Some people think that the only time belief shows up in their lives is for Christmas and Easter. (Feel free to substitute the holy days most familiar to you.) They believe the rest of the year they only deal in cold, hard facts, especially in business. Oh, you caught that too? That’s right, even that opinion about facts is a belief. One dictionary defines “belief” as: “trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.” Do you trust your suppliers, have faith in your staff, have confidence in your methods? You, my friend, are a believer. Evidently we couldn’t get through our day without belief. There are inverse beliefs that are just as important to you too: a distrust of a particular customer, doubt about an inexperienced contractor, or a lack of confidence in an untested process. As important as beliefs prove to be in your business, surely you chose them all thoughtful and carefully. Oh, not really?

There are conflicting voices out there about value. They are in disagreement about how to create it and even what it is. With all this confusion, is value worth pursuing? First, let’s light on a definition. Let’s agree that value is the worth of something. So far, so good. The problem is “worth” is in the eye of the beholder. If you are like me, you very much value your time. Therefore, everything you do that takes time should result in a commensurate amount of compensation. Are you finding that your world often doesn’t work like that? The problem is that the receivers of your time (or anything else) have a different perspective for determining value. This is the valuation that controls how abundant or how skimpy your compensation will be.

I live in a pretty woo woo place. You may too: Taos, Portland, Sedona, Kathmandu, I don’t know, you tell me. Your town might be a bit more concrete and steel but I’ll bet you’ve heard of something that has become all the rage in the touchy-feelie crowd these days: holding space for another. What does that even mean? To hold space for someone means when someone has a problem, you will be with them without judgment and allow them to have their own time and space to work out whatever they’re going through. How could anyone be against that? Oh, people could be. People could be against it because it doesn’t immediately benefit them. They could be against it because it would take time, effort or resources. They could be against it because they are on an active campaign to find someone to hold space for them. People, multiplied, are what you encounter every day in business.

Options certainly sound like freedom. After all, you can now choose between this or that, or this and these many other things. However freedom is not in the possibilities, it is in the choosing. No freedom exists until you choose. In fact, prior to choosing, you have nothing at all: none of the choices have moved into reality. Incidentally, having no options is actually more free than having many options, because the single option is already the reality. Consider examining a menu in a restaurant. There are many choices, perhaps many appealing choices. But there can be no freedom from hunger until you make a selection. All other options are lost in that choice, but now you are free to enjoy the meal and free to be filled. Clinging to options is enslavement. All the “what-ifs” are unrealities. What if you choose the fish, but the chicken is better?

When we find ourselves in need of advice, guidance or even simply information, we commonly seek out familiar confidants. We start with the people we already know and trust. They might be someone we know on a personal level. Or it could be we know them on a professional level or just know of their reputation in a certain area of expertise. Their credibility in our eyes may be because of their experience or credentials, or from referrals from other people who have credibility with us. Credentials themselves are an interesting topic. We are trusting strangers whom we believe to have expertise to designate who else has expertise in a certain arena. For instance, we trust universities to vet doctors and engineers, and government agencies to vet insurance agents and general contractors. So far everything is fine. But where things go off the rails is when we start seeing a targeted expert as a general expert or a trusted friend as a trusted source on all topics.

Americans (and perhaps most westerners) love to be busy. We are proud of it. Ask someone how they are doing and they will gleefully tell you, “Oh man, I am buried. I’ve got so much going on, I can’t see straight.” He might as well be happy about his dangerously high cholesterol or his crushing debt. It’s not just that busyness stands in the way of accomplishment and productivity, or that it hinders your friendships and takes you away from your family. It is not just that the dilution of your attentions hurts you. Something much more insidious is going on. Being “too busy” is your ready excuse for every failure, every missed deadline, and every subpar performance. It is your means to shift responsibility to anything but yourself. At what cost?

I had an appointment first thing this morning with a large cable company to install internet service at our new place. It is not first thing this morning any longer and I have seen neither hide nor hair of an installer so far. I did however have a fascinating conversation with someone in customer service who is making great strides to learn English. She told me that the mass transit strike (local to me) has impacted their installers showing up for their appointments. Since the strike lasted about 36 hours and ended several weeks ago, I am not feeling confident about this rationale. Perhaps the happy news of the strike’s resolution has not yet reached New Delhi. She assured me that someone from the Escalations Team will call me by 12:07 pm to give me a new appointment time when I can expect their intrepid installer. It’s the precision of that 12:07 pm deadline that gives me comfort.

Do you want more patience? You may find it desirable. You may feel like you need it. After all, the experience of impatience may span from annoying to unbearable. The problem is, patience is a force and forces are always limited and opposed. The best you can hope for as a result of patience is tolerance and forbearance. Aren’t tolerance and forbearance good, even admirable? Only relative to their antonyms. The limits of patience are often tested and even surpassed. Even when not, a successful state of patience can be draining and difficult to sustain. Rather than addressing a lack of patience with the injection of yet more of it, consider the environment that is making lack of patience an issue. Why would anyone ever need to be patient?

Perspective is a way of recognizing what something looks like from here. This is not the same thing as what something is. What something “is” is the truth about a thing. A perspective is not the truth per se but is rather a view, an assumption, an opinion. Take as an example the observable event of the sun coming back into view each morning. We commonly call that event the sunrise. After all, from our perspective the sun appears to be rising. However that is not the absolute truth. The truth is the earth is turning and the sun isn’t rising at all. Does that make calling it the sunrise a lie?

Pain. Ouch. No one likes it. Many will do anything to avoid it. Some ignore it and a few actually seek it out. Why such differing reactions? It is because many (but importantly, not all) associate pain with suffering. It is critical to recognize that suffering is the result of resisting pain, it is not its automatic companion. Pain may be inflicted from an external source but suffering cannot. Suffering is a choice we make and one no one can make for us. In defiance of all this, when in pain most of us choose to suffer. Pain and suffering are not synonymous. Any committed athlete who has experienced the satisfaction of the old adage, “no pain, no gain” can tell you that they do not suffer when in pain, in fact quite the opposite. Chances are you have had the experience of having pain without the suffering. What was different then when all the other times they seemed inseparable?

Marketing experts expound that we all should be shouting about the benefits of whatever it is that we offer. The principle behind this is that while we as sellers care about our features, our buyers care about how those features will benefit them. But what happens when a decent rule gets created out of a great principle and then the principle gets forgotten? Here’s an example. Have you ever seen a sign outside a restaurant with the neon proclamation “Fine Food”? I understand you are proud of your product. But this message just doesn’t get across to the eater how they will benefit. The rationalization is that as a restaurateur I want to convey an upscale experience. But here’s the rub: such a crass self-aggrandizing statement is at odds with an upscale experience. You can’t tell me I will have an upscale experience, you must show me.

What do I mean by scarcity? I mean a fear that there is not enough to go around, a worry that something you already have will be taken from you, a belief that business (and life) is a zero-sum game. You may protest. You may claim an inexhaustible allegiance to opportunity and a religious belief in possibility. Yet I submit to you that scarcity is still there, surreptitiously mixed in with all the good stuff and taking a heavy toll. To find that skulking scarcity that is impeding you, poking at you and killing your progress look for these warning signs. Exude anger. Anger is an early warning buzzer. You get angry because you fear you will not get something or worry that you will lose something. Hoard information and data. You believe if you don’t somehow keep things to yourself opportunity will be lost.

Jesus said, “Stop judging”. Do you rewrite that in your head as, “Stop judging people as guilty”? It is just as insidious to find people not guilty. Judging can have two results after all. Maybe finding people guilty makes for better television but Jesus didn’t have television. Still, wouldn’t it be good to judge people as not guilty? Let’s back up for a moment. Why did Jesus say, “Stop judging”? It is not because fair judgment is bad. It is because you are not adequately qualified to judge. So your judgments are unsound. If your judgments are unsound, aren’t not guilty verdicts as likely to be wrong as guilty verdicts? Consider what happens when you judge someone as not guilty.

Most people are living a formula that looks like this: Have-Do-Be. It works out thusly: “When I have what I want, then I will be able to do what I want, and finally I will be somebody. When I have the right degree, the right job, the right opportunity… Then I will do the job the degree prepared me for, work my way up the ladder the job provided me and capitalize on the opportunity to make a name and money for myself… And finally I will be happy, rich, respected and successful.” The first “bookend” that is missing from this is “Know”. You have to learn stuff before you will have anything. The hardworking folks above probably fell into “Knowing” because they read books or took classes or watched videos.

There are some places in business where the scenario is a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game is a situation in which one participant’s gains result only from another participant’s equivalent losses. The net change among the participants is zero; there can only be a shift from one to another. Some legal battles can be zero-sum games. There will be a winner and a loser. But for most business owners, this is a small or non-existent part of business. Even for those in the legal profession, the zero-sum games encountered by some of their clients don’t stick to them. They still get their retainers and fees and their clients still get legal representation in a relationship where both sides feel they have gained.

Back in the day, I was this whiz kid computer genius. There were no smart phones or tablets or even PCs then. Individuals couldn’t afford computers, only companies could. To get such skills meant I had to forgo getting other skills: skills like human interaction and, well, social maturity. Needless to say, I was finding that people didn’t get along with me very well. I thought it was the dominance of my blazing intellect intimidating them. After all, people twice my age were paying me big money to do things they could never hope to do for themselves. Still, living in a world where people merely tolerate you because they have no choice isn’t so great.

Every one of us can hearken back to some pivotal event in our past, likely in early childhood, that determined the trajectory of our life. From that moment, everything turned and faced a certain direction, a direction that we have looked in ever since. It might have been something dramatic, it could have been tragic, or it could have been unnoticeable by all the other participants in the event even as it engraved our path. My event was the day that Grampa told the 4-year-old me that I was left-handed. I loved my Grampa and I had a happy childhood. I had already been told this fact by other loving people in my life so it wasn’t really news. What was new was what I now for the first time realized, and the choice I now felt I had to make.

You are a hard working individual. As a result, you have stopped being merely competent, you have moved into the realm of excellence. Congratulations! No doubt you are receiving praise and accolades for your superior performances. In fact, people have come to count on such performances, and so have you. Many people stop growing at this very level. They stop because it is comfortable. After all, once you achieve mastery you “get” everything that is going on at this plateau. It’s familiar and predictable. But it is not the top. It is not even your top. So what is next after excellence?

Aphorisms, maxims and pithy sayings abound, especially in social media. These pat statements seem to be true. Smart, accomplished or well-known people are attributed with saying them. They get repeated with regularity so others must think they are valuable and valid. Shouldn’t you listen to them and accept them? A problem with maxims is they are implied to be universally true. It might be simpler or nicer if a certain aphorism was always applicable. But if you just make that assumption and blunder forward you can draw some very errant conclusions and do yourself a lot of harm.

Where are those car keys? Why can’t I find my cell phone? I just had that twenty dollar bill this morning… Many people click into a pattern when they realize something is “lost.” They make the same patterned excuses. Even the terminology they use points to a skewed perspective. They say, “My wallet is lost.” What, it wandered off and couldn’t find its way home? Of course, this examination would be better done in advance. Stubbornly ignoring patterns can get disruptive and costly.