“Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.”

–     T. S. Eliot

Words are powerful tools.  We ought to pay careful attention to not only our use, but especially our definitions.

Success?  What does it mean to us?  Does our definition jibe with that of the person closest to us?  Does it jibe with the definition(s) of the team for which we’re responsible?  (By the way, the laws of human nature and mathematics suggest that the answer to this one is, almost by default, “No.” if only because any “team” might have shades of gray definitions of success…)  Does our definition of success capture our heart and mind, or does it adhere to and come from society’s definition, or someone else’s imposed ideal?

Failure?  Implied by any consideration of success, the way we define “failure” informs the level of effort and commitment we’re willing to make toward whatever we defined “success” to be.

Mess?  Some people, when faced with a screw-up, panic.  Some shut down.  Some get angry.  Some look for blame.  Best we remember, though, that my “mess” might be your opportunity.  Your “mess” might be my chance of a lifetime.  Our “mess” might be insignificant to the vendor, client, partner or visitor we’re describing it to.

Definitions drive perspective and are driven by perspectives.  A healthy awareness of that whole process will help us make a difference.

“You are the music while the music lasts.”

–     T. S. Eliot, the first in a series of TSE based DD’s

Glenn Frey’s death is bugging the crap out of me.  Not since Payne Stewart’s plane crash have I been this affected by a celebrity’s death.  Eagles no more, Hotel California closed, Winslow, Arizona nudged one step closer to extinction.

But the music need not die.  Not as long as we last.

And, if we can pass along the gift of music to our kids, we’ve laid one of the cornerstones to a life well-lived.

I don’t speak teenager, and we have two of them in the house.  I’d love to learn to speak teenager.  Really, I would.  I’ve looked on line, at Berlitz and Rosetta Stone — no one offers a course on “how to speak teenager.”

But music does.  The Eldest and I once drove five hours together, just the two of us, with her sharing her music library with me the whole way along.  Tonight, I picked up The Middle, and on the six-minute drive home, we shared three “cool songs,” two of his, one of Glenn, Don and the rest of Eagles’.  The Youngest is trying to help me pick just the right song to be her ring tone.

We are the music, while the music lasts.  And my sadness at the death of an iconic member of an iconic band is softened by the tremendous gift he left us.  May we steward it well and pass it along compellingly.

“Confidence comes from discipline and training.”

–     Robert Kiyosaki, American author, financial literacy advocate, speaker

The negative-or-positive-connotation of the word “discipline” has been written about forever.  So, no “it’s derived from the word disciple and no lecture on whether it’s good or bad, because it’s good.

Another word that has become kinda tarnished is “routine.”  A quick look on the Google brought up 75 quotes on “routine,” most of them suggesting it’s as dangerous as cancer, as destructive as our Presidential election process and as debilitating as a coma.

Bull.

Think of the best free throw shooter you’ve ever seen.  Steve Nash (statistically the best ever), Rick Barry (old school)…you pick.  Pick the best sprinter you ever saw.  Nehemiah, Bolt, Owens.  The best public speakers.  Ziglar, Maxwell, Robbins, Kennedy.  They all — all of them have a lot in common, but one thing in particular.

Disciplined routine.  (Like how I combined those?  Me, too!)

Every time Steve Nash shot a free throw he did the exact same things at the exact same pace.  Every time.  Watch Usain Bolt get in to the blocks at the beginning of a race.  The exact same routine, at the exact same pace.  Every time.  Zig Ziglar, before every speech (and there were a bajillion of them!) did the exact same things at the exact same pace.  Every time.  When Zig glanced at his wrist watch, there was a 1-second pause and then, “BOOM!” A check up from the neck up — game on!

It stands to reason that if our goal is to make a difference, to differentiate by influence and by performance, we ought to adapt their approach to disciplined routine.

Rise early.  Quiet time to start the day.  The Word.  Reflection (prayer, meditation, journal, etc).  Prioritizing activities for the day.  Execute.

That’s one example.  Yours need not be like mine.  Mine need not be like anyone else’s.  But we need to have one.  And to get out of the blocks fast, shoot well and speak / act confidently, we need to do the exact same things at the exact same pace if we want to squeeze the most out of our gifts, experiences, abilities and talents.

“Yes, I’ve already unplugged the device and plugged it back in.”

     –     Steve Heston, on all of over 100 calls with our Internet / TV provider over the last three years

“Step off!  Take a deep breath.  Get your target.  Now, throw to it.”

–     Jim “Pete” Peterson, my high school baseball coach, and me, to every kid I’ve ever coached on the mound

It’s 2016.  The lights come on when I flip the switch.  When I am a bit chilly, I kick the thermostat up a couple degrees, and I hear the furnace kick in and I feel the warm air flow.  When I call you on the phone, I dial, it rings, you pick up — or you send me straight to voice mail, which is there every time if you don’t pick up.  Turn the faucet?  Water comes out.  Press the start button on the car?  Internal combustion occurs.

So why can I almost never count on my Internet provider / TV provider to provide, oh, I don’t know….the internet and TV?  Regardless, the whole process causes two thoughts in my large, misshapen noggin:

1.  How Blessed are we that we can take for granted light, heat, communication, water and transportation?  I mean, seriously, I grew up with a party-line phone (you can look it up, younger subscribers), and my babysitter had an outhouse and cooked and heated with a wood-burning stove.  Think back one more generation — and imagine their wonderment at the basic comforts that we get with the simple flip of a switch.  Compared to the vast majority of people on the planet — we’re amazingly Blessed.
2. As annoying it is that our internet and TV service seems less reliable than a water well in a rural community in a third-world country, the Groundhog Day of dealing with their horrible service does hold one lesson worth considering.  Will simply pausing and re-booting “the device” solve the problem?

Pace.  Pressure.  Busy-ness.  Full in-boxes.  Multi-tasking.  As Yoda might say, “Careful, we must be, not to wear these as a badge of honor.”

Of all the automatic responses our body employs — and there are thousands of them — breathing is probably the least strategically utilized.  When we stop and take a deep breath, we re-calibrate the machine.  When we count to three, we re-cast the feeling in the conversation and we impact the outcome by the simple gesture of being in the moment, thinking, and allowing some peace to weave it’s way in to the chaos.

Experiment for today:  Five times — at any time today — stop.  Step back.  Take a deep breath.  Pause to re-boot your mental machine.  Get your target back in focus.  And throw to it.  I’d love to hear how many more times the “pitch” goes where you aimed…

“You see, without the Truth of The Eyes, the Happyfolk were blind.”

–  Lyric from “Fire Coming Out of A Monkey’s Head” by Gorillaz

Weird band, weird song, weird fact.

Our eyes often deceive us, and it can really get us off balance if we’re not careful.  Using more than one sense makes sense, right?  We can hear.  We can touch / feel.  We can see, sure, but when we connect what we see with what we feel about it — it empowers us to challenge, to change, to adapt and to understand.

Let’s commit to avoid being blind, no matter what we see, or don’t see, and let’s see if that makes a difference.

“Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.”

–     Pete Seeger, American folk singer (1919 – 2014)

At this stage of my career, I don’t even try to act like I believe it when someone says, “Well, Steve, our business is VERY complex.”  Politely as I can, I reply, “Is not!”  And we’re off to the races.

Complexity — rarely real, but even when it is — is like five feet of Iowa black topsoil, bursting with seeds of excuses and weeds of entanglement.

My theory is that people desperately want their stuff to be complex, because it would make them unique if it was.  If our business is really complex, we’ll stay in the office until ten, skip vacations, family birthdays and anniversaries, and we’ll grind.  “Look at me,” we’ll think, “I am working harder than everyone else, and even though my resting heart rate is 133, I am going to protect my co-workers from themselves in the very complex thing…”

In short, they think if their stuff is complex, it makes them unique.

What makes one unique in business, though, is making things simple.  Steve Jobs focus was on the interface, and Apple® provides a superior user experience, not the best technology.  Ronald Regan and Bill Clinton both had one thing that was not negotiable — and the public knew what both of them were about, even though their ideals and approaches to the job were different, to say the least.

Uniqueitude (this is a word I coined just now — you-NEEK-ih-TUDE — is the act of being unique.  In sales, it can be the handwritten note.  In executive management it can be the anniversary gift to the spouse of one of your VP’s who’ve been burning the midnight oil.  For any leader, the ability to say, and enforce, “We’re not going to do that, because this other thing is more important, and we’re really good at it…”  Commitment, confidence, preparedness — they’re all elements of Uniqueitude.

Let’s look at the complexity and probe it for simple elements.  Those elements are where the simplicity lies, ready to be awakened and leveraged to bring about the kind of meaningful change we’re expected to create.

“So, you live from day to day, and you dream about tomorrow
And the hours go by like minutes, and the shadows come to stay
So you take a little something to make them go away

And I could have done so many things, baby
If I could only stop my mind
From wonderin’ what I left behind
And from worrying ’bout this wasted time”

– Lyric from “Wasted Time” by Glenn Frey and Don Henley / Eagles

In a life compelled by music, Eagles was a band that has been a major piece of who I am, musically, philosophically and, to a certain degree, spiritually.  Sure, they recorded almost every song in a key I could sing in, making my days as a cover-band front man at least bearable for the audiences.  But they also wrote about, sang about and delved into topics, feelings and experiences that were — are — important to me.

Thank God I saw them live, because Glenn is gone, and thus so is Eagles.  (It’s not “The” Eagles — and, Bob Lefsetz points out that it always drove Glenn nuts when people added the “The.”)

David Bowie is gone, too.  I never saw him perform live, but his music was also a strong influencer for my generation.  BB King passed recently.  Thankfully I saw him a half dozen times, because “the thrill is gone.”

We never know about tomorrow.  Heck, we’re not even sure about later today.  So we ought not to worry about wasted time, and instead stop wasting time.  See the artists that move you, while they’re alive, while we’re alive.  Have coffee with the people that inspire you, while they’re alive, while we’re alive. Call someone who will have their day changed for the better because you called — while they’re alive, while we’re alive.

Glenn Frey.  David Bowie.  BB King.  Dad.  Mom.  The list is long, and growing.  That’s part of being 54.  But the wasting time worrying, missing and wondering “woulda, coulda, shoulda” doesn’t have to be.  Now, I gotta go pick buy some Cowboy Mouth tickets, make a few phone calls and buy a round of coffee.  While they’re alive.  While I’m alive.

“I am the character you are not supposed to like.”

–     Alan Rickman, British-born actor, who died earlier this week

Hans Gruber.  Severus Snape.  Those characters fit the bill.  And Alan Rickman was one of the great character actors of our time.  Character actors aren’t leading men and women, they’re integral parts of the story, but they’re flawed and hard to figure and they make the story possible because of what they bring out of the rest of the cast.

In business, some people are destined to be lead actors and some are put here to be character actors.  And, just as in the screen world, in business character actors aren’t leading men and women, they’re integral parts of the story, making the story possible because of what they bring out of the rest of the cast.

How much of our time is spent rehearsing for parts we’re not meant to play?  How much of our time is spent forcing a role in which we aren’t comfortable?

Difference making comes down to understanding the part we are to play, and nailing it, much the way Alan Rickman did on the screen.  (Here’s a really cool obituary from this morning’s Wall Street Journal.)

“What is often labeled as constructive criticism may actually be destructive jealousy, since the easiest way to raise our own status is to bring someone else down.  Are we willing to question our motives before we offer criticism?  Does the critical finger we point need to pointed toward ourself first?”

     –     From the description of Miriam in Tyndale’s NLT Chronological Life Application Study Bible

Labels, in general, are problems, and in this case, the label is not only a problem, but a mask.

Masks keep us from being real.  They keep realness down.

In a time where anyone with some pent up anger and a keyboard can besmirch a place kicker’s family, a politician’s integrity (yes, I realize that statement leaves some possibility that there may still, somewhere be a politician with integrity…bear with me here, ok?) or a police officer’s intent (and do so anonymously), we risk losing all sense of decorum and personal accountability.

The waiter at the restaurant.  The chef.  The teacher at the kids’ school.  The attorney that lost our case.  The mechanic that didn’t fix our car the first time.  The kid that didn’t finish their homework.  The spouse that snapped back at us over something trivial.

Easy to get pretty critical of any of them, right?

But what’s our motive?  What’s our intent?  What outcome do we seek from the critique?  Is this about us, or is it about them?  And — as the lesson above calls out — did we spend adequate time in the mirror, looking really, really closely before we took the offensive.

When we’re real, we de-personalize conflict.  We address the conflict as a solvable problem.  When we’re real, our motives are not in question, and they’re not masked.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be conflict, and that doesn’t mean that we’ll be selfless in that conflict.  It just means that understanding our motives might be more important than understanding their failure.

“If I win that big Powerball lottery, I’ll just keep farming until it’s gone.”

     –     Dick Heston, my dad, back when no one ever thought they’d see a $1.7 billion dollar lottery

So, do we play or not?

Who wouldn’t toss $2 in to grab a “chance” for $1.7 billion?

The question, though, isn’t “who wouldn’t?” it’s “who shouldn’t?” and the answer is the vast majority of all of us.  Actually, no.  The answer is, it’s all of us.

If they’re paying out $1.7 billion, and 40% of gross proceeds go to charity, we’re looking at somewhere close to $3 billion being spent (primarily by people who really can’t afford it) on a pipe dream.  Key verb there, is spent.  Yesterday, a friend told me he’d invested $50 in Powerball.  Invested?  Really?  But I digress…

Dad’s “take” that kicks off today’s post, tongue-in-cheek as it was intended, foreshadows a dark truth.  The majority of lottery winners are, within a couple years of winning, basically broke.  Again.  We can dream about wild wealth and financial freedom, but we have trouble imagining the darker side of whatever apparently good thing has just happened in the moment.

I am reminded of a friend and trusted mentor who asked, “Win the lottery!  Good news or bad news?”  Everyone around him exclaimed, “GOOD NEWS!”  He continued, “Your closest friends and family disown you, due to the way you distribute or don’t distribute the winnings among them.  They never speak to you again.  Good news or bad news?”  Everyone around him said, “BAD NEWS!”  He continued, “With all of that unproductive, guilt-ridden time freed up, you create and engage in new, rewarding relationships that excite and energize you and the other people and make you feel fantastic!  Good news or bad news?”  And, everyone around him said, basically, “Um, at this point, we have no clue…we thought it was good to win the lottery and bad to lose all those friends….” and they looked at each other with that Scooby Doo “RUHT-RO!” look in their eye.

His point was this, an oft-quoted Daily Difference staple:  “Most things in life are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong.  Most things just are.”  He also asked — and I’ve incorporated in to well over two dozen DD posts over the years; “Since there is nothing we can do about anything that came before right now, what will we do, right now?”

Highs are temporary.  Lows are temporary.  Right now is all we can really address.  So, whether we pick up a few Powerball tickets or not, whether we win a billion tonight in the lottery, or lose a few thousand today in the market, it will likely not be good or bad, right or wrong.  It will just be.  And in just being in this moment, we can make a difference for someone.