Success | Lorne Rubis

Falling Upward

20122 Mar
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Posted inBe Abundant

Key Point: we have to learn how to fail in order to learn how to succeed. And, we have to learn how to leave in order to understand what it is to be at home. Constructively embracing failing and departure involves establishing our own framework for personal growth. What is yours?

Most of us have heard of the concept of learning from our mistakes. But, do we really embrace and understand that concept? Richard Rohr in his challenging book entitled Falling Upward makes this difficult point: any attempt to engineer your own enlightenment is doomed to being incomplete because it is ego driven. That is, we are choosing where to focus our improvement. But when we really fail and face humiliation, we are forced to look where we haven’t or have preferred not to. When we are open to looking in our darkest more hidden areas, real profound learning emerges. This becomes real self improvement; not just reading about it.

Leaving involves stepping out of our comfort zone. Sometimes we choose to leave an affiliation. At other times the change is not our choice. But, leaving always involves the opportunity of letting go of validations, smallness, securities, and even hurts that limit us. It is the time for renewal. Some believe that leaving is when the greatest personal development occurs.

Character Move:

Embrace failure and recognize it is going to happen to every one of us, and likely more than once.
Use failure as a mirror. Look and learn where you normally might not see. Accept and let it make you more authentic.
Embrace leaving and rejoice in the ability to renew. Yes it will be uncomfortable. But everything ends. Move on and know that you will develop if your mind set is open to renewal.
Recognize that relative to failure and loss, you don’t really have a choice. Both will happen. As the saying goes “God comes disguised as your life.” It is the way we chose to react and move forward that allows us to “fall upward” as Rohr so wonderfully describes.

Falling upward in the Triangle,

Lorne

Go Fish – Enjoy the Ones You Catch!

20112 Sep
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Posted inBe Abundant

A father and his son went fishing on a small boat, hungry.

The father helped his son reel in his first fish, and it was a beauty. “Great catch, son,” the father said.

“Yes, but I’m worried I’m missing out on better fish,” the son said. “What if I could catch a bigger, tastier fish?” “Maybe you should try,” the father said.

And the son did, catching an even bigger fish an hour later. “A real beaut,” the father said.

“But what if there are better fish out there?” the son asked.

“Maybe you should try,” the father said.

And the son did, catching a bigger fish, and then wondering if there were better fish, catching another, and so on.

At the end of the day, the son was exhausted. The father asked, “How did the fish taste?”

The son hesitated. “I’m not sure. I was so busy looking for better fish that I didn’t taste any of them.”

The father smiled contentedly, patted his belly. “Don’t worry. They were delicious.”

_______

The parable above is from Leo Babauta’s popular blog http://www.zenhabits.com/. I like it because it captures the frenzy we find ourselves in from time to time. Often I find people at all levels so worked up about getting to the next big step they forget to take a moment to digest what they’ve learned. They know there is a bigger fish and they forget to fully appreciate the one they’ve caught. Before one knows it, they end up like the little boy and lose sight of the main objective: to nourish oneself and add value to others. I really do think it is important to move forward and evolve. In fact our purpose in life, I believe, is to be constantly growing and developing ourselves while contributing to others. In fact in the highest order of spiritual thinking, even God is defined as a verb as much as a noun. However taking the time to learn lessons and “feed ourselves” is important to govern the pace of movement. “Fishing,” as a metaphor for our personal evolution, then takes on a somewhat more deliberate context.

Character Move:

Recognize that we are going to miss some things. I accepted the role as President of Ryzex and two weeks after I started and introduced myself to the company I was asked to do a high profile job that I wanted to do so badly that I was sick about passing on it. However if I had jumped to that “fish,” I might have missed the time at Ryzex where the Character Triangle became a fully developed concept. Accept and be accountable to feed and nourish yourself in the best way possible in your current role.
The time to move on and to “cast the next line” will become clearer if we are present enough to fully appreciate and absorb what we have in front of us. If our antenna is “up” we will know and use better judgment. When I look back on my career, there were a few times when I got anxious and probably took my eye off what was already on my line. The dot com era was such a time; I think I got so blurred by all the “fish” out there that I didn’t get the most out of the one in my hands. I left the COO job of a company I worked my tail off to transform and jumped to a “can’t miss” start up that of course crashed and burned in the dot com bust. I did learn a lot from that “catch,” trading a trout for a minnow. Be opportunistic but act based on what you want, NOT what you’re missing.

Full Fishing in the Triangle,

Lorne

$#&% Happens. Is it Good or Bad?

201010 Dec
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Posted inBe Abundant

$@#& happens at work. Labeling it as “bad” may be a waste of time.

Many who rise triumphantly never label what they go through as bad and lament over it. They simply take it as a given as if they were a civil engineer surveying the landscape through which a road is being built. In this view, a swamp is not a bad thing. It is merely something that has to be addressed in the construction plan. This is quote from Srikumar S. Rao, Ph.D and the author of Are You Ready to Succeed and Happiness at Work. His class, taught to MBA students, on Creativity and Personal Mastery is literally world renowned.

Here is what I know as a leader of organizations and observing people who thrive at work. When adversity hits them, they do not focus on bad. They quickly realize that it is a waste of their energy. In fact they seem to understand that they really are often not in a position to know if it is good or bad (although it feels bad). As an example, how many people have been demoted or worse, only to realize that it was the classic “blessing in disguise”? They also see these situations as great opportunities for personal growth and development.

This may sound like “mushy happy” talk to skeptics but I’ve observed the benefits of people applying positive resilience over and over again. At the same time I’ve seen people wallow in the world of bad. They mentally give up or shrink and often mope around for extended periods of time looking like Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh.

Abundant thinking is a mind set and belief that we have the right and ability to choose happiness. When we’re in the swamp, that means accepting the situation and finding an alternative to move forward. Our best choice is to find the good. It is there if we look hard enough.

Live in the Triangle and Drain the Swamp,

Lorne

Does Your Mindset Grow?

20103 Dec
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Posted inBe Accountable

In previous blogs, I’ve written about the importance of having the right mind set as a foundation to practicing the three elements of the Character Triangle. In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck outlines two distinct mindsets people tend to have about their basic personal qualities:

Fixed Mindset: People believe that one’s talent, skills, and capabilities are mostly fixed and finite.
Growth Mindset: People believe qualities are a starting point and learning, effort, and persistence will expand skills, talent, and capabilities.

In a recent HBR blog, John Hagel III and John Seely Browne refer to this in describing the mindset paradox: the greatest threat to success is avoiding failure! People with a fixed mindset tend to be protective by avoiding or rationalizing failures. Those with a growth mind set, focus on learning and development. They actively pursue activities that will likely result in both failures and learning.

If we want to excel and succeed at work and apply the Character Triangle as a personal value guide, we have to have a growth mindset. Then of course we have to relentlessly practice with purpose and serious intent.

What is your mindset? …really? What are you waiting for then?

Live the Character Triangle,

Lorne

Character Triangle

Our character is exclusively ours. We define it by how we think and what we do. I believe that acting with Character is driven by what I call the Character Triangle.

What, exactly, is the Character Triangle (CT)?

The CT describes and emphasizes three distinct but interdependent values:

Be Accountable: first person action to make things better, avoiding blame.
Be Respectful: being present, listening, looking again, focusing on the process.
Be Abundant: generous in spirit, moving forward, minimizing the lack of.