“No crying in baseball”

I’m reminded of Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own when he said, “there is no crying in baseball.”  While baseball may not be the place for crying, I would argue the opposite for business and life in general, that there should be more crying.  My reasoning is that until you embrace and understand sadness, you do not know or experience happiness.  Sadness is the feeling of helplessness, loss or despair, which causes one to be less energetic and more emotional, usually leading to crying.  

Our growth as children begins with our ability to separate from our mother and her ability to deal with this feeling of sadness.  The more the mother can let the child separate and become independent the more mature the child becomes.  How many business leaders and managers do you know that act like mothers who can’t handle the sadness of seeing their employees and co-workers grow?  Business leaders are responsible for finding the right coping strategies to deal with their sadness.  The wrong strategy is increasing “aloneness,” this thinking that you can do things on your own.

People want to be happy, they want to reach levels of happiness, yet many people are unable to recognize the root of their sadness.  While most people think money is the root of sadness or the reason for happiness, the research shows it is not.  Yet, what is the benchmark in business for measuring success?  The root of our sadness is the loss of something.  For example, the loss of a job may increase sadness.  It is not the job itself, but what the job provided the person that enhances the feeling of loss.  It is not the loss of money from the job that increases sadness, but what the money allowed the person to do that enhances the loss.  Our challenge is to find and understand the root of sadness. 

Strategically, both personally and professionally, if you understand the sadness in your life, you understand what happiness means in your life.  The more you understand the sadness of the people in your life, the more you understand what it takes to motivate them.  The challenge is creating a trusting and intimate relationship which allows you the ability to know others sadness.  The best way to create trust and intimacy is by sharing your sadness.  By being vulnerable you show you are not alone and you offer other people the chance to understand what makes you happy.  I guarantee happier people will energize your life and your business, and crying more is the answer.

“everything is very simple in war, but…”

I’m in the middle of reading On War by Carl Von Clausewitz, and he writes, “everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” This is a great statement for my life. For example, I know I should exercise everyday, eat balanced and nutritious meals, sleep 7-8 hours, and drink 64 ounces of water. These are simple things, but my ability to make these things reality in my daily life are extremely difficult. I enjoy practicing yoga, and breathing is a large part of my practice, and it is a very simple thing I do unconsciously everyday, but it becomes very difficult when I try to focus on my breath while giving my brain the freedom to stop thinking for a moment. This got me thinking, what makes the simple things so difficult? Its just about making choices, right? I choose between taking a walk or sitting down on the sofa with a bag of chocolate chip cookies. But wait. Maybe I am overwhelmed with the options, or there is too much information telling me what I should do. Then again, it may just be a matter of habit. I drink coke and eat pizza on Tuesday nights instead of drinking water and eating chicken and broccoli.

Is it possible to make difficult things simple?

Making choices that are good for me seems simple, so why does it feel so difficult? My conclusion, I have not resolved my purpose, something I can believe in. Great leaders, great people, great businesses do it everyday, and most of the great things in our life are the result of somebody having the resolve to believe something was so important they had to make a change. With resolve in purpose, difficult things seem simple, choices are clearer, and change is embraced not feared. It is simple. Find a worthy purpose I can choose to believe in, where my choices leave me rested, nourished, and energized. Yes, it may be simple, but it is not easy. That is a blog for another day.