Fortune Friday: "Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it."

How open are you to receiving feedback? Be honest. Most people claim to be open to feedback, but in my experience rarely truly are. Asking and receiving are two entirely different things. And really, what is the point of asking if you have no real intention of receiving?

Nowhere have I found this more prevalent than in the art world. I can't begin to count how many times I have been asked my opinion about a piece of artwork only to be fought tooth and nail on every point of critique. These artists were not seeking genuine feedback. They didn't really want a truthful, unbiased opinion. They wanted validation or to have their ego stroked.

And did their work improve? Of course not.

Real advice, real feedback, real opinion is only useful if we are sincerely ready and open to receive—no matter what the outcome—and to implement.

I remember one time an artist approached me for a critique of their portfolio. Having gained much wisdom through experience, I asked, "Do you want my opinion as a friend, or my honest critique as a creative professional?"

After a long pause, they replied, "Opinion as a friend."

We went on to have a pleasant conversation.

I found this exchange refreshing. Here was someone who thought they wanted my input, but was honest enough to admit they were not ready to receive.

And that is perfectly okay. It's okay to admit we just want some feel-good comments. We all need that sometimes. It is natural and human. But let's not confuse this with real feedback.

To be clear, not all feedback is negative. Sometimes it is quite the opposite. And in those instances, we need to shed our false humility and receive all that positive feedback with complete openness. Many people, particularly creative types in general, are not comfortable in the public spotlight. For every fame-driven diva, there are a thousand artistic wall flowers—content to work on perfecting their craft in relative obscurity.

I've also found this to be true in sports, music, and even the business world. It is an odd paradox. We often pursue high levels of success and all its accompanying benefits—wealth, security, prestige—but then reject it the moment it arrives, turning away the very thing we thought we wanted.

We want to be successful—as long as we're left alone. We want to be wealthy—as long as nobody hounds us for money. We want to be wildly creative—as long as nobody says anything bad about our work.

Do any of these sound familiar?

Again, asking and receiving are two entirely different things. Advice and feedback can be powerful tools for growth, but only when we are truly ready and open to receive. If you're not quite ready, be honest and admit it. But when you are, get ready to profit.

To your good fortune!

Don't Give Your Power Away

The movie Heavyweights is a family favorite of ours. It is about a group of overweight teenage boys who go to "fat camp," a summer camp for weight loss, only to discover it has been taken over by a psychotic self-help guru—played perfectly by Ben Stiller—determined to turn their camp experience into a weight loss infomerical. It's a fairly lowbrow popcorn flick, but amusing and with some good quotables. We love it.

There is a scene early on when the kids learn of the switch in management. The former camp directors Harvey and Alice Bushkin, an older couple played by Stiller's real-life parents, stand before an assembly of the boys and the camp staff, and say a tearful goodbye. They explain that due to unfortunate circumstances they had to file for bankruptcy and sell the camp.

As they exit the front of the room, Harvey Bushkin returns to the microphone and says, "One word of advice. Never let anyone sign your checks!"

Where did the Bushkins go wrong? Apparently they gave power of attorney to either their lawyer or their accountant (or both), who then turned around and took advantage of them.

Either way, they gave away their power—and got screwed.

I think there is a good lesson to learn here. Take a good long look at your life, your circumstances, and your relationships. Take a look at your career and your finances and your health.

Where are you giving your power away? Metaphorically, where are you letting others sign your checks?

Are you allowing other people to railroad your hopes and dreams?
Are you allowing selfish employers to dictate your career trajectory?
Are you allowing bad personal habits to derail your fitness objectives?
Are you allowing people with toxic energy into your life?
Are you allowing fear of failure, rejection, or success to sideline your goals?
Are you allowing cultural expectations to define what is acceptable for you?
Are you allowing social media and TV to suck away your valuable time?

Again, who or what are you allowing to sign your checks? Are you feeding them, consciously or unconsciously, by giving them your power?

Then stop it. Just stop it. You and I have only this one precious life.

Enough is enough. Say to them, "No more." Say it to yourself if you're the culprit.

Stop getting screwed. Stop letting the world sign your checks.

Don't give your power away.

Fortune Friday: "You will soon be involved in many gatherings and parties."

People, but particularly we Americans, often have an unhealthy fixation on independence. We love it. We thrive on the notion. This is hardly surprising given the origins of the United States. The idea of the lone pioneer forging his destiny at the edge of the frontier is steeped in our culture. We claim it as our birthright. But this is not a history lesson. As romantic as this imagery is, it can be a perilous path to travel—literally and figuratively.

No man is an island. Isolation is the dream killer. It is not good that man should be alone. It takes a village to raise a child. Do any of these phrases sound familiar?

These sayings, attributed to John Donne, Barbara Sher, the Bible, and others are not just pleasant idioms and catchy platitudes. They speak to the very core of the human experience.

As much as we hate to admit it, we need each other. We are better and stronger together than we are alone. Not just philosophically, but practically as well. Rome was not built in a day, but it also wasn't built by one person.

As today's fortune implies, gatherings and parties are a good thing. They unite us and bring us closer together. They remind us we are not alone. They reflect us back to ourselves. We see ourselves in others and they in us. And we're all the better for it. The whole really can be greater than the sum of its parts.

Can gatherings and parties also be a waste of time or mere distraction? Of course they can. We can easily use these get-togethers as a way to avoid reality or procrastinate important projects. We can use interacting as a substitute for doing.

But used well, collaboration can be a gateway to exponential achievement—often at a rate and magnitude greater than going it alone.

So get out there and involve yourself with others—it may just be your ticket to the life of your dreams.

To your good fortune! 

Change Your LIfe By Degrees

My older brother Larry is a commercial airline pilot. He fell in love with the skies from his very first flying lesson. I'm not sure exactly what or who got him started down the path of flying. Perhaps it was the stories we heard as kids from our Uncle Jim, also a commercial airline pilot from the long-ago era when pilots were esteemed and respected like doctors and lawyers.

Needless to say, I have heard many tales—some humorous, some scary—of near misses, botched landings, and pilot lampoonery. Flying is also rife with metaphors applicable to all aspects of life. One of my favorites is regarding course correction and degrees of latitude.

If you were to pilot a plane around the equator and maintain an accurate heading with no deviation, when you came back around the earth you would arrive exactly at where you took off. Makes sense, right?

However, if your heading is off by only one degree, when you come back around you will be five hundred miles away from your original destination.

Five hundred miles. One degree! ONE.

To put this into context, if you were to fly westbound out of Quito, Ecuador (near the equator) and your heading was off 3.5 degrees, when you came back around you would miss South America and the Caribbean altogether and land in Miami, Florida.

What a difference a few degrees can make. Huge.

So how can we apply this use of degrees to our own lives? If you are like me you have hopes and dreams and goals. There are things you want to see, do, experience, and accomplish. What if you altered your current heading by even one degree?

Imagine the next year of your life is like the equator. If you stay on your current heading—in other words your habits, your routines, your actions (or inactions)—then next year at this time you will land, metaphorically, right where you are now. No change, no difference. Exactly the same.

But what if you alter your heading—even just one degree? What would that look like for you? Here are some quick ones I came up with:

If you drank one extra 8-ounce glass of water each day, by year's end you will have replenished your body with over 30 gallons of water. Just one tiny glass!

If you did just 5 push-ups every morning, by year's end you will have done 1,825 push-ups that you otherwise wouldn't have done—and have the toned torso to prove it.

If you wrote just one paragraph of your novel each day you would have close to 100 pages completed by year's end. If you upgraded to one page, you'd have a whole book finished!

If you made one extra call, sent one extra email, or wrote one extra thank you note to a customer each day, how would that effect the trajectory of your business? What if you did all three?

You see, to radically change our lives we don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel or shake up our lives. It doesn't have to be an all-or-none proposition. We can take micro-actions. Here a little, there a little. A day at a time. And those actions will add up to big changes.

We just have to alter our heading...one degree at a time.

*****

(By the way, that is NOT a photo of my brother Larry in the cockpit. It is a stock photograph. But I will try to get one from him if possible and update the picture. Thanks!) 

Fortune Friday: "Good things are coming to you in due course of time."

Most of us have heard or used the idiom "in due course", as in something expected, scheduled, or anticipated. We usually use it interchangeably to mean eventually. Or some day or when the timing is right. In other words, wait. Be patient.

For those of you familiar with my Fortune Friday articles, you know I am fond of breaking down the fortunes into their individual pieces and then reexamining and remixing them. Sometimes going to the root of a word or phrase can alter its meaning completely.

In due course. Due course. Due. Course.

As an adverb, due makes reference to points on a compass. Exactly, precisely, directly, straight. As in "The adventurers hiked due north."

Course is usually defined as a route or direction followed by a vehicle, ship, plane, road, or river. But a lesser known use make reference to hunting. The verb "to course" means to pursue game—typically hares—with greyhounds using sight rather than scent.

This conjures such powerful imagery. Early morning on a foggy moor, dogs chasing down their quarry with absolute focus, never taking their eyes off of the prize. Total committed action to the end.

Now let's reassemble these new definitions and apply them to our life goals. We could rewrite the fortune to say:

"Good things are coming to you as you actively pursue your dreams with complete focus and precision."

And when we do that, it really is only a matter of time before they come true.

To your good fortune!

Question Your Thoughts

  

The unquestioned mind is the cause of all suffering. Byron Katie really hit the nail on the head with this. It resonated with me. And for whatever reason, I instantly envisioned today's thought as an image and not as words. I'm an artist and designer after all—sometimes a picture says it best.

Fortune Friday: "You will be showered with good luck."

To be honest, my initial response after reading this fortune was "bleh". I mean seriously, this one is about as generic as they come—and where fortune cookies are concerned, that's not saying much. But once again I let it percolate a bit, and here's the conclusion I came to.

Luck is in the eye of the beholder.

In many ways, for me at least, luck is interchangeable with gratitude. So in the spirit of gratitude I am going to list a few things I am grateful for at this specific moment. Here goes.

1. I have all ten fingers to type this article.
2. I have two working eyes that can see my computer screen.
3. I have a very nice computer to work on.
4. I have high-speed internet service to access the knowledge of the world.
5. I have a comfortable chair.
6. I have a comfortable office which is neither too hot nor too cold.
7. I have an 8-year old car that starts on the first turn of the ignition.
8. I had food to eat this morning.
9. I had clean water to drink this morning.
10. I had hot water to bathe and shave with this morning.
11. I had no one shooting at me this morning.
12. I had no one trying to hurt my family this morning.

These are a dozen things I rattled off in less than a minute. Things that I and almost anyone would be grateful for. In fact, millions throughout the world go without many of these things on a regular, if not daily, basis.

In that regard I have a bounty. My cup literally runneth over. The gods have rained down immeasurable blessings upon me and my family. I have been showered with good luck and have much to be grateful for.

I wish the same for you.

To your good fortune!

Why Your Life Is Broken

Why is your life broken? It is broken for a reason. A very good reason. Your life is broken because it is supposed to be.

Say what?

Bear with me. When we say we are broken or busted or damaged goods, we are lying. To ourselves and to others. Not intentionally of course. In our heads, we might truly believe all those stories. To us, they are the truth. They are our reality. But they are not reality. They are stories. They are the things we tell ourselves to feel comforted, to feel justified, to feel less responsible, to feel vindicated.

Please understand, I am not saying that bad things do not happen to us. Of course they do. Sometimes it is our own fault, resulting from our own bad choices. Sometimes it is the fault of others. But we're not here to discuss assigning blame or responsibility. We are here to discuss why you are broken.

When I was in college, my favorite art history class was Greek and Roman Art. The ancient Romans created stunning, intricate mosaics. Mosaics are created from dozens, sometimes thousands, of tiny broken fragments of tile and pottery and glass, and then reconfigured to form a new image. Sometimes the artist will purposefully destroy other works of art to get the raw materials, the broken fragments, needed to create a new artwork.

To quote Pablo Picasso, "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."

Personally, I do not believe in accidents. I do not believe in fate or randomness either. I believe in a Plan. With a capital P. I believe God has a plan for all of us—each and every person. It is calculated and perfect. We are all pieces of a gigantic, universal jigsaw puzzle. And we all fit together. 

The so-called broken pieces of you or your life, or those parts of you you believe are busted, are in fact the very essential components of God's masterpiece mosaic of you. We have no broken parts of us. There's no such thing. We just think we have broken pieces. We are exactly who and what we are supposed to be in this perfect, eternal Plan. God's plan is flawless. There are no accidents, ever.

Everything that has happened to you, that will yet happen to you, every choice that you have made, good or bad—all these events and occurrences have culminated to create you exactly as you are meant to be.

The good parts, the "bad" parts, the broken parts. They are all part of a perfect you.

Why is your life broken? Because you are flawless.