People upset every day in some way. But what if it’s not the people that are upsetting us? What if it is only a perception? And what if a perception can be mindfully explained away?“Nowhere you can go is more peaceful - more free of interruptions - than your own soul.” - Marcus AureliusWhen the news, a person, a text, a post, a baby, or disruptive moviegoer, or your snoring partner upset you… and you feel like getting outlandishly frustrated - stop and go within. Ask yourself:What is it that’s making me upset? What is causing me to feel wronged?What if I could let it go? How much stronger might I be if I endure it?Can I describe how I might feel seeing myself stepping through this equanimity? How might I feel?Try to remind yourself to try that next time you feel wronged by someone.Consider enjoying the feeling of seeing yourself grow and be better than you were yesterday.

Helpless? Trying to figure out how to help? What if you could do more?Life invites us to be courageous enough to do what we can now. Not later, not halfhearted, but fully and now.What can you do now?If you’re in Hungary, use outdoor’sy skills to help refugees.Donate a resource - time, money, or skill.Become informed. Welcome all viewpoints and develop your own idea.Help someone across the road.Pick up the trash you see on the sidewalk while walking to your car.Listen to someone who’s feeling like an outcast.What if I don’t?Nothing… but also nothing you will receive, and nothing is how much growth you’ll have.Not everyone is cut out for a crusade. Everyone can do one small thing every day to help someone else.Do what you can now.

When people tell you “no, that can’t be, shouldn’t be, we tried and it won’t be done”, that’s when you ask, “well, what if?““What if” opens the door to a world of possibility.Possibility invites us to think about “How” we might make things better.How we make things better is “What” makes change happen.What if you refused to accept the status quo more often? How might that help you help others?

As much as I love Bobby Caldwell’s song, this isn’t about that. It’s about value investing, return on investment, and the story you tell yourself about your value. When you take a job, you give an employer time, skill, and knowledge so that you can help them be profitable. In exchange, you get a salary and other benefits - a dividend. But before you take the job you think to yourself, how will this job make money for me? When will it make money? What will my return on investment be like? Do I know the industry enough to feel comfortable this will succeed? Jump forward, now you’re in the job.You continue investing your time and skill and you receive the salary. But, you start to find the value of your investment is decreasing. Other people are investing the same as you, but they are receiving a much higher yield on cost than you. The value of your investment decreases. Do you stay, collect the dividends as and when they come, and hold the investment who’s value is decreasing? Or do you sell at a loss, learn, and move on? Perhaps you’re only holding the investment because you want the dividends and don’t care about the decreasing value of the stock? Perhaps you were waiting to see if things would change? Perhaps you’re afraid of what would happen if you sold? What would you do? And more importantly, what won’t you do?

What we did in the past is in the past. It’s over. It’s over the second you breathe your next breath. It’s over the moment your heart beats its next beat.What you did a moment ago is a lesson. You can do it again and do it better right now.The real challenge, for me, is giving myself space to forgive myself for the moments in the past. Where I have grown the most is when I have seen myself not repeat those mistakes and instead, embrace the hard work of doing the work of getting better.Forgive and learn from the past. Apply what you learned to the moment now.

Thousands of years ago Seneca wrote to Lucilius, and today I wrote to a reader like you, Steven.Steven, the reader, is in a career change at the moment and working on a business. He and I spent time working on his resume, career coaching, and strategies for taking his idea to market. Today, my insights to Steven were inspired by a letter that Seneca wrote to Lucilius - on crowds and advertising.Seneca wrote to Lucilius:“I should be glad to see you [doing your craft] if what you had to offer [the masses] was suitable for them: but the fact is, [the masses are not capable] of understanding you. You might come across [someone] here and there, but even they would need to be trained and developed by you to a point where they could grasp your teaching.  ‘For whose benefit, then, did [you] do all this work?’”  TLDR version of Seneca’s thoughts are:Your work won’t mean a thing if it doesn’t speak to those you seek to serve; andThose you seek to serve will likely not get you because,You haven’t spent enough time thinking about them, their worldview, and what it means for them to talk to someone like you.My question to Steven, and to you… especially if your work involves taking an idea to people with the hope they buy it:Can you translate your outcomes/what you offer into a language that someone will be capable of understanding?In the mind of the person you are seeking to serve, will what you offer change their worldview in a meaningful way?How did they perceive the world before you, and how will they perceive it with and after you?Hope that insight offers some usefulness.

What is happening now… in our world… we have been here before. In fact, much of what we experience each day is something that relates to, mimics, and repeats a previous experience.The stress and the anxiety can be a lot - it is real.What can you control? What can you do to help and be a positive force for others?How might we stick up for those being oppressed not only in our world, but in our jobs and in our communities? To reach out and say, “hey, this ain’t right, I’m with them.“Do what you can.That’s all anybody asks of you.

Thoughts are powerful. Too powerful. Try watching Travel Thirsty’s YouTube channel and try not to think about downing a Chicago dog. So how do we leverage this power? How do make sense of what our thoughts are telling us?What if our thoughts are trying to pull us away from the present because something about the present is not good enough. Why do what you’re doing now, when you could be thinking about a Jim’s Original?Marcus Aurelius writes, Each of us lives only now, this very moment. Why should our lets thoughts take us to places that are out our reach when we could be doing something important now? Now is what matters.Seneca writes, Cease to hope and you’ll cease to fear. Seneca thought that a mind that lived too far into the future too often (read: daydreaming) and a mind that lived too much in the past (read: brooding) was a mind that was in trouble and was skipping the opportunity, the gift, of the present.So how to leverage the power of our desires and our worries?Make a plan.If getting a Jim’s Original is that important - make a plan. Schedule a day. Commit the resources. Hit the gym (you know you’ll need to).If you know you’ll need to be doing something in the future and it’s on your mind, make a plan. Schedule the time where you can be present with yourself to organize all that needs to be organized so that you’re not rushed.If the past is bothering you, make a plan. Decide if it’s worth it to resolve the problem or not? Talk it out or don’t? Dedicate time for those questions and then, decide what to do. If you decide you can’t/won’t do anything, let it go.Our thoughts are indicatorsThoughts that take us out of the present are just indicators that we need to create time to plan and address the thoughts. They are not reasons to take you away from the beauty of the moment.

I have been asking myself lots of career questions. Perhaps you’ve asked yourself these questions to?What does a career look like?Who am I really serving?How might I do more?Why must I follow the linear path?What if my life was a bunch of questions?What is a career for?To serve others and help them solve their problems so that they’ll be more effective. In turn, the people you help will give you a means to sustain yourself.Perhaps a career is nothing more than a string of projects that grow in complexity? With each new project comes the growth of new skills which can be leveraged for the next project.I tend to enjoy this thinking because it gives me the freedom to be open to new ideas and new jobs. But, not everyone likes it. In fact, it can be hard for employers to see someone like me as someone who can help them. It’s hard to pivot.How to effectively pivot?Think like a marketer.What skills have we acquired through our work can be leveraged to help someone else? And,How might we show the people we seek to serve that we have the skills they need in a way they understand?In my experience, the challenge is never “will I find a job?” The challenge really is, “will I find the right job?” And you will find the right job when you know how to answer the top two questions.QuestionsQuestions create the tension needed for action. They encourage us to think blue sky, focus in, or question the foundations upon which we do what we do.In business, you see leaders more and more trying to ask better questions. But in life, what you and I live each day, we don’t see it often enough.Your life will be a collection of questions. What if I went to law school? What if I could be a teacher? How might I create a community? Don’t stop asking yourself these questions - pursue them. See where the exploration take you.oh… happy belated 25th birthday to cousin Kelly ;-)

What is culture? What does it mean to develop a culture?A definition for culture, and there are many, is: “people like us do things like this.“People like us, students of being better versions of ourselves to serve others, are open minded to new ideas. That’s the culture of someone like us. But what if I was a team manager?People like us, people on this team, celebrate micro-wins every day because we know that a war is won through many tiny victories. But what if I was thinking about my friends?People like us, friends, earnestly make efforts to see each other and share our lives with one another. But if what if…?Culture happens first at the micro-level, in small groups - pairs, cohorts, families, friends, neighborhoods. Then, it expands.If you want to create a team culture, then you and your team get to answer this question: What are the things that people like us do? And who do we serve?Once you have the answer, the next step is to decide to do it.Once you have do it, and repeat it, and improve it, you will have created a culture.