. This really isn’t surprising since most of us already kind of know that when we’re happy, when we’re laughing, we’re…ahhh…happy! Right! But the idea of “laughter is the best medicine” is enough to draw the clowns out of the car to promote programs, training initiatives, and products designed to help us laugh more. There is even a class where participants laugh, however unnatural it may be, at something funny.

If we want to have programs in our workplaces, organizations, even in our personal lives that promote good health, happiness and joy, it seems to me we need avoid prescriptions, overlay and strategies since none of these are very natural. Joy, laughter and connection only happen in a meaningful way when it’s natural, when occurs to us in an unforced way, not the laugh track of a classroom or motivational schtick. 

Don’t get me wrong here, I love to laugh and I laugh a lot, but the funniest things to me are likely not the funniest to you. Same holds true for nearly everything in life, since each of us is a unique shape of existence, what we find valuable and useful is often quite different. Duh.  Teaching and training others to be playful is an exercise in futility Providing Foosball tables and pinball machines may make the office look fun, but they really don’t promote the right muscle group. Play and joy happen naturally, and they don’t happen as a result of being strategic or well trained. Leave people alone and create a space around you that respects the choice of others. Toxic people are likely to be toxic no matter what the temperature of the room is, warm or cold. Happy people seem to raise the level of happy in the room, but just try to make the others in the room happy and the results will likely not make anyone, very, happy.

In the TAKE AWAY: Plan Less-Succeed More, I write about looking at our work and personal life not from the question of “what can I take away”, but “what can we leave behind that will matter for both of us”?  This shift puts the emphasis on who we are being and less on what we are doing or getting. Laughter is a nice idea, I like it, and I’ve found that when I’m happy laughter seems to be in close proximity. I doubt a training program on laughter, or a “laugh class” is going bring sustainable chuckling to my otherwise good life. Laughter and joy cannot be prescribed with any success because it isn’t natural. Better still, promote trust and freedom, leave people alone to be who they are best at being, and bring your own joy into the room. If you do, others will be more inclined to share the mojo with you.

“When I was young I used to pray for a bike, then I realized that God doesn’t work that way, so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness.” **Just in case you needed something to get your started.

It’s Friday and already my ADD brain is strategically deciphering the codes of possibility. Hmmm, we could meet friends at a very loud bar and engage in shouting style conversations amidst the drunken twenty somethings. No, not this week.  Maybe, Saturday night we could go to the Gay 90’s, a very gay lounge in Minneapolis where we go to dance or watch homos in high heels and evening gowns strut their ducked taped genitalia across the cabaret stage. Sounds good. Or, we could always stay home and cruise Roku or Apple TV. I don’t know.

The older I get, which seems to be happening more often these days, I’ve become aware of the challenges of aging. It’s not that I’m looking or really feeling that old, I mean, I don’t wear old man blue jeans that belt high across my stomach, nor do I posses a single pair Tommy Bahama pleated pants, and nary a loafer with slots for a penny (I did at one time, but thankfully they were exchanged for True Religions and Eccos) still, I AM getting older and it makes me wonder about my choices.

One worries that as we get older we will slowly loose our elasticity, in both mind and body. Flexibility is the benchmark of youth, the ability to dash from here to there, stay up to all hours without paying a deep price, and being able to do all manner of physical activities and still recover quickly. But what if we still have youth and flexibility in us, but we’re much older?  Do we go to clubs or places where we will be the oldest person there and attempt to fit in, or do we stay home and nod off in the easy chair as we read the latest issue AARP magazine and watch “Dancing With The Stars”.

All things equal, I will take the path of most resistance, which is to say that I plan on staying up late, dashing about as long as I can, and hanging out with people who are vital and alive, no matter what their age. Yeah, it will take more time to recover, I might be the oldest one on the dance floor, and it could appear to some that I’m not “acting my age”. So be it. Life is supposed to be precious, and nothing burdens the spirit more than bringing the fence posts in, closer and closer, limiting our ability to move and becoming complacent and rigid. 

I still don’t know what I’m going to do this weekend, but whatever it is I know it’ll be fun, it will be late and by Monday morning I’m going to be very tired.

Cool!

I’ve been critical of my own tendency to put technology first. I’m as much of a knuckle dragging gadget grabber as most guys are, but lately I’ve started to take note of the cost this has had on my relationships, my focus and how I manage my time. Obviously, I use my laptop and smartphone to help keep me on task and organized, fine, but there is also this image in my mind, one in which I’m sitting on the shore of an ocean of information, constantly casting out and reeling in a hook load of useless, every day, more useless and more lost time infobating.

Last night after my wife came home after being gone all day long, I was on the computer scanning the seas for another catch of some mud sucking bottom dweller. In an attempt to put her face into my line of focus, gently pulling my laptop off of my lap top, I heard myself say “NO! I’m done yet…!” She went to bed.

The world is already full of enough distractions to lead us out to pasture like grazing cows, I don’t want to awaken to find that my life is over and all I have is a TiVo full unwatched show, and a smart phone that made me stupid. I also don’t want to relationships, particularly with my wife, to become less important than internet cud I’ve been chewing (My metaphors are on fire!).

So, I’ve decided to give up my internet surf board in the evenings, to walk away from it during the weekends, and to start maximizing my time with the people I love and admire, as well as to give myself more time to create, tinker, and reflect.

Before I do that though…I’ve got to check my emails.

I don’t watch much television, and certainly ignore nearly any network news program. I don’t believe news directors have bad intentions, they need to deliver ratings, and in order to do that they have to polish up the poop to have the scoop. Still, my monkey brain feeds on the salacious and tawdry bananas that the mainstream broadcast media peels and throws at us. I can’t watch it now, I can’t hear myself thinking with so many people screaming at one another.

This ugly business of Travyon Martin, a tragedy from every angle it seems to me, and doubtful any of the shouting, tweeting and protesting, hand wringing and wailing will lead us to reconcile the events of that night, or give any of us a perfect glimpse into what happened in the shadows, what lead to the death of a good kid who had his whole life still in front of him, what happened to a family man who is now exiled to the gallows without his day in court?

The shouting, threats and cheap histrionics of the hysterical once again heave our national discourse further into the roiling seas of discontent.  It seems we’ve become a nation deaf to our own voice, the soto vocce of reasoned debate and dialogue is lost in the fortissimo of an indignant chorus.

I believed we all wanted a world that is safe, where we’re free to create, emboldened to build and launch our ideas into the clear blue and to live without fear of being shot or accused without due process. But the madness of crowds can keep us stupid and deaf, turning nuance into nonsense, and here we are, again…

Shouting.

Indignant.

Angry…and still deaf.