Sokanu: The Blog

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.

There are two types of golfers that exist (good one's anyway) - yardage players and feel players. A yardage player is someone who knows that their 7-iron will carry between 155-165 yards, no more and no less, if they hit it well. They have a yardage book that they carry with them at all times, or one of those laser yardage-finders. Yardage players make up the majority of golfers that you are going to play with.

A feel player, on the other hand, is someone who probably couldn't care less what the yardage is to the pin. If he knows he is somewhere between 150 yards and 180 yards out, he's fine. Why? He goes with his gut. Does this sound risky? It sure does. What if the club you pick comes up short, or you hit it over the green? The thing with feel players is that they can hit their 7-iron 160 just like the other guy, but they can also hit it 100 yards, 110, 120, 130, 140 and 150. 

Huh?

Golf is a game, like life, where nothing stays still. Being a yardage player only works if you are a) a professional golfer and b) hit the ball exactly flush every time. Otherwise, what happens if things aren't perfect. What if it is windy out? All of a sudden that 7-iron may only carry 140 yards. You can't hit the ball with the same trajectory, because the wind will knock it down. This is where being a feel player makes so much more sense. You are so used to going with what feels right that you just adapt your swing to the conditions. In the rough? Just swing a little more steeply. Windy? Choke down on the club. There are many examples of this.

I learned about being a feel player from a good friend of mine. We were in high school playing a round of golf together. We were both about 80 yards out from the pin, which is a very awkward yardage. No club "goes 80 yards" when you take a full swing. I was trying to figure out what club to use, and looked over at him. He just took out whatever wedge, and started to take practice swings. I said "how do you know how far you are going to hit that club?" and he said, "I don't - I'm just going to go with my gut on how hard to swing".

Little did he know that I was going to take that and use it as a wonderful principle in business. While this seems like a simple concept, it is so important in life. So many of us go through life being "yardage players" - we calculate everything in order to make sure we take the least amount of risk. We go into careers because we want to be safe, not because we love that career. We listen to other people religiously, because we don't have enough faith in ourselves. When we are young, we haven't yet determined a "yardage book" for ourselves, so we don't know what is right and wrong. So we listen to others.

What I think we should be doing is trying to incorporate elements of both players into our lives. We always need those yardages to make sure we are in the right area. Just like there is no use in using a driver for a 50 yard shot, there is no use in making wildly wrong decisions simply because we are ignorant. But once you are in that right "range", just like a club, you need to let your feel player take over. Use the advice that people give you, but ultimately go with your gut. 

If someone tells you that you can't be a painter "because there is no money in it" take that advice and lock it away in your brain. Then talk to a painter who has made money and get their perspective. Start to determine your "range" in perspective. When it comes time to make that decision, use that information to set you in the right direction, but always follow your gut. The difference between other people's advice and your gut is that you know yourself better than anyone else in the world. You know, internally, what is right and wrong for you. Your "feel player" is telling you this information - listen to it.

The last thing you want to regret when you are older is listening to the advice of others are not listening to yourself enough. I'm going to take a quote from http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2011/05/31/the-top-5-regrets-people-make-on-t... to end this post.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it. 

I ran across this article the other day and it really struck a chord. It's so simple, yet so powerful. The principles in the article can be applied to anyone, in any situation, around the world. Thought I would share it with everyone.

--

My dear Little Mama,

Now that you have turned 22, done your degree and beginning work can I please give you some advice! No, do not say no, please. It is a father’s prerogative!

Do not ever work
Picasso used to paint all the time, Henry Moore sculpt the whole day. Others would have thought they were working themselves to death. They actually were reenergizing and reinvigorating themselves. Do what you enjoy doing. Do not ever work.

Do not try hard
Let it simply flow. Jimmy Hendrix did not play guitar. He simply let his feelings flow unabated. Muhammad Ali used to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. (Do not go into boxing though!)

Do not go into any competition
Quality has no competition. Only mediocrity has competition. If you do what you do at the highest quality you have no competition. Quality creates a moat around yourself.

Do not market
Create your own demand. People are always on the lookout for the good. People seek out winners. Therefore be a winner all the time.

Do not read
Fire your imagination and creativity. Read not what is written but read into the writer’s mind. It is Einstein, one of the greatest minds of our times, who said that imagination is better than knowledge.

Do not run after money
Do not run after money. You will find that money runs faster than you do. Bring total mindfulness to whatever you are doing. Hit Nirvana. Money will feel ignored. It will stop running and fall back on you head over heels. In a heap.

Do not run after success
Carry on doing what you like doing without unduly bothering about success or failure. Success is also like charm. If you think you have it surely it will elude you.

Do not take advice
Advice is what others did not take but wish to give. Your mind is your best guide. Certainly keep your eyes and ears open. Absorb everything but add your own pinch of salt. Filter out what does not suit you. (Do not think I put this at the end on purpose. Honest.)

Love,
Dad

Mr. Attique Rabbani owns a small software firm out in Bangladesh. For his daughter’s recent graduation, he wrote this short letter to her, giving her some small (AWESOME) pieces of advice on what NOT to do with life

Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. Just ask Thomas Edison, the makers of WD-40, and vacuum guru James Dyson - who collectively tested thousands of ideas before finding a handful that stuck. But the point behind the practice of experimentation in innovative thinking, says IDEO General Manager Tom Kelley. Take risks frequently, and be prepared in case the resulting action fails to meet your expectations. Fail forward, and there will be learning from your mistakes along the way.

I just finishing reading this post and am absolutely blown away by what is written there. The man who wrote the post is an author named Clayton Christensen, who is a professor at Harvard University and the author of The Innovators Dilemma and The Innovators Solution.  He is famous for the concepts presented in The Innovators Dilemma, which have helped many companies produce millions of dollars of revenue.

The article is so fascinating because it deals with life in general, and what is important. By now you know that here on this blog we tend to speak about happiness and success a lot, and how to measure those things. That's why when the title of the article was: How Will You Measure Your Life? I was immediately interested.

I will probably write another article or two stemming from this article, but today I want to talk about a specific piece of info: Creating A Strategy For Your Life.

Mr. Christensen writes about this on page two of this article with relation to the students at Harvard Business School.  I will talk about it with relation to anyone in general.

When we hear someone talk about having purpose in our lives, we sometimes will immediately assume that the person is one of those "personal development gurus" that just wants to sell you a package and never talk to you again. The reality is though that having a purpose in our lives is the most important things that we can do for ourselves.

The reality is that most people in this world generally end up unhappy with their marriage, job and path in life. If we use the book Tribal Leadership as a reference, these people would be classified as "level 2", meaning "my life sucks".  They may not use those exact words, but they believe that they have been dealt a tough hand in life and they are bound to it.

Why is this? Drawing from the article, the reason is that those people had not created a strategy for their lives.  Of course, no-one goes into life thinking that they are going to end up divorced, unhappy and without purpose. Yet a high number of people seem to implement this strategy. The reason? They didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.

It is not a good sign when the majority of college students and young people in general spend little thought to the purpose of their lives.  When you are young, this is the perfect (and usually the only) time that you have to do this with dedication.  Think of your responsibilities right now versus what they will be when you are, say, 35.  When you are young you have no mortgage, you are probably not married and probably have no kids.  Going to college to learn and gain a degree for the career of your dreams is the perfect time to stop and think about what your guiding purpose is.

Keep in mind, though, this is not something you can just stop and think about sporadically and whenever you feel like it. Read what Clayton had to do in order to achieve this goal.

When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned.

Purpose is like a rudder that keeps you on course for the rest of your life.  Without it, you will just drift along, being swept side to side, however the sea wants to take you. And remember, your purpose doesn't have to stem from religion or faith. It can stem from any of your core set of values and ideals that you happen to live by.

The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow.