Money makes the world go round. It’s one of the main causes of divorce and, right now especially, is on everyone’s mind.
I tend to agree with George Bernard Shaw that “Lack of money is the root of all evil.” That or an insatiable desire for more and more of it.
Way back in 1877, Russell H. Conwell said, “Money is power, & you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it.” The problem these days is that people substitute ‘all out’ for ‘reasonably’.
I don’t know who said the following or if they are just folk wisdom, but they certainly are accurate.
“All I ask is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.”
“While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.”
“While money doesn’t buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.”
I also like Lord Mancroft’s comment, “Money can’t buy friends. But you can afford a better class of enemy.”
But Francis Bacon really hit a homer with his statement, “Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.”
According to Samuel Butler, “All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income,” which is a good description of our current situation.
Then, of course, there is Emile Henry Gauvreay’s almost perfect description of the attitude that got many of us where we are today, “I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don’t want to buy things they don’t need to impress people they dislike.”
If you want to significantly improve your life you should embrace Bacon’s words, while eschewing Gaureay’s.
Yesterday I offered up links that explored what’s happening currently with the more than 70 million Americans known far and wide as Boomers.
Their effect would have been substantial based on numbers alone, but add in enough attitude to power a rocket to Mars and it has been/still is/will be inescapable.
Still being in a quasi-nostalgic mood this Sunday, I thought I’d share with you the Battle Hymn of the Baby Boomers.
Those of you born after 1964 would do well to accept that the Boomers aren’t going to go away any time soon—nor are they going to sit quietly in a corner until they do.
Vinod Khosla, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and now a venture capitalist, considers himself a pragmentalist (pragmatic environmentalist) and his investments reflect that attitude.
“And I’m a firm believer, technology is the real solution. The world will not go backwards. Human beings aren’t made that way. And so you have to come up with different solutions.”
All well and good, but he goes on to say that leaders need to hold opinions based on their own belief system and that if you believe strongly enough you can lead confidently.
The examples he mentions are Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison and therein lies the problem.
It’s a common attitude, cite one of the “good guys” to illustrate so-called leadership qualities and ignore all the bad examples of the same action.
Ellison and Jobs are known for forging ahead based on their own opinion and convictions and damn the torpedoes and analysts. Fortunately, they’ve both been right far more often (not always) than wrong and so are held up as examples of the need to hold to passionately to one’s beliefs.
But what about all the leaders who follow their own belief system and blow up their companies when they damn the torpedoes?
Robert Nardelli at Home Depot; Richard Fuld at Lehman and the rest of the Wall Street CEOs who passionately believed in derivatives and minimized the risk; John Thain at Merrill Lynch; Al Dunlap at Sunbeam; the list is endless and timeless.
Khosla is interesting and obviously successful following his own advice, but I suggest that you look for more than confidence based on a personal belief system when choosing someone to follow.
Power is interesting—an almost tangible phenomenon.
People crave power relative to their image of themselves. What seems like a small amount to you may be enormous to another.
According to Margaret Thatcher, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
Alice Walker warns that “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Of course, a lot of people have just quit thinking, so they don’t have to worry about their power.
Francis Bacon tells us that “Knowledge is power,” but doesn’t mention that knowledge requires more than book-leaning and texting.
Napoleon said “Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.” Wow, he would make a great hedge fund manager, don’t you think?
Abraham Lincoln warns that “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Sadly, most have failed the test.
As usual, the best wisdom about power is old.
In the mid 1600s Blaise Pascal said, “Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just,” but it will be a cold day in hell when that happens.
But It was Lao Tzu who best summed up power 2500 years ago when he said, “He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.”
Monday Steve Roesler wrote a terrific post briefly recapping a Peter Drucker article in the Harvard Business Review called “Managing Oneself” (Steve included a link to the full article).
A part of that article is The Act of Noticing and it really resonated with me.
“While everyone is blogging, Twittering or tweeting, linking in, booking their faces, and coming up with other digital ways to “connect”, it would be good to ask: “Am I too busy to notice?”
I bookmarked an article last week that included solid research about the bulk of the population preferring to buy goods and services through face-to-face contact. Now I can’t find it because I was so darned connected online I didn’t actually pay attention to the title or where I filed it.
This leads into the video below. I was reminded of Emotional Intelligence pioneer Daniel Goleman’s TED talk a couple of years ago. If you want to know the connectedness between emotions, business, and “noticing”, this will be time very well spent. Close your door. Now. Tell you’re boss you are doing professional development. You are.” x
I recently wrote that“No one is expecting you to solve the problems, but you can reach out and touch just one life. If everyone over 21 did that we would be well on the way to change.”
All I can add is that we better start noticing before all the lights are turned off for good.
Now go see your friends and tell them; have a ‘noticing’ contest together with a ‘doing’ contest.
Before you can practice random acts of kindness you need to notice.
I became a thinking adult watching him deliver the news starting in 1962 and when he stepped down in 1981 I stopped watching TV news—I wanted intelligence and objectivity, not image and opinions.
How can those of us who are familiar with Cronkite convey what he did for us? How do we explain to a generation that thinks bloggers, Howard Stern and morning TV are viable news sources what Walter Cronkite gave us?
Walter Cronkite understood the meaning behind Lao Tzu’s words, “To lead the people, walk behind them.”
Here are a few of his comments that I especially like…
“I feel no compulsion to be a pundit.”
“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.”
“I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.”
“We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.”
“America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.”
“I want to say that probably 24 hours after I told CBS that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday, I was already regretting it. And I regretted it every day since.”
I hope all of you will click the link and read more about this truly unique man; our country would be different without him.
I know of no better words with which to end today then as Cronkite ended each of his news shows—
Think of all the times you’ve used it as your argument of choice—or had it used on you.
The problem, Gloria Steinem tells us, is that “Logic is in the eye of the logician.”
That makes logic a moving target and subject to the whims of MAP, which means that “Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence,” according to Joseph Wood Krutch
Ambrose Bierce offers a wonderful definition, “Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”
Boy is that true.
John Locke tells us that “Logic is the anatomy of thought,” while Leonard Nimoy believes that “Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.”
But it was Dale Carnegie hit the nail on the head when he said, “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice, and motivated by pride and vanity.”
And Tryon Edwards warns us that “Prejudices are rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic,” because, as Anon tells us, “The best defense against logic is ignorance.”
Which goes a long way to explaining why no one on Wall Street or the SEC listened to Warren Buffet or Harry Markopolos respectively.
It seems to me that more people spend less time thinking then at any previous time in history.
They’re more interested in Michael Jackson’s estate than their state’s budget problems; they choose for whom to vote based on attractiveness and clothes; social media fills all their time with thousands of friends to whom they tweet, but don’t talk…
“Language is a wonderful thing. It can be used to express thoughts, to conceal thoughts, but more often, to replace thinking.” –Anon
Then there are those who treat thought and action like marriage and kids—they no longer know which comes first or that they should go together…
“Failures are divided into two classes –those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.” –John Charles
Or you might prefer this version…
“A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.” –Anon
Of course, there are those who expect the wonks to supply the roadmap and have no idea what to do when they don’t…
“When policy fails try thinking.” Or abscond to ideology, which precludes all thinking.
Here are words of wisdom for those who still believe that ‘leaders’ can solve the world’s ills, instead of causing them; one can only hope they are taken to heart…
“Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.”
Finally, if none of the above has sunk in I’ll go straight to the heart of the subject…
“A man [or woman] who does not think for himself does not think at all.”
“The bottom line, though, is I am sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out that the president lied under oath. His [Livingston] situation was not under oath. The bottom line, though, is he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it’s got to be taken very, very seriously.”
“I think it would be much better for the country and for him [Livingston] personally (to resign). I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone.”
“What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily—fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there.” (King David, who slept with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, had the husband killed, married the widow, but continued to ‘lead’.)
“Too many people in government seem to think they are above regular folks, and I said I would expect humility in the way each member of my team served—that they would recognize that the taxpayer is boss.”
“We as a party want to hold ourselves to high standards, period,”
I hope you’ll come back tomorrow as this conversation continues.
My best wishes on your special day to all the fathers reading this.
“Becoming a father is easy enough, but being one can be very rough” –Wilhelm Busch (And has nothing to do with furnishing the sperm.)
“When one has not had a good father, one must create one.” –Friedrich Nietzsche (This is for all you guys who have filled the father role for someone who needed it, whether for a few days, weeks or for life.)
“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” –Clarence B. Kelland (Monkey see, monkey do and this leads us to the next bit of wisdom…)
“Every father should remember that one day his son [or daughter] will follow his example instead of his advice.” –Anon (See above.)
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” –Mark Twain (This has to be one of the smartest things that Twain ever said—and that’s saying something!)
But it’s Wadsworth who really sums up parents and kids…
“By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.” –Charles Wadsworth
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
I tend to agree with George Bernard Shaw that “Lack of money is the root of all evil.” That or an insatiable desire for more and more of it.
Think of all the times you’ve used it as your argument of choice—or had it used on you.
They’re 
“The bottom line, though, is I am sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out that the president lied under oath. His [Livingston] situation was not under oath. The bottom line, though, is he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it’s got to be taken very, very seriously.”
“Becoming a father is easy enough, but being one can be very rough” –Wilhelm Busch (And has nothing to do with furnishing the sperm.)
