Three different people told me the same story last week:

I’m too busy keeping my head above water to make progress on my real goals.

On one hand, that’s a practical and realistic way of coping.  Look, we’ve all experienced that some days we can barely tread water fast enough… and some days we sink… and on those days it’s “impossible” to put time and energy into the future.  How can you invest when you can’t put bread on the table?

All three had practical, legitimate reasons for “treading water,” they were not making weak excuses.  There just has not been time.

So that’s the “practical reality.” What about the “emotional reality”?  What I noticed in all three conversations was a loss of energy and momentum.  There’s an emotional cost to postponing your future, and when you’re calculating the choices of your day and week, this needs to be factored in. I suspect that when you factor in the emotional cost (in the extreme, dying a little more each day), the equation might change?

You’ve likely seen this framework that Stephen Covey offers in First Things First:

Covey points out that we need to avoid QIII and QIV, and shift more time to QII if we want to build the future.  Good!  Let’s do it!!!  How? Well… that’s a problem.  It’s a fabulous model, though most of us already know that we need to stop fighting unimportant fires and getting sucked into distractions… but we still do that.  We’re choosing to put time in QI, QIII, and QIV, and shortchanging QII.  Why?

Because we’re not driven by “what we know.”  We’re driven by what we feel.

There’s some set of feelings boiling around this pattern of behavior pushing and pulling us.  There are feelings before the choice (to shortchange QII).  Then there are feelings the come immediately when we do what we’re doing instead… then there are still more feelings when we end the day saying, “*(@_!_)# another day with no time for QII.”

If I can indulge in a bit of prognostication, I suspect that if your pattern is “do QI &III but miss QII” you’re feeling a mix of stressed, overwhelmed, impatient, excited, and focused (even driven). If you’re getting sucked into QIV then your feelings are likely to be bored, uncertain, distracted, lonely, or lost.

Then, despite the knowledge that QII is the only way out, you still go to another quadrant, and, for the moment it feels good.  If you’re QI and QIII focused, you probably get great feedback, maybe overhearing, “He’s so reliable….”  “You can count on her….”  If you’re escaping into QIII, you get a bit of relief.  In any case, there’s a feeling payoff — an emotional benefit.  What is yours?

The first, and perhaps most important step, to getting out of the pattern is to recognize the emotional drivers.  What’s triggering your pattern, and what payoff are you getting from it?  Knowing that is not enough – you need to DO something with those feelings.  That’s another article… but I’d love to hear your ideas (post a comment!)

I also noticed that in these conversations, and many others – including many in my own head, there’s a refrain about being busy:  “I can’t do this unless I can devote a block of time…”  Many a project have lingered on my “to do” list because I told myself I didn’t have the six hours or three days or whatever to complete it.  Consider this:

If you had a month you could devote completely to your future, what would you do with that month?

How about if you had one week?

What could you do if you had one day?

How about if you had five minutes?

We all have time, but for most of us it’s fractured — five minutes here, and hour there.  While it’s extremely challenging, somehow we have to reclaim those dribs and drabs of time and turn them into a worthy contribution.  As usual, I would suggest the challenge lies not so much in the technical achievement of this end, but in the emotional transition we must undertake in order to bring the A game to these momentary matches.

Survive or Thrive

To conclude, here is powerful reminder from Karen McCown, Six Seconds’ Chairman:

If you focus on survival, then your survival is at question; if you focus on thriving, then your survival is assured – and more is possible.

Each week you have but a few discretionary hours to cash in:  Will you spend or invest?

♥

In SEI Cert class today, Yoshimi said she really liked what I said about Pursue Noble Goals, so I’ll try to recreate it:

Pursuing a Noble Goal isn’t about taking some “lofty” action in the future. It’s about understanding why we might do such a thing, then putting that “why” in action today in “everyday” interactions.

Our lives are made in small moments that add up.

Pursuing a Noble Goal is about ensuring those moments add up to significance — that they add up to what we mean to create.

Sometimes people hear the word “pursue” as something abstract and outside us – it’s really about putting it in action within us.

In the Six Seconds EQ Model, the “capstone” is a competency we call “Pursue Noble Goals.” Members of the Six Seconds’ team were discussing this last week, and reflecting that especially in “tough times” it’s easy to feel stuck and have a sense that the work you really want to do is occluded by the “stuff you have to do.”When we say “pursue” Noble Goals, that could sound like, “I have to give up the day to day and totally focus on the truly significant.” Nice, but unlikely.

Pursue Noble Goals really means putting purpose into everyday action. If your purpose is supporting equity, how can you build more equity between the people in the elevator today? If your purpose is sustaining a vibrant earth, how can you change what you buy for lunch to be more sustainable? If your purpose is nurturing compassion, how can you think and feel as you wash the dishes so you end that experience more compassionate?

In other words:  Consider the alignment between WHAT you are doing each moment, each day — HOW your are doing that, and WHY?  Is your intention coming through both in the action and in the way that action is undertaken?

In promoting Satyagraha, nonviolent compassionate activism, Gandhi explained that you can not make peace through anger. Anger and violence make more anger and violence. Real peace only can be made through peaceful means. Sometimes we think the “end justifies the means,” but in this vision, the means IS the end and the end is made of the means. So when we talk about Pursuing Noble Goals, that’s the standard: Live it. It’s not something to work toward in the future, it’s a future to bring into the present. Everywhere, all the time.

Great experience w my kids discovering a way to make a difference – and how that connection to purpose created emotional transformation.  Wrote it up on family travel blog…

http://redsuitcase.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/j-orangutan-heart/

Recent conversation w a client – major deja vu.  How often have I had this same discussion:  what they say they do isn’t what’s happening day to day.  A beautiful, compelling mission is worthless unless it lives in the the daily interactions of the organization.

It’s incredibly difficult to craft that powerful mission statement, that brief phrase that evokes the substantive and significant meaning of the organization.  After years of fiddling around and finally getting the words “just right,” it’s probably pretty annoying to hear that isn’t that important.  Don’t get me wrong, the “right” mission statement is incredibly important — it’s just unimportant in comparison with the real challenge:  putting the mission in action.

To make a mission live requires “drilling down,” carefully focusing to align intention and action. Think about the basic activities that take place in your organization each day:  What does it look, feel, and sound like to do those in accord with your mission?

For example, Six Seconds’ mission is: “Supporting people to make a positive difference, everywhere, all the time.”  So how should we answer the phone?  How should we respond to our colleagues when we disagree?  To live that mission, how should we be defining our organizational roles, setting budgets, or even choosing what paper to buy?  How about the culture we need to create — and the feelings that are essential to drive that?

Nan Summers, a friend and member of our network, once told me that when she was at Disney they had a phrase, “Everything Speaks,” meaning each little “tidbit” of the environment and the people there transmits some message… either the one intended or something else.  When you drill down, you recognize what & who is speaking, and adjust that to line up with the deeper shared purpose.  This requires giving up some level of autonomy — but not so much that you lose authenticity… big challenge!  Emotional intelligence is invaluable here because you need to see beyond the tactical.

“Everything speaks” emotionally even more than logically — millions of subtle messages come to prevade an organization and shape a culture and climate that’s infectious.  New people come in and adapt — and every interaction, every look, every nuance, ultimately transmits to the customer’s or client’s feelings of trust & loyalty.

Yet most organizations — businesses, government agencies, schools — that I encounter can barely articulate their purpose, and have little bandwidth to spare to consider how that purpose is being undermined or supported.  Just imagine how, if leaders made it an absolutely priority to ensure that the mission was alive at every level, these enterprises would rocket forward.  Have you ever been part of such a place?

We just finished the Level 1 Certification here in Dubai with another amazing group.  I’m struck – again – by the way this work connects people from all “walks of life,” cultures, religions, and races.  We have people in this group from 12 countries that I can name – Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Canada, US, South Africa, Oman, Germany, Portugal, Russia, India… plus a few more!

And here we are in Dubai, one of the new centers of the world, amidst construction cranes (32 out my window), and economic uncertainty, and new hope.  Together finding that we each have a compelling purpose waiting us – that when we strip away the differences and uncertainties we are all driven together to make a positive difference… starting here, now!  We live with layers of fog that keep us from seeing one another – and in these unique moments we focus our hearts’ attention and find that we are “just people,” and together we are more.

My sister works in a highly competitive, political environment. She calls it the “hall of mirrors” because of the constantly shifting alliances and schemes of her colleagues. Soon after her employment, “Jill” discovered that the charming banter of her co-workers hid stealth campaigns of character assassination and departmental warfare. Despite the risks, Jill dedicated herself toward transparency and integrity. She decided to trust her co-workers. She said it was easier on her than assuming the worst.

Jill’s tender and playful attitude helps others relax and brings out the best in them. Recently she gently obtained support from a famously uncooperative co-worker. “Ralph” even seemed delighted to assist. That’s Jill’s brilliance, she brings out goodness and then people feel good about themselves. I could see this in the supportive culture that has blossomed between Jill and her new friends. They are happily working together, despite the tumult all around.

I thought of Jill’s workplace while reading The Futurist’s lead story about an “ethical” area of the brain. Scientists are exploring if our brains are wired to develop an ethical awareness just as we are wired to develop language. If this is so, then even if moral beliefs (like languages) differ according to culture, we may share a deeper programming toward principled behavior. Are we structured to inwardly desire “goodness?” If we betray our own better selves, do we suffer inwardly? Jill’s warring coworkers do seem stressed and unhappy. Is being “good” part of our intended design?

This week I am fortunate to be in California with 6 Seconds. Friday and Saturday was the Choose to Change conference in San Jose which saw emotional intelligence practitioners gather to share their work, experiences and research. I am a huge fan of technology, but nothing can ever replace the sense of connection when we are sharing the same physical space. The highlight for me of those two days was this sense of support and shared purpose. I found all the talks terribly interesting but listening to Anabel Jensen speak was a real pleasure that will inspire me for a long time to come…..

There is currently a Master Class taking place in Monterey Bay. About twenty 6 Seconds professionals are spending five days learning and teaching around improving our own work and skills, sharing good practice and discussing ways to inject energy and knowhow into the global network of emotional intelligence enthusiasts.

Our collective understanding of human functioning continues to grow and our expertise at transformative teaching with it. One of our challenges is finding ways to make some of the invisible processes and personal changes more visible. This needs to happen to encourage organisations and schools to commit the necessary time, patience and funds into using emotional intelligence to help them develop the types communities, both local and global, that we know we all want, but recognise we can only create collectively. Many discussions this week with 6 Seconds members have been looking really intelligently and imaginatively at the issues around the need for visualisation of our work.

Did you see the little blurb in the Sunday NY Times business section? MBA students from the top 15 schools were asked to select the 3 topo factors they wanted in a job. #1 was ‘challenging job responsibilities”. The second was money – not the first as many think. Work-life balance followed and then came ‘potential to make a contribution to society’. These are MBA students, not teachers or social workers, and although money is important to them they want to contribute.

“Some days all I want to be is a missing person.” – shouted the bumper sticker on the car in front to me. Have I ever felt like the slogan on the bumper sticker; you bet I have. Some days the feelings of being overwhelmed from the stuff life throws at you just makes me want to become a missing person.

Soon after I had that delicious interlude with escaping, the words of the poet David Whyte grabbed my attention, “If you stop thinking about the world, the world stops thinking about you.” I then wanted to blow my horn and get the drivers attention and yell, “The world needs you – don’t run away!”

Soon the light changed and both of us continued on our day’s journey. My mind kept reflecting on the bumper sticker and David’s words. I couldn’t help appreciate the importance of understanding emotions and how powerful they are in determining how we approach life. Feelings of being overwhelmed and scared can kick off a cycle of reactions that could result in running away – literally and figuratively. Or we could use a simple but profound process of validating how we are feeling, exploring the why(s) that helped generate the feeling and begin to assess the consequences of our reaction. Many times, this in itself can soothe that desire to run and help us formulate a response that doesn’t risk the world forgetting about me. The world needs the best of all of us.

Daniel Goleman spoke at TED earlier this year and his talk entitled “Why are we all good Samaritans” is now on their site and you can watch it here.

This is an incredible story – a great question to ask yourself!

It’s been wintery (such as it ever is here on the California Coast) for months, and suddenly today it’s summer. So after much impassioned pleading, I inflated the blow-up pool. Much fun for the under-four-foot-high crowd, but part of the pleasure seems to be fighting with your brother or sister. So I just did the classic Dad shout about “if you don’t have anything nice to say.” Mine is, “If you can’t use your words nicely you’re both out of there!” Sigh.

So yesterday was fun and weird. Lots of people I sort-of-recognized, kind of an altered universe of past-into-now. All my high school friends are old! How did that happen? It was cool to meet them again and discover a bunch of pretty nice people. Some married, some divorced, some wishing they were one or the other. Lots with kids, some without, some wishing they were one or the other…

I started at Head Royce in 4th grade, so several people there I’d known since I was 9 years old. Wow. It’s funny what I remember of them, and what they remember of me. Lots of people asked about our old house above the Cal football stadium — we used to hang out on the roof watching games. One guy, Mike, has been telling his kids about it when they go to games now. He said his kids think I was the luckiest kid in the world ‘cause I got to watch all the practices and games. But I’d kind of forgotten about it. It’s like there these jewels getting dusty in a drawer.

There were some surprises. There was a kid called Jon, my last real memory of him was a fight we had in 5th grade when he bit me through my Tough-Skin jeans. Now he’s this gracious, handsome tall guy, who was great! I remembered “Karpo” as a sort of strange kid who threw his backpack through the window in Ms. Harris’ 7th grade history class. Some friends reminded me that was the day I punched Karpo in the stomach and he lay on the floor the rest of the class — Ms. Harris just ignored him there. Now he’s an incredibly tall attorney. I hope he’s forgiven me.

Geez, it sounds like I was fighting all the time. I don’t really remember that part of myself. Makes me wonder if my whole perception of myself is really different than my behavior. Maybe that’s part of what’s scary about the whole reunion thing — you might end up learning something about yourself you wanted to forget.

JB and David and I were pretty much best friends from 7th grade. They were both there and I was truly glad to connect, even if it was just for two hours.

All through 8th grade we called David “Generalisimo” and he wore a Castro-esque cap and we pretended to be intellectual. I figured we’d be friends forever, but I haven’t talked to JB for 18 years and David for 20. How did that happen? I think it’s one of the biggest regrets of my life — not just JB and David, but so many people who were so important to me for a time, then I moved onto a new place and new passions and lost touch. I know the phone rings on both ends and everything, but I’m wondering what it is about me.

I guess a big part is that Patty and I fell madly in love so young. We met when I was 20, we started dating 2 years later, and were married just after I turned 25. We did so much together — between theater and traveling and learning to be teachers. Teaching is a pretty obsessive job no matter what, but we were (are) really work-a-holics. It’s like between each other and work there wasn’t much room in our lives. Somehow we’ve made room for the kids, and kids’ friends, and the neighborhood… so maybe there really was room but I just didn’t pay attention.

One piece of good news — people really do change. For example, we all knew JB was going to end up in law school, which he did. Then after he started practice, he got interested in teaching. Now he’s a high school history and government teacher in the inner city. Meanwhile his kid brother who didn’t quite make it through school ended up practicing law. I guess people really do change.

The strangest part was at the beginning of the party feeling like I was back in high school — on the outside looking in. There were lots of people who seemed to be having a great time, and I was sort of standing there wondering how to step into the circle. Instead I floated around the outside, and made myself approach these quasi-strangers. The difference is now I know that my sense of worth and identity come from within, and I don’t really need other people’s attention to feel ok. But still, all these years later, I long for it.

EQ Reflection: State of the World
Jan 30, 1999

I am writing you from Monterrey, Mexico where I am attending the State of the World Forum for Emerging Leaders; I want to share some of the energy and joy of this event.

There are about 700 young leaders here, university students and recent graduates who are in leadership positions in 40 countries.

This morning, Desmond Tutu reminded us that “children do not know how to hate when they are born.” His message encapsulated a felling I have had in the 3 days here — that these people, charged with idealism and optimism — these “young people” are not the future leaders. They are _the_ leaders. We just need to get better at listening.

I wish I could capture the emotion of this place in an email message. Today, Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias charged us to go home ready to speak up, ready to take action. And nearly 1000 people surged to their feet, 1000 people with the drive and determination to accept the conflict of change. To accept their responsibilities as humans.

Two nights ago there was a performance of dance from around Mexico — and while the performance was delightful, it was the excitement of the audience that brought tears to my eyes.

Many speakers here, Noble Laureates, world leaders, activities, have addressed the power of a person connected with her purpose. On the TV monitor right now I hear a 25 year old leader speaking of her joy through her tears, of what it feels like to be a part of something larger than herself.

Their commitments fuel my commitment, and it is an incredible feeling of facing nearly overwhelming challenges — but facing them with joy and with the sure knowledge that together we are better.

Have a great week!
- Josh