Month: January 2022

You’ve probably experienced some fears in the last week.  Fears are endemic and always threatening to become pandemic!

I’m at an age and season of life when I expect many changes – including some good changes – in the next few years.  Frankly, I’ve been more fearful and anxious in recent months.  Vague risks.  Unsettling prospects.  All the changes I anticipate represent some loss.  I’ve spent significant energy managing those emotions.

It comes down to courage.

I’ve put myself on a steady diet of history, films, and biography to help me think courageously and work through imagination to a stronger mindset.  (Ask me, and I’ll send you a list of recommendations.) 

This is how to use art and literature to fortify yourself, knowing that there is “a great cloud of witnesses” who have the run the race before you. We must constantly learn anew where to place our hope.

…

When our kids were little we explained dying this way:  “Remember all those times when you fell asleep in one place, then woke up in your bed or in another room, carried there by mom or dad? That’s what dying is like.  You go to sleep, are carried by Someone who loves you, and you wake up in a better place.”

When our kids were older I would tell them that dying was not the worst thing that could happen. 

Now that I’m considerably older I dread some of the worst-than-dying situations I can imagine.  When it comes to fears, my imagination needs to be disciplined to help me anticipate and plan and choose, rather than endlessly spin up dystopian futures that drain all hope.

…

Reframing our fearful view of the world is necessary self-leadership.  I wrote this six years ago, and it’s still true:

Frustrated?  Angry?  Read this.

Not long ago I left the office, fuming with frustration, and headed home.   I could feel the blood pounding in my ears.  I got a glass of ice water and sat down with my journal, took a deep breath, took another one, and then wrote this out.  I’m sharing because I hope this helps some others, too.

I want to acknowledge how ungrateful I am. I leave my office most days tired, frustrated, unsatisfied. I selfishly want so much more, most of the time, that I fail to remember how good I have it.

I am extraordinarily blessed with wife, children, and extended family. I have handfuls of deep friendships.

Spiritually I am filthy rich in Christ Jesus, a citizen of heaven by grace, and able to rely upon the strength of the gospel day by day. I have nothing to fear because “the God of angel armies is by my side.”

 I live a comfortable, affluent life. Kings of old could not imagine the conveniences we take for granted. I use more technology daily than sci-fi writers in 1950 wrote about. I’m in a generation that is living longer and healthier at older ages than any previous generation. I live in one of the freest safest countries on earth.

Our travel options are so grand I could get to almost anywhere on the planet within 3 days of starting out. People the world over speak (or want to speak) my native language.

Intellectually I get to live in an idea-rich world, practically unlimited access to data, and I’ve benefited from 21 years of formal schooling and post-doctoral studies. I have the tools to capture and share my writing with others.  I have meaningful work with smart, savvy, hard-working colleagues. We’re contributing to our company’s efforts to tackle a handful of the most important problems in the world, including feeding a growing world population.  

I have abundant opportunities to serve others.

I have no reasons for complaints, none. I should have only room and energy for gratitude. Perhaps the most significant battle I get to fight (not need to, but get to) is the fight for joy and gratitude.

Let’s transform our fears into the right kind of action – especially fights for joy and gratitude, and fights against injustice.

…

I’m learning to be alert to times when my procrastinating has a root cause of fear. 

Inconvenience, preference, or laziness are poor reasons to procrastinate.  Those plainly require self-discipline.  Stepping past fear requires courage.  Daily.

…

Not all fears are bad.

We call it prudence when healthy fears point out needless risks for zero gains. 

The Bible tells us that the proper fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.  Fear of God and obedience to the commands of the King of Kings keeps us in our proper place.

These aren’t the fears that gnaw at our hearts and paralyze our minds.

Selfishness has roots in fear – especially fear that we live in a zero-sum game, and if you get yours then I won’t get mine.

Fleeing from our calling is often connected to our fears. 

Fear mixed with pride and immaturity, flavored with selfishness, is a truly toxic brew.  Even the aroma of that brew can ruin relationships and keep people from thriving in community. This is why the battle with fear is worthy of our best efforts.

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What are lessons from the last big economic downturn (2008-2010) that we should remember now? 

I asked a few of my mentors this question, and summarize their insights this way:

• Keep your debts low. Never overleverage assets.  Only speculate with money or assets you can afford to lose entirely.
• Be contrarian.  “Everyone” moving in one direction should be suspicious.
• The thing you will NOT do separates you from the people who only want to bleed you dry.  Focus on customers who value what you uniquely have to offer.
• Every day ask yourself, “What am I pretending not to know?”
• Choose your mentors and guides carefully.  “The key to being a fly on the wall is knowing which wall to be on.”  Who you know and trust will be truly critical in any economic shift. 
• Do what you can to “catastrophe-proof” your business model.
• Where there is chaos and disruption there are opportunities, which often require a jump to a different S curve.  Resources come in the wake of boldness. 
• Expect to be misunderstood or ridiculed.  Never allow yourself to wallow in self-pity.

We like to get back to foundations and good stuff at the beginning of the year.  The Boy Scouts aren’t in the best graces of the world these days, yet we can honor and admire their foundations.

The Boy Scout Law: A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.

The oath:

“On my honor, I will do my best

To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;

To help other people at all times;

To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”

The motto: “Be prepared.”

Any one of us would do well with these as guiding principles.  Consider the immense capabilities of a people for whom these things are true. 

Inflation is a genuine problem, with many fathers.   Fewer people are paying attention to the drivers of deflation.  For example, these technology platforms (which drive enormous business models) are fundamentally deflationary: 

DNA sequencing 

Robotics 

Sensors 

Machine learning & algorithms  

Blockchain  

By deflationary I mean that these technologies become cheaper rapidly and require less and less human labor to generate disproportionately large economic gains.   Said another way, jobs don’t grow at the same rate as economic gain when organizations use these technologies in their business models.  GDP grows through productivity gains while the hours worked declines. This amplifies the “wealth divide,” particularly when our education systems are still optimized to turn out worker drones rather than entrepreneurs and self-directed learners.  

There are no simple or straightforward “solutions” to these trends.  Neither inflation nor deflation are uniform; there is a distribution of impact severity over peoples and time.   Multiple powerful incentives drive the changes. Riding this tiger is fun until it isn’t, and the dismount is downright scary. 

I suggest we use two lenses to assess options and consider our paths forward: 

1.       Meaningful work which supports families.  There is a correlation between addictions – opioid overdoses killed more than 100,000 Americans in the last 12 months — and lack of meaningful work.  Work is good for us.  Work that supports families is good for our social fabric. 

2.       Willingness to sacrifice today for a better future.  There is effectively zero willingness in our political discourse today.  Deferred gratification is no less critical for countries than it is for individual citizens.   

I suggest these because they’re integrated lenses requiring maturity and tradeoffs.  There are those among us who are called to work on foundational and underlying issues – healthy masculinity and femininity, education in an era of exponential technology, practicing forgiveness and citizenship, discernment, rediscovering the value of connecting the divine and the ‘secular,’ and so on.  Yet we still need some way to integrate our efforts, a mechanism that supports conscious optimism.  We choose X even though it’s inconvenient or less valuable to some, because it leads to a better overall outcome.  (In math terms, a global optimum rather than a local optimum.)  The “we” here is important, too.  History is replete with example of the poor choices of a few who were powerful or influential.  The best choices will align with trustworthy revelation, not just what our flawed guts tell us in the moment.

I call on adults to lead.  Eugene Peterson’s translation of Ephesians 4:14-16 show us the way:

No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are easy prey for predators. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.

Ever been surprised by an outcome that was completely different than you expected? 

• The stock market didn’t reward the quarterly earnings report.  And the price of gold moved down instead of up.
• Your idea was not greeted with enthusiasm.
• The purchase didn’t make you happy after all.
• Your competitor didn’t do what you thought was the most logical thing for them to do.
• Your friend betrayed you for another.

Treat surprises like this as an opportunity for reflection.  Your mental model was wrong, somehow.  You may have missed a critical piece of information.  You may have oversimplified, or perhaps you made it more complex than reality.  You may have underestimated or overestimated some factor.

Reality is what happened. Don’t fall into the trap of blaming reality because it didn’t match your mental model – that’s just wasted energy. 

Reflect, ponder, update your mental model. 

One of the benefits of the “Great Resignation” – millions of employees leaving their jobs, some retiring early, many moving to new positions – is that positions in many companies will open sooner.  There are more opportunities to move into other roles in your same organization.   

Those roles will go to people best prepared in these ways: 

• Mental readiness and willingness to tackle a new challenge with energy 
• Able to execute at least 50% of the new role well, from the start 
• Able to articulate how existing skills and experience can make them successful in a different role 
• Have sufficient documentation, automation, delegation of work, and cross-training so that the organization doesn’t say, “But we can’t afford for you to leave your current position.” 
• Meaningful credibility with a network of leaders so that your name surfaces in their “Who can we get to do _____?” discussions 

Louis Pasteur observed “Chance favors the prepared mind.”  New job opportunities favor those who are prepared for it.  New opportunities cannot be summoned on command but will come occasionally.  

Score yourself on your preparedness.  Get feedback from someone you trust.  Decide what you can do this week and in the next six weeks to become more prepared than you are today.  Do it.  

A reader asked how to overcome writer’s block. I told her there is no such thing as writer’s block. When we feel like we can’t write anything, the truth is that we don’t think we can write anything good. You don’t have a “writing poorly block,” do you? 

Just write. Get it moving. Expect that as you write you’ll start producing something more worthwhile.

Don’t score yourself on the % of your writing which you like. Score yourself for writing as a process, expecting that a fraction of what you produce is schlock.

(This understanding is not original to me.  C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and Seth Godin have all described this.)

Critical insight: This is true for every creative venture, not only writing.

“We won’t offend anyone.” That was the sign outside the religious studies building near the campus of Indiana University. I walked by that sign going to and from the lab where I finished my post-doctoral work (1990-1993).

When I saw that sign, I would think, “I’m offended that you won’t stand for something as good or evil.” No one should aim for a deathbed claim of “I never offended anyone.” Our mom used to tell my sister and me, “If Jesus didn’t make everyone happy, you’re not going to, either.”

Mature people hold these truths in constructive tension:

1. Being perpetually offended is not a fruit of the Spirit.
2. Never giving offense means you are unprincipled.

As we grow in maturity let us press hard to know what we stand for (and are willing to suffer for because we have a conviction of its truth), and where we are flexible. This is living in truth and grace.

Distinguish ideas and behaviors from relationship interactions. It is right and proper to be offended by demonstrably bad ideas and behaviors which do not support human flourishing or are clearly not in step with the wisdom from God. Learn to choose not to be offended by rude and crude interactions with other people.

The way to defeat the ‘cancel’ culture and media-accelerated ‘perpetual outrage’ is to use the power of forgiveness coupled with a willingness to be teachable. Choose to be a learner rather than be offended. We can collectively move forward through the abundant foolishness in the world.