Does this really need to be said?

This is going to sound like a shaggy dog story, but ber with me - there is a point.

A friend of mine, Heather,  told me the following story:

"I'm a small time landlord, and recently rented one of my apartments to a single mom, a nice lady with two young girls. The woman was getting out of what sounded like an abusive marriage, and in a real hurry to sign a lease before she left the country briefly to care for her ailing grandmother. She was REALLY not looking forward to this -- she grew up here, didn't know her grandmother all that well, and hates being in Fiji, her grandmother's country.  She was the best family member to go, though, because she makes her living caring for the elderly.

"She signed a 1 year lease, gave me a deposit, and we made plans for her to move in just after the first of the month. This would give me a couple of days to clean up the place in case the last tenant didn't do a great job.

"Four days before she was supposed to move in, she called from Fiji, and reached me on my cell phone. The number was blocked. I was in the car on the way to a MeetUp, but my friend, Jack, was driving, so I took the call. My tenant said, "My grandmother died, and I'm stuck here healing with cultural issues." Wow! I was shocked, and said I was sorry. Then she said, "I don't know if I'll be back in 2 weeks or 2 months. Can I get out of the lease? What do I do?"

"I told her calmly, but firmly, that she had signed a lease, and I was not about to let her out of it. That she was responsible for the $10,000 amount of the lease. That the law is that I'm required to make reasonable efforts to find another tenant, but that she is responsible for any deficiency. That is, if it's vacant for a month, she owes me a month's rent. And that I'll take her to small claims court to collect whatever she owes me, as soon as I know the amount of my damages."

"She said she understood, and would call me back in a few days to let me know if she could borrow enough money from a family member to keep the lease. I said I understood, and would look forward to her next call. Of course, she never called back.

"That was bad enough. Then I heard through a mutual friend that Jack was telling people that I dealt with this all wrong. That I should have just expressed my condolences and put off a serious discussion for another time. Never mind that he didn't know the situation, that he didn't hear her side of the conversation, that he didn't know the phone number was blocked, so I had no way to reach her, that he's never been a landlord, that he didn't know the law, and that I really need the money.

"So now, I'm not only out a tenant, but my reputation is being ruined by an ignorant jerk, who apparently knows better than I do what to do in my situation -- and is happy to tell anyone who will listen. And who is so cowardly as to not tell me this to my face. By the way, I tried to approach him to talk about it, but he has excuse after excuse as to why he 'can't' get together. What can I do?"

If he won't meet with you, there's not a lot you can do, except to realize that there are ignorant, cowardly jerks everywhere, and to let it roll off your back. You did the best you could. As my grandmother would have said, "Don't dignify that with an answer." Focus your attention on more positive things -- and let this go.

I think the lesson here is more about not being in Jack's position. How do you avoid that? In the words of Craig Ferguson (yes, the guy from the Late Late Show -- he's a very perceptive guy, not just a funny one), ask yourself these three questions:

1. Does this need to be said?
2. Does this need to be said by me?
3. Does this need to be said by me now?

And if the answer to any of those questions is "no",  keep your mouth shut.

How to keep showing up!

In the fall of my second year in business school, my friend, Candy, who'd just completed a summer job and been offered a full time post by that company for after graduation, had to go to a company recruiting cocktail party on top of studying for mid-term exams. Trying to put myself in her shoes, I sympathized with her time crunch, as well as the stress I thought this would bring (or it would have brought for me).

Candy looked at me with a wry smile, and laughed softly, "Oh, no, this isn't stressful! All I have to do is show up. I'm good at showing up!" She continued, "I'll get brownie points for showing up. That's  really all I have to do --  show up and say 'hi' to a few people I know, so that they know I'm there, as part of the team. I don't have to impress anyone -- they've already offered me the job. I don't even have to talk to the recruiters much; they're more interested in prospects they don't know."

This idea that sometimes, all you have to do is show up, stuck with me. Or as Woody Allen said, "Eighty percent of success is showing up."

I'm reminded to mention this now, because I personally have a lot to show up for at the moment. In fact, it seems never ending -- the weekly radio show, the clients, my other businesses which seem to constantly need something, let alone friends and family. (Did I mention taking the barest of acquaintances in for surgery last week because he had no one else?)

I'm actually really good at showing up. I know not everyone is, though, and I think that's mostly caused by lack of motivation. So how do you maintain your motivation?

• Keep reminding yourself of the big picture -- when you see how a tiny action can really help with the big goals of your life, you'll keep on showing up for the little stuff. 
• Remember that "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", as Lao-Tzu said. Yes, you have to take a lot of those single steps, but only one is the first one, and the 'showing up' ones are pretty easy.
• Ask yourself, "How much effort is this really? How can I systematize this so that I can do it with almost no effort?" For example, if you're a coffee drinker, you have surely devised a system to make coffee so efficiently that you barely notice making it any more. You can do that with many things in life.
• Try to find the fun -- or something positive -- in showing up.

Last week, I had a computer nightmare (believe me, you don't want to know the details!). Showing up to deal with it sucked. But the big picture is that I need that computer to run my businesses, and to do the radio show. The first step was to try to do the updates I needed by myself, using all the online help available in forums. When that wasn't enough, I called Apple for help. When that wasn't enough, the online help desk made me an appointment at the local Apple Store for help. When they couldn't solve my problem, they sent me to an outside company who is one of Apple's premium service sites.

There, I met the owner, who is not only the most competent Mac person I've ever met (he almost solved my problem completely, and told me how to do the rest myself), but also turned out to be interested in a lot of things I'm interested in that have nothing to do with computers -- star visitors, the unfairness of our current economic system, angels, the effects of vibrations, etc. We had a fascinating conversation that went on long past the completion of my computer issues. Meeting this man turned out to be the 'something positive' in showing up.

Can meditation make you lucky?

Did you know that there's a structure to luck? There is.

And if you've ever lost something, then relaxed and felt yourself being led to just the thing you though you'd lost, you may have wondered if there were a connection between the two. There is -- learn what it is tomorrow.

Join me tomorrow for a FREE teleclass, in which we'll explore how you can be luckier, as well as the surprising ways in which happiness, success, health and luck are connected.

When: Jan. 21, 10AM PST

Where: wherever you are

Sponsor: Up2Yoga.com

To sign up, click here.

Meaningful Work

In his book, "Outliers, The Story of Success", Malcolm Gladwell defines meaningful work as work that has

• complexity
• autonomy
• a connection between effort and reward

I agree, and I think I'd take it further. More than just complexity, it needs a degree of difficulty that is a 'stretch' for the worker (if I remember correctly, this comes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow"). This 'stretch' will, of course, be constantly changing, because what begins as a 'stretch' eventually, through practice, becomes quite easy. When you rode a bicycle for the first time, it was really hard! And pretty soon, it became so second nature that you almost didn't notice you were doing it. Of course, if the stretch is too great, you get frustrated, because there is no reward for all that effort.

Webster's New World Dictionary defines 'autonomy' as being self-governing or functioning independently of other parts. Obviously, the level of autonomy varies from the relatively low level of the assembly line worker to the relatively high ones of the solopreneur or research scientist. Those with the lowest level of autonomy, that is, the lowest amount of control over their work, tend to have adverse health outcomes because of it. I suspect that above some minimum level, however, different people prefer different levels of autonomy.

The connection between effort and reward is a bit murkier, however. What sorts of rewards? Monetary? Benefits? Appreciation? Status? And what happens when the relationship between effort and reward changes for the worse, i.e. more work, less reward? I know I've had several small business owners remark to me that "I'm working harder for less" in the last few months -- and it's true for me, as well.

So what do you do if that connection between effort and reward isn't what it used to be? Here are a few ideas about where to look for that improved connection between work and reward (in no particular order):

• Realize that things have shifted -- permanently. You can call it the economy, but it's really larger than that. The industrial model (more or bigger is always better, regimentation) has broken down. The earth can't support it, for one thing. Factory farming (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) is poisoning the earth, from toxic fertilizers to seeds that are controlled by one company to poisonous vats of excrement. Fossil fuel, which is what allowed our industrial culture to flourish, is causing global warming -- and is running out. (That may be a good thing, in the long run, but it's destabilizing in the short run.) Treating people like numbers for health care doesn't work, either. We are moving to appreciating each person's unique make up.
• Looking backwards isn't likely to help. The earth supported many fewer people before the industrial revolution than it does now. The speed of the internet, and the connections it makes, are genuinely new, and not likely to go away.
  
• The speed of processing has outstripped human rational thinking. We all need to process faster -- and the fastest human processing is intuition. So begin working with yours so that you learn to trust it. (And call me if you'd like some help there -- either in private sessions or in classes.)
• People do still have needs -- food, clothing, shelter, health, safety, connection/belonging, and self-actualization -- but you may want to consider how your talents, skills and resources can be useful lower down on Maslow's hierarchy. Anything that helps with health (human or the earth's) or efficiency, i.e. doing more with less, is probably a good idea.
  
• At some level, you agreed to be here, on Earth, at this interesting/critical time. So part of you knows that, and knows what you came here to do -- and it may well not be what you think. Listen to your own heart -- it knows.
• Count your blessings regularly. That will both point you in the right direction and keep your spirits up.
• Group effort and sharing are key to this. There's an old problem, referred to as the commons problem. If a community has a finite amount of grazing area available to it, what's best for an individual herd owner is to have as many cows as possible. But if everyone does this, there are too many cows, they're all sickly, the land gets overgrazed and in the long run, won't support very many cows at all. What's best for the community is for them to agree on the number of cows that's best for the community and how they're going to apportion that number. (Apparently, they actually did this with the fish in the waters off Iceland -- mentioned incidentally in Michael Lewis' wonderful article about Iceland's financial meltdown.)
  

It's an incomplete list, and I'm working the murkiness like everyone else. Co-housing, anyone? Want to to add to the list?

Do you want to be happier? More successful?

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a very brief talk on the relationships of meditation, luck, emotional awareness and success, as part of a larger program given by others. There was a lot of material, actually too much for me to cover in the ten minutes I had, and that bugged me. Still, people were quite blown away at the picture I’d drawn for them of how all these things relate to and reinforce each other. So after I sat down to listen to the rest of the program, it hit me — this information needs to get out there! People need to know not only about this reinforcing relationship, but also about all the exercises that one can do to feed the virtuous cycle. So I had an idea... But first...

Quick — How happy are you, on a scale of 0 –10? (Where 10 is “it couldn’t possibly get better — life is a blast!” and 0 is “I’d be better off on the other side”.) Check inside quickly to answer that (whatever number comes up first is the right one). Then scroll down...

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If you answered less than 10, would like to improve that happiness level? (And if the answer is 0 – 1, please go get individualized professional help now.)

If you’re reasonably happy, or so-so, or even kinda bummed, and would like to be happier day to day, read on.

Did you know there are simple, scientifically proven strategies (no, no drugs!) to boost your happiness and sense of well-being, not to mention your success? Because there is now lots of research into the psychology of happiness, emotional awareness, the effects of meditation on the brain and body, and the structure of luck, which you can use to improve your life. But it’s fragmented into hundreds, maybe thousands, of different books and websites.

You could find all this information yourself, but why bother? Do you have that much time? I’ve gathered much of the best of the current research in one place. How much would you be willing to pay for all this information? $300? $500? $1000?

I’m offering it, along with some experiential tools not included in the literature, this one time only, for FREE (of course, there is a small catch, but it is for your own good)!

I’m offering a teleclass, based in solid scientific research into meditation, luck, happiness, and emotional awareness, which aims to boost that happiness level, along with your success, by giving you simple, easy tools and strategies. This is groundbreaking, as I haven’t seen anyone put all these things together in one place. There will be some lecture, especially in the first session, to explain the framework for the class, some guided meditations, some group discussion, homework (about 30 – 40 enjoyable minutes daily — and you may already be doing some or much of it), and questionnaires.

Here are the details:

When: 5 Wednesdays, 6/13, 6/20, 6/27, 7/11 and 7/18, 6PM PDT, which is 9PM EDT, for 45 – 60 minutes each

Where: Wherever you are, by long-distance telephone. However, you must not be driving a car, as it would be too dangerous to take part in the guided meditations.

Cost: Because this is a beta test, it is FREE, if you (a) attend all teleclasses and (b) fill out all questionnaires (don’t worry, they’re short). If you don’t do these things, the cost is $100, which is what it will be in the future. I do this because if you don’t attend all the classes, and don’t fill out all the questionnaires, I don’t know what is working, or how well.

Contact: Hollis Polk at hollis@888-4-hollis.com, 650-616-9377, or 888-4-hollis (888-446-5547) to sign up, get details and/or ask questions.

I’m looking forward to this — it will be fun! Please join me for what promises to be a life-changing journey!