C-O-N-N-E-C-T, Part 3

NOTE: This is part 3 of 3 in a series on connecting. You can see Part 1 here and Part 2 here. I have proposed that there are three reasons we want to connect with one another: 1. Connecting adds value, not only for me but also for those to whom I connect. 2. Connecting is my job as a human being. 3. It’s all about love. In this post, we’ll talk about the last point: “It’s all about love.”

It’s all about Love

I limp my rental car down the road, gently making my way to the nearest tire repair location.  Last night a guest at the hotel I’m staying at pointed out that my right front tire was low. I checked the spare tire, and of course it wasn’t in much better shape. Six phone calls this morning to six different Hertz phone numbers led to my current situation, babying my low tire down the road, hoping the low tire does not become a flat.

This would not be so bad, except I’m in Chacras de Coria, Argentina and the nearest English speakers is, well, back at my hotel. My Spanish? I can at least manage to say “Yo no hablo español bien.” I drive to approximately where I think the tire repair shop is located and look for the “Gomeria” sign. No luck. I circle the village square another time, paying attention to the one-way streets that are not marked as one-way because, if you lived here you would know that this is a one-way street. I circle the square a third time, praying that the tire does not fail me.

Finally, on the fourth time around I spot a tin shack with a dirt driveway and no signage.  It appears as an oasis in a dessert, suddenly and happily. I pull into the yard and am immediately ignored by a 5’ 4” man in blue coveralls and a red cap. He has one other customer and he is absolutely absorbed with the customer and his tire, which sits on a repair stand, separated from the rim so the mechanic can explain the repair options to the customer.

The little mechanic talks in whispered tones to the customer. He stares intently into the customer’s eyes, while he unconsciously strokes the tire lovingly as if comforting a dying cat. They talk for a few moments and the customer, obviously short on cash, simply shrugs. Immediately the man in the red cap efficiently repairs the punctured tire, adding one more day of life to a fully spent tire.

When the customer leaves, the man in the red cap walks across the dirt driveway, wiping his hands on a shop towel. I panic, as I realize the fresh Spanish I just memorized from the phrase book has leaked out of my head. I have no idea how to tell the mechanic what I need.

“En que le puedo ayudar?” (May I help you?) he enquires. I stand carp-mouthed as my mind races for any Spanish that does not involve describing steak cooking preferences or ordering a bottle of Malbec. I point to the tire. “Despachio” I blurt out. Then in English “The tire has a slow leak.” My English makes the man stop suddenly. He stands near me. I realize I am not breathing and try to relax. He looks at the tire, and then looks at me. His eyes crinkle and he smiles a comforting smile, showing seven yellow and brown teeth scattered about his mouth. He lays his hand on my shoulder, and lets out a gentle laugh.

With grace and efficiency, the mechanic takes the tire off of the car, inflates it and then dips it in an old bathtub of water. I’ve seen this trick before. He is looking for bubbles in the water, which indicate an air leak. I stand opposite him looking into the tub. “Aqui,” I say, pointing to the bubbles from the tire. The man rotates the tire in his weathered hands and takes out a piece of yellow chalk to mark the spot. As he does so, he looks into the bathtub and sees a second leak…then a third…then a multitude.

The mechanic steps away from the tire leaving it in the tub. He leads me down the driveway as if he wants to talk where the tire cannot hear. We stand in the dappled sunlight beneath a sycamore tree. He speaks as a grandfather to his grandson, quietly but earnestly. I can understand about a quarter of what he is telling me. The tire is separating and there is no way to repair it. It will have to be replaced. He does not have this tire and it is very expensive.

He places his hand on my arm with the manner of a country doctor. His white hair glints in the occasional sparkle of light that makes it through the leaves above. He is a tire mechanic in a small town in Argentina. I am a silly American businessman in over his head. He speaks no English and I speak even less Spanish. Yet, somehow, under this sycamore tree, we connect.

What Sort of Universe Do You Live in?

Einstein has been quoted as saying, though I’ve yet to find a definitive source for this quote, that the most important question one can ask is “Is the universe friendly?”

There are two basic approaches that one can take to looking at the universe: One can see the universe through the eyes of love or one can see the universe through the eyes of fear.

Primary Colors of Emotions

A psychologist once proposed to me that there are four primary colors of emotions: sad, glad, mad and afraid. Yes, the palate of human emotions is infinite. We might split hairs between being happy, giddy, joyful, exuberant, or any one of a thousand other descriptions, but in the end, all of these emotions could all fit under the primary color of “glad.” So, no matter what we are feeling, our emotions could fit into one of these primary colors. I worked with this four-feelings hypothesis for a long time and it served me well. When I asked myself what I was feeling, it was easier to choose from these four than to select from the infinite crayon box of the emotional palate.

After a while, I began to think of all emotions as falling under two categories: love and fear. After all, when I am full of love, I feel glad, right? And when I am afraid, it might manifest itself as fear, but it might also manifest itself as being angry (mad) or sad. So, I began to think of all emotions as falling into one of these two categories: love or fear.

There is Only Love

Over time I have made one more refinement to this theory. Before I tell you about this final refinement, let’s talk about physics. Did you know that there is no such commodity as cold? Your refrigerator does not inject your food with “cold.” Instead, the job of a refrigerator is to remove heat. In the world of physics there is no cold, merely the absence of heat. The same can be said of dark and light. There is no commodity in the universe called dark. There is simply the absence of light.

In the same way, I began to think of fear as simply the absence of love. When I am full of love it is difficult to feel fear. And when I am afraid, love is absent.

So in the end, my hypothesis is this: there is only love.

Let’s think about the story of the tire repair. I had several opportunities to react in a fearful way: when the rental car company was being less than helpful; when I could not find the tire repair shop; when I saw that the tire repair shop was not a “proper” shop; when the mechanic was talking to the other customer and ignoring me, etc. In any one of those situations I could have become sullen, bolted off to the nearest Shell station and lost half of a day waiting for a tire repair. Instead, I chose love.

In the end, the mechanic inflated my tire, I drove to the nearest Hertz rental location and they gladly exchanged cars for me. The whole effort took less than an hour. And better than that: I was able to connect with a kind man in a red cap, standing under a sycamore tree. How many times in my life will I have a chance like that? Maybe if I live in love instead of in fear, many more times. In the end, it’s all about love.

C-O-N-N-E-C-T, Part 2

Everyone you meet today has shared similar experiences. They have laughed until milk came out of their nose. They have wept inconsolably over a grief from which they did not think they would ever recover, and yet somehow they did. Everyone you meet today has hugged someone they barely knew and they’ve forgotten to show love to the person who mattered most to them. They have probably passed gas at an inappropriate time, which of course made them laugh until milk came out of their nose. We all share a common humanity. Deep down, we are all the same. Our job then is to remember that we are all the same and to connect.

In my last blog post I proposed that there are three reasons we want to connect with one another:

1. Connecting adds value, not only for me but also for those to whom I connect.
2. Connecting is my job as a human being.
3. It’s all about love.

I already covered the first reason to connect: “Connecting Adds Value.” In this post, we’ll talk about the next point: “Connecting is my Job.”

Connecting is My Job

Do you ever think of the precarious nature of life, how fragile your life is? Any runner who has run along Wisconsin Highway 31 at 4:30 in the morning has thought about the fragile nature of life. Despite my blaze orange reflective vest, my Eddie Bauer hat with the LED lights, and the wide berth I give the oncoming traffic, it only takes one distracted driver and…that’s it. Lights out.

I used to think about death a lot. A LOT. Too much. When I was 15 I pulled my cousin aside and whispered earnestly in his ear, “I’m not going to live to see 16.”

He pulled back and looked at me with suspicion. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know…I just have this feeling” I told him. What I was feeling was an unspecific feeling of anxiety, as if something dreadful were just about to happen. What I did not know at the time was that this feeling has a name. It’s called angst and every other 15 year-old in the world was feeling exactly the same way. I thought it was just me.

In November of that year, to my surprise, I turned 16. “Well,” I thought, “I made it to 16 but there’s NO WAY I’m making it to 18.” When I turned 18 I assumed I would not see 21. This went on until, on my 31^st birthday, I decided that it was too late to die young.

Still, every now and then, when I’m running close to a busy highway, or I get an unexplained discomfort in my chest, I think about the fragile nature of life. And it makes me wonder, “What is the reason for my life?”

Time to Connect

Every year I watch It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and every year I cry. When the people of Bedford Falls pour out to help George Bailey, he realizes he’s the richest man in town, and I sob. I can’t help it. Another year has gone by and I wonder how many lives I’ve touched. How have I connected with those around me?

I ask myself, what is the sum of my life? If I were to take account of your life right now, what would be meaningful? What am I most proud of? Is it my home? Of course not. Is it my car? Don’t be silly. My job? Not even close. So, what really matters? If my life is more than the sum of my possessions, then why am I here?

I find the answer in another Christmas story. I love the scene in A Christmas Carol where Ebenezer Scrooge is conversing with the ghost of Jacob Marley. When Scrooge tries to console his friend by complimenting him on his business skills, the ghost reacts sharply:

“'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'”

What an interesting insight. As human beings, what is our job if it is not to connect with one another? We have a short time here on the earth. The only thing we will leave behind is the love that we give and the connections that we make.

So, here I am. I’m putting myself out to the universe. I’m being vulnerable and talking about things that maybe we all feel, but we don’t share with one another. I’m a corporate dude with a corporate title and a professional reputation to protect. If I were to let ego and fear block me, I would never do what I am meant to do here on earth. 

But I guess I'd rather be real than reputable. Or maybe there is a way to do both: have a good reputation and be real. And that is to recognize our shared humanity and to connect with those around me. So, I’m reaching out to connect. All I can ask is that you reach back.

C-O-N-N-E-C-T Part 1

Do you remember what your New Year’s resolution was? I do. But then again, I have an unfair advantage. It’s the same new year’s resolution I had last year, and the year before that, and yes, the year before that. My new year’s resolution is also very easy to remember, because it only consists of one simple word: “Connect.” My goal for 2010, as it was in 2009 and 2008 is to connect those around me in richer, more meaningful ways.

This goal might seem odd to my acquaintances. People generally find me to be reasonably friendly and outgoing. I can tell a good story. I laugh easily and I generally like people, but I tend to not connect very deeply. You might say that my friendships are a mile wide and an inch deep…until recently. Now, I’ve committed to more deeply connect with others.

There are a lot of reasons to connect with other people. I’ll focus on my top three reasons I want to connect with others.

1. Connecting adds value, not only for me but also for those to whom I connect.
2. Connecting is my job as a human being.
3. It’s all about love.

In the next few posts I will explore each of these reasons to connect with one another, starting with the value we derive from connecting with others.

Connecting adds Value

Here’s a question: If you were the only person on earth with a telephone, what would your telephone be worth? There would be no one else to call, right? So, the value of the telephone exists only in its ability to connect with other telephones. Metcalfe's law states that "the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system." Since there are billions of phones on the earth, the telephone is incredibly valuable.

Connecting with other human beings works the same way. The more we connect, the more we derive value from our network and, in turn, the more our network derives value from us. The value flows both ways.

In his amazing book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell explores how knowledge is spread through a community. According to Gladwell, there are three types of people who are critical to “social epidemics.” He calls them Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. I want to focus on that middle one, Mavens.

According to Gladwell, the word maven comes from Yiddish and means “one who collects knowledge.” The thing about mavens is, they don’t just want to collect knowledge, they want to share the knowledge they’ve collected. Typical maven behavior would be someone who runs across a great sale on sweaters at Kohl’s and then picks up the phone and calls you. Or a better example for our connected age is someone who runs across interesting articles on a favorite topic and then posts them to their Twitter status and Facebook page. Mavens don’t find learning alone to be fun. They want to share what they’ve learned.

One of my favorite mavens is Marcia Conner. I am connected to her on Facebook and I follow her on Twitter. If I have my TweetDeck turned on and I see Marcia’s face flash up on the screen, I stop what I’m doing to read. She rarely tweets about what she’s eating for lunch. Her posts add value to my life. Even if she is posting a quick note about the latest adventure of “Boywonder,” her nick name for her son Clarke, I’m sure to enjoy what she writes. By the way, Marcia has a new book coming out in May, The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media. I can’t wait to read it.

I want to make one more point about the value of connecting to others. Our friends are an extension of our neural networks. The human brain is a “meaning maker." The brain finds a pattern out of chaos. This is how we recognized a face or a pathway out of traffic...our brain is finding the pattern. One way the brain does this is by using mental models (also called paradigms). Our friends have similar mental models. I enjoy thinking and reading about training and education. I have friends with similar interests. They share what they learn with me. I also have an interest in distance running. My friends tell me about local races or training tips or other useful information. My friends find patterns in the overwhelming sea of information and bring the juicy morsels of meaningful data back to me. My social network helps me make meaning from the avalanche of information. By expanding my social network, I expand my neural network.

As I connect with others, I add value to them and they add value to me.

So, what about it? Are you ready to reach outside of yourself? Are you ready to put yourself out to the universe and see how it responds? You can start with a simple act. You can start by adding your comments below. Who knows, maybe you’ll connect with someone who will add value to your life. More importantly, the world is waiting for your voice. The world is waiting for you to connect.

Gretchen Rubin has created an ecosystem of happiness

With The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin has created more than a book: she has created an ecosystem of happiness. She spent a year blogging on happiness. Blog comments were incorporated into the book. The blog continues with rich insights about the truths that she learned. You can find her blog at http://happiness-project.com.

As if a book and a blog were not enough, Gretchen has generously created a tool set to help you apply The Happiness Project principles into your life. It can be found at http://happinessprojecttoolbox.com . There you can write your own set of happiness Resolutions or join with other people in a Group Resolution. You can write a list of Personal Commandments and share your Secrets of Adulthood. You can make your own lists (I recorded my bucket list) or share your insights through Happiness Hacks or the Inspiration Board. Even more fun than recording your own thoughts, you can read what others have written. If it is true that none of us is as smart as all of us, there is a lot to be learned from the other people who are sharing their journey at http://happinessprojecttoolbox.com.

I first learned of Gretchen Rubin when I heard her interview on NPR. After checking into her web site, I picked up the book and (as cliche as this may be to say) found myself unwilling to put it down. Gretchen is a great story teller. She makes you feel as if you are observing her life from inside of her family.

All in all, I would recommend The Happiness Project, not just for the wonderful story telling, or the amazing insights, but for the total happiness ecosystem that Gretchen has so generously created.

12 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Started Running

1. Play. That is the essence of running. If your running is not play, then you're probably not doing it right. That is not to say that running is always FUN! There will be times when you feel like your head is going to explode and you will not be having fun. But you know, I remember as a child coming in from play completely exhausted, but I was as happy as I could be because I had been playing. Maintain the attitude of “Low ego, High fun.”
2. Know why you are running. Is it for fitness, stress relief, or just because it seems cool? Pick a goal to start. Make it measurable. Would you like to run your first 5K (3.1 mile) race three months from now? Your goal probably will change as you run over time, but if you don’t know why you’re doing this, you’ll not sustain the effort for the long run (pun intended). Select a goal and be sure to chart your progress.
3. Pick one training plan and stick with it. Consistency is as important as anything else.
4. Be willing to NOT train if you need a rest. Sometimes the best training you can do is to not train.
5. To go with number 4 above, remember that it is easier to recover from an ache than an injury. If your ache becomes a pain, stop running.
6. Start by building a base. It is better in the beginning to walk rather than run. Then it is better in the beginning to run for a particular amount of time before you worry about the distance you cover. Later you can worry about your pace, form, etc.
7. Get yourself a coach. Virtual coaches are almost as good as live coaches. I've never met my first coach, nor have I ever spoken with him. It is Hal Higdon. I read his coaching advice in "Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide." I did eventually hook up with a live coach from a local running store, Running Wild. I joined a marathon-training group through that store. Because of the training, I dropped my Personal Record (PR) in the Marathon from 4:13:20 to 3:41:22 in just one year. The second year of training, I qualified for the Boston Marathon. Not bad.
8. If you can, find a running buddy that runs about the same pace as you. If you know that your buddy is going to show up for a workout, you'll feel obligated to show up too. Of course your buddy is only showing up because he/she knows that YOU will be there. I run with the group RunRacine.com. A simple Google search will probably reveal a running group near you.
9. Make your goal for your first race just to survive. After your first one, you can get fancy.
10. Write it down. Nothing will inspire you more than keeping a running journal. Every day write down what you have done. Then from time to time, look back at what you have accomplished. Personally, I keep my journal at MapMyFitness.com.
11. Run your own race. Don't worry about who you are passing or by whom you are being passed. In a recent race, I was passed by an asthmatic 14-year-old girl who was wheezing so badly she sounded like a calliope as she went by. If I let my ego get in the way, I'll break my game plan just to keep ahead of others. Run your own race and let others worry about their race. Some of those who pass you will be passed later on.
12. Oh, and you know that legalese that you hear about checking with your doctor first? Well, it is actually good advice.

Be safe. Have fun. Run with a buddy. If you do these things, you’ll enjoy running for a lifetime.