365 – Page 35 – Watch. Stand. Pray.

239 – Disrespect vs Disdain

Desire for anything allows that thing to control you. Respect is no exception. Drop and abandon all and any cultures, gestures, customs, rituals, signs—any method of “respect” that you revere. If a motion, word, or hand signal means something “offensive”, eradicate such concern from your mentality and concern. Don’t use any custom to offend others and don’t recognize any custom as offensive to you.

Choose which battle you plan to fight. Will you play the game of “expecting respect” or will you “win”? Will you ask everyone to pretend that you don’t need to learn or will you ditch your pride so you can learn from everyone? Will you seek recognition or will you recognize what you seek? Will you lay down and cry when your rights get snubbed or will you lay down and snub your right to cry?

Respect yourself always, but remember that self-respect includes not caring about respect returned to you. Respectable people know that respect is to be given, not sought. There is a difference between someone who makes disrespectful gestures toward others and someone who genuinely disdains others. Respectable people know the difference. Disdain is the problem.

A person who makes disrespectful gestures is no threat. There is no reason to confront or “keep pride” merely because someone smacks your face or challenges your turf.

However, people who harbor disdain will often outwardly display a perfect choreography of “respectful” gestures. Their disdain surfaces when it’s time to trust other people’s testimony, give others the space to make their own decisions, behave as if accomplished people are competent people, and remain silently seated while other people handle their own affairs. People who harbor disdain will make autocratic demands or toss out provocative taunts. They genuinely believe that they are better than others and if you slight their great honor, they will throw a tantrum like a brat.

“If you’re so good, why don’t you do it already?” is a taunt. “Just do it and don’t care what other people think,” is an encouragement. Notice the difference.

Don’t fear those with disdain, but beware of who they truly are, don’t become what they are, and by no means covet them.

240 – Leading as Guides from a Distance

Control and leadership are opposites. If you control something, you don’t need to lead it; if you lead people, then you don’t need to control them.

Micromanaging drains resources, but so does fixing other people’s mistakes. Leadership requires keeping a distance, allowing people to make mistakes, clean them up, figure things out, and celebrate the victory that comes from their own effort. The adage “managers do things right, leaders do right things” holds true.

Know when to intervene: never too often.

Coach from the sidelines, give pointers, but let the players work the game. There’s a time for both harshness and encouragement, but the important ingredient is to keep off the field. Sit and watch the toddler walk; don’t help him, celebrate his steps from at two arms’ reach, and make sure he doesn’t play with the pretty hot burner on the stove.

Guiding a tour can require some planning and preparation, but you can’t prepare for everything. A quick orientation before the tour is designed to make the tour better, it does not replace it. Have a plan, hold a group huddle for vital warnings before entering the jungle, pause along the way so no one gets lost, and make sure you know your stuff so you can answer any question and solve any problem as they come up.

While some planning is necessary, plans are for the leader, not the group. Give people a schedule, make sure it’s readable, but be flexible. If other people know the mission and direction then the tour will lead itself and you will be free to focus on enhancing the journey rather than hoping that it finishes at all. If someone wants to stop and see something special on the way, that’s a good thing.

Welcome initiative and be patient when things aren’t done perfectly. Let people try and try a few times, offer rewards for success, and when necessary, step in and give a talk-through demo. When people are striving to get their on their own initiative, they’ll place high value on what you have to say. You’ll have to say it often, though. So, get used to repeating the same truth like a broken record.

241 – Stand Unconcerned

Be kind to your adversaries; this is much easier if you don’t mislabel friends as adversaries. Check first. Same goes with forgiveness.

When you try to forgive the wrong person or the wrong deed, it seems generally impossible. Correctly label the good and bad, ideas and deeds, your friends and enemies. Then, it will be easier to navigate challenging situations.

When you know that you have a true adversary, attacking or resisting are the two worst things you can do. Ignoring adversaries—even acting like they aren’t adversaries—is the best action. No one can stand against you anyway, at least if you stand with the Living God Most High. Squabbles and conflicts are generally petty. Don’t try to state your case, prove your point, or assert your claim. Just live and act; let others figure it out.

Nearly any culture you operate in today will have the Bible in its language, so people can search the Bible to understand you if they wish. You don’t need to explain yourself in anything. Once you no longer care about detailed matters of a conflict, you will be free to do whatever you truly need to do.

Apathy toward adversaries is no endorsement. Adversaries need their adversity returned in order to persist. Have coffee with whomever opposes you. Listen to whomever wants to talk to you, at least long enough to sit down. Hear out criticism. Welcome opponents; they’re doing you some kind of favor, even if you don’t yet know how. Let down your guard and don’t fear your weak spots, but don’t numb your wits and never become weak from laziness.

As long as you are diligent and keep working, learning, growing, and strengthening yourself, the worries that most people evade will not be any kind of threat to you. There are two hemispheres of the worldview of standing unconcerned: One is the naked strength in your pure self, just as you are. You are up to any challenge, even without weapons. The other is your place in Eternity. Though your body and belongings may be harmed in this life, nothing in this world can take from one’s Eternity except oneself. Build your strength there.

Psalm 27

242 – Flexible Endurance Always

Dance between controlling your own time and rolling with the punches, even when other people don’t control theirs. Many times, crazy events converge to work out in the end, but this is no validation that craziness should become habit.

You might be late and your friend late also, but that doesn’t mean that being late will improve your life in other areas and with other people. Being late is generally a problem, but that doesn’t mean you should be rude to your friend over mild tardiness. Learn to expect the margins as they are; if they are intolerable, say so. Find a way to control your own schedule with flexibility.

Consider clothes made with stretchable fabric. Stretchy clothes have a defined form, but they can expand and retract as needed. Like stretch cotton, carry a book with you to read or keep important side projects ready in your pocket. Always have a way to keep your own time from being wasted so that you truly have no grievance against those who make you late.

Airports are another story. Agree to call ahead the morning of; use a wake up call for an early rendezvous or quickly touch base before hand when preparing to leave for an importantly timed journey later in the day. Plan for lunch near the train station before departure or include time for a pit stop to freshen up a few minutes before your appointment.

While some simple scheduling gimmicks are useful, the important part is self control: don’t make other late and don’t be angry when others make you late.

An incompetent leader will truncate essential conversations and terminate tardy talent just to stay on schedule. But, the schedule itself doesn’t pay the bills; scheduling is merely a tool for efficiency. If your goal is to be on time every time, quickly fire everyone an end all projects, then there won’t be any chance of latency.

This “time” principle applies to needed patience with difficult people, such as the need to educate employees—fellow, subordinate, and superior—on how to cooperate, stay on task, mind one’s own business, or complete paperwork correctly. A smooth running machine needs both tuning and oil.

243 – Shoot Straight

Everything “meaning something” is a terrible way to live life. It’s a mode with high stress, never able to say one’s true thought, always exhausting oneself trying to wiggle around one’s own meaning and figure out how other people are wiggling around their meanings.

Don’t be a “word bender”. It’s a choice, something grown up with. Shooting straight is also a choice. One choice runs away, making things much more difficult than they ever need to be. The other faces problems straight on, making them smaller in the long run.

Straight shooters and word benders both arise in every culture. The word benders defend their ways indirectly as if it is their “right”, all the while attacking straight shooters and trying to change them. Straight shooters don’t defend themselves, they just think how they think, talk how they talk, and live how they live.

Anyone can switch modes, but we all have a main. Word bending usually hides some kind of shame or unwillingness to “grow up” in order to face problems. Straight shooting seems offensive to word benders, which word benders use as evidence of “hostility” from the straight shooter. See it when it’s happening, don’t push, and don’t push back.

Much of the difference between the two types of people and their two main communication manners has to do with mission. Straight shooters tend to know their mission and just want to go for it. Word benders often don’t know the ideology behind their efforts, they merely have a “way” of talking, certain habits, certain cliches, but they really don’t know where their conversations are headed.

This can likely result from a brainwashed upbringing, an entire culture where everyone has that way of talking. When children say the right things at the right times, their local culture rewards them. It happens in schools and institutionalized religions. Such people don’t really know what they believe, they don’t know how to think critically, they only know certain speech patterns and “right answers” to give at the right times. In essence of their work or subject matter, they are akin to minions.

Straight shooters are different, they actually know their destination, so they just go there.

244 – Leading as Peers

The secret to teamwork is to know what game you’re playing.

At a small, but busy, restaurant in Asia, the entire staff is trained in every job of the house. Everyone does everything from washing dishes to mopping the floor to running food, seating guests, taking wait numbers, busing tables, even preparing the meals. The menu is simple, so no one needs to be an expert chef. That simplicity might be part of the owner’s strategy, though he wouldn’t tell me his trade secrets.

But, it always caught my attention that no one ever had to direct anyone else to do any job. They had a shift manager deciding when people could go home; that was about it. Yet somehow, every job got taken care of quickly and seamlessly. A staff member would stop busing a table to greet a guest at the door, then take up the role of host for the next two hours while another employee stepped in to finish busing the table. It works like that all night, night after night.

It’s not that the staff thinks of themselves as a “team”, they just know how to do every job and they know the business should operate. Dinner guests should have a certain experience, the staff do whatever needs to be done to make that happen. That’s the simple direction given to everyone.

Teams have problems when they don’t know what game they are playing. Someone wants to be the MVP or the boss at the company thinks that a kind voices in the office will get more sales .. try telling that to the Wolf of Wallstreet.

You might not have the privilege of being told what game you’re playing. Under bad leadership .. or no leadership .. you will need to figure that out yourself. A partially-absent supervisor might never be happy, so you be diplomatic instead.

Look where the need is and fill it. You don’t need to be “above” other people in order to lead from among the group. Be a contagious example and don’t pretend to beat any drum. If you end up drumming, let others take turns. The best way to lead peers is to remain one yourself.

245 – Dealing with the Public

When curious people ask you why you do what you do, answer with wise life principles. You don’t need to give away detailed information about your trade strategies and people don’t want you to. People ask these types of questions because they are genuinely curious and want to learn something from you.

It doesn’t matter how famous or unknown you are. You never know when that moment will come when you are granted “flash fame”, your first or only interview on TV, the unexpected press gaggle when you outperformed at just the right spontaneous moment. More importantly, as you trek through life, wise people—especially the young—will decide that you have wisdom to offer and they will seek guidance from you without warning. Always be ready to bless them with wisdom.

You don’t need to share your life story. They don’t want to argue. They don’t mean to be nosy. And, they certainly don’t know how to ask “correctly”. “Why do you do that?” or “Can I ask you a personal question?” Such phrases are bound to come up, often at your inconvenience. If you can get good at answering fan mail on the street, you’re more likely to have fans for no other reason than you are good to whatever fans you have.

Sometimes people want entertainment, which is great. Children also like to be tossed up or to watch you do that one pathetic magic trick you learned when you were ten, but they can’t figure out. Don’t be afraid to do a hand stand or sing your signature song a cappella. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” …Practice. “Why do you work extra hard at the office?” …In general, it is bad luck to do minimals.

Don’t tell the part about how your cousin’s classmate’s teacher’s daughter-in-law’s dancing coach let you audition as a favor. It wouldn’t have worked without practice anyway, so tell that part. And, certainly don’t elaborate on your corporate business strategy, company inside baseball, trade secrets, or that you had some relationships to patch up.

Always give extra encouragement and everything will smooth over. More importantly, give a little friendliness with whomever you meet in passing.