Losing

Note: I originally wrote this a few months ago, but didn’t know how to finish it. Now I do.

Tonight, I started out in a skeeball tournament ranked 3rd in the league. I was scheduled to play a best-of-three match against a 30 seed.

I could make a bunch of excuses on how I might have practiced too much and tired out my arm. Or how it felt different from practice and I didn’t take the time to emotionally center myself for peak performance. Or that the roller I was playing against had an average about 30 points below mine, but rolled really well.

But regardless of all of that, at the end of the day, I lost in the first round, and left to go get some work done back at home that I wanted to get to.

Lessons learned this evening:

  1. If your heart/subconscious isn’t in a game, you’re not going to perform well.
  2. Maybe my interest in skeeball isn’t what it used to be.

I’m feeling really burnt out. Besides being behind on grading, I’m tired and I feel like I’ve been prioritizing things that I should do rather than things I want to do.

I really want to crack open my new 5lb box of Monster Clay and start sculpting something. I want to ink a large 18×24″ drawing I’ve done and convert it into the basis of a new screenprint. I want to paint with the new oil paints (Rive Guache and #Greener for Oils medium) that I got a few weeks ago.

Although, this makes me totally think about the idea of being a professional. A professional ships, even if they don’t like to. A professional does the work, puts in the emotional labor, even if they’re feeling burnt out, or tired, or blocked.

But that also makes me contemplate the discourse between art and money. If making art or playing skeeball becomes a chore, then why keep doing it? Perhaps the real choice I have to make is do I create because I like to create, or do I create to hopefully do this as my life’s work?

What are you really buying?

People aren’t actually buying the physical thing or service (I’m just going to use the shorthand of “product”) that we are selling. They’re buying the benefits and emotional impact that the product delivers.

We don’t hire an illustrator for an amazing image. We hire an illustrator to create an image that embodies what we’re selling. We’re buying status – “Check out this amazing cover of my new book! This famous illustrator I was able to pay with a good deal of money shows you how rich, connected, and amazing I am”  We’re buying time – “That would have taken me years to draw!” We’re buying the feeling of being able to co-create or art direct something without having to build up the skills to do it yourself.

We don’t buy a Civic Hybrid because we need a car.  We’re buying the idea of sustainability, ownership, and private transportation. We’re buying safety, reliability, and the time saved of not having to take a bus.  We’re buying personal space and agency.

We don’t buy lingerie because we need underwear.  We’re buying the feeling of being desired, of being sexy, of being wanted.  We’re buying the look of lust and desire in our partner’s eyes when we undress.  In a way, we’re buying love.

When we’re creating our product offering, remember what you’re really selling – it’s all emotional, and this is what is really creating the value.

Barriers to Empathy, pt. 3

So I talked about the need to be right and expecting empathy back earlier.

The 3rd Barrier to Empathy is:

3. Expecting Change Right Away (Or At All)

Like I said earlier, the toughest part about trying to become more empathetic (especially when trying to become more empathetic to drive change) is that you have to let go of the outcome of changing people.

Tricky, right? You’re practicing something to become better, but in order to practice properly you need to let go of trying to become better.

LOL, life is frickin’ ridiculous, am I right?

Seriously, it seems like a massive cosmic joke, but we really do need to release ourselves from the need to make change in other people and enroll them in our ideas.

Should we still try? Absolutely. That’s the only way the world is going to get the gift you have to offer. BUT, we have to keep in mind that the world is a huge place, and whatever change we’re trying to make has to start off small.

If you look at the concept of Diffusion of Innovation, it makes sense that we have to focus on making change on a small group of early adopters. By nature, our ideas or products or services are not going to be for everyone. Most people, actually, are going to not buy into them.

That said, we don’t naturally know who our allies are – we can make better bets by doing research and finding people who will likely already be bought in to our ideas, but we can never be 100% sure until we ask. So, we’re going to fail.

Expecting some people to not get enrolled, even when we do our best to research them, reach out with true empathy, and get them enrolled in our ideas, is what we need to accept.

Change doesn’t happen right away, or at all. If we give up that expectation and simply work towards enrolling who we can, seeing others and trying our best to align our mission with their needs, we can start tipping the needle in our favor.

We have to think of empathy as a tool for a farmer, not a carpenter.

Farmers invest. They plant seeds, and do their best to control what they can (soil pH, nutrients, water, temperature to a point), but at the end, a bunch of random things could ruin a crop. Plagues of locusts, heat waves, not enough rain, immigration policies, etc.

Carpenters take things they have and make things out of it. Everything is within their control – their tools, the wood they’ve sourced, and the output. Carpenters have control step by step by step.

Empathy is planting seeds. You’re seeing people, hearing them out, and understanding where they’re coming from, even if you disagree. It’s fostering a relationship, putting in emotional investment, and at the end, they still might not buy into the change you’re selling, or they might have a change of heart, but you’ve already moved past this relationship.

Emotional seeds sprout immediately sometimes, and never sprout in others, and sometimes will sprout at random times due to circumstances you absolutely cannot control.

This is why empathy is hard. You have to give up your ego. You have to do it just to do it, and you have to let go of the outcome.

However, empathy is a muscle, and with more and more practice, you can get better and better at it. The world needs more empathy, so why not get some practice in?

Barriers to Empathy, pt. 2

The second barrier to empathy (see the 1st here) is:

2.Expecting Empathy Back

If you’re of the mindset that you can use empathy to drive change, you’re already looking at this as a tactic in order to get something you want.

Whether it’s enrolling a team in your leadership or vision, raising money for a good cause, or getting more sales for your new product/service/book, you’re looking for something – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

However, when trying to have empathy for others in order to get something back, often we also want empathy back as well.

“Why do I have to be the empathetic one? Why can’t they acknowledge me too?”

“I get that part of their argument is correct, why can’t they see the part where I’m correct?”

If these feelings sounds as familiar to you as they sound to me, then you’re struggling with the notion that this is some sort of exchange that has gone poorly. This is the feeling like you’ve been conned out of something; that you’ve been sucked into falling for a ploy that doesn’t benefit you.

But that’s the thing – the toughest part about trying to be empathetic so you can benefit is that notion in the first place. You have to want to be empathetic to understand others, even knowing that a lot of the time they might not have empathy for you.

The analogy I have for this is that empathy is like a job where you walk around letting people take a dollar from your wallet or purse, and then maybe they’ll decide to put money back in, but most will just take your money.

Sounds crazy, but being willing to give up that money in the hope that you’re doing good for other people, and that you’re building up a reputation as someone who helps others without needing anything back is actually the best way to get people to put money back in. BUT, you have to allow for heavy losses in the short term.

Some people will try to take advantage of you, true. But you also have to understand that having empathy is not letting people walk over you. Having empathy is understanding that given everything that’s happened to someone, they’re right.

Empathy for a remorseless killer does not mean I should let them kill me or anyone else. Empathy for that killer means I understand that given their background, biology, and life, if I went through exactly what they did, I’d probably be that killer too. It also means that if I see this killer trying to attack me, I won’t hesitate to hit them with a bat until the police arrive.

So I’d say this is the biggest barrier – reframing the idea of having empathy from sacrificing yourself to the idea of helping others. It’s reframing from being a victim who is exploited to someone who has enough to give that they can be that helpful, generous person. It’s reframing from being shit on to being someone who has boundaries and can also protect themselves when other people seem to be trying to take advantage of you.

Empathy is really hard in that you’ll see people, and they won’t see you back. But it’s just like that quote from Cool Runnings about success – if you’re not enough without it, you never be enough with it.

Barriers to empathy, pt. 1

If you’re looking to have more empathy, but you’re struggling with it, I believe there are three barriers you need to overcome.

Barrier 1: The Need to Be Right

You’ve figured out that by having empathy, you can learn what other people’s needs are, and you realize that by understanding other people’s needs, you can start figuring out how to enroll them in your ideas.

However, there lies difficulty in understanding that the other party is correct (given their own worldview) AND being able to give up the need to be right.

We talk about “losing” and “winning” arguments. We only can actually succeed at enrollment if we get over this binary idea of who is right and wrong. We need to embrace the understanding that getting what we want relies on being able to judo-flip the idea of being right.

Often, we need to show (vs. just saying) we understand the other person by acknowledging their truth. As painful at it may be, to succeed at actually getting someone to listen to you, you’re going to have to affirm (at the very least) their feelings are valid and correct without making judgments about them.

Then, we can start to dissolve the feeling of needing to be right, and we can really start getting to work.

Friendly With Fear

We all want to feel less scared. We all want to have more confidence, to be fearless, and to believe in ourselves. We want to feel validated, and protected, and safe.

The thing is, you’re never going to be fearless. You’re never going to completely get rid of self-doubt, and you’re never going to be worry-free. You’ll always going to want validation even when you cognitively recognize that you don’t want to need validation. You’re always going to get hurt by insults, criticisms (even if unfounded or irrelevant), and the nature of trying to play a larger game is that you won’t be safe.

There are a lot of things to be afraid of, and you’re never going to stop being afraid.

The messed up thing about life is that it’s not about eliminating fear or worry – it’s about learning to live with it, and acting as if it wasn’t there.

How might we change our behavior if we understand that fear is a necessary part of the process, and that we need to learn to dance with it instead? If fear will always be here, then will you let it hold you back from doing more?

Dealing with Rejection

It’s easy for us to judge ourselves when people reject us. Whether it’s not buying our product, to someone making a snide comment about your hair or outfit, to being laid off, when we’re told “No,” it can feel devastating.

Believe me, I get the pain. I had a pretty soul-crushing interaction on Friday that completely knocked me out of the game until Monday, and now almost a week since my last post, I’m finally back in it.

Rejection hurts. Public rejection seems especially painful, as all of your pain and your ideas of what you’re lacking are shown for others to see. It’s sort of humiliating.

But we have to remember – we can’t go judging ourselves by everyone else’s standards. We don’t ask fish to climb trees, squirrels to survive in the ocean, or snakes to juggle.

At the end of the day, even if you’re trying your best, remember:

It might not be for them.

YOU might not be for them. Your gifts to the world aren’t for everyone. We can’t force anyone to love us or what we do or how we do it. All in all, it might just be a mismatch, so learn to forgive yourself and start looking for who you are for.

Leadership

I think that most people can get a group of people to a goal if necessary.

You can bribe, shout, punish, cajole, deceive, or seduce your way to a short term goal.

I don’t think that makes you an effective leader, however, as you’re not really leading anyone, you’re just getting people to get a job done by any means necessary.

Yelling only works for so long before people start sabotaging work or leave. Bribes only work until they can figure out how to get the money without doing all of the work. Lies can work – until the tangled web of lies becomes too complex and it all comes apart.

I think that true leadership involves a lot more work – it involves enrolling people in your vision. You can’t merely pay people off – you have to truly see them and their hopes and dreams and fears, and then align those with that of the larger group. True leadership is where people are willing to continue to ship project after project, and are willing to follow along for the long term wins.

It’s empathising with every team member, and uniting them, even if they disagree or don’t like each other or the project.

I would also bet that if you can do this effectively, you’ll find the amount of rancor and discord within the group to lessen.

So. Are you ready to step up and lead?

Falling Behind, Catching Up

Guh, so I skipped four days of posting.

I realize that I have a very distinct choice.

One voice in my head is chastising me for messing up. It’s telling me that I need to be a professional. That true writers and thought leaders don’t let things get in the way. If I really want to make a difference, I need to ship. ever. day.

It’s telling me that it shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t follow through with anything. I’m terrible with commitments, and I need to get my goddamn adult life together.

There’s lots of “should”s and “I told you so”s. There’s disappointment, anger, regret, shame, and embarrassment.

There’s another voice in my head that’s telling me that missing stuff is part of life. That I was sick and slept through most of Sunday. That it’s about building a habit, not being perfect.

It asks what does being overly strict accomplish? It questions whether it’s about making sure I blog every single damn day, or whether it’s about building a habit of putting words on paper and creating something new out of nothing.

There’s warmth, love, compassion, forgiveness, and support.

I’m fortunate that I have the time, space, and training to be able to hear the different voices, and so I get to choose what voice to listen to.

Thanks, blog, I missed you too. See you tomorrow.

Limnic eruptions

Lake Nyos, where a limnic eruption killed over 1,700 people.

Today I was reading about limnic eruptions. These are huge CO2 eruptions that displace air and can kill people and animals, suffocating them within minutes of the eruption. Interestingly enough, these occur from lakes.

That’s right, lakes. If a lake is meromictic, meaning it doesn’t naturally mix itself, it can build up lots of CO2 in it’s colder, more pressurized bottom layers. Then, if something triggers it, the CO2 basically explodes like a shook-up can of soda and displaces air, rapidly suffocating people within the blast radius.

While this is all the makings of an awesome horror mystery (it’s already swirling in my head of how to work this into an Evil Pin Club story or a film or comic or something), it made me think about diversity.

The more and more we’re exposed to different people from different backgrounds and different ways of thinking and living, the better off we are. It’s creating a more inclusive world view.

I’d argue that it’s less about being a “coastal elite” that makes coast cities (SF, Portland, NYC, etc.) more progressive, but that due to the high level of international travel and immigration, people living in these zones are exposed to more diversity.

It’s much more difficult hating a group of people when you know people within that group. I would venture that the more one is exposed to new ideas and different ways of living, the more one begins to wonder how much truth stereotypes actually have, and then can begin to deconstruct those beliefs and start seeing others as real people.

Just as a lake is more dangerous when it just sits there, we all are more dangerous and more intolerant the less we experience other ways of living.

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