Wisdom, Leadership & Success

Life moves quickly. Work. School. Kids. Travel ball teams. Friends. Social media. Keeping up with pop culture and the latest Netflix series.

You’ve got to have the right job that combines social consciousness and financial reward.

All while saving the environment and being politically conscious and staying in great shape and finding time for yoga or meditation so you’re not too anxious or stressed or depressed.

And don’t forget to post the latest vacation on Instagram to show everyone else your life is great and you’re keeping up with social expectations.

It’s exhausting. It can drive you to burnout.

The thing is, most of these are just a blur of relatively unimportant distractions in life.

How do you exit this crazy, out-of-control carnival ride?

The answer is to simplify and focus on the fundamentals.

The fundamental is relationship. Love.

That’s it for everything in life.

How does that work?

The meaning of life—your purpose in life—is Happiness.

Happiness doesn’t come from money or social status or education or having your kids at an elite college. Happiness comes from high-quality relationships. Period.

Whether it’s your family or work or friends, high-quality relationships are the highest performing relationships because they are based in deep trust and love.

The secret to winning in business? Focus on relationships instead of profits.

Develop good, high-trust relationships with your customers and they will bring you their business. Develop good, high-trust relationships with your team and you will maximize their engagement and productivity. The combination of good customer relationships and good team relationships will maximize your performance—your profits—which you can then use to benefit your team. Great relationships drive profits better than a focus on profits.

It’s all about relationship.

The secret to a great family? Relationships. A great relationship with your spouse is the best way for your kids to learn that good relationships are the key to success and Happiness in life.

Teach your children that to have great relationships with others, they must first be in a good relationship with themselves.

Childhood and adolescence are the story of your kids discovering, loving and leading themselves so they can be strong in their future relationships with family, work and friends.

Our society is totally dependent on good, high-trust relationships between each other and with our justice, financial, political, health, education, etc. systems. When the trust breaks down in those relationships, society unravels. The word society itself comes from the Latin socius which means companion.

It’s all about relationship.

Picking up on the pattern here? Personal success, family success, friendship success, work success and Happiness in life are all tied to one thing: relationship.

We’re surrounded by examples of the importance of relationship.

More than half of the hit songs are love songs. Relationship.

How do you feel when you are with someone you love? Relationship.

How do you feel when you lose someone you love? Relationship.

Why do people suffer so much in solitary confinement in prison? Because you deprive them of relationship.

What’s the worst way to bully someone? It’s not yelling at them. It’s shunning them. Depriving them of relationship.

In ancient societies, exile was worse than death because you deprived the person of relationship with their clan and their own identity.

If you give infants all the food and water they need but deprive them of love and affection, four out of ten will die. Love and affection are more important for survival than food and water.

More than half the surviving infants will have deep psychological challenges. Why? Because love and affection help form our neurological pathways. When the affection doesn’t happen, the neural pathways get mis-wired.

It’s all about relationship. As humans, we are biologically wired for relationship, especially love.

That’s why relationship is so fundamental, so critical for our personal, family and work success.

That speaks to the power of relationship and love on its own.

If you are an atheist, you may want to stop here.

If you’re more spiritual, there is a lot more.

We know from scripture that the Creator is Love.

Love is a relationship. The deepest kind of relationship. You can’t talk about love without talking about relationship.

If the Creator is Love, He must also be relationship. The Trinity. The Father loves the Son through the Holy Spirit.

We are made in the image of the Creator, which means we are made in the image of Love. At our very core, our very essence, we are Love. That’s why we die when we don’t have love.

If we are love at our core, then we’d also have to be in relationship with ourselves. That sounds crazy until we realize that one of biggest things that differentiates humans from other animals is that we are self-conscious. We are in relationship with ourselves.

Creation itself—this universe that is 94 billion light years across with at least a trillion galaxies—Creation is not just an act of love by the Creator for us.

Creation must also bear the mark of the maker—Love. Love, relationship permeates every aspect of Creation in a way that makes the Star Wars Force look trivial.

Science itself tells us so.

If I hold a pen and let it go, it falls to my desk. If I let go of the pen 100,000 times it will fall to my desk 100,000 times.

That’s the Law of Gravity. It describes the relationship between me releasing my pen and the pen hitting my desk. The Law of Gravity also explains the relationships between stars and planets, and the behavior of black holes, and galaxies bending light, and much more.

The whole point of the laws of nature is to describe the pattern of relationships built into the very nature of Creation.

Right now, scientists are pursuing a Theory of Everything—a single framework that, Wikipedia says, “will fully explain and link together all physical aspects of the universe.” It is a single theory that explains everything by showing how all the other laws of nature relate to each other.

In a real way, science can be understood as an investigation of the relationships that are the foundation for the universe. Relationship permeates every aspect of the universe and how we understand it.

So, this thing we call life and creation is a completely rigged game. It’s all about relationship. It’s all about love. That’s it. That’s what it takes to win.

If you want success in your work, your family and your life, tap into the very nature of the creation. Tap into the very nature of people. Relationship. Love.

At work, build strong, high trust relationships with your customers to get their business. Build strong, high-trust relationships with your team to maximize their engagement and productivity. Strong relationships with your customers and your team will give you a tremendous competitive advantage in the marketplace. High-quality relationships will maximize your performance and profits. The key is relationship. love

Everything you do in life should be about developing good relationships with yourself, your family and friends, and with your co-workers.

Anything else is a distraction. A lost opportunity. A waste of the short time we have with each other.

Your life is a rigged game. Practicing love is your key to winning.

I'm Pete Bowen.

Not long ago, a group of friends of mine were having an email discussion about a problem facing our nation at the time.

They’re all good, well-intentioned and successful people. We all agreed that a certain behavior was deeply wrong, but we had deep disagreements about the nature of the problem and the best solution to fix that problem.

The email exchange got spirited. At one point, one of the participants said that if you didn’t understand the injustice his way and you didn’t agree with his solution, you were guilty of participating in the injustice yourself.

Take a second to think about that. If you don’t agree with me,  you’re guilty of the evil behavior yourself.

I brought this up in a discussion with some millennials and iGens I know, and they nodded their heads knowingly.

“It gets worse than that,” they said. “Not only are you evil if you don’t see things my way, but if you aren’t taking action on all the problems in the world right now, you’re a bad person.”

You’re not a good person because you stopped using plastic straws. You can only be a good person if you don’t use straws and eat the right foods from the right farms and boycott products from certain companies and countries and solve homelessness in your town and post social media support for certain movements in certain overseas nations and oppose this policy and care about that species and, and, and…. (insert a list of at least a hundred other things).

In earlier times, society used college and the media to help people understand Beauty and Truth and Morality so that people could practice and seek those things in life. Learning about Beauty and Truth and Morality made us aware of the injustices and problems in life, and we worked together to fix them.

It was a positive view of life that brought hope, built relationships and Happiness, and solved problems.

That positive understanding of life has worked pretty well. We forget that the problems humanity faced for thousands of years—deep hunger and poverty, rampant disease, early death—were much worse in the past than today. We forget the enormous progress we’ve made in very challenging times.

Today, we have more wealth, education and technology than any time in human history. We live better and longer. We’ve made enormous progress addressing hunger, disease and shelter.

Yet, through the postmodern thinking that dominates colleges and the media today, we’ve taught our younger generations to see the world and life only in terms of radical injustice and power.

We’ve taught them that there is very little good going on in our society. Life is dominated by injustice and evil. You are either a victim suffering injustice or an oppressor imposing injustice.

There is no meaning or purpose. Love is a lie. Society is irredeemable. Life is hopeless and dystopian.

If you’re not buying and boycotting all the right things…

If you’re not working at a job that actively solves injustices…

If you’re not attending all of the protests about all the important issues (by the way, they’re all important)…

If you’re not spending all your time on the Internet railing against injustice and attacking bad people…

Then you don’t care and you are a really bad person.

As one millennial put it: “We’ve been told that the world is full of injustice and that we are supposed to solve all of it. We’re supposed to care about every issue we’re told about. If we don’t take action, that means we don’t care and we’re a bad person. But there are so many injustices and we can’t solve them all and its overwhelming and exhausting.”

We have used college and the media to overwhelm millennials and iGens with injustice, then we psychologically bully them, bending them to our will, our issues and our solutions.

Some in older generations may be ok with that. They think it’s just the price of their version of justice.

But it’s killing those in younger generations.

“I wouldn’t mind getting hit by a bus,” one iGen said. “I graduated from college. Now I’m supposed to go to work and be miserable for the next 60 years. And then die. Why not just go now?”

We are teaching younger generations that the world and life suck, that they are responsible for solving all of the world’s injustices right now, and that anything less than total commitment to fixing my injustice my way means they are failures .

Then we are surprised that our younger generations are more anxious and depressed than ever, and that suicide has become the second leading cause of death for ages 10 to 35.

That’s not a typo. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for 10-year old’s.

Instead of teaching younger generations that life is a crazy, wonderful adventure in which they learn about Truth, Beauty and Wisdom, we’re teaching them that the only thing that matters is Power.

Instead of teaching them to pursue Happiness through high-quality, loving relationships, we’re teaching them to bully and hate to force others to do what we want. Power.

We don’t teach the younger generations that they will find hope, meaning and purpose through loving relationships with each other. Instead, we teach them that the world is an irredeemable, hopeless, dystopian mess without transcendent meaning.

Instead of doing what’s best for our younger generations, we’re turning them into our pawns. We’re lying to them about life. We’re using them to achieve whatever we want in the name of power and “social justice”.

It is literally killing them psychologically, spiritually and physically.

That is Unjust. That is profoundly Evil.

It is our responsibility to do something about that.

I’m Pete Bowen.

If you are like many people, when you saw the title Why Faith is Critical to Your Business Success, you probably got uncomfortable. We’re not supposed to talk about faith and business together.

We’ve been taught to see life segregated into two different areas: your public/work life versus your personal/private life. Work and business go on public side. Faith goes on the private side.

You shouldn’t bring your faith to work, right?

Wrong.

You definitely need to be careful about how you bring your religion to work, but your work success is directly dependent on faith. In fact, all aspects of your life depend directly on faith.

Understanding Faith

Faith is another way of saying trust. Faith is another way of saying confidence.

In fact, the word confidence comes from pairing the prefix con which means with (remember your Spanish classes?) and fide which means faith. Confidence means with faith.

When you say that you have confidence in someone you are saying that you have faith in them

Fidelity means that you keep the faith with another. When a person cheats on their spouse, they commit an infidelity. The Marine Corps motto is Semper Fidelis. Always faithful.

The word trust comes Old Norse meaning strength. How much trust, how much strength, is there in your relationship with your spouse, friend or business partner?

You make thousands of acts of faith every day. You have faith that your alarm clock will wake you at the right time. You have faith that your money in your bank account is still there. You have faith that flipping the light switch won’t electrocute you, that the water you drink isn’t poisonous and that people you don’t know will stay in their lane on the highway.

Without those thousands of acts of faith each day, you couldn’t function. Our society would collapse.

Countries where people have strong faith in their justice, banking and political systems do well. When people doubt fundamental systems, bad things happen.

Faith should never be based in blindness or ignorance. The best faith is always be based in evidence—like previous experience. I have faith that I won’t get electrocuted flipping the light switch because I’ve done it hundreds of thousands of times and I’m still alive. I have faith in my auto mechanic because he’s always been honest with me in the past.

Faith and Work

Your business is based on faith. Do you have faith that your people do the things you ask them to do? Do you have faith your clients will pay you? Do you have faith that your team is fully committed to each other and the goals?

What happens to your personal and team performance when you lose faith in your managers, your team, or your clients, bank or suppliers?

When we lose faith, we hedge. We don’t fully commit. We spend time and energy on backup plans. Performance drops. Anxiety skyrockets.

Google’s research on high-performance teams shows that trust—faith—is the key factor in team performance. Faith is more important than talent.

Faith is critical for business success, family success, and success in your relationships with yourself and your friends.

Why Use the Word Faith?

Okay, so why talk about faith—which some people mistakenly take to mean blind religious faith—when we can use the word trust? Why use a word with potential negative baggage when we can use a word that doesn’t have that baggage?

Two big reasons.

First, the word trust has become so familiar that we use it without thinking much about what it means or how important it is in life. We take it for granted. It has lost its impact.

Using the word faith makes us think about trust in new, more powerful ways. It can remind us that faith in ourselves and each other is one of the 2 or 3 most important things in life. Faith is about the strength of relationship.

Remember, strong relationships don’t just give you high-performance teams, families and friends. As we’ve discussed in earlier blogs, high-quality, high-faith relationships are the key to Happiness in life.

So, using the word faith makes us more conscious of the fundamental importance of faith or trust in all aspects of our lives.

That leads us to the second reason using the word faith is powerful.

Faith Unifies and Strengthens our Lives

If we use trust for our public/work lives and only use faith for our personal lives, we reinforce the artificial and destructive idea that we live divided lives.

Trust is the stuff over here. Faith is the stuff over there. That’s a fragmented life.

That’s unfortunate. If you live a divided life in which you think one thing about life, but you are living life doing the opposite things, you will be less productive and less happy.

Less productive because your efforts are divided, not aligned and focused.

Less trustworthy and less happy because you are saying one thing but doing something different. (We used to call that hypocrisy).

We live our best and most productive lives when we unify and focus everything in our lives on our purpose in life—Happiness.

When we don’t feel like we have purpose in life or when we do things that go against our purpose, we become unhappy.

The idea that your life has purpose—Happiness—is basically an act of faith. In fact, any decision you make about meaning or purpose in life is an act of faith. Even if you decide that life has no meaning or purpose—you’re still making an act of faith.

If you don’t make any act of faith about the nature of life, your life will be an unfocused, chaotic, unproductive and deeply unhappy mess.

The word faith reminds us that we make an act of faith about the meaning of life. The word faith reminds us to live our lives faithful to that meaning of life. When people see the consistency between what we say about life and how we live life, they will put more faith in us.

And when we have high-faith relationships with others, we are at our most productive and happiest in life.

Using the word faith forces us to think about life in deep and fundamental ways that the word trust does not. Faith unifies and simplifies our lives, making us more trust-worthy, more productive and happier.

And that brings us back to your business success. Your success at work.

Faith is absolutely critical to your success. When you have high-trust, high-faith relationships with your customers, you will get more of their business.

When you have high-faith relationships with your team, you maximize your employee engagement, their performance and their productivity.

Combine high-faith relationships with customers and your team, and you have an almost unfair competitive advantage at work and in life.

Here are a few tips:

Reflect on the meaning of life and what that means for how you live your life at work and elsewhere

Write down 2-3 ways you can consistently show clients and teammates that you love them and they can put faith in you. Make it your signature.

Think about 2-3 things you do that are not faithful to your purpose in life

Faith. Think about it.

I’d love to hear what you think:

What is the meaning of life?

What about this discussion on faith resonates the most with you?

What about this discussion on faith and work makes you most uncomfortable?

I’m Pete Bowen.

The college admissions cheating scandal is filling the news lately. I led a college prep high school for 14 years and put three daughters through college myself, so I’ve got some experience in that admissions game.

Yes, the college admissions scandal is about cheating.

Yes, the college admissions scandal is about wealthy people having a big advantage over 90% of American families trying to get into elite colleges.

But these are really just symptoms of a deeper and more important problem: our society’s relentless pursuit of Unhappiness.

We are teaching our kids to chase shiny things like status, money, being a starting player on the best travel ball team, getting the most followers on social media, wearing the right brands…

And getting into elite colleges.

We teach our kids to chase these things not because our children will develop into their best self, but because it is socially prestigious. It’s an indicator that our kids are “successful”. It’s an indicator that we are “successful” parents.

That’s the deeper, more important problem. Chasing shiny things in life is making our kids depressed and killing them. How bad is it?

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 34.

The rate of depression among young people increased 63% from 2009 to 2017.

40% of college kids in spring 2017 said they experienced depression so deep it was difficult for them to function.

Those are statistics. Go read the article, How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Peterson to get a feel for what we’re setting our kids up for.

The author is a 34-year-old “successful” millennial who has spent her life chasing what she’s been told to chase, and she is burned out. Miserable. Deeply unhappy. Read the article and feel her pain.

The article resonates with young people because it captures their life experience. They’ve chased everything we’ve told them to chase and they are burned out. Miserable. Deeply unhappy.

Here’s what is most surprising: In 8,000 words about life, the millennial author never mentions the word Happiness. Never mentions relationship. Never talks about fulfillment in life.

It’s like no one ever told her that life is about Happiness. It doesn’t seem to be in her frame of reference.

We have more education and wealth than ever in human history, yet the suicide and depression rates are skyrocketing.

We’re quite literally teaching our kids to chase shiny things in life that destroy them psychologically, spiritually and physically.

All in the name of attending the elite academic or athletic school. All in the chase for shiny things that we call “success”.

All in a relentless pursuit of Unhappiness.

What’s the answer? We need to teach our kids the real meaning of life—Happiness—and how to pursue it.

This week I visited my friend, Dave, who just had a tumor removed from his brain. He showed me what looked like a hundred staples running across his head. Fortunately, the tumor was benign.

When he was diagnosed, hundreds of friends came to visit. While he was in surgery, more than 60 people gathered and prayed for him at the hospital. His family, friends, partners and employees were all behind him because they love him.

Dave told me he was ok if the tumor was malignant because he knew that life and Happiness are all about good relationships—with yourself, with your friends and family, and with your Creator. Dave has those relationships.

Dave is facing a deep life-challenge, and he’s never been more fulfilled.

There’s an 80-year ongoing Harvard Study on Adult Development that backs him on that. It’s very clear: Happiness does not come from money or power or status or education.

Happiness comes from high-quality relationships. Period.

Our society profoundly misses that Truth about Happiness and life. You can’t win by swimming against the societal rip-tide. It’s too powerful. But you can swim out the side of the rip-tide.

Life should be your story of pursuing Happiness by seeking wisdom and engaging in high-quality, loving relationships.

Wisdom is knowledge of the Truth combined with the character, the habits, to live the Truth. It is the foundation for good relationships because wise people are trustworthy.

Wisdom is also the foundation for great parenting. Wise parents raise their kids to pursue Happiness by developing wisdom and good, loving relationships, not to chase shiny things.

You’ll find that great relationships will make you more successful in your work, with your family and friends, and in your community.

Good leaders know that great relationships with clients and great relationships with your team are the key to success. The irony is that pursuing wisdom and relationships will make you more money in business than chasing the shiny distractions.

You’ll have much deeper, long-term relationships with your partner and kids. Your friendships will gain meaning.

Most important, when you experience some deep life-challenge or tragedy, you’ll find people standing with you, helping you carry whatever tough burdens you’ve got.

You’ll suffer together. You’ll love together. You’ll become closer than ever.

And that experience of sharing deep, self-giving love, agape, will bring you Happiness.

That’s the most important lesson we can learn from the college admissions scandal.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, The Tech Whiz Behind Vine and HQ Trivia, tells the story of Colin Kroll.

Professional Success

Colin was a young, self-taught computer programmer who left Detroit In 2007 to go to New York City and do app coding. He worked 12-hour days at the office and did more work at home.

Eventually, Kroll found backers who funded a video app called Vine. You’ve heard of it. Vine was an app that allowed people to publish 6 second videos that looped. It was a big hit on the Internet. Twitter bought Vine in 2012. Kroll was 28 years old and a multimillionaire.

Those around Kroll through the years always said that he was very smart. Investors backed Kroll in another Internet project—HQ Trivia—that became another Internet hit in 2018.

In terms of money and recognition for his professional skills, Colin Kroll was doing very well. He was the CEO of Intermedia Labs, the company that owned HQ Trivia. He was buying homes. He had a Porsche. He had a $75,000 credit card bill.

Kroll had told one of his advisors, “I’m never worried about making more money…”

Tragedy

Just two months ago, on December 15, 2018, Colin Kroll was found dead in his apartment. He was 34 years old.

Kroll spent the night before talking with his employees at his company’s holiday party. The next day he was dead.

More of the Story

Of course, there is more to the story. It is not a new story. It is a very human story that has lessons for all of us.

Colin Kroll was smart. In high school, he used his software coding skills to kick his neighbors off the Internet so he could get more internet cable bandwidth. He regularly got high on pot and prescription drugs.

When he moved to New York City he “worked incessantly” and smoked almost two packs of cigarettes a day. He smoked pot, “occasionally did cocaine” and drank heavily.

Kroll tried to reset his life in 2018. He quit smoking and began to exercise more. Despite those changes, Colin Kroll died last December 15th from an accidental overdose of heroin that was laced with fentanyl.

It might be tempting to write Colin Kroll’s death off as just another example of the dangers of drug use. But a lot more was going on.

Relationships

The Wall Street Journal article talks a lot about Kroll’s relationships with others. In fact, the article spends more time talking about his relationships than his drug use.

According to friends, Colin Kroll was gentle and endearing. They said that Kroll identified with people who were misfits in life.

To many of those he worked with, Kroll was abrasive. He told a mentor, “Everyone thinks I’m an asshole, and I am an asshole, but I can’t help it because everyone around me is so stupid.”

A partner in one of his companies quit over Kroll’s abrasive behavior. Employees complained that Kroll lashed out at them, that he was moody and that he created a hostile work environment. Articles published about Kroll described him as hard to work with and told stories about women quitting because they found Kroll creepy.

Colin Kroll was imaginative and skilled at work, but he wasn’t very good at relationships.

Lessons from the Death of Colin Kroll

So, what are some of the lessons we can learn about life from Colin Kroll? Besides the dangers of fentanyl-laced heroin?

We can learn the important difference between knowledge and wisdom. We can learn why our society’s focus on education instead of formation is failing our young people and our society. And we can learn more about the importance of relationships in life.

Wisdom over Knowledge

Knowledge is defined as the “facts, information and skills acquired by a person through experience or education.” Knowledge is “the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.” Knowledge is a good thing. It is literally about what you know.

But knowledge and wisdom aren’t the same thing.

Wisdom is more than knowledge. Wisdom is the combination of knowledge plus character.

Wisdom is the combination of knowledge of the Truth with the good judgment and character to live that Truth.

You can know that smoking cigarettes is bad for you and still smoke. You have the knowledge about the dangers of smoking, but lack the wisdom—the character and good judgment—to stay smoke-free.

In Mary Shelly’s famous book, Frankenstein, the scientist Victor Frankenstein has the knowledge to bring to life a hideous creature, but lacks the character, good judgment and therefore wisdom to leave that knowledge alone.

And then there’s the Mickey Mouse, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in Disney’s movie Fantasia. Mickey is the apprentice of a powerful sorcerer who has given Mickey the task of carrying heavy buckets of water from a well to a cistern. While the sorcerer sleeps, the lazy Mickey uses the knowledge he has learned from the sorcerer to command a broom to carry the water for him.

Soon, Mickey finds the broom—the product of his knowledge—out of control. The broom carries water until there is a flood. Mickey uses an axe to try to stop the broom, but the broom fragments become brooms themselves, compounding the problem. Everything appears lost.

Finally, the sorcerer awakens and uses his power to put an end to the disaster.

Mickey the apprentice had knowledge of magic, but didn’t have the character, the wisdom, to control it properly.

Knowledge is power. Knowledge, power, without good character, without wisdom, can be very dangerous.

Colin Kroll was certainly knowledgeable. He was a great programmer. He knew how to build a start-up company. Kroll had a strong reputation for great ideas. He was creative.

But Kroll did not balance that knowledge with good character. He didn’t treat himself well. He didn’t treat others well. Kroll must have known that cocaine and heroin could kill him. Kroll died because he lacked the character and wisdom to avoid them.

Formation for Wisdom is Better than Education for Knowledge

The difference between knowledge and wisdom takes us to education contrasted with formation.

Education is the process by which we obtain knowledge. The most obvious place for education is in our schools. Our school system is focused on developing knowledge in kids. Education is all about knowledge.

Our education system is very clear on this. Knowledge is the top priority. It’s all about what happens in the classroom. It’s all about what kids know. The most important things in schools are test scores and grades. College admissions are primarily about GPA and SAT scores.

So where is character and wisdom developed? We spend very little time on them in schools. The biggest areas where character and wisdom are learned is in the performing arts—like theater and band—and in athletics and team-based activities like robotics competitions.

Most of what kids learn about character and wisdom is implicit. They simply pick it up with, perhaps, a few good insights on life from a coach.

When money in our schools is tight, what gets cut? Knowledge, or character and wisdom?

Formation is an older process that goes beyond education. Formation doesn’t just develop knowledge. Formation also develops character, good judgment and wisdom.

The purpose of education is to develop knowledgeable people. The purpose of formation is to develop good people. People who have knowledge and character.

Our society does pretty well educating knowledgeable kids. Our society does a poor job forming people with wisdom.

You can see the results. We are a society that is controlled by knowledge not a society that controls knowledge. We are not in control of where business, and science and technology take us. We are a society at the mercy of wherever science and technology take us.

Importance of Relationships

Finally, Colin Kroll teaches us about the importance of relationships for Happiness in life. Colin had fame. He had professional success. He had social status and plenty of money.

As we discussed in earlier podcasts, however, Happiness is not about fame, social status or money. Happiness is all about having high-quality relationships.

But Colin Kroll was not very good at relationships. He had alienated most of those with whom he worked. He doesn’t appear to have had many close friends. Few of his friends knew the woman who did heroin with Colin Kroll the night before he died. She was the one that found him dead late the next day.

Very knowledgeable. Professionally successful. Wealthy. Famous.

Nevertheless, Colin Kroll appears to have lacked the character, wisdom and the good relationships that are the foundation for happiness in life.

It cost him and all of us on December 15, 2018, when Colin Kroll died at the age of 34. Tremendous potential unrealized.

We shouldn’t let the lessons of Colin Kroll’s life die with him.

I’m Pete Bowen.

Marine Corps Officer Candidate School

Way back in the summer of 1985, I spent my June and July in a special kind of hell called Marine Corps Officer Candidates School—Marine OCS.

Most people, when they hear the word “school”, think that Marine Officer Candidate School would be a place where you learned how to be an officer in the Marine Corps.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Marine OCS was all about putting you under a tremendous amount of physical, mental and emotional pressure to see if you could make good decisions and lead people while tired and stressed.

I remember getting called into the drill instructor’s office (called is the polite word) as part of a group getting commendations for scoring high on the Marine physical fitness test. That lasted about 15 seconds.

Then they yelled at us to get out.

As I ran back to my rack, I heard my name yelled again. I ran back into the drill instructor’s office as part of a second group—many of whom were in the first group—just in time to get a counseling form for poor performance on the physical fitness test.

Pushing Through Failure

That was the theme. They put you in no-win situations or gave you tasks with timelines you couldn’t possibly meet, made you encounter failure face-to-face, made you experience failure at your core, then watched to see if you fought through it. Or gave up.

They weren’t worried about being fair to us. They were focused on one question: Can we trust you to lead our beloved Marines in very stressful situations?

The OCS experience made you dig deep into yourself. OCS made you encounter yourself—your good and your bad—in straightforward, sometimes harsh ways.

It forced you to face your relationship with yourself.

Happiness is About Relationships

From our earlier podcasts, we know that the key to Happiness in life is not money or status or education. An 80-year Harvard study confirms that the key to Happiness in life is high-quality relationships. If you have high-quality relationships, you’ll not only be happier; you’ll also be healthier and live longer.

So where do we have relationships in life? Those are the areas where we should focus our lives for Happiness. The answer is simple. There are six areas of relationship in life. There is your relationship with yourself, your family, your friends, your relationships at work, as a citizen in your community and with the Creator. Six areas of opportunity to pursue Happiness.

In this podcast we’ll discuss some basics about relationships, then we’ll talk about a critical relationship—the relationship you have with yourself.

Your Relationships Are Only As Good As You Are

The idea of relationship seems obvious, but we can learn some important things from unpacking the concept.

Relationship is fundamental in our lives, with the most important relationship being the one you have with yourself. One of fundamental things that defines you as a human being is that you are self-conscious—that you are in relationship with yourself.

Our relationships with others can only be as good as we are in the relationship.

Think of relationship like a bridge. By its nature, a bridge must have at least two anchor points—one on each side of the span. Two strong anchor points makes the bridge—the relationship—strong. If one of the anchor points is weak, the bridge—the relationship—will be unstable and weak as well.

In fact, a bridge is only as strong as its weakest anchor point.

In the same way, if you are a good person and a strong anchor point, you will have stronger relationships. If you are weak or unsettled, your relationships will suffer. Your relationships can only be as good as you are.

Relationships and Trust

Relationship is also an act of faith, of trust, in the other. Your relationships are only going to be as strong as the confidence you have in each other.

When you have trust in the other, you can focus your attention on moving forward. If you don’t trust the other, you spend your time and energy trying to make sure you are safe from the other.

And that trust in the other includes the trust you have in yourself. Self-confidence enables you to move forward with strength and conviction. Self-doubt can paralyze and even destroy you.

So, what can you do to strengthen your relationship with yourself?

Strengthen Your Relationship With Yourself

First, you must be able to love and lead yourself before you can love and lead other people. You must have an accurate and realistic appreciation of who you are, for your strengths and challenges and growth areas, and for your shortcomings. The better you know yourself, the better person you can become.

Develop Self-Confidence

You need to develop self-confidence by proving yourself to yourself. You need to set and accomplish goals, becoming stronger and gaining confidence as you do so.

You need to avoid arrogance—a too-high opinion of yourself—and pursue humility and modesty. Humility and modesty are not self-hatred or deprecation, they are an honest understanding and assessment of yourself.

Appreciate Your Gifts

You can only learn to love yourself by appreciating and developing the strengths, the gifts, you have been given.

Lead Yourself

And you need to be able to lead yourself. You need to avoid temptation. You need to push yourself even when you want to quit. You need to gain confidence by setting goals and leading yourself to achieve them.

There are a few more things about developing your relationship with yourself.

Lead the Story of Your Life

You need to understand that you are writing the story of your own life. It might be a short story. It might be a long one. Every day you write another page in that story of your life. You shouldn’t just wander through life. You should pursue the story of your life with purpose, acting in the best way that you know how at the time.

And that brings us back to our purpose in life: Happiness. You need to ignore the distractions, the temptations, of wealth or status or whatever, and really focus on developing high-quality relationships with yourself and others. The highest quality relationships are based in love.

So, the story of your life, pursuing Happiness, should be the story of you developing high-quality, loving relationships with yourself, your family, your friends, your co-workers, your fellow citizens and your Creator. Great relationships will give you the greatest chance for Happiness and success in life. Everything else is a distraction.

Pursue Wisdom

You need to pursue Wisdom—that is very important. Wisdom is much more than just knowledge of the Truth. Wisdom is knowledge of the Truth combined with the character to live that Truth. Wisdom comes from studying the lessons of the classroom and the lessons of life, combined with the self-discipline to do the right thing.

Every time. Especially when no one is looking.

Every time that you do the right thing, your character becomes stronger. Your wisdom becomes deeper. You become a better person who can be in even better, stronger, deeper and more fulfilling relationships with yourself and those around you.

That puts you on a better path writing a better story of your life pursuing Happiness.

Practice Love

Finally, you must practice love because that is the best, deepest and most fulfilling kind of relationship. You must practice humble love of yourself. Affectionate love for your family. Brotherly and sisterly love for your friends and co-workers. And passionate love (eros) and self-giving love (agape) for your spouse.

It is easy to love those who love you. The truly great person learns how to love those who persecute them.

Pulling It Together

So, let’s pull it all together.

Your life is your story of pursuing Happiness. Achieving Happiness in life is all about having high-quality relationships. The strength and depth of your relationships begins with having a great relationship with yourself.

How do you achieve that? The trick is to both love and lead yourself so you can love and lead others.

You must develop self-confidence and strength by setting and achieving goals as you lead the story of your life.

You must be humble—honest with yourself about yourself—through self-knowledge of your strengths, challenges and shortcomings.

The relationship you have with yourself becomes the foundation for the relationships you have with others. The better the foundation, the more fulfilling the relationships, and the happier you will be.

You should pursue wisdom—the combination of knowledge of the Truth with the good character to live the Truth. Wisdom is the wellspring of high-trust in relationships.

Finally, you should practice love in all things. Practicing love makes you a better person, makes stronger relationships and gives you the best chance for Happiness and fulfillment in life.

Back to Marine Corps Officer Candidate School. It was one of the toughest challenges of my life, but it was through that challenge, through the pain and failure and rare success, that I learned so much about myself. That I gained deeper confidence in myself. The OCS experience was a big factor in making me who I am today—hopefully for the better. It gave me the foundation to develop life-long relationships with others with whom I served in the Marine Corps—and outside of the Marines in life.

I’m Pete Bowen.

Tragedy, Unhappiness and Burnout

This week I read an article about a 27-year old young woman who hanged herself in her New York apartment.

She left her mother apology notes online and in her apartment that read she “felt absolutely nothing during what should have been the happiest and darkest times in my life.”

The notes continue, “I realize I am undeserving of thinking this way because I truly have a great life on paper. I’m fortunate to eat meals most can only imagine. I often travel freely without restriction… However all these facets seem trivial to me…”

And she writes, “It’s the ultimate first world problem, I get it. I often felt detached while in a room full of my favorite people…”

In my blog a couple of weeks ago, Millennials: Pursuing Happiness and Avoiding Burnout, I  talked about an article by Anne Helen Petersen that describes how millennials are feeling not just exhausted, but burned out chasing all the things they’ve been told to chase in life.

It was revealing that in almost 8.000 words about life, Petersen never mentioned Happiness or fulfillment or even relationships. Petersen concluded her article basically settling for being more aware of her burnout and attempting to seek some joy in life.

The Fundamental Problem: We Don't Know Happiness

I think these two stories capture a fundamental problem in our nation. We have more education, more wealth, better health, more travel and more prosperity than ever in history, and yet so many—especially younger people—seem sad, depressed or lack direction.

We need to fix that. We need to understand our meaning and purpose in life so that we can pursue and find fulfillment and Happiness. When we tap into that fundamental Truth about ourselves, we will be in the best position possible to be successful in all areas of our lives.

So, let’s be obvious about it. The meaning of life and your purpose in life are straightforward. The answer is Happiness.

Based on Petersen’s millennial article, it seems like we forgot to tell tens of millions of people that life is about Happiness. And we seem to have forgotten how to pursue Happiness.

Instead, we’ve become thoroughly captured and enthralled by shiny distractions in life. We’re chasing dozens of all the wrong things in life like social status and money, and stuff like the coolest cars and most expensive houses and newest smartphones and the most prestigious schools and travel sports teams.

I’m not saying that its bad to be rich or to appreciate beautiful things. These are all good things that can make our lives better.

But they are not the meaning of life.

They can provide short-term pleasure, but they can never provide long-term fulfillment. If you make the pursuit of these things for their own sake the focus of your life, you will inevitably find yourself in pain, unhappy and unfulfilled.

Meaning of Life: Happiness & Relationship

So, this is the first in a series of blog posts where we will talk about the purpose and meaning of your life—Happiness—and how you can pursue it.

We’ll take the best ancient, timeless wisdom and apply it to our current times and circumstances.

We’ll talk about some simple lessons that you can use to become successful and fulfilled in every area of your life—your personal life, your family life,  and your life with your friends and at your work.

Let’s talk about your life, your Happiness and your success. Let’s make it simple and easy to understand so you can apply it all areas of your life. So you can hand the Truth about Happiness and success to your own children.

Let’s start with Happiness itself. We’ll define Happiness generally as a way of life that brings you deep contentment, satisfaction and lasting joy.

So, if Happiness is not about money or status or fame, where do you find it? As we talked about in an earlier blog, Meaning of Life: Happiness, you find Happiness in high-quality relationships.

That’s not my opinion. That’s a finding from a Harvard study that has been following people and their children for 80 years. High-quality relationships don’t just lead to Happiness; they also lead to healthier and longer life.

It’s pretty simple.  The secret to Happiness in life is having high-quality relationships.

Six Areas of Relationship in Your Life

So, let’s unpack that. If we can identify where we have relationships in life, we’ll know where to focus our energy to achieve Happiness. Where do you have relationships in life? That answer comes down to six places: with yourself, your family, your friends, at work, in your community and with your Creator.

First is the relationship you have with yourself. This is the you that stands at the open refrigerator at midnight looking for a snack in relationship with the you that tells you a midnight snack is unhealthy. This is the you that knows you need to get that task done in relationship with the you that wants to procrastinate.

The relationship you have with yourself is very important because it is the foundation for all the relationships you have with others.

Second, there is the relationship you have with your family. That includes your spouse, your children, your brothers and sisters, and even your grandparents and cousins.

The third area of relationship is with your friends.

Fourth, there are the relationships you have at work. Those relationships fall into two basic areas: the relationships you have with your customers or clients, and the relationships you have within your own organization or team.

Fifth, is the relationship you have with other people in our community and nation. As American citizens, we are the leaders of our nation. We are the “We the people” that our Constitution is founded on. We must be very conscious of our relationships with and our responsibilities to our fellow citizens.

Finally, there is the relationship you have with your Creator. That’s your sixth relationship.

So, the meaning and purpose of your life is Happiness. You are made for Happiness and fulfillment in life.

You won’t find Happiness in money or social status or fame. Happiness comes from having high-quality relationships with yourself and others. If you want Happiness, everything you do in life should be focused on developing high-quality relationships.

The six areas of relationship in life—self, family, friends, work, community and Creator—are the places—the opportunities—where you can develop the relationships that lead to Happiness.

Happiness and Success

There’s more. Each of these areas is also an opportunity for your success.

Do you want a happy, successful family with successful kids? Focus on high-quality relationships with your spouse and kids.

Want success at work? Build great relationships with clients and develop high-trust, high-performance relationships with your team.

The best thing about all of this is that life ends up being quite simple. Life is all about relationships. Everything else in life either contributes to good relationships is the fruit of good relationships or distracts you from good relationships.

One Answer: Happiness / One Strategy: Good Relationships

Here’s one more great thing. Because life and Happiness and success are all about relationships, the things you do to build good relationships at home and with friends are the same things that will build great relationships and give you success at work.

Learn one set of powerful relationship-building strategies that applies to all areas of life.

That’s the deal.

In our future blogs, we’ll unpack your relationships in each of the areas, starting with your relationship with yourself, then through family, friends, work and community. We’ll learn about life and relationships, and then use that understanding to develop strategies and techniques that you can use to be successful.

As we go through this in future blogs, I want to hear your stories and thoughts and questions so together, in relationship, we can all learn as much as possible about life and Happiness and success and relationships.

I look forward to it!

Attacking the Bad and Stupid People

So, America, are we pissed off at each other enough yet?

It is seductive and easy to get pissed off at bad people. Stupid people.

You know the ones. The idiots out there on the other side. The fake news ones. They are ignorant. Selfish. Hateful. They deserve whatever bad things happen to them.

Doesn’t it feel good to be righteous? To defend your truth? To fight for something you believe in?  To tolerate the good stuff and be virtuously intolerant of what they’re doing?

Doesn’t it feel good to attack and denounce the bad and the stupid? Pat yourself on the back for making another tweet or Facebook post that points out their stupidity and evil with a witty and nasty retort.

We need to stop.

We need to stop this incessant, mean-spirited attacking of others. The attacks are stupid and self-destructive. Our attacks destroy our ability to live together as Americans; they threaten our own national security; and the more we attack each other the more it changes us—you and me—into ugly and mean-spirited people.

None of this attacking helps us achieve success and happiness as individuals or as an American nation. Let’s stop.

Bad Faith, Prejudice and Bigotry

Think about it. Most of our attacks start with the presumption that our opponent is bad and stupid. That’s why we are attacking them. We’ve probably never met the other person. We just know that they are bad because of their race or class or job or their pussy hat or MAGA hat or where they live or their political thoughts. And that justifies being mean to them.

We don’t really know them, but we’re willing to pre-judge and attack them based on their race or class or whatever. That’s prejudice.

We make no effort to know or understand them before we attack. We don’t listen to what they say in good-faith to understand them. Nope. Instead, we interpret everything they say in the worst possible way so we can have another opportunity to attack. Our attacks are in bad faith and prejudiced. That makes us bigots too.

When another is that bad and stupid, they aren’t a real person. Or at least they don’t deserve to be treated like a person. They are evil. They are demons. And so, they should be treated like demons.

Demonizing Others Destroys Us

But demonizing “others”, treating them like things, not people, has a long history of turning into truly evil situations like genocide, slavery, internment and mob lynchings. When you dehumanize others in your attacks, you begin a walk down a very dangerous path.

There’s more.

Attacking and demonizing others destroys your ability to develop good relationships with other people. It divides us deeply and emotionally. It poisons future opportunities for a relationship with that person or those people.

We lose the ability to come together as a community or nation to solve problems. That makes life much harder for everyone.

Demonizing others can destroy our own family and friendships. When we attack, we can find ourselves throwing away decades of friendship over a disagreement on some election.

And perhaps most important, when we are mean to others, when we attack and demonize them, we change ourselves. We become what we do, what we practice. It becomes a habit. It becomes part of our character, of who we are. We become mean-spirited, hateful people.

Every time we demonize another person we take another step on a path to mean-spiritedness and hatefulness. That meanness will inevitably seep into other aspects of our lives.

We know from an earlier blog that Happiness in life is all about high-quality relationships with other people. We know that work success depends on having great relationships with our clients and our co-workers.

Happiness and success—everyone wants that, right?

Well, demonizing others destroys our Happiness and success by destroying our ability to have high-quality, high-performance relationships. Demonizing others poisons the trust needed for great relationships. And demonizing others makes us mean-spirited, which undermines our own ability to have good relationships.

To sum it up, presuming the worst about others, and attacking and demonizing them is incredibly destructive on every level. It turns you into a mean-spirited person. It destroys relationships with family, friends and co-workers. And it tears our community and nation apart.

Happiness and Success by Presuming Good Faith

So, we need to stop. We need to find ways to come together as a community and nation. And we can start that process by giving other people the presumption of good faith.

Instead of starting with the presumption that the other person is an asshole who should be attacked, how about starting with the recognition that the other person is a human being. Like you and me. As a human, we should treat them with dignity, not loathing.

From the presumption of good faith, we can begin building a relationship with that person. We can discover what we share as people. We can use that relationship as an opportunity to learn from each other and our different experiences.

What if we started by sharing beers with each other instead of throwing beer in each other’s faces?

By presuming good faith in our opponents, by giving them the benefit of the doubt that deep-down inside they are decent people, we can take advantage of our current situation to pursue Happiness and success in all areas of our lives.

Happiness in life is all about high-quality relationships. The presumption of good faith is the starting point for developing high-quality relationships with your family, with your friends, your co-workers and the people in your community. These high-quality relationships will help you towards Happiness in life.

Practicing the presumption of good faith will change you. It will make you a more understanding, caring and kind-hearted person. You will be a good person who is well-prepared to be a great participant in a relationship. Presuming good faith will make you a better spouse, a better parent, a better friend and a better leader at work.

When you presume good faith, you will learn new things from the people that you previously demonized. You will gain wisdom. You will know how to put together high-quality relationships at work. You will be able to work with others to solve what were previously un-solvable problems.

To achieve success at work, in your family and in your community, you must put together high-performance teams. The highest-performance teams are based in trust. The presumption of good faith is your first and most important act of trust with other people—at work, in your family and in your community. It is the foundation for success in all parts of your life.

How We Can Practice the Presumption of Good Faith

So, what can each of us do to build the presumption of good-faith?

Start by actively listening to others. Set aside all the things you can’t wait to tell the other person. Set aside your concerns and feelings and anger. Actively listen to understand why the other person thinks and feels the way they do. Don’t judge them. Walk in their shoes. Get in their head. Not with the intent to counter or correct or attack them. Simply focused on understanding and appreciating them as a person, a human, just like you. Treat them like you want to be treated.

Find the things that you share, like a fixing cars or riding bikes or tasting beers or watching The Bachelor. Do some things together. Laugh together. Solve things together. Suffer with each other.

If you don’t share anything, then ask the person if they are willing to teach you what they are passionate about and why. Dive into it in good faith. You will likely learn new things, and appreciate people and life more.

If you really seek Happiness and Wisdom and Success, don’t passively wait for an encounter with those you oppose. Seek out someone with whom you deeply disagree, and practice building the relationship. You will surprise yourself on how much that helps you become successful at work and in your family, and how much it adds to your pursuit of Happiness.

I’m Pete Bowen.

Last week a writer from the millennial generation, Anne Helen Petersen, published an essay, “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation”. My millennial daughter recommended it to me. She said Petersen’s article captured the way she and many in her age group feel about life.

Petersen’s article is a good read that captures the real pain—the burnout—that millennials are feeling today.

Before any conservatives out there automatically dismiss her article because it’s on the liberal Buzzfeed website, just read and actively listen to the experience she describes. There is a lot to learn.

Baby Boomers and GenX people may be tempted to dismiss Petersen’s work as millennial whining. Don’t.

The burnout she talks about is real. This is not whining. The pain is being experienced by many in her generation. I think Petersen has done a very good job of describing that pain and grounding it in good stories and examples.

We need to listen because we care about our millennials and because her article can provide us some important insights and lessons about life.

Millennial burnout is telling us that something is off the tracks. We need to fix that.

I’ll give a synopsis, but make sure you read Petersen’s article. It is long and well-worth the time spent. You need to feel the burnout through her writing. It’s the burnout of a generation.

Synopsis

The article begins by describing the burnout in terms of having to chase endless items on to do lists. This endless chase is exhausting and eventually paralyzing. Petersen was doing the important, even difficult tasks, “But when it came to the mundane, the medium priority, the stuff that wouldn’t make my job any easier or work better, I avoided it.”

Through the rest of her piece, Petersen describes what she believes are the cause and history of the burnout.

Much of it is about how Petersen believes millennials were optimized by their parents to win in life. They weren’t allowed the dangerous activities of previous generations like playground jungle gyms or riding bikes without helmets. No teeter-totters or BB guns. Unstructured play became play dates. Unchanneled energy got medicated. Intensive parenting. Moms who became momma-bears and over-protected their kids.

And then there were the expectations. Petersen says,

“Those expectations encapsulate the millennial rearing project, in which students internalize the need to find employment that reflects well on their parents (steady, decently paying, recognizable as a “good job”) that’s also impressive to their peers (at a “cool” company) and fulfills what they’ve been told has been the end goal of all of this childhood optimization: doing work that you’re passionate about . Whether that job is as a professional sports player, a Patagonia social media manager, a programmer at a startup, or a partner at a law firm seems to matter less than checking all of those boxes.”

Petersen and millennials clearly think meeting those expectations is increasingly hard or impossible. They are loaded with college debt.  Many had to live with their parents after college graduation. As she says:

"It’s also about the psychological toll of realizing that something you’d been told, and came to believe yourself, would be “worth it” — worth the loans, worth the labor, worth all that self-optimization — isn’t ."

And social media makes it worse. Petersen says:

"One thing that makes that realization sting even more is watching others live their seemingly cool, passionate, worthwhile lives online. We all know what we see on Facebook or Instagram isn’t “real,” but that doesn’t mean we don’t judge ourselves against it . I find that millennials are far less jealous of objects or belongings on social media than the holistic experiences represented there, the sort of thing that prompts people to comment, I want your life. That enviable mix of leisure and travel, the accumulation of pets and children, the landscapes inhabited and the food consumed seems not just desirable, but balanced, satisfied, and unafflicted by burnout."

Petersen continues:

"And when we don’t feel the satisfaction that we’ve been told we should receive from a good job that’s “fulfilling,” balanced with a personal life that’s equally so, the best way to convince yourself you’re feeling it is to illustrate it for others ."

It seems clear that Petersen and millennials have been told that life is about certain things—like the satisfaction from a good job that’s “fulfilling” balanced with a personal life that’s equally so. So they work harder. Optimize their lives more. Create more tasks for their to-do lists that never end and never lead to the promised satisfaction.

For millennials,

"Outings should be “experiences,” food should be healthy and homemade and fun, bodies should be sculpted, wrinkles should be minimized, clothes should be cute and fashionable, sleep should be regulated, relationships should be healthy, the news should be read and processed, kids should be given personal attention and thriving. Millennial parenting is, as a recent New York Times article put it,"

When they get exhausted and burned out, they are told to add yet more tasks to their lists—like finding leisure time, doing yoga, meditation. Which adds overwhelming to the already overwhelming.

There is no sense of accomplishment. Just more things to chase. It seems hopeless. There is no solution for it.

Near the end, Petersen clearly puts the blame on what she believes is a system that drives this social reality. She says, “Until or in lieu of a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system, how can we hope to lessen or prevent — instead of just temporarily staunch — burnout ?”

She says that the experience of writing the piece was cathartic, that it made her feel great. And that is good. Now that she understands that her malaise is burnout and that burnout applies to her, she can at least be aware of it and honest with herself.

And she comes to the realization that “It’s a way of thinking about life, and what joy and meaning we can derive not just from optimizing it, but living it. Which is another way of saying: It’s life’s actual work.”

Some Points

Some important points before we move forward.

It is important that you feel the angst that Petersen describes. You can only do that by reading the article.

Avoid the temptation to dismiss the article as millennial whining or judge it from your experiences in life. Read it and listen.

Set aside Petersen’s attack on capitalism as the underlying cause of all this. While I think she is deeply wrong with the cause, let’s not get hung up on that here. If you want, we can address that in a future blog.

Where is Happiness and Meaning?

Now some observations and valuable lessons.

First, when I read the article, what jumped out at me was what appeared to be real and deep unhappiness in life.

In a 7,800-word article about life, the word “happiness” never appears. She uses the word “fulfill” only twice. Once to describe fulfilling a goal. The second time to describe a job that is “fulfilling.”

There is almost no sense that life is about Happiness or fulfillment. In the millennial world, life is about chasing aspirational tasks. It is only at the very end—in the last two sentences—that she mentions deriving joy and meaning from life.

Think about that in lieu of our earlier blogs/podcasts. In my blog, The Meaning of Life: Happiness, we talk about that 70 year Harvard study on happiness. It tells us that happiness exists and comes from high-quality relationships. Not only do good relationships make us happy, but happy people are healthier and live longer. Happiness is a real thing.

It seems obvious, self-evident, that we should all be seeking happiness. What else would you seek? The meaning of life is happiness.

More than anything, this article about millennial burnout comes across as an expression of deep unhappiness.

But the idea that life is about Happiness never occurs in the article. It’s not even on the radar screen. There is only the slightest sense, at the very end, after all the catharsis, that maybe we can derive some joy and meaning from life.

If you don’t have meaning in your life, if you don’t even know that we are supposed to seek Happiness in life, if life appears like a hopeless chase of never-ending tasks with no fulfillment, then of course you are going to be deeply unhappy.

Where is Relationship?

Second, we know that happiness comes from good relationships. When you read the article, how much does Petersen talk about relationship? I can’t find anything where relationship plays a significant role. She mentions a partner. She mentions sharing burnout with other millennials. She mentions working as a nanny, caring for two infants. In an article about life and pain and burnout, relationship plays no role.

Lessons from Millennial Burnout

What can we learn from this?

Let’s start by being clear that I am not blaming Petersen or millennials for their pain. Rather, the blame is on us, the older generations.

How would millennials know that life is about Happiness and meaning if we never told them? How could we do them such a disservice? How could we have failed them that way?

Why didn’t we teach them that life is about Happiness and relationships?

The short answer is, because we didn’t know we were supposed to. That history may be told in a future blog.

Blaming "The System"

In the article, Petersen blames the system for millennial burnout. For many millennials, there is only “the system” and they are its victims. It is little wonder that many millennials are blaming capitalism and the American political system for burnout when that is all they know there to be about life.

The never-ending pursuit of tasks with no deeper reason why? Of course, you’d become burned out.

We’ve lost the understanding that the system—whether it be our American political syste

Peggy Noonan and Magic Ponies...

A few weeks ago, I made a quick post about a column by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal about Americans—that’s you and me—and politics and “magic ponies.” With a new Congress coming in and the 2020 election already starting, it made sense to go into greater depth on this issue.

Noonan argues that Americans are voting for “magic ponies” like Trump and Obama based too much on emotion and not enough on their experience and judgment.

She is correct.

That failure to vote for wisdom and experience is a symptom of a much deeper and more threatening problem facing America. Facing us. Facing you and me.

And that problem is us. The problem is you and me.

America is United by Ideals, Not Blood or Ethnicity

Almost all nations in world history are grounded in ethnicity or tribe. You are Japanese because you are born Japanese. You are Tutsi because you were born in the Tutsi tribe.

In these nations, the people look to the rulers, the government, to solve their problems because those are the people who rule the nation or tribe. Its what they’ve been doing from the beginning. They are citizen-subjects of their ruling government

America is different. We are not united by blood or ethnicity. We are united by commitment to the American ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

In the American military and in our citizenship oath, we don’t swear allegiance to a king or ruler. We swear allegiance to “support and defend the Constitution.”

Citizen-Leaders Not Citizen-Subjects

Our politicians are not the leaders of America. We The People–you and me–are the defined leaders of America. We are not citizen-subjects of the government. We are citizen-leaders in our own nation.

That citizen-leadership goes way beyond the government. Through most of our history, We the People solved most of our problems using private associations. We formed non-profits, private associations and charities to tackle challenges like health care, education, homelessness and many other problems.

Tackling problems as private citizen-leaders does several important things. When we help others directly, we develop our own character, compassion and sense of community. All these are keys to Happiness in life.

When we are the leaders solving problems, we take ownership of the problems, investing ourselves in solving those problems. As citizen-leaders working through private associations, we solve problems more effectively, efficiently and with better response than the government can.

Finally, Americans have always been wary of a federal government that gains too much power and becomes tyrannical. Our Constitution is written to have three co-equal branches of federal government. The branches exercise checks and balances over each other, preventing any one branch from having too much power. That is designed to keep the federal government itself from having too much power and becoming tyrannical.

When we tackle problems ourselves, as citizen-leaders, we keep the power with the people, not the government. We prevent tyranny and maintain our freedom.

In his famous 1830’s book, Democracy in America, Alexis De Tocqueville tours America and notes this fundamental difference between America and Europe. In Europe, citizen-subjects are dependent on the ruling class and government to lead and do things for them. In contrast, Americans take leadership onto themselves, forming associations with other Americans to accomplish things.

Our Failure as Citizen-Leaders

Today, We the People, you and I, are failing as citizen-leaders in at least two ways.

First, as citizen-leaders, we are responsible for choosing the best representatives possible to manage our government day-to-day. Nevertheless, the media is filled with complaints about our government from all sides. We seem to be very unhappy with the representatives we choose.

The problem is, the representatives we choose are little more than a reflection of us–We the People.

It is very simple: if we are not wise, we cannot recognize and elect wise representatives. The representatives we elect are not going to be any better than the people electing them.

It is dishonest and disingenuous to blame our failure to elect the best representatives (politicians) on the politicians.

If we don’t like what we see, then it’s our fault. If we want wise leaders, we need to seek and recognize wisdom ourselves. The responsibility is on us.

Second and most important, we’ve largely abdicated our critical role as citizen-leaders in America.

Through our history, we’ve developed active, heroic and wise leaders who become good people by tackling problems big and small.

These leaders are united by a shared commitment to the Truths expressed in the Constitution and founding documents of our nation. That’s why we owe allegiance to the Constitution.

These leaders combine good knowledge and good character into wisdom. They are strong, resilient and compassionate. They set a good example as citizen-leaders and inspire those around them to greatness as well. These citizen-leaders recognize that neither they nor America has never been or will ever be perfect. Nevertheless, they call all of us to strive for greatness together serving each other.

These are the citizen-leaders in all areas of life who have made America an exceptional nation in world history, setting the example for other nations.

The Danger of Postmodern Tyranny

In contrast, our increasingly postmodern colleges, media and culture teach our young people that there is no objective Truth, only personal truth. They tell our young people that no one else is like them. No one else can truly understand their personal truth.

Our young people are taught to focus on their feelings, on how they have been oppressed, offended and victimized. They are taught to be outraged by this oppression and to leverage their outrage to demand things from others.

They learn that those who disagree with them are not worthy of respect. They are not human. They should be dismissed and even demonized.

They are taught that it is America herself that has oppressed, offended and victimized them. America is terrible and owes them.

This postmodern approach is deeply selfish because it focuses so much on personal truth, feelings and entitlement.

The emphasis on personal truth instead of shared Truth destroys our sense of community. It denies the shared Truths expressed in our Constitution and our founding documents. When we have nothing in common, when there is nothing that unifies us as Americans, we no longer have an American community.

Finally, our young people are taught that the government is only the solution to their demands—and to problems in general. This is so deeply ingrained in our education system that most young people don’t even realize that there might be alternatives.

When the government is perceived as the only solution and when people can’t persuade others to agree with their solutions, it becomes all too easy for people to use the power of the federal government to force their solutions on others.

And that is tyranny. It is profoundly anti-American because it is in direct opposition to our Constitution and the timeless Truths upon which our nation was founded.

As that happens, America will no longer be unified by our shared ideals as citizen-leaders. It will be unified by the brute force of a government exercising authority over its subjects.

You may get what you want from that government initially, but that will be short-lived. The governing elites will inevitably abandon you for what they desire and think best. Always, in the end, for themselves.

That is the battle we are in. That is why America is so divided. That is why we are so unhappy with our elected representatives.

We are abandoning our American heritage of being citizen-leaders coming together to pursue Truth, Happiness and Justice. We are engaging in an all-out battle to use the federal government to impose our will on others.

The Answer

So, what is the answer?

If we want a better America, if we want better representatives in government, then we need to clean up our own acts. As individuals, as communities and as a nation.

We need to reclaim our role as citizen-leaders. We must come together and reaffirm the Truths upon which our nation and Constitution are founded. We must ingrain those Truths into our young people. Remember, we are not united by blood or ethnicity, but by those Truths.

We need to form our young people into wise, compassionate leaders who seek Truth and Happiness together. As we know from earlier podcasts, their happiness depends on having high-quality, loving relationships with others. To be wise, we must form their knowledge and character through teamwork.

And to achieve any of that, we must develop our own leadership, wisdom and compassion. We can’t possibly form our young people into good citizen-leaders if we aren’t good, wise, compassionate citizen-leaders ourselves.

Why should we pursue this? Because becoming a better citizen-leader will not only put our nation on the right track but it will give you the best chance at happiness and success in life.

Remember, your happiness is based on high-quality relationships. When you are a better leader, you will have a better relationship with yourself and with your family. You will have better relationships at work and with your fellow citizen-leaders. It will make you more successful in all aspects of your life. At work, at home and in your community.

What are you doing today to improve your own character, knowledge, compassion and teamwork so that all of us can live happier, more successful lives?

What are you doing in your family and at work to develop and practice wisdom? What are you doing to encourage your fellow citizen-leaders to develop wisdom and leadership themselves?

...