Lives On Hold

Boredom, Fear and Despair
in Corporate America

Copyright © 2000 Patrick Montelo
All Rights Reserved

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Introduction

 As America enters the new millennium, we are experiencing a higher level of prosperity than that of any other time in our existence. The jobless rate in America is at a historical low and the growth in the American economy is creating new jobs with greater opportunities than ever before. American corporations can't hire enough workers to fill the available positions and are competing aggressively with each other to recruit, hire and maintain a skilled workforce. Salaries are on the rise. The average American has more spending power than ever before and is also spending at record levels. Personal wealth is also at an all time high. Americans have more assets and retirement savings than ever before. American sons and daughters have more possessions than their parents had; bigger and better homes, luxury automobiles, and an ever growing list of electronic conveniences.

Despite our financial success, many Americans work more hours. Competition is fiercer than ever before and Americans work longer hours than ever before in an attempt to stay ahead. There is competition between competing corporations as well as competition inside the corporation. Inside the corporation, there is competition between business units, between vice presidents, between general managers, between managers, and between individual workers. There is competition in the corporation between each and every peer group.

Much data is available to validate the question of our increased financial prosperity. A more challenging question to answer is: "Are we Americans more happy than ever before?" On the subject of happiness, data is more challenging to find and interpret. While answering the question: "Are we as people happier than ever before?", may prove challenging; a personal question: "Am I happy?", seems answerable. But there are signs all around us that indicate people may not be as happy as they appear at first glance.

With all of our financial prosperity comes a great deal of responsibility. What will we pursue next? Should we pursue more financial prosperity or more happiness, and should these pursuits be mutually exclusive? These are difficult but important questions to answer.

The American Dream

All Americans learn the story of the American Dream. It is a rite of passage. Each generation should be more successful than the last. Today, many of us tend to measure this success by what kind of job we have, how much money we make, what kind of car we drive, what kind of home we live in, where we live, what kind of schools our children attend, what kind of vacations we take, what kind of restaurants we eat at, what kind of toys we have (electronics, boats, motorcycles, planes, snowmobiles), etcetera.

While many less materialistic individuals may not focus as much attention on their possessions or standard of living, we still tend to measure success by our net worth. For example, how much of our home do we own vs. the bank, when will it be paid for, and how much have we saved for our retirement?

Musical Inspiration - What Is Success - Bonnie Raitt - The Bonnie Raitt Collection
"When should one change his mind, and jump the fence, for the dollar sign" ... "It ain't necessary"

The Trap

Many of us start off our careers by pursuing our interests and dreams. Some of us go to school and learn a trade or vocation that is of interest to us. Others may make several career changes along the way while trying to find out what their true passion is. But inevitably, the trap occurs when we stop growing in our careers and stop pursuing what we are most passionate about at that moment. When we stop growing, we consciously or unconsciously pursue money and security instead of our passion.

As we grow through our careers, we may feel that we are being underpaid for the work we are doing; if so, we may seek out a new job with higher pay. When we take the new job, we may not focus as much attention on the work we will be doing as we should. We may focus more on how much the job will pay, what kind of benefits will it provide, and how much job security will there be. Our fear of not having enough money, benefits and security steer us in a path of increasing financial reward and decreasing job satisfaction.

When we become unhappy with our jobs we may stop growing. How long we stop growing depends on how afraid we are. When we stop growing, we feel a sense that we are wasting our time, we feel unfulfilled. We don't feel a sense of accomplishment. We may become bored and we may sink into depression. We feel a sense of loss because we know we are in the prime of our lives and that we are still not doing what we really want to be doing.

Substitutes for Happiness

When we are unhappy at our jobs, we tend to need more and more money just to keep from being depressed. If we are growing financially in our careers, as our salary is increased, so are our responsibilities. Often as our responsibilities grow, we begin to spend more time at work and less time with our families and friends. If our work is unfulfilling to us, we may decide to buy a new thing in an attempt to give us pleasure at that moment. The thing may be new shoes, or a new car, or a new home. Thus, as we choose career paths based on money, our dissatisfaction with our jobs increases in lock step with our standard of living. This pattern may continue slowly in our lives unconsciously for many years, or for our entire lives. For highly driven, aggressive and self-motivated individuals, we may continue to climb our way up the corporate ladder and through the business world. We know that we have hit a point of crisis when one day we wake up and notice that we no longer know who we are.

Musical Inspiration - Impermanent Things - Peter Himmelman - From Strength To Strength
"All these impermanent things, Oh how they fool me dominate and rule me, They keep me waiting here forever"

Financial Security

How much money do we need to have to feel financially secure? As we pursue money and security, we feel that we need to have more and more money to feel secure. As our standard of living increases, it seems that we may never have enough money to feel secure. We worry about our retirement; how will we maintain our standard of living? How will we pay for our healthcare? Where will we live? Who will look out for us when we are too old to look out for ourselves? How will we be able to retire someday and begin to fully enjoy life?

Fear of Loss

The trap occurs because when we reach a level of financial success, we are afraid to lose what we have attained so far. Our fears of failure, of old age and retirement prevent us from pursuing what excites us most, what we most passionate about. Instead of pursuing the exciting path, we pursue the safe path.

Lives On Hold

When we spend our lives working on unfulfilling jobs and saving our money in hopes for a secure and enjoyable retirement, we put our lives on hold. We stop growing. Instead of living the lives of our dreams now, our dreams of happiness and security at retirement postpone our lives indefinitely. Instead of living our lives, we are stuck trying to survive.

When our lives are on hold, we may ask ourselves some of the following questions:

Musical Inspiration - Why Get Up - The Fabulous Thunderbirds - Tuff Enuff
"Well I can't quit drinking, I'm nervous all the time, When I wake up it's like a ton of lead on my mind"

At a point of crisis in our lives, all of these questions may seem unanswerable. The key to getting our lives started again is to determine what we are passionate about at that moment and to break through our fears to pursue our passion. As we grow, our passions change. When we stop growing, we may think we know that our true passion is the good life that is waiting for us at retirement. If we reach retirement, and if we are lucky enough to still have our health, we often realize the things we thought we would enjoy doing for the rest of our lives become boring.

At retirement, we may become so bored that we decide we would rather work than be retired. Some may go back to their old jobs, others may decide to start growing again and pursue new interests. The key to a fulfilling life is still the same at age 65 as it is at age 25; we must work on what we enjoy working on, what excites us, what we are most passionate about at that moment.

Problems of the Workplace

What is going on inside corporate America? Why are there so many problems and struggles daily? Each job seems to have it's own unique set of problems. During our careers, we may make many job changes for many reasons, some right, some wrong. The following are some of the most common reasons we decide to change jobs:
With each job change, we hope that the new job will provide us the things that were lacking in our previous job, i.e. promotion, money, security, a sense of accomplishment. Our perception is that most of the problems we are facing in our careers are due to some inadequacy of the company or people that we work for. So onward the search for the perfect place to work goes.

"Blank" is an Idiot

At the "blank" is an idiot stage in our development in corporate America, there appears to be incompetence everywhere around us. You fill in the blank. Maybe the "blank" is our "clueless boss" who has no idea how to do our job and keeps insisting that we are not performing our job correctly or efficiently. Or maybe the "blank" is a coworker who we feel never gets the job done right the first time, and we're the one who always gets called into clean up after his or her mistakes.

It also seems like the "blanks" get turned loose in traffic everyday on the highways. All types of personalities go through some form of the "blank" is an idiot stage. Aggressive personalities go through this stage aggressively. We think: "Who is that idiot in the left lane holding up traffic at 75 miles per hour?" After we mash the accelerator to the floor and squeeze through the surrounding vehicles to get past the idiot, some other idiot pulls up behind our vehicle and starts tailgating us. We think: "Who is that idiot tailgating me? Can't they see I am going 80 miles per hour?" Depending on the level of aggressiveness of both parties, the situation may escalate to road rage.

Passive-aggressive personalities go through the traffic situation slightly differently; we think: "Who is the idiot tailgating me? Can't they see I'm already doing the speed limit?" Rather than changing lanes and yielding to the faster traffic, the passive-aggressive holds his or her speed and position in defiance and ignores the needs of others. The primary difference between the passive-aggressive and the aggressive is their level of self-confidence.

When we are in the "blank" is an idiot stage in corporate America, we haven't yet figured out that everyone is at a different stage in their development and that everyone has their own unique set of skills and specialization. We think because we know something someone else doesn't, they must not know hardly anything at all. Another common trait we have at the "blank" is an idiot stage is that we aren't ready to admit we need to learn anything else. If we are aggressive, our perception is that we have some great gift for what we do know and we are somehow smarter and better than everyone else.

Musical Inspiration - Big Time - Peter Gabriel - So
"the place where I come from is a small town, they think so small, they use small words, --but not me, I'm smarter than that, I worked it out, I've been stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out"

What we also don't realize at this stage in our development is that we all have our own personal perception of reality, our own point of view. At the "blank" is an idiot stage, we are like young children fighting over who had a toy first.

Both children actually believe they had the toy first. The first child plays with the toy for a while and then sets it down. Then the second child comes along and picks the toy up and starts to play with it. The first child knows that he was playing with the toy first, before he set it down, so he knows he is telling the truth. The second child knows that no one was playing with the toy when she picked it up, so she knows she must be right. It doesn't matter whether second child was in or out the room when the first child set the toy down. If she was out of the room, she doesn't know the first child was playing with the toy before he set it down. If she was in the room, she thinks the fact that the child set the toy down meant he was done playing with it. It doesn't matter if playground rules apply. What matters is what the children believe, their perceptions. Both children actually believe they are right because of their own personal perception of reality.

A good indication that we are passing through the "blank" is an idiot stage is that we don't get into as many traffic altercations as we once did.

Musical Inspiration - Slow Down - Keb' Mo' - Slow Down
"When I was a young boy, Well they tried to tell me, That I was movin', Movin' way too fast, And I knew everything, About everything"

Promotion

Once we have been on the job for a while in corporate America, our concerns eventually focus on how much we make and how we are compared with our peers. We want to know what our peers make so we can make a judgment about whether or not we are compensated fairly. We feel that since we know how we stack up against our peers, we can use this information to determine if our wage is sufficient.

Our concern for how we are compensated in relation to our peers exposes us to the temptation to pursue a career path based on how well we are compensated rather than how much we enjoy our jobs. If our perception is that we are being treated unfairly, then we will tend to choose a career path based on monetary compensation.

Our perception may be that our coworkers are being paid more than us because they get along better with the boss. We may feel that a coworker is kissing up to the boss and is getting special treatment because of this. Or our perception might be that our employer is discriminating against us. We know that discrimination by sex, race, ethnicity, religious belief, sexual preference, and "disability" certainly happens in the world, so we fear this must be happening to us. Or our perception might be that we are being passed by because we don't have a formal education. We know that some employers require training or a college education for certain positions, and so we fear that we are being kept down because we don't have a formal education.

Almost all workers are evaluated for merit increases and promotion on a periodic basis. This periodic evaluation, or review, is often a difficult situation for managers and their workers. Unless the manager has the same or better perception of the employee's skill and effectiveness on the job as the employee does, this review period is likely to be a difficult process. To mitigate this difficulty, some managers and corporations avoid communicating such an assessment with the employee. Inevitably, coworkers find out how their salary increase compares with their immediate peers or others in the marketplace.

When our perception is that we are being treated unfairly, it is often time to polish up the resume and look for a new job. When the most significant reason we are leaving the job is because we feel underpaid or financially insecure, we run the greatest risk of landing in a job we won't enjoy.

When we are at the promotion stage, we are always looking for to the next promotion and thinking about how we will be evaluated. When we are at the promotion stage, we spend most of our time as inward thinkers, concerned about our problems, issues and agenda.

When we focus most of our attention on us, we tend to miss what is happening in the world around us. When we are caught up in our own thoughts, we may notice that occasionally we don't even remember driving to work. We know we drove to work because we got there, but we can't remember the details of the trip. We are so busy thinking about this or that, that our autopilots take over. Traffic tickets are common when we drive around in autopilot mode.

When we move around in autopilot mode, we may "crash" into other people who cross our "flight path". If we are walking around in autopilot mode, we may stumble or bump into someone else. We are thinking so inwardly that we pay little or no attention to our surroundings. When we do bump into someone else, if we are still in the "blank" is an idiot stage, we actually blame the other person for bumping into us. Inward thinkers are always worried about something, and that something always has to do with ourselves.

Management

We move into management for many reasons. Sometimes we move into management to take on more responsibility, sometimes for money, and sometimes for power and control. The best reason to move into management is to learn about people. When we have been managing for a while, we begin to see traits in the workers that report to us that we had in ourselves before we moved to management. As parents, we experience the same thing with our children. The workers that report to us may have the same hard headedness, the same lack of communication skills, and the same inability to accomplish goals without direction that we "once" had. When we move into management, we also get a whole new perspective of the managers we have had in the past, and much to our surprise, we are like them in some ways as well.

What management teaches us is that we are all basically the same, but at different stages in our growth. Our perceptions are different because we all reach each stage in our development in different ways. We have all experienced our lives differently, through our own path in life and our own senses. We draw on our memories - our past perceptions, and use them to form our current perceptions. We all take different paths in learning; some of us have better technical skills, some of us have better communication skills, but we all know something someone else doesn't, and they all know something we don't.

After being in management for a while, we should have a good understanding of how each of us has his or her own personal perception of reality, our view of the world. If we don't learn this, we will remain stuck in the "blank" is an idiot stage and will be an ineffective manager.

If we are still stuck in the "blank" is an idiot stage, we may look at another manager peer or our manager as an idiot. We may feel un-empowered to do our job correctly because of some circumstance we feel is outside of our control.

Boredom and Diversion

Boredom is all the rage in corporate America. Despite all of the change in the world and improvement in our standard of living, it seems like we are more bored on the job than ever before. When we are bored on the job, we look for diversions to help us get though the day. There are many ways we find to pass time during the day in corporate America when we are bored:
What is it about our jobs that are so boring? Why do we sometimes put so much energy into doing anything but our work? Boredom stems primarily from a lack of passion in our work. The reason why we may feel passionless about our work is a more complex issue.

When we encounter problems at work that we feel we have no control over, rather than attempting to fix the problems, we consciously or unconsciously decide to give up. Rather than stepping up to the challenge and trying to solve the problems we see, we blame the problems on others or situations outside of our control. We think: "To hell with it, there is nothing I can do to fix this problem anyway". When we decide we will no longer work on what we believe needs to be changed, we lose our passion - our fire. This "I can't fix it" perception or mentality is the classic end game for many people working in corporations.

Many people in corporate America choose to close out the remainder of their careers in the mode of boredom and diversion. Fear of losing our financial security and jeopardizing our retirement plans keep us where we are. We wait for retirement to happen because then, we think, we can finally live the lives we desire. Until then, we decide to stay bored, wasting precious time in our lives while filling a box in an organization chart. The number of years of our lives that we waste depends on how far away from retirement we are.

Empowerment

When we feel that we have the power to accomplish our goals, that nothing is stopping us, we feel we are empowered. When we feel that something or someone is preventing us from accomplishing our goals, we feel un-empowered. For example, we may feel the "someone" is a boss we don't get along with, or the coworker who we feel doesn't do his job; we can't get ours done because we end up doing his. The "something" we feel is stopping us may be a lack of education or training, or some form of discrimination. In most cases, we feel that someone holds the power we need and that they must relinquish it to us in order for to be able to accomplish our goals.

But why put the blame on others? There are countless examples of happy and successful people just like us who started with very humble beginnings. As we continue to grow in corporate America, we eventually learn that the biggest "thing" preventing us from accomplishing our goals is ourselves.

For example, if our goal is to be promoted to a team leader or managerial position, often our intention and attitude are what determine if we will be promoted. When we are called to help a coworker who is struggling to do his job, we have a choice to make. Will we resent being asked to help the struggling coworker do his job, or will we be glad to help him?

If we feel un-empowered, we will choose to resent that we are being asked to help the coworker. We will feel that we are being asked to do his job and approach the situation fearing that we are being taking advantage of.

If we feel empowered, we will choose to feel good that we are being asked to help the coworker. We will feel that because we have been identified as someone who is capable, we have been put in the position where we can mentor and teach those who need our help. Instead of doing the coworker's job, we teach them to do their job. By doing so, we help the company achieve its goals because now everyone we mentor, over time, becomes as effective as us. This is when we are ready to be promoted.

When we are children, many of us exhibit an interesting trait; we often look for someone else to take the blame, and often we believe that someone else intentionally did something to harm us. There are an infinite number of examples to draw from. Maybe we are playing with a sibling and a toy accidentally rolls off a table on to our bare foot. When we are children, we don't stop and think to ourselves: "The toy fell on my foot because it rolled off the edge of the table, if I only would have had my shoes on, my foot wouldn't have gotten hurt." Instead, we scream and pout: "Mommy, he did that on purpose to hurt me and make me mad!" When we feel un-empowered, we are still looking for someone else to blame.

The key to empowerment is to stop looking for someone else to take the blame. Instead, we must think, what could I be doing differently to help solve this problem? Solving the problem may require us to step up into a role we are not used to playing. The only thing that stops us from doing so is our fear. When we are able to get past this fear, we become empowered. Stepping up into a role that we are not used to playing isn't always easy. The problem we are trying to fix may not be exactly as we perceive. The key to success when stepping up into a new role is: we must help the people we need to work with to solve the problem, not work against them.

The Struggle for Control and Power

The struggle for control and power sums up pretty well what is going on between corporations in the business world. Business strategists try to identify and exploit choke points in their chosen markets. We believe that if we have a strong choke point, we can control our markets. Corporations spend considerable time and energy trying to identify, exploit and maintain control of their markets.

Monopoly Power and Anti-Competitive Behavior

Occasionally, a corporation steps outside the boundaries of what is considered fair play in the business world and attempts to create barriers to competition in an effort to maintain control of their market position. Corporations create these barriers because we are afraid we could otherwise lose our position in the marketplace to our competition. Instead of focusing our time and energy on innovation, fear of loss drives the corporation to try and protect the level of success we have attained. While most people identify this behavior as something that is unhealthy for consumers and businesses, most don't realize is this same type of behavior that is going on inside each corporation as well.

Competition

Competition is fierce in the business world today. Thanks in part to the Internet; markets are more competitive and global than ever before. The pace of innovation has steadily increased, and corporations are running themselves ragged just trying to stay in the race. In this new market place, the competition is so great, that the term "loss leader" takes on a whole new meaning. Now instead of selling a few items at or below cost to bring customers into a brick and mortar store, many Internet companies are selling most of their products at or below cost in an attempt to gain market share, or control of their market. With this new level of competition, you might ask, "How can anyone survive?"

Internal Competition

But competition doesn't just occur between corporations; the greatest challenge that corporations face is not from their competitors. The greatest challenge facing corporations is in fact, the same challenge that faces every person. The challenge is internal rather than external. In many corporations, this internal competition has been encouraged and nurtured at some time in the corporation's history. This is "the survival of the fittest" mentality: division against division, manager against manager, peer against peer. Only the strong survive.

While some corporations have tried to move away from this internal competition, if the corporation that we work for has been around for a while, like most large corporations, chances are there are still many people within the corporation that have been "institutionalized" by this internal competition. Institutionalized individuals fear that someone else is always trying to take something away from them, and therefore, out of fear, behave in anti-competitive ways instead of trying to work together. Institutionalized individuals behave like kids afraid that someone else will steal our lunch money or our candy.

Musical Inspiration - Take Off Your Uniform - John Hiatt - Slug Line
"Take off your uniform, They see what they wanna see" ... "Your replacement, Waits in the basement, They got her down to your smile, She writes those letters too, She thinks she's better than you"

All corporations suffer from internal competition. The level of internal competition varies from company to company, employee to employee. When we are worried about getting what we feel we deserve or we want, we act competitively. When we are worried about the success of the team or the corporation, we cooperate.

Managing Perception

Early in our lives and careers, we tend to see things as black and white, true or false, and wrong or right. We still think somewhat like children. We often don't understand it when someone else has an opinion that differs from our own. We believe that the other person must wrong, because, of course, we're right. This is a normal part of our growth and something everyone must transition through. Later in our careers, as we learn through the struggles in our life and experiences on the job, we begin to understand that our perceptions of the world are a personal thing.

In fact no two people look at any situation or event and see exactly the same thing. Everyone's view of the world, including the people and events in their lives, is their own personal point of view. For example, two peers working in the same corporation may have a radically different view of another coworker. One may view the coworker as easy to work with and talk to, while the other may view the person as combative or a know-it-all. Another coworker may appear as intelligent and hard working to some, but unfit for the job and lazy to others.

As we realize that we all have are own personal point of view, we soon also realize that we can attempt to manage the perception or point of view of others. How this is done depends on the situation and circumstance. If my manager doesn't feel I am accomplishing as much as my manager peers, I can attempt to manage his perception of what I accomplish by writing a long and detailed weekly status report each week.

The fact that my manager is too busy to check on the details of everything I write in my weekly report, leaves open the opportunity to further manipulate his perception by exaggerating what is reported. If my manager likes to provide detailed and fluffy status reports to his or her manager, then maybe the exaggerated report is just the thing.

Managing Expectations

Another method of managing perceptions is to manage expectations. By managing or setting the expectations of others, we attempt to align those expectations with whatever we will produce. For example, if we set the expectation that a project we are working on is very complex and difficult, then if we go over budget or miss our deadlines, we can always fall back on the perception that the project was very complex and difficult. If we succeed, we are perceived as pulling off a miracle. In many corporations, the act of taking on a very difficult or "impossible" project and failing will be perceived more positively than the act of identifying the reasons why a project is doomed to fail. The process of managing perception is a "skill" that some of us focus our time and energy on while others focus their time and energy on just trying like hell to get the impossible job done.

The fact is that success and failure is determined more by attitude than anything else in life. With the right intentions, attitude and decision making, it is possible to accomplish the seemingly impossible. But, unfortunately, not everyone who has developed a skill for managing perceptions has the right intentions. For example, assume a manager and her staff have been assigned an "impossible" project with an unrealistic deadline. After working as hard as possible to meet the unrealistic deadline, it is now apparent that her team will be unable to deliver the project on time. Another manager who is a peer to the first manager communicates to their mutual boss that he feels that the reason why the project is failing is because the other manager is not driving her team hard enough. He doesn't have any in-depth knowledge of the project or the deliverables, but he feels that he could drive the team harder than the other manager.

What is his true intention? Is it to help the corporation by making the project happen on time, or is it to take ownership of a failing project and staff with the intention of building up his team, his personal empire?

Musical Inspiration - Kid Fears - Indigo Girls - Indigo Girls
"Skipping stones, we know the price now, any sin will do, How much further, if you can spin, How much further, if you are smooth."

Acquiring Control

We attempt to acquire control because we believe we need to have control to accomplish our goals. We do this because we feel that we alone know best how something should be done. What we think we are trying to control depends on the situation. We may try to control the focus of a meeting, we may try control the design or direction of a project, or we may try to control a process, but in every case what we are really trying to control is people.

We still don't realize or want to admit that each person involved in the project has something unique to offer to make it better. So, instead of approaching a situation with the intention to share our ideas with the group to create a common understanding of the problem, we attempt to force our ideas and our will upon the group.

When we are successful at forcing our ideas or our will upon others, we believe that we are in control. What we find out later is that our understanding of the problem wasn't as complete as we thought it was. When we realize this is happening, we can admit we have made a mistake and give up control, or struggle to hold on so that we don't have to admit we made a mistake.

Clawing to Hold On

When we begin to lose control, we may try harder and harder to hold on. We don't want to be embarrassed by publicizing that we have made a mistake or that we need help. If the project we are working on is failing, we may attempt to acquire another project before the first fails. We use our "skill" of managing perception to accomplish this.

When we claw to hold on, the weight of a problem will eventually become too great for us to hold. Our fingernail grip on the problem finally fails, and the problem blows up in our face. When we realize we are about to lose our grip of a problem and we believe that the subsequent blow-up is career threatening, it is time to polish up our resume and move on while we can still use our skill at managing perception to save face.

Musical Inspiration - Closer To Fine - Indigo Girls - Indigo Girls
"The best thing you've ever done for me, Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all" ... "I wrap my fear around me like a blanket, I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it"

Micromanagement

When we micromanage, we become task masters rather than managers. Instead doing our jobs as leaders to create a clear plan and direction, to mentor and to motivate, we micromanage because we don't have a clear plan or direction. We micromanage because we are afraid our workers are not doing their jobs when, in fact, it is we who are not doing our jobs.

When we realize we have no plan, we may put the blame on others, particularly our managers. But it is our job to have a plan, and if that requires us to work with our management create that plan, then that is what we must do. Fear is in our way - we don't step up to solve the problems we see and cooperation is missing in action.

A myth being perpetuated in corporate America today is that it is important to fail fast in the Internet market place. The myth is if we fail fast, switch direction and try again, eventually we will stumble across the right business plan. Many larger corporations moving into the Internet market place have been trying the "fail fast" plan because we don't have a plan and feel that because the market is changing so fast, we can't create a plan. When we try to mix the fail fast model with the weight of our own bureaucracies, we fail fast, hard and repeatedly. The real reason why small businesses can move so quickly is because they are smaller, have very little bureaucracy, more cooperation and much more passion.

Micromanagers waste an inordinate amount of time and resources. When micromanagers make it to the top of the organizational food chain, we waste the time and resources of our entire organization. The key to breaking out of the downward spiral of micromanagement is to develop a vision and a plan to achieve that vision. Creating an executable plan and vision requires cooperation.

Use of People

When we consciously attempt to control people to achieve our goals, we also attempt to use them unfairly in some way. We may try to make our workers work extra hard, maybe to put in longer hours without extra pay. We do this by managing perception, and we often "guilt" the employee into making this extra effort. Then when the employee puts in the extra effort, we might show our boss how we accomplished so much with such a small team. When we do so, we take the credit for the hard labor of others. Habitual users use and abuse people until they can't be used anymore. The used may quit and move on to another company or they may just refuse to put in the extra effort.

When we use other people to get ahead in corporate America, we climb a corporate ladder made of people. The people we step on are the rungs of the corporate ladder.

Habitual micromanagers are also habitual users of people. Rather than working on a plan that will accomplish our goals and playing the role of leader, we work without a plan and play the role of taskmaster. Because we work without a plan, we must crack the whip harder and harder to achieve our goals. We may not develop a plan because we fear an unpleasant encounter with our boss or our peers. Instead of building a real plan, one that we can execute, we may develop a plan that we know we can't execute. We develop the artificial plan to appease our management, and thus so they can appease theirs.

The greatest crime is that all of the power and resources at our disposal are being wasted because of our fears. Instead of accomplishing so much, we accomplish so little. When we feel little or no sense of accomplishment, we become unhappy. Why invest so much time and energy in our fear; why not invest in our happiness?

Leadership

The final stage of our growth in corporate America is leadership. The greatest leaders are those who have a vision and are willing to work with others to develop an effective plan to realize that vision. The greatest leaders inspire and motivate those around them. They work on the vision and the plan and give up control letting others contribute to their fullest.

To be an effective leader, we must learn to empower ourselves, control our emotions, cooperate to develop a vision and plan, mentor and motivate the team, but most importantly we must learn to trust.

Instead of only trusting in ourselves, we must be able to put our trust in others. If we don't trust others, we will micromanage instead of leading. Many of us attempt to play the role of leader, but we think more like rulers than leaders. What the great leaders realize that most of us still don't is that they alone are nothing.

Unfortunately, great leaders are few and far between in corporate America. Most of us are still in training. We don't do the job we know we should be doing because we fear it is too hard to fix all the problems we see. We don't work on the things we should be working on; instead we revert back to being taskmasters, micromanagers, and users of people.

Cooperation

How much energy is being devoted to internal competition in corporate America? How many business units are working on nearly identical projects? How much time are some managers spending managing perception and expectation? How much time do we spend trying to control situations and people? How much time and energy does each and every person in the corporation spend judging everything that goes on in the corporation?

The answer is that in corporate America, we spend more time competing internally than we do externally. Instead of divisions consistently working with other divisions, some divisions attempt to take work away from another division to build up their own. Instead of managers working together to identify and correct the problems within their organizations, some focus on building their teams instead of working on the problems at hand. Instead of peers working together to form a common understanding of the problem, some attempt to force their will on others. Instead of peers working together to help other peers that are struggling, we judge them as inferior to ourselves without attempting to understand what it is that they are struggling with.

How hard is it for us to make the change from judging everything that goes on around us to helping others and working together to fix the problems that exist? For most, this change is a very difficult one. We are too afraid that we won't get the credit that we feel we deserve. But why do we feel this way? What are we really giving up except for our ego? Don't most corporations reward those people who can make things happen?

The first step to helping solve a problem in the corporation is to clearly understand the problem. The first step to help a struggling peer is to understand why they are struggling. The only way to understand these problems is by getting involved. Talking with the other party and listening carefully to what they say is the first step. Once we have an understanding of the key issues, then we can draw on our own experiences in a way that will help bring a greater understanding of what the problem really is.

When everyone has the same perception of what the problem is, then it is a simple matter of each person playing a role and executing in that role to solve the problem. The beauty of this is that once we have the same understanding of the problem, the obstacles that once prevented the problem from being solved will no longer exist.

To restate this, harmonious cooperation is each individual drawing on their own experience to help bring a greater common understanding to a problem, and then working together, each playing the most appropriate role to solve the problem. Cooperation is not about us doing someone else's job, instead, we help them do their job (play their role) and they help us do ours (play our role). With cooperation, everyone is happier, more productive and, therefore, more successful at achieving his or her personal goals. At the same time, we are achieving the goals of the team and the corporation.

Emotion

A key step in making the shift to cooperation is learning how to control our emotions. When we try to work together with other people, we encounter the same judgmental traits in them that we know exist in ourselves. If we become defensive when others judge us, we counter their judgment with our own judgment. A verbal conversion or email exchange will then go in a negative direction, and it will be impossible to cooperate. Knowing this, and having the emotional maturity to realize when we are starting to feel defensive, is the key to controlling our emotions.

Instead of acting on our defensive feelings and saying or writing something hostile or antagonistic, we must realize that the other person has made a judgment of us because they don't yet have a clear understanding of us, our issues or our motives. They may still be stuck in the "blank" is an idiot stage. By calmly communicating with the other person, it is possible to reach a common understanding even if they haven't yet figured out how to control their own emotions. This takes practice, but the payoff is well worth our effort. We change from people who can't get things done, into enablers who help get things done.

Our defensive emotions are manifestations of our egos. When our egos get bruised, our emotions want to attack like a dog. When you feel your emotions getting ready to attack, think: "Sit, heel, down boy!" That dog can be trained with practice. Don't give him a bone unless he has been good.

First Impressions

Why are we so quick to make a judgment of others? As we go through life, we learn that often our first impression of someone else is not very accurate. Later, as we get to know the "someone", our opinion of him or her always changes. Yet we all tend to make a first impression judgment of everyone we meet. When we judge others in this way, we consciously or unconsciously influence how we will treat them. If our first impression judgment of someone is negative, the next time we communicate with that person we will treat him or her negatively.

But what if our first impression was incorrect as it often is? Our negative attitude towards the other person will be detected and most likely echoed in the other person's attitude towards us. This is the downward spiral of fear and negativity. The key to avoiding this is to suspend judgment of others. If you feel yourself making a judgment of others, assume that your impression is incomplete and inaccurate. First impressions are always incomplete and most are inaccurate. How can they be complete or accurate when we have only met someone once? We all know better than this, yet we continue to judge others in this way.

But what if you feel that you are suspending judgment, and the other person is making an inaccurate judgment of you? The key to avoiding the downward spiral is to avoid echoing the negativity. Instead of fighting back, try to understand the reason why the person is feeling this way toward you. Maintain your composure and talk with the other person. Be sure you listen carefully to what they are saying. Try to get at the root of the problem that they perceive. This takes a great deal of self-control. You must be able to suspend your emotions and your judgment. This takes a great deal of practice, but the effort is worth the pay-off. Instead of leaving a situation with both parties having a feeling of disdain for the other, both feel that the other person is someone with whom they can communicate and work.

Problems are also just like people, you have to get to know them first in order to help fix them. The next time you look at a problem for the first time, think of it as your first impression of the problem. Don't make a judgment of the problem until you have gotten to know it. To understand a problem, two heads are better than one; to see an answer, four eyes are better than two.

Learning About Life

Our trip through corporate America is all about learning. When we are young we think: "Now that I am done with my training and know everything I need to know, I can go to work and be successful in the business world". As we develop in the business world, we realize we are constantly learning more about our chosen trade, our life and ourselves. When we put our lives on hold, we also put our learning on hold.

Why do we learn so much about ourselves in corporate America? What is the point of learning about us?

Musical Inspiration - Son of Man - Phil Collins - Tarzan Soundtrack
"Oh, the power to be strong, And the wisdom to be wise, All these things will come to you in time, On this journey that you're making, There'll be answers that you'll seek"

Personal Growth

Psychotherapy is the treatment of mental and emotional disorders with the intention to modify our behaviors for personal growth. As we grow in corporate America, we learn how our perceptions are distorted by fear, and that fear lets our emotions get the best of us. How surprising, corporate America is really a self-help class in disguise!

When we're on hold in our career, we continue to get bombarded with the same problems and issues over and over. We stay stuck until we consciously realize why we are stuck. How long have we been on hold? What problems keep slapping us in the face? What is the message to us? How should we address these problems?

When we're on hold, we don't address the problems that make us unhappy. We may seek shelter in alcohol or an anti-depressant prescription drug, but why try to cope with mental illness this way? We are unhappy because we are too afraid to work to change the things we know we need to change in ourselves and in others.

Dysfunctional corporations are mentally ill as well. The level of internal competition in the corporation is the level of dysfunction in the corporation. The level of dysfunction in the corporation is the collective mental illness of the corporation. How sick is our corporation, how sick are we? Will we let ourselves become institutionalized?

Finding Your Passion

When your life has been on hold for a long period of time, one of the most difficult questions to answer is: "What am I passionate about?" When we have been pursing a path towards more material possessions or financial security, eventually we may completely lose a sense of ourselves. If you find yourself unable to answer any of the following questions, then this has already happened:
To begin finding your passion, you must start by finding your sense of self again. It doesn't matter how long you have been stuck or how old you are, as long as you are alive there is still time to change.

Musical Inspiration - Deep Water - Jewel - Spirit
"And you wake up to realize, Your standard ofliving somehow got stuck on survive" ... "'Cause the chains which once held us are only the chains which we've made"

The Midlife Crisis

You may have heard of something called the "Midlife Crisis" and are not sure what it is yet, or maybe you have already experienced it first-hand. For many of us, this big crisis occurs in the middle of our life, hence the name. The truth is that we will experience more than one crisis in our lives, as many as necessary, but the Midlife Crisis steals all the attention. The Midlife Crisis like all crises is the best opportunity to make a significant change in our lives.

When we are at the depths of our despair, the one true thing we all know is that we are unhappy. How we try to cope with the crisis depends on how afraid we are. If we are too afraid to change what is making us unhappy, we will attempt a band-aid fix.

We may decide to buy something like a new car instead of making a change. These purchases only offer a temporary fix to our unhappiness at best. After all, if we know we don't like our jobs, does purchasing something we have to pay for by working at a job we dislike really help matters?

When we are suffering through a crisis, we may attempt to seek refuge in alcohol, drugs, food or some other addiction. Alcohol and drugs allow us to temporarily loosen up. Those things that worry us so much and make us unhappy are temporarily put to the side. Interestingly when we drink, we no longer worry about embarrassing ourselves. But unfortunately the effectiveness of these quick fixes diminishes over time. Eventually they don't work, but even when they do, the hangover is often as bad as the original problem.

Uncovering our Feelings

Knowing we are unhappy provides us a great opportunity to discover the true reasons why we are unhappy. To discover this, we must be aware of all of our feelings. How do you know what you are feeling if you keep all of your feelings bottled up inside you? This is how many of us go through life. When you come home from work, do you need time to let yourself to unwind from work, or do you talk about your struggles at work with your friends, family or significant other?

If you need to be alone to unwind, you are suppressing your feelings; you've got your emotions all bottled up. The truth is when we try to unwind this way, it usually doesn't work, and we often wind even tighter. If you're a bottler and someone is trying to communicate with you, you don't hear the conversation. We are so wound up worrying about our day and our problems that we can't communicate with anyone else. As we wind tighter, we need more and more time daily to "unwind". As this pattern progresses, eventually we can no longer sleep at night because we are still thinking about our problems, struggles and fears when we go to bed.

This trait is very common for men, especially those men who are the sole financial providers for their family. Most men in America are taught at a very early age to suppress their feelings. We tell them to stop crying like a baby, be a man, stand up straight and take it like a man, etc. We are afraid to share our emotions because we have been taught that it isn't "manly" to do so. So rather than being seen by others as some wimpy "girly-man", we put a cork in it. We are afraid to share our true feelings because we are afraid to be seen as weak. Even though this trait is very common in men, it also occurs in many women as well. This trait is especially common in those who were abused or beaten ritualistically when we were growing up. Some times the abuse or beating comes from a parent, some times from a teacher, sometimes from another child. We that are abused or beaten grow an even thicker shell over our feelings. Our outward appearance of strength or anger is actually a defense mechanism that we developed to keep from being abused or beaten.

Interestingly, when we are bottlers, often so are the significant others in our lives. For example, when husbands are bottlers, often the wives complain that they are sharing their true feelings, but that the husbands are not reciprocating. The husbands don't see it this way and don't understand what the wives are trying to get at. The husbands may feel that the wives expect them to read their minds. This is because most often, the thing that troubles the wives is not the thing that they are talking to the husbands about. The wives' true feelings are also bottled up because they fear the husbands won't be able to understand what is really bothering them and will not be compassionate. These bottlers, be they male or female, tend to talk or complain about something other than what is really bothering them.

Releasing the Pressure

So if you realize you are all bottled up, how do you pop the cork? When the pressure becomes so great, the cork may actually pop on its own. Many bottlers pop from the pressure and become disgruntled workers, some go insane, some kill others, and some commit suicide. You don't want to let the cork pop this way; you need to release the pressure slowly at first.

The best way to start releasing the pressure is to talk about some of your problems, struggles or fears with the person who is closest to you. This person may be your significant other, a family member, a long-time friend, or a coworker you know well. We may seek professional help because we don't know who to turn to. Don't feel that this is a necessary step. If you are still not ready to talk, start by having a good cry all by yourself. No one has to see this, so you won't need to be afraid that you'll be perceived as weak. Go ahead, be a complete baby, bawl your head off, let it all out. After you have experienced an intense cry, you will probably find that you have released enough pressure to begin to talk about your problems, struggles and fears. Don't worry; no group hugs will be required at this time.

When you start to talk about what is bothering you, you will be amazed to discover that the problem won't bother you nearly as much as it did before you talked about it. You are able to get past it and onto something else. The more problems you talk about, the more pressure you release. If you are a bottler that is no longer able to sleep at night, try to talk about the problems, struggles and fears you are feeling at the end of each day. You'll be amazed how quickly you will be able to start sleeping again.

What bottlers avoid most is what we need most, human interaction. Human interaction is essential to getting past what bothers us, our daily fears. When we talk with people about our problems and struggles, we are able to lighten the load of our problems significantly. What bottlers don't understand is that when we keep our problems locked up inside, we unconsciously change the way we treat others. For example, if we are worried about a financial problem and we don't talk about it, we will unconsciously become distant or short-tempered. Our significant other will not know why we are being distant, but they will see it and feel it as a change in our behavior.

We can try to hide how we truly feel by not talking about a problem that is bothering us, but the problem will always show through in our personality in some way. We may even feel that the reason why we are holding the fear inside is to protect the others closest to us from having to deal with the same fear. Our attempt to shield them will backfire. They will sense our distance or our anger as we dwell on the problem. To them, the distance or anger could be for any reason, and their minds will run with whatever they imagine the problem might be. Often our significant others complain to us about something which we feel is insignificant. What our partners are trying to tell us is that they sense the change in our behaviors.

When we try to conceal our problems inside of us it is like trying to squeeze a balloon to make it smaller. The air in the balloon is the problem. When we squeeze a balloon, we move the air around in the balloon, but we don't lose any air. The balloon will contort, and the air will appear somewhere else. When we squeeze our problems inside us, our personalities contort, but the problem shows up somewhere else as distance or anger. When we contort, our significant others contort as well. What is really bothering them is not the little thing that they keep yelling at us about; what they are really saying is: "You're not talking to me and you're not listening to me." We can't listen because our minds are preoccupied with our problem.

Holding everything in eats us up inside. Our physical and mental health is in danger when we bottle our emotions. The best policy, in fact, the only policy that works, is to always talk about what is really bothering you. Always.

Musical Inspiration - Come Talk To Me - Peter Gabriel - US
"Whatever fear invents, I swear it makes no sense" ... "Darkness creeps in like(a theif relief' ... "Won't you please talk to me, We can unlock this misery"

Feeling Again

Once we are feeling again, it becomes much easier to see what we do and don't like to do. Maybe you like parts of your job and dislike other parts. Ask yourself: "What are my values?" Ask yourself: "What are the things I have enjoyed working on most in my life?" For most, the answer is that what we enjoyed most was creating something.

The reason why we enjoy creating things is because it gives us the greatest sense of accomplishment. A sense of accomplishment is always the thing that is always lacking when our lives are on hold. It doesn't matter how we end up on hold, we don't feel like there is any purpose in our work because we don't have a sense of accomplishment.

When we do something very well, we feel a great sense of accomplishment. When we work on what we are passionate about, over time we become very skilled at it. When we do something very well, we are artists. It doesn't matter what your profession is, if you do it very well, you are an artist. When we don't feel that sense of accomplishment, we are just working.

What are your values? What are the things that give you the most pleasure? We often think it is some material possession, but after we obtain the possession, we find out that our attraction to it is fleeting. What things do we hold on to, what is our most cherished memories? To most, this was some time in our life when we were happy and those around us were happy. How can you obtain this happiness again in life? What kind of work can we do that brings happiness to us and to others around us?

We can accomplish all of those goals by changing our attitude and the attitude of those around us.

Following Our Passion

Once we know what we are most passionate about at the moment, the biggest thing preventing us from pursuing our passion and being happy and successful is our fear. Our lack of self-confidence - our fear of failure, and our fear of lost security are our biggest roadblocks. The only person standing in your way is you. Why are you still too afraid to try? Ask yourself this question: "What is the worst thing that could happen to me if I make an attempt to pursue my passion?"

If you're thinking you're not in the position to do what you need to do to make a change at your current job, couldn't you step up and give it a try? If your intentions are to help fix a problem, what is the worst thing that could happen?

If you're already employed and you think you would like to change jobs to pursue something else, couldn't you always return to what you were doing previously if you fail?

If you have been stockpiling savings for your retirement and you think you would like to quit working for others and go off on your own, couldn't you get another job if you exhaust your savings?

What assets do you have? Do you have equity in your home? Could you downsize your home and free up enough money to pursue the job or thing that interests you?

Musical Inspiration - Small Stuff - Alabama - Twentieth Century
"Why worry about the mortgage and the minimum wage, Traffic and the taxes and the coming of age, Small Stuff, There's a comfort in the knowing there's a Spirit in us, Giving us the courage and the wisdom to trust"

Everyone's financial situation is different, but the roadblock to happiness is always the same; fear prevents you from changing your life, not your current position in life. What would you rather do, continue to pour all of your time and energy into an unfulfilling job, or pour all of your time and energy into what you want to do most?

When we are doing what we want to do, we don't get bored and stressed out. When we are not bored and stressed out, we are able to focus all of our attention and energy on our work. Work becomes enjoyable, something we are happy to do, not something we feel we are forced to do to survive. When we feel this way, we are able accomplish more than we ever dreamed possible.

How much work do you actually do at work? What do you accomplish in a day? For some of us, the answer is not much. Why do we struggle so hard to get things done in corporate America? We struggle because most of our energy is consumed by fear, our fear, the fear of those around us, and the fear of the corporation as a whole. Don't let this fear keep your life on hold forever. Realize you are afraid, and you have been afraid for much of your life. Ask yourself the question again: "What is the worst thing that could happen to me?"

The answer is, the worst thing that could happen to you is that you never try to pursue your true passion and waste the best part of your life living in fear. You will go to your grave longing for the chance to go back and live your life differently. How many days on this earth do you have left? We could all drop dead in the next moment.

Invest In You

For those in need of a big change, how much money have you saved? How long could you pursue what you enjoy most before that money ran out? Wouldn't you rather live life to the fullest for part of your life rather than to never have fully lived or enjoyed life?

Musical Inspiration - Prince Of Darkness - Indigo Girls - Indigo Girls
"My place is ofthe sun, and this place is of the dark, I do not feel the romance, I do not catch the spark" ... "No one can convince me we aren't gluttons for our doom, But I tried to make this place my place"

Many of us have money tied up in the stock market. Some of us place our bets on companies that we know next to nothing about because we hope that their stock price will continue to go up. Our fear that we don't have enough money causes us to gamble in this way. The market falls when, collectively, we fear something bad is going to happen in the market that will drive stock prices lower.

Because of our fear, we may start to pull our money out of the market in an attempt protect it from loss. When there are more sellers than buyers, the market goes down. Often when we pull our money out, we get burned when later the collective pessimism turns to back to optimism and the market goes up again. If we don't time the market perfectly, we may not get back in the game. Not many can successfully surf the collective wave of fear.

When we invest in ourselves, the only fear controlling our success in life, our happiness, is our own. When we have low self-confidence or a fear of failure, we pull ourselves out of the game. We don't focus our energy on our work; instead we focus it on our fear of failure. The key to success when we invest in ourselves is to get in the game and stay in the game.

Don't let your fear keep you out of the game. Get in it, put all your energy into your work. This will be easy because when you are working on what you are most passionate about, you don't get bored or tired. The biggest risk you take when you invest in yourself is that you will let your fears return and take you out of the game.

Musical Inspiration - The Rose - Bette Midler - Experience The Devine - Bette Midler Greatest Hits
"It's the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance, It's the dream, afraid of waking, that never takes a chance, It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give, And the soul afraid of dyin', that never learns to live"

Ready to Face the World

When you have built back up your lost self-confidence and you know what you are passionate about, you are ready pursue your passions. This should be a radical change from your life on hold; instead of feeling like a victim, someone without power, someone without ability, you should feel excited to take on your passion. If you are feeling this way and ready to make a significant change in your life, don't be surprised that when you tell other people about your plans, you won't always get the support you are expecting.

Musical Inspiration - Two Janes - Los Lobos - Kiko
"Two Janes running along the tracks, Saying 'We don't want to live this way, Ain't never coming back'" ... "Everybody knows they must have been insane, So goes the tale of two Janes"

Remember, most of those around us in society are still living their lives in fear. If you expect to be reassured that you are making the right decision by pursuing your passion, don't count on receiving the reassurance. What matters most is how you feel and your attitude. Don't go to your grave unhappy just because that is the socially accepted way to live life.

Musical Inspiration - Crazy - Seal - Seal
"But we're never gonna survive, unless, We get a little crazy" ... "In a world full of people, only some want to fly, Isn't that crazy"

Power of Fear

Don't underestimate the power your fear has over you. If you try to change too quickly, you might end up headed back to your old ways sooner than you think. On the other hand, if you don't change, your fear will continue to make your life an unhappy one. You will continue to struggle with the same problems over and over. The best way to get past your fears is to talk about the things that you are afraid of with someone close to you. We all desperately need to do this.

When you are ready to face your fears, start slowly. Change your attitude first, and then start working on the behaviors you recognize as problematic in your life.

Degrees of Fear

By growing in corporate America, we can learn how fear clouds our perception and lets our emotions control us, much like when we were children. As we come to understand this, we can also see how fear has been the source of all of the negativity in the world.

When we are young children, most of us are picked on, teased, or abused at some point by older children. When this happens to us and we're afraid, we may say or do nothing to stop the abuse. Our fear is that we can't stand up for ourselves, so we don't try. What we fear is that there is nothing we can do to change our situation. When we hold this fear inside, our behaviors change visibly, and our personalities contort. We may become angry with younger siblings and we may be distant with our parents not wanting to talk about our day at school. Eventually, most children will break down in tears and tell their parents what is happening. When children feel they have no one to go to, they don't break down; they hold all their pain and fear inside and become ticking time bombs.

Musical Inspiration - Digging in the Dirt - Peter Gabriel - US
"Someth~me, dark and sticky, All the time it's getting strong" ... "Digging in the dirt, To find the places w~rt"

When we are teenagers, the friends that we have often decide to do something we feel is wrong. We feel deep inside that we should not be a part of whatever the wrong thing is. Maybe our friends want to steal something, or maybe they want to harass someone else because they are different in some way. If we are afraid of rejection by our friends, we will participate in the negative activity at some level.

As we grow up and start working, maybe the friends are now our peers at work. Maybe one of our coworkers decides to speak about someone else in a derogatory way. If we are afraid of rejection by our friends at work, we will also participate in the negative activity at some level, even if just to laugh at what our friends say.

Homophobia is a fear of homosexuality. How homophobes react to homosexuals depends on how great their fear of homosexuality is. At one level of fear, we don't want contact with homosexuals because we fear getting AIDS. At another level, as parents, we fear that homosexuals will teach our children to be homosexuals, so we don't want homosexuals to be allowed to teach our children. At another level of fear, we don't want contact with homosexuals because we don't want people to think we are also homosexuals. If our fear is strong enough, our fear may turn to hate. If we hate homosexuals, our hate may manifest itself as rage; we may beat or kill homosexuals. Hate is the strongest level of fear.

There has been at least one study of homophobes that kill homosexuals which indicates that these "killer" homophobes are sexually aroused by homosexual pornography. The study indicates that the homophobes that beat and kill are actually afraid that their homosexuality will become public knowledge. So by beating and killing other homosexuals, killer homophobes are able to hide the fact that they have homosexual tendencies. Sometimes our fear of embarrassment, humiliation or rejection by society is so great that we would rather kill than suffer these feelings.

Hitler had a great fear that the Jewish people would mix with the Arian people and would pollute his pure "master race". His fear of this was so strong that it turned to hate which manifested as rage. So strong was his fear that he attempted to exterminate an entire race of people. His fear of capture was so strong that he committed suicide when the collapse of the Third Reich was imminent.

Adolescents who unintentionally become pregnant often choose to have abortions because of fear. The strength of the fear that adolescents feel depends on the state of our minds. If our fear is that our life may be forever unhappy, then our fear is very powerful. As young adults, we often choose to give into our powerful fears.

In the Columbine High School tragedy, Eric and Dylan gave into very powerful fears. They lived their lives in fear, lives with great pain, lives of secrecy, lies and judgment. The fears they held so deep inside turned to hate, and eventually exploded as rage. No one will ever know exactly what pain Eric and Dylan had locked away inside, but their fears were so strong they felt they had no other choice. Were Eric and Dylan abused at some point and too afraid to stand up for themselves? Eric and Dylan feared they would be forever unhappy and that they had no other way to change what was making them feel so unhappy. Who among us has not held our feelings inside, felt unhappy, felt unable to change their situation and then acted negatively?

Negativity is the manifestation of fear, sometimes subtle, sometimes violent. When we are being negative, at the root, we are always afraid of something. Fear can be a blindingly powerful emotion. We have all chosen to be negative at times as we grow through life; who are we to judge those who have also been negative? Choice is our free will.

Musical Inspiration - Put Your Lights On - Santana - Supernatural
"Hey now, all you sinners, Put your lights on" ... "Because there's a monster living under my bed" ... "There's an angel with a hand on my head, She says I've got nothing to fear"

Losing Control

One of the last stages in our development is learning to give up control. We fear giving up control because that is what we have been pursuing most of our lives. We pursue financial security instead of our passions because we feel financial security gives us control over our lives.

We can't control anything in life the way we think we can. As we go through life, at times we convince ourselves that we are in control, if only to find out later we never really had any control. We thought that by having control we would be able to manipulate the outcome of a situation. But when life doesn't take the course we had planned out, we finally realize we never had the control. We miss out on life because we're so afraid that we spend most of our time and energy trying to control it rather than living it. If you want to live a happy life you can, but you can't control exactly where it will go.

To lose control, you must learn to trust. We control freaks find this incredibly difficult to do. We are the ones who always want to be driving the car. Metaphorically, we always want to be in the driver's seat in life. Control freaks often try to manage or control all of our family's finances. When control freaks fly in an airplanes, we are often scared to death. When we get on the plane we look for the emergency exit and begin planning how we will make our escape in case of an emergency. We won't try to do the things we are most afraid to do.

At the root, what control freaks are really afraid of is dying. We think that if we have control we won't get killed when someone else makes a mistake. This is perhaps the greatest example of how fear clouds our perception because we all know better than this. We all know we could die at any moment and we have no control over when we will die.

So to lose control, we must determine what we are afraid of and face our fears. As we face each fear, our ability to face the next becomes stronger and stronger. After we face some of them, we won't believe how much time we spent worrying about such insignificant things.

When you were younger, did you collect a lot of stuff you never really needed? Maybe you still do. Most of us are junk collectors at some time in our lives. We keep everything we have and take everything we can get for free because we are afraid we might need these things later. At some point, most of us realize we have wasted an inordinate amount of time and energy collecting junk we never used. Eventually we get past this fear and get rid of the junk. If we are fearful of giving away something valuable, we might spend some more energy trying to sell the junk in a garage sale. For some, we realize that the investment of our time in selling the junk is not worth the payback. A better way to get rid of the junk is to give it away to someone who can use it. Your time is the most precious resource you have, far more precious than money.

What is difference between collecting junk we never use and collecting money we never use? When think you realize how much of your life you have spent collecting things you don't need, try to put a time figure on it. What do you think you could have done with that time if you had been pursuing your passion? This is what life is about, we learn by doing useless things out of fear and then realizing how we wasted our time doing them. Hopefully, we eventually learn from our mistakes and realize time is our most precious asset.

When you consciously recognize your fears, you can work through them much more quickly. Fear is something you can feel in the pit of your stomach. Pay attention to this feeling. Know when you are feeling it and then ask yourself: "Why am I letting this fear bother me?" When you reach this stage in your development where you consciously identify and face your fears, your fears fall away faster and faster. You become confident in your own ability to do what you want to do in life instead of what you have been doing out of fear. Once you have established trust in yourself, there is only one true fear remaining.

The final step in losing control is to put your trust in God.

Musical Inspiration - Love to be Loved - Peter Gabriel - US
"Still, there's something you should know, That I could not let show, That fear of letting go" ... "And I let go, I can let go of it, Though it takes all the strength in me, And all the world can see, I'm losing such a central part of me"

God's Wakeup Calls

It has been said that God works in mysterious ways. The truth is that our fears cloud our perceptions and prevent us from seeing God's work all around us.

When we reach our lowest points, the greatest depths of our despair, we are most able to see what is happening in our lives and make a significant change. Until we reach that point, God continues to give us signals all through our lives in an attempt to wake us up. Some of these signals are strong and significant moments in our lives. These are the big events that should be slapping you in the face: the automobile accident that could have killed you, the time you almost drowned, the death of a young friend or family member, a personal medical crisis like a tumor or a heart attack. These messages are loud and clear, life is precious, fragile and much too short to put off until tomorrow! Other less apparent signals happen to us daily, moment to moment and precisely as needed. Some of these less apparent signals ask us; what do we see in others that we haven't noticed in ourselves?

Musical Inspiration - God Trying to Get Your Attention - Keb' Mo' - Slow Down
"Well you might be saved, You might be reborn, You might own a car, With a big loud horn, Maybe it's just news, On your television, Or it might be God trying to get your attention"

Only when we finally break through our fears can we see this and understand how God works. Recognizing our fears and facing them is our greatest challenge in life. It is what we were all put on this earth to do. Each day we struggle to find meaning in life. We do this all of our life until we find the meaning or die. That is what the human condition is all about. Once we realize that we are all meant to pursue what we are most passionate about, and that the only thing preventing us from being successful in doing so is our own fears, this is when we can face our fears and live the lives of our dreams. Not when we retire, but today and everyday for the rest of our lives.

Musical Inspiration - After the Rain has Fallen - Sting - Brand New Day
"After the rain has fallen, After the tears have washed your eyes, You'll find that I've taken nothing"

The amazing thing is that when you reach this point of understanding, there will be no need to think about retirement. Why would you need to retire when you are already doing what you want to do in life? We dream of our retirement as a time when we will be financially secure and will finally be able to pursue the things that interest us most, the things we are most passionate about. The truth is that we were all meant to live this kind of life today, a life free of fear, a life full of Love and happiness. The lives we live before we reach this understanding is our education on the meaning of life.

Musical Inspiration - We are One - Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers - Spirit of Music
"There is a knowledge we all know, yet we don't know, yet we don't know" ... "There is a Spirit we all know, yet we don't know, yet we don't know" ... "Wake up now, to the realization, we are all of one nation"

Musical Inspiration - God Don't Have To Teach You This Way - Peter Himmelman - From Strength To Strength
"Hey my brother, though we have but one mother, We're standing on different ends of the world" ... "I see you reach for reasons why, I see you break on down and cry, God don't have to teach you this way"

secret decoder ring

 The End