HDClarity

Ever since the tiny country of Bhutan decided its metric would be happiness instead of product, I’ve wondered how happiness is measured. What makes us “happy,” and how can we get more happiness?

In “The Causes of Happiness and Misery,” Chapter 3 of the groundbreaking World Happiness Report published in 2012, Richard Layard of the London School of Economics and Andrew Clark and Claudia Senik from the Paris School of Economics write:

Together, genes and environment determine the main features of a person’s life—both those that are very “personal” and those that are more clearly “external.” And these features in turn determine a person’s well-being, as illustrated in Figure 3.1.

Among the more “external” factors, key determinants of happiness include:

• income

• work

• community and governance, and

• values and religion

and, among the more “personal” features, key determinants include:

• mental health

• physical health

• family experience

• education, and

• gender and age

Thus a person’s happiness at a point in time is determined by the whole of her life course. The current external features of her life are important, but so are the personal features that have developed over the previous course of her life.

The authors explain how external contributors such as “income” or “work” are mostly effective when taken in context, i.e., when judged against the same metrics for those around us as opposed to global external contributors. Relative income makes people happier as opposed to absolute income, so while a rising tide may lift all boats, it doesn’t necessarily make the boaters any happier. For example, while the net income of U.S. citizens has tripled since the early 1960s, average happiness has remained virtually flat. Whether in the U.S. or Bhutan, keeping up with the Joneses makes us happy.

Redefining happiness

Garrison Keillor would say that in Lake Woebegoneall the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. I wonder if any of them were happy.

It seems that the World Happiness Index is mostly about how we fare individually among our peers. We are nothing without something with which to compare.

Is that what real happiness is? Or is that just feeling good?

I’ve noticed that when I feel good about something it’s almost always because I’ve been taught to feel good about it. It’s a Knower/Judger reaction. When I’m driving my brand-new car down the highway and I see somebody who knows me, I feel good. But that’s an ego thing. I wouldn’t consider myself really happy. It just makes me feel…triumphant. And those feel-good moments seem to be just…moments. Yup…International Happiness Index of 10!

But when I’m truly happy with something, it’s just good for me, out of context…now. It really has no dimension. Nobody around me even gets it most of the time. I catch myself tearing up over certain pieces of music out of pure joy. Or driving alone from one business appointment to another and “noticing” a sunset. I think they call that “stopping to smell the roses.” And while that all occurs in the moment, like “feeling good,” I can, if I wish, make the feeling appear again (without plunking down another $20K on a new car, for example).

So here’s a little assignment for you:

Make a list of the things that make you feel good or happy or that generally improve your life. Then go through and tag the ones that rely on a superior comparison to those around us as “feel good.” Tag those that don’t require someone else’s inferior position as “happy.”

I guarantee you will learn something about yourself.

Ever have an opportunity to correct a habit that’s getting in the way of your happiness but for some reason just don’t do it—again? Let me tell you about the habit I’ve been battling for the last three or four decades.

Many of you know that I’m an excitable person. I’m enthusiastic and energetic, and I really, really, really like to be…right! You don’t spend 40-plus years in motorsports without developing a certain flair for being dominant. Second place sucks.

So I have a habit (or so I’m told) of conversing in a way that sometimes overpowers my fellow conversationalists. You can begin to tell me about your issue, and before you’ve even laid out the basics, my little brain is chugging through a series of solutions (while I don’t listen to the rest of your details), and I’m blurting out a solution long before you’ve even clarified the issue.

My wife will tell you this really pisses her off!

In the long run, I don’t want my wife upset with me, so for 30 years I’ve been “working” on this trait.

Of course, it’s not my fault. According to my DISC profile, I’m a high “D” or dominant, task oriented, and an extrovert. So I want to be known as clever and brilliant, and I want to be known as that now!

Know what? My wife doesn’t care about my excuse. Nor do the prospective customers who’ve passed on my proposals or the clients who’ve called me on this habit (some, thank goodness, who love me enough to keep me around).

I would definitely be happier if I toned this trait down. But where do I start?

Changing a habit can only happen now

In his landmark book How to Run Your Own Life, my mentor Jut Meininger’s Knower/Judger Earth Person (you really have to read this book) asked the same thing.

Meininger’s Learner/Researcher Martian, the voice with no judgment or preconceived solutions, suggests to Earth Person that the real question isn’t where to begin, it’s when to begin.

We arrive at choice points many times a day—sometimes many times an hour—where we can do what we’ve always done (yielding the same results) or do something different. When will we do something different? Now? Or not now?

For most of us the answer is and continues to be “not now.” When we answer this way multiple times in succession, this translates to “never.” And we’re stuck.

Perhaps you recognize that there are times when you operate in a very aware, very present mode and you catch yourself before shoving your foot in your mouth. Congratulations. A “now” moment.

But layer a dose of stress on the situation and the likelihood of doing what we’ve always done skyrockets, right?

Argument with the kids? Selling situation? Debate over Cards/Cubs, Red Sox/Yankees? You know what I mean. Awareness and presence just don’t seem to exist when we’re in the heat of battle.

So what can we do about habits that undermine our happiness?

First, recognize the times you successfully held back and did not execute on autopilot. Congratulate yourself (at least as much as you beat yourself up when you ate those French fries). Celebrate it. Revel in the feeling of accomplishment. You saved a situation from winding up like it always does because you wanted to and you were aware and present.

But recognize, too, when you are under duress. Novel situations. Arguments. New people. Warning! Warning! Warning! If you are aware of your stress, then you can be aware of your unawareness.

I can’t repeat it too often:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

—Viktor Frankl 

Every “now or not now” choice point, which most likely becomes a “now or never” choice point, is one of Viktor Frankl’s spaces. Our growth and freedom lie in choosing now.

If not now, when?

“Want fries with that?” squawked the drive-through speaker.

“Sure,” the driver mumbled, and drove forward to pay at the first window.

He’d made a choice. Or had he?

We like to think we make choices all the time. We choose who we marry or live with.   We choose what we eat, where we go, who we hang out with, our clothing, our religious beliefs, the products we buy, even the words we say as we wander through our day.

So the guy in the fast-food drive-through chose the fries…right?

I truly doubt it. Statistically, how often do you think he’s answered the question of whether he wants fries with that with a no? He didn’t make a choice. He did what he always does.

And so do we.

Our choices are made in the past

Most of our choices were actually made a long time ago. We decided that as the second-born in our household, we could never be as good as our older sibling. That was taught to us in 100 different ways. Choosing to accept it and move on was necessary for childhood survival.

We chose how to define love and what love looked like. We decided how we could influence others and get our way. We decided how parents ruled or guided a household, and when we should make ourselves scarce because Daddy wasn’t sober.    

We may have decided that we could be anything if allowed to let our imaginations run wild. Or we may have decided we’d never be good at anything because we routinely struck out in Little League.

It’s possible our drive-through hero actually chose the fries with his meal. Perhaps he’d been on a diet for three months, lost 10 pounds and chosen to not take fries on the previous 15 trips to this drive-through window, and was rewarding himself. It’s possible. 

So if as Stephen Covey said, “We are where we are today because of the choices we made yesterday,” let’s look at some of those choices and ask how they’re working for us.

Common choices guiding our lives

It’s an easy thing (and the result of an earlier decision) to blame or credit something or someone else for our current condition. But we really make statements like the following because the occurrence resulted in a decision upon which we eventually wrote a rule for our lives.

·        I didn’t pick my parents.

·        My teachers called me stupid.

·        You’re late! You’re always late!

·        You got 96 out of 100? You can do better than that.

·        I was abused.

·        I was always loved.

·        Money is the root of all evil.

These are imprinted messages we carry around in our heads. If money was always in short supply in your household as you grew up, then there’s not enough in yours now as an adult. You made that decision and wrote that rule for your life and your well-being. “As long as I see money as ‘tight,’ I stand a lower risk of running out.”

Then there’s the finish-your-plate rule.

“Think of the starving (insert nationality here),” Mom said as she implored you to clean your plate. Now you’re 40 pounds overweight, and those words still run your life, especially at Sunday brunches.

Think of the thousands of messages you absorbed from your parents, church, school, etc. and look at your reactions to daily occurrences. Think you’re choosing? Really? Are you making a decision that’s different from the way you were molded?

Not unless you’ve made a new choice…and that would be to review some of the old ones that led you to create rules that aren’t serving you very well today, and choosing something new.

“Want fries with that?”    

“No, thank you.”

Clutter. I have it in my office. I have it in my shop. I have it in my home (although mostly in my areas, not my wife’s). I can live with all that. What I have a problem with is the clutter in my mind. Constant self-talk, thoughts, judgments, predictions.

What does clutter in the mind feel like? To me, it feels like a traffic jam on Times Square, with thoughts and expectations and fears all trying to get through the intersection at the same time. Clearing the mind brings calm and order, a sense of peace, and the ability for me to get where I want to go.

Sleep experts tell us that racing thoughts are common with anxiety disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But we all experience this buzzing clutter at times. The thoughts distract us, unfocus us, and generally contribute to an increasing level of stress.

How can we temper these thoughts, and thus decrease our anxiety?

There are a number of ways to get things out of your head. Here are a few I use:

Ho’oponopono

Ho’oponopono proponents refer to the affirmation as “cleaning,” as in cleaning out one’s mind. Whatever thought, prediction, or fear is troubling you, it can be tempered by cleaning. I’ve experienced this often and find the affirmation extremely productive.

As an example, I had a client who harbored trepidation about initial meetings with high-dominant business owners. Once he got started in a conversation he was fine, but getting off the ground was scary.

Ho’oponopono (I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.) cleared his fear as he aimed the “I’m sorry” at his Knower/Judger interpretation that the other person should and would be worthy of his fear. He would utter the affirmation upon entering the target exec’s office, stick out his hand, and introduce himself. After mastering this technique, his ability to greet and connect with perfect prospects has improved dramatically…as has his success.

Meditation

Meditation has been described as a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control. It results in improved mental well-being and helps you develop capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration. What better way to clear the mind than to foster calm, clarity, and concentration?

People from all walks of life—athletes, actors, academicians, musicians, politicians, business pundits—use forms of meditation to maximize the mind’s capacity to support them in achieving their goals and to avoid getting hung up on all the clutter that gets in the way. 

I’m not a practiced or regular meditator. But I have used meditation on several key occasions in my life as the method of last resort to get my head cleared of thematic clutter interfering with my personal clarity. 

Breathing

A subset of meditation, easy breathing exercises can help oxygenate and calm. They can be quicker and easier to integrate into your day as well. I use breathing frequently. I think it has a lot to do with my mother saying “Just breathe” whenever I was injured or shocked or stunned. I was prone to panic attacks as a young boy, and this technique worked wonders on me. Still does.

Journaling

Just jotting down some of the thoughts racing through your head can relieve your mind of its self-proclaimed duty to address all that “stuff” and is a good tool to use before bed. Writing it down tells the cluttered mind that we’ve already dealt with that issue. In journaling, I like to track what’s going on in the rest of the world (perhaps another person involved in the thought that’s bothering me), what’s going on with me (where am I coming from in this transaction), and how I feel about it. I find that last one both difficult and exposing. Identifying what we feel about things, in my experience, contributes more to calm and clarity than identifying what we need to do about things, so get those feelings down if you decide to journal.

Exercise

Exercise promotes oxygen circulation and endorphin flow, and forces concentration away from the clutter in the mind and onto the activity. I don’t use exercise specifically to clear my mind. I use it as part of my everyday operating system because it is so energizing. I drag myself into a workout before 6:00 a.m. and 90 minutes later bounce out ready to tackle anything, after a great workout, a few minutes in some steam, and a wonderful shower. I suspect if I removed exercise from my routine, my mind clutter would actually increase. 

There are many other ways to clear the clutter of our thoughts. What are yours? We all have them, but sometimes we forget to use them. Putting these techniques into action generates a huge payoff. Our mind runs our lives. What we conjure up in that clutter becomes our reality. Leaving it to random chance and outside influence takes away our God-given free will. Why let that happen?

We hear it in baseball broadcast booths all summer long: “He’s a .333 hitter. He’s gone oh for two. He’s due.” But is this accurate? Should you bet on this? Or are you just wishing for an outcome that has no basis in the data, and setting yourself up to lose? The gambler’s dilemma can teach us a lot about all our interactions.

When you flip a coin, it can land in one of two states: heads or tails. The statistical probability that it will land in either of those positions is 50%.

So if I flip a coin six times and it comes up heads all six times, what’s the probability that the next toss will end up tails? It’s simply gotta come up tails this time, right?

The coin has no memory. (At least it’s got that over the baseball player!) On any given toss, it’s going to land either heads or tails. The odds are 50/50 on every toss, even if it’s been one way for 10 straight tosses. So betting your future on tails coming up after six consecutive heads is very risky. The coin is not “due.” Your chance of getting tails is 50/50. Period.

Yet we make this kind of bet all the time. The .333 hitter? He’s got a one in three chance of getting a hit. That stat is the result of hundreds of at bats (depending on how much of the season has passed). It’s what he gets paid for. He fails to get a hit two-thirds of the time (that’s another whole article) and gets paid for that one in three stat.

So he’s gone oh for two. What are the odds he’ll get a hit in his next at bat? 100%? Now, there’s the gambler’s dilemma. Simply put, his average is still one in three.

It is what it is. We develop expectations from our Knower/Judger (our favorite batter is “due”) and then freak out when our wishes (and that’s really all they are) don’t come to pass.

I’m reminded of the fable of the frog and the scorpion. Scorpions have batting averages; nearly 100% of the time, they’ll sting anything nearby. It is in their nature. When you clearly see the data, how could you possibly fantasize another outcome?

The data is always there

How many of your struggles (assuming you have one or two) can be attributed to expectations not supported by data? Really frustrated when your favorite batter doesn’t get a hit on his third attempt? He’s a .333 hitter. Period. Can’t believe the coin came up heads again? 50/50. Period. Tired of having to deal with that direct report who just tells you what you want to hear and then doesn’t act after the conversation? It’s in his nature. Period.

The interpersonal statistic can be useful two ways. You might witness a friend, employee, or family member performing outside his statistical norm—having a bad day. If you review the data and see he’s basically “on” 90% of the time, then you can rest assured he’ll be back on track, like a .333 hitter. But not necessarily today!

On the flip side, when you really need 99% performance out of someone who might be a .333 hitter (in your world) and you dare to expect it, you’re probably in for some frustration.

Our K/Js frequently assign wishes to outcomes that ignore data, and then we bet our emotions on those wishes. But ballplayers go through slumps. Coins fall the same way six, seven, eight, and more times in a row. People act according to their nature no matter how much we want them to act otherwise. Who’s responsible for your frustration? Look at the data that’s in front of you and you can end the frustration of losing on bad bets.

Why do we ever change anything? Because we want to. There really is no other reason. The question is, how do we develop the desire to change anything? This story of a frustrated baby (who would grow up to use the story in his newsletter…) and his response to recurring pain in the patella, or kneecap, explains it all.

The year was 1947. A small boy had mastered high-speed crawling. (Rallyists show promise at an early age.) My home had well-worn and well-loved hardwood floors, and I would fly around the dining room, the hallway, my parents’ bedroom, and another room we called the den with tremendous grace and style. But I would not go into the living room. Why? There was an obnoxious oak door saddle in the archway that would pound my knees as I thumped over it. I was not equipped with the suspension needed to traverse this rough patch without doing damage.

So I avoided that room. There was nothing of interest in there anyway. Chairs. Lamps. No TV. There was an old wooden radio, but if no one was in there, it wasn’t on.

But when Pop came home and Mom was cooking dinner, Pop would plop down in his easy chair in that living room (I still have the chair), and now there was something of interest…Pop!

I would put the old butt in gear and head for that painful obstacle, thump my knees, and start crying, which worked—at first—’cuz Pop would come pick me up. You younger parents recognize this ploy.

Eventually Pop got tired of comforting me and schlepping me over to his easy chair and left me to my own devices. Thump, thump, cry, cry, cry, crawl over to the easy chair. Repeat on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Then one day out of sheer frustration at the pain in my black-and-blue knees, I rocket-crawled over to the archway, stood up, took two halting steps over the door saddle and fell back down for the final crawl to the chair. Those were my first steps ever, and they were totally unassisted. In fact, Pop barely caught the action, looking over his newspaper. Mom missed it entirely.

But here’s my point. Not until I was incredibly frustrated at the pain I had to endure to get to my father did I make a change, take a risk, rearrange my world for the better.

Using frustration to your advantage

This dynamic is at the core of every change you or I will ever make. It’s the positive that comes out of frustration. We’re frustrated because we’re not getting/achieving/accomplishing what our Knower/Judger says we’re supposed to. We don’t want to feel that frustration any longer. We change something.

We can also use frustration to change the source of the frustration—expectation. Without an expectation, there’s no reason for frustration. So every time you find yourself feeling extremely frustrated, you have two choices, and both are valid:

A. You can manage (lower) your expectations so that the comparison of what’s expected to what’s going on isn’t so different, and the result is not judged so negatively.

B. You can change something.

There are certainly situations where simply lowering your expectations in lieu of making drastic changes makes sense. Look at your expectations for your kids, for example. We all have fantastic expectations for our kids (Harvard, NBA, NASA scientist, etc.). But they have something to say about their lives, much more than we do, and there’s not a lot we can do about it. Drop the expectation, and frustration disappears.

But in situations where expectations are more or less dictated by job descriptions, health issues, etc., changing is the only way to lower frustration. And you’ll only make changes when you want to.

Here’s my next point. Either of these solutions to high frustration levels is totally internal. Made by you.

By this stage of your life, you’ve most likely tried to order the other person to perform at a level that doesn’t frustrate you. It’s a Dr. Phil moment. “How’s that workin’ for ya?” My guess is, about as well as my demanding that Pop move his easy chair to the dining room would have worked.

So what’s left? Let it go. Lower your expectation. Change your routine to adapt to the reality of what’s going on. Like my infant self, you might find yourself rising to an entirely new level of skill and experience.

For the past two months, I’ve been accosted with a certain phrase: trust but verify. Reagan used it to get into Gorbachev’s head during negotiations in the 1980s, and now I’ve heard it first from a client and second from my rally car driver. So I dissected the concept, and here’s what I’ve concluded.

If I trust, what value is there to verification? If I don’t trust, then why kid myself? If I feel (from my Knower/Judger) that I need to verify, where is the trust?

Trust, I think we all agree, is a valuable contributor to a productive relationship, whether that’s between spouses, business partners, or rally-racing teams. When you and I trust each other, we can count on each other to be accurate, timely, supportive, etc.

But trust implies an expectation. I trust that you will do what you say you will do. Most of us take our fellow human’s word as reliable, right? But some folks continually tell us what we want to hear, and then perform below our expectations. “Sure, I’ll bake cookies for the sale.” Yeah, right.

Remembering my mentor’s warning that expectation is the source of all frustration, we see a spiral of dysfunction being generated.

A. You trust me.

B. I don’t follow through.

C. We discuss this, and your K/J tells me I was wrong.

D. Now you feel the need to verify.

E. Maybe I now follow through.

F. So you trust again.

But eventually, I’m going to fail you again. I’m human. Why can’t you handle my human frailty? Mostly because your K/J rule says your trust must be honored.

Verifying Slows Us Down

In some cases, a breach of trust is inconsequential. At the other end of the spectrum, it can be deadly. Military training builds unquestioned trust into its vertical management model. On the battlefield, one cannot spare the resources to verify that the ammunition said to be coming is indeed coming.

But your son telling you he’ll clean his room is another story. Most of us will not die if the socks aren’t picked up.

In the middle of this spectrum is my hobby of rally racing. A few weekends ago, while flying along an icy one-lane road in Northern Michigan, my driver (a very talented one) began to repeat back to me every other “note” I read him. “Right five over small crest.” “Right five?” It was as if he’d lost all trust in my calls…and we’d already been racing quite successfully for three hours. When we stopped for a moment, I asked him about his responses, and he quoted Reagan with a chuckle: “Trust but verify.”

That got me thinking. We can race that way. I’ll speak a “note” into the intercom and wait for his verifying question, and then acknowledge his verifying question. But at speeds approaching 90 miles per hour on glare ice, there’s not going to be enough time for that transaction, so we’ll probably need to slow down. And that’s not what we want.

Dilemma.

How fast can your operations work when you stop to verify? Will things work better if you just trust? And what will you do when the inevitable human failure arises?

Taking Another Road

If we’re truly gifted with free will, then you can choose to launch back into verification. Or you can forgive. The verification path is the K/J route and not really a choice but more of a knee-jerk reaction. Forgive? Now that would be the Learner/Researcher route.

Forgive? Are you kidding, Kim? I know. The high Dominants out there reading this will feel somehow threatened and that they’re enabling failure. But I know that when I blow a call at speed in a rally car and it causes my driver to quickly correct in a panic, or worse, go off the road at high speed, I have already learned, and it won’t happen again. Nothing he says to me is going to make me adjust any faster, but dropping it and continuing to race will maximize our performance.

If both parties know what the desired outcome is and are on the same page, my experience is that “trust and forgive” will get you up to speed faster than “trust and verify.” Obviously if the failures continue, you might want to change the rules, players, or communications channel.

The continuous pattern of verifying and being frustrated will take its toll. And this mechanism feeds on itself. The more you verify…the more opportunity to find fault…the more fault found…the more justified the verification process…and trust evaporates.

A successful team’s success runs on trust. Period. No time for verification. Sure, mistakes are made. Corrections are made. Then you do it again. Better.

It’s our human dilemma. Our parents, teachers, ministers, villages, experiences all teach us valuable lessons about what to do in certain situations. Over time these lessons define us. They become our “Roles” in life. Locked in stone. Unchangeable. But are they? Can we move out of the Role and into the Soul?

I write constantly about how we operate in one of two interactive states. We’re either operating from our Knower/Judger persona (interacting with our environment based on past experiences and feelings) or our Learner/Researcher persona (accepting new data without judgment and feeling comfortable about what we want). I’ve frequently named these states our Role and our Soul.

Our K/J or Role persona is what pops out on our DISC or Myers-Briggs (or any other) predictive behavior assessment. These assessments are frequently used to help organizations understand “where you’re coming from” in terms of predicting your behavior and reactions.

Your DISC profile, for example, will tell us what degree of Dominance, Influence, Compliance, and Sensitivity you’ll use with teammates. A high “D” will take charge. A high “I” will tend to tell you what you want to hear. A high “C” will almost always color between the lines (and want you to do the same), and a high “S” will be the peacemaker.

But these profiles only define our roles in society. The lessons we’ve learned from past experiences and feelings condition us to repeat certain behaviors over and over again until they actually define us. In classic psych jargon, it’s operant conditioning. We’ve been positively reinforced for certain behaviors and negatively reinforced for others.

Even the dictionary definition of role helps us understand our K/Js:

Role:

Noun

1. An actor’s part in a play, movie, etc.
2. The function assumed or part played by a person or thing in a particular situation.

Do you yearn to ditch some of the Role behaviors you’re known for?

Examples:

• Your direct reports fear you and so won’t contribute ideas and creativity in the workplace.
• You don’t play and romp with the family because it’s not one of your K/J “rules.”
• You can sell ice to Inuit, but you’re not sure if your customers (or friends, or lovers) are buying because they want to or because you’re just that damned good.
• You’re a peacemaker, and after doing it at home in the morning, all day at work, and all evening before bed, you’re just exhausted.

These are all shout-outs from your Soul. They come from that part of you that can actually see the data for what it is and wants change. But alas. That Role can be too powerful. And you do what you’ve always done. Still getting what you’ve always gotten.

The piece of the Soul I want the reader to remember is the part that wants.

Athletic coaches are always declaring that the team won or lost because they wanted it more, or didn’t want it enough. I totally believe that. Take the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII. Underdogs in both rounds of the playoffs and the Super Bowl, luck just seemed to flop their way.

I see evidence of this every day. At a recent rally in Michigan, Canadian privateer Antoine L’Estage overcame an eight-second deficit in the last two stages to beat current American champ (and Subaru-backed) David Higgins by six seconds. Who wanted it more?

I bet you have stories of overcoming odds when the want piece of your Soul has kicked in. I just want the clear data part of your Soul to see that it happens. That it can happen. And that it can happen as often as you want it to.

Now apply that to your Role issues.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

~ Viktor Frankel

When your Role is telling you to do what you’ve always done, can you insert your Soul in Frankel’s space? Ask yourself “Is this producing what my Soul wants?” and choose your response. Your life will change—if your Soul wants it to enough.

Leaders of all stripes—corporate, volunteer, even presidents of the United States—often exhibit symptoms of psychopathy. So where do we draw the line? When is psychopathy criminal, and when is it seen as “bold leadership”? Would you receive a diagnosis of psychopathy, and what would that really say about you?

Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R, 2nd ed.) says that psychopathy consists of the following traits:

1. Interpersonal or affective defects (e.g., glibness or superficial charm, grandiose feelings of self-worth, conning or manipulative behavior, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affects, callousness or lack of empathy)
2. Social deviance and antisocial behavior (irresponsibility, parasitic lifestyle, impulsivity, and unstable relationships, criminal versatility)
3. Other attributes

However, this checklist seems intended only for the criminal population. Others define psychopathy a bit differently.

“An easy way to think about it is as a combination of physical and social fearlessness,” says Scott Lilienfeld, professor of psychology at Emory University and author of a study on past U.S. presidents. “People high in boldness don’t have a lot of apprehension about either physical or social things that would scare the rest of us.”

In other words, they don’t march to the same Knower/Judger rules. They stand out.

According to Lilienfeld’s research, fearless dominance, which is linked to less social and physical apprehensiveness, boosts leadership, crisis management, persuasiveness, and congressional relations.

Theodore Roosevelt (who actually won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906) is regarded as one of the most influential U.S. leaders. He ranked highest for this type of personality, followed by John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.

Then came Rutherford Hayes, Zachary Taylor, Bill Clinton, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, and George W. Bush.

Fearless and dominant people are often a paradoxical mix of charm and nastiness. Cool and calm under pressure, they are not easily rattled. They lack the anticipatory anxiety most people have and are not concerned about taking dangerous actions. They are usually intelligent and wealthy, and they relish directing other people and bask in their admiration.

Scientists estimate that 15–25 percent of men and 7–15 percent of women in U.S. prisons display psychopathic behaviors. An estimated one percent of the general population could be described as psychopathic. Surprisingly, many who fall into that bracket might lead perfectly conventional lives as doctors, scientists, and company CEOs.

Traditionally psychopathy has been measured as a combination of lack of empathy and willingness to break rules. When you’re very high on both scales, society would probably benefit if you lost your Second Amendment rights.

“People think [psychopaths] are just callous and without fear, but there is definitely something more going on,” says Joseph Newman, a University of Wisconsin researcher and the preeminent American scientist focusing on psychopathy. “When emotions are their primary focus, we’ve seen that psychopathic individuals show a normal (emotional) response. But when focused on something else, they become insensitive to emotions entirely.”

For those readers familiar with the DISC profile, you’ll recognize this as the task-oriented mindset of high Dominants (Ds) and high Compliants (Cs).

Sound like a laser-focused executive? Perhaps a talented surgeon specializing in high-risk procedures? Maybe even rally co-drivers? When I’m focused on my job in the right seat, I have no time for fear, and have been known to continue reading course notes some time after the car has settled on its side or against a tree.

It seems that we are not either psychopathic or non-psychopathic, but rather fall somewhere on the spectrum. Executives, and other effective leaders, by my observation, are lower on the “empathy” scale, but remain fairly compliant on the “rule-breaking” scale. More DISC “D” than “C.”

I’ve written in the past about the role fear plays in holding us back and how predicting negative outcomes through some creative logic keeps us from pulling the trigger on something. Well, maybe the reason that I’m less fearful than you is that I’m more of a psychopath than you.

Want to find out where you stand? Try your own personal psychopathy assessment….click Psychopath.

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

~ Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

Where do these teachers come from? The proverb seems to place responsibility for “appearing” on the teacher. It’s as if teachers were limited resources, sitting on the sidelines of life just waiting for students. My take is that “teachers” are an unlimited resource, with dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of teachers for each one of us.

In his groundbreaking 1976 book How to Run Your Own Life, Jut Meininger used the metaphor of a Martian (M) to show us that everything we humans think comes from our filtered Knower/Judgers and is not an accurate depiction of reality. The book is a dialogue between M and Earth Person (EP), with the naïve M challenging each K/J precept EP uses to run his life…all the “shoulds” contributing to his dysfunction.

Here’s how it opens:

EP: (Looking up suddenly) Hello! Who are you?

M: I’m a Martian.

EP: (Frowning) What are you doing here?

M: I’ve always been with you.

EP: Aw cut it out. You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?

M: Believe me or not. That’s your choice.

EP: (Stubbornly) Then how come I haven’t seen you before?

M: You haven’t been ready.

EP: What do you mean by that?

M: You’re at a point in your life where what you’ve been taught and what you’ve been aware of aren’t enough. You want more out of life than you know how to get.

EP: (More puzzled than defensive) But I still don’t understand why I see you all of a sudden.

M: It’s because you’ve started looking. You’ve started seeing things of value. You’re lucky! Most people limit themselves to seeing things that aren’t of any value to them.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

What Meininger tells us here is that this education process doesn’t launch because the teacher shows up. It starts because the student opens up. The teachers (data, wisdom, information, other interpretation, horizons) are always there. We just have difficulty seeing them.

Let’s look at an example from the business world. A fairly common executive behavior in small businesses today is the “management” mentality. Our K/Js have been trained to believe that we “manage” our businesses, our challenges, and our people, or that we ourselves are managed by others. The term “manage” has some K/J baggage around “taking charge,” “doing it my way,” and heads rolling when mistakes are made.

With abundant data (the “teacher” if you will) telling us that the best-run companies nurture creativity, risk-taking, and learning from mistakes, these executives (potential students) still do not “see” a benefit to trying new ways of directing their organizations. They reach a certain level of productivity (with which they appear to be satisfied) and go or grow no further.

Public organizations might have this management mentality too, but when it puts productivity at risk, stakeholders become dissatisfied with the status quo and demand improved performance.

At this point, the executives become ready students. Lo and behold, they find that the information, classes, coaches, networks, etc. were there all along. They just never saw them because they had no internal need or desire to see them.

Meininger’s book is titled How to Run Your Own Life because he shows the reader how we students get channeled into our own myopic K/J rules of life that are usually written for us by others. For the most part we are ignorant of all the teachers around us who can:

• Help with our relationships
• Make us more money
• Make us happier
• Change our lives for the better
• End the struggles
• Break us out of mediocrity

Are you ready to be a student? Can you regularly set aside some of your K/J rules of life and let in new data? Can you be in your Learner/Researcher persona without being in crisis mode? Teachers abound. Be ready. All the time.