Sokanu: The Blog

I am currently reading How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard. The book stemmed out of the article here, which I have linked to many times before. Besides being one of the best books I've read in a long time, it has great similarities to our purpose here at Sokanu. Not only does it talk about finding your passion in life, but it also speaks about finding your true purpose in life. 

The author understands deeply that the personal relationships that we build are by far the most important thing that we have in our lives. Happiness is generally achieved through the quality of these close relationships. I will go into more of this in later posts - but the general theme is that the book does not focus on just careers, or just relationships, or spirituality. It covers all of these things and how this makes a whole person.

One of the things that I took out of the book is the general association with "caring" deeply about the things that matter to you most in your life. As general as this sounds, most people do not follow this in any capacity. I'd like to spend the rest of this post talking about this principle - and how I believe it is the only thing that can lead to greatness.

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The secret to becoming successful in life is simple - care deeply about whatever you do. Care about your relationships with your family, friends and significant other. Care about your health. Care about your spirituality and why that makes you a better person. And lastly, care about your career & direction in life.

Caring itself is the difficult part. To care means to put a large amount of focused energy into one area that most people do not. Becoming an "expert" at something means that you care more about that thing than other people do.

We can spot the people who care about their work a mile away. They light up whatever room they are, overwhelming the audience with their passion. They are the people that know way too much about their specific topic. Caring about a relationship means you actually listen when the other person talks. It means we have empathy towards someone's situation, regardless of how far removed it is from our own. 

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Most people say they care, but they do not. If they did, they wouldn't complain about how much their work sucks. They wouldn't look at all of the negative things that exist around them. They would learn to frame things in such a way that problems become insignificant. And lastly, if they truly cared - they would be great at what they did.

We all know great parents. We all think we are one. But great parents give every ounce of themselves into making their children better people. They put their children first, themselves second. They watch what they eat during pregnancy (or before). They optimize their child's health when they are young. They spend time teaching a child, even when they know the child doesn't understand what they are saying (scientists know that they do). They know that their purpose in life has become to give their child the best possible chance to be happy in life. 

The reason most people don't become great is because they don't care enough about things to throw themselves 100% into it. They are unsure of the future, and afraid of the hard work involved. They are too selfish to dedicate themselves to someone else. They are too used to being comfortable to push themselves beyond that point.

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Happiness is the ultimate goal in life. Regardless of the area, you need to be able to be great at what you do. And the path to becoming great is to care more about something than anyone else in the world. Caring is hard - but then so is life. 

I think a lot of the world's problems come from the fact that we are, as a species, very poor at framing things against other things. There are multiple terms for this, including: zooming in vs. zooming out, being proactive vs. reactive, or having a micro vs. macro view of the world. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to be using the latter terminology.

What do I mean by this? If you observe most people, you will notice that the problems that they face are relatively insignificant to everyone but themselves. Of course this is to be expected. However, very often this personal view of the world limits people to a degree that is often damaging. I think that many of the problems that people have are a result of having not been taught to frame things in a micro. vs macro way.

First, some terms. Micro, or microscopic, in this context means small, or things related to you personally. Macro, or macroscopic, means large, or things related to many people. I use these distinctions because most people are familiar with them from economics, and the same sorts of principles apply to people.

Most people live in a bubble. That bubble is defined by their circle of influence. Very often that can be detrimental when it comes to making life decisions. Most of us are raised by our parents to have a very microscopic view of the world. Any hardship that falls upon us is massive in nature, because we have nothing to frame it against. A relationship ending, a job loss, or moving houses can seem like overwhelming tasks or events, even though these are extremely small in nature. 

Why is this an issue? Aren't these problems important? Of course they are, but you can't lose perspective of where you are in the world. If you spend 3 months stressing about a move to a house down the block, you are probably making yourself sick for absolutely no reason. 

One of the best principles I have ever learned is something called the "zoom out, zoom in" theory. Whenever you are facing a problem or situation, try and zoom "out" of your body to 20,000 feet, and look down on yourself. Then look at everyone else on the planet. Have a macro view on what is going on in the world. Are people facing a natural disaster? Poverty? Murder? A massive fire down the block? What is happening? While zoomed out, give yourself the perspective you need to center yourself, and then zoom back in. How important is that problem now? Probably not very.

I was once given a piece of advice, and while it may sound harsh, it is very true and is extremely helpful. The advice is - "nobody cares". Next time you think that you are having "the worst day ever" because your local beer store ran out of your favourite beer, or because you lost a brilliant employee, or because your friend forgot to buy you something for your birthday, remember - nobody outside of yourself and your circle cares. That should give you enough perspective from a macro level to significantly decrease the severity of the situation, and should allow you to deal with it on a normal level.

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This can be applied to life very easily, and more specifically - careers. Most people attack career discovery from a micro level. I want a job = I need a job right now = what job can I get right now. Very few people zoom out to imagine themselves five years from now, and see how that job will affect their life a few years from now. When approaching career development, give yourself the respect that you deserve and take a macroscopic look at your life. Ignore things that don't align what that view and then make decisions accordingly. 

Very few people understand the residual power that small actions actually have. Meeting people for coffee, building relationships, reading books, working out, eating healthy, etc... are all things that take a very macro perspective. They don't give instant gratification, they take a very long time to pay off, if ever. If you can master the ability to consistently frame your actions against a macroscopic perspective, your short term actions actually become small long term decisions. That small shift should make your life a lot easier, because you put less pressure on every action you take right now. 

Look at your decisions like you are picking a stock or portfolio of stocks. Are you going to try and beat the market by taking a micro perspective on an industry? Or are you going to plan 20 years out, take a macro perspective on all industries, and plan around that? Very few people beat the market on a short-term basis, and even when they do, they often lose in the next year. The reason? They are not in control - even though they think they are.

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The lesson here is - stop craving instant gratification. We are a society that thrives on it. We make decisions about our lives like we are choosing which app to download. Actually, we often take more time to decide which Angry Birds we are going to download. Why is this? Is life not important to you? Of course it is - but thinking on a macro level is hard work. However, I think that if you can master the ability to frame all of your decisions against something larger, life becomes a lot less stressful. You put less pressure on yourself for each action you take, and you can approach life being thankful for the things you do have. Remember - we have already won the lottery - just take the time to appreciate it. 

Life is an eternal education. We are almost always students of life, learning more every day. Every person we meet, show we watch and book we read - we are learning. Part of the problem with our society is that we seem to define education as the standardized years in which we go to "school", when of course this is not the case. 

What most people don't realize is that we are also teachers. For every person we are influenced by, we in turn influence others. Our actions cause other people to stop and question why we did what we did. Our actions show kindness and compassion towards others. We are always leaving an impact, day by day. Our circle of influence grows along with ourselves.

The way that I try to see life is as a giant classroom. In that classroom there are teachers (your mentors, parents, and influencers) and there are students (the people you influence). Your job is to learn and to represent both sides. If you are constantly growing, your platform for teaching will grow. Your words will become more powerful, and your influence will spread further. 

One of the things we must realize is that the world is completely open. You are influencing others whether you believe so or not. We are all teachers now, more than ever. We all tell stories every day. Remember:

Every life has a story. Stories are made up of experiences. Your experiences make up the lesson plan for your life. Use your life as a class.

Every day, we make decisions that have good or bad consequences for our future selves. (Can I skip flossing just this one time?) Daniel Goldstein makes tools that help us imagine ourselves over time, so that we make smart choices for Future Us.

It's obvious that humans are all different. It's obvious that even within your family, you are completely different than your parents and siblings. You might like basketball, they may detest sports. You may be a musician, your brother has trouble spotting a treble clef. Why, then - do we make some of life's most important decisions in the exact same way?

Take relationships for example. How do we generally approach a relationship; whether professionally, personally or romantically? The first determinant of this is the way that our parents act around each other and other people. Are they quiet and shy, staying at home on Friday nights are rarely having people over for company? Or are they loud, outgoing, and always surrounded by people? Chances are part of your social behaviour stems from this pattern. How does you father act around your mother when he gets home from work? How strict were your parents when it came to social interactions with other kids your age? Were you allowed to "follow the crowd" or were you taught to think differently?

What is the result? Generally the way that we approach & treat other people stems from our experiences with people growing up. Obvious? Yes - but important to note. It has a lot to do with how we perceive & interpret the world around us. In fact, nearly every important decision we make is not based on empirical, unbiased data - but instead on human emotion, bias and perspective. This is why we "guess" what is best for us in life. This is why we make decisions in almost the exact same way. What do we mean by "guess"? Let's dig a little deeper. 

Offline Influences:

The most likely reason you are in a relationship with the person you are, believe in the religion you do, eat the food that you do and choose the career that you end up in are based on your offline influences. They shape nearly every aspect of our life. 

So what's the problem? If we've been doing this forever, why does it need to change? Well - it's great, expect for the fact that humans are generally very bad at predicting what is best for us. Around 60% of marriages end in divorce, many more are unhappy but not legally separated. Most people are unhappy in the career they are in (or else Sokanu wouldn't need to exist) and the method that we select a career in the first place is totally broken. We eat foods that are horrible, both intentionally and unintentionally, with no thought of how it will affect our future. The conclusion? We are very bad at predicting & doing what is best for us.

This is why making most important decisions based on what other people "think" is not always a good idea. Everyone in the world grows up and has a certain "filter" on how they see the world. People only see things that fall into their realm of perspective. Due to this, each person has a certain level of "bias" they carry around with them. So when your parents, friends or teachers give you advice on what to do with your life, you are basically getting three different pieces of bias that are smashed together that come out as "advice". Hopefully most of this advice is good, but some may not be.

The major problem is that as we grow up, we don't really ever get to know ourselves. It's not like we can live within a contained vacuum for our entire lives, so we must be influenced. The real challenge is not letting that influence sway who you are intrinsically. When this happens, we begin to "guess" what is best for us in every major decision.

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Guessing is not the optimal way to choose a career. Just because your friends and family are teling you there is a lot of money in the financial industry does not mean that you should be in that industry. Don't be indifferent to the major decisions in your life. Don't let everyone else make decisions for you that influence the rest of your life. Take every single piece of advice you get, absorb it, and filter it. Throw out what doesn't apply to you, and keep what does.

Being this analytical is not a natural thing to do. Luckily, the world is shifting towards more of a personalized model. Want to know what to eat for your blood type? Read this - http://www.dadamo.com/bloodtype_O.htm. And (very) soon, if you want to know what career to go into based on who you are as a person, Sokanu will help. More and more services are trying to get away from this "guessing" game and give you back the advantage.

The happiest people on the planet take control of their own destiny. They make decisions not alone on an island, but with the help of others. They are masters of filtering and knowing their own path. But the one thing they don't do is "guess" what is best for them. We should all try to start learning more about ourselves in order to become happier people. 

80% of the world lives on less than $10.00 a day(1). 50% of the world lives on less than $2.50 a day. The fact that you are able to sit and read this article is a semi-miracle. Our ability to read, interpret and process information is a gift, not a right. We are lucky in so many ways - yet people continue to complain about their "lot in life", regardless of how bad that lot really is. 

The chances that you were born in North America is extremely low. If you were born into a "modern" society, one that values freedom, education, health, innovation & diplomacy, you have already won. You have won The Ovarian Lottery, the greatest leg up you can have in life.

The world is filled with people who love to complain. They complain about how terrible their marriage is, how badly behaved their children are, how soul-sucking their job is, and frankly - how life sucks. And you know what? They are right. 

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” 
― Henry Ford

Most people sit around and wait for their "lucky day", the day where all of their dreams come true. They sit and pray, hoping they win the lottery, so all of their problems will be solved. What they don't understand is - they've already won. Just by being born here, by being alive past the age of five, by having the chance to be educated in a public school system - you have won. You are in the top 20%. 

Life is hard - we know this. Next time you start to complain about how hard your career or life is, think of this.

• There are 7 billion people on the planet Earth
• 80% of them make less than $10 dollars a day
• 1.2 billion people have a disability
• 7.6 million children a year die before the age of 5
• 23 million Americans are addicted to drugs or alcohol
• etc....

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What are you complaining about again? Remember - you have already won. Billions of people would trade anything to be in your position. You are the envy of the majority of the planet. You have already won the lottery. Now don't waste that winning ticket. 

Sources:

1. http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats