Your Anti-Hero

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In October of 2022, Taylor Swift released her album Midnights, which contains the hit song “Anti-Hero.”⁠1 Part of this musical poem’s brilliance is that it’s a personal confession of a universal truth, namely that there’s an anti-hero in all of us. 

That’s not a very comfortable truth to admit, as Swift does with endearingly playful and sardonic honesty. It’s a lot easier to listen to someone else sing about her emotional struggles and relationship-sabotaging behavior than to face our own. The song is a hit because it hits home for anyone with some self-awareness.

We’d rather see ourselves as the hero of our own story, not the anti-hero; entire marketing programs⁠2 are built on this principle. But the truth is not so simple. The paradox is that we’re both heroes and anti-heroes, or if you will, there’s a hero and an anti-hero within each of us. It’s why Swift can lament getting older but never wiser; why she can identify the prices, vices, and crisis associated with her own devices; and why she can ultimately confess that she’s the problem.

Why do we stare at the sun but not in the mirror? Looking in the mirror can be scary, but perhaps the more powerful reason is that looking in the mirror is lonely. The beginning of a new year, which you may have celebrated on a midnight not long ago, is a natural time for reflection and resolution to change. In 2023, I hope you’ll decide to get to know your anti-hero better, and I hope you’ll also find a trustworthy, empathetic person—a therapist, mentor, counselor, coach, or just a true friend—to be a living mirror for you. 

Best wishes for this new year!

1 https://digital.umusic.com/taylorswiftmidnights

2 https://storybrand.com

What will be Left Inside?

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Every technological advance simultaneously augments and atrophies a human function by outsourcing it. Because my “smart” phone can “remember” thousands of phone numbers, my brain does not. As this phenomenon continues at an exponential paceª, thoughtful reflection and informed decision about how we use our tools will only become more important.

Although many find their way of life alien, the Amish provide a powerful example of this reflective practice, examining technological developments against their Ordnung, a code of values. For example, they generally eschew the use of automobiles and airplanes, primarily because these technologies don’t contribute to their experience of community, one of their core values. 

I’m not quite ready to give up my car. But I wonder if having a garden in my backyard and a grocery store within walking distance would result in a healthier diet, getting more exercise, meeting more of my neighbors along the way, and spewing less exhaust into the air. And I wonder what’s stopping me from organizing for that.

The most significant technological innovation of our age is probably the internet. But the consequences of its misuse are alarming. Social media, for example, turns personality into product. We see all too clearly now the dangers that arise when we interact with the momentary and fragmentary images and words that represent real people in the same or a similar way that we would with those real people. We become “like butter scraped over too much bread.”

It seems that our tools are most capable of outsourcing our physical and intellectual functions for the purpose of getting results or solutions. But what of our emotional and spiritual dimensions? Can those be outsourced in a healthy way? And at the end of all this outsourcing, what will be left inside?

ª https://www.akimbo.link/blog/s-7-e-11-is-seth-real

Nothing to Lose

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Elon Musk recently announced he would be selling almost everything he owns, including all his houses.ª The decision appears to be motivated by concern that his many possessions could make him a target of the poor, and he’d rather not deal with the distractions such conflict would bring.

In an economic downturn induced by a viral pandemic, when involuntary cost-cutting is a necessity both for individuals and organizations, it’s worth remembering there are benefits to voluntary renunciation and frugality:

Men such as Elijah and Elisha became what they were through their courage, perseverance and indifference to the things of this life. They practiced frugality; by being content with a little, they reached a state in which they wanted nothing, and so came to resemble the bodiless angels. As a result, though outwardly insignificant and unnoticed, they became stronger than the greatest of earthly rulers; they spoke more boldly to crowned monarchs than any king does to his own subjects.

—Ascetic Discourse of St. Neilos

As the economic carnage wrought by COVID-19 becomes clearer and deeper, others may react like Musk. But perhaps there may emerge a different sort of people, who are motivated to practice voluntary frugality, able to distinguish between their needs and desires, and who through their dispassionate detachment gain a boldness and power that money can’t buy.

ªhttps://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/elon-musk-billionaire-joe-rogan-interview-grimes-baby-selling-house-possessions-a9504691.html

Bargain

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My mother is a legendary bargainer. She almost never buys anything for more than 75% off its retail price. When she does even better, she becomes positively gleeful. But as gratifying as it is to save money, bargaining has greater benefits than just the financial.

Every event is like a bazaar. He who knows how to bargain makes a good profit. He who does not makes a loss.

—Mark the Ascetic

So how exactly does one bargain with everything that happens? 

One answer to this question is detachment, first and foremost from the desire for control. One entrepreneurª adds that negotiations are typically won by whomever cares less. So being a good bargainer also means detachment from the outcome.

Another answer is positive thinking or mindset. A former Navy SEAL˚ encourages his team to say “good” to every setback, to refuse any negative interpretation and to insist on finding a positive one.

Yet another answer is perspective. Changing the way we see changes the game. Taking the long-term view instead of the short-term casts the event in a new light. Putting yourself in another person’s shoes creates an entirely new experience.

A good bargainer has a paradoxical blend of firmness and flexibility. She knows what she’s not willing to pay, detached enough from the outcome to walk away, but is flexible about what she is willing to pay. She’s firm in her knowledge that the first encounter is not the only one, that there will be other opportunities, and flexible about what will be the right combination of patience and decisiveness to effect the win.

Finally, she doesn’t passively accept as a given what the other offers, be that a price, an opinion, or an interpretation. She spars and dialogues, more interested in the energy in between than on the agents on either end. In short, she plays.

What event have you been dealt lately to bargain with? And how will you play?

ª https://podcastnotes.org/navals-periscope-sessions/naval-nivi-45/

˚ https://originleadership.com/jocko-willink-good-transcript/

Pixels and Persons

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There’s a difference between knowing someone and knowing about someone. It’s the difference between persons and pixels. 

The Greek word for “person”—prosopon—also means “face”. Before the digital era, if you wanted an image of someone’s face, you had to hire a painter or sculptor to create it. Then came photography and now—digital images, which are essentially visual displays of data.

Digital images are getting better and better, and as a result, the conversation about digital privacy is getting louder. As Seth Godin asserted in a recent podcast episode that inspired this reflection, people don’t like to be surprised by what a stranger could know about them.

But knowing about someone is not the same as knowing a person.

What’s the difference? Being present. Being attentive. Being curious. And the magical reciprocity that happens when while listening deeply to someone else, you get to know yourself again or in a new way, simultaneously affirming the humanity of both yourself and the other person.

We will make the digital images even clearer and the machines even more efficient and the robots even smarter. Because we can. Marketing based on personal information will get even more precise. But as this happens, I hope we will ask ourselves the kinds of questions the Amish ask and avoid falling into an unconscious Faustian pact with technology:

What might I lose from buying a product or service that is done by a machine rather than a person? Is what I might gain worth what I might lose? Where else could I get what I might lose?

If they don’t already, the computers will eventually know more about us than we know about ourselves. But they will never know us, for we are unique and unrepeatable mysteries, always changing and becoming someone different. Of course, we will try to program this into the algorithm, trying to close the gap between a person’s rate of change and the data trail left by that change. But the created thing, no matter how powerful or intelligent it becomes, will never truly know its creator.

Because to know a person truly is to know that you can never truly know that person.

Click here for Seth Godin’s thoughts on digital privacy.

Click here for a short article about the Amish and new technologies.

Two Life-giving Practices

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This is new year’s resolution season, and among the most popular from year to year are those focused on bodily health. On that subject, here’s a morsel of ancient wisdom with perhaps an unexpected twist:

A monk should always act as if he were going to die tomorrow; yet he should treat his body as if it were going to live for many years. The first cuts off the inclination to listlessness, and makes the monk more diligent; the second keeps his body sound and his self-control well balanced. —Evagrius

Evagrius highlights self-control as the key virtue for physical health. This is particularly relevant to those of us who live in affluent societies, where so many of our illnesses are related to abundance. Excess sugar leads to diabetes. Cancer is the unregulated proliferation of cells. While we have developed amazing medicines to treat these illnesses of abundance, we also know that self-control and moderation are among the best treatments and preventative measures. But we struggle to practice these virtues. 

It’s possible that the other half of Evagrius’ advice can help us in this struggle. He asserts that acting as if we were going to die tomorrow cuts off the inclination to listlessness, that depressed condition in which a person lacks energy or enthusiasm. This may not make any sense to many modern people, who might understandably ask how a daily remembrance of death, a practice some might call “morbid”, could cut off an inclination to depression instead of fueling it. 

It works because most people have something worth living for—a person we care about, for example, or a cause for which we’re fighting, or a responsibility we take seriously. When that’s the case, the intentional, momentary remembrance of death can paradoxically be one of the most life-giving practices we can observe. It can intensify our focus on what matters most, motivate us like nothing else could, and as a result free us from a listlessness or depression that we’re tempted to numb with materials and practices that are bad for our bodies, certain types and amounts of foods and drugs being the most obvious. 

If the forgetfulness of what matters most creates the steady drip of a low-grade depression that renders us more susceptible to the self-indulgences that sap our bodily health, the intentional remembrance of death creates a quick splash of high-grade pain—sort of like a cold shower in the morning—that can produce clarity, thankfulness, and urgency for meaningful action.

In this season of resolutions, how could your life change if you pursued your longer-term goals in the light of a daily remembrance of death? Especially if resolutions haven’t worked well for you, perhaps it’s worth an experiment.

The Dependency Paradox

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Independence can be deadly.

Yet even with poignant stories like that of Chris McCandless, it’s easy to get caught up in a perpetual pursuit of independence—especially if you’re an American who hears this siren song every 4th of July. Since there is no wax with which to stop our ears from hearing this enticement, let’s turn to other voices for protective balance.

Stephen Covey described a journey from dependence to independence to interdependence. This tracks with the natural course of human development, which anyone who has worked with adolescents knows. Covey returns to an appreciation of dependence in the form of interdependence. While this linear progression makes sense, integrating an insight from attachment theory adds another dimension to it. 

In their book Attached, Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller describe what is known in the field of attachment research as the dependency paradox: “The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.” This reality reaches all the way back to our experience of childhood, as the classic “strange situation” experiments show. Incorporating this understanding into Covey’s progression transforms it from a journey of abstract ideas to something as easy to understand as a baby’s first steps.

Although Attached is essentially a practical guide for the relationship with one’s “significant other,” the significance of the dependency paradox reaches far beyond that particular kind of relationship. It applies to every interpersonal context—in any work-related relationship, on any team—but not just in the obvious way that if you’re not functionally dependable, you’ll be fired. It explains why emotional intelligence’s emphasis on a relationally safe workplace is so important. If we really want our coworkers to innovate, excel, and grow, they need to have a secure relational base with us.

To experience the dependency paradox to a greater degree, here are three of the five principles of effective communication from Attached:

  1. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Being honest about your feelings, even if it makes you temporarily vulnerable, is a prerequisite for an emotionally healthier relationship.
  2. Focus on your needs. But with an important caveat: those needs must take the other’s well being into consideration, as well. If you’re not working toward a win-win scenario, this becomes merely selfish.
  3. Don’t blame. Very few things can shut down communication faster. You can minimize the chance of defensiveness and retaliation by avoiding blame and not initiating difficult conversations when you’re angry.

Independence is attractive because freedom is a basic human need, but it gets dangerous when it cuts us off from awareness of our other needs. 

Independence is like reaching the top of a mountain. Most pictures of mountain climbers feature a solitary person on a peak with a breathtaking view. But as you reach for the sky, remember that the mountaintop of independence is no place to stay. While it may be gratifying and even necessary to summit, it’s cold and harsh and supports no life. Life is below the tree line, helping others climb up.

The image of one of those trees further down the mountain is a much more helpful image for those who want to reach for the sky. The further your roots grow down into the humble ground, the higher your branches will reach toward the glorious sun.

Grateful Winners

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I want to be like Mike. No, not Michael Jordan. There’s another Mike I know, who also happens to be a fierce competitor on the basketball court. He’s more than a few years older than me but plays—and works—with greater intensity than people half his age. He also happens to be one of the nicest and most thankful people you’ll ever meet. 

Competitive intensity and gratitude are a powerful combination, providing healthy, humble balance to those who practice them. Without the drive to win, we accomplish far less. Without thankfulness, our accomplishments can lessen us. How? Those accomplishments can easily produce arrogance and fuel greed. Gratitude is an inoculation against those.

To be a grateful winner is a bit paradoxical. Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham write that a grateful mindset is “the opposite of the stubborn conviction that sees all goods as winnings.” This can be difficult. After all, was it not your effort that produced the results? Was it not your diligence that created something of high quality? Was it not your competitive greatness that resulted in a win? Well, yes—at least in part. But focusing only on our own contributions to achievements can cut us off from others and erode relationships.

So how can one become a more grateful winner? Here are three ideas:

  1. Ask, “Where did that come from?” If you’ve just experienced a win, it may very well be due in large part to your effort, talent, or expertise. But ask yourself, “Where did that (effort, talent, expertise, etc.) come from?” Keep asking that question about every answer to that question, and eventually you’ll almost certainly find someone who gave you a gift. 
  2. Be grateful for your adversaries. After all, without them there wouldn’t be a game. There wouldn’t be a scoreboard. And there wouldn’t be winners and losers. The very experience of victory depends on the existence of an adversary. It doesn’t make any sense to love victory and hate the adversary that makes it possible.
  3. Celebrate your wins with generosity. Winning can isolate you. It separates you from the losers. Sharing the joy of victory with others reconnects us. It also completes a virtuous cycle: having recognized the gifts we’ve received that enabled us to win, we can make our gratitude more real by giving to others. And that feels good.

Sometimes an illustration communicates better than words. At a certain monastery in Greece, there is a beloved icon of the Virgin Mary. If a visitor to this place looks closely, he will find hanging across the bottom of this icon an Olympic bronze medal among the other precious items offered there—clearly given by a grateful winner.

Hiring for Humility

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Others have already made the business case for humility quite compellingly. Jim Collins defined his “level 5” leader as someone with the powerful combination of personal humility and professional will, and Patrick Lencioni has listed humility as one of three characteristics of his “ideal team player.” Of course, believing that humility is important is one thing. Identifying it is something else.

In their excellent book The Spirituality of Imperfection, Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham dedicate a chapter to this often misunderstood and unpopular virtue. In the modern era, they write, words like “lowly” call to mind “servility and self-abasement, ‘meek’ is equated with cowardly submissiveness, and ‘mildness’ is interpreted as blandness.” That’s certainly a distorted view of this virtue.

“Humility” comes from humus, the Latin word for “soil.” It suggests being grounded. It means being in touch with reality. It is truthfulness, first and foremost with ourselves and about ourselves—with the good, the bad, and the ugly about ourselves. One of my teachers once defined humility as being “right-sized” before the other, neither too big nor too small. Another taught me that humility is not being self-conscious. Humility enables a person to be more attentive and present to another.

So how can one identify those humble people, who make ideal team players and have the potential to become level 5 leaders? There are some obvious answers, like watching out for the red flags of grandiosity or narcissism. Here are a few other characteristics to notice:

They don’t compare themselves to others. In addition to being the “thief of happiness,”  comparison is an indicator of humility’s absence. If you’re asking a humble job candidate questions that require him to compare himself with others, be prepared for him to be a bit baffled, slow, and perhaps unimpressive in his response. Because he doesn’t have a lot of practice with comparison, he’s not very good at it. We hear about the “war for talent” and the search for exceptionally good workers. Humility adds a paradoxical twist to this search: we want exceptionally competent people who are convinced that they are unexceptional.

They don’t realize they are humble. This is perhaps the central paradox of humility: if you think you have it, you don’t, and if you really have it, you’re unaware that you do. If you want the people around you to have a better chance of retaining humility, don’t make them aware that they have it.

They are aware of their own defects and shortcomings. But they also have a serenity and peace about those defects and shortcomings that doesn’t detract from confidence in their abilities, strengths, or talents. Asking a potential associate about her defects, shortcomings, or failures is one of the best ways to gauge her humility and and to learn other important aspects of her character.

There’s one more very important way to identify this quality of great team players and superb leaders. Since we tend to see the world not as it is but as we are, the best way to sharpen our vision for the humble is to become more humble ourselves.

Out of Control

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In The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Cooper Ramo reflects on how our world is becoming more unstable and difficult to understand, a world characterized by unprecedented disruption and dislocation. His book is a fascinating survey of this theme, ranging from subatomic science to geopolitical strategy.

It’s easier than ever to feel that things are out of control. They actually always have been, but we didn’t feel this as much or as easily as we do now that technological development has magnified and accelerated so much. Although the times have changed, our natural reaction to the sense that things are getting more out of control has probably always been the same: to seek more control. We can do this in lots of ways: through favors done for others, making or saving more money, enhancing physical strength or beauty, acquiring more information or knowledge, et cetera. 

The widespread appearance of the supernatural in popular culture also expresses our desire for more control in a world that seems ever more out of control. Batman, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, the X-men, the Avengers—all of them portray a power we wish we had.

I wonder though about the dangers that may come with this quest for more control. Some are obvious. Ramo writes about the paradox of military deterrence (the arms race): every state wants to feel secure, but it is doomed in this quest because the very steps it takes to feel more secure almost always make other states feel less secure. But how might seeking control affect an individual person?

Imagine a thick, virtually indestructible rubber band. Pulling on one side is the loss of control. Pulling on the other is the quest for more of it. By pulling harder for more control, do we change anything about this reality other than the strain on the band and our muscles? 

What would it look like instead to pull only so hard as we need to care for ourselves and the relationships and work that have been entrusted to us, and to give some attention to staying aware of this natural and enduring tension? One of the paradoxes of our life is that we are both powerless and powerful, helpless and capable. Living in a healthy tension within that paradox will serve us better than increasing the tension and reducing our awareness of it.