Tag Archives: behavior

How to Become the Best

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During my work work day, I have the privilege of observing several workers who are here in the United States on temporary assignment. I do not work directly with them, although I do see them frequently throughout the day. I think it is a privilege to watch these Japanese workers accomplishing various tasks, because of the their approach to everything they do while at work.

In brief, they are respectful and meticulous in each and every aspect whatever they happen to be doing at the moment. Japanese workers are respectful of everything pertaining to their work environment.

The Japanese workers pick up after themselves. They take the extra step of cleaning up after someone before them if they occupy the same work area. They are publicly polite to the point of being over polite. They are obviously grateful when the same level of politeness is returned to them. I am guessing return politeness does not happen often.

If the number of Japanese workers I come in contact with in my daily activities, over thirty are all outwardly respectful and polite, it is obvious to me this is a learned behavior. Whether they are taught this type of behavior as children, or see it and have it reinforced in the work environment, it is a learned behavior.

I read a short blip on the famous investor Mr. Warren Buffett. The paragraph mentioned that Mr. Buffett bought his first share of stock at age eleven, and his first company at age fifteen. Whether those dates and my memory are correct or not is not as important as the fact it happened early in the life of Mr. Buffett.

Mr. Michael Jordan, President Obama, Mr. Buffett, and one of my personal hero’s, Mr. Mohammed Ali, also bring special skills to the table at which they reign. None of them however achieved what they achieved in their life through blind luck.

There is a (presumably) Eastern saying, that when the Student is ready, the Teacher arrives. I like this saying. It reflects the same type of thinking as King Solomon when he penned the thought that there is nothing new on the earth, and everything has been done before.

King Solomon had a lot of good insight on how the world works. Certain behaviors are intrinsic to each of us. We have areas where we excel, areas in which we aspire to, and areas where we are not so good at. For every Super Human, average people like myself, and you too, there are teachers to help us find our way if we wish to improve.

The idea of sitting under a shady tree relaxing and having a Teacher show up telling us they are here to teach us how to excel in eaching our goals is a wild fantasy at best. Not that there are not any Teachers out there to show us what we want to know, only that we have to take the initiative ourselves to be taught.

How do we get in touch with these great teachers, and how do we get them to teach us? Bribery sometimes works, but for most of us, the cost of hiring a true expert to guide us is out of our financial reach, not to mention our current needs. Fortunately there are other resources, and most of them are free.

The simplest is simply to watch someone who does a task well which we want to learn. If you want to be a great table waiter, watch Waiters where you are currently working. Watch how they talk to and treat their customers. Watch how they subtly take charge and direct the experience of dining.

If you wish to become a financial wizard, odds are a good number of people you know good financial advice to share with you. Even if you do not ask them, how they manage their own finances is a form of teaching you can learn from. If they may not know how to manage finances well, they sure can show you how not to do it. This is as valuable as any free lesson can be.

If you aspire to be or do something great, look around you. There are people who do whatever you want to become or do better than you do. Watch them and act like they do. Eventually with enough practice, you will know why they are doing what they do, and why they do it that way. Once you have learned all you can from them, look for other teachers, and learn from them. Keep the process going, and before you know, people will be looking to you as an expert, and asking you for advice or help.

Mr. Jordan, Mr. Buffett, President Obama, and Mr. Ali, all have a tremendous amount of natural ability to have achieved what they have achieved. They also had years of watching, studying, and learning how to take what they have and make it better. They also had more than a few great teachers who showed them a better way to accomplish their goals. Neither Mr. Jordan, Mr. Buffett, President Obama, or Mr. Ali would have accomplished what they did unless they received help in achieving their life goals.

It is the perfect time to start creating your life dream. If thousands, if not millions before you achieved their dreams, you can too. All you need to do is watch and learn, and you are on your way to greatness!

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Know Your Formal and Informal Expectations

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No matter where you live, what you do, or how young or old you are, sooner or later you know there are expectations that apply to you. Those expectations are not always stated or obvious but are there all the same. Getting along in your family group, work group, or with friends means certain expectations are met.

There is a general division of labor, that is sex, educational, and job based. Terms are used to define the types of labor are used as a rough indicator of work expectations. The terms are “Blue Collar”, and “White Collar”, define what you do for a job, and how you do it.

If you do physical work for a living you are considered a ‘Blue Collar’ worker because you wear work clothes and do physical labor. You know your job as a portion of a larger project. You require some direction and some level of supervision to be successful in your job.

If you have a college education or smart and lucky, you work in an office and you managed your own work or projects. Someone is your boss, but has little day to day interaction with you about your work. You are considered a ‘White Collar’ worker if you meet these criteria. You know what your job is, how to it, and you alone are responsible completing your work.

Growing up from young child to adult, people around you change their expectations of you as you grow. It is almost like a change from blue collar to white collar worker as you mature. As a child you are usually doing something because a parental figure told you too, and doing that something because it needs to be done. As you grow, you do more on your own because you know they need to be done.

Expectations in the work place, social circles, and families are both formal and informal. There are tasks you must complete, and certain behaviors are expected from you. In your social life, your family expects good manners, and your respect for each of them. Your friends expect you think like they do, and to be there for them if they need your help.

Informal expectations are harder to define because they are not talked about nor obvious. In a business setting, a company has policies in place that determine how employees are expected to conduct themselves, and solves differences. These are written down somewhere and everyone working for the company is expected to know them and follow them.

Informal business expectations may on occasion appear to conflict with formal expectations. For example, there may be a formal company expectation of how problems are solved. This may involve a formal process of creating a system of problem definition, all possible solutions, mapped out better solutions, leading to a best solution. Informally, the correct solution may one that is decided over a beer after work, or a weekend basketball game.

Knowing what informal expectations in your work or social group are and following them is important. Informal expectations may mean publicly supporting decisions out of your control while privately disagreeing with them. You company expects you to meet certain standards of dress, behavior and language. These are formal expectations and are written down and talked about.

Completing certain family chores necessary for family unity and happiness without being told once you reach a certain age become informal expectations. Breaking one or more of these expectations and conflict is sure to follow. If you are young adult newly living on your own, new to the workplace, or joining a new group, learning both formal and informal expectations makes your day go better.

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Argue less and find more happiness

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There was a time if I was in an argument, it was not over until one of us admitted defeat. The argument would go on until there was a clear winner. It would even go on longer if it was a heated debate. After all what was the fun of stopping at just winning if I could really rub the other persons nose in their defeat?

It sure felt good when on the winning end to really punish the other person. Taking it one step further. Adding a few extra hurtful comments because I knew I could was extra frosting on the cake.

Over time, I learned, or maybe unlearned, that I was not doing myself any good going above and beyond when I won an argument. It made me feel good for a few minutes of course. Or maybe I should say it made my ego feel good.

What I found was the price I extracted in collecting my proverbial pound of flesh from the other person would eventually turn out to be very expensive for me. I found out my behavior I was really hurting myself in the long run.

Over time, I find it better not to let arguments become that heated if at all possible. The more battles I took on, even more battles would make their presence known. In the end there are only a few battles worth fighting.

What I learned to do was stop arguing when I won. When losing, I found it is less painful to concede immediately. Stopping at the first opportunity is something practiced in martial arts where the idea is to stop the violence as quickly as possible with the least amount of harm to the opponent.

Fighting battles can be fun. Winning them is fun. Punishing the loser is even more fun. It is a blast in fact, until I needed something that only the person I hurt could do for me. Then suddenly it became obvious that the price they paid was much smaller than the price I would end up paying.

At first it was hard to stop. Hard to make myself stop when I had a lifetime of taking arguments too far, too often. With practice it became easier, and when done long enough, stopping before an argument became heated and something painful was said, became second nature.

So what is the benefit in not taking an argument too far? The most obvious is the other person does not feel like they have an enemy. They know what they were saying was actually heard and understood. In the future they may be may be more likely to help you, or at least not do anything to hamper you because they are not your enemy.

Being perceived as more mature comes in third for me. Not letting a disagreement become personal, and therefore heated, allows me to stay focused on keeping the disagreement respectful.

I find I have more energy. I have more energy because I am not wasting energy and effort on something that is not that important.

Life becomes easier and simpler. Not wasting time and energy on something that when compared to the bigger things in life are not really that important, allows more time and effort for what really matters. Not spending my energy trying to win an argument at any cost, gives me more time to notice those little things that make a big difference in the quality of my life.

When enough time is put into not arguing for the sake of arguing, I now understand other peoples arguments may be valid when they disagree with me.

Because I learned other people are not always wrong, I started seeing the person. When I start seeing the person, I know they are trying to enjoy their life just like I am. They may be going about it differently, but they are not wrong.

Reaching this point, a happier more filling life starts to happen, and life becomes happier and more enjoyable because almost everyone is moving in the same direction I am.

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We are waiting for you

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We should not define ourselves through the approval or disapproval of others, but rather by accepting ourselves and appreciating who we are. When we are young children, maybe even babies we do things that elicit a reaction. If moving the muscles in our face receives a response, we try it again. If it works a second time it becomes a part of who we are.

Being accepted and approved of by those around us is very important to our well being. It is what makes society function from a tribal setting to a country of billions. If we are not accepted by those around us for who we are, it is hard to be happy.

Often we take the need to be accepted farther than we should. We do certain things or perform certain acts, not because we want to, but because it is something we think we need to do to receive acceptance from those around us.

Often those rituals we are performing are restrictions we place upon ourselves. Dressing a certain way is a good example. When we are children it never enters our minds how we are dressed. It is only when others in our social circle start to notice what we are wearing that our clothing becomes important to us.

This forming and changing to conform rules our life throughout our high school and early adult years. We conform and change so often we are not even aware we are doing it, and have been doing it. As we change, we change our speech, our taste in television, books, and other entertainment, and opinions of people and the world.

We wake each day and put a happy face on for the world to see, showing everyone we come into contact with how much like them we are. We observe certain few people who seem to be naturals in our chosen circle and emulate them. We also start feeling less than because we are not that talented and natural at being who we want the world to see we are the same as that person or persons.

What would happen if instead of trying to be like everyone else with a few minor differences, we worked on becoming ourselves? Really being who we are, and not settling for being a little bit of who we really are?

Each day we wake, each of us makes almost invisible changes from who everyone thinks we are to who we really are. Most of the time we are not even aware of the process. It may be something as odd as waking up, and wondering why we said what we said to someone the day before. Or maybe why we watched a different television program the night before instead of the program we always watch.

Our inner self knows who and what we really are, and manipulates subtle changes in our lives to help us become us, and not a poor clone of who we think we want to be. Women are the most obvious and successful example during middle age. We men go through a major process too, but we are not as successful as women are in identifying and becoming the real us.

Those people we tried to emulate all those years, were themselves, and they were comfortable with who they were. The real us is perfect too once we remove all the additions and subtractions we made to ourself to fit in. The real us is the person who has stripped away all expectations belonging to others about us, and they become the person they were born to be.

Once we are us, and not an act, we start to have a clear understanding of why we are in this world, and what our true purpose is. At this point we enter in a race against time to accomplish whatever it is we were meant to do.

How much healthier it would be if we did not wait until some future time to become us, stripped away the facade starting right now, and became the real us. How much more we could accomplish as we perfect ourselves along the way instead of going through separate processes. Who am I, and what is my purpose would not be as painful of a process. We need you, start now on the path to finding you.

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The Tilt Monster wants you!

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I was playing Holdem last week and played two non standard hands that both won the pot. In Holdem terminology, I played two pieces of trash and made the nut on the river with each one. In this particular instance in poker terminology it could be said, again in that I was tilting. Nothing new there, we tilt all the time, most of the time without even realizing it.

Tilt applies equally well to everyday life. Driving fast in the morning to make it to work on time, studying for a test late the night before, these are cases of tilt in action. Perhaps you lost your patience with someone for no obvious reason, or the sight of someone you dislike makes you suddenly angry. These are all instances of every day tilt in action away from the poker table.

One of the most interesting things about tilt is it sneaks up on us, and unless we are really aware of how we are behaving and why, we tend to go on and off tilt almost every day. Think about today, and try to remember if there was any time period when you found yourself having feelings or doing something before you realized it? Maybe something as simple as making a biting ‘deserved’ comment before you realized it ‘slipped’ out of your mouth?

These are some simple examples of how we tilt everyday. Tilt for poker players is deadly to their money, and something all good poker players try to avoid. Here is an example of why a poker player going on tilt is so serious. Pretend for example you are a just starting out professional poker player. You payed attention to all the advice and you saved up six months living expenses and enough money for your poker playing bankroll to ensure you will not go broke. You have now left your job behind and you are starting on your new lifestyle.

You wake up in the morning and feel a little tired, perhaps you had a drink to many last night celebrating, and had a little less sleep than you should have to be completely rested. You get ready to eat, but there is nothing in the fridge so you go to a coffee shop for breakfast. Your eggs are not cooked the way you like them to. You send them back and they are closer, but not right, but you eat them anyway. The coffee tastes a little bitter too.

A few more little annoyances happen in your morning and it is off to the poker room. The person who puts your name on the board for a table seat leaves for break, and as some time goes by you realize that people who have arrived after you are being sent to a tables with open seats. The poker room manager apologizes for the error and finally you get to sit down and start playing.

There are a couple of really poor players who are really getting lucky in spite of themselves. They have ran you down (beaten) a couple very good hands you have held. You start to take it personally, and decide you are going to show them who is the best player. Suddenly you realize that the chips you traded your hard earned money for to play in this game today are almost gone! How did that happen you wonder? As you start to think about it dawns on you that you are not in a very good spot. You are tired, angry, and not making good decisions. In poker language, you are on tilt, and just now realized it.

Remember those trash hands I spoke of? I played those on purpose to tilt some players at the table. One player, a pro left the table and took a long break when my second hand tilted him. A second less experience player, became angry and decided to punish me by aggressively playing against me. He lost a lot of money before he went home broke. We all tilt every day. Watch yourself for signs of tilt, so you do not end your day wishing you could do a few things over.

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Is food worth dying for?

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I doubt everyone has done some soul searching over this, but I know I did. I had to decide for myself what was the right thing for myself and my family. People who study our behaviors have come to a few interesting conclusions. Only two have any relevance to this post. The first is that most of us spend too much time dwelling on our faults and not enough time celebrating our successes. The second behavior we share as humans is we are great at blocking out negative factors in our lives we choose not to think about. For us, it seems if we do not think about them, they do not exist.

The reality is they do not exist until they come to pass, then if we are still around to reflect, we chastise ourselves for not seeing this extreme risk, and taking steps to prevent it. A great example is smoking. Growing up in my generation more adults were smoking than not, or so it seemed. There was a major not smoking campaign throughout my school years, and of course like well brainwashed children I was convinced about the evils of smoking and would harangue my parents about their smoking.

After I was out of school a few years, I found myself buying cigarettes for my own pleasure. Over those few years from leaving school to that point, I managed to dull down the dangers of smoking, and turn it into something real men did, so I should be smoking too. There is nothing like a group of men all standing around smoking and joking to make a young man think about how fun it would be tpart of that small social club.

After some years passed, and I went to some funerals of friends and family members who all seemed to have died too early, smoking started to lose its appeal. The biggest factor in changing my mind about smoking was my children. I did not want them being exposed to smoking so they would be less likely to become smokers themselves. It didn’t happen overnight, but one night I smoked my (almost) last cigarette and started down a new life path.

Time marches on I arrived at forty, and a new set of challenges were waiting for me. Mostly about what and how I ate. All men see and hear of other men who were fine one second and dead the next. Men that fell over from massive heart attacks. At first it just seemed like it was the destiny of men to fall over dead form heart attacks. After all heart attacks caused the demise of several male members of my family. That’s just the way life was.  Of course other men came out of the woodwork, and we now know that is not the way life is at all.

We have access to more and better information regarding our health and welfare than we ever had before. In just a few hours of serious net searching, we can become familiar with just about any health subject. One area we still lack in is denial though. There is no medical breakthrough to stop us from living in a state of denial. If there was, I doubt as free adults we would subject ourselves to that particular cure either.

The biggest health concern I see for us is the foods we choose to eat. We are surviving on some really poor food choices. Most of us pretend poor food choices are okay. If eating fast or fried food had the ‘side effects’ of smoking, many people would not be eating those foods. Because the major health problems poor food choices have on our bodies are not visible we go on pretending that eating how most of eat is okay. It is okay, until you find yourself falling over from your heart having exploded in your chest, then it is too late. Company advertising is not going to tell how deadly these foods are either….

I am urging everyone who finds that a major part of their diet is fast food, or fried food to really think about how good that food is, both in health and in taste. Are those food choices really so good that they are worth the risk hidden in those foods? If anyone has children, is eating fast food and feeding it to your children worth dying for and leaving your children to grow up without you around, and facing the same health problems? We can ignore a lot of bad things in our lives and usually it is okay, but poor eating choices have no warning signs until it is too late. Make aware food choices, and be there for your kids. Don’t allow them to grow up eating the poor food choices you are making.

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