We are the World

In some very important ways maybe all of us are more like Michael Jackson than we think. I know. He invented moon walking and was also a moon beam. He optimized the tragic weirdness of someone disconnected from others’ reality. That’s my point. Michael Jackson is just an extreme example of the mixed bag that all of us are. His talent was extreme. Even unique. But his gifts of singing, dancing, songwriting, and envisioning never-seen-before entertainment were developed through immense amounts of hard work and tireless practice.

As Malcolm Gladwell tells us in Outliers, extreme success is nearly always the result of extreme effort. Michael was extraordinary principally because he chose to work at it. So can we. Researcher Carol Dweck reports that nearly all people who are considered experts or masters at something have simply practiced much more than only competent people. I think Tiger Woods, Eli Manning, John Grisham, Steve Jobs and other over-the-top achievers would agree. They focus their talent on being great in a certain way, their way, and over-invest in themselves. The result is unique competence and often spectacular results. So one inspiring thing we can all take from Michael Jackson is that when humans are inspired to do things with enough drive, determination and relentless practice, greatness can result.

But even with extraordinary greatest, all of us are flawed. And no matter how hard we may discipline ourselves, those flaws dog us or new ones appear. To be human is to be flawed. Our flaws are widely seen and yes even talked about. Perhaps the greatest flaw is the arrogance of thinking our own shortcomings don’t matter. I think most of us would rather be judged by our sincere intentions than our uneven behavior. Which brings me back to Michael Jackson. People who knew him best and people who worked with him (I happened to know one of his producers in the 1980s) said he brimmed with positive intention and gentle kindness. Yes, he was afflicted by inner demons (The Man in the Mirror), and who knows how all those demons played out, but all of us have at some time in our lives battled our own darkness. It’s then we need affirming friends who call us on our crap and lift us to higher ground. Authentic friendship is both tough and loyal. I am not sure Michael had many real friends. Friends who didn’t need or want anything from him. All of us need such friends and need to be such friends. All of us. As the singer wrote, “We are the world.” It’s up to us to “make it a better place.”

What’s the best thing we can do? Be a great friend to someone today. A friend that encourages persistence, effort and practice towards worthwhile goals and a friend who also holds up a mirror and says, “You’re better than that!” when our friends give in to their weakness. That’s a friend.

You Can Do Anything - What You Were Born to Do

You Can Do Anything by Will Marre

For 30 years I have helped people get clear on their life’s purpose and finding what they were born to do.  I have discovered that it is found at the intersection of people’s Design and Desire.  What are you talented at and what are you passionate about.  (Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner, Sept. 2009) Recently I’ve come across a stream of literature that states that talent alone is overrated.  It seems that consistent, focused practice develops our latent talents to excel at unexpected things in unexpected ways.  This brings me to Joe Cocker.

For some reason, I’ve always wanted to see Joe Cocker sing live.  I have this mental list of singers and groups I want to hear in person before I have to be pushed into a concert in a wheel chair.  During my college days I saw the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, the Beach Boys, Creedence and many more.  I was even a paid security guard at a Canned Heat concert in 1968 at the Santa Monica Civic.  In my boomer years I’ve managed to see the Eagles, Paul McCartney, Sting and lots of others.  But ever since I heard Joe Cocker’s rendition of “With a Little Help From My Friends” from the 1969 Woodstock Concert, I’ve wanted to hear this weirdly unique rocker for myself.

I was delighted to discover he was coming to Humphries in San Diego in June.  My wife wasn’t.  Not at all.  Not even a little bit.  “Joe Cocker—you’ve got to be joking!” Debbie, who once sang in a band herself said. “I really like music.  I love singing, but that excludes Joe Cocker.”  Finally after days of pouting and begging she gave in.  “But I’m doing this just for you,” she kept reminding me.  We bought tickets at the last minute.  Luckily they were unsold premiere seats released at the last minute at distressed prices.  Ninth row, center.  “Awesome,” I thought.  “Of all the luck,” Debbie said in disgust.

So on a warm June night there we sat, and Joe Cocker’s band came out.  The first thing I noticed was how big a group they were.  Full drum set, another set of Congas, saxophone, a baby grand piano, a Hammond organ, a tiny woman bass player with huge hair, two back up singers and a lead guitarist who was a dead ringer for David Spade.  Then the music started.  It filled the whole star-filled sky to overflowing.  A full, deep wall of sound.  It was rich like a huge chocolate cake of music.  Deb’s eyes opened wide, and she whispered, “Oh.”

Then Joe came out.  He’s a sixty-five year-old Englishman draped in soft, saggy pink British flesh topped with lots of thin wispy grey hair, dressed in black with a well-earned boomer belly protruding over his black and silver belt.  And then there is the voice.  It’s indescribable.  The best I can say is that it is so painfully screechy his vocal cords must be made of titanium.  So there he stood in all his aging glory blaring out the Beatle classic, “Come Together.”

What’s always amazed me about Joe is that he doesn’t really sing.  He emotes a song.  He does a cross of melodious talking punctuated by frequent voice box shredding screams.  And it works.  Really works.  From the first song the crowd of about 1500 of us were up and dancing, clapping, swaying…all the embarrassing stuff ancient concertgoers do.  Debbie soon realized that over the past 40 years she’s heard almost all of Joe’s songs.  That’s because they are nearly all covers, someone else’s hit song.  He doesn’t imitate the original singer.  Instead he is outrageously original.  The way he alternately screams and whispers, “You are so beautiful” can’t help but fill you with surprising emotion.  So Joe rocked all of us for 100 minutes.  He sang every song that he’d sung 10,000 times as if it was his last concert.  Debbie even became a fan even if just for one evening.  His magic was irresistible.

So what’s Joe Cocker got to do with anything? Well, to me, everything.  He is a bigger than life example that we can do anything.  Joe has been a rock star for 40 years.  He used to fill 20,000 seat arenas.  He won a Grammy.  He has sold tens of millions of CDs, and he can’t really sing, he doesn’t write his songs, he moves on stage like he’s being jolted with tiny bits of electricity.  It’s not pretty.  He occasionally freaks out in an awkward spasm of air guitar or air piano.  Not good.  But, and here’s his magic, his biggest musical influence was Ray Charles, and every song Joe sings is an authentic emotional explosion.  He also surrounds himself with talented back-up singers and world-class musicians.  Always.  In his early touring days he had Stevie Winwood and Leon Russell in his band.  And then there is complete and total giving of himself.

You see Joe knows what he’s good at and knows what he isn’t.  And even though he’s not good at writing lots of music or playing instruments or even singing, what he is absolutely amazing at is putting all these ingredients together into a one-of-a-kind sonic boom.  It’s remarkable; Joe Cocker has made a career out of being Joe Cocker and there is no substitute.  Can’t really sing, not very good looking, doesn’t write music or sing original songs, and yet there he is, making other people’s music unmistakably his own.

So what’s the best thing we can do? Consider this.  The people we tend to admire are original and unafraid to be so.  We need to know what we’re good at and surround ourselves with people who are good at what we’re not.  We need to put forth inspired effort.    Most of all we need to be deeply and genuinely authentic.  Authentic in our best self.  Author Matthew Kelly asks us to imagine the best person we can be and then be that person.  It’s really who we are.

So what do you think?  Is there a Joe Cocker in you?  Is being this authentic a risk worth taking?

The American Dream - Right Here, Right Now

I spend a lot of time talking to people about their dream life.  At the American Dream Project we’ve had nearly 20,000 people from teenagers to grandmothers take the Dream Life Assessment. Our research confirms two vivid drivers of our real dream life.  When I say real, I mean the real life we most deeply desire.  It turns out what we really want is not the life depicted as most desired by a hyper consumptive economy and our muscle bound media.  The answers are work and love.  Today we’ll talk about work.  (I’ll address love in a later blog.)

Meaningful Work - The American Dream

It seems one critical element of our most desired life is to be engaged in meaningful work.  Work that expresses our values.  This doesn’t have to be a particular type of work.  Whether we are working on the invention of perpetual energy or the final cure for cancer or whether we are a food server in a local diner, we can gain deep satisfaction as long as we can express our own flair and our own values.  The food server who looks his or her patrons in the eye and offers a cheerful hello or a reassuring smile feels satisfaction from bringing moments of kind attention to someone.  An office or factory worker that embraces their colleagues as both teammates and whole people with whole lives also tends to feel their work is worthwhile.

The most satisfied are those whose work is a great fit with their design—their traits and their talents.  Our traits, like curiosity or an appreciation for beauty (for a revealing assessment of your traits click here) are a source of seemingly endless energy.  Whenever we can freely express who we authentically are we seem to bust out of dull routines and throw off the shackles of drudgery.  But the real rocket fuel of our work life is the pure joy of mastery.  The biggest mistake we make is to think that failure defines the limits of our talent.  Failure is the beginning of new learning if we choose to make it so.  Internal demands for perfection create bitterness but the healthy ongoing quest for progress creates an internal positive energy to pursue unique excellence.

Recent research from Stanford professor Carol Dweck points out that most of us plateau our abilities after 50 hours of learning.  At that point we accept the false notion that this is about as good as we’re going to get.  So whether we’re learning to play golf, master power point or speak in public we tend to believe that after 50 hours of investment we’ve found the limit of our talent.  It’s just not true.  The main difference between the good and great is a continued investment in learning with eager enthusiasm.  Nearly all the people whose talents we most admire are those who have studied the most, practiced more, performed the most experiments or played the game more.  Just consider Thomas Edison or Tiger Woods.  Their genius was released by unrelenting, joyous effort.  Of course it’s not just the quantity of effort; it’s the quality of effort that matters.  Eager learners are closely paying attention to what works and what doesn’t.  They over invest in the things that bring the best results and eliminate wasted time.

So why is this so important today?  It’s because the world has changed.  Permanently.  The economic changes that have thrust themselves on us like a volcano of molten lava have burned the work landscape forever.  The world has little economic need for generic work.  It’s also true that pursuing work in a business-as-usual way brings little excitement or enthusiasm to our lives.  So if we don’t do something different the world loses our gift and we are bored as hell.  As humans we seem to be built for learning, self-expression, individuality and growth.  The old bureaucracies that for 150 years tried to force us to conform to their demand for cookie-cutter “competencies” are dying faster than the dinosaurs.  The best places to work no longer try to “domesticate” their employees.  The need for creativity and commitment is just too great.

The tragic irony of our day is that so many of us are out of work, underemployed or misemployed.  The world urgently needs our best efforts right now.  Our world’s future is at more risk today than perhaps any day.  There is so much to be done to recreate human life for a sustainable, collaborative future rather than a self-destructive, competitive one.

So what does the world need?  You.  Fully turned on.  Volume on high.  Doing what you are designed to do right here, right now.  If this sounds like a pep talk, it is.  American colonists didn’t risk their lives to come to America to get a job as much as they came to create a whole new life.  Today no one is going to give us a job.  We have to create our work, our own value and leave our own mark.  It doesn’t matter who signs our paycheck; we are all self-employed.  Our research shows those Americans who really understand this and strive to live it are the happiest.

Will Marre
Founder, American Dream Project

So how are you doing?  What advice do you have to help us take charge of our work lives?

Above All…Be an Original: Finding Your Dream and Living From Your Design

A few years ago, Chris, a great friend of mine, was attending a summer concert featuring a Beatles Tribute band. They were dressed up like a 1965 version of John, Paul, George and Ringo. They had their accents and music down. They were an amazing group of musicians perfectly imitating genuine rock stars. And they were fake. After twenty minutes Chris couldn’t handle it. He actually left his family sitting on the grass and spent an hour walking home. He couldn’t stand listening to “fake Beatles.” To this day, Chris tells me that if he were a musician, he would rather spend his life playing his music in small bars and clubs then playing someone else’s music to crowds of Baby Boomers trying to re-imagine their past. Chris is an original. He is not about to sing someone else’s song.

Turns out, this is great career advice. “Be the rock star of your own life!”

What if you were designed perfectly to live your Dream Life? Well you are. You were designed to succeed at what brings you deepest, lasting joy. And fulfilling your design is the music of your heart. All you have to do is hear it.

Although we share over 99% of our DNA structure and pretty much 100% of our spiritual nature with other humans, there’s still an amazing amount of room for individuality. Recent brain and personality research suggests that each of us is more unique than perhaps we ever imagined. Turns out that 1% DNA difference leads to tens of millions of physical, psychological, and personality differences. That’s what makes us an original! The way we think, the way we learn, and the way we excel are extremely idiosyncratic. Many of us feel frustrated and anxious when we we’re not allowed to do “our thing our way.” This turns out not to be stubbornness but Design trying to shine through.

Our very uniqueness holds our personal key to fulfillment. A Dream Life is built on discovering, or re-discovering, our authentic Design. Greatness is always the result of being different—Being original.  No one can be better than you at being you.  Don’t compete; be unique.  And turn up the volume.

So how is this accomplished? Luckily, surgery is not required, nor are light explosives. You discover your design by becoming aware of your persistent traits and talents. Your “Design” is the intersection of traits and talents that you bring with you into the world.

Talents are skills that you perform exceptionally well and with natural ease. They are the way others see and experience you—the outer you. Talent yields success with minimal effort. Traits are the inner you. They’re the way you experience the world, what you pay attention to, what you derive deep satisfaction and value from, and how you like to engage life and others. A trait is a persistent quality of our essential identity. Examples are optimism, caring, courage, and enthusiasm.

What you both value doing (traits) and do extremely well (talents) is what you were Designed to do—your calling. Activities that are aligned with your Design give you energy rather than sap it. You don’t tire of them. You have to be told to stop doing them. You do them when you should be eating lunch. You would do them even if you didn’t get paid. They fire you up. When you are expressing your design, you have no longings to do something different. Something better, yes. More opportunity, of course. A bigger stage, more impact…sure. But you don’t yearn to do something fundamentally different.

It’s inspiring to believe that each of us are perfectly designed to fulfill our real dreams; that our traits, talent and interests are sign posts to the road of our greatest possible life.  But I’ve found it take more than understanding and inspiration to actually live a Dream Life.  It requires changing how you think, what you feel, and what you do.  Every decision you make either takes you closer to your Dream Life or further away from it. Yes once you think about it, it’s clear that to live an extraordinary life, extraordinary choices are necessary.  Once, when I was deeply confused my father advised me, “Be who you are and do what you came for.” It was his way of telling me not to be a fake Beatle.

I don’t know what your dreams are or what your extraordinary choices should be.  I can only challenge you to consider your choices and make them. All of us are ultimately responsible for our own lives. Our lives are our anthem. But spending our life imagining what it might sound like doesn’t do any good. Pick up your microphone and belt it out.

This article was originally published in The Deluxe Knowledge Quarterly KQ2 2008.